Angel stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and tilted the Coke bottle to her lips. John looked at her, his pulses tingling. Linda with someone in the Fishers’ empty house. Was this to be believed? Or was Angel just weaving another of her elaborate, spiteful fantasies?
“When was this, Angel?”
She watched him from flat black eyes. “Two weeks and two days ago. I counted. Every day that came I counted, saying: She’s going to give it to me today. But she didn’t and it’s two weeks and two days.”
“Give you what?”
“The bracelet.” Angel curved her wrist in an absurd gesture of chic. “The gold bracelet with Angel written on it, each letter on a little gold thing that wabbles. An A and an N and a G and an E and an L.”
“But why was she going to give you a bracelet?”
“Because it was like the one she had. She was standing there and she was smiling and smiling and I said, ‘It’s bad to be in someone’s house when they’re away,’ and she said, ‘I know it’s bad, Angel, but it isn’t really bad, you see, because they asked me to take care of their house for them and that’s what I was doing.’ But I knew she was just saying that and it wasn’t true because you could see from the way she looked and smiled and smiled to make me think she was so good, and it was then I saw the bracelet and I said, ‘What a pretty bracelet,’ and she let me look at it and it was gold and it had all the little things that bobble hanging on it and on each of the things was an L and an I and all that to spell Linda. And I said, ‘Oh, isn’t it pretty,’ and she stooped down and she kissed me and she said, ‘Do you like it?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And she said, ‘Oh, yes, we are, and if you don’t tell John or anyone that you saw me taking care of the Fishers’ house, I’ll give you a bracelet just like mine with your name on it,’ and I said, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Hamilton,’ and she went away. But she didn’t give me the bracelet and every day I was waiting for it and she didn’t for two weeks and two days—except that it’s two weeks and three days because today’s a day and anyway I don’t want her stinky old bracelet anyway—and I know what she was doing in the Fishers’ house. She was stealing, don’t you think? She was in there stealing with the other person who went away in the car and the other person wasn’t you otherwise she wouldn’t have said, ‘Don’t tell John.’ So that makes it really bad and probably you knew about it and that’s why you beat up on her.”
Do I believe this? he thought. And then gradually he felt excitement stealing through him. There was only excitement. Linda, conjured up like this out of the past, had no reality to him as a person, as his wife who might or might not have been unfaithful. All that was over long ago. But the bracelet existed. Of course it did. It was the bracelet which he’d seen her wearing when she came down to greet Steve Ritter and which she’d slipped off her wrist into her pocket the moment she became conscious that he was in the room. Then, if Angel were telling the truth, the bracelet and the man must go together. Linda was wearing it for her rendezvous with him at the Fisher house because he’d given it to her.
Steve Ritter, he thought. So it had been true about Steve Ritter after all? Steve Ritter meeting her clandestinely, sometimes at the house, sometimes, if that was too dangerous, at the Fishers’, so conveniently empty and so conveniently close. The swaggering Don Juan adding Linda to his conquests and finding out too late that he had a tiger by the tail …
The shadowy enemy had taken on shape and sprung into the open. John felt the sensation of meaningless nightmare slipping away from his predicament. This way he could see it as the logical plan of a man driven to murder, desperately trying to incriminate a substitute victim. At last there was something tangible to fight against.
“You didn’t see who drove off in the car, Angel?”
“No. But he was bad too, wasn’t he? They’re both bad. And that’s why she’s run away, isn’t it? Because she was stealing in the Fishers’ house and she knew they’d catch her so she ran away and now everyone says it’s you who’s done something bad to her. But they’re dopes, stupid, drippy dopes. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” She jumped up and, lifting Louise down from the orange crate, rocked her affectedly in her arms. “That’s it, isn’t it, Louise? Louise says Mrs. Hamilton is wicked and because she never gave me the bracelet Louise says she condemns her to death.”
With the excitement mounting in him, he thought of the bracelet. Except for that moment when it had been on her wrist, he had never seen it. Where had she kept it? It wasn’t in the house with her few other pieces of jewelry. He was sure of that, not only because she’d left the little jewel case open on the vanity in their bedroom, but because, knowing Linda as intimately as he did, he knew that it would be her deepest instinct to hide anything as significant to her as a present from a lover. She would have hidden it as she had hidden her gin bottles and Bill MacAllister’s postcard. And perhaps, since there was one gift, there might be others. And other things too. Letters? If there were letters, if there were a cache …
Angel was swinging Louise to and fro in her arms, crooning a flat, droning lullaby.
Wasn’t that like Linda? If Steve had been her lover, wouldn’t she inevitably have seen to it that somehow or other he should be in her power? Of course it must have been that way, because he had killed her. He would only have killed her because she had made some unendurable demand on him, and how could she have made such a demand without the possession of some powerful weapon? Letters! Was the new hope pushing him too far into fantasy? Of course, even if there had been letters, Steve might have destroyed them when he killed her. But wasn’t it more likely that she would have been sly enough to have been sure they were hidden somewhere beyond his reach?
