by Frances
It appeared he was interrupted. He listened. He said, “Oh. That many, huh?” He said, “The Purple What” and then that he’d be damned and then, “Thanks, Hump,” and hung up. He stood by the telephone and glared across the room at Lois.
“All right,” he said. “You’re a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. The Purple Panthers, for God’s sake, engaged in innocent merriment. Used razors. Had a rumble in mind and the other team didn’t show and the Panthers had time on their hands.” He shrugged.
“At last total,” he said, “twenty-two car owners had reported slashed tires.”
“In the Village?” she said.
“In the Village,” he said, glumly. He returned to his chair. He gave his beer glass an unpleasant stare.
“I never,” he said, to the glass, “ran into anything so damned —evasive.”
He looked at her. His deep-set eyes were angry, blaming. “This doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “You realize that?” His tone said she had better realize that.
“Or,” he added, “disprove anything.”
“No,” she said. “We’re right where we were.”
“A handful of air,” he said. “That’s what we end up with.” And as he said that, for no reason she could understand—except that he liked his own phrase?—his attitude changed abruptly. Anger died out of his face. He looked at her as if he saw a person, not an adversary. He smiled—that was what changed his face, that and something that happened to his eyes. An unstable element, she thought—that’s this Mr. Oliver.
“You got thrown around,” he said. “No bruises? You don’t look bruised but—”
She shook her head.
“It could have been worse,” he said, and with that, abruptly, stood up. “To make a meaningless remark. So—”
She stood up, too. They stood quite close together. He looked down at her with a certain expression in his eyes. So, she thought, not that it matters. Not that it will mean anything.
“By the way,” he said, “it might be an idea not to let anybody know we’ve been—playing detective. To no good purpose. Make us both look a little foolish, on the one hand—”
He paused, and his eyes narrowed.
“On the other,” he said, “if there is anything to any of this, it might—stir up some unpleasant animals. Right?”
“Yes,” she said. “But—all right.”
“But?” He stared at her. “I suppose you mean,” he said, “we already have?”
“Haven’t we?” she said. “If there’s anybody to stir up. But— I was thinking of Mr. Graham. Because—well, he is an executor. And if anybody’s been—had the wool pulled over his eyes—”
He frowned at her.
“Leave Howdy to me,” he said, abruptly. As, abruptly, he turned and took long strides across the living room toward the door. At the door, he turned.
“Good night,” he said, in a tone of anger. He turned toward the door and then back toward her. “And for God’s sake,” he said, with great irritation, “see that you lock things up, will you?”
And then he went.
The most aggravating man I’ve ever met, Lois thought. The most—impossible. Whatever gave me the notion that he was about to kiss me good night? That—I’d let him. The—unstable element!
She went to the door, to lock it, and saw the headlights of the MG go on and heard the little car’s motor snarl. The car turned in fury. Like master like car, she thought, and locked the door.
And went to the french doors to the terrace and checked that they were locked, and wound the casement windows almost shut and had started toward the kitchen and the kitchen door. Then the telephone rang.
She jumped, convulsively, at the loud sound—the sound which seemed, momentarily, the loudest she had ever heard. She looked at the watch on her wrist. Around midnight. Who, at this hour—
She crossed the room to the telephone and picked it up and said, “Hello?”
The line was open. There was the hollowness of an open line. “Hello?” she said, more loudly. There was no sound, not even the sound of breathing. But—somebody listened.
She said, “Hello,” once more, and this time even more loudly— much too loudly, she realized, but could not check her voice, quieten it. “Who are—”
And then there was a click and the line was dead.
She put the receiver slowly back in its cradle and stood, looking down at it. She was breathing quickly, and there was, for an instant, a kind of chilliness in the warm summer air.
Which, she told herself, was nonsense—utter nonsense. Another—handful of air.
All that had happened, of course, was that somebody had dialed a wrong number, known when a wrong voice answered that the mistake had been made, lacked the courtesy to say anything, to say, “I’m sorry.” Some people are like that.
