Catch-As-Catch-Can

by Charlotte Armstrong

“Yeah, but she … she … she didn’t want to be seen, she said and listen, I thought … I didn’t know what was up. I thought.…”

  Andy said bitterly, “I don’t care right now what you thought. No time for that.”

  “What’ll you …?”

  Andy was hurrying across the street once more. He had made a complete square, now, and he pounded past the trailer. He went up the path. He bounded up the porch steps. He rang the doorbell.

  Vince panted after. “Mr. Talbot, I feel terrible. I don’t want to think it’s any of my fault. Listen, what are you going to do?” His eyes wagged nervously in their sockets.

  Andy said, bitterly, “Me? I’m going to use the telephone.”

  Clive stopped his whispering. Somebody was working the doorknob, yanking and heaving on the door. Clive’s arm tightened and Dee thought her throat, would break. They could hear men’s voices.

  “Hey, Al …?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You working in this service room. You lock this door?”

  “Lock? Naw.”

  “I saw you close it.”

  “So O.K. So the owner wants that door closed. Baxter does. Said so. He don’t want the junk in there to show up in the picture.”

  “You musta pushed the button in the door or something.…”

  “Naw. Crash outside made me jump, I gave it a bang. I remember. Get going, Coolie. Bowman’s touchy tonight.”

  “I think he’s nervous as a cat”

  “What d’you mean, that door’s locked?” The door rattled. “Heh, this is one of them locks, you can’t get locked in. All you got to do is turn the knob on the inside.”

  “We can’t turn the knob on the inside. Bowman’s got a bunch of keys, ha’n’t he?”

  “What’s the difference, Coolie. Nothing was in there, I can tell you that.”

  Dee could not breathe at all. She was close to a faint. She might have moved her legs or her hands, but she was convinced that if she made so much as a rustle or a thud, she would faint and die. The madness in Clive was as mad as that. He was bound there would be no noise to betray their presence. He would not think about it. He would tighten that arm yet more, in a convulsive anger, and she could bear no more and she would die. She prayed for those men to leave, to go, to move away.

  “So if it locks when I slam it,” the man said, “nothing could get in, that’s for sure. You going to let them put stuff on your face?”

  “Not me, boy. Not me. I better see if Bowman’s got this key. Say, what’s the matter, with my hat? If I want to wear my regular hat and keep that gook off my face, listen, I’m no actor! You stay on the back door, Al. Bowman’s out front.…”

  “Stay outa his way, Coolie, or you’re going to lose your hat, ha ha. The boss don’t want his customers to see that hat on TV. He’s going to want you to look smart, boy. Ha ha. You shoulda worn your tuxedo.”

  The men were moving, voices retreating. Then they were gone and Clive’s arm relaxed. Dee gasped and choked and gasped again. And he began his whispering.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I don’t mean to hurt you, Dee. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I just want you to understand.… You’ve got to promise me.…” Clive writhed. “Got to,” he sobbed.

  He hated her. He wanted to hear Dee laugh. Dee say, “I believe you! I know you wouldn’t do a thing like that! I’m sure of it. You couldn’t!”

  He had to hear it. “What, harm your little cousin, Laila? You, Clive? Never!”

  He had to have it. Dee and her flaming faith could save him from all evil, and he hated her, because he had to have it.

  Mr. Bowman said, “Well, we’re all set. We’re ready.”

  “Good.” Mr. MacMahon of KROV was adjusting his earphones. “Won’t be long now. But you want to relax. Dave Ainsley will guide you, remember. Just talk naturally to Dave. He’s done this a lot of times. He’ll never let you down.”

  “It’s sure an experience for me. But I’m mighty proud. I think I’ve got a very interesting story to tell the.…”

  “Sure. Sure you have. Excuse me. Testing.”

  Mr. Bowman took out his handkerchief and put it back into his pocket again. Stuff on his face, he couldn’t mop it. He cast a nervous, baleful eye about, but then Dave Ainsley clapped his shoulder. “All set?” The young M.C. had a wide and friendly smile. “Your family looking in, Mr. Bowman?”

  “Yes, my wife and her parents.…”

  “Good. Good. And your customers, too, eh?”

  “I hope so,” said Mr. Bowman. “Ha Ha.”

