Maybe she had been wrong about Tom, she thought, about the way he had looked at her. She opened her eyes hopefully and was bitterly sorry she had. His expression of angry bewilderment was unchanged, but now he was leaning forward, staring at her as if he could draw the right answer from her by force of will. And she knew he couldn’t. The tears overflowed, and she cried weakly; then magically a tissue was pressed into her hand. She had forgotten the nurse. The upside down face bent over her from behind the bed, and she was strangely consoled by the sight of it. All these men in the room – even her husband – had been made aliens by what had happened to her. It was good to have a woman there.
‘Mrs Barton?’ Dahl’s voice was unexpectedly sharp, and Tom turned abruptly toward him. Dahl must have caught the warning in that, Julie realized with gratitude; when he spoke again his voice was considerably softer. ‘Mrs Barton, please let me put the matter before you bluntly. Let me show you what we’re faced with here.
‘A dangerous man is on the prowl. You seem to think he was drunk, but he wasn’t too drunk to know exactly where he could find a victim who was alone and unprotected. He probably had this house staked out for weeks in advance, knowing your husband’s been working late at his office. And he knew how to get into the house. He scraped this window sill here pretty badly, coming in over it.
‘He wasn’t here to rob the place – he had the opportunity but he wasn’t interested in it. He was interested in one thing, and one thing only.’ Surprisingly, Dahl walked over to the dresser and lifted the framed wedding picture from it. ‘This is you, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Julie said in bewilderment.
‘You’re a very pretty young woman, you know.’ Dahl put down the picture, lifted up her hand mirror, and approached her with it. ‘Now I want to show you how a pretty young woman looks after she’s tried to resist a man like that.’ He suddenly flashed the mirror before her and she shrank in horror from its reflection.
‘Oh, please!’ she cried.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ Dahl said harshly. ‘According to the doctor you’ll heal up fine in a while. But until then, won’t you see that man as clear as day every time you look into this thing? Won’t you be able to point him out, and lay your hand on the Bible, and swear he was the one?’
She wasn’t sure any more. She looked at him wonderingly, and he threw wide his arms summing up his case. ‘You’ll know him when you see him again, won’t you?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ she said.
She thought she would be left alone after that, but she was wrong. The world had business with her, and there was no way of shutting it out. The doorbell chimed incessantly. The telephone in the hall rang, was silent while someone took the call, then rang again. Men with hard faces – police officials – would be ushered into the room by Tom. They would solemnly survey the room, then go off in a corner to whisper together. Tom would lead them out, and would return to her side. He had nothing to say. He would just sit there, taut with impatience, waiting for the doorbell or telephone to ring again.
He was seldom apart from her, and Julie, watching him, found herself increasingly troubled by that. She was keeping him from his work, distracting him from the thing that mattered most to him. She didn’t know much about his business affairs, but she did know he had been working for months on some very big deal – the one that had been responsible for her solitary evenings at home – and what would happen to it while he was away from his office? She had only been married two years, but she was already well-versed in the creed of the businessman’s wife. Troubles at home may come and go, it said, but Business abides. She used to find that idea repellent, but now it warmed her. Tom would go to the office, and she would lock the door against everybody, and there would be continuity.
But when she hesitantly broached the matter he shrugged it off. ‘The deal’s all washed up, anyhow. It was a waste of time. That’s what I was going to tell you about when I walked in and found you like that. It was quite a sight.’ He looked at her, his eyes glassy with fatigue. ‘Quite a sight,’ he said.
And sat there waiting for the doorbell or phone to ring again.
When he was not there, one of the nurses was. Miss Shepherd, the night nurse, was taciturn. Miss Waldemar, the day nurse, talked.
She said, ‘Oh, it takes all kinds to make this little old world, I tell you. They slow their cars coming by the house, and they walk all over the lawn, and what they expect to see I’m sure I don’t know. It’s just evil minds, that’s all it is, and wouldn’t they be the first ones to call you a liar if you told them that to their faces? And children in the back seats! What is it, sweetie? You look as if you can’t get comfy.’
‘I’m all right, thank you,’ Julie said. She quailed at the thought of telling Miss Waldemar to please keep quiet or go away. There were people who could do that, she knew, but evidently it didn’t matter to them how anyone felt about you when you hurt their feelings. It mattered to Julie a great deal.
Miss Waldemar said, ‘But if you ask me who’s really to blame I’ll tell you right out it’s the newspapers. Just as well the doctor won’t let you look at them, sweetie, because they’re having a party, all right. You’d think what with Russia and all, there’s more worthwhile things for them to worry about, but no, there it is all over the front pages as big as they can make it. Anything for a nickel, that’s their feeling about it. Money, money, money, and who cares if children stand there gawking at headlines and getting ideas at their age!
‘Oh, I told that right to one of those reporters, face to face. No sooner did I put foot outside the house yesterday when he steps up, bold as brass, and asks me to get him a picture of you. Steal one, if you please! They’re all using that picture from your high school yearbook now; I suppose they want something like that big one on the dresser. And I’m not being asked to do him any favors, mind you; he’ll pay fifty dollars cash for it! Well, that was my chance to tell him a thing or two, and don’t think I didn’t. You are sleeepy, aren’t you, lamb? Would you like to take a little nap?’
