Gerard had been at the police station to hear the questioning on Bruno’s death. He had flown over from Iowa, he said. It was too bad, Charles’ end, but Charles had never been cautious about anything. It was too bad it had had to happen on Guy’s boat. Guy had been able to answer the questions without any emotion whatever. It had seemed so insignificant, the details of the disappearance of his body. Guy had been more disturbed by Gerard’s presence. He didn’t want Gerard to follow him down to Texas. To be doubly safe, he had not even canceled his ticket on the plane to Canada, which had left earlier in the afternoon. Then he had waited nearly four hours at the airport for this plane. But he was safe. Gerard had said he was going back to Iowa by train this afternoon.
Nevertheless, Guy took another look around him at the passengers, a slower and more careful look than he had dared take the first time. There was not one who seemed the least interested in him.
The thick letter in his inside pocket crackled as he bent over the papers in his lap. The papers were sectional reports of the Alberta work, which Bob had given him. Guy couldn’t have read a magazine, he didn’t want to look out the window, but he knew he could memorize, mechanically and efficiently, the items in the reports that had to be memorized. He found a page from an English architectural magazine torn out and stuck between the mimeographed sheets. Bob had circled a paragraph in red pencil:
Guy Daniel Haines is the most significant architect yet to emerge from the American South. With his first independent work at the age of twenty-seven, a simple, two-story building which has become famous as “The Pittsburgh Store,” Haines set forth principles of grace and function to which he has steadfastly held, and through which his art has grown to its present stature. If we seek to define Haines’ peculiar genius, we must depend chiefly upon that elusive and aery term, “grace,” which until Haines has never distinguished modern architecture. It is Haines’ achievement to have made classic in our age his own concept of grace. His main building of the widely known Palmyra group in Palm Beach, Florida, has been called “The American Parthenon” . . .
An asterisked paragraph at the bottom of the page said:
Since the writing of this article, Mr. Haines has been appointed a member of the Advisory Committee of the Alberta Dam project in Canada. Bridges have always interested him, he says. He estimates that this work will occupy him happily for the next three years.
“Happily,” he said. How had they happened to use such a word?
A clock was striking 9 as Guy’s taxi crossed the main street of Houston. Guy had found Owen Markman’s name in a telephone book at the airport, had checked his bags and gotten into a taxi. It won’t be so simple, he thought. You can’t just arrive at 9 in the evening and find him at home, and alone, and willing to sit in a chair and listen to a stranger. He won’t be home, or he won’t be living there anymore, or he won’t even be in Houston anymore. It might take days.
“Pull up at this hotel,” Guy said.
Guy got out and reserved a room. The trivial, provident gesture made him feel better.
Owen Markman was not living at the address in Cleburne Street. It was a small apartment building. The people in the hall downstairs, among them the superintendent, looked at him very suspiciously and gave him as little information as possible. No one knew where Owen Markman was.
“You’re not the police, are you?” asked the superintendent finally.
Despite himself, he smiled. “No.”
Guy was on his way out when a man stopped him on the steps and, with the same air of cautious reluctance, told him that he might be able to find Markman at a certain café in the center of town.
Finally, Guy found him in a drugstore, sitting at the counter with two women whom he did not introduce. Owen Markman simply slid off his stool and stood up straight, his brown eyes a little wide. His long face looked heavier and less handsome than Guy remembered it. He slid his big hands warily into the slash pockets of his short leather jacket.
“You remember me,” Guy said.
“Reckon I do.”
“Would you mind if I had a talk with you? Just for a little while.” Guy looked around him. The best thing was to invite him to his hotel room, he supposed. “I’ve got a room here at the Rice Hotel.”
Markman looked Guy slowly up and down once more, and after a long silence said, “All right.”
Passing the cashier’s desk, Guy saw the shelves of liquor bottles. It might be hospitable to offer Markman a drink. “Do you like Scotch?”
Markman loosened up a bit as Guy bought it. “Coke’s fine, but it tastes better with a little something in it.”
Guy bought some bottles of Coca-Cola, too.