A secret cache? A cache which, if somehow he could get to it, might make it possible for him to break the net or, better, turn it back to entangle its own creator? He was virtually a prisoner here in the cave. He would need help, but …
A scuffling sound behind him made him spin around. Emily’s head, then her shoulders, were wriggling through the hole in the wall. She squeezed in and hurried toward him, saying exuberantly:
“I did it. Nobody saw me. I took the bike to the highway and dumped it right there where everyone can see it.”
Suddenly he thought: The children. Why not? Not just Emily and the terrifying, exigent Angel, but all the children—his allies.
In a second the decision was made. He turned to Emily who had squatted down on the floor and was hungrily eating a sandwich.
“Do you think you could get the other kids here?”
The moment he’d said it, he realized his mistake and, turning to Angel, saw the look of thunderous disapproval on her face.
But then, before his own wits had made the jump, Emily said in horror:
“Bring them to the cave? Louise would never, never, never allow that. She’d hate it. Louise would …”
“No she wouldn’t, either.” Angel was clutching Louise to her breast, her head bent down as if she were listening to an invisible voice issuing from below the sunbonnet. Then she glared at Emily. “Louise says yes. Louise says Timmie can come to the cave and Leroy and Buck. Louise says, Yes, yes, yes.”
“Then”—John smiled humbly at Angel—“do you think Emily could go back to the village now and tell them about the bicycle and then bring the other kids here?”
Angel stumped back to the orange crate, carefully settled Louise on it and dropped her a solemn curtsy. Then she turned back to John.
“We’re both going now. I’m going to ride my bicycle and Emily is going to walk.”
Emily exchanged a swift glance with him, letting him know it would be all right.
“I’ll tell them about your coming up on the dirt road and borrowing my bike. Then we’ll come back with the others.”
“And find out whatever you can.”
“Of course I’ll find out everything.”
Angel ha
d picked up a little twig from the floor. She beat at Emily’s legs with it.
“Go on. Go on first—slave.”
Emily hurried toward the hole in the wall. Angel started strutting after her and then turned back to John.
“Why are we going to bring Timmie and Buck and Leroy? Is it some kind of a game?”
“Yes,” said John. “It’s some kind of a game.”
“I’ll play it,” said Angel. “If it’s a game, I’ll play it. But I’m the head of the game. Louise says so. Whatever it is, I’m the head, the top, the queen of the game.” She simpered. “And if I’m not, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go to those men and I’m going to say, ‘You want dopey old John Hamilton, don’t you? I know where he is,’ I’ll say. ‘I know where dumb, dopey old John Hamilton is.’”
The simper became a giggle. Emily had slipped out through the hole. In a crazy skipping dance Angel ran to the hole, ducked down and wriggled away after her sister.
For a moment John stood still, his arms limp at his sides. In the flickering candlelight, Louise, perched on the orange crate, seemed to glower menacingly like a pagan idol. A brutal memory came of the butterflies struggling in the dusty webs of the window above the new, nightmare cement floor. It was as if he were still there in the damp, musty atmosphere of the barn. Then, in his mind, the men were running down the slope from the cars, belling like hounds. And, with Angel’s giggle still echoing in his ears, the cave became not an asylum any more but a trap.
He was still too close to those moments of horror to have full control of his nerves and he felt panic pushing up in him, urging him to run, to escape from the cave before Angel Jones betrayed him.
But gradually the thought of Emily steadied him. Emily could control Angel. Couldn’t she? Wouldn’t it all be all right—because of Emily?
Exhaustion hit him. He dropped down on one of the pine-needle beds; then, realizing it was Angel’s, automatically got up and moved over to Emily’s.
He would have to stay. Whatever might happen, that was the only possible road to salvation—to stay, to trust Emily, to make himself believe that with the help of the children …
Before he realized it, he was asleep.
18
HE WOKE UP with a start. The candle had burnt out. Above him daylight still filtered down from the remote fissure in the rock, thrusting a greyish quality into the darkness. How long had he slept? Would the children be arriving soon?
The thought of the children brought a nauseous sensation of anxiety. Hadn’t he been absurdly rash? Now there would be five complex, unaccountable entities who had it in their power to betray him. Not intentionally, perhaps…
To steady himself, he thought of Linda’s problematical cache. If it existed, if he could find it, if his hunch were fantastically proved to be right, everything might be resolved. As if the answer had come to him while he was asleep, he thought of the cow-barn. If Linda had something of great secret importance to hide, she would never have hidden it in the house itself, but the cow-barn, where she had kept her garden tools and to which he never had reason to go, was different. Could that be it? A magpie cache in the cow-barn? But where in the barn? The old ice-chest was the only piece of furniture there. In the ice-chest? Why not? No one ever used it; it was near the door. Why should she have bothered to look for a more elaborate hiding-place when the ice-chest was so ideally suited to her purposes?
Couldn’t he send one of the children to look? Almost certainly there would be troopers guarding the house. But —a child! After dark … !
Yes, he needed the children. Of course he did. It could work with the children.
Not long after that they came. He heard the scuffling sound of their bodies wriggling through the hole and then could dimly make them out as patches of movement in the darkness.
