Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  Perley sighed. “I guess I get the point. These truffles are hard to come by?”

  “I haven’t tasted one since the war started, but I’ve got a precious tin locked in my suitcase.”

  “That lets out the Briggses, the Moresbys, Mabel, and Walters. They’re poor people and they’ve never had a chance to find out if they’d swell up or not.”

  “Truffles used to be fairly inexpensive,” Mark said calmly, “and fairly plentiful.”

  Perley fought on. “I don’t care. It still seems like an awful roundabout way to break a roomful of people down to one person.”

  “It’s only one way. If the sight of my little plateful doesn’t smoke that one out, I’ll know he’s either dead, under lock and key, or sinning elsewhere. And I’ll cross him off. Then I’ll begin on the music. Another one of our hopefuls has a habit of foaming quietly at the mouth when he hears The Beautiful Blue Danube.”

  “You’re making that up!”

  “No I’m not. I’ve got it in black and white.”

  “Then I’m not going to be hungry,” Perley said. “I’m going to wait outside.”

  For the first time that day Mark grinned with pleasure. “You might watch for The Beautiful Blue Danube this afternoon at the concert.”

  Perley looked ready to faint.

  “I’m kidding,” Mark said hastily. “I got Beulah to call up the camp and request a few omissions. We can’t have it happen there.”

  Perley’s color returned to normal but he was far from happy. He wailed: “I used to read in the papers how the police would find a girl’s body in an alley, identify her from the stuff she carried in her purse, talk to her landlady, get the boy friend’s address, go to his house, tell his mother it wasn’t nothing but a parking violation, rap on his bedroom door, walk in, and pull him and the bloody knife out from under the blankets. Don’t they do that any more?”

  Joey came pounding across the lawn from the hotel, waving an envelope. Mark stopped laughing and waved in return. She panted up the steps and gave him a letter.

  “Miss Rayner says you might as well save tipping the boy, so I brought it myself. I think so too. The mail just came.”

  “Thank you, Miss Beacham. May I?” He slit the envelope.

  “It’s beautiful writing, isn’t it?” she said.

  “It is indeed.” He read silently. “Just a note from a friend of mine. Hey!” he added, as she poised for flight. “You running away again?”

  “That yellow cat had kittens. Pee Wee’s with her now. She doesn’t mind.” She was off at once.

  Mark turned to Perley. “The letter’s from Albert Shaw. He’s been looking up the caretaker Cassie fired, and he ran him down, too. The name is Higgins, and he is and has been in jail ever since he lost his job. Automobile thief on the side. That’s that. I never did warm up to that angle.”

  Perley got up and stretched.

  “Going to look at the cat that doesn’t mind?” Mark asked.

  “I’m going home to dress for the concert. I need sleep but I guess I’ll get that there.” He walked like a beast of burden.

  Mark sat on the porch until lunch. He checked and rechecked his book, added Perley’s data, and reread the meager and picturesque information he had copied from Miss McKenna’s files. He computed ages and dates, made a composite picture in his mind of all the things he had to go on; the result was dim. Aside from the emotional set-up and the identifying flaws, there was too little of the private life that preceded the collapse. Love and hate were there in emphasis and detail, but only as they existed between two people; the older man and his daughter, the younger man and his mother, the girl and her brother. There had to be other people in those lives. Who were they? Did the older man have a living wife as well as a daughter, a quiet woman who moved from hotel to hotel, inwardly seething, inhibited, grudge-bearing? Or could he, for instance, have had another child? And if so, would that child recognize the too familiar signs when they began to creep into its own life?

  And the younger man. Had he brothers or sisters? Nothing was said about that. Only his mother had come to the hospital, weeping and praying. Suppose he had brothers and sisters with good memories, who lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the telltale twitch of arms and legs, the curious lightness of the body, the driving urge to laugh out loud and then to cry? And his mother. There was no reason for believing her dead. She could be alive and strong, and she could have other children between the ages of nineteen and fifty.

