“It’s the frame,” Hannah said. “Nothing more than the framework.”
Walker smiled. “You aren’t using the word in its slang sense, are you? And then why not?” He shrugged. “It could work that way.”
“You know that I’m the donor of a thousand dollars for the poetry contest?”
He nodded, working another cigarette out of the package.
“Then you must know that Dennis Keogh refused to submit his poetry.”
“And that’s supposed to prove?”
“I should think it pokes a large hole in your theory.”
“No-o-o. Small potatoes, a thousand dollars. In such an operation—we call it the confidence game—the operator would make that gesture, waiting for the big kill.”
More than anything else, his casualness, hiss patronizing intimacy was wearing on her nerves.
“I never gave the boy a thing except his salary; never.”
“And a room on your premises.”
“That was an economy on my part.”
“Of course, and a convenience on his.”
Hannah stared at him. “Do you believe this is what happened?”
“Much more important right now, do you think so? You’ve said no. But isn’t there some doubt in your mind? I said this had to take co-operation on your part. Cooperation means a lot of things, a guy leaving a window open co-operates with a thief. See what I mean? You’ve got a nice job in a bank, you’re practical, your mind runs to figures, to politics, to church work. How long have you been interested in poetry?”
“All my life.”
“All right, let’s take it that way. I wouldn’t think you’d know a poem from a pomegranate any more than I would, but let’s take it that way. You’ve spent a lifetime with shopkeepers, clerks, fishermen. And here he is, the most beautiful thing that ever happened to you: six feet of it in his socks. He’s been around. The world’s his oyster, but he’s already looking for pearls, the pearl, and, lady, all of a sudden, you’re it! The pearl of pearls.”
Hannah dug her teeth into her lip. She couldn’t help it. Nothing mattered except that she keep inside of her the churning bile.
He pulled her chin up with his forefinger and let the finger slide off, jarring her head.
“And you take to writing poetry yourself,” he said derisively. “Like taking to drink. Did it go to your head? Love has parted my limbs—is that how it goes?”
Hannah tried to shut her ears to the slur of his voice. Her head bobbed down and she turned her fingers in her hair to keep her head from bouncing with the sobs she could not control.
“That’s quite a picture—for a spinster, Miss Blake—love has parted my limbs.” His face was close to hers.
She flung her hand at it wildly. He danced back nimbly. “That could get you in trouble.”
“‘Unbound my limbs,’” she cried. “Filthy scum.”
The sheriff whistled softly. “Excuse me. There is a difference. I’ve got a filthy mind, but yours is as pure as the snow. Then listen to this, my friend. When you were doing your best to alibi him for the time of the murder, he didn’t need it. He had one. He was keeping a rendezvous with another girl, a pretty girl, the librarian—a friend of yours, too.”
He waited for the effect of the news to sink in, and the relief came over Hannah in hot waves. He was quivering before her eyes in its flood. She was going to be hysterical, she thought. She had to say something, to loosen the congealment about her tongue.
“How could he kill Maria, then?” she managed.
Walker smiled; almost wistfully. “He couldn’t. This is not a case. Until that payoff, it was a swell theory.”
Hannah tried to think, to prepare herself for the next deluge; something was unfinished, there was but one question more. If Dennis did not need her alibi, she needed his. And where were you, Miss Blake? She heard the question in her own head, and the answer, the truth was thick in her throat, there to be spurted out. And yet he stood, his elbow on the mantel, his face smiling, his eyes full of the leer telling his satisfaction in her humiliation.
“Rough, huh?”
Hannah drew one deep breath and another, gaining strength, sanity, with each of them.
Walker lit the cigarette he had used as a pointer. “Close to home, wasn’t it?”
She said nothing.
“I’ll take bets on that kid’s record with women. I’ll bet he’s got ’em spotted from here to Pensacola, the latches off a dozen doors for him.”
Hannah rocked in the chair, hugging herself, digging her fingernails into the fat of her arms.
“You aren’t going to forget this day, Miss Blake.” He walked over to her and steadied her with his hand on her shoulder. “Did you hear me?”
