Don't Open the Door

by Ursula Curtis

  Because there remained only the glove drawer, and the half-used perfumes and colognes to be thrown out, and—the thing Jennifer shrank from—the contents of Molly’s little desk, the letters and photographs and other personal mementos which for one reason or another she had kept.

  “There might be some—ah—family thing you’d want,” Arthur had said stiffly, “or . . . I really don’t know, but I think it would be wise—”

  He was right, of course; nevertheless, facing the task she had left until last, Jennifer found the chime of the doorbell a reprieve. She hadn’t heard a car, although the driveway was graveled like their own because of the dust. On the other hand, she hadn’t been listening.

  This would be one of those agencies which never heard of deaths in a family—a dairy soliciting its rivals’ accounts, a newly established dry cleaner, an Indian from a nearby pueblo selling blankets or intricately worked turquoise and silver. Prepared to deal with any of them, Jennifer pushed her short dark hair back from her forehead and walked crisply through the depths of the house.

  To her surprise, to her momentary fright, she opened the door on the totally unexpected figure of Ned Saxon.

  7

  HER first thought, because of the atmosphere of disaster that lingered in this house like some terrible perfume, was, Something’s happened to Richard. Then, mercifully, Ned Saxon gave her an anxious and apologetic smile.

  “Say, I’m awfully sorry to bother you like this,” he said, “but I saw your car outside and I wonder if I could use the phone? My car’s conked out on me about a half mile down the road.”

  “Of course, come in,” said Jennifer. She had none of Molly’s embarrassment with the man; she quite simply and briskly did not care for him—personal hard luck was not always a guarantee of worth—but at the moment she felt a genuine compunction. In spite of the coolness of the morning the walk had been an obvious effort for him; his face, normally ruddy, had such a deep and almost radiant flush that for just a second, contributing to her momentary fear, he had appeared to be all one color.

  “I’d be glad to drive you to a garage if that would be any help,” she said, but Ned Saxon demurred at once with the air of deprecation which Jennifer always felt, without knowing why, to be completely false.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t think of it. I’m interrupting you as it is, I know. Fact is, I bought this old battery from a neighbor of mine and I think that’s where the trouble is. He got me into this and he can get me out,” said Ned, smiling redly.

  “Well, if you’re sure . . . there’s a phone in here,” Jennifer said, and turned and led the way into the dining room, because although Ned Saxon must of course know where the telephone was he would never make his way into the house without an escort. It was punctilious; it was also a nuisance.

  His brief respite had quieted the breathing which had been labored at the door. Behind her, his progress was utterly silent. So it wasn’t an old wives’ tale about bulky men moving with such delicacy, Jennifer thought absently, and jumped a little as the telephone burst into sound when she was two feet away from it.

  It was Iris Saxon. “Sorry to bother you, Jen, but there’s a delivery man here with an electric broiler or something, and I didn’t know whether you wanted me to sign for it or what.”

  “Yes, would you? I forgot all about it. And by the way, your husband’s right here, would you like to talk to him?”

  Jennifer had turned automatically to face Ned Saxon when Iris’s voice came along the wire; now, as she handed him the receiver, she was surprised and concerned about the ring of white around his mouth; he looked ill.

  “Hi,” she heard him say as she walked back into the living room. “You were right about the car this morning. I was on my way to that place on Fourth to see if I could pick up a lamp and it died on me . . . Right around the corner from here . . . That’s what I was just going to do . . . I’ll see you at five.”

  The receiver went down, the dial spun, Ned Saxon delivered his complaint about the battery with the loud cheerfulness which accompanies rancor about a business transaction between friends. In the living room, he thanked Jennifer for the use of the phone. “He’s on his way, so I’ll wait for him at the car.”

  “I’ll drive you,” said Jennifer at once. She might not—did not—like Ned Saxon, but it would have been impossible to turn out even a sworn enemy who was under such obvious stress. “Just a second and I’ll get my keys.”

  But Ned would not hear of it. “Iris’ll have my head for barging in on you at a time like this,” he said, “and besides, the walk will do me good. Maybe cut down the old avoirdupois, or do I mean embonpoint?”

