Twisting the Rope

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  Anderson started at this. “Another practical joke? And did he admit to it?”

  “Not… not exactly. Or rather, he said it had been an accident.”

  Anderson took a deep breath, while his eyes flashed with thought. “And did he happen to mention setting up another… accident with a door and a cable?”

  Elen stared blankly, but then her attention and the attention of the whole room was pulled to Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin, who had put his hands to each side of his head and was rocking back and forth, crying, “Oh, my! Oh, my!” in perfect imitation of a distracted old woman.

  “What is it, Mr. Ó Súilleabháin?” asked Anderson, with admirable restraint. “Do you know something about either of these practical jokes or accidents?”

  Pádraig was making a series of faces, some amused, some overwhelmed, and some only intelligible to himself. “Cinnte! How shouldn’t I, when one was played on me and the other I played myself?”

  “You?” It was Martha who spoke. “You set the trap with the door that caught Mayland? And you lied to me about it, straight-faced?”

  He wilted in front of her, and his unfocused blue eyes blinked very fast. “Well, I did and I didn’t, Martha. Don’t bite me too soon.

  “You see, I always wanted to try that trick with the pins of the door, ever since I heard about someone doing it to their uncle in Watertown. But you have to have a big window, and a drop, and all in a straight line. When I saw this theater, with the dock and even that big chunk of concrete there… it seemed heaven itself had set the thing up.”

  Long, in his corner, groaned. “Perhaps I owe Don Stoughie an apology.”

  “No you don’t!” snapped Martha, but she didn’t explain. She said to Pádraig, “Didn’t you know you might have killed someone with that loop under the door?”

  Now Pádraig looked completely miserable as well as unfocused. “I’m sorry, Martha. I didn’t, really. I was being clever, you see. I did up the cable, trim and neat, and then I stood back and thought, ‘You donkey. Anyone looking at this will know it’s you was here, for no one else makes a decent knot in the company.’ So, piece by piece, I did it again, as badly as I could think how. That big snarl in the middle was the worst, most unseaworthy part of it, and I was proud of the idea. But I never thought the stiff cable would spring itself under the door.”

  “You got Mayland badly bruised. And in a lot of trouble,” said Martha.

  Pádraig hung his wounded head.

  “And you lied to me.”

  Long put his hand around Martha’s ankle and whispered to her. She fell silent.

  Anderson scratched his head. “So, Mr. Long. Your wild ride is explained at last. Have you any desire to press charges?”

  “None,” said Long. “I think this very unimportant digression has worn itself out.”

  Elen felt the room turn to her again. She shrugged. “I’m guilty too, Martha. I lied when I let you think he hadn’t been out of my sight all morning. I only knew about the incident what you told us, but I thought that anything Pat had done to revenge himself upon George needed support, even if it was cockeyed.

  “He had just told me—George, I mean—that he knew about Jude. He made it seem as though I’d just borne the baby like a hen lays an egg and walked away from it.

  “He, on the other hand, said he was going to apply for custody. Can you imagine any institution handing over this multiply-handicapped child to a dirty old crank like St. Ives? With no better reason that he happened to be the father?

  “I guess George realized that would be too much to expect when he calmed down; he didn’t bother asking at all but just jimmied a window and took the boy away. I guess he found him by Sandy’s description, or by the name on the door, because he’d never even seen him before. Too bad, too, for one visit might have cured him.”

  Elen swayed forward. Her black eyes, completely without focus, glittered in a white face. (White as Sullivan’s back, thought the sergeant.) Then, slowly, she fell back until her head touched against the wall. Her eyes closed and he thought she had gone to sleep, until she lifted her head again and beat it against the wall. Again.

  As Long had seen her son do in his pain and confusion, wrapped in blankets smeared with dung. “Elen!” he called roughly, and Elen stopped. Jude whimpered in his sleep.

  Anderson’s feet moved on the carpet and he included everyone in the room in his thoughtful glance. “I’m sorry this is so difficult for you, Ms. Evans. Do go on. You were able to find where he had taken the boy?”

