Turret Room

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Charles Tyler stood at the top of the two steps and thought, Well, there they are. The whole crew! Or was there someone missing?

  Granny, at sight of him, began severely. “This is making me very very nervous, Charles. I have called Dr. Brewster and I shall take his advice when he comes. I cannot see why I should be required to endure this sort of thing, or why you do not simply remove him. That mad person.”

  Ted, as if she’d touched one of his buttons, began to chime, “You had better take him away, Charles. That murdering monster! Or I don’t promise …” Which was ridiculous. Ted, playing that he was on the verge of vengeful violence, when he couldn’t, at the moment, seem to struggle out of his chair.

  Tyler said, “Sit still. Be a couple of minutes.” He came to stand behind the “murdering monster,” making a muttered request to Conrad, who at once went briskly to the foyer where he would know exactly when the ambulance came.

  The boy was sitting quietly, his fine hands relaxed. Young hands, corrected Tyler. Most young hands look fine.

  Edie said to Tyler quietly, “He had no reason on earth to do anything to Myra.”

  (She was thinking, And you know he didn’t do it.)

  But now Ted bounced up. “She is talking about motive, Charles,” he explained. (And Edie saw humor flash in Tyler’s eyes.) “That’s very simple.” Ted puffed up. “He killed her so that Myra wouldn’t tell.”

  “Tell what?” said Edie flatly.

  “Why, that he had attacked her!”

  “Why had he attacked her?”

  “Because. He want to kill her, of course.” Cousin Ted left his mouth open and panted softly. “What?”

  Edie couldn’t help it. She laughed. She looked up at Tyler and said, “Excuse me. I’m sorry. But if that doesn’t go round and round …”

  The Chief of Police said, broodingly, “No. It often happens pretty much that way. People trying to cover up bad with worse. They fool themselves that this will fix it.”

  Edie knew that her whole face reacted to accept his correction and to agree with him. Hadn’t she listened, time and again, to people of all. ages telling long sequences of “good” reasons for doing wrong? Being sucked on downward, spiraling down and down, and ever explaining that they swam with purpose, ever intending to come to a turning place, when all of the past wrongs would be covered up, at last, and they could rise up again.

  “Looking for the turning-around place,” she said, aloud.

  Then her heart gave a bit of a happy jump because the big policeman knew what she meant, respected her phrase, and accepted her as one who also knew these things. We are getting on, she thought, if we are beginning to communicate. She had begun to think of his eyes as intelligent, not cold.

  But now Wendy was blown off the stairs as if she had been picked up by the wind. She was down on the carpet, whirling like a leaf in a storm. It was as if her long cramped immobility had exploded with an accumulation of the need to move. It seemed she would dance away into the dining room. But she did not go. She whirled back and wound up slap against the back of the sofa, where she clung.

  Tyler eyed her warily. Harold shut his eyes tight. Granny said tartly, “Now, Wendy … Now, I was afraid … This is just the sort of thing, Charles … It’s too much for a sensitive child. Not to mention me. Where is Mrs. Beck?” Granny was on her feet. “We pay the woman. Take him away, Charles. Do. You know as well as I do that Harold Page needs no motive.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t need a thing,” said Edie, with hot eyes. “Not even the opportunity.”

  She looked to Tyler to resume communication, but she seemed to have lost him. “The prison ward is the place for him,” said Tyler. He seemed to be watching Ronnie Mungo, who had scrambled up and was now beside Wendy with an arm around her. Wendy was suddenly as still as stone again.

  Edie thought, This policeman has to understand, and he will. I believe he will. She rose and went closer to Tyler. “No, it isn’t the place for him, sir. Especially not for him. I wish you’d let me tell you …”

  “We don’t abuse a prisoner,” Tyler said.

  “I don’t mean that. I am thinking of his child.”

  “You are fond of the child, are you?” His eyes pierced.

  “I’ve never seen the child.”

  “What is your motive, then?” Tyler sounded patient. “I wouldn’t mind understanding your motive.”

