Murder by Reflection

by H. F. Heard

  His mind was in complete confusion. Why had he suddenly made an advance to her? Why? Because he had, a few moments before, caught sight of the possibility of escape, complete escape from her. And this, the hope of escape, had suddenly reduced his pressure of resentment and disgust. What he liked to call his captive rage was assuaged. It was an all-too-consistent reaction in him, consistent to his inconsistency. To him, living in a dream, the thought of being free was almost tantamount to the fact—with the additional advantage that in actual fact he had had to do nothing about it. So he made his advance to her, his friendly gesture of relief toward his companion because he had glanced a neat way of ridding himself of his proprietress.

  He had divided the actual person into two, for she had for him no real existence of her own. She was for him two persons because she had two aspects in his life. And had the companion aspect responded properly, why, then he might have been content for the proprietress aspect to be “let off with a caution,” even if that caution were spoken only to himself. His nature would, probably, have been satisfied just to know that he had the whip hand and next time she misbehaved, next time she became wholly the proprietress, why, then she would have to go. But she had refused his offer of terms. She had shown that she considered herself the wronged party. It was then clear that he would have to submit even further if he were to be let live with the shadow of her disapproval lifted. The two sides of his will came together—the daylong-dreaming desire to be free and the required persistency of effort to effect his freedom. And immediately, as when binoculars are focused, he saw a single image, no longer two. Instead of an old-time companion with whom one side of him was familiar—an efficient housekeeper who alternated with an exasperating governess—now only one person remained constantly in his mind, a person who simply must be dismissed. And yet, even then, and wasn’t that providential, it could all be accident, just a daydream, as far as he was concerned, but a daydream which nature might by accident—could he call it happy accident?—make actual.

  After a considerable time he rose, remarking in hardly more than a whisper, “It can be put to the test. Nature can decide.”

  Chapter XII

  After that sub-acute storm the house seemed no worse, if no better. They seemed to have reached a new norm of tacitly agreed distance. She was certainly far from happy, pretty certainly her health was paying for her bitterness of mood, but it was apparently a resigned bitterness. He was certainly not genial, pretty certainly indifferent, but apparently content to carry on. The domestic staff accepted the atmosphere of this new act. The house ran quietly.

  Arnoldo went out little. He was apparently absorbed in his work. His day was almost as regular as though he had had an office to attend. He would work from after breakfast; be called for lunch; return immediately after; be called in time to change for dinner. Once she remarked to him, in the, few exchanges they had, that she had been doing the month’s house-bills and the bill for current was very high. Did he think the servants left the lights on all day in their quarters? He thought it was more likely his fault. If that was so, he did not think the consumption would be anything like so high next month.

  He worked so hard that he even neglected Marian Gayton. He called on her only once, and then to recover the tube he had lent her. She showed him how she had kept the readings but he did not seem much interested. She was too intelligent to press him as to why he was abstracted. All he told her was that he wanted the tube for work he was now doing up at the house.

  His only other interruption was forced on him. Coming down to lunch, he found Kermit there and that Irene had invited him to stay. Evidently her loneliness made her anxious for any company. Afterward Kermit asked whether he might see the laboratory. He was distinctly interested.

  “That’s a pretty intensive hook-up,” he remarked, looking at the linked tubes and valves spread over the wall facing the window.

  “Oh, it’s simply an amateur idea,” smilingly replied Arnoldo. “Amateurs always use twice as much material and their models are always several times as large as a professional’s. I had an idea about some resonant effects, but I don’t think I’m getting anywhere.”

  They parted, and in a few days Arnoldo proved his words. He told Irene about it.

  “I don’t know whether it’s just staleness from working top hard, but I think I’ve reached a dead end, at least for the time being.”

  “All this work and expense gone for nothing?” she asked querulously.

  “Well, perhaps after a rest I might come back to it.”

  She went on complaining a little, but he acted on his decision. He had Joe help him dismantle much of the wiring and the valves, packing them away.

  It was late summer now and there was some real heat. The smell of the orange and lemon groves seemed to become something which you might almost see—a thick, sticky, all-too-sickly sweet mist. It seemed to be in one’s mouth, almost as much as in one’s nose, a dense incense, as in an unventilated church, or the vapor of anaesthetic gas as it hangs about an operating room. Clothes and sheets and the pages of books seemed impregnated with it.

  Mrs. Heron began to complain of her sleep. As Dr. Hertz was leaving her one day—she had stayed in her bedroom till he called—Arnoldo met him on the stairs.

  “Couldn’t you suggest to her that she move her bedroom?” he suggested.

  “The room she is in now must get pretty hot these days,” the doctor allowed.

  “And the smell of the orange groves comes in more that side. There are practically no groves north of us.”

  “Is there a bedroom there that she could make use of for the time being?”

  “Yes, we are pretty certain the big north room on that floor was used as a summer bedroom by the people who built the place.”

  “All right, I will say something to her. Often just a change of bedroom, or even just changing the way the bed points, will improve bad sleeping. We are queer, suggestible creatures, Mr. Heron. I hope you have not been feeling your blood pressure again?”