  He gave this its English pronunciation, drolly. Holding the door, then closing it after him, Jennifer doubted that the walk would do him good in any respect. Only extreme fury, which was ridiculous, or physical disability could have produced that startling red and ice-white countenance, and Ned Saxon was not a young man. Well, she had done her best. Like Eve Quinn, like Arthur Pulliam, she dismissed the matter and forced herself back to Molly’s desk.

  Nina Earl had been away on vacation, and Eve was not able to reach her until that evening. Ambrose was in the bathtub, still examining with sympathetic horror a wasp sting which he had received that noon and treated with perhaps two dozen band-aids, the peels from which Eve was still picking up in odd places.

  Lively, talkative, immensely competent at her job, Nina said, “Well, you’re a voice from beyond. Did you know we got the dog-food account, the one we sat up and begged for so prettily? I want some heartbreaking old piano music and a bloodhound or maybe just a basset eating sadly out of a bowl marked Brand X, with a Skye terrier or one of those happy eyebrowey types reveling in our stuff . . . Well, enough of this rubbish. What are you doing with all your leisure, besides not coming to see us?”

  Eve considered explaining about Ambrose, decided that it was too complicated, and said, “Nothing much . . . Nina, has Henry Conlon a sister?”

  Nina Earl had been with the agency almost since its inception, and knew the life histories of most of its personnel. In addition, she had the kind of voluminous memory which could, if required, produce instantly the whereabouts and size of the nearest wildlife sanctuary.

  She said now, with promptness, “No. An older brother, I believe, an Army officer in Germany. Incidentally, he is a very nice guy, Henry, who has had a very rough deal.” ’ ’ ”

  “He also seems to be my landlord.”

  “Oh, is he? Well, you’ve probably heard that thing about a small world.”

  “It sounds very faintly familiar. Was he ever connected with a school called Hapgood or Lockwood or something like that?”

  “The Lockwood School for girls, and no, not that I know of. It went out of existence years ago, anyway, and small wonder.”

  Eve, who knew that Henry Conlon’s puzzling demeanor should by now have faded from her mind, felt her curiosity sharpen instead. She said, “Oh? Why?” and then, as roars began to issue from the bathroom, “Hold on a second.” Ambrose, in the tub, had been trickling water lovingly over his head from a plastic squeeze bottle, unaware of the hazards involved. Soapy eyes shut, face scarlet with pain and wrath, he had already employed the bath towel, his pajamas and his bathrobe, all of which were bobbing soddenly around in the tub. There was a considerable amount of water on the floor.

  Eve brought him a dry towel and his only other pair of pajamas, started and nearly fell on the wet tile when she received a venomous hiss from the newly escaped toad, and went shakenly back to the telephone.

  Nina had heard the shrieks. She said coyly, “Ah, you have news of an astonishing nature?” and Eve laughed. “A cousin, with soap in his eyes. About the school—?” But it was after all only negative information about an enterprise which had failed in spite of having contained, in the beginning, a lucrative idea. There was a good deal of money in the Southwest, a lot of it new, and, in this immediate area at any rate, no really exclusive girls’ school where along
with the regular curriculum ranchers’ daughters could be taught the vanishing arts of ballroom dancing and the pouring of tea and civilized conversation with their elders.

  “But not a success,” said Nina, “although it seemed to go along well enough for three or four years. Maybe there was too strong a flavor of silk purses. Anyway, it folded.”

  “Quietly?”

  “Certainly no headlines or I’d know,” said Nina without false modesty. “If it’s important I could probably find out for you.”

  Somehow all the urgency had drained away; perhaps that was Nina’s matter-of-fact voice. “Don’t bother, it was just a thought,” said Eve, and they lapsed into the civilities of two women who had worked companionably together for two years. Nina said that the potato chip account had had to be talked out of an idea of their own—“Coulson’s, the hip chip”—and that Mr. Cox’s pretty blond secretary had had twins. She went on chattily, “Your local murder seems to have been solved, or shouldn’t one bring that up?”

