by Evelyn Piper
Although it was foolish, since she hadn’t heard him ringing the bell, he removed his shoes in the living room. When he left he must have forgotten to put the light out—another indication of his state, since Dennis usually was meticulous about such things. (He enjoyed spending but not wasting his money.) When he set his shoes down he saw, in a double take, that her shoes, which he had left in front of the yellow-green chair, were missing. He tiptoed into the bedroom, which was dark, and stood in the doorway holding his breath to hear her breathing, acknowledging to himself how much he wanted her to be asleep so that he could kiss her awake. Standing there, not hearing her breathing, he did another double take and remembered that her blue jacket should have been on the living-room floor, too. Cursing, he switched the light on, although he knew without looking that she was gone.
Dennis ran out of his apartment and was waiting for the elevator to come up before the cold of the floor, penetrating his socks, reminded him that he had not put his shoes back on. “What’s come over me?” he wondered miserably, knowing perfectly well. And, of course, he had locked himself out. The super’s passkey lay on the table where he had put it down to take his shoes off and he hadn’t the faintest idea where his own key was!
Dennis opened the elevator door, walked into the cage and pressed the B button. Surely, he thought, the super would have another passkey? Surely, it would take less time to get him up again (another five bucks!) and to explain what had happened . . . A patient sleeping in there. I thought I didn’t want to awaken her. When I found her gone I was so worried because she is in a pretty bad state . . . “I’m sorry about this,” was all he would have to say. “I’m afraid I was so worried about my patient, Mike, that I left your passkey on the table and forgot the latch was on.”
He could see the expression on the super’s face and this was enough to make Dennis push the M button. When the elevator stopped at the main floor, Dennis hurried out. Better to go in his stocking feet than to see the expression on Mike’s face: “Why, Doc? Why, Doc! WHY, DOC!”
43
Wilson put off going to the police until there was nothing else to do because once he did that, reported his gun missing, got them out after her, she would be a goner. Once the police got wind of this aspect of the case, she would be their baby. He had marked the school’s telephone number on the wall near the phone. He would try that again first. Warn Louise Benton first, if he could.
44
“Let it ring,” Blanche said, “and don’t talk any more unless you’re going to tell me where you put her. I must know,” she said. “I can’t stand this much longer, not knowing!” Her voice did break but the revolver was steady in her hand.
“I never saw her. I never saw her.”
“If you say that again, I’ll kill you now.”
45
It was the peculiar sensation of feeling pavement through his socks that was making him feel so insecure and helpless. “Barefoot boy with cheek of tan!” Dennis was an adult. He was an adult in his stocking feet and not a barefoot boy. He had made a mistake in leaving her but he would find her again. Dennis stepped into something wet and felt his stomach muscles tighten in distaste. Stop being such a damned old maid, he said to himself. So he didn’t approve of himself right now. Granted. Wilson, rushing around the corner, almost knocked him over.
“So you’re not asleep!” Wilson said.
“Asleep!”
“Out of the question, is it? And you the guy who doesn’t take his troubles to bed with him?” Wilson, who was a head taller than Dennis, looked down at him, cocking his head. “And you the guy who doesn’t take his troubles to bed with him,” he repeated, and then, in one of those flashes of comprehension, even while he was asking Dennis where Blanche was, he had the answer to what had been puzzling him. Dennis had been in character, the guy who didn’t take his troubles (Blanche) to bed with him. Dennis had the third ear, all right, but because he was afraid of what the siren (Blanche) would do to his Odyssey, to the long journey he had to take before he could afford Blanche, he had, like Odysseus, carefully stuffed cotton in his third ear so that he hadn’t been able to hear her song and to know that it was a song of sanity.
“She was up in my place but she’s gone.” He did not like the way Wilson said “Blanche.” “Why?”
“Because I’ve got to get hold of her before something happens.”
He did not like the way Wilson pronounced her name or his wanting to “get hold of her.” Jealousy again. Othello again. “Before what happens? I don’t understand you.”
“You will, Dennis, you will! When I locked her in my bedroom she found the gun I keep in my chest of drawers. Loaded.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Where do you think she could be, Dennis?” No time for cowardice. Hit it. “Dennis, I was a damn fool. I’ll tell you about it later. In the meantime, would she have had the time, since you left her, to go to the school, use the gun, and get out again?”
“Plenty of time, but . . .”
“Come on then.” Wilson started toward the nursery school. “I told her to think over the Paris Exposition story and I think it’s a dead certainty that she’ll have decided that Louise Benton is the villain in the case and go for her.”
“She did, Iss. I mean she did accuse Louise of having lifted the plot of that story; there is what would be a remarkable similarity to the two plots, except, of course, it was Blanche who did the lifting!” He was out of breath. “Anyhow, I convinced her that it was foolishness. I told her that you didn’t believe in it for a minute. I convinced her that Louise had nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe she didn’t stay convinced, Dennis! I tried to get Louise several times at the school and there no answer. I rang the doorbell and got nowhere. I leave it to you, should we go to the police?” Dennis shook his head and began to run. Dennis was the faster and Wilson, pounding away in back of him, caught a glimpse of his feet and it seemed to him that Dennis had no shoes on. Why no shoes, for the love of Mike?
