The Listening Walls

by Margaret Millar

  “It was just an ordinary routine flight,” she said aloud, as if Dodd had been there to deny it. “Nothing sinister about it. Mrs. Kellogg’s black eye was the result of an ac­cident, not a beating up. The pill her husband gave her was Dramamine. She looked scared because she didn’t like traveling by plane. They got off at Los Angeles because—well, there could have been any number of reasons: Mrs. Kellogg’s condition, or Mr. Kellogg’s suddenly remem­bering a business deal, or both of them deciding to visit a relative they hadn’t seen for a long time.”

  A group of jets roared overhead in take-off. The house shook, the windows rattled, the sky changed.

  14.

  Helene Brandon planned the trip to the city as a surprise for Gill. Shortly before noon she appeared at his office looking chic and cheerful in her sable-trimmed suit and best pearls.

  Gill’s private secretary, Mrs. Keely, greeted her with restraint: A wife’s place is in her own office, not her husband’s. “Good morning, Mrs. Brandon. Mr. Brandon is not expecting you?”

  “No, he’s not. This is a surprise.”

  “Oh. He’s very busy this morning. He left orders that he was not to be disturbed until lunch time.”

  “It’s lunch time now.”

  She opened the door of his office, softly, in case he was dictating or talking on the telephone. But he was doing neither. He was bent over his desk, his head buried in his hands, while the ticker-tape machine beside him coughed politely for attention. She stood, quiet and motionless, watching him, thinking with surprise how vulnerable he looked and wishing she had never seen him like this. She would rather have had him arguing with her, shout­ing at her, criticizing her, anything but sitting there de­fenseless.

  “Gill?”

  He raised his head slowly. His eyes were red, as though he’d been rubbing them, trying to erase from them images he didn’t want to see. “Hello, Helene.”

  “Your secretary told me you were busy. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Not about... Oh Gill, stop it, stop worrying over things you can’t do anything about.”

  “I have more reason to worry now than at any time since she disappeared.”

  “Why? Has something happened?” She crossed the room and put her hands on his shoulders. They seemed frail and stooped under the padded cashmere coat. “Gilly, dear. Tell me.”

  “Amy never came home that night, Sunday. Rupert came home alone. Every word he’s spoken is a rotten lie.”

  “I can’t believe . . . How do you know?”

  “Dodd found out.”

  “Can you trust him?”

  “Further than I can Rupert.”

  His shoulders twitched impatiently under her embrace. She stepped back, and her hands dropped to her sides. Thoughts began swimming to the surface of her mind, ugly and sharp-toothed, like barracuda coming out of the ambush of kelp and crevice. I don’t care if she never came home, never comes home, never is seen again.

  “They left Mexico City together on Saturday,” Gill said, “bound for San Francisco. Their luggage was checked through. It arrived, but they didn’t. They got oft at Los Angeles. Their luggage wasn’t claimed until Sun­day evening.”

  “What does that prove?”

  “It proves what I’ve suspected all along, that Rupert’s whole story is a pack of lies. Amy didn’t come home Sun­day night, she didn’t pick up her dog, he didn’t drive her to any station, the highball glass with the lipstick stains wasn’t hers . . .”

  “How can you be sure of all that? Maybe they got off at Los Angeles together and took a plane up here the next day, still together.”

  “Why would they stop over in Los Angeles without any luggage? A man traveling alone might. No woman would.” He stopped to rub his eyes again. “There is some evi­dence that Rupert doped her to make her more—manageable.”

  “Doped her? Why, that’s crazy, that’s utterly crazy!”

  “I think,” he said quietly, “you’d prefer to believe that I’m crazy rather than that Rupert is corrupt. Is that right, Helene?”

  She leaned, suddenly and heavily, against the desk. “I—I’ve never said you were crazy, just some of your ideas.”

  “You’re convinced, aren’t you, that I have some sort of fixation on Amy which puts me in a position where I can’t evaluate facts. Go on, admit it, Helene. You’ve been thinking it for a long time, tossing hints, making implica­tions. You might as well say it outright.”

  Her mouth moved carefully, like a cornered animal feeling its way out of a trap. “I don’t believe either that you’re crazy or that Rupert is corrupt.”

  “You’re straddling the fence, eh?”

  “I’m trying to be detached and reasonable.”

  “You’re detached, all right. I think you’ve been de­tached for a long time, from Amy, from me too.”

  She could feel words boiling in her throat like lye, but she swallowed them all and said calmly, “I couldn’t be detached from you, Gill, you know that. But that doesn’t mean I must agree with you on everything, all the time. You don’t like Rupert and never have. I do.”

  “Why? Because he married Amy and took her off our hands?”

  It was close to the truth. “I thought he would make a good husband for her. And he has, until . . .”

  “Until. Yes. That’s a very large word.”

  “Oh, Gill, stop it. Don’t put me in the position of hav­ing to defend Rupert against you.”

