I had known it was coming, but I felt faint and dizzy. When I did not speak he went on: “I suppose all of us are capable of it, more or less. Greed envy, jealousy, rage, fear, self-protection, or sheer desperation—who knows what the human animal will do? And of course, there is always what we call original sin. Whatever it is, it may be the matter of a momentary impulse or the result of a long train of unconscious preparation. But we do kill.”
“I don’t believe Judith would kill anybody,” I said stubbornly. “And she’s really afraid. She was so afraid that she preferred to kill herself rather than be killed. And there is someone after her. I think he mistook the Benjamin woman for her. He certainly did me when he caught me that night. When he found he’d made a mistake he dropped me into the pool and escaped.”
“You’re sure you don’t know who he is?”
“No. I haven’t an idea. If the police have been here you know they’ve been watching for him.”
“They don’t entirely believe in him. Nor did I, until you told me all this.”
“He exists,” I said. “Judith knows who he is, too, but she won’t tell. Not anyone. Not me. Not even you, I suppose.”
“No,” he agreed. “Of course, there is one particular psychosis which seldom accepts treatment. Let’s call it guilt.”
“Yet she comes here.”
“She may want absolution without confession.” He glanced through his notes. “You are insistent that she never took a lover?”
“Her husband says so.”
“Husbands are usually the last to know,” he said dryly. “She may have had affairs, Miss Maynard. Take a woman of her type and the situation between herself and Mr. Chandler, and what can you expect? It might account for a number of things.”
Owing probably to my virginal status, he abandoned Judith’s sex life, however. I wanted to tell him that I was twenty-eight years old and had lost my belief in the stork at the age of twelve. He gave me no chance.
“Has it occurred to you that her reaction to the sight of this dead woman was rather extreme?” he asked. “She must have seen death before.”
“It wasn’t a pretty sight, Doctor.”
He took a turn or two about the room, looking deeply troubled.
“It’s just possible,” he said finally, “that it was your sister Mrs. Benjamin came to meet the night she was killed. After all, this woman expected to go home. She must have expected someone with a car to take her back to the station. Mrs. Chandler drives, of course?”
“Yes. But the whole idea is ridiculous, Doctor.”
He sat down at last and giving me a cigarette took one himself and lit them both.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” he said. “I’m out of my field, of course. I’m no detective. But just when did this Homicide man, O’Brien, ask for protracted leave, or whatever they call it? And why did he take your cottage? To watch your sister or to watch over her?”
“I think he was worried about her. He practically told me she was in danger.”
“Why? Didn’t he say? Your unknown man couldn’t have been Walter Benjamin, unless he is still living and had his own reasons for disappearing. You didn’t recognize his picture?”
“No. Of course, a beard changes a man.”
He looked thoughtful.
“A beard? Would he have a reason for wearing a beard? Unless he had a weak chin or wanted to disguise himself?”
“I don’t know why any man wears one,” I said. “I think they’re horrible.”
He laughed at that, and soon after he got up.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve given you more time than I should. But I may call you up someday, if that’s all right.”
“You don’t think you should see Judith?”
“At the moment,” he said dryly, “I imagine I’m the last person in the world she wants to see.” I picked up my bag and prepared to go, but he stopped me. “I hope you don’t mind this question,” he said. “I think it’s necessary. Have you any idea why your sister hated your mother?”
“Hated her? I don’t understand!”
He modified it when he saw my face.
“Perhaps the word is too strong. Let’s say disliked her,” he said. “That has been evident all along. She won’t discuss her. She won’t even mention her name. I told you once there was a point I could never pass. That is at least a part of it.”
“But Mother idolized her,” I protested, “The rest of us simply grew up, but Judith was the hothouse plant. Nothing was too good for her.”
“Not every hothouse plant flourishes,” he said dryly, and I prepared to leave.
I had plenty to think of on my way home that day, and it did not help matters to find Anne waiting for me at The Birches. She had come by train and Ed Brown’s taxi, and she was still indignant.
“What does Ed mean about my Bill climbing a ladder the night Judith tried to kill herself? And the police arresting him?”
“Your Bill wasn’t arrested” I said. “He was helping with what he calls a bit of breaking and entering. As a matter of fact, he was holding the ladder while I climbed it. Only the police grabbed him.”
“I suppose that explains everything,” she said nastily.
“Sit down,” I said. “I’ll get you a cup of tea or a highball, whichever you wish. And as soon as you’re calm I’ll tell you the story. Your Bill’s all right. He’s probably with his Janey this minute. As for the ladder, we needed it to get into Jude’s room. I didn’t say too much when Ridgely was here, but if it hadn’t been for Bill she’d be dead this minute.”
Anne chose tea, and I waited until Jennie had brought in the tray, dropped the sugar tongs on the floor, and reluctantly departed before I began. Then I told her, as briefly as I could. She was, like Phil, completely incredulous.
“Then she really meant it after all!” she said. “She’s the last person in the world I’d expect to do a thing like that. I thought she was simply playing for sympathy. Or maybe she wanted Ridgely back.”