  Dee, lying on the lumpy surface of the paper rolls, knew one outcry would be enough. The house walls were so thin that she could hear the men milling busily in the blaze of light outside. She could hear their voices, if not always the words, and one cry would have brought help to her.

  But Clive’s breath blew hot on her cheek, and lying there, with an oily rag between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, trying not to strangle herself with the reflexes of revulsion, Dee listened to his whisper.

  She was frightened. If she could have believed that Clive was strong for evil, cold of heart and head, she wouldn’t have been quite so frightened. But he was not strong at all. His frantic weakness was her danger. It had been her danger while those men stood at the door. And it had been Laila’s danger, all along.

  He kept whispering, “Dee, I’m not going to do anything bad. I don’t want to hurt anybody. But you’ve got to listen to me before you listen to Talbot. It was all mixed up, I tell you. Everything was just as you say—kind of catch-as-catch-can. It’s not what Talbot thinks. At first I thought the poor kid was running away because of her feelings. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t help her. You understand that, don’t you? If you do, just nod your head. Please, Dee. Nod your head.”

  Dee nodded her head and nodded it again.

  “All right. It wasn’t until that cabdriver … that’s when I first heard about the poison. Don’t you see? When I realized … listen, Dee, after that, didn’t I do my best to find her? You know that, don’t you? If you’re not going to remember that, Dee, and be on my side, I don’t know … I don’t know.… Now Talbot’s got hold of that driver and you know what he was trying to insinuate. I’m not going to have it, Dee. Not going to have that kind of trouble.”

  He was half sobbing, half whining. He’s mad, she thought.

  “How would you feel if they started to say that you wanted your cousin to die? You and I are the heirs. You’re the same as me. How would you feel?” Dee rolled her head. “You do believe me, don’t you? Nod if you do.”

  She nodded.

  “Nod if you’ll be on my side. You’ll make Talbot lay off. You won’t.…”

  She kept nodding.

  Clive’s breath sobbed in. Dee was his only key to salvation, now. If the stubborn belief she’d shown in Talbot could shine for Clive, all would be well, somehow. And still he hated her because he had to have it and he couldn’t get it. There was no way he could be sure.

  “No, no,” he said. “You’ve got to nod yes to everything just to get away from me. I know. You think everything is black or white. I can’t trust you. Dee, listen, what I was doing, out there by the hedge … I was watching. Talbot and the cabdriver were on the trailer.”

  Talbot! Andy! Her heart jumped and Clive knew it. He wasn’t sure why. His whining whisper was dying lower and lower in despair. He had enough clarity of mind left to know he couldn’t ask her if she’d seen the gun because that would tell her that he’d had a gun. The rest was darkening.

  “Dee, how can I trust you? Listen, Dee. If Laila gets sick or whatever it is …” he ducked his head and wiped his face on his sleeve, “it won’t be my fault. Swear you believe that. Dee, I want to let you go!”

  Dee knew he couldn’t let her go. He was in a corner from which he could not escape. He was guilty. In every breath he gave it away. And nothing could save him from the guilt he knew, whatever the law might someday say. Clive was disintegrating, now, in his own horror at the
mess he was in or the mess he was.

  What he might do to Dee, herself, would bear no relation to logic or plan. He was as good as a madman and no one was going to come running to save her, either. Nobody. Not Andy Talbot. He probably thought she was in that hospital. Or, if he knew better, he still could not know where she was instead. Nor Dr. Stirling. How could he imagine! Not the police. Nobody.

  Oh no, Dee Allison would attend to everything in the flesh. Dee, the redheaded little fool, the busybody.… She should have called the police—used the telephone still more—and then gone to bed in that hospital.

  Well, no use wishing she had not run pell-mell into this jam. Because she had, and here she was. One thing was certain. She had better see what she could do to get herself out of it. So she set her will upon the problem.

  No way to speak with Clive, reasonably or soothingly or even deceptively. He didn’t dare let her speak, lest she scream. In that fear he was justified. She would scream as soon as ever she could. Meanwhile, he was dangerous. At any moment he could seize her throat again and press too hard. And time was passing. Dee couldn’t find Laila until she got out of this, nor even try.

