I Want to Go Home

by Frances Lockridge

  “I’d like about ten minutes,” Heimrich said. He looked around the reception room. “In your office, preferably.”

  “I’d like my lunch,” Dr. Hardy said.

  “Ten minutes,” Heimrich repeated. “About one of your patients.”

  “Well?” Dr. Hardy said, making no movement toward the office.

  “Mrs. Meredith,” Heimrich said. “Susan Meredith.”

  “Oh,” the doctor said, sounding even more weary. “That.” He sighed, noticeably. “All right,” he said. “It shouldn’t take five.” He led Heimrich back into a private office; he sat down at a desk, with his back to the light, and motioned Heimrich to a chair. It left Heimrich facing a window.

  “I suppose one of them came to you,” Dr. Hardy said. “I’d have thought they’d have more sense. Who?”

  “The boy,” Heimrich said. “Arthur.”

  The doctor said “oh,” as if things were explained. He looked at Heimrich darkly.

  “Did it ever occur to you that a physician has certain responsibilities?” he said. “And that he discharges them? Including the responsibility to report to the police if one of his patients is being poisoned?”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. He sat comfortably in the leather chair, and leaned his head back. His eyes were only partially open. “Nevertheless,” he said, “we have to look into these things.” He was very mild. “One of our responsibilities, doctor.” He opened his eyes a little wider. “We get a report that somebody is feeding somebody arsenic,” he said. “We have to ask around.” He almost closed his eyes again. “Naturally,” he said.

  “All right,” Dr. Hardy said. “You’ve asked. Mrs. Meredith is not getting poison.”

  Heimrich let it rest for a moment. Then he picked it up.

  “However,” he said, “the story that she is doesn’t surprise you. Obviously.”

  “Because she’s got a bee in her bonnet,” the doctor said. “Since yesterday. Her mind’s failing a little, you know.”

  Heimrich shook his head. He said he didn’t know anything about it. He indicated he would like to.

  “She’s eighty,” Dr. Hardy said. “She’s very weak. Bluntly, she’s dying. Not of arsenic—not of anything. Just running down. Apparently her mind has begun to run down too.” He looked at Heimrich. “Not unusual,” he said. “Not unexpected.”

  “You expected it?” Heimrich said.

  “It was always to be considered,” Dr. Hardy told him.

  Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “But you didn’t actually expect it,” he said. “Or, did you?”

  Dr. Hardy sighed. He leaned a little forward.

  “I had no expectations,” he said. He seemed to be reading from a primer, very slowly, very carefully. “That her mind would become affected toward the end was always possible. Until yesterday, there were no indications that it was being affected. Then she decided she was being poisoned.”

  “And she isn’t, doctor?”

  The doctor sighed and shook his head.

  “Certainly not,” he said.

  Heimrich nodded, still with his eyes partly closed. He made no move to get out of the chair.

  “Was there any change in her condition which would make her think that?” he said, after a moment. “That would support this—delusion? In this precise form?”

  “She had a slight digestive upset. Nothing of importance.”

  “Is she subject to such upsets, doctor?”

  Dr. Hardy hesitated.

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said, “I can’t insist on any of this. I realize that. But you see my position, doctor.” He was very mild.

  “Actually,” Dr. Hardy said, “she has always had rather an unusual digestion for a woman her age. Except for certain things, of course. Ordinary things, that bother a good many people. Shellfish.”

  “But she hadn’t had shellfish?”

  The doctor spread his hands.

  “Look, Captain Heimrich,” he said. “So far as I know she hadn’t had shellfish. Naturally, she’s not supposed to have. She’s old, weak—actually, as I said, she’s dying. You’d expect changes in function—in metabolism. You’d expect she couldn’t digest things today she did—oh, say six months ago. Anything might have upset her. Anything might upset her tomorrow. It’s her mind at the moment. Even a lay—anybody ought to be able to understand that.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Naturally, doctor.”

