“It’s your story,” I said.
“It’s the facts,” he said. “Use your head, David. When are you going to stop plunging into things you can’t cope with?”
“Look…” I said.
“You look,” he said. “Open your eyes. You’re not up to this.”
That’s what Audrey had said too. Maybe they were right. Maybe I wasn’t up to it. I knew it would be a relief to get away from it all.
“Peggy is…” Jim started, “I don’t know what word will express it. Deranged, perhaps. I know it’s not a nice word but I have to use it. There’s a Hyde beneath her. I don’t know what brings it out, but it’s there. Love won’t help her. Psychiatry may. I don’t know. But she’s dangerous, very dangerous.”
“Why do you love her, then?” I asked.
“I happen to love Peggy,” he said, “with a love I don’t think your type of narrow-minded idealist understands. Because it’s a love that asks nothing.”
“Maybe it asks nothing,” I said, “because it gets nothing.”
“Now we’re being petty,” he said.
He said it with the old familiar expression of intellectual scorn on his full face. And it was a shock to realize for a second that this man and I had gone to college together and called each other friends.
I got out of the car and looked at him. He made no effort to detain me and waved Steig back into the car.
“There’s only one thing to say,” I said. “Your entire story is a lie from beginning to end.”
But as I walked back to my room, I knew I’d been reaching. Peggy had murdered once. These clippings were genuine. Even Jones had told me that.
Which helped not at all. Because there came visions to my mind. Of Peggy holding an icepick, a razor. Standing over Albert, standing over Dennis. Plunge of the arm, sound of steel point driving into flesh and tissue. A look on Peggy’s face. One I’d seen that night on the pier when she’d been attacked. A shocked and wild look.
A look not human.
***
Funerals are not nice.
They are creations of society which are intended to provide people with a last chance to show respects but which turn instead into miniature Grand Guignols. For my money, they’re morbid and tasteless. You just can’t effect anything tasty with a corpse. They’re too dead.
Dennis’s funeral was no exception. I don’t know what brought me to it. Peggy told me about it. She wasn’t going with Jim so I took her.
And I did feel sort of sorry for Dennis. A little ashamed, too, at having suspected him of murder. He’d just been an ill-fated kid with no chance at all. Victimized all of his short life by brother James.
A few relatives were there. Not many. Most of them, I suspected, were in Missouri. Even the ones that came looked like country cousins. Their clothes weren’t on a par with Jim and Audrey’s. Yes, Jim had his wife with him. It was his concession to appearance. After all, this was in the paper and no breath of scandal must besmirch the moment.
Some people there I didn’t understand. They were men mostly. And there was something about them. Something faintly tawdry in spite of the clothes they wore. An aura of inherent cheapness and vulgarity.
They didn’t look too sad either. One of them even snickered during the service. Jim didn’t hear it. But Steig did and I saw him put his big hand on the man’s shoulder and the man went white.
The relatives played their expected role. They looked sad. They clucked pityingly. They commented. Once I thought it was a joke, that line about how “natural” the corpse looks. Well, it’s not a joke. I heard it about five times that afternoon.
And there was poor Dennis, unable to complain, lying up there in front and taking it straight. That ugly little hole in his temple all covered up and prettied. Dennis finally at peace. The hard way.
Peggy didn’t speak to me much. She kept her head lowered during much of the service. I don’t think she looked at Dennis once. Her dark-gloved hands were clasped tight in her lap. The thought in my mind that she might have caused all this was enough to make my hands tremble spasmodically all afternoon.
I watched Audrey in the front row. I’d been surprised to see her at first. I didn’t think Jim would want her there. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe she went in spite of his wishes. But there she was at his side, thinner-looking than ever in her black dress, looking at Dennis fixedly.
When the dismal charade was over and we had all guessed that Dennis was dead, we filed out in the sunlight and found Wilshire Boulevard much the same and all the people thereon alive and moving.
The assemblage milled respectably in front of the parlor. They made gentle, strained smiles and spoke in muted, strained tones.
“Horrible thing, James, horrible.”
Jim nodding gravely, lips pressed together. To keep back a smile? I didn’t know.
“The dear boy looked so natural.”
Chicken claw hands plucking at pearls. A relative ghoul passing comment on the dead.
I didn’t concentrate on staying by Peggy and somehow Jim managed to get her beside him. So I moved over to where Audrey stood with an aunt.
As I approached, the woman said a few extra words of vain condolence and then passed into the void.
Audrey looked at me, dry-eyed and dead sober, it appeared. There was a certain classic loveliness about her. Dressed in black, her dark hair pulled back tight, her eyes as funereal as her outfit, her skin pale and clear.
She tried to smile at me but couldn’t. “It was nice of you to come,” she said.
I took her hand and squeezed it.
“I’m sorry for him,” I said. “That’s why I came.”
As I stood close to her now, I noticed her breath. She wasn’t sober. Sorrow had just given her the capacity to hold it in. She was as taut as a drum. I got the impression that it wouldn’t take much to unhinge her.
“I’ll be going,” I said.