  She shook her head, to clear it. “He called and told me. Right after the Saturday concert. ‘Chickie,’ he said. ‘Haul your ass down here right now!’

  “Turns out he had this idea…. He’d hired a Mexican girl to take care of Jude. She didn’t speak much English, and he didn’t know a word of Spanish. I don’t know. Maybe he was sleeping with her too. He thought they’d go back to Ottawa and find a little house, and he’d have a little ready-grown family, to dab into whenever he wanted. When he wasn’t on the road.

  “What a sweet picture! And how impossible. I don’t even know where he was going to get the money to pay the Mexican lady….”

  “He was pretty broke,” said Martha ruefully. Then she sat bolt upright. “No! Wait! I do know where the money came from.” She reached up and took Long by the elbow. “Mayland. The disappearing cash.”

  His face remained impassive and he gazed beyond. Martha to the sad slumped shape that was Pádraig. Martha’s eyes narrowed as he avoided them.

  “You knew all about this, didn’t you?” Again, no answer. “What I heard yesterday in the other room, when I was on the phone with Elizabeth…”

  Long sighed. “I’m sorry, Martha. It is not something I am permitted to talk about.”

  “Mr. Long…” began Anderson, with heavy patience.

  “He pledged you to secrecy? No. I heard. You pledged him to secrecy. And now he is dead, so there is no release for either of you. Is that it?” Martha stood up, her face strained and thoughtful. “Well, how about if I tell you what happened?”

  Long looked embarrassed. “Martha, you make too much out of—”

  “He admitted taking the money and told you he was going to pay it back. He said he had needed it for… for family matters. Right? And you said you’d replace it in the kitty and make the theft into a personal loan to him from yourself, right? Better no one else in the group was to know?”

  “Much better,” he replied, with a shade of temper. “Much better if no one did. And it was our business, I think.”

  Martha sat down again, breathing hard. “I’m sorry, but I don’t agree.”

  “Elen, do go on.”

  Elen Evans glanced from Martha to Long. “That is entirely all we need, now. For you two to start snarling at one another.” She passed her hand over her forehead, with all fingers spread. “You know we all depend upon your shining romance as the one perfect thing in this imperfect world.” She repeated the last two words to herself as Anderson leaned forward and waved her on.

  Elen frowned, thinking. “By the time I got there—”

  “Where, please?” asked Anderson.

  “Sprays Hotel is where he was keeping the kid. Just around the block from here. Maybe that’s why Marty…”

  Martha dropped a curse into the air.

  “By Saturday night his sweet plan had already gone sour. Judy. He had left his lady alone with the boy most of the day and planned to do so all evening too. Like potted plants on a shelf… When he got back after an afternoon of new-ages harmonies, Jude was upset and his caretaker at her temper’s end. Sergeant, that boy of mine is brain damaged, all right, but he has a way of making his wants known! He could drive you to suicide, could Judy.”

  The detective didn’t ask what Judy’s way was. “And was that it? Did his dissatisfaction with the boy drive George St. Ives in that direction?”

  Elen opened her eyes wide. “I didn’t mean that, exactly. I don’t know. All I do know is that at seven-th
irty the Mexican girl up and went, leaving George in full possession of infantile fury, with explosive diarrhea. He kept thinking he’d be able to make it on time for the show, and then that he’d show up late, until it was all over, and the neighbors walking out of the hotel because of the smell, and the landlord pounding on the door…. Lawks, what a scene!” Elen rubbed her eyes in a spread-finger gesture that was a ghost of her usual, wry manner.

  “When I got there, George had tied Judy up—the rope, of course, which he’d snitched as part of his kidnapping tools—and when that hadn’t stopped the noise, George had started to hit him. There was the boy, howling and poking the air, blindly, and George, with his face like a brick, tearing his own hair out: Fine ‘home life,’ I think.

  “I felt so sorry for them both at that moment, that I could not tell you which was worse off.”