She had been about to turn the lights off, go to bed. (No, she had been about to make sure that the kitchen door was locked.) She went out into the kitchen and discovered, in the doorway, that she had turned the light off. She could go across the small, neat room blindfold; the glass of the kitchen door was a luminous rectangle from the night’s pale glow. She clicked on the needless kitchen light and went to the door and found that—as she had known it would be—it was locked.
It was time to go to bed, to go to sleep. But she tingled with wakefulness. Leaving the kitchen, she hesitated a moment, realized (uncomfortably) that she did not want to turn the light off, turn any light off.
A silly goose indeed—a frightened goose. She turned the light off and went back into the living room. She lighted a cigarette and sat down, but almost immediately stood up again and—which could hardly have been more absurd—checked again to make sure that the french doors were locked, secure.
All it was was a wrong number. All she was doing was— dramatizing. As (be firm, now) she had done from the first.
If you want to find out whether somebody got home safe, her mind said slowly, with long spaces between heavy words—if you want to find that out, you have merely to use a telephone, wait to be answered and—say nothing yourself.
If you want to make sure and not give yourself away. If you are a burglar, scouting to make sure the coast is clear. Or—if you have tried murder and want to discover how you made out.
Lois Williams made herself a drink. The whisky was hot in her throat. But its heat stopped there, did not spread relaxingly through her body, through her nerves.
She lighted another cigarette and then saw that the first still smouldered in a tray. She held her hand out, with the cigarette in it, and saw that her hand trembled.
For a moment, then, fury surged through her—desperate, inarticulate anger. And—anger at Bob Oliver. He had led her into danger and then—walked out on her. Had left her here to—
And with that—that wildness—her mind inexplicably leveled. It was as if this absurd overloading of fantasy had tripped something in her mind, set in force—anxiously—some governor of sanity.
“Of all the ridiculous—” Lois Williams said aloud. “Of all the—”
She was all right now, she told herself. A wrong number—only a wrong number. (Not somebody calling to see whether, as planned, a hurrying small car had swerved out of control, plunged somewhere, crashed into something.) She was as safe as houses—safe as her own small bright house. And—
There was a sound on the terrace—a sound of something brushed against, moved. She whirled violently, raised both hands up, protectingly.
The light from the house fell on the terrace. It fell on a deer—a young doe, big ears pricked high, eyes shining in the light. The deer was there—the deer was not there. There was a scratch of hooves on flagstones. Then there was nothing.
Scared stiff of a deer, Lois thought. Scared into panic by a deer. She’d never let anybody—certainly not the impossible Bob Oliver—know about that. That would really make him laugh, the—
And then, remembering how loudly he did laugh, had laughed, Lois crinkled insi
de, laughed inside. An absurd man. How he laughed, and made you join laughter, when there wasn’t, in fact, anything in particular to laugh at.
Lois turned the lights off in her small bright house, and went to bed.
The loneliness came back then, as it still did at that moment each night—the feeling of being lost. It came then most acutely, although it was never entirely absent, was always a sort of edge of emptiness around the small circle in which she stood alone. Beyond that little circle—the circle of a moment of time, of a meaningless physical space—there was a blankness almost palpable. Always—
But as sleep began to come, and loneliness to fade with consciousness, Lois thought, vaguely, It wasn’t really that way today. Because, today, so much was happening that there wasn’t time to think.
Of course that was the reason, she thought. There couldn’t be any other reason….
And slept.
Once, a long time later, she wakened herself. It seemed that she had awakened herself with the sound of her own soft laughter. She must have been having a funny dream. But she could not remember it.
VII
She typed for a little over an hour and looked at the result.
“Tour of Historic Houses”
That was the title of the work. “In Glenville, Conn. Saturday, August 30. 1–5 p.m. Tickets, $2.50.”
That was the where, the when and, to some degree, the how. (Two dollars and fifty cents, provide own transportation. The last would be revealed.) Then “The Design.”
