by Frances
For the first time, Pam thought, watching Cleo Harper sitting uncomfortably on an uncomfortable chair, worrying a damp handkerchief—for the first time I understand what places like this are for; sterilized places like this, in which girls voluntarily live in dormitories, hygienically. They are for girls like Cleo Harper, with whom nobody will ever really want to live. They are for tall girls with flat chests and inevitably damp handkerchiefs, and always with slight colds in the head.
Cleo Harper had a slight cold in the head and as she talked she sniffled. It was also evident after a moment that she had been crying and was ready to cry again. She cried again, unbecomingly, when Mullins identified himself, and introduced Mrs. North without identification, and said that he wanted to go over again the circumstances of her meeting Frank Martinelli that afternoon. The tall, pale girl bent her head and gulped. You could, Pam found, be very sorry for her, without liking her.
“Oh,” Cleo Harper said, “it was dreadful—dreadful. To do a thing like that—to Fran. To Fran of all people. To dear Fran.”
Her words are inadequate, too, Pam North thought. She means more than that.
“She was my best friend,” Cleo said and dabbed at her nose. “Ever since I went to the company she was my best friend. She understood.”
Cleo Harper did not say what Frances McCalley had understood—what there had been to understand. It was as if she had merely used the word which lay nearest.
“And she’s dead,” Cleo said. “I just can’t believe it. I just can’t. What a horrible thing to do.”
“It was horrible,” Pam North said. “I know how you must feel.”
But I don’t, Pam thought. I can never know how she feels. It’s as if she were feeling in a different language.
“About this boy,” Mullins said. “This Martinelli.”
But it was not easy to guide Cleo Harper. She was insistent that they know about Frances McCalley, who had been her dearest friend, with whom she had “always been,” with whom she had gone to movies and walked home from work, with whom once she had gone to a camp on summer vacation, with whom—in summer—she had ridden back and forth on the Staten Island ferry. You could see the two of them, as she talked; perhaps, Pam thought, you could see more than she meant them to see, or more than she knew.
Because there was nothing to indicate that Frances McCalley had been a girl whom Cleo Harper would have contented. You could only guess at Frances now, and guess with little knowledge. But Martinelli, murderer or not, was a dark; angry youth and, murderer or not, he appeared to have had a dark, angry attachment to Frances McCalley. And a girl who was, contentedly, Cleo Harper’s best friend would hardly, you could suspect, engender such an attachment. People who are killed violently, unless they are killed by accident, usually have in some fashion been violently alive. Or so Pam North, listening to words which got them nowhere, thought as she listened. No one would, for example, kill Cleo Harper.
“Unless,” Pam said to herself, “they were married to her. But nobody ever would be.”
Pam heard herself think this and was suddenly shocked. I’m cruel, she thought; I’m contemptuous because she isn’t attractive, I’m cruel because Jerry loves me and nobody will ever love her—no man and, not really, any woman. She’s just trying to make herself believe that Fran was her dearest friend; that she was dear to Fran. She is making it up for herself so that she can have it as a memory and—
“Until she met that horrible boy,” Cleo said. “That horrible, black, dirty boy. She must have been crazy—it wasn’t like her. She was never that way.”
There was an odd emphasis on the word “that.” Cleo Harper spoke as if there were a kind of unspeakable loathesomeness about being “that way.” But as far as appeared, she meant merely that Frances had been normally responsive—had been at any rate interested—in a young man.
“He did something to her,” Cleo said. And now there was a new note in her thin voice. Before she had been sorry for herself, and writing ineffectual drama about her own not quite believable bereavement. But there was a new note now, not immediately decipherable. If Cleo had seemed strong enough to hate, you might have thought it hate. It caught Pam North’s attention.
“It ought to be him,” the girl said. “Him lying there, all cut and with blood all over him. Somebody ought to have killed him and then none of it would have happened.”