She held onto my hand.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me with these… jackals. Relatives waiting for scraps. And those… those tramps.”
I didn’t know what she meant. But I stayed as her fingers dug pleadingly into my arm.
“Have you your car?” she asked.
“Yes, but…”
“Take me somewhere,” she begged, “anywhere, David. I’ve got to have a drink or I’ll go out of my mind.”
“But I’m with Peggy.”
“Does she look as if she’ll have to walk home?” she asked bitterly.
“Well,” I said, “I should…”
***
The bar was cool, dark and empty. We sat in a back booth. Outside July shimmered hot fingers over the streets.
Audrey had a long one, a stiff one. I watched her throat move convulsively as she poured it down. When she’d finished it off, she put down the glass and leaned back against the booth. The tenseness gave a little at the edges. Alcoholic relaxation eased her nerves temporarily. And two big tears forced themselves from under her closed lids and ran down across her white cheeks.
“Poor baby,” she said, “poor helpless baby.”
Audrey needed someone to talk to. I listened.
“He never had a chance,” she said. “Money, sure he had money. Is that what they call a chance nowadays?”
She looked at me and the anger slipped from her thin features. She started working on her second drink. She put the glass down and pressed her right hand to her breasts as it she wanted to rub the liquored heat into her flesh. She reached up and dragged off the black veiled hat with a sob.
“I hate funerals,” she said miserably. “They stink. You hear me! They stink!”
“I hear you.”
She leaned her head onto her right palm and then ran shaking fingers through her hair.
“Poor baby,” she said.
She lost breath for a moment as a sob clutched her throat. Then she drank some more.
Her eyes on me. Red. Lost eyes.
“You know what he said to me a few ni
ghts ago?”
“Jim?” I asked.
“Dennis. Jim never talks to me.” Another sob. “Dennis said—You’re my family, Aud. The only family I have.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“Imagine it,” she said. “Just his sister by marriage, but to him, I was his family. And he… he kissed me on the cheek. And he hugged me.”
Her teeth clamped together. Her lips pressed tightly, drained white under the lipstick.
“If I find out who did it,” she said, “if I find out for sure that she did this I’ll…”
“What?” I said.
Her eyes dropped. She shook her head and picked up her glass.
“You’ll do what?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“I’ll tell you who killed Dennis. Steig killed him.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t want to know,” I said. “You’d rather believe it was Peggy.”
“Buy me another drink?”
“No, I won’t buy you another drink. I’m taking you home. I’m never buying you another drink again. Drink yourself to death on your own money. I’ve lost sympathy.”
She didn’t say a word all the way to Malibu. She got out of the car and I drove away. I imagine that she went to her room and locked herself in. There, she probably took off all her clothes and went to bed with a bottle of whiskey and drank it until she was senseless. Happy college days gone. Betty Coed in a drunken stupor.
Later that afternoon I stopped by Peggy’s apartment. Apparently Jim had to entertain a few visiting firemen he happened to be related to. And, naturally, since Audrey wasn’t around he’d have enough trouble explaining that without having Peggy around to arouse comment too. As a matter of fact I found out later that Jim was burned up because I’d taken Audrey away. Lord knows why. She certainly was in no shape to play hostess to ferret-eyed relatives.
Peggy was sitting in the living room listening to the radio. I recognized the introduction the orchestra was playing. In a moment Lanza would start heaving his lungs out and using up his incredible gift a little more.
The door was open to let the breeze in so I went in and sat beside her. She smiled a little and patted my hand as I sat down.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t been keeping track. Where were you?”
“I took Audrey home,” I said.
“Oh. Jim took me home. That is, he had Steig take me home.”
“I imagined he would.”
Casual conversation with Che gelida manina in the background. And my mind tearing at me to ask her once and for all if…
But how can you ask a girl you love to tell you—yes or no—whether she’s murdered?
“I’m sorry you went,” I said, unable to ask.
“Went?”
“To the funeral. They’re depressing. And you have enough troubles.”
She smiled mirthlessly.
“I’m used to funerals,” she said. “My mother. An uncle. An aunt. A cousin. Dennis.”
She shrugged.
“Everybody dies,” she said.
I looked at her closely. At her finely etched profile, the light from the dying sun on her cheeks.
Then she started to talk. More to herself than to me, I think. Just her thoughts spoken aloud.
“He looked nice lying there,” she said. “He wasn’t a… a man anymore. I mean there was nothing ugly about him.”
Was that a smile? It was gone too quickly for me to be sure.
“You know what he looked like?” she asked.
She began to examine her white hands.
“He looked like a gentleman,” she said.
CHAPTER SIX
It took about an hour to drive to Pasadena. I followed winding Sunset all the way to its end, then turned off into the speedway that led to Pasadena. The car worked fine. I hit eighty once. A good thing the car was in working shape. I was in no mood for more troubles. I had enough.
Driving gave me time to think.
About my novel, which was getting nowhere at an exceedingly rapid clip. About my life, which was getting more and more complex and unenjoyable. About Peggy, who seemed more an enigma by the day.