‘Yes,’ said Julie.
Her parents arrived. She had been eager to see them, but when Tom brought them into her room the eagerness faded. Tom had always despised her father’s air of futility – the quality of helplessness that marked his every gesture – and never tried to conceal his contempt. Her mother, who had started off with the one objection that Tom was much too old for Julie – he was thirty to her eighteen when they married – had ultimately worked up to the point of telling him he was an outrageous bully, a charge which he regarded as a declaration of war.
That foolish business, Julie knew guiltily, had been her fault. Tom, who could be as finicking as an old maid about some things, had raged at her for not emptying the pockets of his jackets before sending them to the tailor, and since she still was, at the time, more her mother’s daughter than her husband’s wife, she had weepingly confided the episode to her mother over the telephone. She had not made that mistake again, but the damage was done. After that her husband and her parents made up openly hostile camps, while she served as futile emissary between them.
When they all came into the room now, Julie could feel their mutual enmity charging the air. She had wistfully hoped that what had happened would change that, and knew with a sinking heart that it had not. What it came to, she thought resignedly, is that they hated each other more than they loved her. And immediately she was ashamed of the thought.
Her father weakly fluttered his fingers at her in greeting, and stood at the foot of the bed looking at her like a lost spaniel. It was a relief when the doorbell rang and he trailed out after Tom to see who it was. Her mother’s eyes were red and swollen; she kept a small, damp handkerchief pressed to her nose. She sat down beside Julie and patted her hand.
‘It’s awful, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s just awful. Now you know why I was so much against your buying the house out here, way at the end of nowhere. How are you?’
‘All right.’
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Her mother said, ‘We would have been here sooner except for Grandma. We didn’t want her to find out, but some busybody neighbor went and told her. And you know how she is. She was prostrated. Dr Vaughn was with her for an hour.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Her mother patted her hand again. ‘She’ll be all right. You’ll get a card from her when she’s up and around.’
Her grandmother always sent greeting cards on every possible occasion. Julie wondered mirthlessly what kind of card she would find to fit this occasion.
‘Julie,’ her mother said, ‘would you like me to comb out your hair?’
‘No, thank you, Mother.’
‘But it’s all knots. Don’t those nurses ever do anything for their money? And where are your dark glasses, darling? The ones you use at the beach. It wouldn’t hurt to wear them until that discoloration is gone, would it?’
Julie felt clouds of trivia swarming over her, like gnats. ‘Please, Mother.’
‘It’s all right, I’m not going to fuss about it. I’ll make up a list for the nurses when I go. Anyhow, there’s something much more serious I wanted to talk to you about, Julie. I mean, while Dad and Tom aren’t here. Would it be all right if I did?’
‘Yes.’
Her mother leaned forward tensely. ‘It’s about – well, it’s about what happened. How it might make you feel about Tom now. Because, Julie, no matter how you might feel, he’s your husband, and you’ve always got to remember that. I respect him for that, and you must, too, darling. There are certain things a wife owes a husband, and she still owes them to him even after something awful like this happens. She’s duty bound. Why do you look like that, Julie? You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Julie said. She had been chilled by a sudden insight into her parents’ life together. ‘But please don’t talk about it. Everything will be all right.’
‘I know it will. If we aren’t afraid to look our troubles right in the eye they can never hurt us, can they? And, Julie, before Tom gets back there’s something else to clear up. It’s about him.’
Julie braced herself. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s something he said. When Dad and I came in we talked to him a while and when – well, you know what we were talking about, and right in the middle of it Tom said in the most casual way – I mean, just like he was talking about the weather or something – he said that when they caught that man he was going to kill him. Julie, he terrified me. You know his temper, but it wasn’t temper or anything like that. It was just a calm statement of fact. He was going to kill the man, and that’s all there was to it. But he meant it, Julie, and you’ve got to do something about it.’
‘Do what?’ Julie said dazedly. ‘What can I do?’
‘You can let him know he mustn’t even talk like that. Everybody feels the way he does – we all want that monster dead and buried. But it isn’t up to Tom to kill him. He could get into terrible trouble that way! Hasn’t there been enough trouble for all of us already?’
Julie closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Dr Vaughn came and watched her walk around the room. He said, ‘I’ll have to admit you look mighty cute in those dark glasses, but what are they for? Eyes bother you any?’
‘No,’ Julie said. ‘I just feel better wearing them.’
‘I thought so. They make you look better to people, and they make people look better to you. Say, that’s an idea. Maybe the whole human race ought to take up wearing them permanently. Be a lot better for their livers than alcohol, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Julie said. She sat down on the edge of the bed, huddled in her robe, its sleeves covering her clasped hands, mandarin style. Her hands felt as if they would never be warm again. ‘I want to ask you something.’
‘All right, go ahead and ask.’
‘I shouldn’t, because you’ll probably laugh at me, but I won’t mind. It’s about Tom. He told Mother that when they caught the man he was going to kill him. I suppose he was just – I mean, he wouldn’t really try to do anything like that, would he?’
