“Not your Daddy?”
“No, Daddy was different. I felt safe with Daddy. Please give me my doll!”
“I found this, sir.” Marty Burns handed the slip of paper from the telephone table to Wallace.
“Lakeview five five-thousand.” The old Inspector read aloud, his voice growing huskier and more disbelieving, until finally, at the end, he was whispering in a sort of breathless protest against the words. “Is this the Police Station? My name is Betty Lorman… Someone is dead.”
“So they left this paper with you,” Wallace said, “and told you to wait a certain length of time, and then to call the police. How long did they tell you to wait?”
“Two hours.” The child’s nose twitched with the effort to keep from crying. “I wish I could hold my doll!”
She grasped it eagerly as he brought it within reach and, for a moment, let one hand lie on the stiff tulle skirt, as a blind man in a strange room might rest his hand against a wall to draw confidence from its solidity before he ventured further.
“Don’t wind it, though,” the Inspector said, holding Burns where he stood beside them with a faint, almost unnoticeable flicker of one eyelid. “Tell me about Mother and Daddy. What do they look like?”
“Daddy looks like me,” the child said. “Only he’s round and a lot taller and his hair’s thin in front. Not as tall as him, though.” She looked up at the young policeman who, even under her child’s eyes, flushed and twitched self-consciously.
“And he isn’t as tall as Uncle Bob either, or as dark,” she concluded.
“Good. And Mother?”
“Soft like a kitten. With sky-blue eyes and hair like black clouds. Curly, not ropy like mine.”
“Is that the way Daddy described her?” Wallace asked, dismissing Burns with another twitch of his eye.
“Daddy, or Uncle Bob. I can’t remember. Anyway, it’s the way she felt.”
“I guess Uncle Bob was Daddy’s brother, not Mother’s.”
She nodded, fastening her eyes again in that still, almost expressionless concentration on the doll, not seeming to hear either the rasp of the dial under Burns’s finger or the spare, pointed words, the first-fired arrow of the hunter which, even if it missed its mark, would land somewhere and so change, however infinitesimally, the pattern of things as they now existed. “All right. Where did they go?”
“It doesn’t matter. They said you’d take care of me.”
“Scheming, heartless devils!” The words burst from the old Inspector. “That’s what they are. To leave a child—” For only the second time since they had come into the room, his words were addressed to Burns.
When the call had come to Police Headquarters in the thin, child’s voice they had, of course, thought it was a hoax. But the Inspector was through for the day and so was Burns, so they rode over to River Lane together just on the one chance in a hundred that it wasn’t some teen-ager holding her nose and making her voice high and talking through a handkerchief stretched over the mouthpiece in an effort to get some friend—or enemy of the moment—into trouble.
The Inspector and Burns hadn’t yet been out on a case together—Burns was pretty new in the department—and the difference in age and rank, added to their lack of knowledge of each other, had kept conversation at a minimum.
Betty set the doll firmly on the top of the desk, turning to look fully for the first time at Wallace. “That isn’t true,” she said angrily. “You said that because you think I was scared, because you think they shouldn’t have left me with Uncle Bob. But I wasn’t scared. Death is nothing to be afraid of.”
“Who told you that?” For a moment Wallace forgot he was talking to a child. “The same person who told you to say your uncle died from natural causes?”
She nodded. “Daddy. But he didn’t say exactly that. He said Uncle Bob died as the natural result of a chain of events.”
“And did he tell you who killed him?”
“He didn’t have to,” she said. “I knew.”
“Well, who?” Wallace asked, staring hard at her.
“We all did.”
Wallace drew a deep and exasperated breath. Across the room Burns stared thoughtfully at a blue painting in a blue frame—either undersea or stratospheric—then shrugged and opened a door which led to one of the bedrooms off the living room.
“Look, honey,” Wallace said. “I have a little girl of my own who was your age once. She looked a little like you, too—only she was blonder. And she used to sit on my lap a lot. Just like this.
“Did you ever sit on your Daddy’s lap, and put your head against his chest?” He put one big, hairy hand over her face, almost covering it, and pressed it back. “And did you ever, then, talk about things you’d never talk about when you were sitting up looking at him? And weren’t those things the true things, because you couldn’t possibly say anything that wasn’t true when you were leaning back against him, hearing his heart beat under your ear?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Only Daddy told me the true things then.”
“Tell me some of them. Tell me some of the true things Daddy told you.”
“That I was strong. That I could take care of Mother. That I shouldn’t be afraid of anything—not even death.”
“And then, after Uncle Bob died,” Wallace asked gently, “did Daddy tell you to tell me you had all killed him?”
“No. I knew we had. Because I knew I’d helped to start it.”
“But who fired the gun?” Wallace demanded, “and why?”
“That doesn’t matter. It was when I switched the letters that counted. And that’s part of ‘why.’”
“… Tess! Tess! I’ve won First Prize!”
She yawned, opening her pink mouth so the white little teeth showed, close-set and sharp, like a frame around a picture of her tongue; then burrowed deeper into the soft nest of quilts and pillows.
“What?” she asked dully.