She nodded.
“Just remember I did you a good turn.”
26
SHE LEFT THE CAR in the driveway and half-ran, half-stumbled across the lawn fighting the lightness in her head, the illusion of floating, the expectancy that any instant she would depart from reason. Sophie, broom in hand, watched her first steps from the car, openmouthed, and then leaped toward her and caught her arm at the portico steps.
Hannah stood a moment, gasping for more of the air, of which there did not seem to be enough to fill her lungs.
“You’re sick, Miss Blake. You’re awful sick.”
Hannah nodded, feeling green, feeling that everything inside her and about her was the color of bile.
The girl hitched Hannah’s arm over her shoulder, and with the strength of a small, stout ox, took half the big woman’s weight upon herself, and bore her into the house and up the stairs that creaked under the strain. This healthy child, Hannah thought, this honey-faced, innocent, strong-backed child.
She eased Hannah into a chair, a straight chair she must have selected in her mind as they entered the bedroom, for she led the way to it unhesitatingly, and kicked it into position. Her breath hissed through her teeth with the effort.
Don’t be frightened, Hannah thought, but she could not get any words out at all. Her eyes pleaded the message, but Sophie had no time to look for it. The girl snatched the spread from the bed. She glanced at Hannah, saw her shivering and got a wool blanket from the cedar chest. Without question or consultation, she began to undress the big woman, making all the time consoling, mothering noises, and the dress removed she draped the blanket around Hannah’s shoulders. She unfastened her hose and thrust her hand beneath the foundation garment, the quicker to open it. Hannah moaned at the rough touch of her hand.
“I’m sorry, Miss Blake. I’m not very good at this. I never done it before.”
“Wonderful. You’re wonderful,” Hannah managed.
The child smiled, her whole face vivid with it. She wrapped the blanket around Hannah and hugged her in it, a quick, rough hug against her full soft breast. “I was afraid you was having a stroke.”
She pulled Hannah to the bed and rolled her, blanket-clad, into it. Hannah caught her hand and held it. The girl withdrew it gently, and smoothed the hair back from Hannah’s forehead. Hannah turned to the wall and began to sob. She wanted to hold the tears back, but they would not be stemmed. The torment poured out of her in racking, shuddering waves. Sophie flung herself on the bed beside her and tried to hold her, patting awkwardly at her arm, her back, the girl’s head bowed against her in sympathy.
“Don’t cry, Miss Blake,” she crooned. “Don’t cry—It’s going to be all right.”
When Hannah was still at last the girl got up and pulled the blinds. She brought a box of tissue from the dresser and put it on the pillow.
“Miss Blake, should I call Doctor Johnson?”
“No. I’ll be all right,” Hannah said.
“I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“No. I’ll be all right. Just leave me alone.”
Hannah could hear her move about the room, putting away her clothes, and then go to the door. Hannah turned in the bed.
“Sophie.”
The girl
brushed at her cheek quickly and turned. She, too, was crying.
“Come here a minute, Sophie.”
The girl came but with laggard steps, completely awkward now that the emergency was over.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know. I just never seen you like that. It hurt. That’s all.”
“Nobody’s ever seen me like that. Thank you, dear.”
It made the child cry more, and she fled from the room.
Hannah stared at the door as it closed behind her. Presently shadows seemed to stir across it, sometimes writhing, the play of the wind on the window shade and beyond it the sun behind the trees, shapes against the sun, Hannah thought, dancing to the tune of a demoniac fiddler, a player upon nerves, upon heart-strings … the contagion of dancing, the contagion of the power to whirl men into a dance … Hi-ho, Elizabeth, step lively and you’ll see the tune I’m whipping up for your lover—(an excellent fiddler, Mr. Walker)—look at him dance! Here he is and here he isn’t. There he was and there he wasn’t the night that she was killed. Making poetry. Don’t make me laugh. Making love and I’ll believe it. Bold love or secret? Secret? Good! Twice-over I’ll believe you. But what will it do to the buxom witch he works for? What a tale to tell, and I’m the boy to tell her. Spin around, Hannah Blake, and I’ll play it again all for you. You’re a fool, and women are fools and men their masters. I’ll bet he’s got ’em spotted from here to Pensacola, the latches off a dozen doors for him.