Lois had left space for The Design—a circle, with words around it: “250th Anniversary, Glenville, Conn.” Inside the circle, the—whatever it was. It said, “Founder’s Rock.” In larger reproduction, it dangled on discreet New Englandish signs at various road intersections in the Town of Glenville. From a distance, Founder’s Rock looked much like a turkey on a platter—a turkey roasted brown. Which was all right with Lois. (Turkeys are appropriate to New England.) Which was, in any case, none of Lois’s concern. That was for the Art Committee. And the cut was in the office of the Glenville Advertiser (and job printing) waiting for copy to surround it.
Page one, then—ready. Inside the brochure, on pages two and three, a map of the village, with houses indicated on it—houses one to ten. No concern of Lois Williams. (Committee on Landmarks.) Cut for the map in the office of the Glenville Advertiser. (And if she didn’t hurry, the impossible man would be on the telephone, asking where the hell the copy was, and did they want it by Friday or didn’t they want it by Friday?) Pages two and three, therefore, no concern of hers.
Page 4—
“1. Glenville Community House, Main Street. Formerly the mansion of Ephraim D. Asbrook. Tickets for the tour available here and tea will be served from 5 to 7 p.m.
“2. Home of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Pruitt, Redbury Road. Built circa 1750. Authentic example of the central chimney farmhouse. Original dutch oven still functioning.”
Anybody, Lois thought to herself, wanna bet?
“3. Home of Mr. and Mrs. Jasper Follonsby.” (And about a hundred china dogs.) “North Lane. Authentically restored eighteenth-century clapboard and shingle house. Furnished in the period.
“4. Home of Mrs. Abigail Montfort, Battle Street. Generally considered the oldest house in Glenville and known as The Cannon-ball House, a Revolutionary cannon ball being embedded in it. The Second Battle of Glenville was fought here and in the swampy area behind the house.
“5. Home of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin C. Teller, 22 Main Street. Believed to be—”
And 6, and 7, and 8, and 9 and—10. She sought typos—not “farmmouses” for heaven’s sakes! Home of “the late Mrs. Abigail Montfort?” Not her responsibility.
Responsibility where responsibility belonged—with Mrs. Simpson.
Lois put the portable back in its box, and folded up the bridge table. Outside the sun was bright, but inside coolness persisted, and a breeze blew gently through open french doors. One of the things that had made them buy the house was that, while in the winter sun poured into it, lay three fourths of the way across the living room, the summer sun, so much less welcome, did not intrude. It lay bright, quiescent, on the terrace at this hour—this hour of ten on the morning of Wednesday, August twenty-seventh.
Lois had been typing in shorts and shirt. She changed for the village—for Mrs. Simpson, waiting (no doubt) in the Community House, formerly the mansion of; for, with approval granted, delivery of copy to the printer. Or, conceivably, the printer’s boss. She put on a white piqué dress, although it could be worn only once without cleaning.
She went to close the french doors on to the terrace and remembered the deer and, of course, thought of the petunias. There is practically nothing a deer does not relish. Lois went out onto the terrace, carrying the copy for the tour brochure under her arm.
The deer had, as was to be expected, eaten petunias. It—she—had not eaten all of them, which was something. Not much, but something. Lovely creatures, she thought, but too numerous. (“They’re protected within an inch of my life,” a nurseryman had assured her—had assured her and Ken in—in those days when there was a future.)
This deer (think of now, try to live in now!) had walked extensively on the terrace, and at first with dusty hooves. The pointed crescents of the little hooves were clear in dust on the flagstones—clear, at any rate, where the deer had first stepped. (After, apparently, walking up the gravel drive, dusty from lack of rain.) Yes—here was where the deer had stopped, and pricked big ears and looked into lighted room where a darkhaired girl stood, for an instant, frozen in ridiculous terror. A soft-eyed deer, meaning no harm, with no thought beyond petunias. Lois smiled and shook her head, apologizing to herself for herself. Fears creep at night. The sun scatters them.
Here the deer had stepped, and here and here, while dust still clung to delicate hooves. Here the deer had stopped and, all too evidently, leaned down to nibble petunias growing by the terrace edge. And here, close to the house—
She stood, looking down at a blur of dust, close against the clapboards, beside one of the french doors. A blur—no, two blurs. And—blurs.