  She stopped listening to Clive at all. In the strange light, she studied this tiny cluttered place. She began to feel about with her two feet, which Clive had tied together at her ankles. Her toes were sentient in the soft shoes. She used them like finger tips. Sitting on the rolls of paper, leaning as he was over her, braced by an arm on either side of her body, Clive could not see what her feet were doing.

  The light—wings, shafts, planes—penetrating by the cracks around the window and at the top of the window frame, was very odd and confusing. But her shins came up and touched that stepladder, that was leaning against the opposite wall. Carefully, her toes examined it. The legs of it lay between the rolls of paper on the floor. The rolls, however, were parallel in such a way as to leave each leg in a slot that pointed to the wall. Dee thought it out very carefully.

  If only her weight and Clive’s on the fat rolls did not count too much and wedge those rolls together, if the ladder could slide, if only the slots between the rolls were clear to the wall, and the floor not too rough, and the angle at which the ladder rested sharp enough, and the room large enough, so that when she shoved with all her force at the ladder’s bottom rung, it would slide to the wall, be vertical, then fall.…

  If Clive were surprised enough not to be able to duck away, the upper end of the ladder might hit him with some force. It might hit Dee, of course, but not if it hit him first.

  It would, she decided, at least, be noisy. It would be better than this, whatever happened. It was the only chance that she could see to do anything.

  So she struggled as if she begged for speech and her eyes kept his face, as if she pleaded, and Clive kept sobbing.

  “You stand up for me, Dee … or I … or Iplease … I can’t take any more—”

  She put her toes on the ladder, knees bent, and she thrust both legs out with all her might. It worked better than she had imagined. The legs of the ladder were not wedged between the rolls of paper at all, but slid slickly in shallow grooves. The ladder reared higher, balanced forever. When it fell the sound was not much. The thud with which it fell was soft. The ladder was short enough. The room was wide enough.

  It worked out nicely. Dee lay crushed under Clive and the ladder. But it had hit the back of his neck, she thought, and he was not whispering any more.

  “Beaned him!” she thought exultantly. “Pretty good, Dee! Pretty smart! Atta girl!”

  Now all she had to do was get that doorknob … or get someone’s attention. So she began to squirm and struggle and strain.

  CHAPTER 20

  “What good I can do here, I don’t know,” said Talbot’s despairing voice into Mrs. Gilman’s phone. “There’s absolutely no sign. If Laila was ever in that trailer, Pearl must have dumped her somewhere. I’m going to St. Bart’s. See what I can get from Pearl. And see Dee.”

  “Dee’s all right,” the doctor said. “She called Lorraine. Now hear this, Talbot. Pearl told Dee that Laila was in the trailer.”

  “She did!”

  “And Clive put her there. Do you get that? Where is Clive?”

  “Gone,” barked Andy. “This makes a big difference. Pearl says she was in it at the time of the crash?”

  “So I understand.”

  “I’l call you,” said Andy abruptly. He hung up the phone.

  “Hey Talbot—” Dr. Stirling shook his head.

  Andy looked around the little house he was in. “Thanks for the phone,” he said to this nurse or whatever she was. “You’re positive you didn’t see that girl?”

  “Oh no. The police were asking me that very same thing,” repeated Agnes Nilsson, in her most refined voice. “But, as I say, Mr. Talbot, I went immediately to the scene and did my best to give first aid. People are so often impulsive and although they mean to be kind, they will do the wrong things for an injured person. I felt that with my experience.…” She spoke on. Andy had not long listened to her words.

  The little sitting room was old-fashioned and stuffy, windows curtained to the point of smother, furniture shabby and crowded, all dominated by the gleaming modern cabinet of the TV set. The nurse had turned the volume low, but the gray faces were jawing and fluttering busily, just the same.

  The old lady’s wheel chair was drawn before the screen, but she was not peering at the world through that tiny window, just now. She was strained around, instead, to look backwards and her fingers were drumming on the chair’s metal arm. Vince, who had shuffled slyly into the room and was watching the picture, gave her a helpless grimace, with little attention in it. He dismissed her from the thinking world. The old lady’s fingers seemed to flout and despise him.