46
“No,” Blanche said. “I won’t let you go. Even if you do tell me, I won’t. Tell me,” she whispered, “tell me.”
“Why won’t you believe me? I have told you. I told you. I told you.”
Blanche rubbed along her right hand to keep her fingers limbered and ready. “I will never believe anyone again. What happened to Bunny? Where did you put her? How did she die?”
“What’s the good of this? Get it over, then. Why don’t you use that gun and get it over with?”
“I told you that. Because when I shoot you someone will hear and then he would be saved and it must be both of you because you are in this together.” The word “together” acted like an electric shock which she could feel in the hand she was rubbing, which made the hackles of her hatred stand on end.
“But he won’t come here.”
“Of course he will. Of course he’s coming here, don’t you realize that I know that? For his reward, of course!” Miss Benton was in a nightgown and robe now; the severe, chic trousers and sweater were put away; what she was wearing now was supposed to be seductive. When Boston tries to be seductive it goes too far, Blanche thought, her lip curling.
“Dr. Newhouse is angry with me. He called me from the police station and accused me of doing the most . . .” And then Louise remembered what she had not done and saw what it might mean. Dennis had been so curt, she thought, so hard and rapping. He had made those staccato accusations, one after the other, and she had denied them the same way, all her energy employed in denial and all her imagination busy trying to understand why Dennis should have turned against her, should seem to hate her. She had not seen Ada again. Ada had not approached her or begged to work for her without pay. This was what Dennis had implied, of course, that she was so . . . saving that she would have been tempted to make use of Ada because it would save money. And couldn’t it have been her . . . savingness . . . which had betrayed her, after all? Now that she had time to think, now that she was not s
o humiliated and confused hearing Dennis talking to her that way after the week in Wellfleet, she could remember the one small thing she had not done. Dennis had thrown that one off so airily, just because one of the mothers thought she had seen Ada in the supermarket! “It might be a good idea to have all the locks changed just in case Ada has a key,” as if Dennis didn’t know how much that would have run them, as if he didn’t know how close their margin was! But she hadn’t had the locks changed, and if Ada could have got into the building while they were in Wellfleet, she could have interviewed Miss Lake here on the twenty-first as Miss Lake said. Since she and Dennis had been in Wellfleet from the sixteenth to the thirtieth, Ada could have sent the application and removed any letters she wanted to from the mails, could have let herself in this morning and could have abducted the child. Ada knew that she always took a vacation two weeks before the school year began. Louise said, “Miss Lake . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment, because might not this confusion make the girl . . . “Miss Lake, I know how all this could have happened. It just came to me now. I just now saw . . . Miss Lake, won’t you put that gun away and listen to me?”
“I’ll listen to you. You can talk.”
“We had a teacher here. I became concerned with her . . . Certain things happened. I received reports from the parents of the children in her group. I called in Dr. Newhouse to see her because I was definitely concerned. Dr. Newhouse saw her several times and told me that I must get rid of her because she had become unbalanced; he called it menopausal psychosis. Ada was forty-eight and when menopause came and she had to face the fact, which she had apparently been evading, that she would never be able to have a child of her own, well, she couldn’t face it. Dr. Newhouse thought that she had probably gone into teaching for the wrong reasons. He doesn’t believe that a teacher should want to be a mother to the children. She should want to be their teacher.”
“Don’t you be a teacher, please. I don’t want to be taught. Stop it. Dr. Newhouse already told me about this teacher, so don’t you try that on me, Miss Benton!”
“Yes, but there’s something Dr. Newhouse doesn’t know. Miss Lake, don’t you see that it must have been Ada Ford who wrote you that letter saying that there was a place here for your little girl because someone dropped out? It was Ada who interviewed you here while I was away. I was away in Wellfleet.” She blushed. “Ada must have planned all this to kidnap your child today.”
“It’s so funny how a gun pointing at you makes your imagination work.”
“It isn’t imagination. I told you. I just realized how she could have gotten into the building while I was in Wellfleet. Why won’t you believe me? I just realized that I didn’t change the locks, which was the one thing Dr. Newhouse advised me to do that I neglected to do. If he’d questioned me about it specifically when he called from the police station, I would have remembered before, but he didn’t mention the locks and I didn’t remember until just now.”
“Yes. Just now!”
“Just now. I didn’t change all the locks because the idea of Ada breaking in here . . . Why would she, don’t you see? It seemed ridiculous, pointless, so I didn’t. But now it became clear to me. Now. This minute! So, please, let me call the police, Miss Lake. I’ll tell them how the whole thing must have happened. It would have been so easy for Ada to get into the school this morning without being seen. She knows exactly when and where we are every minute of the school day and she could choose the precise time. It would be easy not to be seen. She would know just when she could get . . . Bunny . . . out without anybody noticing her. And then, with all the other unfortunate coincidences . . .”
“Unfortunate coincidences! Coincidences!”
“Let me call the police and tell them about the locks not being changed. That is something so definite. Then they will take this seriously.”
