Don't Open the Door

by Ursula Curtis

  In the course of a year, a surprising number of inebriated prisoners did not survive the night. Whether they might have succumbed as speedily if they had been allowed to lie in the doorways and alleys where they had been picked up, it was impossible to know. But with the passing of Silverio Baca, forty-five, the Valley heaved a cautious sigh of relief.

  He suited everybody so nicely. There was his grievance against the Pulliams, his familiarity with the house and grounds, a past conviction for burglary. When apprehended in a small unwholesome bar he had been in possession of twenty dollars, an odd fact in itself as he was currently jobless, and although he was far too drunk to make any attempt to account for his whereabouts on the night of Molly Pulliam’s death he had resisted the arresting officer so violently that he had had to be, in the demure terminology of the report, “subdued.” This violence might have been simply distaste for being bundled off to jail; equally, it might have sprung from fear.

  In any case he was dead, either from acute alcoholism or injuries suffered from a theoretical fall in his cell, and there was the unmistakable air of a life for a life—his for Molly Pulliam’s. “Save the expense of a trial,” said some people grimly, and other voices added, “Even if he’d been convicted he’d have been out again in a year, able to do it again.” Easily dismissable, perhaps because the newspapers had garbled the account and used conflicting home addresses, was Silverio Baca’s widow’s claim that the twenty dollars had been in payment of a debt, and that her husband had spent the evening in question at home.

  Jennifer Morley accepted the premise of Baca’s guilt with fierce unthinking anger. Arthur Pulliam accorded it more measured consideration. “To think,” he said, his neat old-fashioned face stiff with outrage, “that I once gave that fellow an old suit and overcoat of mine.”

  To Iris Saxon, who had had only an occasional distant glimpse of the man as he tied up roses or cut the Pulliams’ lawn, the case seemed automatically solved. She was astonished when her husband folded the newspaper and commented, “Very nice and neat for the police, isn’t it?”

  Iris, making peanut-butter and jam sandwiches for their lunch, put the knife down and stared. “You mean you think he didn’t do it?”

  “I mean it all seems very providential,” said Ned, pacing importantly. In spite of his bulk and his sixty years, his clear blue eyes and the curiously deepened color of his hair were uncannily reminding of the slender impetuous young man who had captivated Iris Dickinson so long ago; of his odd patterns of thought there was no physical trace. In this he resembled his wife: she often seemed like a little girl trapped unwittingly in a net of wrinkles and gray hairs.

  “The Sheriff’s office really bore down on this thing, because Arthur Pulliam is an important man in a way and pays a lot of taxes.” Ned Saxon said it with an air of thoughtful gravity. “They must have gotten a list of possible suspects from Pulliam right away, and how many people had he fired lately? But it’s three days before they catch up with this Baca, and then he’s too drunk to make sense or talk back at all, and then he’s dead. He was a scoundrel, no question about it, but,” said Ned in a distant and brooding tone, “I just wonder . . .”

  The wonder was very little shared. The investigation into the death of Molly Pulliam could not be officially closed, but the taut vigilance relaxed a little. Bolts and chains were still fastened securely at night, but a few large dogs, one of which had gratuitously bitten its new mistress, were returned to the animal shelter. A door-to-door salesman sold two vacuum cleaners in the area, and previously captive children were allowed to stay out until dusk. This alone had a tranquilizing effect on everyone’s nerves.

  Like people shocked by an earthquake in a part of the world where there are not supposed to be earthquakes, the Valley residents began putting things back together, not suspecting that there would be another tremor, quite soon.

  Arthur Pulliam was so badly frightened by the sound of his front-door chimes that he froze momentarily against a wall, thinking with unaccustomed wildness that he would not answer, that he would wait until he heard the further sounds of retreat. Then common sense suggested that this could hardly be the visitor he dreaded—not this soon, and certainly not in broad daylight. Moreover, there were two people; straining, he could hear a murmured interchange.

  When he opened the door the Saxons stood there, and while Arthur would normally not have been pleased to see them—he would have preferred to say what he had to say by telephone—his relief was so great that he was almost cordial as he asked them in.

