“No, ma’am.”
“Because I don’t have to go home. I’m free. Free as a bird.” She reached over and touched his coat sleeve. “I don’t have to go home, do I?”
“I guess not.”
“You’ll never tell anyone?”
“No.”
“You’re a very good man, McGowney.”
“I have never thought I wasn’t,” McGowney said simply.
When darkness fell, McGowney got his car out of the garage and brought it around to the ambulance entrance behind his office.
“You’d better hide in the back seat,” he said, “until we get out of town.”
“Where are we going?”
“I thought I’d drive you into Detroit, and from there you can catch a bus or a train.”
“To where?”
“To anywhere. You’re free as a bird.”
She got into the back seat, shivering in spite of the mildness of the night, and McGowney covered her with a blanket.
“McGowney.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I felt freer when I was locked in your little lab.”
“You’re a bit frightened now, that’s all. Freedom is a mighty big thing.”
He turned the car toward the highway. Half an hour later, when the city’s lights had disappeared, he stopped the car and Mrs. Keating got into the front seat with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Indian style. In the gleam of oncoming headlights, her face looked a little troubled. McGowney felt duty bound to cheer her up, since he was responsible for her being there in the first place.
There are, he said firmly, “wonderful places to be seen.”
“Are there?”
“California, that’s the spot I’d pick. Flowers all year round, never an end to them.” He hesitated. “I’ve saved a bit throughout the years. I always thought someday I’d sell the business and retire to California.”
“What’s to prevent you?”
I couldn’t face the idea, of, well, of being alone out there without friends or a family of some kind. Have you ever been to California?”
“I spent a couple of summers in San Francisco.”
“Did you like it?”
“Very much.”
“I’d like it, too, I’m sure of that.” He cleared his throat. “Being alone, though, that I wouldn’t like. Are you warm enough?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Birds—well, birds don’t have such a happy time of it that I can see.”
“No?”
“All that freedom and not knowing what to do with it except fly around. A life like that wouldn’t suit a mature woman like yourself, Mrs. Keating.”
“Perhaps not.”
“What I mean is—’’
“I know what you mean, McGowney.”
“You—you do?”
“Of course.”
McGowney flushed. “It’s—well, it’s very unexpected, isn’t it?’’
“Not to me.”
“But I never thought of it until half an hour ago.”
“I did. Women are more foresighted in these matters.”
McGowney was silent a moment. “This hasn’t been a very romantic proposal. I ought to say something a bit on the sentimental side.”
“Go ahead.”
He gripped the steering wheel hard. “I think I love you, ma’am.”
“You didn’t have to say that,” she replied sharply. “I’m not a foolish young girl to be taken in by words. At my age, I don’t expect love. I don’t want to—”
“But you are loved,” McGowney declared.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Eventually you will.”
“Is this another of your miracles, McGowney?”
“This is the important one.”
It was the first time in Mrs. Keating’s life she had been told she was loved. She sat beside McGowney in awed silence, her hands folded on her lap, like a little girl in Sunday school.
McGowney left her at a hotel in Detroit and went home to hold her funeral.
Two weeks later, they were married by a justice of the peace in a little town outside Chicago. On the long and leisurely trip West in McGowney’s car, neither of them talked much about the past or worried about the future. McGowney had sold his business, but he’d been in too much of a hurry to wait for a decent price, and so his funds were limited. But he never mentioned this to his bride.
By the time they reached San Francisco, they had gone through quite a lot of McGowney’s capital. A large portion of the remainder went toward the purchase of the little house in Berkeley.
By late fall, they were almost broke, and McGowney got a job as a shoe clerk in a department store. A week later, along with his first paycheck, he received his notice of dismissal.
That night at dinner, he told Eleanor about it, pretending it was all a joke, and inventing a couple of anecdotes to make her laugh.
She listened, grave and unamused. “So that’s what you’ve been doing all week. Selling shoes.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me we needed money that badly.”
“We’ll be all right. I can easily get another job.”
“Doing what?”
“What I’ve always done.”
She reached across the table and touched his hand. “You don’t want to be a mortician again.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You always hated it.”
“I don’t mind, I tell you.”
She rose decisively.
“Eleanor, what are you going to do?”
“Write a letter,” she said with a sigh.
“Eleanor, don’t do anything drastic.”
“We have had a lot of happiness. It couldn’t last forever. Don’t be greedy.”
The meaning of her words pierced McGowney’s brain. “You’re going to let someone know you’re alive?”
“No. I couldn’t face that, not just yet. I’m merely going to show them I’m not dead so they can’t divide up my estate.”
“But why?”
“As my husband, you’re entitled to a share of it if anything happens to me.”
“Nothing will ever happen to you. We agreed about that, didn’t we?”
“Yes, McGowney. We agreed.”.
“We no longer believe in death.”
“I will address the letter to Meecham,” she said.
“So she wrote the letter.” McGowney’s voice was weary. “For my sake. You know the rest, Meecham.”
“Not quite,” I said.
“What else do you want to know?”
“The ending.”
