“I cannot speak on the telephone now,” said Granny regally. “I must have a pill and my white shawl. I don’t know why it should be so cold in August.” She was proceeding, walking slowly but fairly steadily, toward the east wing, mumbling to herself. “Weather is not what it used to be. Seasons are all confused. Myra was young and I am old.”
When she was gone, Edie let her breath out. “Hello? Dr. Wesley?”
“I believe you asked me to call you?” said a man’s voice.
“Yes, sir, I did. I am related to the Whitman family. This is about Harold Page.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Dr. Wesley, I may have to speak fast.” Edie looked on all sides while she talked. Mrs. Beck would appear any moment, surely. Or Wendy might come downstairs.
“A terrible thing has happened. Someone got in here, at the Whitman house, on Wednesday night, and injured Mrs. Whitman who was taken to a hospital in a coma and has now died.” Edie felt proud of that sentence. It was pretty good. It told a lot. “All of them here,” she hurried on, “think it was Harold Page, and the police want him.”
“Harold left us on Monday …”
“I know. But he didn’t do it. He is here now. I have him hidden.”
“I beg your pardon? Hidden, did you say?”
“That’s what I said.” Edie was forced to swallow.
“You are speaking from the Whitman house? He is there, you said? They don’t know it?”
“No, they don’t know.” Her sentences were sounding sillier. She didn’t know how to frame another.
“I am wondering,” the voice said suavely, “why you called me?”
“Well, could you come down, sir, and help me? Help him? He didn’t do it.”
“My dear Miss Thompson,” the doctor said, “surely you can tell the police that he didn’t do it. In what way … why should I come?”
“Why because, although it isn’t true, his ex-wife is swearing that she saw him that night.”
“I should think that it’s a matter for the police, really.”
“Yes, but surely you must see how it is the same thing, all over again.”
“The boy is all right, you know.”
“But to go through …”
“I see. I see.” The voice was enlightened. “You think that he will be damaged emotionally; perhaps you are thinking ‘psychologically’? But Harold is perfectly well, you know.”
“He isn’t well, physically. He has a fever.”
“Then he ought to see a physician.”
“Yes, sir, I know that.”
Edie wanted to grind her teeth. She began to think there was such a thing as being too sane. She couldn’t seem to reach this man with any of her own sense of tragedy and peril.
“I think,” he was saying now, “that you mean to be kind. But Harold Page is as able as any of us to meet whatever his environment presents, and he ought not to have special privilege. He is not a cripple, Miss Thompson, and he need not lean or depend.”
“Yes, I realize …”
“So we mustn’t treat him like a cripple, must we? Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, but isn’t there anything?”
“I doubt that there is any wise thing that I can do. You say he is unjustly suspected of a murder? The police will surely investigate, will they not?”
“Yes, well …”
“I would say that you ought to call the police, at once. To have hidden him is—unacceptable behavior and I, frankly, am rather surprised that Harold allowed it. He knows he must face reality.” The doctor suddenly stopped sounding stuffy. “Turn him in, my dear,” he said. “Trust the authorities. Secrets and stratagems are pretty romantic.”
Edie said coolly, “Thank you very much for your advice.”
She hung up. She thought, I’ll get the guard. No, I’ll tell Harold. No, first, I’ll get the guard. No, I promised. She seemed to hear the front doorbell clear its throat. She sped up to the foyer to throw the door open. She would fling herself upon Charles Tyler.
Ronnie Mungo said cheerfully, “Good morning.”
Edie stepped backward and let him in. “You are so wrong,” she said into his smiling face. “This is going to be one of the worst mornings I ever saw.”
“What’s up?” He looked alert.
“Oh, listen …” Well, fling herself upon anybody. “Could you do anything?” she cried.
Ron took her by the arm and helped her down the two steps. He glanced around and saw that they were quite alone. “How can I say,” he answered in his lighthearted way, “until I know what the matter is?”
