So she took the long, devious, roundabout path that was the only one open to her, to try to focus his attention on the gas oven—by refusing to touch, one by one, all the dishes that had been prepared on the open burners on top of the stove.
“She’s not touching a thing,” he said finally. He put his hand solicitously to her forehead, to feel if she had a temperature. It was moist with anguish.
“Don’t humor her so much,” Vera snapped. “There’s nothing the matter with this food.”
“What is it, dear, aren’t you hungry?” She’d been waiting for that! She gave him the yes-signal an infinite number of times.
“She is hungry!” he said in surprise.
“Then why doesn’t she eat what’s put before her?” Vera said furiously.
“Maybe she wants something special.”
Step two! Oh, if it only kept up like this. If she was only given the chance to save him . . .
“I like that,” sniffed Vera disdainfully. She was still not on guard against her. As soon as that happened, Janet Miller knew, it would double her difficulties.
He leaned toward her tenderly. “Do you want something special, dear? Something that’s not on the table?”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, came her agonized messages.
“See, I knew it!” he said triumphantly.
“Well, she’s not going to get it,” Vera snapped.
He gave her a rebuking look. All he said, mildly but firmly, was: “Yes, she is.” But his meaning was plain—“would you deprive anyone so unfortunate of a little thing like that, if you knew it would make her a little happier?”
Vera saw she’d gone too far. She tried to cover up her blunder. “How you going to tell what it is, anyway?” she asked sulkily.
“I’ll make it my business to,” he said, a little coldly.
Janet Miller’s thoughts were racing ahead. Many things could be prepared in that oven, but most of them, roasts, pies, and so forth were out of the question, needed long cooking ahead. It must be something that could only be made in there, and yet would not take any time. It held a wire rack in it, a grill. That was it! Bacon. That could be made almost instantly, and there was always some in the house.
He was patiently running through a list of delicacies, trying to arrive at the right one by a process of elimination. “Do you want croquettes?” No. “Succotash?” No—
“Meantime your own meal is getting cold,” Vera observed sarcastically. Her nerves were a little on edge, with what she knew lay ahead. She was not ordinarily so heartless about Janet, to give her her due. Or rather she was, but took good pains to keep it concealed from him. His mother could have told him a different story of what went on in the daytime, when he wasn’t home.
He began to run out of food names; his suggestions came slower, were about ready to falter to a stop. Fear stabbed at her. She widened her eyes at him imploringly to go on.
Vera came to her aid without meaning to. “It’s no use, Vern,” she said disgustedly. “Are you going to keep this up all night?”
Her latent opposition only served to solidify his determination, spurred him on to further attempts. “I’m not going to let her go away from this table hungry!” he said stubbornly, and started in again, this time with breakfast dishes, for he had run out of supper ones. “Cereal?” No. “Ham and eggs?” No. Oh, how close he was getting. “Bacon?”
Yes, yes, yes, went her eyes. Her heart sang a paean of gratitude.
He smacked his palm down on the table in vindication.
“I knew I’d get it finally.”
Her eyes left him, shifted appraisingly over to Vera. All the color had drained from her face; it was white as the tablecloth before her. The two women, the mother and the wife, the would-be savior and the would-be killer, exchanged a long measured look. “So you heard us!” was in Vera’s look. “So you know.” And then with cruel, easily read derision, “Well, try to tell him. Try to save him.”
He said plaintively: “You heard what she wants, Vera. What’re you sitting there for? Go out and broil her a few strips.”
Vera’s face was that of a trapped thing. She swallowed, though she hadn’t been chewing just then. “I should say not. I got one meal ready. I’m not going to get up in the middle of it and start another! It’ll get the stove all greasy and—and—”
He threw his napkin down. “I’ll do it myself then. That’s one of the few things I do know how to cook—bacon.” But before he could move she had shot up from her chair, streaked over toward the doorless opening that led to the kitchen, as though something were burning in there.