They rode to the hotel in silence, rode up in the elevator and entered the room in silence. How would he begin, Guy wondered. There were a dozen beginnings. Guy discarded them all.
Owen sat down in the armchair, and divided his time between eying Guy with insouciant suspicion, and savoring the long glass of Scotch and Coca-Cola.
Guy began stammeringly, “What—”
“What?” asked Owen.
“What would you do if you knew who murdered Miriam?”
Markman’s foot thudded down to the floor, and he sat up. His frowning brows made a black, intense line above his eyes. “Did you?”
“No, but I know the man who did.”
“Who?”
What was he feeling as he sat there frowning, Guy wondered. Hatred? Resentment? Anger? “I know, and so will the police very soon.” Guy hesitated. “It was a man from New York whose name was Charles Bruno. He died yesterday. He was drowned.”
Owen sat back a little. He took a sip of his drink. “How do you know? Confessed?”
“I know. I’ve known for some time. That’s why I’ve felt it was my fault. For not betraying him.” He moistened his lips. It was difficult every syllable of the way. And why did he uncover himself so cautiously, inch by inch? Where were all his fantasies, the imagined pleasure and relief of blurting it all out? “That’s why I blame myself. I—” Owen’s shrug stopped him. He watched Owen finish his glass, then automatically, Guy went and mixed another for him. “That’s why I blame myself,” he repeated. “I have to tell you the circumstances. It was very complex. You see, I met Charles Bruno on a train, coming down to Metcalf. The train in June, just before she was killed. I was coming down to get my divorce.” He swallowed. There it was, the words he had never said to anyone before, said of his own will, and it felt so ordinary now, so ignominious even. He had a huskiness in his throat he could not get rid of. Guy studied Owen’s long, dark attentive face. There was less of a frown now. Owen’s leg was crossed again, and Guy remembered suddenly the gray buckskin work shoes Owen had worn at the inquest. These were plain brown shoes with elastic sidepieces. “And—”
“Yeah,” Owen prompted.
“I told him Miriam’s name. I told him I hated her. Bruno had an idea for a murder. A double murder.”
“Jesus!” Owen whispered.
The “Jesus” reminded him of Bruno, and Guy had a horrible, an utterly horrible thought all at once, that he might ensnare Owen in the same trap that Bruno had used for him, that Owen in turn would capture another stranger who would capture another, and so on in infinite progression of the trapped and the hunted. Guy shuddered and clenched his hands. “My mistake was in speaking to him. My mistake was in telling a stranger my private business.”
“He told you he was going to kill her?”
“No, of course not. It was an idea he had. He was insane. He was a psychopath. I told him to shut up and to go to hell. I got rid of him!” He was back in the compartment. He was leaving it to go onto the platform. He heard the bang of the train’s heavy door. Got rid of him, he had thought!
“You didn’t tell him to do it.”
“No. He didn’t say he was going to do it.”
“Why don’t you have a straight shot? Why don’t you sit down?” Owen’s slow, rasping voice made the room steady again. His v
oice was like an ugly rock, solidly lodged in dry ground.
He didn’t want to sit down, and he didn’t want to drink. He had drunk Scotch like this in Bruno’s compartment. This was the end and he didn’t want it to be like the beginning. He touched the glass of Scotch and water that he had fixed for himself only for politeness’ sake. When he turned around, Owen was pouring more liquor into his glass, continued to pour it, as if to show Guy that he hadn’t been trying to do it behind his back.
“Well,” Owen drawled, “if the fellow was a nut like you say—That was the court’s opinion finally, too, wasn’t it, that it must have been a madman?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, sure I can understand how you felt afterwards, but if it was just a conversation like you say, I don’t see where you should blame yourself so awful much.”
Guy was staring at him incredulously. Didn’t it matter to Owen more than this? Maybe he didn’t entirely understand. “But you see—”
“When did you find out about it?” Owen’s brown eyes looked slurry.
