by Frances
They waited. He shook his head, sadly.
“Slander,” he said. “One of three men would have to be lying —the doctor, Mr. Graham, this Mr. Bourgelotti at the bank. That’s needed to make the notion stick.”
They looked at him.
“No,” he said, and shook his head. “Nothing tangible enough. Mrs. Williams, Mr. Graham says he blotted Mrs. Montfort’s signature. You remember that?”
She thought. She remembered. She said, “Yes.”
“Did he blot yours? And the boy’s—young Bourgelotti’s?”
She looked at him a little blankly, feeling a little blank.
“I don’t—” she said, and stopped and Shapiro said, with patient sadness, “Try to remember, Mrs. Williams. Try to picture it.”
She did—the old woman, indistinct in the gloomy corner of the room; Howard Graham, all cheer, all satisfaction with accomplishment, bringing the will across the room to the light, handing her the pen, after she had signed giving the pen to Tony Bourgelotti and then—
“No,” she said. “He sort of waved it in the air, the way one does, and folded it and put it in his pocket.”
Shapiro sighed. He seemed disappointed. They both looked at him.
“Probably doesn’t mean a thing,” he said, gloomily. “Well—”
“You saw Ralph Bourgelotti?” Bob asked, when it seemed that Shapiro had sunk, practically without trace, into silence. “The man at the bank?”
Shapiro nodded gloomily. He said that Mr. Bourgelotti seemed quite sure of himself.
“Now?” Bob said.
“Go back to town in the morning,” Shapiro said. “I can’t think of anything more to do here at the moment.”
“And—just drop it? Although you think there may be—”
“From time to time,” Shapiro said, “we have to—put things on the shelf. Or—on the back of the stove. Well—I’ve bothered you two long enough.”
He started off, long and thin and a little stooped. He stepped off the terrace and stopped and turned back.
“Oh, Mrs. Williams,” he said. “Somebody’s been trying to get you on the telephone. It rang a couple of times while I was waiting. Couldn’t get in to answer it, of course.”
He went, then. After a few moments they heard a car start up. It appeared that Mr. Shapiro had parked at some little distance from the house, and walked to it.
“He’s a strange man, isn’t he?” Lois said. “So—uncertain. Depressed. Not what you’d expect in a detective, somehow. Wistful. And, why did he come here? Wait until we came back? Just to ask what you thought about Mr. Graham?”
Bob Oliver looked down at her, his eyes a little narrowed.
“Came to see you,” he said. “No way of knowing I’d be along.” He almost closed his eyes. “All I can think of,” he said, “is, he wanted to know if Howdy had blotted the signature, as he apparently said he had.” He looked down at her. “You’re sure he did?”
She was quite sure. She remembered it quite clearly.
“Now,” Bob said, “I wonder why.”
“Because the ink wasn’t—” she began and he made an abrupt gesture.
“Don’t be a goose,” he said. “Why you remember it, of course. Why-”
Whereupon, she hissed at him. And he stopped her hissing, in the manner most appropriate.
But she could not say why she remembered so trivial a thing as the blotting of a signature, and promised that she would lock everything carefully and not go out again, alone. She said, “Yes, Mr. Oliver, thank you, Mr. Oliver,” with mimicked meekness, and for that got kissed again, as was to be expected. Which was pleasant; which proved nothing. Which was not expected to prove anything—not yet.
Turning out the lights, undressing, she half expected the telephone to ring. But it did not—not until morning.
She was having breakfast on the terrace when the telephone rang—rang inside the living room with startling loudness. She jumped slightly at the sound, and coffee sloshed into saucer. It was a few minutes after eight.
The bell rang several times before she could reach the telephone and say, a little breathlessly, “Hello?” There was no real reason to be breathless, or to hurry. It was only a telephone ringing on a pleasant morning in late August—a sunny morning.
“Mrs. Williams I’ve got—” a woman’s voice said. But then the voice stopped, and Lois heard what she thought was a breath drawn in quickly, gasped in. “Tell you—” the voice said and stopped again. Then, farther away, not at the telephone, there was the sound of movement—a sound unidentifiable, faint and, over that, the sound of a voice. She thought a man’s voice. She could not make out the words.