  “She doesn’t feel as well as she has been feeling,” the doctor went on. “She’s old, childish—full of fears. Irrational fears. She doesn’t want to admit to herself how fast she’s going down hill. She wants—oh, some other explanation. Like a lot of old people, she’s beginning to develop anxieties. She’s beginning to think younger people are against her. She gets physically upset. She decides she’s being poisoned. Well, captain, she isn’t.”

  “All right, doctor,” Heimrich said. “All right. I don’t question you’re right.” He stood up, now. He was very casual. “I don’t suppose that, with things as they are, you thought it worth the trouble to make any—tests?” he said. He threw it away.

  Dr. Hardy looked at him across the desk. Then, for the first time, he smiled faintly. Rather unexpectedly, he nodded.

  “I made tests,” he said. “Just—just on the millionth chance.”

  “They were negative?” Heimrich said, running out the foregone conclusion. Dr. Hardy merely nodded. “But,” Heimrich said, “you did make them.” It was a statement. It needed no answer and got none. But Dr. Hardy looked up at the detective and there was a careful absence of expression in his eyes. “Well,” Heimrich said, “thanks, doctor. Sorry to take up your time.”

  “All right,” Dr. Hardy said.

  Heimrich turned and walked to the door, and then turned back again.

  “Incidentally,” he said, “I suppose Mrs. Meredith didn’t name anyone—any individual—as this poisoner? No definite accusation?”

  Dr. Hardy was shaking his head before Heimrich finished.

  “Just ‘they,’” he said. “She said something like, ‘Doctor, I think they’re trying to poison me.’” The doctor shook his head. “It’s too bad,” he said. “She’s been a great old girl. A great old girl.”

  Heimrich nodded in the appropriate cadence. He said, “Well, things happen,” in the appropriate tone. He went out of the doctor’s office and down to the police car in which Sergeant Forniss was waiting. Forniss was a large man, very solidly built, with a face which looked a little as if it had been carved out of a substance very hard. Heimrich told Forniss that it looked to him like a false alarm.

  “Old lady imagining things,” he said.

  Forniss said, “Sure.”

  “Of course,” Heimrich said, “she has got a lot of money. And a good many people to—leave it to.”

  “Sure,” Forniss said, and started the car. He drove to Park and was stopped by lights. “The doc O.K.?” he said. The lights changed and he turned up Park.

  “Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “I should think so. Just the old lady’s mind going, I guess.”

  “Sure,” Forniss said. “False alarm.”

  They went several blocks and then Heimrich spoke again.

  “Of course,” he said, “if her mind’s going it might make a difference if she was planning to make a will.”

  Forniss did not immediately respond to this. But, somewhat later and while they waited for another light, he turned to the shorter man beside him and looked at him a moment. Heimrich’s eyes were entirely closed and he seemed to be asleep. Forniss assumed he was not and spoke to him.

  “You know, captain,” Forniss said, “you do think of the damnedest things, don’t you?”

  Heimrich did not answer this, then or later.

  Alice Meredith, sitting in a reclining chair, sitting in the shade of a big tree behind the square house, did not look much more than thirty of her forty-seven years. Nor did she feel them; she felt very well and interested in things. She was interested
in the book she had been reading and would be interested in returning to it; now she was interested in looking out across the lawn, in thinking how very well the grass had done this year, even under the trees, in the tricks her mind played, so that, while still pleasantly conscious of the lawn, it could find space for a thought of dear, aging Susan upstairs in the house and of dear Jane, on a train somewhere, coming home. It would be interesting to see dear Jane again, after all these years. It would be very interesting, altogether, when Jane got home.

  The station wagon—the one which belonged to nobody in particular, like a barn cat—came up the drive. Alice Meredith could recognize it from the sound even before it had come far enough to be visible from where she sat. The station wagon, rattling, reached the parking circle and stopped. Arthur Meredith got out of it and absently kicked a front tire. Dear Arthur, his mother thought. He does so look as if he might come apart. Then, without raising her voice too much, she called to him. He quit kicking the tire and walked toward her, now and then kicking the grass.