  Elen’s words faded in and out. She rested her head on her hand. “Poor pig that he was. Not asking for so much, I don’t think. A good tour, making his own kind of music. Someone… something of his own.” Elen pushed the lamp aside and laid her head down where the dead flies had lain.

  Martha stirred. “He chose his life, Elen. Every moment of it. Few people get so much freedom.”

  Anderson scratched his nose, as though to remind them all the law was present. “And he let you take the child away again?” She nodded forcefully. “He was endlessly grateful. In fact, he ran out of the room and left me alone with Judy.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Now that was not pleasant.”

  “Leaving the rope behind, Ms. Evans? Or did he take, it with him?”

  Elen made a huge frown and groaned. “I have been trying to remember that all day. I can’t think why he would take the rope, though.”

  “And the boy. Why didn’t you simply take him back home? To his home.”

  She lifted her head off the table. “I did call them, but no one answered. So I called Sandy. I felt she owed me something, though now I can’t think what. She said she’d take him for the rest of the night, which was just a few hours, by this time.

  “Judy never reacted badly for Sandy, or at least never before. She’d always liked him. Gone to see him a number of times. Fancied she had a way with him. But the night turned into a real hell for us both, and next morning—whomp! Here we were in the middle of a murder, with me the last one to see the victim alive. And we’re up to our eyebrows in terrible secrets….”

  “Are we sure, yet, that this is a murder?” asked Anderson, with no expression. Heads turned toward him. No one answered.

  “We will want to see the hotel room where all this happened, of course.”

  “It’s over by Front Street,” said Elen.

  “That’s right by the pier?”

  She nodded. “I’ll take you there.”

  Anderson nodded, as though it went without speaking that Elen would be leaving with him. He then pursed his lips and made a note in a little notebook that he pulled from his upper jacket pocket.

  “In your own words, Ms. Evans: in what sort of mood was Mr. St. Ives when you left him that night? Depressed, I imagine, if all his domestic… uh… hopes had let him down?”

  “Just ashy,” agreed Elen. “Also quite drunk.”

  “Umm.” He closed his notebook with a pop. And stood.

  “I think, Ms. Evans, that after we peek in at the motel room, it would be a good idea if we went down to the station and had this story done up in regulation fashion.”

  “Am I under arrest?” she asked, looking at him from under lowered lashes.

  Anderson’s trick eyebrows shot up. “Do you want to be, Ms. Evans? Once you can explain to me how you lured a man much larger than yourself to the end of the pier and then convinced him to stick his head in a noose that wasn’t likely to hold him anyway, then I will be most happy to oblige. Till then…”

  His eye fell on Pádraig, who was leaning against. Martha. “Before I go, Mr. Ó Súilleabháin, would you care to explain how it is that you are not yourself, but your cousin?”

  Martha took a step nearer. Long gave an unmistakable hiss. Pádraig waved them both away. “The passport belongs to my cousin, who has the same name as me. I used it so I would not have to apply for a work permit and probably not get it. There, I have no secrets left, either, and you can boot me out of the country before my sailing class starts!”

  Anderson put his hand in front of his mouth and stroked his moustache. Martha stepped past him. “No you don’t, Pádraig. There are alternatives. You can always marry an American.”

  Pádraig flinched and looked at the bed. “Don’t make sport of me like that, Martha. I only told the truth.”

  But Martha’s face was determined. “But you can marry an American. Lots of women would have you. Me, for example.”

  Pádraig looked up with round, drugged blue eyes.

  “Martha!” bellowed Long, and he grabbed her by the elbow. His face was perfectly black. “How can you! How dare you!”

  “What the hell?” cried Elizabeth, no less outraged.

  She shook him off. “A perfectly legal, countertop registry service, eh? Not religious of any kind? And then if it doesn’t work out. After six months, say…”

  “That is not a marriage at all, according to the church,” said Pádraig.”