Cleo Harper gulped and dabbed at her eyes. Then she looked up and it occurred to Pam that perhaps was not altogether ineffectual. There was something odd about her eyes.
“The dirty little beast,” the girl said. “The dirty—thing!”
There was no doubt about the note in her voice now. It was venom. There was room in the thin body and the thin mind of Cleo Harper for one large emotion—hatred. It was surprising.
“Now, miss,” Mullins said. “Now, miss. You don’t want to work yourself up. O.K.?”
“You ought to kill him for it,” Cleo Harper said. “You ought—you’ve got a right. He killed her—he changed her and then he killed her. Somebody ought to kill him. He oughtn’t to be alive.”
It was abashing. That was the only word for it. It was so naked; it was so much more than people said to other people. It spread emotions out too openly, let you see too deep. I don’t want to know that much about her, Pam thought. It is more than anybody ought to know about anybody else. It’s—ugly.
And it lay in the tone, in the inflection.
“Now, miss,” Mullins said. “You oughtn’t to talk that way. It ain’t—”
He broke off, looking puzzled. Pam had a disturbing notion that Mullins had been about to say it wasn’t ladylike. Or perhaps he had really seen, and almost said, that it was not human.
Mullins looked at Mrs. North, with a kind of anxiety. It was, his look told her, getting beyond him.
It was beyond Pam too, she thought. Or she hoped it was—or she hoped she was wrong. She hoped that Cleo Harper hated Frank Martinelli because she believed he had killed her friend; that she felt a hatred which, although extreme, would still be comprehensible. Pam hoped that all this venom, which was not like anything she had seen before or wanted to see, was directed against a murderer, and not merely against a man—because he was a man and so had “changed” the feelings of a girl.
I don’t care what people do, Pam thought. It isn’t that. Or how they feel, because any way of feeling can be natural and all right. Or I suppose it can—for some. But this would be ugly.
Pam North groped for a word more accurate. When she found it she hesitated to use it even in her own mind because it was too big a word for people. For ordinary people, anyway. But the word was “evil.” Looking at Cleo Harper, hearing her hitter words continue, Pam thought that there was something evil, and unexpected, in the room. Or that there might be. It was not clear. Possibly, Pam thought, she was now herself a writer of melodrama, inventing motives, imagining mysteries in simple things. Probably Cleo Harper was merely an overwrought, not very effectual, person who had lost a friend and lacked self-control.
It was easier to think that. More comfortable. Thinking that made the world more comprehensible and, in a way, more tolerable. That, Pam decided, was why people had quit believing in evil. It was too uncomfortable a belief. It was too unseemly. Even now, with something enormous that was surely evil loose in the world, and not yet bound, it was hard to believe in evil on a smaller, more human scale. It was easier and less alarming to think that you were merely making things up.
People did not believe in big emotions, except, of course, their own emotions, which they always considered big. They—
“Philosophy,” Pam said to herself, alarmed, deciding to stop it at once.
“Huh?” Mullins said. Cleo Harper merely stopped talking for a moment and looked at Pam through reddened eyes. Pam realized she had done it again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have been thinking out loud. I do, you know. Even when I think I’m not. Like now.”
“Why philosophy
?” Mullins said. “I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I, Mr. Mullins,” Cleo Harper said. “I’m trying to tell you—and she—”
“I’m really sorry,” Pam said. “It was just a thought. I was really listening. You were going to tell us about seeing the Martinelli boy at the cafeteria.”
Cleo Harper hadn’t been, precisely. She had been telling them what ought to be done with Franklin Martinelli. But she was oddly obedient. She took up a new line of thought without protest and now Pam did listen.
“He was running,” she said. “His face was all twisted up. And—I just remembered. He had one hand in his pocket, like he was holding something. The knife!”
Mullins shook his head, chiefly in answer to the question in Mrs. North’s eyes. It couldn’t have been the knife, he said. They had found the knife, on the floor where it had been dropped, apparently, as soon as its work was done. It was a clasp knife with one long blade and a rough handle which was smeared, but not usefully imprinted, by the hand which grasped it.