  Andy said forcefully, “Now, I know she was there, it’s obvious to me, since Laila Breen had to get out of the trailer on the side toward this house, only someone near this house could have seen her. But if you rushed.…”

  “I ran down the steps. I happened to be on the porch when that coupe.…”

  “You couldn’t see into the trailer at all?”

  “No, I don’t believe so. My attention, naturally, was fixed on the actual crash. It was all so sudden.…”

  “Your patient,” said Andy, “seems to be trying to attract your attention now.”

  “Oh well,” said Agnes. “She wants to get into the act,” she said in a malicious whisper. Her descent into a cant phrase was cynical and shocking. Andy’s eyes flickered.

  “Is she senile, Miss Nilsson?” he asked softly.

  “The doctor says not,” said Agnes brightly, but her eyes said, I’ve often thought so. You may have guessed it.

  “A stroke?”

  “Mrs. Gilman was injured in an auto accident some years ago,” said the nurse primly.

  “Injured in her mind?” pressed Andy.

  “To a degree,” said the nurse judiciously. “That is, she is very limited, of course.”

  “She can’t speak?”

  “No. No, she can’t.”

  “She watches TV?”

  “Oh yes,” Agnes trilled. “Incessantly.”

  “Then her eyesight is not in question?”

  “Why … uh.…”

  Andy said, “Where was she, during the accident?” He could see that the old lady’s hand was listening, now.

  “On the porch,” said Agnes stiffly. “It was unfortunate. I’ve been a little concerned about the effect. However, she doesn’t seem to have been too much affected. I’ve kept her quiet, of course. Perhaps she hasn’t quite realized.…” Her head nodded suggestively.

  But Andy, looking at the old lady’s hand, saw that it had left off its urgent tapping. It was stretched out, stiff with her listening. It seemed to him that the fingers grew tense with imploring. Now, as he watched, the fingers closed, the hand turned over and dropped in despair. It was an eloquent hand. Surely it was attached to a mind.

  Andy said,
“Excuse me.”

  “I don’t advise …” said Agnes, her voice rising.

  “I must ask her,” he said impatiently.

  “I must insist.…” Agnes moved into his path.

  He looked at her. “It ought to be plain to a two-year-old that she wants to say something.”

  “Sure she does,” said Vince suddenly.

  “Did the police question her?” Andy was sharp.

  Agnes said, “No, and while she is in my charge, I must be the judge.…”

  Andy said, “It’s a free country, Miss Nilsson. This is her house, isn’t it?”

  “She must not be excited.”

  “G’wan, she is excited,” said Vince Procter. He was getting in on this. His brown face was shrewd.

  “All the more reason.…”

  The old lady’s hand was saying, Alas! You see?

  “Excuse me, Miss Nilsson,” said Andy firmly. “If she wants to communicate with me, I’m afraid you are not going to stop it.”

  He walked around the wheel chair and sat down and leaned close and looked into Mrs. Gilman’s eyes, that were swimming with sudden tears. He said, “How do you tell me? Paper and pencil?”

  She nodded. She dried her eyes on her fingers. Then her hand took the pencil. Vince came and leaned over the back of the chair. Andy craned his neck to watch the words grow black on the paper.

  I saw the girl leave the trailer.

  “Good!” Andy’s voice vibrated with relief. “But did you see where she went, Mrs. Gilman?”

  The pencil wrote. Yes. Into a closed truck. A young man helped her into it. Closed doors. The truck went north. Paramount linen service license number 72X3408.

  Andy said, “You are wonderful! I didn’t dare to hope for such an intelligent and complete report.” He touched her hand. “Now, I must telephone, right away. Then, I’ll come and explain to you what it is all about.”

  Tears rolled on the old lady’s cheeks.

  “Now, she is very upset. You see!” hissed Agnes. “I’m afraid I must ask you to go, at onoe.”

  Andy said, hostilely, “Not until I telephone.”

  “She ain’t upset,” said Vince. He patted the old lady’s shoulder. He said, “Don’t you worry,” and he winked at her. He had taken a furious dislike to that big horsey nurse. He had a great need to be furious with somebody and he was grateful to this old dame for giving the information. He was glad that probably nothing bad was going to happen to the kid with the hairdo. So he sat down. He said to the old lady, “Say, what’s this going on across the road? I bet you know.”