“She doesn’t,” I said flatly. “But look here, Anne, she really is afraid of someone. Not Ridge. This man is a good bit taller than he is, and strong. I only saw him in the dark. But he’s been around since. I think he knocked Mrs. Benjamin out and then threw her in the pool, and I believe he shot O’Brien.”
She put down her cup.
“It’s a pity,” she said icily, “that no one ever tells me anything. I send Bill out here to get some good country air while I have to be away, and all at once there’s a killer around. I’m taking him back with me, Lois.”
I smiled.
“You’d better wait until his face looks better,” I said. “He’s still not very pretty.”
“His face? Did those policemen attack him?”
“No. Bill chased this killer—as we gaily refer to him—a night or two ago and came out second best when he caught up with him. The man got away, but Bill is somewhat battered.”
Her face was a mask of horror.
“And you allowed a thing like that!” she said. “My own son, in peril of his life, and you do nothing about it.”
“What could I do?” I asked reasonably. “I wasn’t there. It was all over when I knew about it. And his lip is healed by this time.”
“So they haven’t got this—killer?”
“No.”
She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. I knew how she felt. Her quiet domestic life of poor servants, or none at all, of struggling to send her children to good schools, of pot roasts and the price of coffee, of getting Martin off in the morning and seeing him come home tired at night—none of this had prepared her for the drama she was facing.
“I’ll be all right after a while,” she said. “Let me just rest here a few minutes. I left a note for Martin. He can go out for his supper.”
I sat there looking at her. She was older than Judith. She must remember things I had forgotten, or as a child never knew, and I was remembering what Helga had said that morning in the kitchen about the sins o
f the fathers.
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Anne?” I said.
She opened her eyes.
“What about?”
“About the family. Years ago. Was Father ever in any sort of trouble? I don’t mean financial. Anything else?”
“Father? Of course not.”
“He and Mother, they were happy together, weren’t they?”
“They didn’t fall all over each other, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think they quarreled much. But—I’ve never told this to anybody, Lois; not even Martin—they had a fearful row the day he shot himself.”
She hadn’t heard anything, just the loud voices and Mother crying hysterically. She had been staying in the house, as I knew, and she heard Father bang out the front door in a fury. It wasn’t like him, she said.
“I don’t suppose it really meant anything,” she went on. “Only it was strange that night at the dinner, Father in full dress and Mother in the black velvet of the Laszlo painting there and all her pearls. I remember wondering at how well they carried on, although I don’t think they were even on speaking terms. It was the same night, of course, that he shot himself.”
Her voice trailed off, as though she had lost herself in the past.
“Did you know of any trouble Mother was having at that time? She wasn’t in any sort of jam, was she?”
“What do you mean by a jam? She was in debt all over town. She refused to recognize the crash, you know.”
But she couldn’t have owed fifty thousand dollars, I thought. Anne poured herself another cup of tea and set down the pot.
“Of course, she got out as soon as she could after Father’s death. She took Judith and went to Arizona. I often wonder if she didn’t blame herself. If that was the reason she left. As though she couldn’t stand the house any longer. Judith’s cough was only an excuse.”
I was remembering myself. The hasty exodus, and my standing around childlike to watch the hurried packing of trunks, Mother’s face white and strained, and my nurse grabbing me by the arm and shutting me in the day nursery. Curiously enough, I did not remember seeing Judith at all. I daresay she was around, coughing, as Anne said, but I did not remember her.
But, with one of those curious flashbacks of memory that occur sometimes, I was remembering a tall saturnine-looking man, carrying down the bags to the car.
“We had a butler then, didn’t we?” I asked.
“I suppose so. We always did have, didn’t we?” she said vaguely. “I’d better see Judith, I suppose. She practically threw me out the last time. What on earth will I say?”
“Don’t ask her any questions. Just say you’re sorry she’s not well. Tell her about Martin, or the high cost of living. Talk to her about going abroad. She intends to, as soon as she can get the space. Just any darn thing, but ignore the bandages.”
She did pretty well, although I could see she was shocked at Judith’s appearance. I think Judith tried, too, although she wasn’t successful. They did better over the Queen Mary, on which Judith wanted to travel. But she and Anne had never got along, and I was relieved when Anne said she did not want to tire her and got up.
She stayed to dinner that night. Bill, for a wonder, turned up, but he instantly vetoed going back to New York.
“I’ve got a thing for this Janey girl,” he said, “and I’m having the time of my life into the bargain. I’m staying awhile, if Phil and Lois will keep me.”
Anne eyed him. His face had improved, but the black shadow around one eye made him a little pathetic. In the end he got his way and, Anne refusing to ride in his jalopy, he drove her to the station in our car. I think she was reassured by the sight of a state trooper on a motorcycle who followed them into town. It annoyed Bill, however, and on returning he stated he had meant to take Janey for a drive that night, but the idea of a policeman making a third did not appeal to him.
