“Hello?” said Grace Bradley, at the same time making the sign of the cross.
“Mrs. Bradley? This is Luanne Utley. I’m terribly sorry to bother you at this hour. I’m looking for my daughter, Winifred Utley. She was supposed to be home at ten-thirty, and she hasn’t come home. I’m out of my mind. My husband is out of town.”
“Who is this?” asked Grace, confused.
“Luanne Utley. Mrs. Raymond Utley. My husband is the new president of Veblen Aircraft. We bought the Prindeville house on Varden Lane.”
“Yes? Isn’t it awfully late to be calling?”
“I’m looking for my daughter, Winifred.”
“Why would you think she’d be here? It’s two o’clock in the morning. Do my children even know her?”
“Your son Constant danced with her at the club junior dance tonight.”
“I don’t think my son was at a dance, Mrs. Utley. I think he had dinner with his sisters.”
“Please. Would you look, Mrs. Bradley? I’m sorry to bother you. I know it’s a terrible hour to call anyone. Winifred said she’d be home at ten-thirty. She’s never late. Ever. I am worried about her. Could you put your son on the phone? Please.”
“Hold on,” said Grace. She got out of bed and put on her robe and slippers.
The room that I usually used in that house, the room that had once been Agnes’s room, before she was put away, had lately been used by Freddy Tierney, and I was sharing a room with Constant. I was in that room asleep when Grace opened the door and turned on the light. Immediately I awoke and sat up in bed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, startled to see Grace Bradley standing in the doorway.
“Where’s Constant?” she asked.
I looked over to his bed. It was empty. It had not been slept in. “I don’t know,” I said.
“There is a woman on the telephone. Mrs. Utley. She is looking for her daughter. She said that Constant was dancing with her at the club. Do you know if that’s right?”
“Yes, he did dance with her.”
“Are Kitt and Mary Pat here?”
“Yes, I brought them home. Constant stayed. I went back to pick him up when the dance was over at ten.”
“And the Utley girl. I can’t remember her name. Was she there?”
“Winifred. I assumed she went home with Billy Wadsworth. He was her date.”
Grace went to an extension phone in the upstairs hall and picked it up. I got out of bed and followed. “No, Mrs. Utley. Your daughter is not here.… Yes, he is, but he is asleep.”
Grace looked at me for an instant, as she told her lie.
“He said your daughter went home with Billy Wadsworth.… Oh, I see. You’ve talked to Mrs. Wadsworth, and to Billy.… I wish I could help you, Mrs. Utley.… Oh, no, I wouldn’t call the police,” said Grace, quickly. “You can’t be in a safer neighborhood than this. It’s patrolled hourly. Maybe she slept over with a girlfriend from school. I’m sure it will be all right.”
She said a few more comforting things. Then she hung up. She looked at me again. There was an expression of enormous sadness on her face, a look I had never seen before. “Girls, girls, girls,” she said. “Constant’s just like his father. And his brothers. Look where it got Jerry, this sort of thing. A cripple. And that girl in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say.
“How old is this Utley girl?”
“Fifteen, I would think.”
“Fifteen. Imagine her being out at this hour. I may not have any control over the men in my life, but I most certainly do over my daughters. Will you go downstairs? If Constant is there with her, drive her home, will you? Varden Lane. Tell the silly girl her poor mother is frantic. Good night, Harrison.”
I watched her walk down the long hall to her own bedroom. I, like Sally Steers, always thought she didn’t know of her husband’s infidelities. I realized then that she chose to ignore them. At her bedroom door, she turned back to me and saw me watching her. “Don’t tell Mary Pat and Kitt about this. I don’t want my daughters to know such things go on in this house.” She went into her bedroom.