  He went over the notes again, carefully and hopefully, and wrote down the names of his possibilities. There were too many. The circle grew wider instead of smaller. Soon the circumference would be out of sight.

  He turned to the last case. The girl. The girl who went away with her brother. Did she ever marry? Maybe. Out west, in a new town, and the brother would help her to put it over. He’d probably stop at nothing to get rid of her. He could ask her to marry; bribe her, prey on her raddled emotions, tell her his happiness was at stake. He could make her promises that he never meant to fulfil; and they’d bury her past like the dark secret it was. Did he fit in, the brother?

  He saw Roberta heading toward the cottage and closed the book. She came up the steps, swinging a tennis racquet.

  “Good morning,” he said grimly. She’d managed to keep out of his way until then.

  She sat on the railing. “I owe you an apology or something, don’t I? About my party this afternoon.”

  “I’m not really angry,” he said. “Just hurt.”

  She looked confused. “I never know when you’re serious. But honestly I didn’t leave you out on purpose. After I invited the people I wanted, I counted the seats. And there simply wasn’t any more room. Do you see?”

  “Too clearly. But don’t disturb yourself. I couldn’t go. Too busy.”

  “You look busy.” This was delivered with a crushing air. When she saw he was unscathed, she tried again. “We’re going home next week. I expect we’ll see the last of you, and all this, when we get on the train.”

  “I’ve never heard a more hopeful speech. . . . Roberta, when are you going to talk to me?”

  “What am I doing now?”

  “Putting on an act and it’s a waste of time. You’re an amateur. How old are you?”

  “Well! Eighteen, and you know it.”

  “How old is Nick?”

  “Nineteen. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Joey and Pee Wee.”

  “He’s eleven and she’ll be nine next week. Wednesday. This is positively fascinating, but I’ve got to get ready for lunch.” She stalked across the porch and opened the screen door. There she hesitated, and turned. “Why do you want to know all that?”

  He stretched lazily. “I’m giving a party myself tomorrow night, and I wondered if you and Nick were old enough to be invited. I think you are.”

  The door slammed. He sat back and waited for her return. In five minutes she reappeared and walked by with a cool nod.

  “Have them send me over some lunch, will you?” he called after her. “Sandwiches and coffee will do.”

  While he waited, he planned the hours ahead as well as he could. Arrangements with the chef about party food. Invitations. Arguments with the chef about how to serve the truffles strictly undisguised. He winced when he thought of that touch. Was he as crazy as his quarry, baiting his trap with a victrola record and an underground fungus brought to light by the snout of a rooting pig? Perley’s face had said so, and he didn’t know about the pig’s part.

  The lunch gong rang, and he watched the strollers converge on the hotel. Without exception, each head turned in his direction. He put his feet up on the railing; a disarming gesture, he hoped. The door behind him slammed again and Joey came out, wiping her wet hands on her shirt.

  “How did you get in there?” he asked sharply.

  “Through the bathroom window. That’s nothing, we always do it.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Everybody. It’s
kind of low and it’s wider than it looks like, and it saves time if you’re in the back.” She saw that he was frowning and made a hurried and indignant defense. “I’ve washed!”

  “I can see that. Run along.”

  “Aren’t you eating any lunch?”

  “They’re sending it over. Run along and get yours and don’t dawdle after you’ve finished. Come straight back here.”

  There was an edge to his voice that she’d never heard before; he didn’t smile at her either. She backed slowly down the steps, her eyes on his face, and missed the bottom one. She thought he might laugh at that, so she laughed first, to encourage him. But he didn’t notice. He’s working, she told herself as she trotted over to the hotel; he’s working out the answer to his job.

  She was right. He was. He was remembering what she’d said about the window. She’d said: “Everybody does.” He walked around to the side of the cottage and checked for himself, wondering why he hadn’t done that before. There was a rise outside the bathroom and the distance from the ground to the window was only two feet. There was also a large, overturned flower pot for the use of juvenile entrants. He measured the removable screen, and the result was an ugly surprise. If he had to get in that way, he could; and with very little inconvenience. And visibility from the Pecks’ could be nicely avoided by a crouching approach along a low growing hedge.