The shadows writhed again. Oh, sweet Dennis … all love and poetry. Women you didn’t know for knowing them so well. An art of both, he made, his kiss on the hand at first, a dozen hands and a dozen mouths … and breasts … your breasts are pale moons stung each with a kiss. …
She grew nauseous with loathing, her flesh seeming to shrivel as though something leprous were creeping over it. She groaned and turned again to the wall. Her head was fevered. She humped to the edge of the bed and rolled her forehead against the cold, hard plaster. It was the hard coldness of the dead. Only once had she felt it, her lips to her father’s forehead, bidden by the command of a weeping mother to whom all there was of the man lay stonelike. Was the flesh all to those who had known the flesh? The spirit nothing without it?
Oh, yes! How soon forgot the spirit, the body once removed. … A woman dead—a tight game of bridge, Frank. What a charity death when the living are dead. I was kinder to you than I knew, Maria. You knew. That’s why you waited. No protest. She put her fingers to the wall. The stone, the cold, cold stone. It has no pain. My head is heavy on the pillow, a little while, heavier, stonelike. My arms I can scarcely lift, leaden, my legs are weighted. Love has unbound my limbs! Love has fettered them, mired them, chained them to the earth …and no more dreaming. Heavy, heavy, night-bound, a black and shapeless pit. Utter darkness. Sleep.
27
WHEN HANNAH AWAKENED IT was to the first song of the birds beyond her window, the room itself blue-purple in the predawn light except for a night lamp on her dresser. Sophie had turned it on and left in its filmy glow a tray, a lovely composite for a still-life, Hannah thought—the slender pewter jug, the cup and saucer, and an orange. It was Sophie’s measure of the needs of a sick stomach.
Hannah got up, the weariness, the illness gone. What a healer, sleep! She drew the blinds. The garden was shimmering with dew, and in the sky, the last stars clung beyond the reach of dawn. And who could despair of the dawn itself, she wondered, going to the eastern window, its gleaming shield tipping back the night.
She hastened to the bathroom and washed, the warm water and then the cold, a stinging pleasure, and the rough towel pricking up the life-lust in her. In her robe she went downstairs and put on the kettle. Returning to dress, she paused at the open door of one of the guest rooms. Sophie asleep there. She went in on tiptoe and looked down on the ball-like shape, the girl’s hair wild on the pillow, but her face smooth and as soft as cream. She wore faded polka-dot pajamas for which she had gone home and returned for the night to be within Hannah’s call.
This is goodness, Hannah thought. She picked up the clock from the table at the child’s bedside. The alarm was set for six-thirty. Hannah shut it off. She went to her own room and returned with the tray, leaving it on the table with the clock next to the jug. She felt almost gleeful herself then, retreating and dressing quickly. She made a quick pot of coffee and boiled two eggs. The taste of them was good, but the fresh, clean air of morning better as she stepped outdoors and filled her lungs with it. Dawn, and Hannah Blake born of the morning at the age of forty-seven. The birthday of her life.
She took the car from the garage and drove through the still-sleeping town, startling a rabbit on High Street. A rabbit on High Street, she mused. It was as though the brick and mortar were gone, or not yet built, and the street a rutted path, the car a horse. What a way she would have had with a horse, she thought, the reins easy in her hands—a great dappled steed, snorting, charging at her command, rearing up to match her will with his, and merging then their two wills to conquer the wind and space.
She turned off High Street and down the ravine lane. The docks were awake, alive with the scurry of the fishermen’s preparations. She left the car and pulled her coat tighter against the damp wind. The sun was behind the town, the docks in shadow, but far out beyond where the silver mist turned golden, the peninsula at the mouth of the Cove was a knob of sunlight, the windows of the lighthouse there a burst of gold, and the water a molten streak pouring into the shadow.
