by Belva Plain
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I meant—what do you plan to do after I die?”
“I’m going away. I certainly can’t stay here.”
“Who’s going? You and Ian?”
“No! That’s all over. You must believe me.”
“I see. What about the child?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”
Her head was bent, her profile outlined in the lamplight. Pure Greek, he thought, a classic head.
And he said abruptly, “You will take no money from him. I am leaving enough for you. As far as the world knows, the child is mine. Don’t punish it before it is even born by attaching a scandal to its name, and don’t hurt Happy.”
“Oh, no, I would never do that. She’s been a friend to me. She’s the kind of woman—she’s old-fashioned, not like me. What I mean is, in her position, if that happened to me, I would take the bastard for all he’s worth, all I could get, and kick him out. But she—it would break her up if she knew, and what good would it do me? I said that once to Michelle. We were talking about Ian and me—”
“Don’t tell me. As long as I know you will keep your word, that’s enough.”
“I will keep it. I’m thinking, I’ll go to Florida and be with Michelle. That is, if—”
“If there’s money for her to stay on in school? There will be. Why should I punish Michelle either? She’s a nice kid. As long as she’s doing well, let her stay there and make a life for herself.”
Roxanne was crying. “I don’t know, I don’t know what to think! You’re so good! I never knew there could be people like you. I wish I could help you, do something for you. I’d go to China, Africa, anywhere—”
“You can do this. Go to the telephone, call Dan and Sally, then call Happy and Ian.”
“Ian?”
“Yes, yes, Ian. I want them all here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. It’s very important. They must come, all of them. And after that, call my lawyer, Timothy Larson, and tell him I need him here, too. The number’s in my book.”
The medicine had begun to take effect, so that the pain merely nagged and could be borne. He looked around the room, at the muted reds and blues in old rugs, at his books, the horse paintings and the photograph of his mare, who perhaps would not even recognize him anymore. He hoped she would find a good home, for she and all his possessions would surely be dispersed. Or maybe they might keep the mare until Tina grew old enough to ride her.
“Mr. Larson’s away and will be back Wednesday,” Roxanne reported.
“Then tell them to send a partner. I don’t care who it is.”
When she returned, he saw that she was very uneasy, and he said gently, “You look so scared, poor girl. But there’s no need for you to worry, I promise you.”
“If you say so. But I wish I understood what it’s all about.”
“You will,” he said.
They were all sitting in a semicircle facing Clive. There was a certain drama in the situation, with him presiding, totally in charge, while all of them had to wait for him. The only persons there who did not seem distressed were Happy and Mr. Jardiner, the lawyer.
Ian kept playing with his little gold penknife; he was sitting close to Happy, while Roxanne was at the opposite end of the semicircle. Maybe it was true, then, that they were finished? She had said so, and he wanted so much to believe her. It did seem that way, though, for they were being very careful not to look at each other. Appearances, however, were deceiving. Indeed.
Sally and Dan both looked worn and haggard, as if they had not slept for weeks. He wondered what might be the trouble. They were two people who didn’t deserve trouble, though that was not the way the world worked. Indeed.
“I asked you to come, Mr. Jardiner, because I want a responsible witness to what I am going to say.”
Mr. Jardiner, who was very young, probably just out of law school, nodded with appropriate gravity.
“There are two more people coming. In fact, I see the car now. Will you open the door please, Roxanne?”
Two men with the stride and posture of authority entered and took their seats. Clive made the introductions.
“Detectives Murray and Huber from homicide, Mr. Jardiner, my lawyer. The rest of us have met before.”
It seemed as if the entire semicircle had leaned forward, about to topple or at least to reach for their toes. It was very nearly enjoyable to watch the play as, like a puppet master, he pulled the strings.
Huber began, “Do you have a clue?”
“No, I have the solution,” Clive said.
Alarm traveled from one to the other, all the eyes widened, Ian stopped fidgeting with the penknife, and Dan grasped Sally’s hand.