  “You’re defending him against the facts, not me. The facts. Do you hear me?”

  “I’m sure everyone in the building can hear you.”

  “Let them!”

  They glared at each other across the desk. But deeper than Helene’s anger was a feeling of relief. He’s shout­ing, that’s good. At least he doesn’t look so vulnerable any more. He’s fighting, not just sitting with his neck bent and exposed as if to a guillotine.

  “While we’re airing grievances,” he said, more softly, “I must ask you not to wear your pearls when you take the train up to the city.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’ve been too many jewel robberies lately.”

  “The pearls are insured.”

  “Not for what they’re worth. And I can’t afford to re­place them. You might as well find out now, money’s tight. Call it bad luck on my part, or poor judgment, or both. But the fact is, we have to cut down, perhaps even sell the house.”

  “Sell our house?”

  “It might come to that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before? There are a hundred ways I could have been saving money.”

  “You can start now.”

  “I don’t mind.” But it was more than not minding; she felt quite excited at the idea of a change, a challenge. Per­haps they could find a ramshackle old house, and Gill and the kids could all help fixing it up, painting, putting on a new roof, making over curtains, repairing doors and steps. The whole family working together for a common purpose . . .

  “I’ve been poor before. I don’t mind.”

  “I do,” Gill said. “I mind very much.”

  She could still see the old house clearly in her mind, but no one was working on it. The roof leaked, the steps sagged, the windows were cracked and curtainless, the paint was peeling, and Gill was sitting on the front porch, his head in his hands, his neck exposed to any blow, any attack. “God damn you,” she said. “Stand up and fight.”

  “Fight? Fight what? You?”

  “Not me. You shouldn’t be fighting me. We should be on the same side, pulling together. And we would be if . . .”

  “If what? Let me hear your if’s, Helene.”

  “If it weren’t for Amy.”

  He
looked pained but not surprised. “You may re­gret saying that.”

  “Maybe I already do,” she said soberly. “But not be­cause I don’t believe it.”

  The intercom signaled for attention, and the voice of Gill’s secretary insinuated itself into the room, as pene­trating and genteel as the whisper of a lady librarian. “Mr. Dodd is on the telephone again, Mr. Brandon. Will you take the call?”

  “Go ahead. . . . Dodd? Yes. Yes, I understand. When? How much? Good God, didn’t anyone try to stop him? I know it’s legal, but under the circumstances . . . No, I can’t get away from the office until later this afternoon. Hold on a minute.” Gill put his hand over the telephone and spoke sharply to his wife, “I must ask you to wait out­side.”

  “Why?”

  “This is a personal matter.”

  “Meaning it’s about Amy?”

  “Meaning it’s none of your business.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” she said airily, but her cheeks burned red and when she walked to the door her legs felt weak and rubbery.

  She stopped at the secretary’s desk in the outer office. “Tell Mr. Brandon I couldn’t wait. I have another—appointment.”

  Appointment wasn’t quite the word, she thought, as she rode the elevator downstairs. Errand was closer. Errand of mercy. Or perhaps errand of mischief. It would depend on your viewpoint.

  On the street she hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of Rupert’s office.

  “That’s walking distance,” he said.

  “I know. I’m in a hurry.”

  “O.K. You from the Peninsula?”

  “Yes.”

  He screwed up his face in soundless laughter. “I can al­ways tell. After twenty-six years in this business you get intuition. I’m from the Peninsula myself. Redwood City. Every morning I take the train up here and I drive my cab all day and then I take the train back. Always been crazy about trains. The wife says I ought to of been an engineer. That way I wouldn’t always be running into a bunch of knucklehead cops always telling me where to park and what to do and making with the one-way streets. You waste a lot of gas on these one-way streets.”

  You waste a lot of gas, period, Helene thought irritably. Any other time the cabbie would have amused her, she would have asked questions, drawn him out, and later made a funny story of the incident to tell Gill and the kids. Today he seemed merely a talkative, annoying old man with a grievance.

  He parked at a red curb. She paid him and got out of the cab as quickly as possible.

  When she reached Rupert’s office, she found Miss Bur­ton in the act of combing her hair.

  “Why, Mrs. Brandon,” Miss Burton said, returning the comb to her purse with nervous haste. “We weren’t ex­pecting you.”

  Editorial “we” or Rupert-and-I “we,” Helene won­dered. She had never paid particular attention to Miss Burton in the past, and she wouldn’t have now if it weren’t for Gill’s suspicions. There was nothing special about her: eyes blue and rather solemn, short turned-up nose, plump, pink cheeks, temporary blond hair, short, sturdy legs intended for long and loyal service. The com­posite picture she presented was one of directness and simplicity; not even Gill, with his emotional astigma­tism, could have denied that.

  Helene said casually, “Is Mr. Kellogg around?”

  “He just left.”

  “I’ll wait, if I may. Or perhaps I’ll do some shopping and come back later.”