Edie pulled away from his hand. “No. No use. Wendy will lie and lie and lie …” She sunk her teeth hard into her forefinger.
Ron said, unperturbed, “What about? And where is she?”
“She’s dressing, I guess. To run off to Mexico with you. Or so she imagines.” Edie didn’t care what she said anymore. She couldn’t think what to do.
“Imagines?” he drawled.
“Myra is dead.” She threw it at him.
“Oh, oh,” said Ron softly. “Well, that does put the frost on. Too bad. I was fond of Myra—in a way.” The pleasant smile-wrinkles framed, she saw, a pair of foxy eyes. “Were you?” he asked, obviously wondering why she should be this much upset.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Edie burst out. “Harold Page is in my room.”
“What? You don’t mean the ‘madman’?” He wasn’t taking it seriously yet. He was putting quotes around the noun.
“Only he isn’t. He didn’t do it. He wasn’t here that night. He hasn’t done one single thing that’s wrong. I’ve had him hidden in my room since yesterday.”
Ron took her by the shoulders with firm hands. He was looking down at her with a stern expression. “For God’s sake! Why?”
“Because I couldn’t get him out,” she cried. “Cousin Ted has had us bottled up. And now Harold’s own doctor tells me what a fool I am. So you needn’t bother.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Ron said. He smiled at her, now, but she sensed that wheels whirred in his head.
Edie began to mimic the doctor’s voice. “Harold Page is ‘as well able as any of us to meet what his environment presents.’ So, the poor kid, sick with a fever, walks right into a murder charge. Oh, I’ve done well!”
“Murder?” There was an edge to the pleasant voice now. A shock?
“Well, of course, murder!” she cried. “He is supposed to have knocked Myra down and broken her head and now she is dead of it.”
Edie was feeling as isolated as if she lived in an iceberg, all by herself. Was she the only one in the world who cared what happened to Harold Page? “And I have to go and tell him.” She hid her face.
In a moment she heard Ron’s voice, close to her ear. “You mean to say this chap is innocent?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Even of being mad. But it won’t matter.” She turned her back.
“You’re sounding pretty upset, Cousin Edie.”
“Oh, I’ve been a romantic idiot,” she wept. “I haven’t ‘faced reality.’ And now the jig is up. The bubble’s burst. The end has come.”
She had no handkerchief. She mopped her face with her sleeve. Then Ron was putting his handkerchief into her hand. “But look,” he said with a certain comical stubbornness, “if he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it? Did he?”
He had almost made her laugh.
“Maybe I don’t get all this,” Ron said.
You don’t, she thought, but you may as well have it. Her heart jumped as she said quietly, “Are you wondering who did?”
Her vision had been mopped clear and she looked directly at him. What kind of a man was this, anyway? If she had laid the ghost, killed the dream she had once built up around him, then she did not know him at all. She did not know why he had come, so early in the morning, to run away with Wendy because Wendy insisted. A man who had had two wives already—could he have built a romantic dream around Wendy, aged nineteen? Or was it W
endy’s money?
He said, “Oh, come on now, Cousin Edie, I know Wendy takes a bit of handling. Are you calling her a murderess?”
Had he read her mind or had he thought of this before? No matter. No difference. Edie said, “All right. I can’t prove it. But Myra is just as dead.”
She turned her back on him and walked away, trying to compose herself and make ready to go up to the turret room and tell Harold Page what was up. Poor Myra, she thought. I haven’t spared her a minute, to mourn her.
But she hadn’t known Myra, either.
“I don’t see,” said Ron, “what you thought you were going to do with him.”
She turned around and he was looking a little angry, which was odd.
“Get him away, of course,” she cried. “Out of this house and out of this town. Where the Chief of Police is the victim’s brother, and that’s a darling situation, too.” She was going to cry again. She sank into a chair and huddled there, using his handkerchief.
“Edie, maybe you had better calm down.”