“As the family members know, I am a sick man. My remaining lifetime can be counted in days. In this condition, a person has some very serious thoughts.” He paused. Let them wait. He would tell it in his own fashion. “It came to me that at some time in the future, even years from now, some poor vagrant who breaks into a house may be seized as a suspect in the murder of my father. It’s possible. That sort of thing has happened.” He looked toward the detectives. “Isn’t that true?”
Huber acknowledged the possibility. “But not likely,” he added.
“Even so, I’ve asked you here to set a record straight. I am the person who shot Oliver Grey to death. I and only I.”
There was a long, anguished collective gasp. Happy gave a sharp cry, Ian stood up and sat down again, and Dan started to say something, but was prevented by Detective Huber, who held his hand up in a stop signal.
“Yes,” Clive resumed, “I was crazy, mad, hysterical, whatever you want to call it. I had intended to kill my brother. Things had happened … yes, things. It doesn’t matter.” He paused, gave a kind of gasp, and continued in a voice so exhausted that the others strained to hear.
“I took the gun. I can’t really say what I was thinking or whether I even was thinking. I went out into the snow. I remember I fell on the back path going up the hill. I took off my shoes so as to leave no tracks in the house and went in at the back door. I knew that Father went to bed early and that Ian was there for the night. Of course he was late, he hadn’t gotten there yet, but I didn’t know that. I was crazy, mad, do you understand? It was almost dark in the hall and I mistook my father for Ian. Yes. My father. I was crazy, do you understand?” Clive looked from one to the other, across the stunned semicircle. “The gun was a thirty-eight-caliber revolver. It’s here now. Roxanne, take the officers upstairs. On the top shelf of my closet there is a green book, Principia Mathematica. It’s hollow. The gun is inside.”
Except for Mr. Jardiner, who had begun to take rapid notes on a little memo pad, it was as if all in the room were dazed. No sound broke the thick silence while the three were upstairs. When they returned, the semicircle straightened its collective back to peer at the open book with the gun inside it.
Murray spoke. “So you planned to kill your brother. Why?”
How to answer? Because all my life he got everything he wanted. Everything.
“Why?” Murray repeated.
“I prefer not to say, except that Ian has committed no crime. In that respect, he is an innocent man.”
This was enough. They had no need to know more.
“It would be advisable to answer, if you can,” Mr. Jardiner said quietly.
“I can, but I don’t choose to. You have the gun and voluntary confession.”
The detectives were not so easily put off. “It would help you in your defense if you would give some reason for this hatred you speak of.”
“I don’t want any defense. I’ll be dead before you can even convene a grand jury.” Then Clive read their thoughts. “And it won’t be suicide,” he said.
The room, the house, the vast morning outdoors, nothing was large enough to contain the emotional typhoon that swept him. And searching from one numb face to the other, his eyes glancing from Ian to Roxanne, he said, “If there is
anyone in the room who knows why, he knows, that’s all, and no one else needs to.” His glance returned to Ian. “I’m glad now that I didn’t hurt you, Ian. You have a long life ahead. So, I’ve said it and I can go in peace, more or less.”
Huber inquired, “Had you intended to use the weapon again? Most times the alleged killer disposes of it.”
Clive had to smile at the “alleged.” “I would have if I could have found a way, but I have been unable to drive myself and be alone. It’s just as well. Now you can match the weapon with the wound and neatly sew up your case.”
On the instant, the echo came to his ears, into his very heart: Wound. Red, torn, wet, a gaping horror. And suddenly he cried out, as if there were no one there to hear, or as if it made no difference who heard, “My good father! The only human being who loves—who really loved me since my mother died. He, who never harmed a soul on this earth, only did good all the days of his life. My God, my God.” And he rocked back and forth, weeping.
Then suddenly he rose from the chair, as the cutting pain came back, mounting higher than ever before, digging and rending, trying to break him in two. He stood up and took a step, as if he would run away from agony. Then he stumbled and fell.