“Can’t you take a joke?” she said thickly. “What kind of a wife d’you take me for? I wouldn’t let you, after you’ve been working hard all day. Won’t take a minute . . .”
He was so defenseless, so unguarded—because he thought he’d left all antagonists outside the front door. He fell for it, grinned amiably after her.
Oh, if he’d only keep looking, only keep watching her from where he was! He could see the oven door from where he was sitting. He could see what she’d have to take out of it in another minute, right from in here. But there was no suspicion in his heart, no thought of treachery. He turned back toward Janet again, smiled into her face reassuringly, patted one of her nerveless hands.
For once her eyes had no time for him. They kept staring past him into the lighted kitchen. If only he’d turn and follow their direction with his own!
She saw Vera glance craftily out at them first, measuring her chances of remaining undetected in what she was about to do. Then she crouched down, let out the oven flap. Then she looked again, to make sure the position of his head hadn’t shifted in the meantime. Then she crushed the two bulky olive-drab masks to her, turned furtively away with them so that her back was to the dining room, sidled across the room that way, sidewise, and thrust them up into a seldom-used cupboard where preserves were kept.
So it hadn’t been just an evil dream. There was murder in the house with them. Janet Miller’s eyes hadn’t been idle while the brief transfer was occurring. They had shifted frantically from Vera to him, from him to Vera, trying to draw his own after them, to look in there.
She failed. He misunderstood, thought she was simply impatient for the bacon. “You’ll have it in a minute now,” he soothed, but he kept on eating his own meal without looking into the kitchen.
Vera came in with it finally, and the smile she gave Janet Miller was not a sweet, solicitous one as he thought, it was a she-devil’s smile of mockery and refined cruelty. She knew Janet had seen what she’d done in there just now, and she was taunting her with her inability to communicate it to him.
“Here we are,” she purred. “Nice and crispy, done to a turn!”
“Thanks, Vera.” The doomed man smiled up at her gratefully.
The meal finished, he retired to the living-room to read his paper, wheeled her with him. Vera, with a grim, gloating look at her, went back into the kitchen to wash the dishes.
Janet Miller’s eyes were on his face the whole time they sat in there alone, but he wouldn’t look up at her; he remained buried in the market reports and football results. Oh, to have a voice—even the hoarsest whispered croak—what an opportunity, the two of them in there alone like that! But then if she’d had one, the opportunity wouldn’t have been given to her. She probably wouldn’t have been allowed to overhear in the first place.
Even so, Vera was taking no chances on any circuitous system of communication by trial and error, such as he had used at the table to find out what she wanted. Twice she came as far as the living-room door, stood there and looked in at them for a moment, dishcloth in her hand, on some excuse or other.
His doomed head remained lowered to his paper, oblivious of the frenzied eyes that bored into him, beat at him like electric pulses to claim his attention.
Vera directed an evil smile at the helpless woman at his side, returned whence she had come, well content.
Time was so preciou
s, and it was going so fast. Once Vera came in here with them finally, she’d never leave them again for the rest of the evening.
He felt her imploring eyes on him once, reached out and absently stroked her veined hand without looking up, but that was the closest she got to piercing his unawareness. A football score, a bond quotation, a comic strip, these things were dooming him to death.
Vera came in to them at last, helped herself to a cigarette from his coat pocket, turned on the radio. He looked up at her, said: “Oh, by the way, did you phone the gas company to send a man around to look at that hot-water heater in the bathroom? I’d like to take a bath tonight.”
A knife of dread went through Janet Miller’s heart. So that was how it was going to be done! That defective water heater in the upstairs bathroom. She closed her eyes in consternation, opened them again. She hadn’t known until now what to expect—only that it would be gas in some form or other.
Vera snapped her fingers in pretended dismay. “I meant to, and it slipped my mind completely!” she said contritely.
It hadn’t. Janet Miller knew. She’d purposely refrained from reporting it. That was part of their plan, to make it look more natural afterwards. An unavoidable accident.