“The ending.” McGowney stirred in the seat beside me and let out his breath in a sigh. “I don’t believe in endings.”
I turned right at the next traffic light, as McGowney directed. A sign on the lamppost said Linden Avenue.
Three blocks south was a small green-and-white house, its eaves dripping with fog.
I parked my car in front of it and got out, pleasantly excited at the idea of seeing Mrs. Keating again. McGowney sat motionless, staring straight ahead of him, until I opened the car door.
“Come on, McGowney.”
“Eh? Oh. All right. All right.”
He stepped out on the sidewalk so awkwardly he almost fell. I took his arm. “Is anything wrong?”
“No.”
We went up the porch steps.
“There are no lights on,” McGowney said. “Eleanor must be at the store. Or over at the neighbor’s. We have some very nice neighbors.”
The front door was not locked. We went inside, and McGowney turned on the lights in the hall and the sitting room to the right.
The woman I had known as Mrs. Keating was sitting in a wing chair in front of the fireplace, her head bent forward as if she were in deep thought. Her knitting had fallen on the floor, and I saw it was a half-finished glove in bright colors. McGowney’s birthday present.
In silence, McGowney reached down a
nd picked up the glove and put in on a table. Then he touched his wife gently on the forehead. I knew from the way his hand flinched that her skin was as cold as the ashes in the grate.
I said, “I’ll get a doctor.”
“No.”
“She’s dead?”
He didn’t bother to answer. He was looking down at his wife with a coaxing expression. “Eleanor dear, you must wake up. We have a visitor.”
“McGowney, for God’s sake—”
“I think you’d better leave now, Mr. Meecham,” he said in a firm, clear voice. “I have work to do.”
He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
He Got What He Deserved
BERNICE CAREY
All the ingredients for prettiness were there: lustrous blond hair; round blue eyes; full red lips; round chin; soft, plump cheeks. Neilsen wondered why they did not add up to making her a pretty girl.
Alone with her in a room at the police station, Robert Neilsen sat and listened, professionally, impassively. He had been surprised at being called. One would have thought a woman held for murder would seek a lawyer of established reputation in the community, not an inexperienced newcomer.
In the first few minutes of the interview, however, she had explained her choice, prefacing her explanation by the declaration in a high, flat voice, that Gloria Ericsson was no fool. She knew her rights. The first thing, she had demanded a lawyer. She refused to say one word to the cops until she had talked to a lawyer.
Neilsen had nodded gravely, corroborating the correctness of this procedure.
“The only lawyer we ever done business with,” she had informed him, “was old Mr. Stedman, and he died a couple of months ago. So I didn’t know who to turn to, and I just looked in the classified section of the phone book and picked a name I liked.”
Her eyes grew fixed for a moment on his, and then she laughed, abruptly and briefly. In the course of their interview Neilsen became aware that she never smiled, only laughed in this sudden, disconnected way.
“Dad was Scandinavian. Norwegian,” she elucidated, “and when I saw your name: Neilsen, I said to myself, that’s for me. Another Scandinavian. Be kind of like one of my own folks.”
Robert Neilsen smiled perfunctorily, and decided not to apprise her of the fact that although his name had come down from a Danish great-grandfather, this forefather’s blood had been diluted, not to say obliterated, by typical American cross-currents all along the way: English, Irish, French, a dash of German, and a possible strain of Chippewa Indian on the side of one great-grandmother.
In school, and in his brief period of practice, Robert had learned that it is best to hold one’s client firmly to essentials, suavely barring the paths to irrelevant discursiveness. But it was not easy to do with Gloria Ericsson, and after the first few minutes he quit trying.
“I killed him, of course,” she said. “But the way I look at it, I was perfectly justified. All you have to do is let the judge and the jury know what was going on. Anybody would have felt just like I did. And, of course, I really did it for Mamma’s sake.”
“You intended to kill the man?” Neilsen interjected in a slightly dazed tone.
“Oh, no. That is, I hadn’t planned to.” She paused for a moment, and her pink and white countenance was entirely blank, her eyes empty.
Robert Neilsen deduced that behind this blank facade she was considering what had happened.
“I guess,” Gloria resumed, “I didn’t really mean to kill him even when I hit him with the vase.” She pronounced it “vahze.” “I was just mad, and I picked up the nearest thing and whammed him with it. You know how it is when you lose your temper.”
Robert nodded feebly.
“But when I tell you what that man was up to, you’ll see why it served him right, getting himself killed.” Without seeming to deviate from their unseeing fixation upon his own eyes, the azure irises of hers oscillated in a sort of frantic movement from side to side, as if Gloria were unable to hold them steady in her anger at the wickedness she was recalling.
“You see, Mamma and I are all each other has. I always say parents and children are really closer than even husband and wife. Well, after Dad passed away, and I got married, I and Harold—that’s my ex—we went on living in Mamma’s and my home. You see, Dad left the house and his insurance and everything to Mamma. Dad was—well, a little funny that way. Not that I’ve got anything against him. But, well, you’d have thought he’d have looked after my interests a little. Though, of course, I was only seventeen at the time, and he counted on Mamma looking after me.