When the ambulance took Clive away, Roxanne rode with him.
“There’s room for one. His wife may go,” said the attendant.
“His doctor said the bone gave way,” Ian reported as he put down the telephone. “It just broke apart. He wasn’t surprised.”
Mr. Jardiner, while doing his best to maintain judicial calm, was as stunned as everyone else. Yet he thought to observe, “Without question, the poor man’s mind broke apart, too.”
Spoken like a lawyer preparing for his defense, Ian thought. And he quickly agreed. “Yes, I’ve been seeing something coming for quite a while, although since I’m not a doctor, not qualified to diagnose, I didn’t talk about it. But he’s been in a frenzy, I can only call it that, over the sale of the woodlands. Quite abusive, unreasonable, really not quite—well, quite sane. He has to be forgiven.”
Mr. Jardiner made more notes. Happy, tearful and trembling, clung to Ian’s arm, and Dan, frowning in an effort to recollect, tried to imagine a frenzied and abusive Clive. Clive?
And then again, in a flood came the realization that Sally had been freed … quite obviously, the report she had heard had been the sound of a blank. No one would have live ammunition in those fancy, silver-plated collector’s items.… They were all standing in the hall, near the door at which Clive had been carried away, but Sally had climbed a few steps up the stairs and sat there now alone. It was the aftershock, he knew, thinking, Now I will really take you away, we’ll have a whole week to ourselves. Tina is doing so well, she can be left with Nanny, a whole week for you and me, for you to recover, oh my dear, my darling.
Detective Huber, who had been taking his turn at the telephone, rejoined the group.
“The boss got the devil of a shock. First, he didn’t even believe me. Jeez! Never heard anything like it in my life. He’ll be putting two guys there outside the poor bas—the poor man’s room. Jeez! Never anything like it in my life.”
Murray said, “Of course we knew it was an inside job, an employee, an employee who was mad about something, or possibly the family.” He flushed and, as if in apology to the family before him, explained, “Can happen in the best, you know. So we knew. The house was full of valuables and nothing was taken. There was even cash, seven one-hundred-dollar bills. Yeah, the bullet came from a thirty-eight, from this baby right here,” he said with the green book under his arm. “Yup, as they say, if you wait long enough, murder will out.”
“Not always,” Huber reminded him, “but most of the time.”
If only we could have known all this three months ago, Dan thought.
Happy was seeing the body on the floor in the hall, the body that could have been Ian’s, her husband’s, her love, her only love.
At least, Ian thought, Clive will die believing that Father was the man we always knew he was, while for me—I will live knowing otherwise.
Poor Clive. Did I not always believe there was something wrong with him? Sally said to herself.
“I think,” said Huber, as the two prepared to leave, “you folks owe yourselves a good stiff drink.”
“Or two,” Murray added.
Mr. Jardiner tucked his notebook in his pocket, put on his overcoat, and gave parting advice.
“There will be reporters, of course. They’ll be descending on you all like a swarm of hornets. Tell them nothing. Have someone else open the door and say that the family is not available. They may call our office if they wish, and, of course, they will wish. The facts are simple: It’s been a matter of public knowledge that the family members have been in disagreement over the proposed new community in the forestlands. Clive Grey’s cancer had spread to his brain and in the course of this ordinary business disagreement, he lost control. He was not responsible. That’s it. As for you all, what is there to say? It’s a terrible, terrible thing! I hardly know how to tell them at the office. I understand”—this with a nod to Ian and Dan—“that you are third-generation clients of our firm. Mr. Larson will be devastated when he hears this.”
“Devastated,” Happy said when the front door closed. “I guess the word will do, because really there is no adequate word.” Her eyes were red and she blew her nose. “How are we ever going to get over it?”
The four stood waiting together in the hall, marooned, Sally thought, like people cast away, deciding what to do first, whether to put up a white flag for rescue, forage for food, or build a shelter. The house, after what had just occurred within its walls, was as ominous as that desert island.
