by L. R. Wright
Carlyle had stopped driving, stopped going out to Old Age Pensioners' things. There was some talk around the village about his sudden inactivity, and George had believed when he
called that there might be some truth to the rumor that he was failing.
So he'd gone. For Myra? For Audrey? He doubted it. He'd gone out of a dark curiosity, a rancorous desire to see his own good health substantiated by a pale and wraithlike Carlyle, dying.
It was hard to tell about these things, but he certainly hadn't looked like he was failing.
He'd just wanted to vent his spleen, that's all, thought George bitterly, lifting his head from his arms. He was always a venomous bastard and maybe he finally got bored, having to be always on his best behavior in a town the size of Sechelt. And when Myra died, the buffer between him and George was suddenly gone.
Anyway, he'd called, and for whatever reason, George had answered the summons.
He'd knocked on the half-open door and heard Carlyle call to him from the living room. "Come!" he'd sung out, like he was a king or some damn thing.
"What is it, Carlyle? What do you want from me?"
"Oh, George, just look out there,” said Carlyle from his rocking chair. "Did you ever think we'd be living in a place like this, you and I, only half a mile apart, looking out at such a beautiful sight?"
"We wouldn't have been,” said George, "if I'd had anything to say about it. Not both of us."
Carlyle glanced over his shoulder. He gave him a grin and one of his ludicrous winks. "Funny, isn't it," he said, "the tricks that fate plays."
"Just say what you have to say, Carlyle, and then I'll be getting on my way."
"I'd hoped you'd stay for lunch,” said Carlyle. "I just bought a salmon."
"I don't care for fish.”
Carlyle sighed. He seemed tired; perhaps that was why he wasn't getting out of the rocking chair. "Well, at least have the courtesy to sit down, George," he said.
"I have no intention of sitting down. just say what you've got to say, and if you don't say it fast, I'm going."
Carlyle, looking out at the sea, rocked, and nodded, and rocked.
"Okay. That's it. I'm on my way."
"Not so fast, George." Carlyle turned around and hooked an arm around the back of the rocking chair. His voice had lost its warmth. "I've gotten pretty sick of you over the last five years. Everywhere I go, there you are with your long face and that perpetual scowl. It wasn't so bad when Myra was around—she kept you under control, Myra did. But ever since you buried her, George, it's gotten to be a bit much. Oh, I know you talk about me,” he said, turning back to the window.
"I've never said a goddamn word about you to anyone," said George, furious. "I don't like the taste of your name in my mouth."
Carlyle was silent for a moment, rocking gently. "It's too bad we couldn't ever get to be friends, George. I wanted that, you know, especially in the beginning. " He was speaking quietly, almost to himself. "I thought you were a man I could get to know, confide in—I thought I might have found a real friend. Never had many of those. Never had any, when you come right down to it. I haven't the faintest idea why I thought you might turn out to be my friend. It was your eyes, I think. So stubborn and unwavering. And something about the way you walked, aggressive and hesitant, all at the same time.” He turned around again, slowly. "But that never happened, did it, " he said bleakly. "I ended up with your sister, instead." He threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, God, that was the biggest mistake I ever made. ”
"It was a bigger one," said George huskily, "for her.”
When Carlyle looked at him this time there was grief on his face, and in his watery blue eyes. George didn't believe it for an instant.
"I didn't want her to die," said Carlyle, heavily. "I loved her. As much as I could. You jumped to a lot of conclusions about me, George. Some of them were accurate. But some of them weren't.”
"You killed her,” said George. He stared at Carlyle, open-mouthed, hardly able to believe he'd said it. "You killed her,” he said, more belligerently.
"You do insist," said Carlyle coldly, staring back at him. "on missing the point." He deliberately turned his back on George. "She was a foul driver, and she finally managed to kill herself. I'd never let her drive, never, not while I was in the car. I tried to stop her that day, as a matter of fact, but she was in a state, as usual, wouldn't listen to me.”