“Who is it?” she said, and the words hurried one another. “What do you—”
There was, then, the clicking sound of a broken connection and the telephone was dead. Slowly, Lois put the telephone back in its cradle and stood looking down at it, waiting for it to ring again. But the telephone was only a black thing, a sulking contrivance of metal. She lighted a cigarette and still stood and waited, but then, when nothing happened, went back out to the terrace.
It was not anything, really—not anything to think about twice. Somebody—probably somebody connected with the anniversary celebration. Mrs. Simpson?—had telephoned about something of no consequence and had been, by something, interrupted. Something on the stove had caught fire. A child had fallen and bumped its head, and pre-empted a mother’s attention. (Except that Mrs. Simpson’s children were grown, or nearly.)
“I’ve got something I’m supposed to tell you about—” Completed, it would have come to no more than that. There had been a delay in printing the list of houses to be visited. One of the houses had been withdrawn from exhibition. Or, for all she knew, burned down. It would not be—
Across hours a voice sounded—a flat voice. “You’d be Mrs. Williams,” the voice said. No—more like “Willems.” But anybody could slur a name. Most people slurred most names, most vowels. I’m making things up again, Lois told herself and, firmly, took a sip of coffee. The coffee had gone cold. There is no reason whatever to think that it was Mrs. Harbrook who had telephoned her, been interrupted before she could say what she wanted to say; “tell” what she wanted to tell. Whoever it was—not Mrs. Harbrook, almost certainly—would call back and apologize for having hung up and—
It was no good. The more she said it might be anybody, the more clearly she saw a tall, elderly woman with a long weathered face (and a slight chin beard) looking down at her and saying she “would be Mrs. Willems.” So, all right. Mrs. Harbrook had telephoned to tell her something. That the livingroom ceiling of the cannon-ball house had fallen in, so that the house would have to be scratched from exhibition. That—
Lois looked the number up and dialed the number. She arranged words in her mind—“Mrs. Harbrook, I hope I’m not bothering you too early in the morning, but somebody telephoned me and was interrupted and I thought I recognized—” “Mrs. Harbrook, was it you who telephoned me just—”
The telephone was ringing, presumably in the cannon-ball house. The signal was loud. Three times, four times, five times— Country people are often out of doors, pulling weeds, gazing resentfully at Japanese beetles. Six times, seven times. Picking flowers to decorate a house to be put on display. (But flowers picked on Thursday will hardly be at their best on Saturday.) Eight times, nine times.
This was nonsense. Lois hung up. Not Mrs. Harbrook, obviously—or, if she, calling from somewhere else. Or—it was absurd to think that something had happened to her. If there was anything to all this, it would be the other way round—Mrs. Harbrook and that nephew of hers happened to other people. All the same—
It is always possible to dial incorrectly. The telephone might well have been ringing in the wrong house. She lifted her own telephone again, waited until the dial tone was strong, dialed again, this time with exaggerated care. And waited again, this time not so long.
The mind behaves oddly, Lois thought. A moment ago
I merely thought, vaguely, that it might be Mrs. Harbrook. Now, merely because I can’t get her, and by that fact the chance that it was she is diminished, I am the more certain that it was she and—and that something has to be done about it. Because, for all I know, she had—what? A stroke? Or somebody—
This is ridiculous, Lois thought. I’m at it again. What on earth’s come over me?
But she went to the terrace doors and—which was really ridiculous—locked them securely. She showered and, standing under the shower, the rushing of water drowning other sounds (except that there weren’t any other sounds. No sounds of feet coming furtively toward her), felt oddly defenseless. In her own safe house, on a pleasant morning, in long-tamed countryside!
