I Want to Go Home

by Frances Lockridge

  “On the train,” Jane said. “I told you.”

  “You told me,” Heimrich agreed. “Mr. Lockwood says no. He says you were here.” Heimrich did not make anything of this. He stated it.

  Jane’s hand trembled in Ray’s; her whole body was trembling. He sat on the arm of her chair and held her, trying to stop the trembling.

  “But,” Heimrich said, after looking at them a moment, “I do see your point about the shrimps, Mr. Forrest. Naturally.”

  “To put it most simply, you couldn’t get away with it,” Ray said. “It comes down to that. Whatever you thought, you couldn’t make anybody believe the things weren’t connected, part of a series of events. Part of the murder. And Mrs. Phillips was in Los Angeles.”

  “Now Mr. Forrest,” Heimrich said, in a tired voice. “Why would I want to get away with anything? I—Yes?”

  The last was to Forniss, who made some sound, some gesture, which the others did not hear. Ray was vaguely conscious that, while he talked to Heimrich, Sergeant Forniss had gone away, closing the door after him. Now he had returned. He had brought Alice Meredith with him. She looked at those in the room and said “oh!” Then she said, “Dear Jane.”

  She looked at Heimrich and then, with a darting glance, at Jane, sitting in a chair, with Ray’s hand on her shoulder. Ray was half standing now.

  “Dear Jane,” Alice repeated. “It’s so dreadful, isn’t it? So—hard to understand.” She turned to Heimrich. “But I’m sure it isn’t what you think,” she said. “You and this—this other gentleman.” The “other gentleman” seemed to be Ray Forrest.

  Jane looked at the older woman and shook her head.

  “No, Alice,” she said. “This is Ray Forrest. He’s a—a friend. Not what you think. He isn’t arresting me.”

  “Dear Jane,” Alice said. “Of course. So nice he’s here. So helpful. Inspector—”

  “Captain,” Heimrich said. “You want to tell me something, Mrs. Meredith?”

  “But—” Alice Meredith said. She looked at Jane and Ray Forrest. “I’m so afraid I—it’s so embarrassing. So dreadful, really. I can’t forgive myself. Poor, dear Susan. But Frederick says I must. And John too, of course.”

  Heimrich got up. He motioned toward a chair, watched Alice Meredith perch on it, sat down himself. His eyes did not close.

  “Naturally,” he said. “About the shrimps, I think?”

  “But how?” Alice said. “Oh, cook, of course. Dear cook. Such an unfortunate accident. So—confusing. For you especially, captain. That’s what John felt most.”

  “Go on, Mrs. Meredith,” Heimrich said. “Somehow, accidentally, shrimps got into your—” He paused and closed his eyes. “The late Mrs. Meredith’s food,” he said.

  “Step-mother,” the present Mrs. Meredith said. “Step-mother-in-law, really. I’m so afraid so, captain. I can’t forgive myself.” But she did not sound as if she were unforgiven.

  “Monday, that would have been,” Heimrich said.

  “Monday morning,” Alice Meredith said. “About—oh, ten-thirty, eleven? Cook was resting, you know. Poor, dear cook—so tired, sometimes. And I was making the bisque myself.”

  “Yes?” Heimrich said.

  “Grinding them, you know,” she said. “The shrimps, of course. And just as I was finishing, the telephone rang and I’m so terribly afraid—Well, there must have been some left in the grinder, you know? And poor cook didn’t notice and ground the chicken for Susan’s croquettes and—” She broke off and looked at Heimrich. “So dreadful,” she said. “Such a dreadful accident. Poor dear Susan was so susceptible, you know. Even the tiniest particle of shrimp upset her for days. But we simply couldn’t think.”

  “Very understandable,” Heimrich said. “You made the bisque?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Oh yes, of course. And it was so good I—I’m terribly afraid I ordered more shrimp for a curry the next day. So—unthinking of me! Really, I can’t forgive myself. And what was left of the curry—Tuesday, you know—I couldn’t understand at all and I was so afraid. But that was all right. Dear Arthur.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. Jane and Ray looked at the slender delicate woman, the quick little woman who was Alice Meredith. They looked at her with a kind of fascination.

