Little Less Than Kind

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Knowledge was relief, was burden, was lonely, was not lonely enough. Old David knew. Knew that Ladd knew. Sure, old David even knew who had done the telephoning. That rigid neck. He’d never looked. Didn’t dare. Ladd, who had waited for the look that never came, knew this because it never came. Which was too subtle for such as Gary Fenwick. Dumb Gary, who thought his Uncle Walt was going to check. Oh, laugh …

  Only the two of them knew … Ladd rolled over.

  All right. Alone. Kill the wicked. Plan it. Plot it. Let nothing else matter. Nothing. Plan, not what to do, but how. Alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I’m all right now.” Abby reached for his hand. “But it scared me so.”

  “What scared you?”

  “Just for a minute, that’s all. I … had it all so clear. He was a dear man and I loved him dearly, as you know, David, and then he got this horrible thing, and he died. Oh, don’t you see? For a minute … to have to revise the whole thing …” Then Abby said, shockingly, “But if he did, David, I couldn’t condemn him. I can’t bear pain.”

  “Please …”

  “But of course, Hob didn’t.” She sat up straighter. “And I hope they catch that insane person and put him away. To say such things.”

  David couldn’t follow the twisting moods. “Yes, darling, but what scared you?”

  “You see, when Hob first went back …”

  “To the hospital?”

  “Yes. Well, I had some pills for pain that my doctor had given me. And Hob had taken one, once. I think when he had a tooth extracted. So he said to me that my pills were … a … hell of a lot more powerful than anything they had around that place. And he wished he had some of them. So of course, I brought him all I had.”

  “You”—David swallowed—“brought him some pills?”

  “Yes, I did. Of course, I did. He said he wished he had them.” Her eyes were hurt.

  “I understand, darling, but what were they?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t ask. I just take what the doctor tells me to take. I just knew they were for pain.”

  David’s breath moved inward with slow care. “Did you see Hob take any, in the hospital?”

  “No, I didn’t” She used her handkerchief.

  “But he kept them?”

  “Oh, yes. He thanked me and he kept them.” Her tears started.

  “Were they in a bottle?”

  “One of those little plastic cylinders.”

  “Many pills?”

  “Oh yes, all I had. Almost full.”

  “Your prescription?”

  “Yes. David, why …?”

  “Abby, were they dangerous?”

  “I don’t know. But it said on the label how many to take and how often.”

  (Lord, she doesn’t see her own inconsistency. Lord, help me think.) “How could Hob keep a prescription of yours in a hospital room?”

  “I don’t know. I think he put them in the little drawer with his toothpaste.”

  “They must have been found. When was this, Abby?”

  Her long throat worked. “Oh, a long time …”

  “A long time before he died? How long?”

  “Oh, weeks. You’re worse than the police,” said Abby. “Why are you asking?”

  “I’d better find out what they were.”

  “But he couldn’t have. The man said so. He said the doctors would have known.” She would begin to tremble in a moment.

  “I’m sure that’s right. I’m sure they would,” he soothed.

  “Then what does it matter what they were?”

  “It doesn’t,” said David, relaxing. “There is no connection.” He believed, himself, that the doctors would have known, had Hob taken strange (and lethal) medication. David tried to feel relieved. And yet—it was true that Hob had died rather mercifully. David had always felt, although perhaps never clearly stated it even to himself, that Hob, having made his will, had then in a businesslike way simply gone ahead and died. It would have been like him.

  Abby had clasped her hands. She said, “It tears me to pieces, even to think about it. Oh, David, if he did, if he had to … because there was such wicked pain … Oh, David …” She was going to fallover. “I think if he had told me why he wanted my pills, I’d still have brought them.”