  “We just stopped by for a minute,” said Iris, crisp and distinct, “because Ned wants to fix that bracket that he promised M—that he didn’t get around to last week—”

  “Oh, don’t bother about that,” began Arthur, but Iris continued firmly, “—and there are a few things of mine that I’d like to pick up, because of course you won’t be needing me any more.”

  Thus anticipated, Arthur was very faintly put out. He had never been at ease with Mrs. Saxon, largely because it was impossible to treat her as a regulation employee. Neither Molly nor Jennifer, he knew, had ever issued any orders; when there was something out of the usual routine to be done, it was always, “Iris, would it be a terrible nuisance . . .” or, “If you get a chance . . .”

  Such a state of affairs was distasteful to Arthur, who liked people who worked for him to be very much aware of the fact. Mrs. Saxon had never shown him anything but a courteous mixture of friendliness and civility, but it would have been as unthinkable to rebuke her, if the occasion arose, as it would be to slap one of his aunts.

  He had therefore rehearsed a little telephone speech in which he would thank her gravely for past services, assure her that Molly had valued her acquaintance, and explain that in his tragically altered circumstances . . . and so forth. Although he was genuinely regretful about the loss to the Saxons of that small but much-needed weekly income, he would rather have enjoyed it—and here was Mrs. Saxon murmuring politely, “Excuse me,” as she walked past him, while from the kitchen came the sound of hammering.

  Arthur was on somewhat firmer footing with Ned Saxon, even though the older man steadfastly refused payment for the small repairs he effected in the homes where his wife worked. He would present the bill from the hardware store, go over it meticulously, and accept no more than that even if he had made special trips in his car; there was a strong suggestion that any such repairs had been made for his wife’s comfort and safety.

  He was now reinforcing a bracket under the shelf, over a long sweep of formica counters and steel sinks, which held Molly’s cherished collection of pewter. “That’s very kind of you,” said Arthur, and added perfunctorily, “Perhaps you’ll have something to drink?”

  In three simultaneous responses, Ned Saxon laid down his hammer and said consideringly, “Well, now . . .”; Iris Saxon said briskly from the other end of the kitchen, “Thanks, but we can’t stay, really,” and the telephone rang.

  Arthur’s forehead grew instantly damp with panic, because the telephone was in the dining room and anything over a furtive mutter would be clearly audible here. And to go to the bedroom extension, closing the door behind him, would look peculiar. Very well; he would say, if the necessity arose, “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.” He became aware that the telephone was still pealing, and that both the Saxons were regarding him curiously. He mumbled something and went rapidly into the dining room. The voice at the other end, when he picked up the receiver, was his brother-in-law’s.

  “If you’ve really made up your mind about this, Arthur, and you’re going to be home, we might as well get the listing signed tonight. Somebody has to sell the house, and the sooner the better for you, I imagine.”

  A very faint curiosity there, as to his speed in getting the house on the market? Surely not; no bereaved husband, especially one bereaved under the shocking circumstances, could be expected to cling to a house that held, in its wood and metal and fabric, the silent and ineradicable witness
ing of violent death.

  But if the call came while Richard Morley was here?

  “Yes, fine,” said Arthur through dry lips. “Any time that’s convenient for you, I’ll be home all evening. Give my best to Jennifer.”

  In the kitchen, Ned Saxon solemnly accepted fifty-two cents, the two cents being tax, for his restoration of the bracket, and Iris Saxon said, “I don’t want you to think I’m going off with the silver, so will you please check this with me?”

  She was light but firm, and “this” being a large knitting bag, Arthur obediently but awkwardly looked in at a cloth tape measure, a cake of something to rub on irons, a pair of rubber gloves Mrs. Saxon used when doing laundry by hand. “And I think these are my scissors,” said Iris delicately—this meant she was certain—“but maybe you wouldn’t mind making sure that yours are there, in that end drawer at the right.”

  They were. “Well, we won’t take up any more of your time,” said Iris, sending a glance around the kitchen where she had put in so many days, “but please”—her eyes began to brim—“please let us know if there’s anything at all we can do.”