  He went back to the porch and found his lunch on the card table. He pushed it aside, changed his mind, and ate absently.

  Who had come through that window the day Joey’s clothes were destroyed? Somebody, anybody, who weighed less than one hundred and sixty well-distributed pounds. Anybody who moved quietly and knew his way about. And why was it necessary to play that childish trick?

  He didn’t have to ask himself that; he’d known the answer all along. It wasn’t a trick and it wasn’t childish. The destruction of Joey’s clothes was a part of the destruction of Mary Cassidy.

  But who? Someone who had hated Mary Cassidy, who had killed her in cold blood and was still unsatiated. Someone who had hated her in the past and transferred that hate to the present; who’d hated her for what she’d made of her life, for what she’d given and received.

  He said the last words over again, for what she’d given and received. And what had she given? New life and confidence to a family of strangers, people to whom she was neither related nor obligated. New life, confidence, and a small girl who was both son and daughter. Joey. Was that it? Was Joey the key? She was Cassie’s own job, her own creation. And even a puppy had died because Cassie loved it.

  Or was Joey herself, without Cassie, something enviable, challenging, and intolerable? But he couldn’t find a reason for that. If that were true, then Joey would have met Cassie’s fate, and Cassie would be alive.

  No, the motive was Cassie. The puppy had been hers and hers only, and the clothes had been one of her successes. Cassie was behind it all. Someone still hated the half-starved little girl from Donegal who had tried to better herself, and succeeded; who had known how to make people happy; who, in a few hours, would be a handful of gray ashes.

  He heard a voice say: “They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,” and he was astonished and embarrassed when he realized the voice was his own. He looked around hastily but there was no one in sight. Just the same, he said to himself, I think I’ll read that one to Joey some day.

  He left the cottage and went over to the hotel. Cora screamed from the veranda and he screamed in return, but he didn’t stop. He went around to the service entrance because his business was with the chef. He found that worthy, a huge Swede, not in the kitchen where he belonged but in a string hammock under the trees. Their conversation gave them both pleasure. Axel, it seemed, liked parties. Private parties. He frankly admitted that they were all profit, to him. Sandwiches, yes. Five kinds. Lemonade? It was poison, certainly, but he’d brew it. Coffee by all means. Small cakes, naturally. A large platter of choice strawberries arranged around a mound of powdered sugar? Very pretty.

  “What can you do with a tin of truffles?” Mark asked.

  The chef’s eye glistened. “You have not!”

  “I have so! But see here, this is important. No disguise, no fancy business, nothing squeezed out of a tube. I want them recognizable, on sight. What’s wrong with a background of little squares of hot buttered toast?”

  Nothing, the chef admitted, except lack of inspiration. But if that was what Mr. East wanted, he could have it. They parted with mutual respect.

  Mark returned to the front of the building and entered the lobby. He wrote his invitations and put them in the mail boxes, covertly watched by the nervous clerk. Then he frustrated the telephone operator by making several calls to Bear River, and speaking English. His town guests accepted with a mixture of reluctance and curiosity. He thought several of them sounded as if they were consenting to an evening in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Mrs. Moresby, he imagined, was making a more scholarly comparison, due to her summer course at Columbia.

  He went back to the cottage, found Joey on the steps and his lunch tray removed.

  “Roberta says I can’t go to the concert,” she said.

  “And so you can’t. You wouldn’t like it.”

  “I would! I will! I’m crazy about music! Pee Wee’s going! What’s the matter with everybody all of a sudden? All of a sudden I can’t do this and I can’t do that! I’m almost nine!”

  “I know. But wouldn’t you rather stay home with me and play Russian Bank?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t know how to insist; he didn’t want to frighten her. “Have you ever heard one of those army camp bands?” He pulled down the corners of his mouth.