  Anderson watched all this with no expression on his face and his mouth hidden behind his hand. “I’m in over my head, you know,” he said to the room in general. “This is a federal matter. Or perhaps diocesan.” He raised his voice, to be heard.

  “Mr. Sullivan, I suggest you get your passport updated at your soonest convenience. And don’t marry until you’re very certain. Perhaps not for another twenty years.

  “And, Mrs. Macnamara, don’t throw yourself away on callow youth. I’m sure he would disappoint you.” He rose, smoothing his jacket and trousers ostentatiously.

  “Now, Ms. Evans, let us go prepare a lovely, coherent statement on our new word processors. You’ll feel better if you do. We can drop off little Jude on our way.”

  He turned to the boy, to find Long was standing between them. I advise you most strongly, Sergeant, to let me do that. Or to call the institution and have some person used to him come for him. Neither Judy nor you would be happy if you were to take him off in a car again.”

  Anderson stared, with a hint of distrust, at the dark man in front of him. “You sound very sure I can’t handle him. Or just very sure of yourself.”

  “Jude and I have been good for one another. It has nothing to do with any quality of mine or lack of yours, but he and I do get along. And he… has a way of spreading his dissatisfactions around him. So do we all, of course.”

  “What goes around…” began Teddy.

  Elizabeth shot him a venomous glance.

  Anderson missed none of this, but his expression remained private. “Then so be it, Mr. Long. Take the boy home. But do it now, please, for they’re expecting him.

  “And, by the way, I’m very glad to be able to tell you that Mr. Stoughie has decided to drop charges against you.”

  Mayland Long opened his sunny eyes in surprise, and he grinned his white teeth. “That is good news. Why?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Martha smiled quietly.

  Elen Evans rose now from her chair, brushing lint and insect parts from her skirt. She picked her way to the door. She looked at no faces in the crowded room. As she passed, Pádraig came next to her, bent and earnest as Quasimodo. “Lots of girls have babies,” he whispered a bit too loudly into her ear. “It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

  She glanced back at him, astonished, as she closed the door behind her.

  Don Scherer thought about changing out of his uniform. He looked at the clock again. He compromised, taking a shower and putting on a clean regulation shirt.

  In the five minutes he’d been in the shower, Anderson had come in again. Scherer hurried after and caught him closing the door.

  “Can I sit in?” he asked, and was embarrasse
d by the sound of his own words. The sergeant expanded his forehead upward.

  I thought you’d gone home an hour ago, Don,” he said. “There’s really no reason you should wait.”

  Scherer stood silent, unable to think of an excuse that would get him in and unwilling to turn away. At last he asked, “You have her with you?” The sergeant nodded. “We have both Evans and Frager.”

  “Then you… it’ll all be over by tomorrow when I get on, won’t it?”

  Now Anderson’s mobile forehead descended. “After this coroner’s report… Yes, I don’t think there’ll be much more to do.” His nostrils twitched and he sighed.

  “Okay, Don. Come in. Be quiet.”

  Long returned to find Pádraig flat on his stomach, lying on Long’s bed. The young man’s eyes were open, but they displayed a complete lack of interest. He found Martha in what had been. Marty’s room, yanking at her battered old suitcases.

  “Are you so sure they’re going to let us go tonight?” he asked her.

  “We can go right now, my dear. That’s what the officer said on the phone. Now it depends on Pádraig.”

  For a moment he stood there, and then went over and lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head. Evening’s last light came through the blind in slices.

  Had it only been twenty-four hours since he sat behind his little keyboard, playing with Macnamara’s Band for the first and only time? And had it been only at nine this morning that that storm petrel, Anderson, entered this room to tell them St. Ives was dead?

  Often his days had gone by with nothing at all to mark their passage. Days and weeks. Not since he had kept company with Martha, though.

  “I feel much better,” he said at last, adding, “Who are the ‘we’ that are permitted to leave, Martha?”

  She glanced up. “Who can leave? Everyone but Elen, I guess. Maybe Elen too; he didn’t say.”

  “We will have to find that out.” Long rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat experimentally. No cough.