  “Don’t begin to believe it, now,” David warned sharply. “Don’t do that, Abby.” He knew the first step to belief was to be able to imagine. He rose from where he had been crouching and his knee cracked. “In the first place, Hob was probably only kidding, to say he wanted them. He took your gift. He wouldn’t hurt your feelings. But he would never put you on such a spot, either. We can certainly believe that much. Your pills were confiscated the next day, by some nurse, no doubt. Strange medicine just does not lie around in a hospital. So there is no point in thinking any more about it. And do not believe two things at once, darling.”

  “I’m so foolish,” she said and used her handkerchief. “But then, I always have been. You love me, anyway.”

  Abby’s mixture. A little childish, yet able to be amused at her own childishness. And able to tell a simple truth. He did love her, anyway. He looked down upon her lovely silver hair, her head, that darling mystery. She seemed to have dismissed the point that someone had accused David of murder. Why? Because she thought it so absurd?

  David was not one to dismiss absurdity, just as such. He knew that he would check—oh very gingerly—and find out just what Abby’s pills might do and whether Hob had shown any symptoms that might pertain. He did not believe that Hob was a suicide. But it was wise to protect himself, and Abby, by some evidence.

  Abby got out of the chair. “What a mess I must look,” she cried. “Oh, I’m so glad …”

  He stared at her, unable to follow.

  “… that none of it seemed to upset Ladd the least bit. Did it?” she said radiantly.

  “Didn’t … seem to,” he said, marveling.

  “I thought he took it all so well. So much better than I.” (David felt his very soul pinched.) “Like a man,” said Abby mistily. And then, with one of her sudden changes, “David, take me out to dinner? Somewhere charming? I feel,” said Abby, “like being taken out to dinner.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh.” It was as if he had surprised her with an invitation. “Then I must do something about this face. Maybe I’ll lie down a little bit, with goo on it. Then dress.”

  “Good program.”

  “Ah, David, you are so dear and so good to me.” Abby kissed him. She went upstairs.

  David marveled.

  Abby knew that to go out to dinner meant the two of them. She knew that Ladd would not go along. Did that mean that she knew? He left it for a mystery.

  He contemplated the spot that he was on. He had not told Abby, bluntly, directly (or honestly) that he believed her son to have been the crackpot on the telephone. He had not forced her to contemplate what the boy had done. Although David knew very well that he might be forced to do just this, and perhaps very soon, he did not wish to do it now. He did not wish to ‘tear her to pieces.’ He would rather not. He could not see that it would help anyone, in any way … not yet.

  What was he going to do, then.

  Think, he advised himself. You are supposed to have a brain.

  Let us be orderly. (Alternative Number One.) If the boy really believed that David had, in some way, done away with Hob, arranged for him to die sooner than was natural, why, that explained a great deal! That, then, was the basis for the hostility, for the wall, for everything. But, since it made all the rest reasonable, such an erroneous belief could be attacked with reason. With the kind of proof the police, the court, or reasoning minds accept.

  There would have been, too, a reason for the boy to have acquired such a belief. Some misinterpretation. Something to be found out, attacked, and by reason shown to be an error. Oh yes, all this would follow, if the boy did truly believe.

  But (Alternative Number Two) what if the phone
call was just malice. That would mean something more difficult, perhaps impossible, to attack. Some callous, criminal meanness. An abnormal, or at least a very ugly and undesirable, state. An illness.

  Which was the case with the boy? How discover?

  David considered talking to him, now. Considered having to send a twenty-year-old playmate home in order to achieve privacy. Considered Abby, if he were to do this.

  Abby first, of course.

  He had asked her, once, how Hob had dealt with what she called Ladd’s moods.

  “Oh, I could usually coax him out of them before Hob came home. But I must say that if there was any least trace left, Hob always knew it. And he’d … well, he’d just go right against it. He’d just have at it. I can’t explain.”

  “But it worked?” David had asked.

  “I couldn’t bear those times. Quarreling upsets me, David. I can’t help that. I don’t see why people can’t just be courteous to each other.”

  “Do you mean that they quarreled?”

  “It wouldn’t go as far as that.”