"You made her go,” said George. "You frightened her into going.”
Carlyle turned around again, slowly, smiling. "Ah, George. Did you hear what you just said?”
George felt the earth shift beneath his feet.
"I didn't make her do things, George,” said Carlyle, petulant. "She made me do things." He shifted himself around in the rocking chair, clumsily, it seemed to George, and looked again out at his garden and the sea. "You should have told me," he said. "You had a responsibility to tell me what I was getting into. How was I supposed to know, for God's sake? And then she told me, finally, when it was too late. Oh, she told me, all right, she told me everything," said Carlyle, rapidly, nodding, rocking.
George began looking desperately around the room. He thought he was looking for something close enough to grab, hang on to, something he could lean on while he made his painful passage out of the house, away from the sound of Carlyle's voice.
Carlyle glanced over his shoulder at him. "I'm talking about your sister, George. Your family. Pay some respect, George. Pay some attention." He watched until George became still, then smiled and once more arranged himself to face the sea. "There was nothing much you could do about it, was there? Although you certainly tried, like a good son, a good brother. But that sort of thing is contagious, in a way—did you ever think of that? It's ironic, but they get to like things that way. That's what I think, anyway. Do you see what I mean? So the damage was already done, George, long before she met me; probably before you decided to take matters into your own clumsy hands .... "
George saw the shell casings sitting on the bookshelf, and suddenly his feet were no longer nailed to the floor. Carlyle shook his head regretfully at the ocean. "It must have been a terrible scene," he said, "just dreadful, such an awful thing you did, and all the time—you'll never know—maybe they liked it! After all," he said, beginning to turn, "she didn't let you save her in the end, did she, and Audrey—”
George struck him.
* * *
He sat upright, now, at his desk, his heart beating fast, looking out the window, not seeing his garden. A long time later he noticed that the sun was getting low, and he was hungry.
He forced other things from his mind and thought about tomato soup.
Then he made himself think about his daughter. She had sounded happy that he was coming. She'd been suggesting it for months, ever since her mother died.
George tried to remember if she had a balcony. Maybe he could grow things in pots.
But he knew he never would.
CHAPTER 29
For several minutes after he knocked on the door, Alberg heard only silence within the house. He was just about to go around to the garden and have a look there when the door opened and George Wilcox was looking up at him.
"You know," said George, "I kind of thought it might be you. The perfect end to a perfect day, as they say.”
He looked disarranged. The deep waves in his hair were askew, as though he'd been abstractedly running his hands through it. The ubiquitous gray cardigan was absent. He was wearing an open-necked white shirt which revealed the sagging flesh of his neck, wide maroon suspenders, shapeless gray pants and scuffed leather slippers.
"Cassandra been talking to you?” said George.
"Cassandra?" said Alberg. "No. Why?”
"Oh, I don't know. The two of you seem to be pretty thick these days." He opened the door wider and gestured to Alberg to come in. "I thought she might have told you about my plans,” he said, as Alberg squeezed past him into the long, narrow living room.
"W
hat plans?" His eyes went automatically to the place on the windowsill where the shell casings had stood, and he felt a welcome rush of anger. 'Nice old guy or not, the man had killed someone.
It was hard to believe, all right, he thought, watching George shuffle slowly toward the kitchen.
"What plans?" he said again, following the old man into the den, where a large suitcase, half filled with clothing, lay open on the desk.
"I'm moving,” said George. "To Vancouver. I'm going to live with my daughter. "
Alberg leaned against the doorway. He told himself to remain calm. He told himself to be patient. He reminded himself that George Wilcox was no fool.
"What brought this on?" he said, watching the old man stuff a couple of books into the suitcase. There was a pile of them on the desk, next to a framed photograph, face down.
"People dying brought it on," said George. He got two more books from the pile and fitted them in. "I figure I'll be better off living with somebody who's still a long way from crapping out."
"What about your garden?"