“Well, when I came of age, I had a talk with Mamma and explained to her how it was. In case she passed away, all the delay over a will, and having to pay lawyers’ fees—no offense, Mr. Neilsen.” She interpolated a laugh—to show there was nothing personal in the remark—and went on, reclasping her long, rounded fingers over an alligator bag, causing two diamond rings to glitter more brilliantly with the movement. “Well, I showed Mamma that the only sensible thing to do was put our property in both our names, the bank accounts, too; so they wouldn’t be tied up for ages—in case anything happened. Mamma saw, of course, that it was the thing to do. My mother is devoted to me, absolutely devoted. So we fixed our home—and a little house the folks had on the other side of town that we rent out—so we have joint ownership of everything.
“And I must say, Mr. Neilsen, everything has worked out just swell. When Dad died the folks had our home fixed up lovely. Everything you could want. Electric all through. Magic Chef in the kitchen, and a Frigidaire with a deep-freeze, and a Bendix and a mangle, and a Mixmaster—”
She leaned forward a little, pushing the soft muskrat coat back on her shoulders. Her face grew intent, and although she looked straight at him, the lawyer had an uncomfortable feeling that momentarily she had forgotten his presence as she went on—lustfully was the only word he could think of—enumerating the possessions which filled her Home.
“And since I’ve been working—I didn’t quit even when I got married—I’m an I.B.M. operator for the Sno-White Creameries—handle anything: tabulator, setter—anything you want to mention. I get a good salary —ver-ry good. Believe me, they know a valuable person when they get hold of one. Well, the money I’ve spent on our home! You see, me not having to pay rent, and Mamma paying for the food and utilities, I was able to get things really nice. There isn’t anything we don’t have. I guess our home can stand up against anybody’s in this town. The living room rug alone—it’s cream- colored broadloom—cost over five hundred dollars. And the bedroom sets. Simply lovely. Just last year I got a new one for my room—Swedish Modern. Blond maple, you know. And I let Mamma use my old set in her room—imitation mahogany with brass handles. It’s really mine, of course. Harold’s—my ex, you know—Harold’s folks gave it to us for a wedding present. Cost over four hundred dollars. I managed to hang on to that, you bet, when him and I split up.”
While she paused for breath, she settled the muskrat more securely on her shoulders and renewed her clutch on the alligator handbag. Neilsen’s mind stirred with the knowledge that this was a point at which he should firmly lead the woman back to his business with her. But he was numbed by the torrent of words.
“So you can see, we were getting along fine. Had everything. And I never dreamed. She met him in church. Mamma went every Sunday, but I was usually too busy, taking care of my clothes and all. I’d only met him twice, mind you. Once at a church supper. He sat with us, but I didn’t think much about it, although I remember now at the time I thought it was funny the way Mamma insisted on wearing the red dress with the white floral print that I had given her from summer before last. She said when I gave it to her she thought it was too gay; but here she was wearing it to a church supper after I told her she ought to wear the navy blue with polka dots. Mamma does dress well; she never has to buy anything for herself. I give her all my clothes when I’m tired of them.”
Her eyes grew perfectly blank
again. Neilsen was beginning to recognize this evidence of introspection.
“I should have known something was up,” Gloria burst out. “The way she fussed over her looks these last few months. Having a new Toni every three months, and wearing the different shades of lipstick I’d given her. Honestly, it’s disgusting when you stop to think of it, a woman in her fifties. And the sneaky way they went about it. That’s what really gets me. Now I find out he used to call at the house evenings when I was out!”
Her eyes moved quickly, and then fastened fixedly on the attorney. “It’s not,” she announced virtuously, that I blame Mamma. Why, Mamma has always told me everything. Like sisters, people always said. It was that man. He influenced her. Had her simply eating out of his hand.
“And tonight—well, tonight they have the nerve to spring the whole thing on me out of a clear blue sky. When I got home from work, there he was, big as life, in the rose tapestry armchair in my living room. Mamma had invited him for supper—without even telling me. And then—” She thrust her head forward, a three-strand necklace of pearls swinging out from the sponge-soft skin above her full bosom. “They tell me they want to get married!”
In the dramatic pause which followed, Neilsen made a noncommittal noise in his throat.
“And my father dead only seven years! Why, it’s indecent! And as if that wasn’t enough, what do you suppose they wanted to do? Live in our home, both of them. He had it all planned out. He’s got a chance to be head custodian in the new Farmers’ Exchange Building downtown, and he was going to quit at the apartment house where he’s been working, and take this job, and live in my house.”
Her eyes were blank and still for a moment before she spat out, “A janitor! Imagine! But the payoff— What do you suppose he had the nerve to say to me? He said I was welcome to stay on and live with them; but I should sign over our property to Mamma—everything but stuff like the rug and the bedroom sets and my china and silver. He even had the nerve to say ‘sign it back’ to Mamma. And she just sat there and looked at the floor and twisted her fingers together and never said a word.
The Lethal Sex Page 5
