Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense

by Armstrong Charlotte

  When Henny brought her eggs, Mrs. Brady said, “It’s surely hard to get used to Alice not being up there, in that room—she was there for so long. When did she last get out and go anywhere?”

  “I don’t remember, Miz Sarah.” Henny obviously wanted to escape.

  “Tell me, you last saw her right after she’d had her lunch on Monday?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said Henny, looking miserable.

  “And so did I,” said Mrs. Brady. “Karen didn’t think we should tell her we were going downtown. I didn’t even speak to her.”

  “No. No. You don’t want to feel bad about that. Look, you spent the whole morning with her.” Henny seemed to be cooing and she was not a cooing woman. “You couldn’t know. Miz Del will be here for dinner, I guess. Right?”

  “That’s right. Henny?”

  “Your eggs are getting cold, Miz Sarah.”

  “Henny,” repeated Mrs. Brady sternly, “is there something I haven’t been told?”

  Henny was startled. Her eyes rolled, and her hand clutched at the cross. “I don’t know what you mean. I just don’t want to talk about it.

  I don’t think you should talk about it, either.”

  “Why on earth shouldn’t I talk about it?”

  “I mean . . . Well, you’ve got to go on,” mumbled Henny, “and what’s the good of talking about it? Poor thing. I mean, she’s probably better off.”

  Then Henny put her head down and seemed to butt through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  Mrs. Brady began to eat her eggs, reflecting on the contradiction of the golden cross and the horror of death—if that was what Henny was trying to be rid of, by calling death “better off.”

  Well, Mrs. Brady herself was not so crazy about the idea of dying, but she accepted the fact that one inevitably would. It was presumptuous, in her opinion, to say that poor Alice might be better off. Maybe so. But maybe not.

  Maybe Henny felt guilty because, during that seemingly normal afternoon, Henny herself had gone up to the third floor to “lie down,” as usual, and had not made even a token resistance to the coming of the angel of death, by being alert to his imminence. Nobody had expected Alice to die—not on Monday.

  Shock? Maybe I am still shocked, she thought. But it didn’t click, as the truth should.

  Bobby Conley came shuffling in.

  “Good morning,” said his great-aunt. “No school today?”

  “Nope,” said Bobby, getting into his chair in a young way that was far more difficult a physical feat than simply sitting down. “But I better hit the books some.” Bobby was twenty, and away at college during the winters. He was taking some summer courses, locally.

  “Del is coming to fetch me,” said Mrs. Brady.

  Bobby grunted that he knew. Henny came in with his juice and a mound of toast. Mrs. Brady poured his coffee.

  “How do you feel about your parents flying off to Germany and France?” she asked him.

  “That’s okay,” said Bobby. “I’ll be living on campus, anyhow.”

  “And Suzanne back in boarding school. You’ll be able to keep an eye on her.”

  Bobby gave her one blank look, as if to say, How antique to think that anybody should keep an eye on anybody. “Oh, sure,” he said tolerantly.

  His sister, Suzanne, bounced in, looking like something out of science fiction, with her hair wound on huge rollers all over her small head.

  “I don’t want anything to eat, Henny. I’m reducing.”

  Mrs. Brady cocked an eye at the bare waistline, exposed between two pieces of cloth, that seemed to her to be tiny enough to snap in a strong breeze. But she said nothing. She was not in firm touch with these young people. They had seemed fond of her, in earlier days, but even Susie, at fifteen, had grown away. They went their own ways. And, of course, they should. Mrs. Brady thought they’d had a better break than their father.

  Sarah Brady had always felt a kind of responsibility for her nephew, Jeffrey, because she could see, better than anyone else, how he had been burdened all his life. Poor Alice had believed that to be born a beautiful female was all the Lord had ever required of her, and that to have been widowed in her early thirties was surely a preposterous error of some kind. It couldn’t happen to her! Poor Alice, with no personal resources, but plenty of money, had taken to the one hobby that appealed to her: she had gone in for ill health.

  Sarah understood as much as there was to understand. Alice had been the golden-haired pet, the pampered darling, whereas she, Sarah, three years younger, had been the “clever” one. And the lucky one, thought Sarah now. It may be better to be born lucky than good-looking. She smiled to herself and sighed.

