This Sweet Sickness

by Patricia Highsmith

  “You can always sublet. Hate to lose you as a tenant.”

  “No, I’ll sell even if I take a loss. I should have my things out in about a week.”

  “Well, you won’t have to take a loss, Mr. Newmaster,” Mr. Willis said with a laugh. “I’ve got two people who want a house around that area and in that price range.”

  “Good. The sooner the better, Mr. Willis, because I’d like the money before I go abroad.”

  “I think we can manage it. Can I show the house any time I want to?”

  “Any time at all.”

  They set a time to meet at Mr. Willis’s office in Beck’s Brook next Saturday morning to make the mortgage arrangements, and it was Mr. Willis’s opinion he could have the house sold by then, in which case the bank would give David back all the money he had put into it.

  David hoped so, because he thought William Neumeister might have to disappear without trace, in which case he would not be able to receive the money the house would bring. He recalled William Neumeister’s signature on his mortgage, the same signature with which he had registered with the electric company and the propane gas company and with which he had paid his bills for the Ballard house from Neumeister’s checking account (if he wanted the money from the checking and savings accounts, he’d have to go in person to Beck’s Brook and close them), and for the first time, he felt a doubt of William Neumeister’s luck. Annabelle’s words had made him afraid, had made him ashamed of the William Neumeister game. He would have to be careful in Beck’s Brook. It scared him to think of facing the Beck’s Brook police again as William Neumeister. It was as if since his house was shattered, its privacy gone, so was the character William Neumeister. He felt he wouldn’t be able to bring it off again.

  Putting the house up for sale at this time might look suspicious, but he had been unable to postpone it a day longer. He was afraid Annabelle might ask to see the spot where Gerald had died, that the police might want him to tell her, firsthand, how it had happened. It was unthinkable to keep the house. In fact, it was not even safe to go back there. And yet the thought of hiring someone to pack up his things was distasteful to him.

  But Mr. Willis would probably telephone someone on his list of prospective clients, someone who would never have heard of the Delaney-Neumeister story. Mr. Willis would be the only person who knew he had put up his house for sale the day after Gerald’s death, and Mr. Willis, like Mrs. McCartney, thought highly of him as a tenant.

  In the Froudsburg Herald on Monday evening, there was a picture of his house, showing the front steps against which Gerald had fallen and also a small, fuzzy picture of Gerald, ugly and grinning. And Effie had directed Gerald to the house. That enigma panicked David. If she knew that much about him, she would start trying to find out why he kept the house in the name of Neumeister, and very likely, out of spite because he had rejected her or out of a sense of justice, she would tell the police that Neumeister and Kelsey were one and the same. David was unable even to face that possibility.

  Should he call up Effie—which was what an innocent man would do—and ask her if the man she had talked to on Sunday had told her his name or what he wanted? Could he dare deny flatly, if Effie asked him, that the house in the newspaper photograph was his? What was he going to say when Effie told him that the man whose picture was in the paper tonight was the man she had talked to?

  There was no way out except to deny everything.

  It was after 8 P.M. David dreaded the strain of another telephone call, having gotten successfully through the call to the Beck’s Brook police at 6 P.M. and to Mr. Willis immediately afterward. David put the newspaper back on the sideboard. He was the last one in the dining room.

  Sarah, nearly finished with her clearing, said a dull “How are you tonight, Mr. Kelsey?” and passed him with a tray.

  David went upstairs for his overcoat, got Effie’s number from the little book by Mrs. McCartney’s telephone in the hall, then went out and walked almost to Main Street to reach a certain shabby pharmacy that had a telephone booth. He called Mr. Willis again and asked him please not to put a FOR SALE sign on or around the house until after next weekend. Then, though he had intended to call Effie Brennan, he found he was not up to it.

  He walked back through the slush to Mrs. McCartney’s, wondering how he would get through the evening, how he had gotten through the four or five hundred other evenings he had spent in his room. It was as if his wretched room itself had suffered an invasion. The Neumeister part of his life had entered the Kelsey Monday-to-Friday part, and like certain chemicals on mixing had set off an explosion. David was not used even to thinking about his weekend life during his working days and evenings. Now his weekend existence had, in fact, been destroyed. Slush-slush-slush went his shoes on the filthy sidewalks.

  And there was Annabelle angry, loathing him, angry and mistaken, and he himself too distraught to think how to set things right again. That should be his number-one project—Annabelle. He decided to attempt a letter tonight, a calm, sympathetic letter that would make Annabelle feel less hostile toward him and help him also to clarify his own thoughts. He immediately felt better with that plan in mind for the evening.

  As soon as he turned on the light in his room, he saw the little rectangle of paper on his bed that meant a telephone message:

  Miss Brennan called at 8:30. Wants you to call back.

  FR 6-7739.

  He would not call her, he thought. He could conceivably be out all evening, returning too late to call her back. But she’d call again tonight, or call tomorrow at the factory, he knew. At some point he would have to face it. He took a deep breath and walked to his door again. He walked back to the same pharmacy and called her number.

  “Oh, hello, David,” Effie said in a friendly, excited voice. “Did you see the paper tonight?”

