by Hazel Holt
‘Is this what you’re looking for, Anna?’ I asked, taking the ballpoint pen from my bag.
‘Sheila!’ Anna got to her feet and came towards me. Something in my face made her stop. ‘Sheila, what is it?’
I held out the pen.
‘Chicopee Falls Motel,’ I said.
Somehow the ridiculous name made the whole thing seem even more unreal.
‘You must have got it when you were staying there for the conference and there was no other time you could have lost it, was there? Only the day Carl Loring was killed. And you never said you’d been in here. Why was that?’
‘I think you know why,’ Anna said quietly.
‘I know when and I know how,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know why.’
‘Look, Sheila,’ Anna said urgently. ‘I have to explain. But not here, please.’
‘We’d better go to my office,’ I said.
We sat down facing each other across the desk. I found I was still stupidly clutching the coffee mug, so I put it down on the desk, slowly and with infinite care, as if it was made of the finest porcelain. For a while we neither of us spoke, then Anna said, ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Just tell me,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I didn’t mean to kill Carl,’ Anna said at last. ‘It was Max I had to get rid of.’
‘Max?’ I was startled. ‘So Carl didn’t kill his brother.’
‘No. I did. Max ... he was responsible for Dan’s death. I just found out.’
‘But surely ...’
‘Dan died in Vietnam? Oh, sure he did. But he wasn’t killed by the Viet Cong—well, he was, but the man really responsible for his death was Max Loring.’
‘How terrible!’ I cried. ‘What happened?’
Anna took a deep breath and shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Dan was an infantry officer, attached for this one mission to a reconnaissance group checking out enemy positions. They were ambushed by the Viet Cong but managed to call up their helicopter by radio. Most of the group had been wounded in the ambush; only the officer in charge and the sergeant were unhurt. The helicopter managed to land in this paddy field but they were under really fierce Viet Cong fire. The officer and sergeant rushed over and managed to scramble on board. They told the pilot to take off right away. They said everyone else had been killed.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Dan was one of the wounded,’ she said, ‘left behind to be slaughtered by the Viet Cong. The officer who got away—who left men to die to save his own skin—was Max Loring.’
‘Oh, Anna,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry.’
She was shivering and her voice was very low so that I could hardly hear what she was saying.
‘I only found out quite recently. The sergeant, the other man who got away, was dying of lung cancer and had it on his conscience. He managed to find the relatives of the men who had died so that he could let them know what really happened. I wish’—her voice broke—‘I wish I’d never known.’
‘Did you tell Linda?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t—it would have hurt her so much. I knew I had to act for the both of us. I had Dan’s old target pistol—he was really good, did I ever tell you he won a medal at Camp Perry?—and I sort of kept it after he died, though I never thought I’d use it.’ She gave a little laugh and went on, ‘I found Max Loring up in the computer room that day. It was quite late in the afternoon so there was no one else around. He seemed surprised to see me. I said I knew about Vietnam, explained how I’d been told. He went quite white—it was odd, I’ve never seen anyone do that before. All the colour drained right out of his face. He blustered a bit, but he was so scared ... I unslung my purse from my shoulder and dropped it on to the floor, then I took the pistol from my jacket pocket and shot him.’
‘Anna!’
‘I didn’t expect to get away with it—I thought people would come running when they heard the shot. But nobody came. And, do you know, there was no blood—the bullet hadn’t even come out the other side! I thought, if I got away with it, Linda would never have to know about Dan. So I thought maybe I’d hide the body so that it wouldn’t be found until I was back in New York. I remembered the old blanket chest, Theo was fond of showing it to people. Max wasn’t heavy, just a little man, and I’m quite strong. I got him into the chest and went away. I didn’t see anyone, so I just left the building and came right back to change for the concert.’
‘And you’d left for New York,’ I said slowly, ‘when we found him. And, of course, there seemed no reason for you to be involved. The police barely questioned you; there was no sort of motive.’
‘Your lieutenant called me on the telephone in New York,’ Anna said. ‘He seemed quite happy when I told him I’d been in the main galleries and not in the study rooms.’ We sat for a while in silence. I could barely take in what Anna had said—the horror of Dan’s death, the calm way she had told me of Max Loring’s murder. Eventually I asked, ‘What about Carl Loring?’
Anna got up and walked about the room. ‘As I told you,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to kill Carl. I’d been jogging, remember, and I thought I’d come in and get a cup of coffee from Linda. I went into her room but she wasn’t there and her coffee machine wasn’t working so I went along to the commons room.’
‘What time was this?’ I asked.
‘Just after ten, I guess,’ she replied. ‘I figured Linda had gone to a class or something. Anyway, I went into the kitchen and found Carl Loring there. I said something about coming in to bum a cup of coffee and he made some snide remark about people using the place like a coffee shop. I went to put my purse down on the table but I dropped it and it fell on the floor, scattered things all over. I felt a fool down on my knees, scrabbling about trying to get things together with him sneering at me. Then he bent down and picked something up. It was an empty cartridge case.’
She gave a short laugh.