  “Yes?” Heimrich said.

  “After he saw you,” Alice Meredith said. “He—he was afraid it might be the shrimps, somehow. So he threw them out. Poor dear cook was so puzzled, of course.” Alice Meredith shook her head. “So many things went wrong,” she said. “So confusing.” Then she sat, looking at Heimrich, as if she had finished. After a moment, Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “So embarrassing to have to tell this,” Alice said. “But, we thought, so—necessary.”

  Heimrich looked at her; he seemed to look at her carefully. But all he said was, “Naturally, Mrs. Meredith. I can see it would be.” And then he stood up and again there was some obscure communication between Captain Heimrich and Forniss, and Forniss went out behind Mrs. Meredith. Heimrich turned and faced Jane and Ray Forrest. He faced them and waited.

  “You believe that?” Ray said. “Don’t you see what they’re after?”

  “Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “I see what they’re after, Mr. Forrest. They don’t want me to be—confused.”

  “They want to get this first—poisoning—out of the series.” Ray said. “Because Jane couldn’t have done it. You see that?”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “But—I rather think she told part of the truth, you know. Enough of it for her purposes. Their purposes, if you prefer.”

  “An accident!” Ray said, and he was angry.

  “Now Mr. Forrest,” Heimrich said. “Not an accident, I think. The old lady was supposed to believe she was being poisoned. That was supposed to indicate senile dementia, incompetence. So she couldn’t make a will. But—I’m afraid it happened, not by accident, pretty much as she said. And, I think it stopped there. I think Mrs. Meredith stopped there.” He paused, and nodded slowly. “I think somebody else went on with it,” he said. “In a different way, to the end. Leaving out the fancy stuff, the subtle stuff.” He stopped, and Jane felt he was looking at her. And again she could feel herself trembling, feel Ray’s arm back around her, trying to hold her body against its own movement.

  She was more conscious of the pressure of Ray’s arm, then and for some time, than of what Ray was saying—saying tersley, angrily, to Heimrich. Heimrich was seated again and probably his eyes were closed again, but she did not look at him. She looked at her hands in her lap, and felt the pressure of Ray’s arm on her shoulders. And waited.

  Ray was arguing and she did not think, as she thought vaguely, that Heimrich was rejecting the arguments. He seemed rather to be absorbing them; now and then he nodded.

  “They’re all together,” she heard Ray say. “Against the old woman, now against Jane. Can’t you see it?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It doesn’t happen. You know that, Mr. Forrest.”

  There was more to which she did not listen or to which, listening, she could not get into her mind. When she could focus her thoughts again, Ray seemed to be arguing another theory—that there were several plots. He seemed to be listing them—Alice Meredith and the shrimp allergy, somebody else and Jane’s delay, somebody else and the actual murder.

  “Or,” he said, and this she heard clearly, “Mrs. Meredith and one other—one to delay Jane and, when that failed, kill the old lady. Because then they couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “Possible,” Heimrich said to that. “Intricate. Naturally, Mr. Forrest, I can’t say it’s impossible. But there’s always Lockwood’s story. A good witness, you know. A solid story. And—the simplest thing, Mr. Forrest. You see that.”

  “But wrong,” Ray said. She was listening now, because she knew what they were talking about. The room seemed shadowy and uncertain, even Ray’s arm was something she had dreamed. Only the words were real. It was as if she were coming out of an anesthetic, and heard the
words, real in a world of dream.

  “He’s lying,” Ray said, and Heimrich said, “Prove it, Mr. Forrest. Prove it. Nobody’s stopping you.”

  There was an odd pause, then. It was as if there were words which were unspoken in the pause.

  “The way you work?” Ray said then, in a strange tone.

  “A way,” Heimrich said. “Prove it. You’ve got the story—a story. You’re in the movies, Mr. Forrest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cast it,” Heimrich said. “Is that what you call it? Cast it, and I’ll look at it.”

  “How did Lockwood know she wasn’t on the train?” Ray said. “If he lied. Or this other man lied. You’d be interested?”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “We asked the other man. Carroll.”