I looked out the window. Constant’s Porsche was in front of the garage, where I had parked. I quickly pulled on my trousers and a sweater and a pair of loafers. I went down the hallway as quietly as possible and down the stairway. At the entrance to the living room, I cleared my throat as loudly as possible to warn them if they were in the act of making love. There was no reply. The room was quite dark and silent, except for the loud ticking of an antique clock on the mantel. I switched on the lights. The room was empty. I turned and walked over to the library. The door was shut. I knocked. I loudly cleared my throat again. There was no reply. I opened the door and walked in. “Constant?” I whispered. I turned on the lights. There was no one there. I turned on the lights in the dining room. It was empty. And in the lavatory under the curved stairs in the main hall. Empty. Turning quickly, I knocked over one of the dozens of Easter lily plants, and the blue-and-white cachepot in which it sat broke on the marble floor. I waited for a moment to see if anyone upstairs had been awakened by the noise. There was silence. Then I turned on the lights in the small room off the main hallway which Gerald used as an office. It, too, was empty.
Suddenly, there was a tap on the window. Someone was standing outside. I froze in fear. My parents, whom I rarely thought of, flashed through my mind, how it must have been for them at that moment when their attacker was upon them. The window was of a Tudor design with small diamond-shaped panes. With the lights on in the room, it was difficult to see out. There was another tap, more urgent.
“Harry, Harry,” the person said in a loud whisper. Standing outside the window was Constant.
I ran over to the window. It opened out. “Jesus Christ, you scared me,” I said.
“Shhh,” he whispered.
He looked slovenly, dirty, his shirt unfresh, torn, darkly stained, his trousers unpressed. His skin was pale. His hair was sweat-wet and slicked back. There was a sore on his lip.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I whispered.
“Oh, Harry,” he said. He was crying. “I need help.”
I put my leg through the window, but it was too small to get out of. “Shit,” I said.
“Be quiet. Don’t wake up anybody,” he whispered.
“I’ll go out the kitchen door,” I said.
I tiptoed through the hall to the kitchen. Bridey’s room was next to the maids’ dining room off the kitchen, and Bridey was known to be a light sleeper. The other maids, Colleen and Kate, slept up on the third floor. I continued to tiptoe until I got to the door. As quietly as I could, I unfastened the lock, the double bolt, and then the chain. Outside, Constant was standing by the door, breathing heavily.
“Why are all the lights on?” he asked.
“I turned them on. I was looking for you. Your mother sent me downstairs.”
“Ma? Why?”
“Mrs. Utley called. Winifred’s not home. She called the Wadsworths. Your mother thought you were with her downstairs in one of the rooms, but she didn’t want Mrs. Utley to know that. Where is she? Is she with you?”
“You better go back in and turn out the lights. They’ll attract attention if someone drives by. Like a police car.”
“I think Mrs. Utley is going to call the police.”
“Oh, my God. Shut out all the lights, Harry. Quick!”
Alarmed by the urgency in his voice, I went through the downstairs, turning out the lights in the living room, library, dining room, lavatory, and office. When I went back out the kitchen door, Constant was standing in the same place, as if he were in a trance.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He turned and walked away toward the tennis court. I followed.
“You’ve got to help me, Harry. I need you. I need you like I’ve never needed anybody in my life. Are you my friend?”
“Sure I’m your friend. Yo
u’re the best friend I ever had.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
“Follow me.”
We went across the lawn, past the tennis court and pool, to the area at the bottom of the property where we had played softball on Easter Sunday. He continued walking into the woods. It was pitch dark.
“Here,” he said finally, stopping. “We have to move her deeper into the woods.”
“Who?”
“Winifred. We have to move Winifred.”
“Is she hurt?”
“She’s dead.”
I couldn’t see his face in the dark.
“Dead?”
He dropped to his knees. There in front of him on the ground was Winifred Utley. She was wearing the same pink dress she had on at the dance at the club, but it was pushed up on her so that part of the skirt covered her face. Her panties were pulled down to her knees. I reached out to touch her, but her face and head were covered with blood. I recoiled. I realized that the stains on Constant’s shirt were blood.
“Constant, what happened? Who did this to her?” I spoke in a whisper. My heart was thumping in my chest. I knew that a time of my life had come to an end. A door had shut. Nothing would ever be the same.