Chapter 23
I FOUND HELGA WITH Walter Benjamin’s picture that night. She had gone into my room ostensibly to turn down my bed, but she had not done so. Instead she was standing holding the photograph, and her hand was shaking.
“Found this on the floor,” she said. “Not very pretty, is he?”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Me?” she said indignantly. “Of course not.”
I did not believe her. She was both shocked and frightened and she scurried out of the room as fast as her legs would take her. I gave her time to get to her room and settle down before I followed her, carrying the picture with me.
She had not gone to bed. Apparently she had been sitting beside the window in the dark, as though she were watching the grounds, and I saw she was careful to draw the shade before she switched on a light. For the first time I wondered if she was afraid and if so, of what. When I asked her, however, she merely said it was a hot night and she liked the air.
But she eyed the photograph with angry suspicion.
“I told you about that,” she said. “It’s my bedtime, Lois, and what with company and trays and what not I’ve earned my sleep.”
“Of course you have,” I agreed. “This won’t take a minute. Just who is this man? You recognized him, didn’t you?”
“With all that hair? It might be the angel Gabriel for all of me.”
I gave up. Helga could be stubborn, and the way her jaw was set over her lower teeth a Missouri mule had nothing on her. Yet I felt she wanted to tell me something and was afraid to do so. I tried another tack.
“All right,” I said. “You didn’t know him and he didn’t know you. But perhaps you remember what employment agency Mother used Helga. She must have changed help now and then.”
“Not me. I went there as kitchenmaid and I’ve stayed ever since.”
“But the others. I seem to remember a lot of butlers, for one thing. Where did she get her servants? What agency, I mean.”
She threw me a sharp glance.
“She didn’t consult me,” she said. “My job was my kitchen and I stayed there. Every morning I got my orders. I wrote them down, too, so your mother couldn’t say I’d changed anything. And every week I added up my slips, so she knew I wasn’t getting a percentage like most cooks. Butlers, too. They get a cut on all the liquor they buy. That Dawson got rich on it.”
Dawson! It was the name I had forgotten, and Helga had managed to tell me after all.
“He was there when Father died wasn’t he?” I said casually. “How could he get rich, Helga? We had lost everything.”
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “All I know is he was going to buy a business of his own. That takes money. He was a bad man, Lois. A wicked man. Mind I don’t know anything, but he got that money somewhere that wasn’t honest.”
“What sort of business, Helga?”
“How would I know?” she said. “And it’s no use showing me that picture!” she added. “I haven’t got my specs. Left them downstairs. I wouldn’t remember, anyhow. Now clear out of here. I want to go to bed.”
But I held it out to her, and she had to take it. She didn’t want to. Her old hands were shaking again, and she gave it the briefest possible glance.
“Never saw him before,” she said. “Don’t like hairy men. Never did. Who’s it supposed to be?”
She knew him all right. But for some reason she wasn’t going to tell me who he was, and I knew my whole excursion was a failure. She didn’t know anything. She insisted she did not know what agency Mother used to find domestic help, and I left her standing in the center of the room, her mouth stubbornly set. But she said one significant thing as I was closing the door.
“You better let sleeping dogs lie, Lois,” she said. “We got trouble enough now. Don’t you be stirring up more.”
I made Judith comfortable before I went to bed that night. I rubbed her back, realizing that she was thinner than I had ever seen her, and I laid out the two sleeping-pills she was allowed out of the bottle I kept hidden in my room. She hardly spoke at all, but when I had finished she looked up
at me.
“Does Doctor Townsend know about me, Lois?” she asked
“I believe Phil called him up,” I said evasively. “Would you like to see him?”
She shook her head.
“I was just tired,” she said slowly. “Tired and sort of desperate. I didn’t kill that woman, Lois.”
“I never thought you did darling.”
“And I didn’t shoot O’Brien, either.” She gave me a thin smile. “Jennie told me he’s in the hospital. I hope he’s better. I rather liked him. He’s improving, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said. “They say he’ll pull through.”
“And—have they any idea who shot him?”
“I suppose all cops make enemies. Nobody knows who did it, unless you know something yourself, Judith. If you do, you ought to tell it.”
But she only gave a slight shudder and closed her eyes.
“What I know wouldn’t help,” she said flatly. Then she did an unusual thing, for her. She reached up a thin hand and patted my arm.
“I’ve played hell with your work, haven’t I?” she said. “Ever since I came.”
I grinned at her.
“My agent says the magazines are going all out for sweetness and love,” I said. “That rather lets my Sara Winters out, doesn’t it!”
She let me go then, as though she was settled for the night. As soon as I had closed the door, however, I heard her beyond it, locking it and shoving the bolt in place. So, whatever the terror was, it was not over for her.
Phil says that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings what issues is usually a lot of burps. Yet as it happened it was young Bill who solved at least one problem for me. For by that time I was practically convinced that Walter Benjamin had been Arthur Dawson, and that he had been involved in some dirty business in the past which concerned us. It would account for the money in the bank, the change of name, the beard, and most important of all, why his widow had come to The Birches.
The Swimming Pool Page 22