  “But they are making him the scapegoat. They did that once before. He came because he cares for the child. Surely, the child has to be thought of. I am concerned, because, don’t you see, that if you …”

  Wendy called out, like her old self, rude, ruthless, “Listen to her! Carrying on about the child. The child! What a hypocrite! What did she care, when she hid the madman in our house? She decided he wasn’t dangerous. Well, we thought he was dangerous and it’s our house. What kind of big old concern is that?”

  Oh, Wendy was slippery. Wendy could make sense. The antagonism was raw—but there was reason in what she said.

  “Certainly,” said Cousin Ted.

  Chapter Fourteen

  MRS. BECK was pretty sure that her upper right arm was broken or perhaps her shoulder, by the feel of it. Her face felt bashed in on one side and she didn’t want to touch it with her one usable hand. Her legs, however, seemed to work and on them she had crawled slowly up the steep and narrow stone stairs, not thinking of anything but the pain and how to get relief from the pain. Now, she sat in a heap on the tiny landing, not much more than a top step, just inside the door. The door was ajar, just slightly. She could smell the smells of the house, the upper living house and she could hear living voices. Knock? she was thinking. Thrust? Be enough to sag upon the door. It would open. She would be in the light. But—wait. Might as well be careful.

  Harold had found a little vigor for his voice. “Wendy is right, Edie. Let it go, now. Don’t you be in any more trouble.”

  Tyler snapped, “This a confession?”

  “No, sir,” said Harold, “but there will be due process. I can afford a lawyer, this time.”

  “Due process!” said Granny. “The impudence! Well, we shall have our lawyers.” She started to walk, as if to the phone again.

  Wendy bent over as if her spine snapped and was draped over the sofa-back, her hair hanging to brush the cushions. Ron reached to try to lift her upright and Granny said, with a fastidious flutter of her dainty nostrils, “Do put that child down somewhere, Mr. Mungo, and keep her calm. Wendy, my advice is simply that you must rise above this whole sickening vulgar business until the doctor comes.”

  And Mrs. Beck, biting on pain, thought, Wait a minute. Wendy was there, was she? And how was she? This was very important. Mrs. Beck knew very well that she and Wendy—never mind a broken bone or two—might still be in the same boat. And did they have the madman?

  Granny said, “Ingratitude! We took Edith in, Charles, when my niece died. For two years in this house, she had everything she could possibly want. She chose to leave.”

  And Ted began to echo and embellish. “Ungrateful! Resentful, tool Always did resent our Wendy. Envy, you know. Why, all this is nothing in the world but—”

  “But what?” howled Edie. She had begun to shake. All right, admitted that she had been foolish. Led deeper and deeper, after a first step she ought never to have taken. It seemed months ago that she had thought to be, for an hour perhaps, the gentle go-between, wise for both sides. But just the same, she would take no more of the Whitman brand of nonsense. “Nothing in the world but what?” she shouted, being human and humanly enraged, because she had tried to be grateful for their “everything” and she had failed. “Spite?” cried Edie. “Do you think I am making up his alibi just to annoy you? Or do you think I brought him into this house hoping that he would kill you all off?”

  Tyler was looking at her. Nothing in his look condemned her for being human, but he was the judge, just the same. He was sane. And Edie felt ashamed. Even Cousin Ted could say a true thing. Edie did resent the
m. Resented Wendy. She had meant no harm, but she had taken risks. Tears swam into her eyes. “If I had let him run the risk of being shot on Thursday—at least there wouldn’t have been a scapegoat.” (And now she was shaking because that was true. And would Myra, then, have died?)

  “A scapegoat for whom?” said Myra’s brother.

  Mrs. Beck licked her dusty lip. That Edith—carrying on. Well, Mrs. Beck could hold against the pain for another minute. She had better. She didn’t know the smart thing to do. She didn’t know, for instance, why they weren’t looking for her. Something funny … Now she could hear the old woman, very close.

  “Charles, if it were not for you, I would call the police. In fact, I think if you cannot control this situation you ought to resign.”

  She must be at the telephone. Mrs. Beck’s thigh ached, where the stone edge of a step pressed into it. Her whole torso was aching. Her head whirled.