  Alice’s one child, Jeffrey, had been at his mother’s mercy all his life.

  But poor Alice, dead or alive, didn’t seem to bother Jeffrey’s children.

  “You were at the beach, Susie, all day Monday,” said Mrs. Brady musingly. “But Bobby, you came home for lunch and you were in your room, studying, right across the hall from your grandmother.”

  They both looked at her like owls.

  “I didn’t bother her,” said Bobby, chewing.

  It was Henny who had found Alice, and had called the doctor, after Henny’s customary “lie down.”

  “And she didn’t bother you, eh?” Mrs. Brady said.

  Suzanne looked at her with round eyes. “If you just didn’t tell her you were going anywhere.”

  And Mrs. Brady thought, Touché? Or was the girl thinking of her father?

  But Susie was thinking of herself. “I never told her when I was going to the beach. She’d just have a big fit about sharks.” One brown shoulder shrugged. “Or chaperones.”

  Bobby said, “She didn’t even know I was going to summer school to pull up my grades. She’d have had a big fit about that too.”

  “No, it wasn’t easy to tell her anything,” admitted Mrs. Brady with a thoughtful air. “It never was. I don’t operate that way. I’ll have a big fit if I think the world is kept a secret from me.”

  They were eyeing her. With skepticism? Amusement? Pity? Or with a touch of wonder? Ah, thought Mrs. Brady, they are not as indifferent to death as they pretend.

  “So she didn’t cry out? Didn’t ring her bell? You didn’t hear a thing?”

  “Nope,” said Bobby. “Not a croak out of her.” Then he turned his face to her, quickly. “I didn’t mean to put it . . . I’m sorry.” And for one brief moment Mrs. Brady saw an awed and shaken boy, who had never before been across the hall from where someone had died.

  But now Karen came in and said, “Good morning, all.” She had come in quietly. Her hand touched the young girl’s shoulder. Suzanne sat perfectly still under it. Then Karen touched her stepson’s hair lightly. Bobby did not flinch.

  Mrs. Brady was thinking, They won’t give themselves away.

  Henny came to serve the mistress of the house with her normal air of devotion. This was Karen’s house now. She was a pretty woman, in her thirties, small, compact, well-groomed, gracious in manner. She had been a nurse, hired to take care of poor Alice during one especially trying bout, almost six years ago. Karen and her patient had taken to each other. And when the patient’s widowed son had married the nurse, whatever else it may have been, it had seemed a useful and practical arrangement.

  Karen’s control and gentle good manners, perhaps enhanced by her nurse’s training, had been a saving and a soothing influence, all around. She was the one person, Mrs. Brady reflected, who had always given poor Alice her needed dollop of sympathy, who had never, so far as Mrs. Brady knew, been driven to protest, to say, in one way or another, Oh, for pity’s sake, cheer up!

  When the young people left, Mrs. Brady took another cup of coffee which she didn’t want and wasn’t supposed to have. She said to Karen, “You know, I’ve been feeling something—I don’t know exactly what. But I hate to go away tomorrow without getting at whatever it is. Why do I feel as if I were getting special treatment—the kind that Alice alwa
ys got?”

  “Why, Aunt Sarah,” said Karen, smiling, “Of course, you are getting special treatment. We are all so fond of you. Don’t you think we realize you have lost your only sister? Oh, it is too bad that this had to happen during your visit. Poor Alice always so looked forward to seeing you.”

  She did? thought Mrs. Brady. She found that her feet were shuffling, her toes curling. Normally, she appreciated Karen’s soothing ways, but not today, somehow.

  “I hope you aren’t feeling unhappy because you and I went off on a lark on Monday,” said Karen gently. “Don’t feel that way. Please? There was just no reason to think we shouldn’t have gone. There were people in the house. We mustn’t be tempted to feel guilty, must we?”

  Mrs. Brady examined this. No, she thought, but then, to my best knowledge, I have not been tempted to feel guilty.

  “You’ll be home, back in your own place,” Karen was saying, “with all the things you find to do and I know you’ll just go on, because you always have.” Karen had butter in her mouth. “Now, tell me, is there something Del likes to eat, especially, that I could order for dinner?”