That’s why I was going to Pasadena to see her father.
I wanted to meet him, talk to him. There had to be some beginning to all this. Some cause for all this unbalanced effect.
The house was a small bungalow near the California Institute of Technology.
The place was fastidiously kept. I don’t know whether the captain or his son or hired help did it. It was probably hired help. Whatever the case, the lawn was cropped close, the house was neatly painted and everything was square and neat and clean. You could almost guess that a very appearance-conscious man lived there. A man to whom exterior presentation was half the essence of personality, if not a good deal more than half.
I stood on the porch waiting for someone to answer the bell, looking at the porch railing scrubbed clean recently, the smell of soap and lye still in the air. The welcome mat was dusted and swept but no more welcoming for that.
It was a young man in his teens who answered the door. He was pale, he wore glasses. I knew him, though. It was Peggy’s face. I noticed the black coat sweater over his white shirt, the small, tight knot on the tie.
“Yes?” he said.
Myopia. A lot worse than mine. Braces on his teeth. Nothing to glean a Mr. America vote.
“Are you Phillip Lister?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s right.”
“I’m a friend of Peggy’s,” I said. “I don’t know whether she’s mentioned me.”
He looked confused.
“No… she didn’t.”
I extended my hand, feeling awkward, feeling a slight sense of anger with Peggy. Was she ashamed of me? The inevitable question popped into my overly male brain.
“I’m David Newton.”
“How do you do?” His handshake was weak. “Won’t you… come in?”
The same hesitating way of speaking as Peggy. As if he weren’t sure that what he was about to say was the right thing.
I was in the hallway. It was as fastidious as the outside. Scrupulously arranged. It was more like the waiting room of a doctor than a home. Lister probably ran his house like they said he ran his ship before the war. With a tyrannical insistence on the immaculate.
“Won’t you sit down?” Phillip asked me. He was a little taller than Peggy, about five-ten I guessed. He was quite lean. And overstudied, it was obvious. I could just picture him in the early morning hours poring over complex engineering volumes.
I sat on the couch. He sat on the edge of a chair. Like a timid man in a furniture store, afraid to damage anything because it isn’t his property.
I noticed the room, too. Everything in its place. A sterile cleanliness. The fireplace obviously unused and swept clean, the andirons polished to a bright luster, the unneeded screen dusted and standing in precisely the right spot. On top of the fireplace, polished candlesticks, empty. Over them, pictures, all hanging at the right angle. Pictures of Navy men and ships; Captain Lister’s only concession to nostalgia, I imagined. A discharge prominently displayed. Or did an officer get retirement papers? I didn’t know. Maybe it was a citation.
Phillip was clearing his throat.
“How is Peggy?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“She… she was here about a week or so ago.”
“So she said,” I said, nodding.
“Mmm-hmmm,” he said, nodding too. He swallowed. “What is she doing now? Has she found a job yet?”
“Uh… no, no, not yet. Still in the process, I guess.” He smiled. It faded.
“Have you known Peggy long?” he asked.
“About a month,” I said.
He looked surprised. Then he hid it.
“Oh?” he said. “Are you from California?”
&n
bsp; I got the impression that he’d spend the whole day chatting about nothing before he’d ask me what I’d come for.
“I’m from New York,” I said. “Say, is…”
“I was going there once,” he said.
“Oh, I…”
“But Father…” He paused, smiling falsely. “I changed my mind.”
“Is your father home?” I asked.
He looked at me blankly.
“Uh, he’s… he’s upstairs. He’s taking his nap.”
“I see.”
“Did you want to see him?”
“Yes.”
He stirred restlessly. “Oh,” he said, “I… can I help you in any way?”
I hesitated. Then I said, “Maybe you can. I want to find out about Peggy.”
“Oh.”
The glasses, the coat sweater, the lean, bowed form. Student. Driven son. I threw off the thoughts about him.
“Can you tell me about Peggy’s marriage?” I asked.
“Her marriage?”
He looked at me carefully.
“Tell me,” he said, “is Peggy really involved in all these… these terrible… things?” He finished weakly as if the word “murder” were more than he could speak.
“I’m afraid she is,” I said.
“Oh. Poor Peggy.” He bit his lip. “She must be terribly upset. She wouldn’t tell us much when she was here. And Father…”
He broke off, ill at ease.
“Did Peggy kill her husband?” I asked abruptly.
He flinched. As if someone had cracked a whip over his head. He looked over into the hall. I got the idea he was looking to see if his father were around.
“She…”
“Did she?”
He nodded jerkily.
I closed my eyes for a moment. It was true. I couldn’t even take the pleasure of doubting it vaguely any more.
“Do you know why?” I asked.
I shouldn’t have asked. I should have realized how it would hurt him. But curiosity was conquering any sense of consideration I had.
“Well,” he said, “I really don’t…”
“I’m not just prying for its own sake,” I said. “Peggy is suspected of these other two murders and…”
Silence from both of us. It clung to us. He was shocked, looking at me with disbelieving eyes. And I was shocked too by my own words.
Someone Is Bleeding Page 9