Realization came in that sequence. Two—not four. Blurs—not the clear small marks of little pointed, crescent feet. Shapeless marks of dust on flags. Yet—not entirely shapeless. The shape, blurrily, of human feet. Of feet in flat-heeled shoes in—in tennis shoes!
She looked down at the blurs on the flagstones, and nerves tightened.
Some time—there was no way of telling when—someone wearing tennis shoes which had picked up dust from the dry gravel of the driveway, had stood there on the terrace; had stood close to the french doors, but so as not to be in sight from within the house. Stood and—and listened?
There was no way of telling when this had happened. The doe and the person—the listening person, watching person—would hardly have been simultaneously on the terrace. No deer shares a small terrace with a human. When she saw me, Lois thought, the deer ran.
Then—after the deer had gone? A few minutes after that, I turned off the lights. After that, there was nothing to listen to. Then—before. Almost certainly before. While Bob and I were talking—while he was telephoning New York, talking of a handful of air.
Somebody listened then. Listened to find out what we knew!
Then there is—then it is real, not melodramatic make-believe. Then I—we, now—have stumbled into something.
She thought a cloud had passed between her and the sun. She looked up, instinctively. The sky was cloudless.
Robert Oliver took a final look at the locked-up type which constituted Page 1, August 28 issue, Glenville Advertiser and said, “O.K., Jimmy.” Jimmy slid the form from the stone onto a cart and trundled it off to stereotype. So that was that. It wouldn’t be perfect; it never had been yet. At the best, there’d be a jump slug that didn’t jibe with facts—“Continued on Page 8” a line would read, and on Page 8—where was the damned thing? At the best, there’d be the one-line-of-type-too-long removed—a
nd with it whatever sense a filler might have made. Well, things like that happened to the Herald Tribune. They even happened to the Times. The difference was that the big papers could catch errors in later editions. He couldn’t. That was one of the differences between the New York Times and the Glenville Advertiser. There were others.
Bob Oliver climbed the wooden stairs from the composing room to his office. He sat at his desk and lighted a cigarette and felt at once a little triumphant and a little let down, as he felt each Wednesday morning at about this time. Once more, he’d got it out. Once more, he felt his hands empty. There was, as always, sadness in these long minutes—minutes after the time he said, “O.K., Jimmy” and committed himself and before the entire building gave a small, resigned gasp and began to vibrate with the press in the basement. During those long minutes everything stopped and waited. There was nothing to be sad about. One more edition of a small-town weekly was rolling, and it was difficult to think of anything of less real importance. Only—one more thing was ended. He supposed that was it. One ending after another. That is a way to count it off.
The sadness was, for some reason, more intense today than on most Wednesdays. He seemed less able than he usually was to stand aside, watch this man, who was himself and yet only partially comprehensible, sit and feel sad about nothing at all; feel apprehensive over nothing. Suppose that by some colossal misadventure, some catastrophic error lay unobserved in the columns of the August 28 issue of the Advertiser—some obscene typo, conceivably. (Given time enough, one of those happened to almost every newspaper.) Some unforgivable conjunction of words innocently meant, not to be innocently read. Suppose all this. So what?
For some reason, Bob Oliver thought—waiting for the building to shake—I have, of course only for the moment, lost the ability to stand off, observe; to retain, even while understandably astonished by the odd behavior of this man who is also me, a suitable, sanity-saving detachment. For some reason, I am caught in it again—totally caught. Why—damn the girl, Bob Oliver thought, to his own complete surprise. Because, what did the girl have to do with it? For God’s sake, he thought, I’m getting on. In no time, I’ll be forty. I had that—years ago, and for what it was worth, I had that. Mentally, he stroked a long white beard. Obviously, the girl had nothing to do with it. A slight, not previously noticed, impairment of the digestive process. That would explain it. Not a girl with dark hair and blue eyes. (Why the hell, Bob Oliver asked himself, do I constantly go around shouting at people?)
