The Rim of Morning

by William Sloane

  (And yet, Julian, the most ignorant savage quickly finds out about a rifle, even if his most “prolonged examination” will not reveal the nature of that deadly tool. It was typical of you to assume that no one could know a thing unless he understood how and why it worked. But people do not think that way. They see only what it does, and understand the forces and instruments of their world by their effects, not the principles which lie behind them.)

  Apparently the coroner had come to the end of his questions. He hesitated and I saw him glance down at Dan Hoskins, who gave an imperceptible shake of his head. Whereupon Julian was excused from the witness chair. Then followed one of the most curious speeches I have ever heard. The coroner addressed the jury as if they could help him resolve the problem which confronted him. He reminded them that they had seen the body and that it was their duty to decide how Mrs. Marcy had come to die. If they felt that she had met her death by misadventure—“or accident, that is”—they were to find a verdict to that effect. If, on the other hand—and here he shrugged—they had any idea that she had died as the result of negligence, or deliberate intention on the part of some person or persons, they would bring in a verdict to that effect. He himself could not comment on the evidence beyond remarking that it was contradictory and confusing. On the other hand, there appeared to be no ground for suspicion that anyone could have desired the death of Elora Marcy or stood to profit from it in any way. While the witnesses from the house where she worked had admitted to a certain lack of suitable caution in letting her leave their house, there was apparently some reason to suppose that almost anyone would have done the same thing in their place. The evidence which Dr. Peters had presented was one thing they had to bear in mind. And another was the evidence of the sheriff and the footprints . . .

  It went on like that for some time and had I been on that jury I would have been puzzled to know what sort of verdict the coroner expected me to reach. He simply laid his own perplexity in their laps and said in effect: “I don’t know what to make of this, but maybe you do. Anyhow, you’ve got to bring in a verdict.”

  The jury was out for a long time. At least it seemed so to all of us. When they filed back into the court there was a look of sheepishness on most of their faces. The foreman stood up with some embarrassment. “We’ve talked this thing over, Ben,” he said to the coroner, “and we don’t figger to know any more about it than you do. So we kinda reached a compromise. We find the deceased met her death as the result of internal injuries like Doc Peters said, but we don’t know how she come by ’em.” He sat down and wiped his forehead with a blue bandanna handkerchief.

  A babel of talk burst out in the room behind us. Everyone stood up at once and began shuffling, not back, toward the door, but down forward, where we were sitting. The final words of the coroner were lost in the general noise. Almost at once Dan Hoskins was standing at the end of our bench, beckoning to us.

  “This way. You better go out the side door.”

  We followed him without further urging. None of us wanted to stay behind in that crowd. The noise at our backs was louder and there were some shouts which I could not make out. We found ourselves almost at once passing through what must have been a judge’s chambers and then down a private stair of some sort. Julian and Mrs. Walters were the first in the single file by which we descended, and I brought up the rear. Although no one came after us, the skin on my back crawled as we went.

  The sheriff wiped his own forehead when we reached the sidewalk. “Git in your car right off,” he said, “and go on home. I’ll expect all of you to stay there till you hear from me. And listen. For God’s sakes be careful what you say and do. I never seen folks so stirred up.”

  Our car was almost opposite the door by which we came out. I drove, with Anne beside me, and we went down to the highway by back streets. The impulse to stamp on the throttle was panic-strong in me, but I managed to resist it. We rolled out along the edge of the bay at forty-five and as Barsham Harbor dropped behind us I began to breathe without feeling as if a bar of iron were clamped around my chest. Anne’s face beside me was white, but she lit a cigarette with steady fingers.

  “Fools,” said Mrs. Walters after a time. “Small-town ignorant fools, that’s what they are.”

  None of us could think of a suitable comment to that, and we drove on in silence.

  “That sheriff better keep them in order,” she went on, after a silence.

  23.