“Will they? I don’t,” Blanche said. “I don’t take it seriously. What kind of idiot do you two think I am, anyway? How many times do you think you can fool me? Clever as you two are! Oh, you’re very clever. This mysterious teacher who suddenly appears!”
“Not suddenly, no, I told you! Dr. Newhouse called me from the police station about her, so he thought of her before this, don’t you see? Mr. Wilson, too! Don’t you understand that when I denied that it was possible for her to get in here, they dropped her as a possibility, but they thought of her before! Miss Lake, both Mr. Wilson and Dr. Newhouse . . .”
“Why don’t you call him ‘Dennis’? ‘Dennis, darling’ . . . You know you do!”
“Please, Miss Lake!”
“How did this crazy, convenient, mysterious teacher find out about Bunny in the first place? Why would the registrar of the Stevenson School tell this crazy, mysterious teacher that I had applied there? Why would that school give her Bunny’s name and address so she could write me that convenient letter saying there was an empty place in your school? Who told this crazy teacher about me?”
“Miss Lake, I . . . She must have seen your daughter and . . . why, with your mother, Miss Lake! When your mother—she . . .”
“My mother! Now my poor mother!”
“But why not, Miss Lake? Ada couldn’t have done it alone, you’re right about that. She would have to know about you in the first place, of course, that goes without saying, and she’d have to have quite a few facts. But couldn’t your mother have met Ada when she was out with your little girl? Couldn’t your mother have talked to Ada—in the park, say, when she was there with Bunny, while you were working?” If she dared to come closer to the girl. If she could touch her. (If she could only touch her!) “You said that your mother was terribly ashamed because your child was illegitimate. You said that she wanted you to give your child away for adoption.”
“Because mother didn’t feel I was able to take care of Bunny by myself. For Bunny’s good.”
“But that’s just it, Miss Lake. Don’t you see how Ada fits into place? Your mother doesn’t feel that it is good for the child . . . or for you. She thinks your situation is bad for both of you. Now, if she told this to Ada, who believes that she would be the best possible mother a child could have, and that it is a sin that she has no child . . . Dr. Newhouse believes . . .”
“Dennis! Dennis!”
“Dennis believes that Ada has a messianic belief in her capacity to mother a child. She would feel that she was appointed to take care of this unfortunate baby, why can’t you see that?”
“I can’t see, no, but I can see where you got all this, Dr. Newhouse had no right to tell you all this. I told him about Bunny and Mother in confidence; he had no right to tell you!”
“Of course he had a right to . . .” It seemed to Louise that she saw Miss Lake’s finger tighten on the trigger; she continued hastily, “Can’t you see now how Ada got into this? How she found out about you and then convinced your mother . . . who was convinced to start with, anyway, that your child would be better off with her? That you would be better off without Bunny? It seems so clear to me that Ada and your mother arranged this . . . for your mother to go away today so that she couldn’t testify to there being a child, for Ada to take the child . . .”
“My mother did this terrible thing to me? My mother had Bunny stolen and walked out and left me? Do you think I would believe for one single moment that my mother would do such a thing to me? She loves me! She may think that Bunny . . . But she loves me and she loves Bunny and she wouldn’t do a thing like this in a million years!”
“It’s the only answer! It’s the only answer!”
“It’s the only answer you can find. To save yourself. It isn’t going to work, Miss Benton! When he comes,” she said, “I’m going to lock you in that kitchenette so you can’t warn him.” She watched Miss Benton crying, with curiosity, as if weeping were something she did not understand. She stared at the tears now running down Miss Benton’s face as if she did not know what tears were. Except to rub her right hand with her left, she hardly moved at all.
47
; Dennis rang the bell. Dum-dum-dum-di. He heard Wilson puffing up the stairs behind him and rang again. Dum-dum-dum-di.
Wilson said, puffing, “Why didn’t Louise give you a key? Discretion? No, you preferred it, didn’t you? No keys, no locks and no keys for you.” No “ball and chain” was what he really meant. “Let you in or not let you in just as she chooses; her pigeon. Maybe she doesn’t choose just now or maybe it’s too late for choice in anything but funeral decorations!”
Dennis said, “Don’t be ridiculous. She wouldn’t shoot.”
“Why do you think she took my gun?”
“She wouldn’t shoot.”
“Wouldn’t you call that wishful thinking, psychiatrist?” Wishful thinking all along the line, Wilson thought.
“I can understand Blanche wanting to shoot, but she wouldn’t.” His hand was on the knob waiting for the click.
“Maybe I better get the cops, eh?” He saw Dennis shake his head. “Dennis, I know, but maybe we better.”
The mechanism clicked and the knob seemed to jump in Dennis’s hand like a live thing, as if the desire in the pressing finger on the release button up there was so powerful, so overwhelming that it made the dead metal live. Dennis turned the knob as quickly as possible, grimacing.
Wilson whispered, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Dennis said. He walked through the hall and started up the stairs, first one step at a time and then, when he could hear the frantic but muffled banging overhead, two at a time, leaping. “Louise!” he called. “Louise!”
There was no answer, only the repeated pounding.