  “As it is,” Granny picked up the phone, “I shall call my lawyer.” She was dialing the operator. “Edith, you know,” she said haughtily to Tyler, “was brought up to believe that all poor people are saints and angels, but anyone with means must be a villain. That’s why she’s on his side. It’s psychological.” Granny was being gentle with the ignorant.

  Edie put all of her fingers into her hair. “Poor people come in all kinds, Granny,” she said, shakily.

  “Certainly they do,” snapped Mrs. Whitman, with her own superb illogic, “but you don’t know that.”

  Then she was grandly commanding the operator to reach her lawyer for her. The operator began to be extremely tiresome, seeming to think she needed the number. Ronnie Mungo came to help.

  Harold was thinking about wealth. At the moment, he had very little cash. About a dollar and a half, he thought. He’d had enough saved from his meager salary to pay a week’s advance on the room in the board-inghouse. Enough left to get him down here, and back, on the bus. He hadn’t saved any money by walking. It had cost him more, having to eat so many times. He wondered if money would have made any difference, in those days.

  “The Will isn’t through probate yet,” he said aloud. “I borrowed on it, though, for my tuition.”

  “What’s that?” Tyler said, in a moment.

  “My great-uncle’s will. He was quite wealthy.” Harold looked up, because there was a peculiar silence. Everything was stopped.

  “You can check,” said Harold.

  To Edie, it was very funny. It was hysterical. “Everybody change sides,” she sang out blithely. “I’ll be against him, and all of you can be for him.”

  “That,” said Tyler severely, “will do—from you.”

  “I should think so,” said Granny grimly.

  Ronnie Mungo, having gone to her aid, was on the phone for her. He rolled an eye across the room, turned his back, began to speak, conveying Granny’s orders. Granny left him to do it and huffed her way back to the far chair. “Edith,” she said, “I shall change my Will. Don’t imagine that I won’t!”

  Ronnie Mungo kicked at the cellar, door and it closed with a sharp click. Mrs. Beck made a little yelp. It was no louder than a mouse-squeak. Then, she sagged in darkness.

  Cousin Ted was snatching at his chance to be forceful. “Edith,” he said, “I suggest that you pack your things.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Granny, and Ted swelled with her approval. (He had said the right thing.)

  “Very well,” said Edie calmly, “but I can’t leave town. Can I, Mr. Tyler?”

  “No,” he said. But his attention wasn’t on her. He wasn’t following the family clash. He had the feeling that something else was going on here, and he was missing it. His eyes slid to watch Mungo as he came slouching toward Granny, the courteous male, having done her telephoning for her. Oh, quite the little helper around here. But “not involved.” You bet not, thought Tyler. So what has got him shaking in his boots, all of a sudden?

  Edie was saying, “I’ll have to stay to make a statement. I believe that Wendy fought with Myra, Wednesday night.”

  Granny burst furiously, “Now, she cannot say that, Charles. Shut her up, if you please? At once!”

  (Not I, thought Tyler.)

  “They fought, I think,” said Edie, steadily, “over Wendy’s engagement to Ronnie Mungo.”

  Mungo was leaning on the wall now, behind Granny. He looked as if he would like to crawl through it.

  “Back that up, Edith,” said Tyler sternly, even as his mind said Ah!

  “Mrs. Beck could back that up for you,” said Edie. “Where is she?”

  That was when Wendy toppled over. Just as she was, where Ron had left her, huddled on the sofa, with her arms still tight around her knees, she fell sideways and lay in the knot. “I don’t know where Becky is. I don’t want to hear anymore. I wish you would get this over.” She uncurled convulsively and lay on her face with her wrists against her ears and her fingers clawed, stiffly. “I want Becky,” she whimpered.

  Mrs. Beck, lying on her side on the tiny platform, legs trailing down, her neck bent where her head was against the lowest board of the cellar door, could hear very clearly. For some reason, sound came through the low slot, the natural crack at the bottom of the door, and was reflected directly into her ear.