"What about it? There's gardens in Stanley Park. Stanley Park's practically across the street from Carol's place." He glanced up at Alberg. "Sit yourself down in the chair, here.”
He pushed it toward him. "I don't like you looming in the door like that. You're blocking some of my light."
Alberg sat. For a while they didn't speak. George continued to pack, stuffing books in among pajamas and pants and socks and underwear. Finally he picked up the photograph. He studied it for several seconds, then abruptly held it out to Alberg. "This is my sister," he said. "Audrey."
Alberg, accepting the photograph, saw something in George's eyes: whether irony or amusement, he couldn't tell.
He looked at George's sister.
His shock was almost physical. The hair was shorter, and done in a pageboy style now out of fashion, the nose was slightly longer, the mouth was slightly smaller, but the resemblance to Cassandra was striking.
Alberg looked from the photo to George; he knew his astonishment was obvious. But George was busily packing more books, looking, Alberg thought, like a squirrel creating his winter's cache.
"I thought you might like to have a look at her, " said George, "seeing you've expressed such a curiosity. " He took the photograph back and packed it carefully between two flannel shirts.
"I'd show you the one of Myra and Carol, too,” he said, "but it's already packed away." He straightened up and rubbed the small of his back. "Time to take a break. Bring that chair into the kitchen. We'll sit in there for a while."
He looked at Alberg, waiting for him to stand and pick up the chair, and Alberg realized that there was to be no discussion of the resemblance between his sister and Cassandra Mitchell. He got up and moved the chair and sat in it quickly, before George had a chance to make him take the leather one.
"Now," said George, arranging his hands in his lap, "since you didn't know I'm leaving, you haven't come to say goodbye. And since you didn't find anything out there in the ocean that's got to do with me, you haven't come to arrest me for anything. So tell me, policeman. Why are you here?"
He would miss coming to this house, Alberg realized. He would miss the flowers in the garden, and the sound of the sea on the beach, and sitting like a benevolent hunter in George Wilcox's kitchen, reluctantly enjoying his company.
"I've come to tell you a story,” he said, and smiled, and stretched out his long legs.
"I'm a busy man," said George shortly. "Got no time for stories. Not today.” '
"It won't take long," said Alberg. "I might get some of it wrong, but if I do, you can correct me."
"Ir's your story," said George. "Why should I correct you?"
"It's your story," said Alberg. "I'm only telling it." He pulled cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket and reached for the ashtray on the tobacco stand next to George's chair. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he said politely.
George didn't answer, just stared at him, stubbornly.
"Last Tuesday morning, Carlyle Burke phoned you," said Alberg. He lit a cigarette and put the package and the lighter back in his jacket pocket. "He asked you to have lunch with him. Now we both know how you felt about old Carlyle, so I won't even speculate about how he persuaded you to go, but he did, and you went." He leaned toward George. "You didn't intend to kill him. I'm sure of that. You're not a killer, George.”
He sat back. "At least you weren't, until last Tuesday."
"I don't have to listen to this." George was pulling at the tufts of stuffing that protruded from a break in the seam of the leather chair. Alberg remembered sitting in that chair and doing the same thing.
"No, you don't," he said quietly.
George said nothing.
"You went into the house and Carlyle, for whatever reason, maybe just because he was a spiteful old bastard, talked to you about things you'd just as soon never have heard. And finally you couldn't stand it any more, and you hit him on the head." He looked at the old man closely. "Is it too hot for you, George, sitting in the sun?”
George said nothing. His face was crumpled and still.
"You probably didn't mean to kill him, even when you hit him,” said Alberg. "Sometimes it's harder than you'd believe, to kill a man. Sometimes you have to stab and bash away at him until you're both soaked in his blood and the other guy's still yelling, still crying out, maybe praying, or calling for his mother and yet he won't die, he just won't die."
"You speaking from personal experience?” said George. "Is that your police brutality kind of thing you're talking about?”