“We’ve used it this long, once more can’t hurt,” she said reassuringly.
“I know, but it’s dangerous the way that thing leaks when you turn it on. We’re all liable to be overcome one of these nights. If a man wants anything done around here he’s got to attend to it himself,” he grumbled.
“I’ll notify them the first thing in the morning,” she promised submissively.
But there wouldn’t be any morning for him.
A moment later she artfully took his mind off the subject by calling his attention to something on the radio. “Did you hear that just then? That was a good one! Don’t let’s miss this—I think those two are awfully funny.”
A joke on the radio. What could be more harmless than that? Yet it was helping to kill a man.
A station announcement came through—“Ten p.m., Eastern Standard Time—”
“Things are picking up. If they keep on like this, I think we’ll be able to take that cruise next summer.”
No you won’t, Janet Miller screamed at him in terrible silence; you’re going to be killed tonight! Oh, why can’t I make you hear me?
The station announcement came through again. It seemed to her like only a minute since they’d heard the last one. “Ten thirty p.m., Eastern Standard Time—”
He yawned comfortably. “Before you know it the holidays’ll be here. What do you want for Christmas?”
“Anything you want to give me,” she simpered demurely.
He turned and looked at Janet, then scrutinized her more closely. “What’s the matter, dear? Why, there are beads of sweat on your forehead.” He came over, took his handkerchief and gently touched them off one by one.
But Vera quickly jumped into the breach. She was on her guard now. Janet had her to combat as well as her own incapacity. The odds were insuperable. “The room is too close, that’s all it is. I feel it myself . . .” Vera pretended to mop her own brow.
He reached down and touched Janet’s hands.
“But her hands are so cold! That can’t be it—”
“Oh, well—” Vera dropped her eyes tactfully. “Her circulation, you know,” she murmured under her breath, as if trying not to hurt the paralytic’s feelings.
He nodded, satisfied.
Janet’s eyes clung to him desperately. Hear me! Why can’t you hear me! Why can’t you understand what I’m trying so hard to tell you!
He got up, stretched. “I think I’ll go up and light that thing, get ready for my bath and go to bed. I had a tough day.”
“I think we may as well all go up,” Vera said accommodatingly. “There’s nothing but swing on all the stations from now on and it gets monotonous.” The dial-light snapped out. On such a casual, everyday, domestic note began the preparations for murder.
He picked Janet carefully up in his arms and started for the stairs with her. Her chair was always left downstairs. It was too bulky to be taken up at nights.
She thought distractedly, while the uncarpeted oak steps ticked off beneath him one by one, “Who’ll carry me down in the morning? Oh, my son, my son, where will you be then?”
On the stairs their two faces were closer together than at other times. Her frozen lips strained toward him, striving to implant a kiss. He said jocularly: “What are you breathing so hard for? I’m doing all the work.”
He carried her into her own room, set her down on the bed, promised, “I’ll be in to say good night to you in a minute,” and went out to start heating the water for his bath.
It was Vera who always prepared her for bed.
She never needed to be completely undressed, for she no longer wore street clothing, only a warm woolen robe and felt slippers. It was simply a matter of taking these off and arranging the bed coverings about her.
Vera came in and attended to the task as inscrutably, as matter-of-factly, as though there were no knowledge shared between them of what was to happen tonight. This woman bending over her was worse than a murderess. She was a monster, not human at all. Janet’s eyes were beseeching her, trying to say to her: “Don’t do this; don’t take him from me.” It was useless; it was like appealing to granite. There were two impulses there too strong to be deflected, overcome—passion for another man, and greed. Pity didn’t have a chance.
He was in the bathroom now. There was the soft thud of ignited gas. He called in, just as Vera finished arranging Janet in bed: “Hey, Vera! Do you think it’s all right to light this thing? There must be a whale of a leak in it. The flame is more white than blue, with the air in it!” There was a faint but distinct hum coming from the hot-water heater. That, however, was not a sign of its being defective, but a normal accompaniment to its being used.