“A sticker,” Mullins said. “Sort of a Boy Scout knife. Like a kid might have had.”
“His hand was in his pocket, anyway,” the tall, thin girl insisted. “I thought it was a knife—afterward. He was almost running because he had just killed her and—”
It was difficult to keep her even remotely objective. Martinelli had, it appeared, gone very rapidly through a revolving door, setting it swirling. Cleo had been indignant and turned to say something to him and recognized him.
“He looked terrible,” she said. “Like he was crazy. So I didn’t say anything. He turned and ran up the street.”
“Ran?” Pam repeated.
“It was almost running,” the girl said. “Because he was afraid—because of what he’d done. And the knife in his pocket, all bloody.”
“Listen,” Mullins said. “He didn’t have the knife. Whoever did it left the knife.”
“I don’t believe it,” the girl said. “You’re trying to pretend he didn’t do it. You’re crooked and he’s paid you something or—”
“Jeeze,” Mullins said. “Jeeze, miss.” He looked at her as if he were measuring her for something. “You’ve got some mighty funny ideas, miss,” he said, with unexpected mildness.
“You oughtn’t to say things like that, Miss Harper,” Pam North told her. “They’re confusing. You don’t understand about things like that. People don’t pay for murders.” She paused to consider. “Not that way, anyhow,” she said. “Like buying a license. Not from Sergeant Mullins.”
“You don’t know,” the girl said, looking at Pam. “How could you know?”
This, Pam thought, is one of the strangest conversations. One of the very strangest.
“Listen,” she said. “Can’t you just pretend you don’t know the boy killed her? And just tell us what happened?”
“He ran,” the girl said. “With his face all twisted and with the knife in his pocket.”
Of course, Pam thought, she could be just a little queer, perhaps only because of strain. Or she could be—what was the word?—psychotic. Or, of course, she could be, for some purpose which was not clear, pretending to be these things. She was difficult.
“And to think,” Pam said to herself, “that I thought she was just a flat-chested girl, who didn’t mean anything! Just something facts would come out of if you pressed a button.”
Then Pam looked a little alarmed at the others, thinking that again she might have thought out loud. But apparently this time she hadn’t.
“Suppose,” Mullins said, “I just ask some questions. And you just answer them. O.K.?”
“What do you want to know?” the girl said. “I told you about seeing him.”
What he wanted to know Mullins got slowly. She had stared after Franklin Martinelli for a moment while he ran—or perhaps merely walked rapidly—up the street. Then she had gone on into the restaurant. She had gone up to the counter. She had got her lunch.
“What?” Pam said.
“I got my lunch,” the girl said.
Pam was impatient.
“I know,” she said. “What for lunch?”
“Oh,” the girl said. “Stew. Irish stew.”
It was incongruous. Pam had expected—
“Oh,” she said. “Not just a sandwich? Cream cheese and jelly or something?”
“Stew,” the girl said. “I was hungry. I didn’t know then that—”
“Of course not,” Pam said. “I didn’t mean that. And then what?”
“Then I ate it,” the girl said.
Pam shook her head.
“For dessert,” she said. “What did you have for dessert?” She paused. “A baked apple?” she said. She said it casually.
“No,” the girl said. “Why? What made you think a baked apple?”
“I didn’t,” Pam said. “I was just—suggesting. As if I’d been in and you came in from outside and I said ‘is it clearing up?’ or something like that. Meaning, what is it doing?”
“Oh,” the girl said. “I had a fruit salad. I looked at the baked apples, but I don’t really—”
“What!” Pam said. She said it very suddenly.
“—like baked apples particularly,” Cleo Harper said. “There are always those little hard slivers around the core.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Pam told her. “That’s just careless preparation. You ought to—”
She broke off. It was hard enough to keep Cleo Harper on the subject, without helping her this way.
