I Want to Go Home

by Frances Lockridge

  She stopped when she realized this and stood for a moment and then pretended to look into a shop-window while she thought. She did not, at first, see how she would get around it. With the rush hour on, trains on the Harlem Division—trains which went through White Plains, on north to Croton Falls and Brewster—would be leaving at very frequent intervals. But the intervals would not be so short that one or two of them could not easily watch the gates of all the trains. She did not see how they could fail to find her. And she did not see how she could get home without going through one of the gates. If I had a car, she thought—and almost laughed, because it was really so simple.

  She went on down Forty-third, feeling confident again, and knew where she was going. She was really going home. They were not going to stop her.

  Ray Forrest’s taxicab, carrying him on the shuttle route between the stations, went east in Forty-fourth, turned south on Vanderbilt, picked its way toward the portals of the Grand Central. He looked out idly, looked at people standing on the curb, waiting to cross the street. He did not expect to see her any longer. All that was gone—all that sense that a miracle was, if he reached out for it, within his reach. He hardly saw the people waiting on the curb; his eyes passed over them absently, without hope.

  The cab was already swinging in toward the station when realization pushed in through his mind. There had been a girl there in a powder-blue suit—there had been—Jane had been there. She had been standing there, waiting to cross the street.

  He reached for the door and the cab, obeying the signal of a policeman, jumped forward. He tugged at the door and the driver, without looking around, yelled “Hold it. What yuh trying—” and went in without slackening. A cab ahead blocked him, and a cab was so close to the door on the right that there was no chance to open it. Ray slid across the seat, reaching for the other door, and the driver turned, swore at him angrily and then, when the way opened, started again. Now they were too close to other cabs to open either door.

  The driver saw his chance and lurched the cab in toward the curb and stopped it with a jolt and reached back for the door.

  “What the—” he began, and Ray pushed a bill at him and jumped. He jumped between taxicabs and other drivers yelled and then the policeman yelled. Ray kept on going.

  But she was not there, now. There was another group of people waiting to cross Vanderbilt Avenue, waiting to take the chance of dodging through the cabs and into the station. Several of them did, as he watched, and went through the portals near him.

  Jane must have done that, he realized, while he was trying to get out of the taxicab. She had gone past him, somehow, into the station.

  He turned back, ran along the curving sidewalk to the main doors. He came out in front of a wide stairway, leading down toward the esplanade of the upper level. He stood there for a moment and thought, in the hurrying crowd, he saw the powder-blue suit and ran down the stairs, recklessly, after it. He was almost at the bottom before he realized that it was the wrong suit, on the wrong girl.

  But he did not check himself. Jane was in New York, in the station. She had made it. He was suddenly exuberant. Now—now, at last he’d find her. There couldn’t be many trains for her to take. The thing to do—Two minutes later he turned away from the Information booth with a Harlem Division timetable in his hand. Any train that stopped at Croton Falls or Brewster would do. From there you took a cab. It was a break knowing, from long ago, from friends visited, the area around Brewster. He couldn’t miss her now. …

  It was long after five o’clock by the station clocks, after six by the time the city ran on, when he admitted to himself that he had missed her. It was discouraging, but it was evident. And it was, he told himself, only that he had missed her. It had not been as easy as he had thought. Too frequently, before one Harlem Division train left, the gates had opened for another; hurrying people caught the earlier train, people who preferred seats to time took the later. The gates had been far apart, often; once, at least, they had been on different levels. Now she was on her way north.

  There was an answer to that. He caught the 6:20. It went north laboriously, stopping everywhere with a kind of baffled anxiety.

  Jane was confident, now, going a way long familiar. She had forgotten none of it, she discovered. The car she had rented at the Drive-Ur-Self place in Vanderbilt Avenue, in the Grand Central building, just north of the entrance to the station, rolled smoothly, obediently. The sun was red behind her and to her left, throwing long shadows, and along the parkways, by the reservoirs, the grass and trees and bushes were richly green. There was a kind of quiet everywhere, as the world waited, unhurried, for the night. It was wonderful to be here again, driving the Saw Mill, the Taconic, Route 100 by the lakes. It was wonderful to be getting home.

  It was only a little after seven-thirty, and still light, when she saw the absurd small elephant on its pedestal in Somers. She laughed aloud when she saw it. She waved at it. She said, aloud, “Hello, Jumbo. Oh—hello!”

  Nine

  She was halfway through her story when she became convinced he was not believing her. He had withdrawn his belief; he was merely letting her talk it out, letting her say it.

  It was not anything he did, or any way he looked. He was a square man with a square face. His name was Heimrich—Captain Heimrich of the State Police. He sat in a chair, almost outside the cone of light thrown downward by the lamp, and leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes, or almost closed them. But it was not that. At first, although his eyes were closed, although he seemed to have detached himself, she could feel his attention and his interest. After the start, he had asked few questions, but he had asked some. Now he was not asking any. He was not interested any longer, because he had quit believing her. This left the words she was saying without meaning; she thought her voice was revealing that, even for her, the words had no meaning any more.