  DUSK HAD drawn in by the time we reached the house and once more the chill of autumn was in the air. Anne and Mrs. Walters went about the preparation of supper in silence. After I had put the car in the barn, I foraged round until I had collected all the wood I could find. Then I went into the living room and built a roaring fire.

  “Swell!” said Anne when she came in and saw it. “Now, if we just had some—”

  “I have,” I told her. “In my bag. You bring glasses.”

  What obscure impulse had led me, day before yesterday, to buy a bottle of Scotch and put it in my suitcase I cannot say, but I was never gladder of anything than of the first draught of that whiskey and well-water highball we drank in front of the fire. Just the two of us. Mrs. Walters stayed in the kitchen and impatiently refused an invitation to come and join us. Julian had gone upstairs the moment we had got back to the house and, though Anne knocked on the door of his room, he declined to come down. He told her that he would appear for supper, but that he did not want to be interrupted until then. So we drank alone and I was not sorry to have it so.

  We did not talk about the afternoon, nor mention the disturbing inconclusiveness of the inquest. We did not even comment on the ways in which Julian and Mrs. Walters had behaved. Instead we talked about things we had seen and done on our respective travels in Europe, about the foods we’d eaten, the wines we had drunk. It was pleasant merely to listen to the way she spoke, softly and with humor. From time to time we clinked the rims of our glasses and took another sip. The firelight was comforting in that room of shadows. Anne felt the same relaxation, almost contentment. Once, after a silence, she said, “This is the first time things have felt right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “And that’s funny, because things aren’t at all right, really.”

  “We won’t talk about them now. Later. But let’s have this as long as we can.”

  We stayed there in front of the fire until Mrs. Walters came into the room and informed us tersely that dinner was ready. A minute later we could hear her knocking at Julian’s door, but when she came into the kitchen where we were sitting down, she said shortly, “He won’t come. Says he has to work. I’ll take a tray up to him.”

  The meal, like all the others in that house, was a quick and silent one. At least until the very end. Then, to my surprise, Mrs. Walters looked at me and said, “What did you think of that farce this after-noon, Professor Sayles?”

  “That we were lucky to come out of it comparatively scot-free.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “And that I still don’t see what happened to Mrs. Marcy.”

  “You don’t? Why, your own explanation is the only possible one.”

  “Is it?” I said softly. “Maybe. But it is so unlikely that I’m not satisfied with it. Don’t forget, I looked at that bank where she went into the river. There’s no ledge there sharp enough to do what Dr. Peters described in the way of injuries.”

  She leaned forward and looked heavily into my eyes, as if she wanted me to feel an additional weight behind what she was saying. “But there are underwater ledges, Professor Sayles. It must have been one of those.”

  “No,” I answered. “I don’t think so. A body weighs much less in the water. Even the full sweep of that current wouldn’t do to a person the things that happened to Mrs. Marcy. Waves—a heavy surf— might possibly. But not the steady thrust of that river, strong as it is.”

  She drew back and her voice was lower. “You are quite mistaken. You must be. There is no other
way it could have happened.”

  “You’re very positive,” I told her.

  “For Julian’s sake, at least, I should think you’d be equally positive.”

  “Why?” I demanded. “I’m sure Julian had nothing to do with the whole thing. I’m not, to tell you the honest truth, so sure about you, Mrs. Walters.” The moment I had said it my doubts rushed together and I knew that in some obscure way I had hit close to home.

  She stood up and it seemed to me that she was making a tremendous effort to master herself. “Don’t you see what you are doing when you make such statements, Professor Sayles? Can’t you understand that if there is too much doubt about the way that poor woman came to die, the first thing that will happen is that we shall all be investigated?”

  “Very likely,” I told her. “ ‘Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.’ In other words, I have no objection to being investigated.” I looked full at her. “Have you?”

  “Good God!” she flung out at me, “must you go on thinking in this childish, superficial way? Can’t you see that any investigation would result in the police coming here, in their going over the house? Have you no imagination whatever? Where do you think they’ll look?”

