The Rim of Morning

by William Sloane

  “So you know my title and when I arrived?” I was puzzled.

  “Oh, yes. In Barsham Harbor we know everything half an hour after it’s happened. Your arrival was all over town by the middle of the morning. And I deduced the ‘Professor’ part from the fact that you came from New York and have a more or less unusual name. Knowing that you are visiting Julian Blair, I conclude that you must be the Richard Sayles who wrote The Elements of Experimental Psychology. I’m a secretary at Cambridge in the winter, in the Department of Psychology.” She gave a sort of dry smile. “You see how easy it was.”

  “I see why your brother is sheriff, Miss Hoskins.”

  She laughed at that. “Oh, I don’t do any of the sheriffing. I take Dan’s notes for him and type them, but he does all the hard work.”

  This was a clever woman. For all the pleasant homeliness of that long face of hers and the angular awkwardness of the way she sat in her chair, I was conscious of her shrewdness and mentally decided that it would be well to be cautious about what we said to her.

  She took another pull on her cigarette and remarked, “I hope you’re not offended by my knowing who you are.”

  “Not at all,” I told her. “Flattered. But there does seem to have been a good deal of talk about Julian and the rest of us in the village.”

  “Inevitably. They haven’t much else to do, so they talk about anybody and everybody. And when there’s nothing else to say, they gossip. They’ve been gossiping about this house and the people in it, ever since Professor Blair came. Furiously. And, without anything really to go on. Which means that they’ve had to make up stories, for instance one about a death ray that a lot of them are convinced Mr. Blair is inventing.”

  She tapped the ash off her cigarette with an abrupt gesture. “Dan’s going to have some trouble, I’m afraid.”

  I had a suspicion what that last remark meant. The good folk of Barsham Harbor, with this tragedy for a pretext, would expect the sheriff to take some kind of action—action against Julian, or Mrs. Walters, or all of us. Seth Marcy, of course, and that cousin of his who’d driven me out from the station. The thought of those two men made me uncomfortable. They wouldn’t be easy to reason with.

  Ellen Hoskins seemed unperturbed by the silence that followed, but after a time she looked from one of us to the other. “By the way,” she said, “it’s not my business, but where are the rest of you?”

  “Upstairs. Julian—Mr. Blair—isn’t strong, and after Mrs. Marcy’s fall he took a sleeping tablet.” Some unpremeditated impulse made me add, “At least, so Mrs. Walters told us. He doesn’t even know what’s happened yet.”

  It seemed to me that she sat up a trifle in her chair. “So. The fall was a great shock to him, then?”

  “Yes. We all thought she was badly hurt for a minute.” But even while I was making that reply it struck me as curious that Julian should have been so shaken by the accident. He must have changed a great deal, I reflected. In the old days he would never have been so disturbed by an event that affected him only at second hand. Impersonally kind and troubled he might have been, perhaps, but not reduced to the white and trembling figure I had taken in charge. All at once there was a thought in my mind which I had not summoned: that accident to Mrs. Marcy must have meant something to him, something important. But how could Elora Marcy have been anything important to Julian in any way at all? The idea was ridiculous.

  “From what I hear,” Ellen Hoskins was saying, “your Mrs. Walters is quite an unusual person.”

  “That depends on what you mean,” I answered cautiously.

  She had the grace to smile. “You don’t need to worry. I’m not here in any official capacity. Maybe I just have the Barsham curiosity.”

  Anne broke in on that. “I can’t understand why she hasn’t come down. She’s a very light sleeper. She hears the smallest noise.”

  “She must be worn out,” Ellen Hoskins commented.

  “Yes,” I agreed, but the explanation was unsatisfactory to some watchful segment of my mind. I still believe that Mrs. Walters should have come downstairs when Ellen Hoskins arrived. I think she overplayed her hand, just that one time. She overplayed it because she should have realized that neither Anne nor I would be quite willing to believe that she was really asleep. And yet, it is actually possible she really was asleep. That day must have put an intolerable strain on her.