“Poor Roxanne,” she said. “Not married a year yet.”
“Imagine,” Happy said. “Police guards outside his door. I had no idea his mind had gone like that. You never told me, Ian, and it’s odd that I never noticed it. Did you ever notice anything, Sally?”
“Not like that, exactly, although he was always a bit odd, I thought.”
“Ridiculous.” Dan was indignant. “There was never anything wrong with Clive until this cancer spread. Nothing. I’m going down to the hospital. What about you, Ian?”
“Of course. You all don’t have to, unless you want to.”
Happy, needing to be busy, said she would stay and tidy the kitchen. “Their breakfast dishes are still on the table. I think I’ll take the dog back to our house, Ian. Roxanne will probably be gone all day and he’ll mess up, with nobody here to let him out.”
Sally understood that need to occupy one’s hands, to move about and make work, even when there was no work. “I’ll stay and help,” she offered.
Ian released a heavy sigh. “A criminal trial. That will kill him, if the cancer doesn’t.”
“By the looks of him, the cancer won’t take very long about it,” Dan said gravely. And he tried to imagine himself, but could not, having a brother who had wanted to murder him.
When the women went into the kitchen, Ian said very low, “Dan, I wanted to get a minute alone with Sally. I should get on my knees before her.”
“No need for that. You saw what you saw, and you reached a logical conclusion.”
“I put her and you through hell. Tell her how sorry I am, will you. Tell her I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Ian, it’s okay. It happened, that’s all. The whole thing’s a horror and absolutely no fault of yours.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“What do you mean?”
Ian walked away into the living room. Dan watched him go to the end, stand before the fireplace with his head bowed, go to the window, drum with his fingers on the glass, and return to the hall with an expression of utter despair on his face, a despair so striking that Dan grasped his shoulder and gently shook him.
“Come on,” he said. “This business has been enough to knock down ten men at once. I want you to go home and rest. I’ll go to the hospital
and let you know what’s happening. Come on.”
“I want to talk to you. My head will split if I don’t talk to somebody, and you’re the one, the only one.”
What could it be? What new confession, what betrayal, might yet be forthcoming?
“Put your coat on, Dan. We’ll talk outside.”
In the angle between the house and the garage, they stood out of the wind and Dan waited while Ian kicked at a patch of melting snow on the driveway. He understood that, whatever it was Ian wanted to disclose, he was having a hard time beginning or maybe was having second thoughts about disclosure.
So he said kindly, “If you’ve changed your mind, say so.”
“No.” Ian now looked him firmly in the eye. “No. This has to be said. It’s damn hard, but here it is. What this is all about, you see, is that Roxanne and I—” Here he kicked again at the chunk of snow. “She and I, you see, we knew each other before Clive married her. I had no idea, I was as shocked as any of you the day he brought her to the house as his—his bride. No, I was a thousand times more so, couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We had sort of broken up, sort of, but not exactly, and she did that to spite me.”
Dan felt his mouth drop open. “And Clive never knew?”
“He never knew anything until the night he shot Father. Didn’t know that we had started up again—not much, just a couple of times—and that the baby—you know she’s pregnant, don’t you?—isn’t his. It’s mine.”
“God almighty,” Dan said.
“We started almost three years ago. I met her—well, it’s not important. Things happen. You have only to look at her and see how it happened. You can fill in the rest, or maybe you can’t. I suppose you and Sally—but then I don’t really know about you two either. Things are not what they seem.” Ian grimaced. “That’s cliché number one.”
The last thing Dan ever wanted to do was to sit in judgment; it wasn’t his way. And yet, in the face of this revelation, he was unable to resist a little self-defense. And he answered quietly, “Sally is everything to me. Everything.”
“You may not believe it, but Happy is to me, too. That’s what we fought about. She wanted me to leave Happy. Christ! I’d cut my arm off first.”