  “The paper?”

  “Yes. The man who was killed, you know—He’s the man who was at Mrs. McCartney’s yesterday asking about you. His picture’s in the paper tonight. Look at it, Dave. Gerald Delaney. You know him, don’t you?”

  David’s heart had taken only the mildest dip. “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t? He knew you. Well, I thought you’d be terribly interested.”

  “No. I mean, I’m only interested because he seemed to know me.” David looked out of the telephone booth at a middle-aged man just a yard away from him, inspecting a row of pocketbooks. He had the feeling the man was listening, knew that he lied, that the man was a police detective ready to arrest him as soon as he came out of the booth. “They told me at the house he was drunk,” David added, dry in the mouth.

  “Oh, not drunk. But he’d had a few all right.”

  David sensed her caution. She was waiting for him to say more. “And where did you tell him I was? Mrs. McCartney said you made up a place.”

  “Well, I said—Oh, David, can I see you tonight? Can’t you come over?”

  He hesitated. “Not very well, Effie. I’ve got some work to do tonight.”

  “Look at the paper, David. They’ve got a picture of the house. It belongs to William Neumeister.” She pronounced it “Newmester,” the way the Beck’s Brook police had. “You know him, don’t you?”

  “No,” David said.

  “You don’t? In Ballard?”

  “No,” David said with very genuine impatience.

  “But I saw you going there once, David. You put your car in the garage.”

  “I did?”

  “Look at the picture in the paper. William Newmester. Maybe I’m pronouncing it wrong. I know it’s the house. First on the right on County Road with the big chimney.”

  “It must have been somebody else you saw there.”

  “I guess I know your car, don’t I?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in Ballard,” David said stubbornly.
/>   Now she was silent.

  “But I’ll take a look at the story, Effie.”

  “Listen! If you recognize the man, would you let me know? Call me back. I’m kind of curious.”

  “Sure, Effie.” He dropped the telephone on the hook. The last moments had exhausted him.

  It was probably with Wes that she had seen him at the house, David thought. He had never seen Effie with anyone else who had a car. Even if she hadn’t been with Wes, she would tell him all about this, because people always spilled out an exciting story, one with a mystery in it and the death of a man she had spoken to just before he was killed. David remembered Wes asking suspiciously, “She lives in a nursing home? Not in a house?”

  David dreaded tomorrow and seeing Wes. And maybe, like Effie, he would telephone tonight.

  He went back to the boardinghouse. He could not even start in his mind the letter to Annabelle.

  14

  Wes, however, was his usual self the next day. David met him at ten in the morning in a corridor, and Wes kept him a minute or two telling a long joke about an old maid and a burglar which David managed to laugh at, and then Wes slapped him on the back and walked on.

  David began to feel easier. Maybe he could lie his way out with Effie. Maybe she had not been with Wes when she saw him at the Ballard house. If he kept insisting it hadn’t been him she saw, what could she do about it? And by this weekend, he would be out of the house.

  The vertical hands of his wristwatch that evening reminded him to report to the Beck’s Brook police—but that had been last night at six, he realized. “Okay, we’ll check again,” the police voice had said, but they hadn’t said when they would check at the Barclay, and they hadn’t told him when they wanted him to check with them again. Perhaps they didn’t want him to call again. Perhaps he was overanxious. David remembered that quite by accident, when he spoke to the police, he had not said where he was calling from, but suppose they were calling the Barclay in New York at this moment and learning that William Neumeister was not there and never had been?

  For a moment, David debated going to New York and staying overnight at the Barclay as William Neumeister. It would at least be on record. Or should he simply call the Beck’s Brook police again, voluntarily? Appear to be cooperative? He put his overcoat on and left the house.

  He called from the pharmacy near Main. A young voice answered.

  “Hello,” David said. “This is William Neumeister again.”

  “Oh-h, Mr. Newmester. Well—nothing to report from here, I guess. You’re still in New York?”

  “Yes. I may be here for—anyway, over next weekend, I think,” David said, and as he had last night, he lowered his voice somewhat, because he thought he had talked to the police officers on Sunday in a hypercautious growl in an effort to seem calm.

  “I see,” said the young voice. “Well, thanks for calling us.” And there was even a smile in the words.

  David walked back to the boardinghouse, had his supper, started to read a book that he had brought from the factory’s library, and then decided to take a walk. Gerald was probably buried today, he thought, and it had been on his mind all day to write a letter to Annabelle. He wanted to write the letter before he settled down with his book, and he began to think about the letter as he left the house. Platitudes of sympathy came to his mind first, and he discarded them with disgust. I want you with me now. After all, that was all he wanted to say.

  It took him until eleven to produce a ten-line letter that satisfied him. He did not say anything about wanting her. He was sympathetic.

  The next day, Wednesday, just after the lunch hour, the intercom announced all over the building that David Kelsey was wanted on the telephone. David went back to his office to take it, knowing that his secretary was with Lewissohn that afternoon. David had a ghastly premonition that it was the Beck’s Brook police wanting to see him. Annabelle had told them that Gerald had been trying to find him on Sunday. Or they had called Effie and asked her why she had sent Gerald to the house in Ballard and she blurted out that she had seen him there. “You’re David Kelsey?” the plump, alert-faced young policeman would say. “Sunday you said your name was William Neumeister.”