  “Ideally, no,” said Eve; she had just become aware that the windows were completely dark and the curtains undrawn, and that for the first time in days she had forgotten to lock the back door. And under the rush of the bath water and the volume of Ambrose’s shrieks . . . she said a hasty goodby to Nina, agreeing to lunch soon, glanced in at Ambrose and proceeded to the door at the end of the narrow, galley-like kitchen.

  The pane here looked directly across the wall and the shared driveway just outside it at the other house, and at some time since the fall of darkness Henry Conlon had arrived: there were lights on, capping the shrubs faintly with gold. Eve shook off the eerie feeling that her telephone inquiry to Nina Earl had summoned him up, turned the lock, and pushed at the bolt Ned Saxon had insisted on installing.

  It was stiff, and as she struggled with it a car came wheeling into the driveway, its headlights vanishing before the motor was cut. Someone for her? It was hardly likely without a preliminary telephone call, but while Eve stood in doubt there was a dim flash of the courtesy light as the driver emerged.

  Through the zigzag carving in the top of the gate let into the wall, Eve could tell only that the caller was a woman. She felt at once let down and embarrassed, because in a house which had belonged to his aunt and of which he was one of the executors Henry Conlon had a perfect right to entertain a whole procession of female visitors he chose— and then a woman, who had obviously forgotten something, returned rapidly to the car and opened the door for an instant.

  This time she was recognizably Jennifer Morley.

  Eve left the kitchen and returned to the bathroom where Ambrose, only his ankles in the tub and his face an alarming cherry red as he leaned out, was attempting to groom the cornered horned toad with her toothbrush. “Stop that and get dry at once,” she said with unaccustomed fierceness, seizing Ambrose and the toothbrush.

  “Brush,” said Ambrose just as angrily.

  “Teeth, not toads. Oh, blast!” said Eve, and threw away the toothbrush, a new and very good one, and put Ambrose to bed with a grim speed that bewildered him into docility. “My hat,” he only said meekly as she left the room, and Eve got the hat, placed it on his pillow, tiptoed out again with an elaborate silence suggesting that the little house was full of sleeping people, and had her own much-delayed dinner.

  As the wife of the real estate broker who handled both these properties, Jennifer Morley naturally had matters to discuss with Henry Conlon, or rather commissions to carry out for her husband, and everybody knew that that business kept odd hours. As for the air of hurried anonymity, Eve had imagined that. Lots of people—people coming into very familiar driveways—switched off their headlights even before they had finished braking.

  In the road outside, a car had come to a pause with its engine throbbing. Eve ate her salad and devoted herself stoically to the book at her elbow. A little later, on the other side of the wall, Jennifer Morley’s car backed, withdrew, and became a receding hum; it was followed at once by one which could only have been Henry Conlon’s.

  None of it anything to do with Eve. She went briskly about her before-bed routine of straightening the primitive kitchen and restoring the living room to its usual tranquility, but there was not the sense of accomplishment she had always enjoyed before in this small domain; something had been very slightly spoiled. It did not help when, presently, she was unable to brush her teeth.

  Not surprisingly to anyone even faintly familiar with him, Ambrose snored. Eve had overcome this obstacle to her own repose by imagining herself at a seaside resort, paying heavily for the privilege of hearing waves wash gently over pebbles. It did not work as well as usual tonight. Whatever the interpretation to be placed on Mrs. Morley’s solitary visit to the house next door, Eve wished that she had not been a witness. She wished too that Richard Morley, showing her the house months ago, had made even a passing reference to the executor’s being a friend of theirs.

  Not that it was her concern in any way, or so Eve thought until morning.

  8

  IT was not an auspicious day from the outset. Eve, who had had one of her rare broken nights, was tugged out of sleep by Ambrose’s imperious hand to a whole assortment of unfamiliar sounds—rain—and the realization that it was Iris’s day to come and both the Saxons were at the front door, waiting in the downpour.