She had to agree with that. Oh yes. Be calm. Don’t care, that meant. Stop caring. “What does it matter,” she raved, “if I rant and rave like Wendy? Anybody might as well. I couldn’t help him. I can’t, now. Oh, the world has moved and left me far behind. I was trying to be … I don’t know what … to do good, I guess. But it was only busybodying.”
She realized that he was crouching beside her, that he seemed about to pet her and comfort her. That would be intolerable. Edie pulled herself straight and took one hard swipe at her eyes with the handkerchief. “Okay,” she said sternly. “So much for me. Oh, he’ll be all right. That is, if they don’t shoot him on sight. That is, if they have enough pity to get him to a doctor before they beat him with sticks, or something. Maybe he won’t suffer too much. Maybe he won’t get sent back, as a homicidal maniac. Somebody else might believe him. It may come out that Wendy drove him there in the first place, with her lies, and doesn’t mind if she does it again. Justice may prevail. If it doesn’t, then Wendy will just get away with murder. Two of them. Myra. And Harold Page—to all intents and purposes. That’s wrong, I think. Flat wrong, plain and simple. That is, if anything is simple anymore.”
Ron stirred and said, “Er … could I do anything?”
“What could you do?” Edie flashed. “I forgot. You came to carry Wendy off and marry her.”
“Could be,” he drawled, “I suddenly don’t feel like marrying Wendy Whitman.”
“Just because she’s insane?” Edie then became ashamed of herself. She got out of the chair. Jumped into her familiar skin. “I’m very sorry, Ron,” she said in her normal voice. “Pay no attention to that, please? I don’t know what to do, you see. There’s nothing I can do about this.”
But she found herself feeling a little better. It was dead-end, frustration alley. You snarled and you bit. But after a while, when you were sane again, you just hit the wall. She could not help Harold Page.
So she had been insulting a stranger, this Ronnie Mungo whom she did not know, because a dream or two had died—but he had not dreamed them. She said again, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t insult you. You have nothing to do with it.”
He was looking at her thoughtfully. There seemed to be a tiny worry line on his brow. “I’m sorry, too,” he said, “because it looks to me as if you’ve had a little too much to do with it. Aren’t you going to be in a bad spot?”
“Oh—” Edie dismissed that.
“Look, I guess I see why you did all this. But I don’t think Tyler is going to take it kindly. Matter of fact, I think it’s against the law.”
She shook her head sadly.
“Not going down too well with the old lady, either. Is it?”
“No,” said Edie, who didn’t care about that.
“Do you know what I think? I think we had better get him out of here.”
Chapter Eleven
“WHAT?” Edie didn’t trust her ears.
“Right now.” (He meant it?)
“How could …”
“I have a car out there.”
“There’s a guard out there,” she said, bewildered.
“Then get him in here.”
“How?”
“Call him in. Tell him a story. Tell him you’re hearing sinister noises, somewhere inside the house. Get him out of this room, and the way is clear.”
“Would he come?” Her heart beat faster.
“What’s he there for?” Ron held his head tilted. He was grinning at her. His eyes were reckless.
“Then you’d take Harold?” She couldn’t believe it.
“Certainly. Whisk him out of town. That’s what you would like. That would take you off the spot.”
She said, in confusion, “I want him back where he’ll have somebody on his side, some chance.” But that was wrong. Dr. Wesley wasn’t on Harold’s side. Oh nonsense, of course he was—although not romantically.
“There’s going to be one hell of an uproar if he’s caught in your room,” said Ron rapidly. “You’re going to land right in the soup. Harboring a wanted man.”
“He’s not a murderer.”
“I believe you. So—get him out. Chicken?”
“Are you doing this for me?” She couldn’t imagine why he was doing it.
“For auld lang syne,” Ron said lightly.
“There wasn’t any.”
“Then for the auld lang syne that never was,” he said. “You’re pretty cute, Edie.”
“Don’t tease me.”
“For kicks, then,” he said impatiently. “Call it that. Shall we do it?”