I won’t have this, Lois said, firmly, to herself, as she dressed, putting each garment—not that there were many—on with a special firmness, putting each garment in its place. I won’t be a silly, fluttery female, a—a goose! Damn the man. I’ll drive over to the Montfort house and walk up to the door and—and what? I know. Say that the committee thinks it would be a good idea to put a bucket of sand—just a small bucket—by the front door and a little sign saying, “Please put cigarettes here” and, if Mrs. Harbrook has anything to tell me, she’ll have a chance and— She went out the front door and locked it behind her and, standing outside in the pleasant warmth of an August morning, thought, Who does he think he is to tell me what to do and not to do? What business has he glaring at me when he isn’t even here?
She then, rather as if she had been turned around forcibly, faced the door again, and unlocked it and went back into the house and to the telephone and dialed a number she knew, but had not until that moment realized she knew. This time, the distant telephone rang only twice and—
“Well!”
The voice was loud, angry.
“Oliver!” the voice said, in something resembling an indignant shout. “Office doesn’t open until—”
She said, “Bob,” in a small voice.
“Come in early just to get—” he shouted at her and then, suddenly, diminished, said, “Oh.”
“Yelling at people on the telephone,” she said. “Before you know who you’re yelling at. For all you knew, it might have been the mayor.”
“There isn’t any,” Bob Oliver said, and now there was amusement in his voice. (Laughing at her, the oaf!) “First Selectman, my dear. I was in the middle of an editorial and—”
“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. “Genius at work. If you don’t want to be interrupted, why don’t—”
“Listen,” he said. “Let’s start over, Lois. Now—the telephone rings. I pick up the receiver. I say, ‘Good morning, this is the office of the Glenville Advertiser. This is Robert Oliver speaking.’ Now you—”
The voice he used was ridiculously mellow. Involuntarily, she giggled.
“This is Mrs. Williams,” she said. “Lois Williams. May I speak to Mr. Oliver, please?”
“I just told you—” he said, and turned mellow again, “This is Oliver speaking.”
“Bob,” she said, “probably it’s nothing. Just another brainstorm. But—”
He listened. When she had finished, he said, “You’re sure?”
She wasn’t sure. She thought she had said that. But—the more she thought about it, the nearer she came to being.
“I started to drive over and see,” she said. “And—you began to glare at me. Tell me not to be a goose, sticking my long neck out and—”
“I never,” Bob Oliver said, “told you you had a neck like a goose. Very pretty neck, of only standard length. Also, I’m very glad you felt the glare. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a heroine who goes out into a dark garden full of lurking shadows and—”
“All the same,” she said, “if something happened to her, I’d—”
“Stay there,” he said. “I’ll come around. We’ll both go.”
“The editorial?”
“Town planning can wait,” he said. “Town planning we have always with us.”
It took him only ten minutes or so. The MG skittered on the driveway gravel. She was ready, and they skittered away—after she had, with less conviction than she would have liked, need to mention the possible presence of seeing-eye neighbors. It took five minutes to Battle Street and the cannon-ball house.
John Keating, in slacks and an open-neck shirt, was standing in front of the house, on the narrow lawn which separated it from the street. He held a hose. He was watering the lawn. He was any suburban landholder, watering grass which needed it after two weeks without rain.
“Why,” he said, “good morning, Mrs. Williams. Mr. Oliver.”
He twisted the nozzle of the hose, and the sprinkle of water subsided.
“Sprucing things up a bit for Saturday,” he said, and waited —waited smiling; plump, agreeable and smiling. (You rushed to rescue. You found a man watering the grass. Anticlimax was complete.)
“We were just going by,” Lois said. “I remembered something I’d forgotten to tell Mrs. Harbrook. About Saturday. I wonder if-”
He looked doubtful at that. He said, “Well—
“I don’t know,” he said. “She hasn’t felt up to seeing people. It’ll be better this afternoon, probably. After the funeral, you know. But, if it’s at all important—”
“It would,” Lois said, “only take a minute.”
He would see. If they didn’t mind coming up on the porch—no use getting their feet wet—he’d see if his aunt felt up to it. He went inside and closed the door behind him. They waited.
And Mrs. Harbrook, very tall, very long of face, appeared. Her nephew, who was not by some inches as tall, stood beside her, and a little behind.