  “That’s right,” said Ned Saxon heartily, and the door chimes rang.

  Instantly Arthur Pulliam had the liquor cabinet open. He seized a bottle at random, lifted down glasses that chattered perilously in his hands, said with a frantic hospitality that sat as oddly on him as a sarong, “Oh, but you must have something. I really insist. Perhaps you’d just help yourselves while I see who—”

  He had no plan as he hastened to the front door in a second impatient echo of chimes; he only knew that he must keep the Saxons captive in the kitchen for the next few possibly dangerous minutes. And after all that, and the panicky race of his heart, it was a weedy youth in glasses, a parcel delivery truck in the drive behind him, who said, “Pulliam? Package for you,” and thrust out a fiat rectangular box.

  From the black and white zigzag pattern of the wrapping, and its next-to-nothing weight, the box contained some frivolity from Farrar’s, a small costly specialty shop Molly had liked. Arthur put it down on a bookcase and, in his irritation at presently discovering that by some evil chance he had given the Saxons his most expensive Scotch, which they were sipping at as though it were vinegar, forgot about it until later that evening.

  By that time Richard Morley had come and gone and the listing for the house, at an asking price of forty-five thousand dollars, was signed. “I suppose you’ll take an apartment for the time being,” said Richard.

  Arthur shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet. Mr. Heather-wood has suggested a leave of absence, and I think I’ll take a week or so away before I do anything definite. That is, if the police . . .”

  He almost unburdened himself to his brother-in-law then, even though there existed between them only the automatic civility of having married sisters. Richard Morley was tense, alert, sardonic-tongued, with a deplorable tendency to mock what Arthur considered the Solid Values; still, because of that very quality he might—

  It was not caution that stopped Arthur’s tongue, but a realization that this was not the proper moment: Richard clearly had a problem of his own. His jaw, always aggressively taut, seemed now to be almost clenched, and in the last few days the sprinkle of gray in his close-cut fair hair appeared to have multiplied. As though he had read Arthur’s mind he asked abruptly, “Has Jennifer asked you whether Molly had been getting any peculiar telephone calls in the last couple of weeks?”

  Arthur blinked in surprise. “No, but you remember that the Sheriff went into all that—any enemies, or threats of any kind, and of course I said no. Molly would surely have told me at once.”

  A flicker of cynicism passed through Richard’s eyes. “But did Jennifer ask you herself?”

  “Certainly not,” said Arthur, beginning to feel obscurely offended. “Why?”

  “I heard Jennifer talking to someone on the phone, and she seemed to feel . . . You remember that picture of you and Molly the newspaper ran, back in June sometime, with a small article about your being feted, I believe the word is,” said Richard, his raillery showing through even now, “upon becoming a member of the Fifty Year Club at Heatherwood Construction?”

  “Twenty Year Club,” corrected Arthur stiffly.

  “All right, Twenty. Jennifer seemed to have gotten it into her head that either the picture of the article might have had something to do with—what happened.”

  “I don’t see that,” said Arthur in bewilderment. He was so affected by the implied slur on the Heatherwood Construction Company that he whipped off his glasses and polished them angrily. “I don’t see that at all. Besides, this fellow Baca . . .”

  “Unfortunately, Baca’s dead,” said Richard Morley, and took his leave.

  Surely, Arthur repeated to himself, Molly would have told me if there had been anything like that—but it was a train of thought his mind shied away from and he took refuge in physical action, emptying ashtrays, checking the door locks, coming at last to the black-and-white package.

  Send it back unopened? But Jennifer had said something about a coming birthday of her husband’s, and suppose Molly had ordered—

  When the tissue fell away the box disclosed a blouse of very thin white silk, long-sleeved, starkly simple except for an open and elongated diamond-shape just under the high throat. Oddly for Molly, an inveterate user of charge cards, it had been a cash transaction, and the price was twenty-five dollars plus tax.