  A deeper older voice said, “Mr. Kelsey? Sergeant Terry of Beck’s Brook speaking. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

  “No.”

  “Uh—you know a Mrs. Annabelle Delaney of Hartford, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that her husband left Hartford to go to see you last Sunday?”

  “I was told that.”

  “Where were you Sunday, Mr. Kelsey?”

  “I was visiting my mother—at a nursing home.”

  “A nursing home where?”

  “Hazelwood, it’s called. Five miles north of Newburgh.” It was one of the two nursing homes that were approximately an hour’s distance by car from Froudsburg.

  “Newburgh,” the man repeated, as if he were taking notes.

  The voice continued in an easy tone: “I take it you read about Delaney’s death in the papers.”

  “Yes—and I called Mrs. Delaney when I heard about it.”

  “Do you know William Newmester?” he asked with a note of hope.

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “But you know a Miss Elfrida Brennan.”

  “Yes. I know her slightly.”

  “You have any idea why she sent Delaney to his house in Ballard?”

  “Well, I spoke to her on the phone. She said she didn’t really know of a house there—that she just made up a place to tell Gerald to go to that day. He’d had a few drinks, I heard.”

  “Yes. Do you have any doubts, Mr. Kelsey, that Miss Brennan’s telling the truth? This is strictly confidential between us, so you can be honest with me.”

  “No, sir. I have no reason to have any doubts. Why?”

  “Well, we’re trying to find Newmester. Mrs. Delaney wants to see him. Talk to him, y’know, and ask him what happened. Newmester’s in New York and he won’t be back till next week.” The voice sounded unbelievably casual.

  “Oh,” David said.

  “We don’t think Newmester’s got any reason to hide, and yet we don’t know. He’s not at the hotel he said he’d be at in New York, and we thought Miss Brennan might know him and might be trying to protect him.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Uh-hm. When did you see Delaney last, Mr. Kelsey?” the lazy voice continued.

  “I saw him three or four weeks ago when I went up to Hartford.”

  “Did he seem hostile when you saw him then?”

  David took a deep breath. “Frankly, I’ve never paid much attention to Delaney. I’m a friend of his wife’s.”

  “Just a friend, Mr. Kelsey?”

  “Yes,” David replied, thinking the truth included friendship, after all. “Isn’t that what she told you?”

  “Ye-es, she did,” the man drawled, and he sounded as if he believed it. “Delaney wasn’t by any chance jealous?”

  “I don’t know what his motivations were. Maybe his wife knows. You might ask her.”

  “Hm-m. She said her husband had a bad temper.”

  “Sergeant, I’ve seen Delaney only once in my life, and that was in Hartford three or four weeks ago.”

  “I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Kelsey. One thing more. Can you give us the telephone number of your landlady?”

  David gave it. A moment later, walking away from the telephone, he felt a sink of defeat: the Beck’s Brook police would very likely remark to Annabelle that he had been visiting his mother over the weekend. Annabelle knew his mother was dead.

  And there was the other little matter that Annabelle wanted to see William Neumeister.

  Mrs. McCartney
was waiting in the hall that evening, and she began to talk as soon as she saw him. The Beck’s Brook police had called and asked her a lot of questions, and she was at great pains to tell David that she had given him the highest kind of “references.” Mrs. Starkie had been standing by, too, to corroborate everything that Mrs. McCartney had said to the police. Mrs. Starkie joined them in the hall. So did Mr. Muldaven. Mr. Muldaven had also been in the house when the police call came.

  “I told them you were the finest young man who’d ever set foot in this house,” Mrs. McCartney averred to David.

  David listened for Annabelle’s name, but he did not hear it. The police had been interested only in his personal habits, and in where he had been that weekend, and Mrs. McCartney had told them he spent every weekend with his mother, and had for the two years she had known him.

  “Who is this Newmester?” Mrs. McCartney asked.

  “I don’t know,” David said.

  “Don’t you worry about anything, David,” Mrs. Starkie put in.

  “Thank you.” David had not known he had such a champion in Mrs. Starkie, whom he hardly so much as greeted when they encountered each other in the house. “Would you excuse me now?” David asked, ignoring a babble of questions. “I’d like to go upstairs.”

  “Of course, you would, dear boy,” said Mrs. McCartney, patting his sleeve. “You go ahead. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  It was a pleasure to climb the stairs and leave their voices behind him, a pleasure to close his door and snap the lock under the knob and breathe again! Why hadn’t they mentioned Gerald, David wondered. Why hadn’t the police told Mrs. McCartney that he knew him? Were they saving that for something? If so, what? Had Annabelle really not told them he was in love with her? Maybe he was going to be saved by the very gun Gerald had carried. A drunken mistake with a flourish of a gun was disgrace enough, but if a story of jealousy of his wife’s lover came out, that would make Gerald a premeditating killer.