  “Dear Arthur,” his mother said, when he was close enough. “I thought you’d be playing tennis. Or something.”

  “I play lousy tennis,” Arthur said, and stood in front of her. He seemed, she thought, to sway slightly. It was odd that he always gave her that impression.

  “Dear boy,” she said. “Practice, I expect.”

  “Why?” Arthur said. “Is there some reason I ought to play tennis?”

  “Dear Arthur,” his mother said. “Why not?”

  Arthur did not reply. He sat down on the grass. How oddly he folds up, his mother thought. Like—like an umbrella with a broken rib. So much as if there were parts left over. Dear Arthur.

  “I’ve been to the police,” Arthur said, looking up at her. “What do you think of that, Alice?”

  “I can’t think,” his mother said. “What did they want you for, Arthur. The police.”

  “I wanted them,” he said. He looked at her. “Well,” he said, “aren’t you surprised?” He continued to look at her. “Aren’t you ever surprised, Alice?”

  “But of course, dear,” she said. “So often. So very often. Why the police?”

  “Because grandmother’s being poisoned,” he said.

  “Dear Arthur,” his mother said. “So—so abrupt, aren’t you, dear? I don’t think she is, you know.”

  “She thinks she is,” Arthur said. He looked at his mother very intently. “I think she is,” he said. “Before Jane gets here.”

  “She’s so old, dear Susan,” Alice Meredith said. “So old. So—so full of suspicions. And you’re so young, dear.”

  Arthur moved on the grass; it was as if he had started to get up and changed his mind suddenly. There was irritation in the movement.

  “She’s not full of suspicions,” he said. “You know that, perfectly well. There’s nothing the matter with her mind.”

  “I’m so afraid, dear,” his mother said, and looked off across the lawn. “So afraid. Dear Susan is so old, Arthur, and she’s growing weak, you know. So much weaker every day, I’m afraid.”

  “Not her mind,” Arthur said. “She doesn’t—imagine things. You know that.”

  “Didn’t,” Alice said. “I do know how you feel, dear. I’m so sure we all feel that. But we must—we must reconcile ourselves, dear. So old, you know.” Her eyes returned from their wandering, focussed on her son. “Dr. Hardy would know, dear,” she said. “Unless, you think—”

  “Hardy’s all right,” Arthur said, “ ’sfar as I know, anyway.” He looked intently at his mother again. “It’s easy to confuse arsenic—a little arsenic—with something else,” he said. “Gastroenteritis.”

  “Dear Arthur,” his mother said. “What odd things you know. Did you like the policemen?”

  Arthur stood up. He was not nearly so awkward in the movement as he had been before.

  “Mother!” he said. “Good God, mother!”

  “Dear Arthur,” Alice said, looking up at him and smiling. “So stupid of me. I mean—what did the police think?”

  “How do I know?” Arthur said. “One of them seemed to be three-fourths asleep. They said they’d look into it.”

  He looked down at her and waited. She looked up at him.

  “I wonder,” she said, and spoke slowly, “I really wonder whether you should have done that, Arthur. Don’t you?”

  “I think so,” he said. “I think somebody should.” He paused, and once again his gaze was intense. “With Jane coming.”

  “Then of course you had to,” his mother said. “Of course, dear. Did you get lunch?”

  “What?” he said. “Oh—lunch.” He considered and came to a conclusion. “No,” he said.

  “Dear Arthur,” his mother told him. “You must have something, you know. There were curried shrimps. I’m sure cook saved some.”

  “Not again,” Arthur said. “Don’t tell me again.”

  His mother raised her eyebrows.

  “But you’ve always been so fond of them, dear,” she said. “Haven’t you? But I’m sure cook can find something else if you’d rather.”

  He did not reply to this. He walked toward the rear of the house, kicking now and then at the lawn.

  Dear Arthur, his mother thought. So interesting of him to have gone to the police. So direct, in so many ways, Arthur is. His father will be so interested, I think.