  “You did?”

  “One of the boys,” Heimrich said. “A point.” There was again a pause. Then Heimrich spoke, as if to himself.

  “Why leaving the house?” he said. “When did the other Lockwood—Elliott—catch cold? And Carroll, of course.”

  Again there was a moment without words, and then Ray spoke with a kind of challenge in his tone.

  “Look,” he said, “you know, don’t you? Think you know?”

  “Now Mr. Forrest,” Heimrich said. “Now Mr. Forrest. Proof.”

  “You’re waiting for it,” Ray said, as if it were an announcement of fact.

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Proof after the fact, you know. That’s when you get it, usually, Mr. Forrest. From the way people act.” He seemed to Jane to be speaking from a long way off. “Make the criminal fit the crime,” she thought he said. It did not seem sequential.

  Perhaps, she thought suddenly, frighteningly, it had all been a dream. The others were looking at her again and she covered her eyes, with her hand, feeling with thumb, with middle finger, the delicate bones under the skin on her temples, holding her mind—she thought—between the thumb and middle finger of her right hand. Perhaps there, within that space she could so easily span, lay the only reality there was in any of this, and that reality was only the reality of a dream, or of a kind of madness. Perhaps nothing she thought had happened to her had really happened, except in her mind—perhaps what they believed was what was true. Perhaps she had come on through from Los Angeles, perhaps there had been no man in Kansas City, no stranger in St. Louis pulling at her and calling her his wife. Perhaps she had come here, as they thought, by airplane and then had rented a car, as again they thought, and driven to the house and poured poison into the medicine, so that Aunt Susan would die. And then, closing in in horror, in shock, at what she had done, her mind had fled into a dream—into this fantastic dream. I can’t believe my mind any more, she thought; it is lying to me. It has gone off the track, she thought; it is plunging through a nightmare, seeking to be safe. It is hiding me from knowing, because it would be something too dreadful to know.

  She reached out with her other hand, as if to close it on some thing, and only after she had reached and found nothing did she understand she was reaching for Ray’s hand. But Ray was not there. Ray had been there, in the dream, and in the dream he had held her close for a moment when they had come from the library, leaving Heimrich sitting in a chair, with his head leaning back, his eyes closed. Ray had held her, close. He had put his hand on the back of her head, his fingers in her hair, and held her face against his shoulder and he had said something. If she tried she could remember what he had said, in the good part of the dream. It was going to be all right, he had said. “It’s going to be all right, Jane. We’ll make it all right.” And then, holding her, he had said something else. “Don’t tremble that way,” he had said. “Darling, don’t tremble so.” But she had not thought she was trembling, although now she could feel her fingers shaking against the bones of her temples.

  Ray had said something else and she tried to remember. Something about taking the car, about seeing a man named Carroll. A man named Carroll in White Plains, that was it. But that did not fit into the dream. She must have said something in response, because Ray had held her out from him and looked at her and had seemed satisfied, and he had smiled and said, “Good girl. Good girl.” But then he had gone and the trooper had motioned with his head toward the door to the living room and she had gone into the room—had come into this room, where the others were. And they had looked at her without speaking, as if they were waiting for something—for her to say something or do something. But she had sat down again and covered her eyes, and then the terrible belief that they were right had begun; the belief that they were right and that she was hiding in a dream from something to which she could not bear to awaken. Perhaps, she thought, she would never awaken.

  She heard her name spoken and realized that someone had spoken to her before, but that she only now heard. She moved her hand and looked up and Grace Lockwood was standing in front of her and saying “Jane. Listen. Jane.” Grace’s voice seemed almost gentle. When Jane took her hand away and looked at Grace, Grace smiled. She did not seem to be unfriendly. “Listen, Jane,” she said, again. “You must get some rest.” She paused. “Whatever is true,” she said. She looked at Jane. “You’re shaking,” she said. “You’re cold.”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said. “I have to wait here.” She looked at Grace. “Don’t I?” she said.

  Grace was shaking her head.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “He’s talking to Alice, now. About the shrimp. So awful, such a crazy thing to do. You know about it?”