  “He pretended to think I was his wife,” she said. “He pulled at me, holding me back.”

  He did not believe this. He did not believe there had been in St. Louis a man who had pretended to think she was his wife and had tried to drag her away from the train. It made it hard to remember that this was true, that this had happened.

  It was as if she were in a dream, a dead dream. Her voice had been going on, explaining, saying these things happened, and it was as if no one were alive to listen to her. It was as if she had awakened out of one nightmare into another nightmare.

  When she drove through Somers, when she saw the little elephant on its pillar, that was when she had awakened from the other nightmare—the nightmare of running, the dream she was telling this man who did not believe it, was not interested in it. This new nightmare had begun when she turned into the driveway of the big house—no, when she parked her car at some little distance from the house, and started to walk toward it. It was then she had had the feeling that this had happened before; that before she had done precisely this—got out of a car and walked up the driveway toward the house. She almost remembered, but did not quite remember, that she had dreamed about walking up to the house, and seeing Aunt Susan come to the door and hearing Aunt Susan say she couldn’t come in.

  It was while she was walking up to the house that she knew something had happened, that it wasn’t over. It had been as if she were walking back into a dream of fear.

  She had had to park at one side of the driveway, not in the usual circle, because the circle was full of cars and there was no room in it for the car she had rented in New York. At first she wondered if Aunt Susan was having a party, but then she saw that the cars were not right for a party. She realized that before she saw that two of the cars had the words “New York State Police” lettered on them.

  She went on, and just as she came to the front door, it was opened. The man who opened it was a State trooper and he stood in the door for a moment, blocking it, and said, “Yes?” Jane had said who she was and he had said, “Oh,” in an odd tone, and stepped aside so she could
go in. The hall was dark—darker than she remembered it. “Right in here,” the trooper said, and motioned toward the door to the study. “I don’t—” she had begun, but he had merely shaken his head and said, “Go on in, Mrs. Phillips.” She had seemed to have no choice, and had gone in.

  There were two men in the study, and neither was anyone she had seen before. One of them was taller and younger than the other, and they did not really look at all alike, but at first she had felt that they did look alike. Afterward she knew she had felt that because they both seemed to be square, with square faces, and to be more solid, made of harder material, than most men. They were standing side by side, facing her, when the trooper opened the door, and she had a feeling that they had been talking and had turned toward her at the sound of the door’s opening. She had also a curious feeling that they had been waiting for her.

  The trooper had said, “Go on in, Mrs. Phillips,” as he opened the door, so that the words became at once a command to her and an explanation to the men inside. The men facing her did not speak at first, but merely looked at her, giving her time to speak first. She had had a feeling, quite inexplicable, that what she said first would, in some fashion, be important. It was not right. She felt somehow fragile and defenseless, which was not a way she had ever felt; she had come home, she had got home, and now there was something dreadfully wrong.

  “I don’t—” she said. “What is it?”

  “Come in, Mrs. Phillips,” the shorter man said. He had a voice which was at once strong and oddly soft, and something in the voice and in the man made her feel that he never spoke until he was quite sure what he wanted to say. Even his “come in, Mrs. Phillips,” did not sound like a casual invitation, but like something which he had planned in advance, even like something he had been waiting a considerable time to use. Why, they’ve been waiting for me, she thought, and was puzzled and had a sense of foreboding, of anxiety.

  “All right, sergeant,” the shorter man said, and the taller man, without saying anything—without again looking directly at her—went past her and out the door, closing it behind him.

  “You just got here, Mrs. Phillips?” the shorter man said, then. “You were expected earlier.”

  “What is it?” she said again. “What’s happened?”

  “Naturally you don’t know,” the man said. “You just got here. You’d better sit down, Mrs. Phillips.”

  He motioned to a chair under the light and she sat in it and then he sat in another chair, almost out of the cone of light. He did not speak immediately, but sat looking at her. Her face was in the light.

  “Your aunt’s dead, Mrs. Phillips,” he said. “Your great-aunt. Mrs. Meredith.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh—I—” She did not know what else she planned to say. She did not know clearly why she was not more surprised.

  “She died this morning,” the man said. “About ten o’clock.” He paused. “Somebody killed her,” he said. “She was poisoned, Mrs. Phillips.”

  She started to speak, and he waited, and she did not speak. She merely looked at him, and knew her face was speaking. Half unconsciously she reached out to move the lamp and he said, “Please,” and she realized she was not to move the lamp.

  “She died very quickly,” the man said. “She was old and—tired. It didn’t take much.”

  “What was it?” she said, and was surprised by what she said, and by the way her voice sounded. It was the way a voice sounded in a nightmare—detached, as if her mind were speaking without her throat and tongue and lips. And she felt that it was not what he had expected her to say, that it was the wrong thing to say. But she did not know why it was wrong.

  “Oh,” he said. “Nicotine. The stuff they use for bugs.”