“About three months after it happened. But you see, if not for me, Miriam would be alive now.” Guy watched Owen lower his lips to the glass again. He could taste the sickening mess of Coca-Cola and Scotch sliding into Owen’s wide mouth. What was Owen going to do? Leap up suddenly and fling the glass down, throttle him as Bruno had throttled Miriam? He couldn’t imagine that Owen would continue to sit there, but the seconds went by and Owen did not move. “You see, I had to tell you,” Guy persisted. “I considered you the one person I might have hurt, the one person who suffered. Her child had been yours. You were going to marry her. You loved her. It was you—”
“Hell, I didn’t love her.” Owen looked at Guy with no change whatever in his face.
Guy stared back at him. Didn’t love her, didn’t love her, Guy thought. His mind staggered back, trying to realign all the past equations that no longer balanced. “Didn’t love her?” he said.
“No. Well, not the way you seem to think. I certainly didn’t want her to die—and understand, I’d have done anything to prevent it, but I was glad enough not to have to marry her. Getting married was her idea. That’s why she had the child. That’s not a man’s fault, I wouldn’t say. Would you?” Owen was looking at him with a tipsy earnestness, waiting, his wide mouth the same firm, irregular line it had been on the witness stand, waiting for Guy to say something, to pass judgment on his conduct with Miriam.
Guy turned away with a vaguely impatient gesture. He couldn’t make the equations balance. He couldn’t make any sense to it, except an ironic sense. There was no reason for his being here now, except for an ironic reason. There was no reason for his sweating, painful self-torture in a hotel room for the benefit of a stranger who didn’t care, except for an ironic reason.
“Do you think so?” Owen kept on, reaching for the bottle on the table beside him.
Guy couldn’t have made himself say a word. A hot, inarticulate anger was rising inside him. He slid his tie down and opened his shirt collar, and glanced at the open windows for an air-conditioning apparatus.
Owen shrugged. He looked quite comfortable in his open-collared shirt and unzipped leather jacket. Guy had an absolutely unreasonable desire to ram something down Owen’s throat, to beat him and crush him, above all to blast him out of his complacent comfort in the chair.
“Listen,” Guy began quietly, “I am a—”
But Owen had begun to speak at the same instant, and he went on, droningly, not looking at Guy who stood in the middle of the floor with his mouth still open. “. . . the second time. Got married two months after my divorce, and there was trouble right away. Whether Miriam would of been any different, I don’t know, but I’d say she’d of been worse. Louisa up and left two months ago after damn near setting the house on fire, a big apartment house.” He droned on, and poured more Scotch into his glass from the bottle at his elbow, and Guy felt a disrespect, a definite affront, directed against himself, in the way Owen helped himself. Guy remembered his own behavior at the inquest, undistinguished behavior, to say the least, for the husband of the victim. Why should Owen have respect for him? “The awful thing is, the man gets the worst of it, because the women do more talking. Take Louisa, she can go back to that apartment house and they’ll give her a welcome, but let me so much—”
“Listen!” Guy said, unable to stand it any longer. “I—I killed someone, too! I’m a murderer, too!”
Owen’s feet came down to the floor again, he sat up again, he even looked from Guy to the window and back again, as if he contemplated having to escape or having to defend himself, but the befuddled surprise and alarm on his face was so feeble, so halfhearted, that it seemed a mockery itself, seemed to mock Guy’s seriousness. Owen started to set his glass on the table and then didn’t. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Listen!” Guy shouted again. “Listen, I’m a dead man. I’m as good as dead right now, because I’m going to give myself up. Immediately! Because I killed a man, do you understand? Don’t look so unconcerned, and don’t lean back in that chair again!”
“Why shouldn’t I lean back in this chair?” Owen had both hands on his glass now, which he had just refilled with Coca-Cola and Scotch.
“Doesn’t it mean anything to you that I am a murderer, and took a man’s life, something no human being has a right to do?”
Owen might have nodded, or he might not have. At any rate, he drank again, slowly.