  “I don’t get the picture, Abby.”

  “Well—Hob, you know, used to ride right over moods. Although not,” she had added thoughtfully, “not mine.”

  Abby’s mixture.

  Now David began to wonder. Had she spoiled that boy rotten, forever “coaxing” him? Yet Abby could be, in her own way, very firm. She had sent him away from the table, last evening, for being a naughty child. Done it in a sweet and gentle voice, but done it. If her standard was politeness, she at least insisted upon her standard. Abby’s courtesy was … adamant. David smiled to himself, and left that.

  He considered Hob. When Hob “rode over” a mood, as he would have done in a noisy and cheerful fashion, did the boy think him insensitive and too severe? A strong man, who indulged Abby because she had enchanted him, had Hob, in truth, been too severe with, for instance, a trait of Abby’s turning up in his male child?

  David left all these thoughts. He did not like himself for having them. And besides, who knew? Who could ever say? However this boy had got off on the course he was now following, he had to be straightened around. And quickly.

  Confront him? That was David’s natural impulse. Have at him, then? Now? Say to him, “Look here, I know and the police know who made that phone call and you can be in very bad trouble if you do not straighten around. Now first, your father was not murdered at all, and second, I have never murdered anyone. What is it going to take to get that idea out of your head? You tell me what it takes and I’ll provide it.”

  But would that work?

  Or say, “Look here, you are going to distress your mother beyond what she can bear.” Would that reach him? David winced.

  He sat in Hob Cunningham’s house and could not feel sure enough to act. He was a reasonable man, and more. What was it that Aaron had said of him? Kind, honest, patient, and understanding. All the most respected virtues of our modern age. But the virtues were incompatible here. David could not clearly see how to be both kind and honest in this instance.

  Still, he could be reasonable. He would not, for instance, act in anger or in haste. Or in any more ignorance than he could humanly help. No, not until he knew as much as it was possible for him to know.

  But was it possible to find out what the boy was thinking, when he could not communicate with the boy? He thought, ruefully, of his own good cheer only this morning. Now he believed that, although he could certainly march upstairs and ask the question, “Do you believe that I killed your father?” he would precipitate some kind of open conflict and distress in the house, but he would not necessarily, or even probably, get the true answer.

  An oblique approach occurred to him. Could he find out through Gary Fenwick? That loyal henchman was obviously in on the telephone plot, for it had been known where Walter Douglas was on a Sunday. Maybe, maybe, thought David. I’m wilier than he is, at least. Devious, treacherous, to go round about. No matter, thought David grimly. If it is the only feasible way to go. After all, the boy did not confront me, but went round about.

  He began to muse on Aaron’s words. The cream of western civilization? Or a super-hypocrite? Which am I?

  Neither. Neither. A man, loving worrying willing wanting, like any man alive since the dawn, civilized or not. But a man who watches his own motivations because he knows what the devil can do and does not care to be possessed.

  Yet. Both. Both. A man who examines all he can find in himself and knows very well that there is much he has not found yet. But who would now pretend. He would in cold blood hide the hot truth, that what he would most like to do, in pure and primitive rage, would be to go up there, now, and hit, strike, beat that boy, give him physical pain for punishment. In a fury of judgment. Or revenge?

  Not for me, he thought ruefully. For one thing, were I to beat up the boy, then he would be one up on me, among my peers, within our system. He heard the vibration of their descent. Four feet on the stairs. He let them go.

  David Crown sat still in Hob Cunningham’s house. An intruder? Meaning well, but an intruder just the same?

  But, God help him, an honest man. Why had he not said openly to the policeman when he had been asked, “Yes, I think I know your telephoner. There he is.” Why had he not? To spare Abby, of course. Even the policeman, who already must have suspected, had wanted to spare Abby.

  And now Abby “felt like” being taken out to dinner. And would be.

  He perceived that Abby had her power. That there could be a tyranny of weakness.