Mrs. Harbrook said, “Good morning, Mrs. Willems,” in a flat voice. “John says—”
“A little bucket of sand,” Lois Williams said, and the rest of it. “Because the insurance company is so strict,” she said. And the rest of it.
“Of course,” Mrs. Harbrook said, in a flat voice. “It’s a very good idea, I’m sure.” And moved, as if to go back into the dark house.
“Mrs. Harbrook,” Lois said, and spoke quickly, “did you telephone me earlier? This morning. I thought—”
“No,” Mrs. Harbrook said, in the same flat voice, “I didn’t telephone anybody.”
“Whoever did,” Lois said, “started to say something—something about telling me something—and was—cut off. I thought I recognized your voice.”
“No,” Ella Harbrook said. “I didn’t telephone you.”
“I tried to call back,” Lois said. “Nobody answered.”
“No,” Mrs. Harbrook said. “I didn’t—”
“That’s strange,” Keating said. “The telephone didn’t ring, Mrs. Williams. We’ve both been here all morning. Haven’t we, Aunt Ella?”
“Yes,” Ella Harbrook said. “We’ve both been here all morning.”
“Perhaps you dialed wrong,” Keating said. “Easy thing to do.”
“Well—” Lois said. Unobtrusively, very gently, Bob Oliver was touching her arm. “It must have been that, I suppose. I’m sorry we bothered you, Mrs. Harbrook. Today, especially. When you must be so—”
“That’s all right,” Keating said. “Aunt Ella doesn’t really mind. Do you, Aunt Ella?”
“No,” Ella Harbrook said. “It must have been somebody else who telephoned you, Mrs. Willems.”
They went back to the MG and got into it. Lois looked back at the house. Keating was standing in the doorway. He had a cigar, unlighted, between his lips. He waved a hand, in a half salute and then put it in his pocket and brought a lighter out. The MG gave its usual convulsive leap.
“Well?” Bob said, after they had turned a corner of the road.
“I’m quite sure she called,” Lois said. “The voice. And the way she pronounces my name. And—I thought I might have dialed wrong the first time, and dialed again. I’m sure—”
“Don’t be a goose,” he said. “Of course yo
u didn’t dial wrong. Not once, probably. Certainly not twice.”
“Then?”
“She changed her mind,” he said.
“She sounded—just now I mean—as if she had learned lines.”
“Yes,” he said. “With the prompter standing by. Also—it’s considered bad practice to water grass when the sun’s on it. Not that a good many don’t, but—”
“There ought,” Lois said, “to be something we could do. But—what?”
That was the question. The answer was not apparent. They did drive to the Inn; they did ask for a Mr. Shapiro, who might (although it seemed doubtful) have an answer. Mr. Shapiro had checked out early. In plenty of time to catch the 7:58 to New York.
XII
Nathan Shapiro had not caught the 7:58 to New York, although he would have liked to—and would have had plenty of time to, since it was twenty-three minutes late out of Glenville. He had, instead, gone to the State Police barracks and made, hesitantly, a suggestion and been looked at and asked “Why?” The question was not an easy one to answer, and Shapiro did not really answer it. He said merely that it wouldn’t do any harm.
“Look,” the police sergeant said, “you’re not saying they’ve got somebody else in there?”
Shapiro did not. He did not think for a moment that they had somebody else in there. Not, he interjected mildly, that he hadn’t known things like that to happen. It was merely that it wouldn’t do any harm.
“Look,” the sergeant said, “the Newberrys have lived around here for generations. Buried generations. You’re not saying—”
Shapiro was patient. He said he was not saying anything. It was up to the sergeant. He himself had, obviously, no authority. He was merely butting in.
“From what I hear,” he said patiently, “she hadn’t been going around at all for several years. Hadn’t had visitors. Been a recluse.”
“You read things,” the sergeant said. “Anyway, Ella Harbrook would know.”
“Undoubtedly,” Shapiro said. “Of course, she inherits.”
The sergeant had, from his expression, never heard anything so ridiculous. But, on the other hand, it wouldn’t do any harm. Somebody who had known her for years. He hadn’t himself. He considered.