‘I couldn’t believe it—when I shot Max Loring it hadn’t occurred to me to look for the empty case. I didn’t hear anything, you see, because it had fallen into my open purse there on the floor of the computer room. He stood over me with it in his hand and when I scrambled to my feet he said very slowly, “Is this some kind of souvenir? I think perhaps I should keep it. I believe they can match such things and maybe this is from the bullet that killed my dear brother. Of course, I wouldn’t dream of taking it to the police—not yet. There are all sorts of interesting things you and I might like to talk about first.” Then I knew he didn’t care at all about his brother being killed. He was going to use it to blackmail me.’ She flung herself down into the chair facing me and said violently, ‘There was no way... And besides, he was such a vile person and he’d made Linda so unhappy. Not just work, but all that business about Doug. And I knew he’d use this to get at her as well as me.’
‘You knew about Doug?’ I asked, startled.
‘Dave told me, he was so worried about her, though he made me promise not to let her know I knew. Oh, Carl Loring had made so many people miserable! That’s how I justified it to myself later. At the time, I guess it was a kind of blind panic. I snatched up the knife and killed him.’ She gave a shaky little laugh.
‘I guess Linda was right about my purse. If I’d cleaned it out when she asked me that day, the day I shot Max, I’d have found the cartridge case then and Carl Loring would still be alive. Crazy, isn’t it?’
I seemed incapable of saying anything and Anna went on, ‘I stood there for a while, just looking down at him, then I wiped the handle of the knife to get rid of my fingerprints and washed the blood off my hands at the sink. I was just going to leave when I heard someone come into the commons room. For a moment I thought I was trapped, but then I tried the door that leads to the furnace room and by some miracle it was unlocked, so I got out that way. There was no one around when I came out of the furnace room. I just ran all the way back to the Institute. I was in my track suit, just another jogger back from a run. Josh, one of the guard
s, joked about it.’
‘It must have been Gina who came into the commons room while you were in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Then she went in there and found the body ... Of course! There wasn’t anything in her note that said she had killed Carl Loring—just that she was glad when she saw him dead.’
Anna looked stricken but didn’t say anything.
‘I suppose Linda told you that the police think Carl murdered his brother?’ I said. And that Gina killed Carl?’
Anna nodded.
‘Did she tell you that Carl Loring had AIDS?’ I asked. Anna stared at me with horror in her eyes. She looked down at her hands.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said quietly. ‘That scratch on my hand from Tiger—remember? And Carl Loring’s blood when I wiped the knife ...’
I got up quickly and went and put my arms round her.
‘It may be all right, Anna,’ I said urgently. ‘You mustn’t worry. There’s only the faintest chance ...’
She clung to me for a moment and then she got up, picked up her handbag and slung it over her shoulder.
‘It’s all the same, really. I killed two people—I guess it’s only fair there should be some kind of retribution.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Of course I don’t know what you’re going to do, Sheila. Will you tell your lieutenant?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, how could I? Both Carl and Gina are dead. Neither of them have any family to be hurt if people go on thinking they were murderers.’
Anna smiled. ‘That’s a very partial kind of casuistry,’ she said.
‘You’re my friend,’ I said, ‘and so is Linda. I love you both very much. The Lorings and Gina are dead, nothing can bring them back. How could I condemn you to God knows what and break Linda’s heart?’
Anna shook her head. ‘It isn’t fair to ask you to make that kind of choice,’ she said. ‘But thank you all the same.’ She came over and gave me a hug and said, ‘I’m going right back to New York.’
‘Today?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘right now. So this is goodbye.’
‘I’ll see you in a few days, then,’ I said, ‘when Linda and I come up.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you.’
Chapter Fifteen
I don’t know how I got through my lunch with the Sterns. I hope they put my abstraction down to excitement at going back to England. We parted with many earnest promises to meet at wherever place in England they found themselves attending a conference. (‘It’ll either be Feminism and Semiotics at Bristol or Cognitive Research on Gender and Comprehension at Cambridge. I guess we’re going to need a little relief after either of those!’) Yet I was glad of their company. My thoughts were in a turmoil and I found myself putting off the moment when I would have to face Linda and Anna.
But by the time I got back Anna had already gone.
‘She had an urgent call,’ Linda said. ‘Someone in her department was sick so she had to chair some committee or other. We’ll see her in Brooklyn Heights in a couple of days.’
I found it difficult to talk to Linda with Anna’s dreadful secret uppermost in my mind, so I said I wanted to do a bit of packing and went to my room straight after supper. I was just persuading Tiger, who had followed me, not to take up residence in the suitcase I had opened on my bed, when the telephone rang. I could hear Linda go to answer it, and after a short while she came into my room.
‘Sheila,’ she said, and her voice was hoarse and almost unrecognizable. ‘Something terrible has happened.’
‘What is it?’ I asked anxiously.
‘It’s Anna—she’s ... she’s been in a car crash. They say she’s dead.’
Linda sank on to a chair and buried her face in her hands.
‘Oh, no!’ I knelt beside the chair, attempting to comfort her as she tried to speak through her sobs.