  “Yes,” Jane said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nobody does,” Grace said. “Such a crazy thing. Poor Alice. You can never tell. But, anyway, the rest of us can go, now. You have to rest.”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said. “I’m—I’m afraid I—” She stopped, then, not sure what she had meant to say.

  “For one thing,” Grace said, “you probably haven’t had anything to eat. Have you? And you’re shivering.” She looked down at Jane. “I’m not asking anything,” she said. “Don’t tell me anything. You need a hot bath, and something to eat. And you need to go to sleep, Jane. Whatever is true.” She shook her head, as if Jane had been about to speak. “I don’t know what’s true,” she said. “It’s terrible. I sent the children away. To their friends.” She seemed momentarily to be speaking to herself, as much as to Jane. Then she said, “Come, Jane. A good hot bath. Some hot milk. And bed.”

  Jane found herself getting up, following Grace out of the room, through the hall, up the stairs. It was her old room, but someone had been using it. “Little Susan’s room,” Grace said. “The bathroom—”

  She stopped, because Jane nodded.

  “It was my room,” Jane said. “When I was growing up. I remember.”

  “Of course,” Grace Lockwood said. “Your aunt told—” She stopped abruptly, as if she had broken some rule. “A good hot bath,” she said. “I’ll get you some hot milk. In a thermos, so it will be hot when you’re ready. And then you must go to sleep.”

  “I—” Jane said. Then she said, “Thank you, Grace.”

  “Good,” Grace said. “You must drink it, now. You need it, you know.” She went toward the door and then stopped. “It will make you sleep, you know,” she said, and went out the door, closing it behind her.

  Jane stood for a moment and then started toward the door, but took only a step and stopped. No, Grace was bringing something—milk, that was it. Grace would have to get in to leave the milk. She must not lock the door, because then Grace could not get in.

  It comes out very neatly, Jane thought. It is very logical, very sensible: Perhaps I am not dreaming now.

  She went the other way across the room and into the bathroom. She locked this door behind her and stood for almost a minute looking at the bathroom before she did anything else. It had new fixtures, she realized; it was not, as she had expected it to be, familiar. She shook her head and turned on the hot water. It had come slowly when she was a child there, it had been little more than a
trickle. Now it gushed into the tub. Slowly she undressed, letting her clothes fall on the bathroom rug. When she had finished, she stood looking at herself in the mirror which was the full height of the door. She ran her hands through her hair, lifting it, and let it fall again. She leaned close to the mirror and looked into her eyes and they were not as she remembered them. I must be afraid, she thought.

  The water gushed noisily into the bath and she leaned down and tested it, and then turned off the hot water and let cold gush in. Then, still moving slowly, almost automatically, she stepped into the bath and slid down so she could lie in the warm water. It was a long time before she did anything but lie in the water, feeling it make her body lighter, less bound to heaviness.

  “Just to stand by,” Heimrich said. “To watch. Not to keep things from happening. Not to let too much happen. He understands that?”

  Forniss shrugged.

  “I told him,” he said. “All you could do,” Heimrich agreed. “Is he out of sight?”

  “A closet,” Forniss said. “Linen closet. With the door open a little.”

  “Convenient,” Heimrich said. “It ought to work. If he stays awake. If he’s bright. Is he bright?”

  “He’s what we’ve got,” Forniss said.

  Heimrich opened his eyes. He did not look pleased.

  “What we’ve got,” Forniss repeated. “What they sent along. A trooper. Name of Turner. I suppose he’s bright.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes again.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve got to suppose something.” He considered this and, after a time, sighed. “I suppose,” he said.

  Ray had driven the little rental car as fast as he dared on the unfamiliar, twisting road. He had driven it angrily, swearing at its sluggishness, swearing at the vagrant twistings of New York 22. The road was black surfaced, too narrow, for a good many miles; he was a long way from Somers when he found concrete again, and the little car steadied down. He came around a broad curve and down a steep hill into White Plains at a little before eleven o’clock. It was after eleven when, finally, he found the address Sergeant Forniss had given him. It was a detached house, in a row of houses. And it was dark. The Carrolls had gone to bed.