  “Yes I have, and you needn’t make faces. I’m crazy about them.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. It was broad daylight; they’d be back by six o’clock at the latest. There would be a crowd, a normal, friendly crowd. “Wait here,” he said, and he went inside and called Perley on the cottage extension. When he came back he was smiling. “You can go,” he said, “but only if you follow instructions. In the bus going down, you and Pee Wee will sit together. The driver will let you both off at the railway station, and you’ll transfer to Mr. Wilcox’s car. He’ll be waiting. And if anybody wants to know why, you tell him you love Mr. Wilcox the same as you love music. And you’d better love him too, because you’re going to stick to him like a brother. He’ll bring you home.”

  She accepted the terms joyfully and with only one question. “Why?”

  “Rough element at these affairs.”

  She agreed, and made a dash for the door.

  “What are you going to wear?” he asked. Her eyes were already dreaming over hooks and hangers.

  She paused. “This is like a party. Or Sunday. I got a pale blue handkerchief linen with Valenciennes,” she said glibly. “Real Valenciennes.”

  He let her go, and sat on the steps to watch the other preparations. Roberta came, silent and preoccupied, and he heard her moving about in the room she shared with Joey. Miss Rayner’s horse and buggy were brought to the parking lot, and Miss Rayner, in black silk, took a seat under the trees. Folly Number Seven, the newest and cleanest, roared up the hill like a Juggernaut and came to a snorting stop before the veranda. Cora and Kirby joined Miss Rayner, and Cora’s intermittent hoots mingled with the Folly’s fretful coughs. The Haskells, fat, overdressed, and flattered, rocked sedately on the veranda. Nick came out, examined the waiting guests with a cool stare, and walked over to the cottages. He was limping more than usual and his face was drawn and tired.

  “Coming for the girls?” Mark asked. “They’ve been long enough. I’ll call them.”

  “Don’t bother,” Nick said flatly. “I’m on my way to the Pecks’. I’ll stop here on the way back.”

  Mark watched as he moved on, dragging his foot. He was turning one phrase over and over in his mind. Dropped by a nurse, dropped by a nurse.

  The three Pecks came out, surpassi
ng the Haskells in raiment, and stopped to talk about the weather. It was a lovely day, and the sky was a lovely blue, and later on there might be a breeze.

  Franny was eloquent. “I was talking to Mr. Haskell at lunch,” she said. “He thinks we’ll have a storm. A perfectly dreadful one. But he doesn’t think we’ll get wet. He thinks it will hold off until late tonight, or maybe tomorrow. He’s really wonderful. He went to sea when he was a lad.”

  Joey can talk better than that, Mark thought with satisfaction. She could talk better than that the day she was born. “We need the rain for the crops,” he said solemnly.

  Roberta and Joey came out. He looked the latter over with pleasure; pretty as a picture, and not the candy box type.

  “Remember,” he warned softly.

  Franny heard him, puckered her mouth, and dimpled. “Remember what?” she asked.

  “To come back,” he grinned. He waved them on.

  They swooped on the Folly with loud laughter, and piled in. The Haskells hurried down the veranda steps like two Wagnerian characters late on cue. The Folly roared off.

  Mark saw Beulah join Miss Rayner under the trees. She said something, and pointed to the sky. Miss Rayner followed her look, rose, and shook out her skirts. Then the two of them walked arm in arm over to the fat bay, who watched their approach over a shoulder that looked as if it would shrug if it could.

  He sat on, smoking cigarettes. The concert party, together with the siesta hour, had cleared the lawns and the veranda. He gave everybody a chance to settle down before he strolled into the lobby.

  “I’m running up to see George Parmelee,” he said to the clerk. That gave him a wide range; George could be almost anywhere.

  The second floor halls were quiet and deserted. He knew the rooms he wanted and wasted no time. There was, he noted, nothing about summer hotel locks that a backward child couldn’t master in a minute.

  His first stop was Cora Sheffield’s suite, and it was as trim as a thoroughbred’s stable. The one visible concession to lure was a bottle of Blue Grass perfume tied with a yellow satin ribbon. The ribbon said “THIRD PRIZE,” in gold letters. He read the label on the bottle. Six ounces. About right for a likely colt.