  Now, though her head swam, her nostrils flared, scenting hope, scenting power. But she couldn’t move, not yet. Couldn’t reach up and turn the doorknob. Couldn’t twist and raise until her good hand and arm could do that. In physical weakness, she must wait. And listen. Carefully.

  Tyler said to Edie, “Do you accuse Wendy of getting into the hospital last night? Of putting a pliofilm bag over my sister’s head until she died? Of watching her die? Of waiting—to take the bag off, afterwards?”

  His words were brutal and Edie winced away from them. Like that? No passionate half-accident? (Oh, did the damaged brain know what was happening? Did the body struggle? The blind unconscious organism’s will to live?) She gasped. “No, I don’t, sir. I didn’t know … it was … like that. I don’t know.”

  “Or,” said Tyler, “do you think it was Mungo did that?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  MUNGO kept his hands in his pockets but swayed forward from the support of the wall. “If that’s what is on your mind,” he said, “check it. I took Wendy to a party with twenty people there. At Sandy Waltham’s. We left when they can tell you and arrived here when the guard, over there, can say. You check it. Find out there wasn’t time.” He sounded bold and angry.

  “And after you left here?” said Tyler, without apparent emotion.

  “I went directly to the Broken Drum, where I am known. Got a little drunk and a fellow went home with me. We kicked life around until the sun was up. Ask him. Paul Milliman.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Tyler.

  “And I got here this morning,” Mungo went on, “when, Edith can tell you. And the guard, too.”

  Tyler said, “Thank you very much.” And saw Mungo flush a little. He sure overdid that, Tyler thought.

  Well—the Chief thought he’d gotten about as much as he would get, here. He’d start the check on Mungo. Might be late. The criminal has the advantage of knowing what to cover up before the police can know it. This Mungo was no kook. The Chief realized that it would be a pleasure to “get” him.

  He glanced at Conrad, who nodded. So the ambulance was out there. Tyler said, “Okay. We’ll take Page now.”

  He had forgotten about Edie for a moment.

  Edie said, “You are taking Wendy, too, of course.”

  And Tyler sighed invisibly.

  “She has been accused. As much as he has. Or wasn’t it against the law for her to knock Myra down? Is Wendy immune?”

  Might as well be, the Chief thought. Don’t fight it, little social worker. I can’t take her on your belief. You weren’t here.

  “Well, I can tell you,” said Edie, hotly, “that she has always been a liar, that she faked a beating, and said Harold did it, to get her divorce. In fact, she’s not exactly n
ormal. She doesn’t give one damn about her own baby. Or much else. She’s unstable enough to have hallucinations, just about. And rages! Don’t you believe me? Shall I put her into a tantrum? Right here and now? It’s not very difficult.”

  The Whitmans were stricken dumb.

  Harold Page was the one who stopped her with his sudden cry. “Ah, don’t! Don’t, Edie. Please? Don’t hit her. You’ve hated her long enough.”

  He was so impelled that he started to get up, to go to Wendy, but the guard leaped and put a quick strong arm in his way.

  Tyler watched Edie go up to the big window and stand there with her back to the room. He thought, Honey, you are probably right, which is nothing to be ashamed of, in my book. But who killed Myra? You don’t know.

  Granny had found breath and said, “I would advise nobody to listen to that insanely ungrateful girl. And until this trash is out of my house, I shall not listen at all.” She then, with a flourish, turned off her hearing aid.

  Tyler said glumly, “I’m in charge here.” And then to Conrad, “Just hold everything.” And he went into the foyer to open the front door and call his people himself. He’d get one of them to pass along instructions for the checking up on Ronnie Mungo. He was thinking sadly, How weak is reason, against the very root of force. He couldn’t condemn Edith Thompson for a touch of human passion.

  In the big room, Conrad hung over Harold.

  Harold knew he couldn’t get to her, but might he dare speak? The old lady was very stiff and blank of face. Couldn’t hear. Ted Whitman, in a comical way, looked deaf, too. Mungo was leaning on the wall, kind of out of it. Edie was by the window. The big Chief was gone.