  Five

  It had been after two o’clock Tuesday morning before Jane Phillips’ mind had quit running round and round in a cage of anxiety. Then she had gone to sleep, but she had had dreams. The man who had called himself Montrose was in the dream, but never with the open, smiling face he had seemed to have at first. All through the dream his face was angry and threatening. It was much more angry than it had actually been as he stood on the platform at Ash Fork, watching the Chief glide by him, gaining speed, looking for a moment at Jane through the window of her room and then fading away, backward, into the past. Now he was scowling and ugly in the dream and then, just as she was beginning to be really afraid, he had no face but merely a blank area. It was not as if he had put on a mask, but as if his face had become a mask. And then, through the mask, he began to chant at her, “You won’t get home, you won’t get home, you won’t get home.” There was a kind of gleeful hatred in the voice, which was first Montrose’s voice, as she remembered it, and then not one voice but many. She was on the train when this started, but somehow she got off the train and then she was walking up the drive toward the big square house near Somers, and there were figures—all faceless and no longer recognizable in any way as Montrose—and all of the figures, together, were chanting, “You won’t get home.” Then Great-aunt Susan was at the door of the house, looking much younger than she had when Jane last saw her, and Jane began to run up the drive. But then Great-aunt Susan’s face became a featureless mask, like the others, and she joined in the chant, except that she was saying, “You can’t get in, you can’t get in.”

  Jane woke herself, then, by crying, “No! No! It’s Jane!” because just at the moment of waking it seemed as if she were no longer herself, and it was because of that change in her that Susan did not recognize her. Awake, Jane found that she was trembling and that the covers and her nightdress were twisted around her, and that the nightdress was wet with sweat. She sat up on the edge of the berth and held her head in her hands and, after a moment, quit trembling. It seemed very hot in the little room, and there was a steady bouncing motion as the train rushed on through the night. She turned on a light at the end of the berth and stood up. She stripped off the nightdress and hung it up on a hook and then straightened the bed-clothes. Then, because it was still hot, she pressed down a tumbler marked “Fan” and got back into bed. The sheets were still hot and crumpled, but her body was cooler without the gown and gradually the room, too, seemed to become cooler. So after a time she slept again, and if she dreamed this second time the dreams did not waken her and she did not remember them when, quite late, she finally awoke. She
only remembered, vaguely, that the train had seemed to stop and start, and then again stop and start, sometime after there was light seeping in around the edges of the drawn blind at the window.

  She washed and dressed and then rang for the porter. He came very promptly, so that she realized he had been waiting for her to ring. He smiled broadly and he said, “Got your wire off, mam. Back at Albuquerque.” He offered her change and she shook her head. He said, “dining car back that away, mam,” and gestured toward the rear of the train. He waited for her to leave the room.

  But she did not want to leave the room.

  “I wonder if I could have breakfast in here?” she said, and he hesitated a moment and then said, “I guess so, mam. Suah! I get you a waiter.” He went back toward the rear of the train and, after a few minutes, came back with a waiter. Jane ordered and then stood in the corridor of the train while the porter, very quickly, very expertly, made up her berth. Presently there was a long seat ready and she could go back into the room and sit by the window. After about fifteen minutes the waiter came back with her breakfast, and the porter fixed a narrow table in front of her. She was very hungry, she found. It was rather as if her flight from phantoms during the night had been real, physical, burning energy.

  She stayed in the bedroom the rest of the morning and had lunch there, and by reading and, between pages, watching a continent roll back, she kept her mind off—almost off—the “funny things” which had happened. She had even, by late afternoon, convinced herself there was nothing more to fear, that whatever had been attempted against her had been abandoned. She even became a little doubtful that anything had been attempted against her because now, in the daytime, in a room growing very familiar, it all began to seem absurd. It was ridiculous, she decided at about four-thirty, to stay cooped up in the little room. It was not what she had expected the long ride east to be, and it was a long time since she had ridden on a good train.