‘It was some hospital in New Jersey,’ she said. ‘That’s where they took her. I don’t know what happened. I must go to her.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said ‘and I’ll come with you, of course. But look, why don’t I phone Mike and see if he can find out for us what’s happened.’
Mike rang back after a little while. ‘I’ve been on to the New Jersey police,’ he said. ‘It seems she simply lost control—just went off the road. Lost her concentration, maybe. It happens. No other vehicle was involved.’
Mike was wonderful. He drove us to the hospital, saw to all the police formalities and brought us back to Allenbrook again just as dawn was breaking.
‘Have you got a sleeping pill to give her?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied wearily. ‘I’ve got something.’
‘I think you should take a couple yourself,’ he said, looking at me critically. ‘You look almost as bad as Linda.’
But no pills could bring me rest as I turned over and over in my mind what I knew and what had happened. And what, most of all, should I do? It seemed fairly certain that Anna had deliberately crashed her car. Of course I couldn’t tell Linda what had passed between Anna and me. Not only would she have to face the agonizing reality of what Anna had done and why—all the trauma of her brother’s death revived tenfold—but she would then be sure, as I was, that Anna had taken her own life. Linda had enough to bear without any of that. No, I couldn’t tell her. But was it fair, now that Anna was dead, not to tell Mike what had really happened? My conscience told me I should, but the thought of an official statement, that Linda would have to know about, made it equally impossible to tell him. After tossing and turning for a few hours I gave up and got up. I found Linda in the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I did try to sleep, but—well, I couldn’t.’
I made us some coffee and we sat for a while in silence.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ Linda said suddenly. ‘I don’t think I could have borne it if you hadn’t been here.’
I felt a dreadful pang of guilt. If I hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have found the pen and Anna might still have been alive.
That was my predominant feeling throughout the next few days. Anna’s body was brought back to Allenbrook and she was buried, not in the graveyard of the little Moravian church, beside the Revolutionary soldier and the Mohican, but in one of the new cemeteries where the gravestones went right down to the pavement.
The evening before I left Allenbrook I had dinner with Mike.
‘The first thing I’m going to do when I retire next year is buy a plane ticket to England,’ he said. ‘Will you show me around Stratford-upon-Avon?’
‘Yes,’ I said smiling. ‘We’ll stand on Clopton Bridge and look at the swans.’
‘I’m sorry your time in Allenbrook had to be spoiled by all that’s happened,’ he said, ‘but, then again, if it hadn’t been that way, I guess we would never have met, and that would have been a shame.’
‘A great shame.’
‘It’s been a strange kind of case, but it ended neatly enough, I guess.’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Very neatly,’ Mike said. ‘Unless,’ he continued, looking at me quizzically, ‘there’s something I’ve missed?’
Perhaps I paused a moment too long before saying, ‘No—what else could there be?’ because he looked at me rather sadly, almost as if he knew that I hadn’t been honest with him.
‘You’ll be glad to be back home with your son and those animals you’ve told me about,’ he said, and we talked of other things, but at the end of the evening, in spite of reiterated plans to meet in England, we parted with something like constraint between us and I was sorry, because he was a nice man and I couldn’t help feeling that I’d treated him less than fairly.
Linda drove me straight to Kennedy Airport from Allenbrook. We neither of us felt like staying in New York. As we said goodbye she clung to me.
‘Thank you again for everything, Sheila. Thank you for helping me deal with things.’
We were both crying, I found I couldn’t say anything.
I’d been given a se
at by the window but, in my usual nervous state, I carefully didn’t look out as the plane took off. My mind was still in a state of turmoil. I was pretty sure that Mike suspected that the neat solution to the deaths of Max and Carl Loring was not the right one. Whether he had thought about Anna’s death and put two and two together I wasn’t sure. Certainly he had no means of knowing why Anna had killed them, and without a motive there was nothing he could do. Linda was safe. It was all for the best, I kept telling myself. This way the hurt was kept to a minimum—nothing could undo what had been done. Surely it was best to leave things as they were. And yet ...
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom and broke into my thoughts. For a moment I didn’t take in what he was saying, something about an engine fault and having to return to New York.
‘We’ll have to cruise around a bit to use up some fuel,’ the voice was saying. ‘The stewards will be round with drinks.’ There was a moment’s silence and then a buzz of conversation.
I looked out of the window—somehow I wasn’t nervous now.
We were flying up the coast, each inlet perfectly defined as on a map.
The pilot’s voice again, bracing and cheerful. ‘It never rains but it pours! I’m afraid we have a problem with the undercarriage so we’ll be landing with the emergency gear.’
The woman sitting beside me crossed herself, but there appeared to be no signs of panic. A little way up the aisle I saw some of the cabin staff bizarrely jumping up and down, presumably in an effort to shake the undercarriage loose. None of it seemed at all real. I found I wasn’t frightened. It seemed inconceivable that I might die, that I might never see Michael again. I looked out of the window again. The skyline of Manhattan was spread out below, the fairy-tale towers of the skyscrapers looking as magical as they did in all the photographs. And just as unreal. We were coming in now and over the airport. I could see ambulances and fire engines racing out to the runway, but it seemed impossible that they might be for us.