"And other times," said Alberg, unruffled, "one little smack seems to do it, and the guy stands there bewildered, looking down at this dead person and wondering how the hell he got that way."
He took a final drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out. "That's the way I figure it happened with you. One little smack, probably didn't feel like much to you, just enough to shut him up, that's probably what you thought. And then there's the man lying there dead."
"With his eyes open,” said George, involuntarily. He pulled himself upright, flinched from a twinge somewhere, and let himself sink back into the chair. "I know that," he said carefully, "because I found the body. His eyes were open. I remember that."
"Then," said Alberg, "you realized what you'd done. Not much you could do about it. You could have called us, of course. Maybe that didn't occur to you. Maybe you thought you'd do it later, after you'd watered your roses. Or maybe I you decided you could get away with it. Anyway, you found something that would hold the shell casings—probably in the kitchen, since that's the only place you left any prints—and you dumped them into it and lugged them home." He shook his head admiringly. "It was clever to take them both. We wouldn't ever have known they were missing, if it hadn't been for his cleaning woman.”
The color had seeped from George's face. He wasn't moving at all.
"Now what I do not understand,” said Alberg, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, studying George intently, "what I simply cannot comprehend, George, is why, when you got those things home, you didn't get rid of them right away. You could have buried them in your garden or put them out with the trash. But what do you do? You put them up on your windowsill, bold as brass, if you'll forgive the pun.”
George looked back at him, silent and gray.
"Of course you were lucky, too," said Alberg. "Damn lucky. You were seen going into Carlyle's gate by three people. Two of them saw you at two thirty, when you found the body. One of them—unfortunately, he's what we call an unreliable witness—one man says he saw you a lot earlier. That fits with the time of death. It also fits the story of the man who sold Carlyle the salmon. Oh, yes, we found him, George; or, rather, he found us. He says Carlyle was expecting a guest for lunch. And I figure that guest must have been you.”
He lit another cigarette and crossed an ankle over his knee. He wondered why he wasn't enjoying himself.
"So here's the other thing I do
n't understand, George," he said. "Why the hell did you go back there? Did you start wondering if he was really dead, and decide you'd better hie yourself back on up to the house and finish the job?"
"Watch yourself, policeman," said George, struggling with exhaustion.
"Or did you just want to sneak another peek at him lying there, dead as a doornail, eyes staring at nothing, his head resting in a pool of his own brains and blood? Was that it, George?" said Alberg, with contempt. "Did you really hate him that much?"
"You stupid miserable cop,” said George. He looked completely drained. He had barely enough strength to push himself out of his chair. On his feet he glared down at Alberg, almost swaying. Slowly he bent close to him. "Okay, policeman,” he said. He jabbed him in his chest. "Now you just sit there and keep your goddamn mouth shut and let me tell you a story."
Painfully, awkwardly, he paced the small room. "He went into the war," he said. "I was ten years old. Up to then it wasn't so bad. He had a barbershop. Drank some, got into a temper now and then, threw things around sometimes. Scared the piss out of me, but he never hurt anyone. Then he went into the war. Gone four years, he was. When he came back ...."God help us, I don't know what happened to him over there. Maybe nothing. Maybe he'd have worked himself into it anyway. He was no saint before, that's for sure. It turned me into a pacifist, him coming back from the war like that, but maybe it wasn't the war's fault, who knows?"
He went to the window and stood, still and stooped, looking out. He seemed calmer, now.
"I was fourteen when he came home. He went back to the barbershop. Drank more. A lot more. Threw things around more. Then he started to hit her." He looked over his shoulder at Alberg. He looked extremely old. "They've got a name for it now," he said. "Battered wives, they call them. There are places they can run to. But not then.”
He turned back to the window. "Not then. No relatives, either. We lived up in Yale, right where the Fraser Canyon begins. You think Yale's a small town now, you should have seen it back then. Dirt roads, wooden sidewalks."