  “He won’t be in the office any more today,” Miss Bur­ton said. “He’s not feeling well. I think he’s coming down with the flu. He hasn’t been taking good care of himself since Mrs. Kel—since he’s been living alone.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, well, no proper meals for one thing. Good hot meals are very important.”

  “Do you cook, Miss Burton?”

  “Cook?” She flushed from the base of her throat to the tips of her ears. “Why? Why do you ask that?”

  “I’m just interested.”

  “I like to cook when there’s someone to cook for. Only there isn’t. I think that answers your question, and the other questions behind it.”

  “Other questions?”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  “But I don’t. I have no idea.”

  “Your husband has.” Miss Burton’s voice trembled, and a pulse began to beat, hard and unrhythmically, in her left temple. “Lots of ideas.”

  “Has he been talking to you?”

  “To me? No. Not to me. Behind my back. Hiring a greasy little detective to follow me, pump me—well, he was pumping at a dry well. He didn’t find out a thing, the same as you’re not going to because there’s nothing to find out, because I never . . .”

  “Wait a minute. Do you think I came here at my husband’s request?”

  “It’s a funny coincidence, last night the detective, now you.”

  Helene’s brief laugh was more like a cough of indigna­tion. “Why, if Gill knew I was here, he’d—well, no mat­ter. Let’s put it this way. I don’t agree with my husband on everything. If you’re angry with him for something he’s done, all right, that’s your privilege. But don’t let your anger spill over on me. I came here as a friend of Rupert’s. You’re his friend, too. . . . Aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, hadn’t we better work together, cooper­ate?”

  Miss Burton shook her head, more in sorrow than in denial. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I can trust any more.”

  “That puts two of us in the same boat. The question is, where’s the boat going? And who’s at the helm?”

  “I don’t know anything about boats.” Miss Burton’s voice was cold and cautious. “Not a thing.”

  “Neither do I, really. I went sailing once on the Bay with my husband. Years ago, just the two of us. Gill was the skipper and I was supposed to be the crew. God, it was awful. I was scared to begin with, because I can’t swim very well, and then a strong wind came up and Gill began shouting orders at me. Only I couldn’t understand them, they sounded like a foreign language or a child’s gibber­ish—ready about, hard alee, jibe ho. Gill explained them all to me afterwards, but at the time I felt such terrible confusion, as if some immediate and urgent action was expected of me but I couldn’t understand what. That’s the way I feel now, right this minute. There’s a strong wind, there’s danger, I should be doing something. But I don’t know what. The orders sound like gibberish, I can’t even tell where they’re coming from. And I can’t get off the boat. Can you?”

  “I haven’t tried.”

  “And you won’t try?”

  “No. It’s too late.”

  “Then we’d better get our signals straight,” Helene said bluntly. “Don’t you agree?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Where’s Rupert?”

  “I told you, he wasn’t feeling well, he went home.”

  “Straight home?”

  “He may have stopped for lunch. He always eats at the same place at noon, Lassiter’s, on Market Street, near Kearny.”

  Lassiter’s was a moderately priced bar and grill that catered to the men of the financial district. They were a martini crowd, consisting of third vice-presidents, sales managers, West Coast representatives, all of them known as executives, a word which meant nothing except that it entitled them to a two-hour lunch.

  She spotted Rupert immediately, sitting at the counter with a bottle of beer and a hamburger in front of him, both untouched. An open paperback book was propped against the beer bottle, and he was staring at it but not reading it. He looked tense and expectant, as if he was waiting for someone he didn’t like or something he didn’t want to face.

  When she touched him lightly on the shoulder he jumped and the book fell on its side and the beer bot
tle teetered.

  She said, “Aren’t you going to eat your lunch?”

  “No.”

  “I hate to see anything wasted.”

  “Help yourself.”

  He got up and she took his place at the counter and reached for the hamburger without embarrassment or self-consciousness.

  He stood behind her while she ate. “What are you do­ing here, Helene?”

  “Miss Burton told me you usually had lunch at this place so I came over and here you are.”

  “And now what?”

  She spoke quickly and quietly so the man on the next stool wouldn’t overhear. “Gill just had a phone call. From Dodd. I’m sure it was about you and some money. I could only hear Gill’s part of the conversation and not much of that. He asked me to wait outside so I couldn’t hear any more, but I think he’s going to meet Dodd late this afternoon. They may be planning some kind of show­down.”

  “About the money?”

  “I guess so.”

  “They have no grounds.”

  The man on the next stool paid his check and left, and Rupert sat down in his place.

  “Listen,” Helene said. “I’ve got to know more about this. I’ve put myself in a bad position trying to defend you. I want to be reassured that I’m doing the right thing.”

  “You are.”

  “What money was Dodd talking about?”

  “I cashed a check on Amy’s account, using her power of attorney.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do people cash checks? Because they need money.”

  “No, I meant why all the fuss on Dodd’s part, and Gill’s? Gill said it was legal but that someone should have stopped you, under the circumstances.”