  However it was, the three of us went on talking inconsequences for what seemed like an eternity, trying not to let the tide of silence dammed-up in that house flood over us. At least that was what Anne and I were talking for. Ellen Hoskins appeared to have no purpose but the social one. Once I thought to myself that this conversational night piece was fantastic beyond any credence. There we were, chit-chatting away as if it weren’t three in the morning and as if this Ellen Hoskins’ brother hadn’t just been fishing a woman’s body out of the river. A woman who had been alive, walking, talking, singing to herself in this very house a few hours before. And my friend, Julian Blair, lying asleep and drugged upstairs; this was going to be nasty for him in the next few days. And Anne . . . The pieces of it began to fall apart in my mind with fatigue. I could barely keep myself awake enough to make a decently conscious remark now and again. To this day I cannot remember what trivia we discussed in that half hour before the sheriff came.

  17.

  THE CLUMP of feet on the back steps brought my attention into focus again. I got heavily up from the sofa and went out to the door. As I stumbled through the dark hall I tried to remind myself of the need for caution, discretion, a tight rein of restraint on everything I said or did from this moment on.

  The man outside was knocking before I got to the kitchen and he made a peremptory noise of it. You could have told by nothing more than the way he knocked that he was the law. When he came into the lamplight I saw that he was a big man, something like his sister in face, but heavier of nose and jaw. The humor that lay in the corners of her mouth was missing from his. He looked strong, solid, and not quite grim. Thoroughly determined would be closer to it. After my first glance at him I knew that nothing could be done to alter anything about this man’s actions. He would do his duty as he saw it and the chips could fall anywhere they chose. We introduced ourselves and I took him into the living room. He didn’t offer to shake hands, by the way.

  “Hello, Ellen,” he said. “Sorry I kept you waitin’ so long. Took longer at Marcy’s than I expected.” He looked the room over once, without interest, and settled his gaze on Anne. “You’re Miss Conner, I calculate.”

  “Yes, I am.” Anne’s voice was low but steady and calm; she was clearly in complete control of herself and I felt a rush of admiration for the way she sat there, her head high but not defiant, her eyes level.

  Dan Hoskins wasted no more time on the civilities. “Well, it’s kinda late and I’ll try to get this over with fast as I kin.”

  He looked at us inquiringly. “You don’t mind if Ellen, here, takes a few notes for me?”

  “Not at all,” I assured him.

  “Good.” He smiled faintly. “She likes to help me out—gives her something to do. Well, you two just tell her your addresses so we get that down all right and proper.”

  Ellen Hoskins had produced a notebook and several pencils, sharpened to needle points as I observed. I suspected that detail was typical of her. She was the kind of woman who never needed to ask for anything. We gave her the facts about ourselves while the sheriff watched the two of us without expression. Then he cleared his throat.

  “This ain’t anything reely official,” he observed, “but I figger I better collect all the information I can as quick’s possible. Folks in town is kinda wrought up about the whole thing and it’ll be best for all concerned if we get it clear right away.”

  “Sit down,” I suggested, “if it’s just informal. All of us will be glad to tell you what we know. Shall I call Mrs. Walters?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. By the way, where-at is she and Mr. Bl
air?”

  I told him about that and then suggested that if he wanted information I could tell him the story of the day as Anne and I knew it. Then, if he wanted to ask any questions, he could. Ellen Hoskins frowned when I advanced this proposal, but her brother seemed to approve.

  “Might’s well,” he agreed. “Mebbe I ought to keep you two apart and see if you tell the same story, but God knows you’ve had a plenty time to go over it already. Shoot.”

  “Stop me if I go too fast for you, Miss Hoskins,” I said.

  She looked up from her notebook. “You’ve got only one mouth,” she remarked drily, “I expect I’ll be able to keep up with it.”

  “She’s used to perfessors,” her brother observed with satisfaction. “You don’t need to worry about her.”

  I launched into the account of the day’s events, summarizing them briefly up to the moment of our return to the house and the discovery of Mrs. Marcy lying at the foot of the stairs. When he heard that Anne and I were not actually in the house when the accident occurred, the big man frowned.