Now, she saw a thousand reasons why they couldn’t do it. “Cousin Ted and Mr. Tyler are on their way—”
“They’re not here, yet.”
“But will he go?” She started for the stairs.
“Well,” said Ron with a great shrug, “if he won’t go … that’s gratitude for you.”
“Is there time?”
He came over to her and spoke rapidly, making a plan. “You call the guard. Right now. I’ll lure him where we want him. You put your pseudo-madman in the back of my car. Make him lie low, on the floor. I’ll nip out and drive off. Why not?”
She thought, Does he think it’s a game? Then she thought, Yet why not? The way things are is so bad, so dangerous, so wrong. What way could be any worse than the way things are?
Ron said, “Aw, come on, Edie. Just as I’m finding out that do-gooding can be fun.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Where shall I say, though?” She ran up to the foyer. She was thinking of Granny, Mrs. Beck, Wendy. “There are people all over the house.” East wing, west wing, upstairs. “I’ll have to say I’m hearing noises in the cellar.”
“Cellar. Fine. That’ll do. Quick, now.”
Edie knew they had not thought this through. But there wasn’t time to think it through. There was only just time enough to do it. Surely, it would be better to get Harold Page out of the house. How could that be doubted, whether you could produce your reasons in an orderly row or not?
She was out in the air again, in the bright morning. The guard saw her at once and turned toward her. She ran to him; he was still Conrad, the one she knew. “Oh, could you please?” Edie made herself breathless, which wasn’t difficult. “There is somebody in the house, I think. There’s something making noises. Now, we’re all scared.”
“Inside!” But he was moving. He would come. “Where, miss?”
“In the cellar. Something down there …”
“I’ll take a look.” He followed her.
They hurried across the tile of the foyer and down into the room, so darkened by the drawn draperies. Coming in from the sunshine, the guard was blinking.
“It seems to be a kind of rustling,” Edie was improvising.
“How could he get in there?” the guard muttered. “I locked the outside cellar door myself.” He was bristling now. He stopped short, as Ron met him. “Sir?” He blinked.
&nbs
p; “Better check, don’t you think?” said Ron, in a low voice, as if not to frighten the intruder. “You’ll know how to handle it.”
“Yeah. Sure,” the guard said. “I can handle it.”
He walked and Ron, beside him, became a kind of guide. They were going around the curve of the wall. At the cellar door, they would be invisible from the stairs. The stairs would be invisible to them. Edie was poised to ascend.
Then she heard Granny’s voice. “Who is that man? Young man?”
Edie looked and there sat Granny, in a chair near the door to the east wing, wrapped in her white shawl, looking as if she had been sitting there for hours.
“Oh, Granny, go away!” wailed Edie.
Ronnie Mungo had said much the same, although more tactfully. “Mrs. Whitman, maybe you had best not be out here just now.”
But Granny, trotting into the big room, with her shawl wrapped around her snugly, had gone on talking to herself. “… help remembering how one lies down in one’s coffin. I do not believe that this is the time to … I believe that I would rather sit … How do you do?”
Then she had sat down, established herself. “Ronnie Mungo, is it not?” the old lady had said. And then, “There has been a death in the family.”
When Edie, poised on the first step, wailed in disappointment, the guard took it for female fright. “It’s all right, ladies,” he said to her and Granny, too. “I can handle it.” He said to Ron, “Could be a rat, you know. Something of the sort. This is the cellar door, right?”
Ron said, in a voice too loud, “Get him out.”
Edie knew that he spoke to her. All right, she thought, do it anyway. In spite of Granny. She won’t know what is happening soon enough to stop it. Edie ran up to the balcony. No, no, she thought. If Granny sees him, she will cry out, and the guard will look. He might even shoot.
The guard was not looking, now. He had taken Ron’s words as addressed to himself. “Listen,” he said, “if he is down there, I’ll get him out, all right.”
Granny shrilled, “Get whom? You are in my house.”
“Get the madman, ma’am.” Conrad accepted her authority.
Turret Room Page 12