  Ambrose could not reach the lock. Eve, not a fast efficient waker, said distractedly, “Run and say I’ll be right there,” and then in the strange twilight of the room could not find the sleeves of her robe. Barefoot, short fair hair pillow-rumpled, hating kind reliable Iris from the bottom of her heart, she fled to the front door and got it open, saying in an unstrung social way, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what made me— Come on in, it’s pouring.”

  The ever-courteous Saxons must have turned to each other the instant the lock clicked, because like two people in a comedy routine—apparently oblivious of the water streaming down Ned’s face and siphoning off the folded newspaper held over Iris’s held—they were offering each other measured observations about the weather. “It’s, what, August since we had a real rain? “At least that. It’ll be awfully good for the grazing.”

  Into this strange scene Ambrose, half-hiding behind Eve, said in a very small but menacing voice, “I want my rockles.” Simultaneously Iris shook out the newspaper and stepped inside, and Ned Saxon said in answer to Eve’s invitation that he had to be on his way. Eve, very conscious that she looked decadent as well as disheveled in a robe and bare feet when the older woman had been up for hours, knew the depth of her own confusion when she almost imagined Ambrose saying in a soft and hair-raising voice, “Is it dead yet?”

  Like many mornings badly begun, it grew worse. Still somewhat bemused by the dark light and the million chucklings of the rain around the house, Eve started the percolator, showered, dressed, made her bed. When she emerged to announce that coffee was ready, Iris Saxon was seated in a corner of the couch, laying out her sewing kit and button box and rubber gloves as she always did, and Ambrose, planted in front of her, was saying coaxingly, “Which hand?”

  “Left,” said Iris absently, not looking up, and Ambrose popped the horned toad proudly into her lap.

  Iris uttered a strangled sound of anger and horror, pressing herself violently back against the couch cushions. Eve, who had arrived just too late, cried, “Ambrose!” and started forward. Ambrose bounded onto the couch with rocking force and recaptured his unwilling pet.

  “Don’t ever,” said Iris Saxon coldly out of an ashen face, when she had caught her breath, “ever do that to me again, do you hear?’

  The woman and the child might have been alone in the room, and although a rebuke was certainly justified Eve felt queerly chilled. She had made up her mind the evening before that the toad had to go, if only for its own sake—but not in this shaming way. She said in a crisp light voice, “Ambrose, you must keep him in your room or he’ll get stepped on,” and, “I’m sorry, Iris, he must have given you an awful fr
ight. Come and have a soothing cup of coffee.”

  “When they say boys will be boys,” said Iris, smiling wryly and recovering her poise, “they know what they’re talking about, don’t they? It’s silly of me to jump like that, but I hate those things . . .”

  Toads, wondered Eve fleetingly, or little boys? A little girl, now, starched and ringleted and playing prettily with her dolls . . . that was unfair. She poured coffee into two cups, aware of Ambrose’s silent and immensely baleful withdrawal, and was pleased when the telephone rang.

  It was a wall arrangement, just inside the kitchen doorway. Eve lifted the receiver down, and a male voice speaking from what was audibly an office background said, “Miss Quinn? Richard Morley. I hope I didn’t catch you at a busy time?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “I hope the keys my wife brought you last night are the right ones,” said Richard Morley.

  Eve’s way here was certainly clear, after the first sensation of having been buffeted lightly in the midriff. No sensible person shored up such a deception between husband and wife; moral considerations apart, all it could reap was the blackest blame from both of them. It would take only a blank, “What keys, Mr. Morley?”

  What she said was, “I’m sure they are, although to be frank I haven’t tried them—I’m just up.”

  As traceably as air from a punctured tire, the tension escaped from Richard Morley’s voice. Eve closed her eyes. “Well, that’s good,” said the voice in her ear, and then, perfunctorily, “Everything else all right at the house?”

  “Everything’s fine, thanks.”

  Feeling that her face must be a scalding color, aware of a deep delayed indignation, Eve returned to the kitchen table and took up her coffee cup. She said to Iris Saxon with an air of bright recollection, “By the way, have you any idea of what Ambrose means by his rockles? He keeps after me, and I haven’t the slightest idea.”