  So David had let the boy go, had not confronted him, lost the chance, for this day, this evening. Sat here, being reasonable. The trouble was, being also honest, he knew how the heart could bend the reason and was bending and using his own. He wondered whether Abby, having Hob’s heart, had ever bent Hob’s reason. Of course she had. Of course she had. Not Abby, but Abby’s needs.

  What about the boy, then? How could a grown man expect the boy to keep reason clear and bright and straight, when the man could, even now, see his own bending, bending, for a darling woman’s sake?

  No, he could not expect too much from the boy. David saw deeper. If the boy “believed” that David was a killer, maybe … no, almost certainly … it was not his “reason” that believed. And in that case (which was close enough to Alternative Number Two) what was there to do?

  Be kind and patient and try to understand.

  But do nothing?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  About a quarter of ten, on Monday morning, Rafe Lorimer slapped sandals upon stone steps. “There you are, Abby.”

  “Good morning,” she said cheerily. She was cutting faded blossoms away from her roses. “Where were you all day yesterday?”

  “I,” said Rafe, “was writing a poem.” He was wearing his usual costume; his hair was rumpled on his head. “Abby dear, lend me your ears?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “David’s at the plant, naturally. Ladd is upstairs, I think. Cleona is in the kitchen. Here am I.”

  “Could we go indoors, please?”

  Abby pouted, regretting the open day.

  “Felicia has gone to the corner. I would rather she didn’t … uh … know.”

  “It is about Felicia?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Abby sighed and dumped her handful of blooms, stripped off her garden gloves.

  They went into the library, which was sunny at this hour. Rafe said, “Abby dear, I won’t take long. I can’t. I have an appointment. A committee of ladies. It seems I am inveigled into addressing a group of young people at the Wednesday Club. They are beginning an art class. Did you know?”

  “No,” said Abby, who was not a clubwoman. “How nice, Rafe. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, no. Thank you. I have only a minute. I’m snatching it.” He did his accordion smile. “Because of your son and my daughter and what’s happened.”

  “My … Ladd and Felicia?�
� Abby blinked.

  “Now, Abby, neither you nor I would be so very much pleased by any romance between them. Shall we just face that?”

  She bit her lips and furrowed her brow.

  “There will be none,” said Rafe. “That’s what I came to tell you.”

  Abby put her head to one side. “Why, thank you,” she said gently. “Now surely you have time for one cup?”

  “I must speak to the boy. I wanted to tell you first.”

  “But tell me what?”

  “Ladd waited for her, evidently.”

  “What do you mean? When?”

  “On Saturday evening.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh yes, that is why she never did come back. Now, there was some kind of quarrel between them: Felicia is heartsick about it.”

  “Why, I am sorry.” Now she was troubled.

  “Because,” said Rafe with the faintest touch of triumph, “she happens to be a tenderhearted girl and she did not enjoy having to refuse his advances.”

  “Oh, Rafe,” said Abby mournfully, and only just without laughter, “you must be confused.”

  Rafe said, “No, I think not. You don’t often go out to the pool, do you? Whereas I from my studio, can very often see and sometimes hear. You may not have observed them together, as I have done.”

  “Ladd and Felicia?”

  “Oh yes. Certainly. He has been keeping very close to home and the pool. Abby dear, you must have noticed that much. The boy is devoted to you, as you know. He is quite aware of the fact that you and Felicia never did hit it off. So—can’t you see his conflict?”

  Abby continued to look puzzled.

  “Now, she is unhappy and, I daresay, he is unhappy. Oh, it will pass, as all things must. But you and I can, perhaps, help our young people?”

  “Felicia told you that he …? What did you say?” Abby leaned forward.

  “We trust each other,” said Rafe in his fatuous way. “Yes, she told me. I want to make sure that the boy knows this is final. Can you help him, Abby?”

  Abby, her face a little pink, said, innocently and wistfully, “What am I to do, Rafe?”