“Of course it’s all right,” Vera called back unhesitatingly. “Don’t be such a sissy! You’d better not put off taking that bath tonight. You’re always too rushed in the morning, and then raise hob with me!”
A thread of acrid warning drifted into Janet’s bedroom, dissolved unnoticeably after a single stab at her nostrils. Vera had gone into their bedroom to begin undressing herself. He came in to Janet, in bathrobe and slippers, and he looked so young, so vigorous—to die this soon! He said: “I’ll say good night to you now, hon. You must be tired and want to go to sleep.”
Then as he bent toward her to kiss her forehead, he saw something, stopped short. He changed his mind, sat down on the edge of the bed instead, kept looking at her steadily. “Vera,” he called over his shoulder, “come in here a minute.”
She came, the murderess, in pink satin and foamy lace, like an angel of destruction, stroking her loosened hair with a silver-backed brush.
“What is it now?” She said it a little jumpily.
“Something’s troubling her, Vera. We’ve got to find out what it is. Look, there are tears in her eyes. Look, see that big one, rolling down her cheek?”
Vera’s face was a little tense with fear. She forced it into an expression of sympathetic concern, but she had an explanation ready to throw at him, to forestall further inquiry. “Well after all, Vern,” she said in an undertone, close to his ear, as though not wanting Janet to overhear her, “it’s only natural she should feel that way every once in a while. She has every reason to. Don’t forget, we’ve gotten used to—what happened to her, but it must come back to her every so often.” She gave his shoulder a soothing little pat. “That’s all it is,” she whispered.
He was partly convinced, but not entirely. “But she doesn’t take it so hard other nights. Why should she tonight? Ever since I came home tonight she’s been watching me so. I’ve had the strangest feeling at times that she’s trying to tell me something . . .”
There was no mistaking the pallor on Vera’s face now, but it could so easily have been ascribed to concern about the in
valid’s welfare, to a wifely sharing of her husband’s anxiety.
“I think I’ll sit with her awhile,” he said.
Yes, stay in here with me, pleaded the woman on the bed, stay in here, stay awake, and nothing can happen to you.
Vera put her arms considerately about his shoulders, gently raised him to his feet. “No, you go in and take your bath. The water must be hot now. I’ll sit with her. She’ll be all right in the morning, you’ll see.”
But he won’t, my son won’t.
Vera threw her a grimace meant to express kindly understanding, as he turned and padded out of the room. “She’s just a little downhearted, that’s all.”
She moved over to the window, stood looking out with her back to the room. She couldn’t bear to face those accusing eyes on the bed. There was a muffled sound of splashing coming through the bathroom door, and then after a while he came out.
“Sure you turned that thing off now?” Vera called in to him warningly. A warning not meant to save, and that couldn’t save.
“Yeah,” he said through the folds of a towel, “but you can notice the gas odor distinctly. We’ve got to get that thing fixed the first thing tomorrow. I’m not going to shut myself up in there with it any more. How’s Mom?”
“Shh! I’ve got her to sleep already. No, don’t go in, you’ll only wake her.” She reached up, treacherously snapped the light out.
No! Let me say good-bye to him at least! If I can’t save him, at least let me see him once more before you—
The door ebbed silently, remorselessly closed, cutting her off. Help! Help! ran the demented whirlpool of her thoughts.
There was the murmured sound of their two voices coming thinly through the partition wall for a while. Then a window sash going up. Then the muted snap of the light switch on their side. It seemed she could hear everything through the paper-thin wall. Not even that was to be spared her. Sweat poured down her face, though a cool fresh night wind was blowing in through her own open window.
FOUR NOVELLAS OF FEAR: Eyes That Watch You, The Night I Died, You'll Never See Me Again, Murder Always Gathers Momentum Page 2