“Listen,” Pam said. “Forget about that. You saw the baked apples?”
The girl nodded.
“The man just put them down,” she said. “A tray full of them. That’s why I looked. Usually I don’t even look at them, but these just came in.”
“A full tray?” Pam insisted. “I mean—a completely full tray? Not even one gone?”
“Listen,” the girl said. “I think you’re nuts, whoever you are. What difference does it make?”
“Well,” Pam said. “It makes all—”
Again she broke off, because Mullins suddenly shook his head at her.
“It doesn’t make any,” she said. “I don’t know why I asked. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Cleo Harper looked at Pam North with great and evident doubt. Then she shook her head.
“So I looked at the apples,” she said. “And I got a fruit salad and I went over and sat with a girl I knew and ate lunch. And then—when I was leaving—somebody screamed and—and—”
“You went over?” Pam asked. Her voice was gentle. Whatever the girl was, you had to be gentle.
Cleo Harper nodded without speaking. She drew in her breath in a quick, shivering gasp.
“Don’t remember it,” Pam said. “It doesn’t do any good.”
It was good advice, and obviously futile.
Mullins waited a moment and then he took over. He got a guess that Cleo Harper had taken about twenty minutes to eat her lunch, talking with the other girl as she ate. So it was perhaps twenty-five minutes after she had come in, and seen the Martinelli boy going out, that the scream had come. Pamela North broke in, her question to Mullins.
“Couldn’t you have told?” she asked. “From the outside booth, I mean. Somebody looking in? Doesn’t the mere fact that it was almost half an hour mean that the boy couldn’t have done it because somebody would have found her in that time?”
Mullins shook his head. It was not light in the booth—not glaringly light. The Greystone Coffee Shop went in for subdued lighting. It had not been unduly crowded; a person sitting alone in a booth had a reasonable chance of remaining alone. A person passing and looking in casually, and not actually sitting down opposite, might have assumed that she was merely sitting there. The woman who discovered her had done so because, with the restaurant filling up, she had started to sit down opposite the huddled girl. Then she had screamed.
“But,” Mullins said, looking at Mrs. North questioningly, “that doesn’t matter now beca
use—don’t you get it, Mrs. North?”
“Of course,” Mrs. North said. “Who thought of it? Who brought it out, Sergeant? I just wondered whether we needed it.”
The girl looked at Mullins and then at Mrs. North.
“You talk and talk,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. The Martinelli boy killed her and you just sit here and talk and talk. And don’t make sense.”
“You’re sure the tray was full of apples?” Pam insisted. “You have to remember.”
“But I do remember,” the girl said. “They just brought it in—a man just brought it in. Why shouldn’t it be full?”
“Because if it was,” Pam said, “the Martinelli boy couldn’t have. Because—”
Mullins stood up.
“I wouldn’t say any more, Mrs. North,” he said. “We won’t bother Miss Harper with all that. O.K.?”
“I don’t—” Pam began. But Mullins shook his head at her. She still didn’t see why not, and thought of saying so, but decided it wasn’t important. Then she went out with Mullins, leaving the thin girl with a damp handkerchief clutched in one hand in the room. Cleo Harper looked after them, apparently not understanding.
Outside, Mullins indicated, with a kind of bumbling tact, that Mrs. North sometimes talked too much.
“She’d deny it in a minute to get at the kid,” he said. “If she knew what to deny—and maybe, from what you said, she does now. But there’s no reason giving her a blueprint, Mrs. North.”
“All right,” Mrs. North said. “But it is a blueprint, isn’t it? As plain as, or plainer. Plainer, I should think. In black and white, not blue.”
“I—” Mullins began. He paused.
“You know,” he said, in quiet wonderment, “sometimes I understand you, Mrs. North.” Mullins considered himself with a kind of awe. “Honest to God,” he said. “Sometimes it ain’t screwy at all, really.”