“The picture. The Fellows Contest. I’ve won it! Only,” he paused, his wide forehead wrinkling, “the check isn’t here.”
She roused slightly. She was fully dressed. It was late afternoon but she had been drinking and had gone to bed to sleep it off.
“You didn’t win,” she said, “and you never will. Why don’t you give up trying?”
“This time I did! Here’s the letter. It’s addressed to me, see? Mr. P. Lorman—” He started to hand it to her, then withdrew it suddenly and carried it to the window, snapping the shade to the top with such force that it twirled around until the circle at the end finally stopped it.
Her laughter started slowly, only a faint titter at first, but it grew deeper and turned raucous, gaining impetus and strength, until, at the end, she was rolling on the bed. She raised her knees to her chest, then flung her legs straight, beating her feet and holding her aching stomach.
“That kid,” she spluttered. “That kid’ll do anything for you…”
“Uncle Bob left the letter saying he’d won,” Betty said, “and I erased the R, so that it looked like a P, and then I opened Daddy’s envelope—it wasn’t stuck tight—and saw that he only got Honorable Mention. So I put Uncle Bob’s letter in and glued it shut again.
“I thought it would make him happy,” she said. “I’d forgotten about the check. And it did make him happy for a minute. But that just wasn’t worth the awful way he felt when he found out what I’d done. And it wasn’t worth the awful fight he had either.”
“With Uncle Bob?” Wallace asked. “Was that this morning?”
“No, with Mother, because Mother laughed. And it wasn’t this morning. It was a long time ago.”
“Well, let’s get back to this morning. Did you go to school today? Was Uncle Bob lying there on the floor when you got home?”
“Yes, he was dead when I got home,” Betty said. “You don’t have to be afraid to say the word. Daddy was here and he talked to me and then they gave me the note to read over the telephone and they kissed me and they left.”
Before she answered, Betty sat up straight, taking her head away from Wallace’s chest. “Mother was here,” she said after a moment. “In the bedroom.”
“And was Mother upset?”
“Yes. So was Daddy. But this morning she was happier than she’s ever been.”
“Now put your head back,” Wallace pressed gently against her face, “and tell me everything that happened since you got up this morning. You washed your face and brushed your teeth and…”
“I’m all dressed, Mother. May I have breakfast now?”
“Give her breakfast, Peter. I’m sick.”
“What’s it from this time?”
“What’s it ever from? Rotgut.”
“Why do you drink it?”
“Why do I drink it? he asks. I drink it to escape, that’s why!”
“To escape what, Tess? Your guilty conscience? Because you told me Betty wasn’t mine?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Why do you need to torture me, Tess? You and I both know she is.”
“Because you’re so damned virtuous. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke—and you don’t understand people who have to.”
“I understand you, Tess. You’re a baby with the devil in you and you’ve never learned to walk.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to leave you.”
“Leave me? You can’t, Peter!”
“I can. It’s the only way I can win. The only thing I can win—aloneness.”
“Aloneness? Peter, I need you! I wouldn’t be anything without you. Peter… Peter… please.”
“Did you ever love me, Tess?”
“Darling, I did. I do! I’ve grown up now and I do.”
“Have you really, baby? Prove it!”
“I will… I lied about Betty… She’s yours, ours.”
“Of course, I belonged to all three of them,” Betty said.
“Anyway, Mother and Daddy came out and got my breakfast and while I was eating we laughed and had fun and Mother looked beautiful and happy.”
“And then, when you got home from school you found Uncle Bob was dead. Didn’t you cry? Didn’t you feel bad? Didn’t you ask why your Daddy killed him?”
“We all cried. We hated to have him dead. But we knew why he was dead. When something’s in your way it has to be removed.”
“Even something you love?”
“You can love something or someone and it can still be in your way.”
“All right. How was Uncle Bob in Daddy’s way? Did he live here? Was it too crowded?”
“No, he boarded down the street. He wasn’t really-truly in the way. Not like a chair you keep falling over all the time or a door that opens in front of your toy chest, so you can’t get at it, or a winter coat that you never wear that’s hanging in front of all the other things you do wear—or a—or a—”
“I get it,” Wallace said shortly. “He wasn’t really-truly in the way, but he wasn’t just-pretend in the way either, or else your Daddy wouldn’t have had to kill him. His body wasn’t in the way, but some of the things he said or did or thought were in the way. In the way of your Daddy’s happiness?”
“That’s right. That’s exactly right.”
“Good. Now, let’s get down to business. How was he in the way of your Daddy’s happiness?”
“He kept winning things.”
“Winning things!” Wallace repeated incredulously.
“Yes. When he and Daddy were young, Uncle Bob won a scholarship. So he went to college.”
“I see. And Daddy didn’t?”
“No. And then, I told you how Uncle Bob won first prize in the art contest. I can’t figure why. It was only some old flowers. Daddy’s picture was better. ‘Death Riding a White Rat.’”
“Good Lord!” Wallace said. “Well, anyway, what else did Uncle Bob win—that your Daddy wanted, I mean?”
“I don’t remember them all. An electric clock once, but we already had one. Anyway, it was more of a feeling Daddy had… Oh, and then a long time ago, there was a girl. At first, I thought it was Mother, until I realized Daddy had won her.”