  The ordinarily frugal Arthur was not taken aback at that—he had liked his wife to reflect his own successful standing—but he was certain that a duplicate of the blouse already hung in Molly’s closet, which again was odd because she had not been a woman to have two of such a thing. But this was female terrain; let Jennifer, who had promised to come and cope with the disposition of Molly’s personal possessions, deal with the blouse as she wished. Arthur folded it back into the tissue, thrust the box into a desk drawer, and dismissed it from his mind.

  He was—unknowingly, because he had never met her—much in the position of Eve Quinn when she had walked away from the problem of Ambrose’s rockles.

  Ambrose had temporarily forgotten about his rockles; he had a new absorption. So had Eve.

  5

  THERE was nothing in the envelope except the newspaper clipping, and even though there was no one but Ambrose to see her as she read it Eve could feel her face grow warm—not with hurt, or injured pride, but simply out of shock that someone who knew her should have seen fit to do this. While it was mischief on only a petty scale, it showed an attention trained closely on her.

  The clipping was fairly long, headed by the photograph of a half-smiling girl with straight flowing blond hair, and it was datelined Chicago. It supplied the information that the engagement had been announced of Susan Hanes Griffith, daughter of, etc., and William Harper Cox, son of, etc. The schools and sororities of the bride-elect were gone into, along with her Junior League standing and her present activity with a children’s charitable organization; the history of William Harper Cox was similarly chronicled. An early wedding was planned. Well, naturally.

  Almost oblivious to the fact that Ambrose had introduced a horned toad into the house, Eve looked again at the envelope, neatly and properly addressed, postmarked Albuquerque. Someone at the agency, obviously, because her own engagement had never been officially announced; it had been, she thought wryly, an inter-office affair in every respect. It was the casual spite that bit, the implicit hope that she would be reduced to tears.

  In a world studded with real battle grounds, it should not have been so shocking to discover such a trifling enemy, but somehow it was. Someone—in the typist’s pool, in the production department, at the switchboard?—had taken the time and trouble to scissor the clipping, learn the new address Eve had left in case any question should arise about work she had just completed, stamp the envelope and mail it.

  Not Nina Earl, with whom she had shared the travails of locally produced potato chips and pi
ckles; Nina was a friend and a good one. Certainly not Tom Sanders, who occupied the next cubicle and toiled over an insurance company account: “The only company that enables you to take it with you,” he declaimed occasionally. No; it was a feminine gibe from someone contemptuous at Eve for having let such a catch slip through her fingers. The only person who came to mind was a ravishing copper-haired, cream-complexioned typist with eyelashes like stilettos over a green glance which had been trained on Bill from the moment he entered the office . . .

  “At the door,” Ambrose was whispering hoarsely and excitedly into Eve’s ear. “Oo, at the door.” Who had encouraged him in these dramatics about visitors?

  Eve’s first reaction, when she had opened the door, was to whisk it closed again, because the man who stood silhouetted against the grass and the apricot tree was from Cox-Ivanhoe. She could not fit the longish light-eyed face into any exact background, elevator or water cooler or one of the green-carpeted offices, but she knew she was not mistaken. In her present frame of mind—she still held the spiteful little clipping in one hand—she did not feel cordial toward anyone connected with Cox-Ivanhoe.

  She said unadornedly, in the tone she kept for aging youths purportedly working their way through college by selling magazine subscriptions, “Yes?”

  His own look of polite recognition did not waver. “I’m Henry Conlon, Miss Quinn. I apologize for the state you must have found this place in, but I’ve been out on the coast for a couple of months.”

  Eve had been making out her rent checks to “Estate of E. J. Dunn”; now, stunned and half-resentful, she realized that she was gazing at her landlord. Richard Morley might have told her—but of course, she realized even in her discomposure, there was no reason why he should ; she had made no mention of the advertising agency, and certainly none of her broken engagement. With which, of course, this man would be familiar.

  There was no recourse but to ask him in, and, once he was in, to ask him to sit down. Eve, made even stiffer by the Swiss-clock appearances of Ambrose’s head around the doorway beyond her visitor’s shoulder, said that she liked the house very much and that everything was fine. No, not at all; she had enjoyed putting the place in order. Yes, it was certainly a pleasant change from the city.