  “Nothing special,” said Mrs. Brady, rather shortly. “She eats what she’s given.” She felt, suddenly, that she would be very glad to see her own child. “So do I,” she added, “usually.”

  “Dear Aunt Sarah,” said Karen fondly, “as if you’ve ever been a bit of trouble. But you know, Jeffrey is the one who has been hit the hardest. Don’t you think we must try—just to go on? And let time heal? He’s going to accept that European assignment. I encouraged him to. Don’t you think that’s wise? To get away from this house will be so good for him—new scenes and new experiences to help him forget.”

  “Oh, yes. I think it’s wise for him to accept that offer,” said Sarah Brady. “I thought so before, and told him so, as you know.”

  “He thinks so much of your judgment,” said Karen, “and so do I. It is only the shock—I think we must just plunge into our plans. Let’s see. You’ll be busy packing today, I suppose?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Brady thought to herself, and that will take all of twenty minutes. She couldn’t figure out why she felt so cross.

  Karen excused herself, to make her marketing lists, and Mrs. Brady went upstairs, moving through the big pleasantly furnished house with a strong sense of its eclipse. This house was going to be closed. Jeffrey and Karen would be off, abroad, the children away at schools. What will Henny do? she wondered. But Henny was a household jewel who could write her own ticket, having become as valuable as a rare antique.

  Mrs. Brady went back to thinking of Monday. She couldn’t help it.

  Just after lunch, on Monday, Karen had invited her to ride along downtown, while Alice rested. Mrs. Brady, who loved to prowl the streets when she was feeling spry enough, had accepted gladly.

  She had gone to get her things, discovered with pleasure a legitimate errand of her own, and then had passed her sister’s bedroom door. Karen, in the doorway with a tray in her hands, had made a “shushing” mouth. Alice was not to be told that they were going out. Mrs. Brady had supposed at the time—and still supposed—that to tell Alice would have meant at least five minutes of listening to Alice bemoan the fact that she couldn’t go too, or the fact that she was being abandoned.

  So Sarah had merely glanced in, seen her sister’s head—still golden, courtesy of dye—and the prow of her sister’s nice straight nose (which had always made her own nose seem even more knobby than it needed to seem), taken the sense of her sister’s lair, perfumed, and cluttered with the thousand things that Alice had for her bodily comfort, and heard her sister say, “I wish to rest now,” in her piteous, imperious manner.

  I must be allowed to do exactly as I wish at all times, said Alice’s manner, because I am so ill.

  Mrs. Brady remembered Karen’s saying that Henny needn’t bother, Karen would take the tray down; remembered Henny’s dive for the stairs-going-up; remembered seeing Bobby, flat on his stomach on the bed, a book on the floor, and his head hanging over it; remembered how the car had pussyfooted out of the driveway, and Karen’s sad mischievous smile, when they were finally running free, on their way through the small city to its center.

  Mrs. Brady had happily considered what she could, in all conscience, shop for. (She lived very frugally in a tiny apartment, not far from her daughter Del’s house.) Karen had discussed a new bedspread for Suzanne and socks for Bobby, and her dentist appointment.

  “You won’t mind waiting for me, Aunt Sarah?”

  “I think I’d rather poke around by myself and take the bus back,” Mrs. Brady had said.

  “But it’s three blocks to walk, from the bus to the house.”

  “I don’t mind. Besides, I have a little errand to do.”

  “Can’t I do it for you?”

  “No. No. It’s all right, you see, when the three blocks end in a soft chair.”

  “Well . . . if you insist.”

  So Mrs. Brady had enjoyed herself in the department store, inspecting bedspreads, and had advised about socks, and then, deposited on the sidewalk near Karen’s dentist’s building, she had gone her own way. Not far. Not for long. She had that little errand, which gave her a bit of a purpose, and she had accomplished it, and then window-shopped her way to the bus stop, and a bus had come before she was too tired . . .

  When she had come back into this house, Dr. Clarke was already there, and Henny was weeping. Bobby was in the living room, numb and dumb and dry-eyed. Jeffrey had been notified. And Alice was dead.