“Of course,” Wallace said slowly, the wrinkles beside his old eyes hardening into the semblance of rutted stone.
Burns came out of the bedroom holding two pieces of a torn scarf. “I found this, sir.”
“Uncle Bob gave that to Mother,” Betty said, and slid off the Inspector’s lap.
“What of it, Burns?” Wallace’s voice sounded tired and far away.
“It has been torn wilfully.” Burns looked very young as he stood there with the red and blue silk pieces trailing from his hand, and a little worried, because he was afraid he was going to say something presumptuous.
Betty turned the music box over and wound it. Once more the sad little tune rose and descended, through the three weeping phrases, stopped for a moment and then began again, while the doll, its arms outstretched, turned endlessly.
“I’ve been listening to you talk to the little girl,” Burns said, “and I thought you did a fine job of it. I wish I could talk to children that way. But I can’t, because I’m not married or anything and I was an only child and I’ve never had experience with children. They frighten me, to be completely honest about it.”
The lines beside the old Inspector’s eyes softened just a little, or changed somehow infinitesimally from rutted stone to a gentler, more flexible series of wrinkles—a series which might have been started long ago by too much smiling. It was true, he did understand children, having had four of his own. And he did understand young policemen, having had many more than four of them around him. So he said, “What is it you’re trying to tell me, Burns? What’s bothering you?”
“Only this, sir. As I said, I’m not married, and I guess I’m sort of romantic. I’ve been thinking how it would be if you loved a woman and if that woman was—well, partly a child.”
He paused for a long while to let the flush which had come to his face recede, and then he said, “And I’ve been listening to the little girl talk. And somehow she isn’t just like a child. So if the man were sort of a father type and his wife treated him like a parent—if she lied to him and was glad when bad things happened to him, as some children are, I understand, or think they are anyway—well then, if this man had to make a choice, he might choose to protect the woman who was a child rather than the child who was a woman.
“Because the chances are, the woman would always be a child, while the little girl had a chance of growing up into a real woman. And maybe, the man thought that a little unhappiness and experience and responsibility would help the child grow into a better woman. Then too, the child has a whole life ahead of her in which to forget and learn and be happy, while the woman who is a child has only now and not much left of that.”
“I don’t follow you,” Wallace said a little brusquely. “What are you getting at?”
“I guess I’m not making much sense. I’ll try again, though maybe it isn’t even worth the saying. When I found the torn scarf and Betty said her uncle had given it to her mother, it made me wonder.”
Burns stopped short and mopped his forehead, certain he had overstepped the bounds of rank.
The music box ran down and, in the new silence, Burns felt Betty’s eyes on him. He met them for an instant. They were alert, expectant, waiting in a sort of suspended stillness. Strangely, she did not move to rewind the box.
“Go on,” Wallace said. “It made you wonder what?”
“I know you’ve sort of taken it for granted that the man killed his brother,” Burns said apologetically. “But from what Betty said about her mother’s being so happy this morning—it occurred to me that maybe that happiness was jeopardized later. You see, the mother knew that as long as her husband’s brother was alive, her husband would never feel himself to be top man. And her husband had
to feel important if they were going to live in that safe, fairy-book world. Then too, maybe if there weren’t another child-adult around—like Betty’s uncle—to show her husband up, she wouldn’t have to drink.”
“It’s all very neat,” Wallace said wearily. “So the husband took her away to protect her at the expense of Betty—because he thought Betty was young enough to throw it off and his wife was too young. But you’re just guessing, Burns. The torn scarf is nothing. She might have torn it in a fit of anger. That doesn’t mean she killed the man who gave it to her.”
“I know, sir. There’s no real proof.” Burns looked across at the child and, for a moment, their eyes clung together across the empty air. “But Betty knows,” he said.
Betty set the music box down carefully without taking her eyes from Burns’s face, but she kept one hand on it, as if it gave her comfort. “We all did it,” she said. “But Mother fired the gun.”
Burns opened his other hand and laid four torn pieces of paper on the desk before Wallace. “I found these too, sir.”
The old Inspector bent his head to fit the scraps together. There was only one sentence, written in ink, dated that morning. “Being of sound mind, I leave all my worldly goods to my daughter, Betty Lorman.” It was signed, “Robert Lorman.”
“It may or may not be true,” Burns said. “Betty’s mother may have asked him not to come around any more and, out of spite, he threatened to show it to the husband.”
“Good thinking, Burns.”
“Well, I figured, sir, that the father being the kind of man he was—a father to both his wife and his child—if he had killed his brother, he’d have gone off alone. There’d be no reason for him to take his wife then. He’d have left her with Betty.”
“All right.” The old Inspector looked tired. “It’s all very neat, but what’s the difference? They’ll probably both get caught. It’s difficult for two people to escape the law forever.”
“There’s one way they could, sir,” Burns said. “If they were dead,” he added softly.
The old Inspector’s eyes could not have been more startled if he had not spent most of his life looking at death and the perpetrators of it. “No,” he said.
Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve Page 23