“Help me move her deeper into the woods, closer to her own house.”
“Why move her? We have to go for help.”
He ignored me. “I’ll get her head. You get her feet.”
“But why?”
“I have to get her off our property. If I drag her through the woods, they’ll be able to tell. Get her feet.”
As we started to lift her, she let out a faint moan.
“Constant, she’s not dead.” I was joyous. We placed her down on the ground again. “I’ll go for help.”
“No, you won’t. She’s beyond help. She’s more dead than alive.”
Then he picked up a baseball bat, the bat from the softball game on Easter Sunday, the bat that he had flung into the woods because it was cracked, the bat that neither Kitt nor I had been able to find. It was broken in two. The head of the bat was covered with blood.
I heard another sound from Winifred. Still staring at him, I knelt down to look at her. I could hear the gurgling sound of saliva in her mouth as she expired. I covered my own mouth to stifle the scream that was forming there. “She just died,” I gasped. My voice was barely above a whisper, but, unmistakably, there was the beginning of panic in it.
When he spoke, his voice was harsh as he enunciated each word carefully. “You cannot panic, Harry. You cannot lose your head. Do you understand? We have to stay very very calm. We have to do everything right. Tomorrow, when all this is over, we can fall apart, or mourn, or whatever has to be done, but not now. Do you hear me, Harry?”
I stared at him.
“Do you hear me, Harry?”
I nodded my head.
“Say the words, Harry. Say, ‘I hear you, Constant.’ Say, ‘I will stay calm. I will not fall apart.’ Say it.”
“I hear you. I’ll stay calm. I won’t fall apart.”
“Good. This has happened. We can’t undo it. We have to deal with the situation as it is. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Take her feet.”
Numbly, I followed his orders. I performed my assignments in mute stupefaction, distancing myself mentally from what my hands were doing. We lifted her up again, but this time I did not look at her. We moved deeper into the woods. Then, at a head signal from Constant, we moved in the direction of Varden Lane, which backed onto the Bradley and Somerset estates. When we were within sight of the three-story red-brick Utley house, we saw that there were lights on on several floors. There, at a second signal from him, we laid her down behind a clump of bushes. He began covering her with leaves. Calmly, he wiped his fingerprints off the head of the bat with the tail of his white Brooks Brothers shirt.
“We better get back to the house. Don’t talk on the way. I don’t want to wake up Charlie in the chauffeur’s apartment over the garage.”
“What about Winifred? Do we just leave her?”
“Winifred? What about me? It’s too late for her. I’m the one we have to think about. It was her fault. The whole thing was her fault.”
We reentered the house through the kitchen door. We stood in the dark for a moment to see if the house was quiet. He placed the head of the bat down on the counter.
“Get a garbage bag from under the sink,” said Constant. He began to take his clothes off—shirt, trousers, undershort—and piled them into the garbage bag. Then he placed the bat in the same bag. Standing naked, he said, “You better take your clothes off too. Stuff everything in here. Shoes too.”
I did what he said. He tied up the bag and took it outside. I followed him. “I’ll put this in the trunk of Bridey’s car in the garage. We can get it out tomorrow. They might search my car. They won’t search hers.”
I was amazed at his calmness. He came back into the kitchen. Suddenly a light went on. “Who’s there?” came a voice. “Who’s out there?”
“It’s me, Bridey. It’s Constant. No need for you to come out. I was just getting a glass of water. Go back to bed. It’s late. Sorry to disturb you.”
“What are you doing up at this hour, Constant?”
“Go back to sleep, Bridey.”
When the light went off, he signaled for me to follow him up the back stairs. He opened the door and looked out into the upstairs hall to see if his mother was up before making his way down to the room that we were sharing.
Inside, he said, “Take a shower. Quick. Use a brush on your fingernails in case there’s dirt from the woods. Then get back in bed and try to sleep until morning.”
He picked up the telephone and dialed. “Long distance? I’d like the number of Eloise Brazen. B-R-A-Z-E-N. It’s on Park Avenue in Manhattan. I’m not sure of the exact address. Somewhere in the Eighties.” He waited. “Thank you.” He dialed again.