  It was very horrible. Her throat felt stiff, as if she would not be able to swallow.

  “Very powerful,” he said. “Very quick. It only took a minute or two, the nurse thinks.”

  “No!” she said, and her voice sounded harsh. “Oh—it hurt her!”

  “Naturally,” the man said. “It always hurts, I suppose. Not long, though.”

  “You’re the—you’re from the police?” she said, still in the stiff, harsh voice.

  “Naturally,” he said. “Heimrich. Captain Heimrich. The State Police.”

  “You don’t—” she said, and he shook his head.

  “Not yet, Mrs. Phillips,” he said. “We don’t know yet. You see, somebody put it in medicine—in something she was to take after she ate. Two hours after. The nurse was the one who gave it to her, finally. Anybody in the house could have put it in the medicine.”

  “Anybody—” she said. “One of—”

  She felt each time, because he nodded before she had finished, that he knew what she was going to say; that she was, now, saying what she was supposed to say, what fitted into a program laid out for her.

  “One of your family,” Captain Heimrich said. “Yes. Somebody wanted his money.” He had leaned his head against the back of the chair and partly closed his eyes. “Her money,” he said, after a moment. “Your aunt’s. But somebody got to thinking of it as his money.” He seemed to consider this. “Naturally,” he said. “Why were you late, Mrs. Phillips?”

  “I—” she said. “Somebody made me late.” She waited for him to say something, to express something. He did, she thought, momentarily open his eyes a little. But then he almost closed them again.

  “That’s very interesting,” he said. “Go on, Mrs. Phillips.”

  “It began in Los Angeles,” she said. “I’m almost sure it did. At the hotel.”

  “All right,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  She told him, then. She told him what had happened—at the hotel, on the way to the station in Los Angeles, on the Santa Fe train. She did not tell him, or try to tell him, about how fear had grown, and nervous anxiety. She tried to tell him merely what had happened and, when she realized that this was going wrong, she thought perhaps that was the reason it went wrong. The things were so small, at any rate until Kansas City. Told now, objectively, as incidents, they did not seem to mean what they had meant. Telling about the telegram from Ray, she began to feel that he was not believing her, and she thought that might be because she could not make clear that—as she knew now—she had been suspicious of it because it was not signed “Love, Ray,” but had dismissed that suspicion because she wanted to, had thrust it down and still remained subconsciously uneasy because it remained there, underneath.

  He had asked a few questions about the incident at Ash Fork, and one or two about the man in Kansas City. What had he said? When had she realized he had a gun? But afterward he had not asked questions, and she had felt that he was merely letting her run through it. For a little while she tried to recapture his belief. She told him about the boy in the eating place outside Columbia, because she thought that would be easy to believe, but he did not change. After that she merely ran through it.

  “I changed at Newark because they would be waiting at Pennsylvania Station,” she said. “I thought they would be at Grand Central, so I rented a car and drove out.”

  She stopped and looked at him, and saw that his eyes were entirely closed, now. It was as if he had gone to sleep. But he had not gone to sleep.

  “That’s very interesting, Mrs. Phillips,” he said. “Why?”

  “Why?” she repeated.

  “Why did you think this was being done to you?” he said. “Who did you think they were? Naturally, you thought about it.”

  “They—they wanted me to be late,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

  “Now Mrs. Phillips,” he said. “Now Mrs. Phillips.”

  “One thing I thought was that Aunt Susan was—sick,” she said. “Dying. They—somebody—didn’t want me to see her.”

  “Why?” he said, again.

  She said she didn’t know. Her voice came from far off. It seemed hopeless to say anything. He waited.

  “I thought she had left me out of her will,” Jane said. “B
ecause she was angry at me. I thought somebody was afraid we’d—we’d make it up. If I saw her. And wanted to keep me away until she died.”

  “Did you?” he said.

  “She did die,” Jane said. “She’s dead now. I just got here.”

  He shook his head.

  “She died this morning,” he said. “About ten. You see, you wouldn’t have been here anyway. You would have got to Grand Central at nine-thirty. You couldn’t have got here by ten. So, you see, it didn’t make any difference.” He closed his eyes again, having opened them only a little. “All this you tell me,” he said.

  “I don’t know what it’s all about,” she said. “I don’t know, Captain Heimrich.”

  “Naturally,” he said. “I see you don’t. You see, Mrs. Phillips, there’s no way it makes any sense. No way at all. You see that?”

  “It happened,” she said. Her voice was dull.

  He did not answer that, directly.

  “You decided to come back suddenly,” he said. “You wrote your great-aunt. They decided not to give her the letter because they thought it would excite her—upset her. She was quite ill, you know. Why did you decide to come back?”

  “I wanted to come home,” she said. “I just wanted to come home.”

  “If somebody expected her to die naturally and in a day or so, delaying you might mean something,” he said. “You see that. Even a few hours.”

  “They meant it to be longer.”

  He opened his eyes and shook his head slightly.