  Almost as soon as Mrs. Brady had reached her own bathroom, and taken one of her pills against the shock and strain, she’d heard Karen running up the stairs. But Karen did not need her, and then she had heard Jeffrey’s voice below. So she had hurried down to stand by, been delegated to watch for Suzanne and break the news gently—as Monday had splintered out of the shape of an ordinary Monday.

  Remembering, Mrs. Brady shook her head. But there was no shaking the nagging notion out of it. She couldn’t help imagining that there was something she hadn’t been told.

  So she marched into her bathroom and took a pill to fortify herself. She intended to fare forth. She intended to see her nephew alone. She really had not—not since, not yet.

  It was almost eleven when Mrs. Brady finally made it, by bus, to Jeffrey’s office, identified herself to his receptionist, and could not help but feel gratified when Jeffrey came blasting out of his inner recess.

  “Aunt Sarah, what the dickens are you doing here?” He was a tall man, a bit thick in the middle these days; his hair was graying; his long face had acquired a permanent look of slight anxiety. He was a quiet man, who ran well in light harness, grateful for peace whenever he got it.

  “I won’t have another chance to see you alone, Jeff.”

  “Will you come in?” The anxiety on his face deepened. “Or better still, let’s go down to the drug store and have a coffee break.”

  “All right.” She wouldn’t risk another coffee. No matter. So he took her down in the elevator and they sat in a leatherette booth. The place was familiar. Mrs. Brady had lived in this town, herself, ten years ago. The druggist knew her. The young girl who tended the snack counter was friendly. Mrs. Brady felt personally comfortable. She ordered a piece of Danish pastry.

  But now to business. Studying her nephew’s face, she said, “Jeff, it’s true. Poor Alice didn’t like it. We both knew that she wouldn’t. I’m sorry that your last talk with her, on Monday morning, had to be even as unpleasant as it was. But I can only say to you that I still think you were right to decide to go to Europe, and right to tell her that you had decided to go.”

  “Why, sure, Aunt Sarah,” he said, not looking up. “I know that. And don’t you worry about it for a minute.”

  “Alice would have been perfectly safe, with all the arrangements you made, and no more miserable than usual. As far as we could know.”

  “I agree. Please, Aunt Sarah, don’t think for a moment
that anyone is blaming you—for your advice or for anything else in the world.”

  “Oh, Jeff.” His aunt felt impatient with him. “Of course, you’re not blaming me. I don’t understand why there has to be any thought of blame. I happen to know that the Lord is running this world and hasn’t yet appointed me to do it. Or you, either.” She was sputtering, as of old.

  He was smiling at her. “I’m all right, Aunt Sarah,” he said affectionately. “It takes a little time, that’s all.”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad—” he began, and quickly stopped.

  Oh, yes, he was glad she was going. It only confirmed what Mrs. Brady had been feeling. Well? Perhaps, she must concede that she could be a bit of a nuisance, too. After all, Jeff was a grown man. He didn’t need his Auntie to stiffen him. Or shouldn’t. Time would pass, time would heal. Heal what? The truth was, a burden had been lifted from Jeff and his household. All that eternal pussyfooting would be over. Fresh winds would blow.

  But they were not blowing—not yet. Was the household guilty of being just a little too glad? And too soon?

  No. She still sensed that she, Sarah Brady, was being treated too gently, in some way. She couldn’t pinpoint one single piece of clear evidence—but she knew in her bones that she was being “handled.”

  So? Had Sarah Brady come to such a pass? She didn’t relish it. Why, Alice was the one who always had to be handled. All her life. In fact, that was how Alice managed the rest of the world. If it did not behave just as she wished, she simply insisted that it seem to—at least within her range. And had always won, because it was easier to do it that way—Alice having such a very small and narrow range.

  But not I, thought Sarah. No, not I!

  “I thought you were glad I was leaving,” she said flatly.

  “Not for my sake,” said Jeff, too quickly. “But I want you to be busy and forget. Live your own life, Aunt Sarah.” He was smiling, but she didn’t like either the look or the sound of him. “You have always told me that I ought to live mine.”