Guy stared at him. The words, unutterable tangles of thousands and thousands of words, seemed to congest even his blood, to cause waves of heat to sweep up his arms from his clenched hands. The words were curses against Owen, sentences and paragraphs of the confession he had written that morning, that were growing jumbled now because the drunken idiot in the armchair didn’t want to hear them. The drunken idiot was determined to look indifferent. He didn’t look like a murderer, he supposed, in his clean white shirtsleeves and his silk tie and his dark blue trousers, and maybe even his strained face didn’t look like a murderer’s to anybody else. “That’s the mistake,” Guy said aloud, “that nobody knows what a murderer looks like. A murderer looks like anybody!” He laid the back of his fist against his forehead and took it down again, because he had known the last words were coming, and had been unable to stop them. It was exactly like Bruno.
Abruptly Guy went and got himself a drink, a straight three-finger shot, and drank it off.
“Glad to see I’ve got a drinking companion,” Owen mumbled. Guy sat down on the neat, green-covered bed opposite Owen. Quite suddenly, he had felt tired. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he began again, “it doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”
“You’re not the first man I seen that killed another man. Or woman.” He chuckled. “Seems to me there’s more women that go free.”
“I’m not going free. I’m not free. I did this in cold blood. I had no reason. Don’t you see that might be worse? I did it for—” He wanted to say he did it because there had been that measure of perversity within him sufficient to do it, that he had done it because of the worm in the wood, but he knew it would make no sense to Owen, because Owen was a practical man. Owen was so practical, he would not bother to hit him, or flee from him, or call the police, because it was more comfortable to sit in the chair.
Owen waggled his head as if he really did consider Guy’s point. His lids were half dropped over his eyes. He twisted and reached for something in his hip pocket, a bag of tobacco. He got cigarette papers from the breast pocket of his shirt.
Guy watched his operations for what seemed like hours. “Here,” Guy said, offering him his own cigarettes.
Owen looked at them dubiously. “What kind are they?”
“Canadian. They’re quite good. Try one.”
“Thanks, I—” Owen drew the bag closed with his teeth—“prefer my own brand.” He spent at least three minutes rolling the cigarette.
“This was just as if I pulled a gun on someone in a public
park and shot him,” Guy went on, determined to go on, though it was as if he talked to an inanimate thing like a dictaphone in the chair, with the difference that his words didn’t seem to be penetrating in any way. Mightn’t it dawn on Owen that he could pull a gun on him now in this hotel room? Guy said, “I was driven to it. That’s what I’ll tell the police, but that won’t make any difference, because the point is, I did it. You see, I have to tell you Bruno’s idea.” At least Owen was looking at him now, but his face, far from being rapt, seemed actually to wear an expression of pleasant, polite, drunken attention. Guy refused to let it stop him. “Bruno’s idea was that we should kill for each other, that he should kill Miriam and I should kill his father. Then he came to Texas and killed Miriam, behind my back. Without my knowledge or consent, do you see?” His choice of words was abominable, but at least Owen was listening. At least the words were coming out. “I didn’t know about it, and I didn’t even suspect—not really. Until months later. And then he began to haunt me. He began to tell me he would pin the blame for Miriam’s death on me, unless I went through with the rest of his damned plan, do you see? Which was to kill his father. The whole idea rested on the fact that there was no reason for the murders. No personal motives. So we couldn’t be traced, individually. Provided we didn’t see each other. But that’s another point. The point is, I did kill him. I was broken down. Bruno broke me down with letters and blackmail and sleeplessness. He drove me insane, too. And listen, I believe any man can be broken down. I could break you down. Given the same circumstances, I could break you down and make you kill someone. It might take different methods from the ones Bruno used on me, but it could be done. What else do you think keeps the totalitarian states going? Or do you ever stop to wonder about things like that, Owen? Anyway, that’s what I’ll tell the police, but it won’t matter, because they’ll say I shouldn’t have broken down.
It won’t matter, because they’ll say I was weak. But I don’t care now, do you see? I can face anyone now, do you see?” He bent to look into Owen’s face, but Owen seemed scarcely to see him. Owen’s head was sagged sideways, resting in his hand. Guy stood up straight. He couldn’t make Owen see, he could feel that Owen wasn’t understanding the main point at all, but that didn’t matter either. “I’ll accept it, whatever they want to do to me. I’ll say the same thing to the police tomorrow.”
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