  “So neither of you saw it happen, then?”

  “No.”

  “D’you know if anybody did?”

  Thinking back, I found that I was not wholly sure about that. “I don’t believe so,” I said. “Mrs. Walters did say something about Mrs. Marcy’s having fallen, but I’m reasonably certain she used a word like ‘must.’ ‘She must have fallen,’ or something like that.”

  He turned to his sister. “Make a note to ask about that, Ellen.”

  “I’ve already got it.” Her voice was wholly uninflected.

  “How did she look when you saw her lying there?” He sounded as if he assigned a good deal of importance to my answer and I noticed that he was alert, for all the relaxation in his posture. Not in any tense or overt way, but with the patient expectation of a fisherman staring at the cork float on his line.

  “Why . . . I don’t know, exactly. Sprawled out and limp, I should say. She was right at the foot of the stairs, as I said, and lying perfectly still. Her face was grayish and her eyes were closed. At least I think they were.”

  “Yes,” said Anne in a low voice.

  The big man nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “Then Mrs. Walters picked her up—almost right away—and carried her in here to the sofa. I did notice then that the poor woman’s arm hung down rather peculiarly. Her hand was turned out from her body, instead of in.”

  Dan Hoskins grunted at that and turned to Anne. “You see that, too?”

  “No. I didn’t notice.”

  He turned back to me and revolved one square, thick hand at the wrist. “Like that, hunh? Like her wrist—or her arm—was busted?” he suggested.

  I nodded. “But of course it couldn’t have been. The tracks along the road later pretty well disproved that idea.”

  “So? Well, anyhow, the reason I asked was that when we found her it seemed like both her arms was busted.” He paused but I could think of nothing to reply. After a time he went on, dubiety in his tone. “Maybe not, of course. We’ll know more about that when Doc Peters turns in his report. And then again, maybe it was the water did it.”

  “She couldn’t have carried that umbrella if she’d had two broken arms.” He looked puzzled at that, so I went on to finish my story— the whole miserable business, including our stupid failure to call at the Marcy house to find out about her. He listened with attention and never once interrupted, but I felt that my story was clashing with something else that was already in his mind. There was a stubborn set to his mouth.

  “Sounds like you’re right about the broken bones,” he admitted when I finished. “But when we found her, seemed to me like she was all brukken. O’ course that current sets in against the rock pretty hard when the tide’s ebbin’, but . . .”

  I wondered what he was getting at. If Mrs. Marcy had any broken bones, it was clear enough that the current must have been responsible for them. Else how could she have walked as far as she did? Mrs. Walters was no fool, either. She would never have let the woman out of the house if she had thought Mrs. Marcy was seriously hurt. Her remarks about Seth Marcy proved that to my own satisfaction.

  “But you saw those tracks in the mud, I suppose?” The question was put in as tactful a tone as I could muster, but I wanted to be sure that nothing which could exculpate us, wholly or in part, was omitted from those precise, rapid notes that Ellen Hoskins was taking.

  He studied the palm of one big hand for a moment before he answered. “Yup. I saw them. I reckon there ain’t much doubt about how it all happened.” Somehow his tone contradicted his words, though he sounded not so much skeptical as dissatisfied. After a while he gave us the clue to what was in his mind. “It seems kinda queer to me, her fallin’ in that way, even if she had hurt her head. This farm here and the next one were about second nature to her. Must have been. . . .” He closed his hand and looked up. “Wal, you can’t help me there. I’ll have to talk it over with Doc Peters.”

  The way in which this man asked his questions and thought aloud interested me. Generally, instead of looking at us he kept his eyes fixed on some corner of the room, or the line of the baseboard. Once, long ago, I had had a Latin teacher who did the same thing in class—never looked at you when he called for a recitation, but stared at an Alinari photograph of the Forum before Mussolini and said, “Mr. Sayles, can you give us the future perfect of eo?” He’d been the shrewdest teacher in school, for all that, and big Dan Hoskins made me remember him. In a moment he called on me to recite again:

  “You and this young lady wasn’t here, then, when Elora left the house?”