  “Everywhere, I suppose.”

  “Yes, everywhere. Including Julian’s laboratory. And then what do you think would happen?”

  The fury of her outburst, the way she flung words at my head as if they were scalding hot, both amused and irritated me. “I don’t know what would happen, Mrs. Walters. Nothing very serious, I should think. Julian said that no one could understand his apparatus but a few experts anyhow.”

  She shook her head with a sort of wild impatience. “He’s just a child, Julian is. He cannot imagine how things will look to an ordinary human being. He’s right so far as the principles go. I don’t even understand those myself. But I tell you that one look in that room of his and we should all be in a serious predicament, Professor Sayles. You haven’t been there, so you don’t know, but you’ve got to believe me when I say that. The police would never keep their mouths shut. They would tell what they saw. And that would be the end of our chance to finish the work here. Those horrible people in Barsham Harbor would never leave us alone, once they heard . . .”

  “Heard what?” I asked sharply. Her whole manner was so wild and excited that I was afraid she was going to have an attack of hysteria.

  The sharpness of my tone apparently brought her to her senses. She made a visible effort to get control of herself. “I’ve said too much,” she declared finally, in a milder voice. “I realize that you can’t believe in what Julian is doing. But I do. And it will be the end of everything if that sheriff and his men come poking into this house. Even if you believe Julian is mad and that I’m—well, I can guess what you think of me and perhaps some of it is true—you might stop to consider that it will kill your friend Julian Blair if his work is destroyed now. So, Professor Sayles, the only course for all of us is to tell the same story that we’ve told already.”

  “It’s too late,” I told her. “After that verdict at the inquest, the sheriff will be bound to investigate the whole thing until he finds out the truth.” I looked at her hard and long. “My story has been true. Anne’s story is also true. If you and Julian have not told the truth, this is the time to come out with it.”

  She gave me a single sidelong look out of her dark eyes and moved toward the door. “What a fool you must think I am,” she said and shut it behind her.

  Anne stared at me speechlessly. “Well, well, well,” she said. “You certainly struck oil.”

  “Yes.” I picked up a dish towel. “Let’s clear this mess up; we can talk while we work.”

  “Immediately, sire,” she answered and began filling the dishpan. “I couldn’t tell what that was all about. Could you?”

  “No. But she told us one thing. If there was anything funny about what happened to Mrs. Marcy, the motive for whatever part Mrs. Walters had in it is plain enough. She wants to protect Julian until he finishes his work. She won’t stick at anything to do it, either.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked after a while.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing until I get a look at that device of Julian’s and find out why it would be so fatal to have anyone see it.”

  “That won’t be so easy, Dick. He keeps the door locked every second except when he’s actually going in and out of the room.”

  “He must have a key,” I said. “If we get hold of that the rest will be easy.”

  Her reply was a noise which, if it wasn’t a snicker, was an exact replica of one. “Dick, this is too absurd. We’re plotting together like a couple of characters in a B picture. It’s all ridiculous, somehow.”

  “Maybe. It wasn’t so funny earlier today.”

  “Or last night.” Her tone was apologetic. “But let’s not forget our original plan.”

  “What?”

  “To do what we can for Uncle Julian.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d rather lost sight of that. Well, let’s think some more before we decide on anything.”

  “You think,” she said. “You’re the brains of the conspiracy . . . If only there were somebody around I could vamp for you.”

  “There is,” I told her.

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  “Good heavens,” she said, “I’ve been working on you all along.”

  24.