The fishermen hauled in their ropes and revved their choking motors, their collars buttoned against the wind. Here and there, one caught sight of her and lifted his hand in salute. She hailed them back, her hands in her pockets for warmth. She watched for O’Gorman to come down the hill. His son was there before him, the boat ready. The man came then in long strides, his pipe shooting smoke like a whistle.
“O’Gorman, ho!” she called out in their manner as he approached her.
He took the pipe from his mouth and touched a finger to the peak of his checkered cap. “You’re up at the shriek of dawn, Miss Blake. How are you, ma’am?”
“I’m fine, Dan, and you?” His name came as easy as butter.
“As fit as a man can be torn from his bed in the middle of the night. A cursed way to earn a living.” He called out then to the boy: “Warm her up, Michael! She’ll be spitting carbon that’d bounce from the lake’s bottom.” He grinned down at Hannah. “When we’re doing the evacuation, will you get the town down here at this hour? I think not.”
“Would it be an imposition, Dan, to ask you to take me out in the boat with you as far as the lighthouse? I want to see where we’ll be landing during the evacuation.”
“It would not and if it was, I’d do it. But it’s a mile walk back.”
Hannah smiled. “By land or water?”
He stuck his pipe back in his mouth. “’Tis a mite closer by water,” he said slyly—“and only knee-deep to a giant like you.”
She kept pace with him down the dock. “It’s Saturday,” she said. “I’ve time enough.”
“Aye, and tomorrow’s Sunday, God be praised.”
He went into the boat ahead of her and bade his son hand her down. Hannah moved from one of their hands to the other, and the boat shifted under her step. “I’ll sink it,” she said.
“Not under twenty your weight, but she’ll balk like a mule with a woman astride her.”
Hannah sat on the bench opposite him at the helm of the boat, beyond the great box shape at the rear into which the boy emptied a barrel of ice.
O’Gorman revved the motor, waiting. “She’ll spit diamonds instead of carbon this morning.” He cupped his hands over his mouth then, and shouted down the docks. “Take us out, you, McGovern! I’m setting the lady down at the point!”
The boy flung the line down to his father. “Christ and Peter,” he said.
“Christ, Peter, and John,” the father said, as though it were a litany.
Along the docks, one boat and then another put off, the smell of gas fumes spoiling the air. O’Gorman pulled in last a few yards behind the next in the fleet. Hannah watched the shore line, scrub pines and dunes beneath the cliff, mile after mile of them, until sight failed.
She leaned toward O’Gorman. “Has the sheriff called off his dogs?”
The big man frowned. “Aye, off all but poor Annie. They’ve flattened her.”
“Did he arrest her?”
“Arrest or no, they’ve got her in the county jail.”
“He’ll call it a costly arrest one day,” Hannah said.
“Then he’ll call it in hell,” O’Gorman said. “Thank God there’s a place like it for the likes of him.”
“Is that the most you have to say in her defense?” said Hannah.
“I can say from now till sundown and it won’t release her. And as for him, I could vote twice in the same day and not defeat him. He’s the power of the state behind him, and till he gets better than her, he’ll hold poor Annie.”
“Ignorance makes a fine conniver,” Hannah said. “We’ll see if he’s still holding Annie by sunset.”
O’Gorman squinted into the sun watching her. “We’d never forget it, could you get her off, Miss Blake. I’ll stake my life on her innocence.”
And I mine if needs be, Hannah thought. “Do you believe in signs, Dan? There’s a white bird flying up.”
O’Gorman scarcely glanced at it. “It’s a carrion.”
28
BY THE TIME HANNAH reached the county seat that morning, Annie Tully was not in need of her services nor of those of a lawyer. She had been held overnight on suspicion of complicity in the murder of her employer, and since the evidence was insufficient, and his persuasions ineffective, Walker had to release her. Still, Hannah thought, she was glad she had come—not only to receive Annie, but to encounter Walker in his own den.
Town of Masks Page 14