  “No. She was gone when we got back to town.”

  “Uh huh. And you didn’t worry about her special?”

  “No.” I went on to tell him briefly about my conversation with Mrs. Walters and suggested that he ought to question her about that part of it.

  “I’ll git to her,” he remarked calmly and went on to make certain from me that the first indication we had of anything wrong was Seth Marcy’s arrival at the back door. When I finished, he sighed, “ ’Bout what I expected, but thank you just the same, Perfessor. Now, just think back on the whole thing once more and see if there’s anything you’d want to add to your statement.”

  That last word stuck in my mind. I didn’t exactly like its implications. “Statement?” I said. “I don’t see why I have to make a statement. There’s no crime here.”

  “No,” he admitted, and then paused. “Fact is, I’d like to make sure this thing ain’t put in the wrong light around town, Perfessor.” He cleared his throat. “Like I said, folks is some stirred up. Nacherally. Elora was well-liked and it’ll be hard fer a lot of them to believe she’d make a mistake like walkin’ off the medder road into the river, even considerin’ she’d had a crack on the head. Fer Seth’s sake, and yours, you understand, it would be a pity if anyone was to think she . . .” his voice stumbled, “say, jumped into it a-purpose.”

  I stared at him. The very notion was fantastic, but I began to see what he meant, or thought I did. “Oh. But they couldn’t blame anyone round here for that, even so. I’m positive she didn’t commit suicide, but even if she did, it wasn’t because of anything connected with us here.”

  “No?” His voice was noncommittal. “I’m not sayin’ it would be. Especially Miss Conner and you, Perfessor. But if you’ll excuse my way of putting it, Mr. Blair and that Mrs . . . Mrs . . .”

  “Walters.”

  “Walters, they seem like kinda queer people to us here in Barsham. We ain’t accustomed to foreigners.” There was a sudden half smile at the corners of Ellen Hoskins’ mouth at that last word. “They bein’ queer, let’s say, and it bein’ queer that Elora Marcy would walk into the river off her own field, there’s some will make a connection.” He looked directly at me and from his manner I guessed that what he was going to say was to be something he regarded as vitally important. “Just what is it that your Mr. Blair’s workin’ on her
e, Perfessor?”

  The question took me by surprise and I knew the consternation it caused in my mind must be visible on my face. The control I had been able to keep in the course of the examination so far was instantly dissolved. It was impossible to foresee the results of any answer that I might make. I damned myself for not having prepared for this emergency. I should have had a good, workable half truth, or even a plausible lie, ready to meet that inevitable inquiry. For if I answered it truthfully Dan Hoskins and all Barsham Harbor would assume that Julian was mad (which I had to admit to myself he probably was) and immediately connect his insanity with Mrs. Marcy’s death. Perhaps they would believe that Julian had driven her insane by the sheer madness of his project, or infected her with his own mental trouble, as if insanity were a contagious disease. Added to that, of course, they would be properly horrified and suspicious.

  The problem we had to face was how to convince Dan Hoskins and, through him, the whole of Barsham Harbor, that there was no connection between the tragedy of the afternoon and anything which Julian was doing in that upstairs room of his. After all, that was no more than the simple truth—or so I assured myself. Yet the thrust of fear that had gone through me at the sheriff’s question should have taught me better. There was a connection, more than one connection, between Mrs. Marcy and the invention of Julian Blair. Somewhere in my mind I was aware of that, but what the relationship between the two things was I did not know. Meantime, Dan Hoskins was waiting for his answer.

  “Why, I don’t know that I have the right to divulge anything about that,” I began, sparring for time and an explanation of my hesitation in replying. “Julian’s work is hard to describe to anybody who isn’t an expert, anyway. He’s an electrophysicist, and he’s an expert on electric waves and circuits. He made most of the improvements on the modern radio tube, for instance. Right now he is studying some faint electrical phenomena that no one knows much about yet. Waves that are something like radio waves, if you want to put it that way.”