The doctor did not laugh. He said grimly, ‘I think he might try to do something exactly like that.’
‘To kill somebody?’
‘Julie, I don’t understand you. You’ve been married to Tom – how long is it now?’
‘Two years.’
‘And in those two years did you ever know him to say he would do something that he didn’t sooner or later do?’
‘No.’
‘I would have bet on that. Not because I know Tom so well, mind you, but because I grew up with his father. Every time I look at Tom I see his father all over again. There was a man with Lucifer’s own pride rammed into him like gunpowder, and a hair-trigger temper to set it off. And repressed. Definitely repressed. Tom is, too. It’s hard not to be when you have to strain all the time, keeping the emotional finger off that trigger. I’ll be blunt, Julie. None of the Bartons has ever impressed me as being exactly well-balanced. I have the feeling that if you gave any one of them enough motive for killing, he’d kill, all right. And Tom owns a gun, too, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you don’t have to look that scared about it,’ the doctor said. ‘It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t been warned. This way I can tell Christensen and he’ll keep an eye on your precious husband until they’ve got the man strapped into the electric chair. A bullet’s too good for that kind of animal, anyhow.’
Julie turned her head away and the doctor placed his finger against her chin and gently turned it back. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll do everything possible to see Tom doesn’t get into trouble. Will you take my word for that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what’s bothering you? The way I talked about putting that man in the electric chair? Is that what it is?’
‘Yes. I don’t want to hear about it.’
‘But why? You of all people, Julie! Haven’t you been praying for them to find him? Don’t you hate him enough to want to see him dead?’
It was like turning the key that unlocked all her misery.
‘I do!’ she said despairingly. ‘Oh, yes, I do! But Tom doesn’t believe it. That’s what’s wrong, don’t you understand? He thinks it doesn’t matter to me as much as it does to him. He thinks I just want to forget all about it, whether they catch the man or not. He doesn’t say so, but I can tell. And that makes everything rotten; it makes me feel ashamed and guilty all the time. Nothing can change that. Even if they kill the man a hundred times over it’ll always be that way!’
‘It will not,’ the doctor said sternly. ‘Julie, why don’t you use your head? Hasn’t it dawned on you that Tom is suffering from an even deeper guilt than yours? That subconsciously he feels a sense of failure because he didn’t protect you from what happened? Now he’s reacting like any outraged male. He wants vengeance. He wants the account settled. And, Julie, it’s his sense of guilt that’s tearing you two apart.
‘Do you know what that means, young lady? It means you’ve got a job to do for yourself. The dirtiest kind of job. When the police nail that man you’ll have to identify him, testify against him, face cameras and newspapermen, walk through mobs of brainless people dying to get a close look at you. Yes, it’s as bad as all that. You don’t realize the excitement this mess has stirred up; you’ve been kept apart from it so far. But you’ll have a chance to see it for yourself very soon. That’s your test. If you flinch from it you can probably write off your marriage then and there. That’s what you’ve got to keep in mind, not all that nonsense about things never changing!’
Julie sat there viewing herself from a distance, while the cold in her hands moved up along her arms turning them to gooseflesh. She said, ‘When I was a little girl I cried if anybody even pointed at me.’
‘You can’t be a little girl all your life,’ the doctor said.
When the time came, Julie fortified herself with that thought. Sitting in the official
car between Tom and Lieutenant Christensen, shielded from the onlooking world by dark glasses and upturned coat collar, her eyes closed, her teeth set, she repeated it like a private Hail Mary over and over – until it became a soothing murmur circling endlessly through her mind.
Lieutenant Christensen said, ‘The man’s a janitor in one of those old apartment houses a few blocks away from your place. A drunk and a degenerate. He’s been up on morals charges before, but nothing like this. This time he put himself in a spot he’ll never live to crawl away from. Not on grounds of insanity, or anything else. We’ve got him cold.’
You can’t be a little girl all your life, Julie thought.
‘We’re here, Mrs Barton,’ the lieutenant said.
The car had stopped before a side door of the headquarters building, and Tom pushed her through it just ahead of men with cameras who swarmed down on her, shouting her name, hammering at the door when it was closed against them. She clutched Tom’s hand as the lieutenant led them through long institutional corridors, other men falling into step with them along the way, until they reached another door where Dahl was waiting.
He said, ‘This whole thing takes just one minute, Mrs Barton, and we’re over our big hurdle. All you have to do is look at the man and tell us yes or no. That’s all there is to it. And it’s arranged so that he can’t possibly see you. You have nothing at all to fear from him. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ Julie said.
Again she sat between Tom and Lieutenant Christensen. The platform before her was brilliantly lighted; everything else was in darkness. Men were all around her in the darkness. They moved restlessly; one of them coughed. The outline of Dahl’s sharp profile and narrow shoulders was suddenly etched black against the platform; then it disappeared as he took the seat in front of Julie’s. She found that her breathing was becoming increasingly shallow; it was impossible to draw enough air out of the darkness to fill her lungs. She forced herself to breathe deeply, counting as she used to do during gym exercises at school. In-one-two-three. Out-one-two-three.
The Specialty of the House Page 25