“Hello?” I could hear the sound of a woman’s voice awakened from sleep.
“I would like to speak to Gerald Bradley.… I don’t have a wrong number, Miss Brazen. Please put my father on the telephone. Now.… I know it’s three o’clock in the morning. I am sorry to awaken you. Put my father on the telephone.… Pa, it’s Constant. Get home. Get home as quickly as you can. Get a car and driver.… Yes, I am. I’m in some trouble. Trouble like you never knew.… Not on the phone. There’s been an accident, a terrible accident. They’re going to say things about me that aren’t true. But it was an accident. I swear to you, Pa. It was an accident.… What? Yes, good idea. Phone Fuselli. Leave now, Pa. Hurry.”
Constant stepped into the shower. He washed his hair. He washed his body. He washed his hands. He scrubbed his nails with a brush. He went to a bureau and took out a white Brooks Brothers shirt identical to the bloody shirt that he had just placed in the garbage bag. He put it on and got into bed. I stared at him.
“If they ask me for my clothes, I’ll give them this shirt. It’ll be used by morning. There’s another pair of gray flannels in the closet.”
“I don’t have an extra pair of shoes, or another pair of trousers.”
“I have everything. Don’t worry.”
“Where’s your blazer?”
“It must be in the Porsche.”
He looked out the window. “Jesus,” he said. He recoiled from the window in order not to be seen.
“What?”
“There’s police cars on the street.”
“What are they doing?”
“Driving slowly. Flashing the searchlights on the lawns.”
I stared at the man who had been my friend, as if he were another person whom I did not know. Turning from the window, he looked at me.
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.
“You have a cut on your lip,” I replied.
He put his hand on the spot and walked to the bathroom mirror. He turned his head slowly from side to side, studying the bl
emish, as if it were an assault on his good looks rather than a possible clue to a murder.
“Constant,” I said.
“What?”
“Why? Just tell me why? So I can understand.”
He turned from the mirror and looked at me. “She screamed,” he said without emotion. Horrified by what he said, I covered my mouth with my hand. He walked toward me, taking off his shirt as he did. It dropped on the floor. He stood naked in front of me, his hands on his hips. His body slowly undulated, as if in time to music. Then he put his hand on his penis and started to rub it back and forth. “Here. Take it,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
“No.”
“It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Don’t tell me no. I know you always wanted it. Here it is at last. Go ahead. Go ahead.”
When I awoke, unrefreshed, from a troubled and fitful sleep, the other bed in the room was empty. Gerald had returned to Scarborough Hill at six in the morning and was locked in the library with his son. Jerry appeared at seven from his apartment. There were telephone calls to Sandro in Washington. At eight the family gathered for breakfast. They were a family who normally abounded in good cheer at the breakfast table, vying with one another to tell their familial or social adventures of the night before. Grace was keen to tell of the political dinner she had attended, at which she had been placed next to a young priest, Father Murphy, who had been passionately devoted to Sandro’s recent campaign in Bog Meadow. She tried several times to tell her story but Gerald’s attention was elsewhere than on his wife’s latest favorite priest. It was obvious that Grace and the girls knew nothing of the drama that was unfolding around them.
“Constant dumped us last night, Pa,” said Kitt.
“What do you mean?” asked Gerald.
“Our brother Constant’s a ladies’ man,” said Mary Pat.
“We were having the most wonderful evening at the club, Mary Pat, and Harrison, and Constant, but first he got moody when Weegie and her parents came into the dining room and then, as soon as he saw that new girl in town, what’s her name, Winifred Utley, whose father is the new president of Veblen Aircraft, and she said, ‘Hi, Constant,’ she couldn’t take her eyes off him, and he said he hoped she didn’t mind dancing with a man with an erection, and he just dumped us and went off and danced with her, leaving us stranded, and poor Harrison here had to bring us home.”
A Season in Purgatory Page 9