  No, Arnoldo had not. But no; neither would his mother move. She proved highly unsuggestible, at least on that point. No; she would not leave her bedroom with its lovely view of the front garden.

  “She can’t be shifted,” said the doctor after his attempt. “Better let her stay. If she took a dislike to the change that would only make the insomnia worse.”

  But it certainly continued. Dr. Hertz suggested light garden work—just to walk among the plants and do a little casual pruning.

  “Help her,” he advised Arnoldo, “by being with her and carrying out the little things she may suggest. Gradually she’ll do some herself and get simple exercise. You’ll be able to keep her quietly interested out of doors.”

  Arnoldo was evidently quite willing to co-operate in helping this gentle nature cure. It seemed to point to a moderate success. Mrs. Heron responded. They did not talk much, and then only about immediate garden things. But it looked like a slow healing, or at least an approach to healing. He would work quietly beside her as she pruned the roses and did other light work, would fetch shears, scissors, twine, basket for her.

  His own many-faceted interest seemed now to have turned back to natural history. It did not, however, stay long at botany but drifted on to the neighboring science, entomology. He became fascinated with the plants’ insect-guests. When she protested he would say, “They are really more interesting than the flowers.” He began to carry his inquiry into the house itself.

  “You’d be surprised at the number of different sorts of spiders even a house like this harbors.” She shrugged her shoulders with disgust.

  “But they are wonderful creatures,” he would reply with a quiet but vexing reasonableness.

  Then one afternoon he came to her in the garden. The weather was still more close and hot. The air seemed almost a tepid drink composed of mixed scents. She was resting on a chaise-longue under the trees.

  “It’s lucky I turned entomologist in time and became inte
rested in our insect house-guests—as well as those who prefer your flowers as their hosts.”

  “Why?” she roused herself to ask languidly.

  “Because we are in time. White ants are in the house. We can tackle them all right. Very likely they were hidden somewhere about the place when we took it. Something—this damp, hot weather, probably—has started them up.”

  “What a nuisance!” she complained. “Now we shall have to have the place turned upside down with fumigators and pest-hunters.”

  “No; they are only in one small place; I’ve looked about carefully. And I’ve enough knowledge now, myself, to tackle it. They aren’t really a difficulty if you take them in time. They are really very helpless creatures.”

  “Well, you’d better do something at once! Where have they made an entry?”

  “I spotted it by catching sight of part of their little mud-tunnel, in which they have to travel, showing up on the white boarding of one of the windows. You can see the window from here.”

  “Why, that’s the last window of my bedroom!”

  “Let’s go up and inspect. As I say, I don’t think they’ve made more than a landing, but a wooden house like this is a banquet to them if once they get hold.”

  She had roused herself, disgusted at the thought of these little vermin infesting and consuming her home, and she and Arnoldo were already on their way to inspect. He led her upstairs.

  “You’ll see it easier from the inside than by looking up from underneath.”

  When they were in her bedroom by the window she looked out.

  “I don’t see any marks.”

  “I’ve cleared away the connecting passage they had built. That cuts off further invasion—if this is their one entry, as I hope. But look here.”

  They bent down near where the long window frames came to the floor, flanking a window seat. Quite clearly she could see a narrow tube of what looked like congealed sand running a few inches from a crack in the floor boards along to a crack in the wall panel’s skirting. He broke open the long shell with the point of a pencil. Inside could be seen moving the dirty-white, grublike termites.

  “How disgusting!” she said, drawing back.

  “We’re in time, though,” he replied.

  “Can you get them out?”

  “Oh, quite easily. Just a few days’ work. You’ll have to move out for a night or two.”

  “But there’s no room ready.”

  “Well, you know, I’ve finished working in the big north room. Joe and I have packed up all the apparatus I was working with. It isn’t as if the room had been used as a real laboratory. Electricity has no smell.” “Like money,” he had nearly added, but thought the quotation might not be considered apt. She was willing to look at it. They went over to that side of the house.

  “It’s very bare,” she said. “And look at the way the south wall has been marked!”

  “Those are only screw and clamp holes. I can tidy it up in a few hours. Meanwhile I must put some fumigation on that floor of yours at once.”

  She let Joe and him carry her things out and move her bed.

  “If we put the bed-head against the wall—that was where the state-bed stood before, when the room was used as a summer bedroom—it will hide the scars on the wallpaper.”

  She soon tired, ceased superintending the exodus, and wandered up and down the broad corridor. Then she complained of the smell.

  “Yes,” he said, coming to the door of her old bedroom. “I shall have to shut this room up pretty tight. The smell is pretty unpleasant and, besides, we want the termites to get it undiluted.”

  She wandered off downstairs.

  That night he seemed mildly excited, joking with Joe as he was valeted. Joe responded. Mrs. Heron’s languidness felt a certain relief that he and the staff seemed more at their ease again. She and he said little, but she felt that the tension was less.

  “Perhaps,” she thought, “it’s in myself more than in them all. If I could sleep better perhaps I might feel things less. Perhaps the change of room is providential and I ought to have tried it before.”