  THAT EVENING was a strangely happy one. For one thing, Anne and I had the living room to ourselves. Mrs. Walters was nowhere to be seen when we came out of the kitchen, nor did she put in an appearance thereafter. Julian was apparently up in his room; from time to time we could hear the sound of steps over our head and once a thump that suggested his having dropped a tool. But otherwise the house was silent and we were alone in it. Thinking back on that strange interlude, I believe that Mrs. Walters had decided she could no longer trust herself to talk with us and that she felt she had said too much already. So she went to her room. I imagine she even went to sleep. She had nerves of iron, that woman. Much as I hated her then, bitterly as I remember her now, I am compelled to admire her. More than once I have caught myself hoping that she is still alive somewhere. I cannot imagine what she would be doing, or how she was able to explain herself if she did make a new start—in another country, perhaps, or at least, another part of this one.

  But Anne and I were not thinking too much of her. We were not really thinking much about anything. We sat on the floor in front of the fire and sipped whiskey and water at intervals that were not too long. I know that the strain of the afternoon had begun to tell on both of us. We were thoroughly relaxed, disinclined to anything important, though we both knew, I think, that we were living that evening not in peace but an armistice. The fire was warm on our faces and the liquor grateful in our stomachs. We smoked. We talked occasionally and lightly. The things we said have no place here because they had nothing whatever to do with the story of the house on Setauket Point. But they were pleasant and full of meaning when we said them.

  Once, when the firelight fell on Anne’s face at a certain angle, I remembered Helen. The recollection, I found, did not hurt. Instead, it was oddly embarrassing. All at once it seemed to me that I had let part of myself live too long in the past. I was not ashamed of having loved Helen, but rather of the fact that it had taken me so long to get over it. A love that is true to living persons and existing realities is steadfast and fine. But I saw then, for the first time, that a love which was fastened upon the dead and true to nothing but a past that was finished, is not a good nor true emotion. If it went on too long, it could become an incubus, throttling a man from the real life of the present, which is the life that we were fashioned to meet and experience.

  After a long time I said something of that to Anne. I knew that it would have to be explained sometime and that it would be easier now than ever again. She listened to me quietly and said nothing after I had finished. I wanted not to
stop then. I wanted to tell her something of what I felt about her, but I found that I could not. In that house I could confess to things that were over and dead. I did not seem able, somehow, to go on and talk of the future, of anything which looked beyond the instant in which we were.

  The fire had died to coals when we finally left it to go upstairs. This night I did not put my arm around her, as I had the time before when we went up those stairs together. We said good night in the hall, whispering because we did not want to wake Julian if he had gone to sleep, and we said it almost as casually as if we had been strangers. That seems strange to me now, but it was inevitable then.

  My room was cold and bleak. I undressed as quickly as I could and lay down in the thick dark. It was the proper time, I told myself, to think things over carefully, to sum up the inquest and that amazing scene in the kitchen with Mrs. Walters. But my mind refused to tether itself to any one subject. It ranged over an extraordinary me-lange of things. It tossed up at me the picture of Ellen Hoskins, sitting beside the court clerk and taking her own notes, presumably for her brother. She was a shrewd woman, that sheriff’s sister. Much cleverer, perhaps, than her brother. No wonder he let her assist him . . . Then there was the recollection of Anne’s brown legs swinging against the cut bank . . . The curious timidity of Julian’s face at the inquest . . . and then there was nothing. I was asleep.

  When I woke to a room that was still as black as blindness I thought at first that I had been having a nightmare. My skin was cold with perspiration and my heart was pounding with that terrible fear which half strangles you with its intensity. And there was a horror in my mind, unformed and unrecognizable, but washing up over my consciousness in great black waves. I wrestled with that fear as Jacob wrestled with the angel. I told myself that I was awake now and that there was no more cause to be afraid. But there was.

  I heard the sound at first almost subconsciously, as I must have been hearing it in my sleep. It was not loud, but I knew it for what it was—the same sound that the two of us had heard in the meadow at the moment when the storm was over the house. But this time there was no storm. The night outside the window was still; I could see stars in the sky. And yet the noise was present in my ears and there could no longer be any doubt at all where it came from. It was in this house.