“John!” It was Emily’s voice, low, conspiratorial.
“The candle burnt out,” he said.
She brushed past him, going toward the back of the cave, and soon light flickered behind him. She passed him again, holding a candle, moving back toward the other kids, and, as the light spread out in front, he saw them. Angel was sitting on the floor by Louise’s orange crate. The boys stood in a line, Buck fat and red-faced, Timmie slim as an alder switch, Leroy small, golden-brown, beautiful—all of them completely different and yet all of them wearing the identical awed, round-eyed expression.
“We told them,” said Emily. “And we made them swear the oath. Swear it again, swear it in front of John.”
Leroy opened his mouth, showing blazing white teeth.
“We swear …” he began, then the other boys joined in, all of them half whispering, half chanting:
“We swear, cut our throats and hope to die, that we’re on John’s side through thick and thin. Whatever he wants us to do we will do and we won’t tell anyone even if we are tortured with every torture known to man. And Angel is the head of the gang.”
Angel, who had pulled Louise down into her lap, looked up smugly. “I made them put that in. I made them say that.”
The boys shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other.
Leroy said, “It’s a beautiful cave. The secret is beautiful.”
Buck said, “Gee, they were hunting all through the woods and they didn’t find you.”
“No,” said John.
“Daddy was with them.” Timmie Moreland blurted it out and flushed. “Daddy was with them, running through the woods and everything, and he called Mummie and he said you’d got away. You must have got to the road and thumbed a ride and got away, he said.”
The image came of Gordon Moreland, precise, keen-eyed, enormously civilized, running with the blue-jeaned farmers through the woods.
Emily said, “It’s all right, John. I told them about the bike. Didn’t I, Buck? I told Buck’s father. I just brought it out like it was something I ought to say and there were other men with him at the gas station and they all jumped in a car to go after my bike. So they’ll find it and everything will be all right.”
Angel got up, clutching Louise to her bosom.
“They found Mrs. Hamilton,” she announced. “They found Mrs. Hamilton. She was in the cement. They dug her up out of the cement.”
She started rocking Louise wildly back and forth. All the other children, even Emily, were watching her, appalled and impressed by her daring in putting into words what they all obviously knew and had been keeping back. Slowly Angel started to dance around with Louise while the children’s eyes were fixed on her, beady with the thrill of fascinated horror.
“They dug her up. They dug her up. And I guess she looked awful—awful starey, starey eyes, awful starey, starey mouth, awful …”
“And blood,” broke in Buck Ritter, clumsily trying to share the spotlight. “Blood everywhere. Blood all over her clothes. Blood …”
“Blood,” piped Timmie, though his face was a greyish white.
“No,” cried Angel, in a sudden ecstasy of self-induced terror. “No, no. Don’t say those bad, wicked things. Don’t …”
She dropped down on the floor clutching Louise and, with her collapse, the children’s game of making their flesh creep collapsed too. They looked scared and uneasy. John, for whom, unlike the children, the horror was a real horror, said quietly to Emily:
“They’ve really found her?”
“Yes. The troopers did. The troopers came right after the others and they looked in the cellar, then they looked in the bam and they found the new floor, they …”
She broke off. It had been hours since John had known that Linda must be dead, known it with a certainty which should have mitigated the shock, but it didn’t. She was dead. She was really dead. He tried to bring a memory of her alive in his mind, but nothing came except the children’s horror-movie image of her—awful starey,
starey eyes, blood, blood all over her dress …
The boys had crowded around him. Emily was watching him with an anxious, maternal gaze. He became conscious of
them again and, through them, of the urgent needs of the present.
“Have they taken her away, Emily?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes,” said Timmie. “Daddy said yes. They took her away in an ambulance and she’s gone.”
“But the troopers are still at the house?”
“Gee, I don’t know. I …”
John felt a gentle tug at his sleeve. He looked down. Leroy had the material of his shirt delicately squeezed between finger and thumb.
“Mr. Hamilton, can I go up there? Can I go up to the house and see if the troopers are there?” He dropped his eyelids shyly. “Then I can come back and I can tell you and you can know.”
“No,” cut in Timmie excitedly. “Me. Let me go. John, let me go.”
It was like a game again. They didn’t think about whether he’d killed Linda or not. None of them had even asked. Those terms didn’t exist for them. To them, this was just a game—like the game he’d invented in the woods. “If you were an animal, every time you saw a human being you’d shiver and say—the Enemy!” Play it that way, then, handle it the way he used to handle the games, with game rules and game ethics.
He looked down into Timmie’s passionately eager face. “No. Timmie. Leroy thought of it first. It’s his idea. He’s the one who must go.”
“But I wanna. I wanna do something. I wanna …”
“You shall, Timmie. But this is Leroy’s idea.”
“Then I’ll go?” Leroy’s smile was dazzling. “I’ll creep up there? Right now?”
“Yes, Leroy. But be careful. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“No, no. I won’t. And I’ll come back and I’ll tell you.” Leroy started to run toward the hole in the wall. Just before he reached it, Angel called out:
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