  She did sleep better and felt more rested, though the weather remained torrid. He worked to get her room right but reported, after a couple of days, that though he had checked the place they had found, he had uncovered two other places.

  “They are in farther than I thought, but certainly not through the place. I’ve taken up a number of the floor boards and it’s quite clear now.”

  She came and looked into the room. It smelled badly and the planking was widely torn up.

  His, “But it will be a little while before we can have the room clear and sweet for you,” was demonstrable.

  He worked hard but also found time to make her comfortable. Each day, as soon as she left her bedroom, he would go in and work at redecorating it. Joe and he polished the floor and touched up the paint.

  “Why not have a decorator?” she said.

  “Oh, it’s a relief to get back to applied art after all this science, and the paint gets the smell of the insecticide out of my nose.”

  “Evidently his weathercock interest has swung back again,” she thought; “the full circle: art, physics, biology, art.”

  She was quite content, then, when he asked if he might carry out a scheme for the summer bedroom, as he now called it. Their relationship seemed as though it now might go right back, it too going full circle, to the balance they had had when they first became associates in the New York suburb which now seemed more than an epoch away. He would be the artist again, bringing things of beauty for her to admire and, across that bridge, they would meet, or at least greet one another.

  The design he now drew out was really quite a charming light decorative scheme which had the advantage that he could work at it, bit by bit, each day when the room was free. He secured white silk hangings for the bed and put bunches of white plumes on the top of the posts.

  “A little funereal,” she remarked.

  “They had them there before; the effect is fine and also gives a sense of coolness.”

  It was rather stately. But he was vexed with the bed-head which, he said, and it was true, was not in keeping. One afternoon when she came in to watch him at work, she found that he had taken off this part of the bed structure. The screw-marked wall showed behind.

  “I’m going to do a thorough job.” He turned to her. “Look,” taking up from the floor a drawing; “this is the design I want to paint on the wall instead of the bed-head.”

  It was a delightful decorative panel—a white peacock, with its tail fanned, stood on a small mound of pale blue, while wading birds, egrets, storks, and ibis stood in the silver pool which surrounded the little island.

  “Your heraldic creature will watch over your sleep.”

  She was more pleased than she could remember being for a long while. Every morning he would work on it. The light, however, he soon complained, was not good enough so far from the window. So he rigged up some powerful lamps which he said gave, with their hard, blue-white light, an illumination even better than daylight. He would put them up against the wall and himself standing behind them, “to prevent the shadow of one’s arm from falling on what one is painting,” he would pick out the mural. Every afternoon he would put other lamps—less luminous, but they were, he said, rapid drying-out lamps—to play on the wall so that it might be quite dry and not smell of the paint when Mrs. Heron went to bed. The painting took some time to finish. But Mrs. Heron was greatly pleased with it and even more with the attention that he had given to it. She became attached to the room, and when he suggested that she stay on, as it was really now a finer apartment than that she had occupied, she consented.

  Chapter XIII

  Her sleep had improved; but her energy did not come back as quickly as she had been certain it would, if she slept. Indeed, as the cooler weather arrived she became markedly more lethargic. Dr. Hertz was sent for again. At first he was generally hopeful. Then he became specifically
concerned. Soon after that he had some blood tests made. After calling on Mrs. Heron and advising the usual iron with the new trace of copper in it, asking if she took enough liver, and inquiring whether she would take ventriculin, he left her resting in her fine white bed and asked Joe if he might see Mr. Heron. Arnoldo came down from his room.

  Dr. Hertz was quite frank: “I’m doing all I can, but I must warn you privately that I take now a serious view of the patient’s prospects.”

  Arnoldo asked why. Was she not naturally a highly nervous person?

  “That is the reason for not telling her. Fear always reacts unfavorably. But you should know. Maybe she will respond to treatment with the current standard palliatives; but …” He paused; Arnoldo turned and with his foot arranged a mat which was lying a little out of place. “The blood tests seem to show a condition like, very like, leukemia.”

  “Is that”—Arnoldo had now brought the mat into line by poking it with the point of his boot—“is that serious?”

  “If the finding is correct, yes; yes, indeed, very serious.”

  The finding evidently was correct. Mrs. Heron, it was soon clear, was gravely ill. It was not a rapid decline but she never rallied. Dr. Hertz came to see her regularly. He was too honest to hold out hopes, but he knew of a number of palliatives for her condition and its accompanying symptoms. At the right time he advised a nurse and when the next stage arrived he sent in a second. Arnoldo was attentive, vigilant, saw that his instructions were carried out. After three months Mrs. Heron died.

  Dr. Hertz was kindly with Arnoldo, who broke down completely. “It was a case of failure to acclimatize, I believe,” he said. “She never really responded to the stimulating, maybe overstimulating, contrast of this semitropical condition. That happens not infrequently with certain elderly people out here. Perhaps if she had gone out more she would have been able to adapt better. But of course she was of the age when that particular trouble may show itself wherever one happens to be living.” To himself he thought, “She wasn’t a happy woman. I wonder whether there’s a correlation between malignancy and resentment?”