The Lethal Sex

by Christianna Brand

  I said, “So you’ve married again.”

  “Yes.”.

  “When?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “Right after you left Arbana.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t lose much time starting a new life for yourself.”

  “I couldn’t afford to. I’m not young.”

  “Did you marry a local woman?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t realize until later that he had taken “local” to mean Arbana, not San Francisco as I had intended.

  I said, “You think your wife wrote me that anonymous letter?”

  “Yes.”

  The street lights went on, and I realized it was getting late and cold. McGowney pulled up his coat collar and put on a pair of ill-fitting white cotton gloves. I had seen him wearing gloves like that before; they were as much a part of his professional equipment as his throaty voice and his vast store of sentimental aphorisms.

  He caught me staring at the gloves and said, with a trace of apology, “Money is a little tight these days. My wife is knitting me a pair of woolen gloves for my birthday.”

  “You’re not working?”

  “No.”

  “It shouldn’t be hard for a man of your experience to find a job in your particular field.” I was pretty sure he hadn’t even applied for one. During the past few days, I had contacted nearly every mortician within the Bay area; McGowney had not been to any of them.

  “I don’t want a job in my particular field,” McGowney said.

  “It’s the only thing you’re trained for.”

  “Yes. But I no longer believe in death.”

  He spoke with simple earnestness, as if he had said, “I no longer play blackjack,” or, “I no longer eat salted peanuts.”

  Death, blackjack, or salted peanuts—I was not prepared to argue with McGowney about any of them, so I said, “My car’s in the garage at the Canterbury Hotel. We’ll walk over and get it, and I’ll drive you home.”

  We started toward Sutter Street. The stream of shoppers had been augmented by a flow of white-collar workers, but all the people and the noise and the confusion left McGowney untouched. He moved sedately along beside me, smiling a little to himself, like a man who has developed the faculty of walking out on the world from time to time and going to live on some remote and happy island of his own. I wondered where McGowney’s island was and who lived there with him.

  I knew only one thing for sure: on McGowney’s island there was no death.

  He said suddenly, “It must have been very difficult.”

  “What was?”

  “The exhumation. The ground gets so hard back East in the wintertime. I presume you didn’t attend, Mr. Meecham?”

  “You presume wrong.”

  “My, that’s no place for an amateur.”

  For my money, it was no place for anyone. The cemetery had been white with snow that had fallen during the night. Dawn had been breaking, if you could call that meager, grudging light a dawn. The simple granite headstone had read: Eleanor Regina Keating, October 3, 1899—June 30, 1953. A blessed one from us is gone, a voice we loved is still.

  The blessed one had been gone, all right. Two hours later, when the coffin was pulled up and opened, the smell that rose from it was not the smell of death, but the smell of newspapers rotted with dampness and stones gray-greened with mildew.

  I said, “You know what we found, don’t you, McGowney?”

  “Naturally. I directed the funeral.”

  “You accept sole responsibility for burying an empty coffin?”

  “Not sole responsibility, no.”

  “Who was in with you? And why?”

  He merely shook his head.

  As we waited for a traffic light, I studied McGowney’s face, trying to estimate the degree of his sanity. There seemed to be no logic behind his actions. Mrs. Keating had died quite unmysteriously of a heart attack and had been buried, according to her instructions to me, in a closed coffin. The doctor who had signed the death certificate was indisputably honest. He had happened to be in Mrs. Keating’s house at the time, attending to her older daughter, Mary, who had had a cold. He had examined Mrs. Keating, pronounced her dead, and sent for McGowney. Two days later I had escorted Mary, still sniffling (whether from grief or the same cold, I don’t know), to the funeral. McGowney, as usual, said and did all the correct things.

  Except one. He neglected to put Mrs. Keating’s body in the coffin.

  Time had passed. No one had particularly mourned Mrs. Keating. She had been an unhappy woman, mentally and morally superior to her husband, who had been killed during a drinking spree in New Orleans, and to her two daughters, who resembled their father.

  I had been Mrs. Keating’s lawyer for three years. I had enjoyed talking to her; she had had a quick mind and a sharp sense of humor. But as in the case of many wealthy people who have been cheated of the privilege of work and the satisfactions it brings, she had been a bored and lonely woman who carried despair on her shoulder like a pet parakeet and fed it from time to time on scraps from her bitter memories.

  Right after Mrs. Keating’s funeral, McGowney had sold his business and left town. No one in Arbana had connected the two events until the anonymous letter arrived from Berkeley shortly before Mrs. Keating’s will was awaiting admission into probate. The letter, addressed to me, had suggested the exhumation and stated the will must be declared invalid, since there was no proof of death. I could think of no reason why McGowney’s new wife wrote the letter, unless she had tired of him and had chosen a roundabout method of getting rid of him.

  The traffic light changed and McGowney and I crossed the street and waited under the hotel marquee while the doorman sent for my car. I didn’t look at McGowney, but I could feel him watching me intently.

  “You think I’m mad, eh, Meecham?”

  It wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer. I tried to look noncommittal.

  “I don’t pretend to be entirely normal, Meecham. Do you?’’

  “I try.”

  McGowney’s hand, in its ill-fitting glove, reached over and touched my arm, and I forced myself not to slap it away. It perched on my coat sleeve like a wounded pigeon. “But suppose you had an abnormal experience.”

  “Like you?”

  “Like me. It was a shock, a great shock, even though I had always had the feeling that someday it would happen. I was on the watch for it every time I had a new case. It was always in my mind. You might even say I willed, it.”

  Two trickles of sweat oozed down behind my ears into my collar. “What did you will, McGowney?”

  “I willed her to live again.”

  I became aware the doorman was signaling to me. My car was at the curb with the engine running. I climbed in behind the wheel, and McGowney followed me into the car with obvious reluctance, as if he was already regretting what he’d told me.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said as we pulled away from the curb.

  “I’m a lawyer. I deal in facts.”

  “A fact is what happens, isn’t it?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Well, this happened.”

  “She came back to life?”

  “Yes.”

  “By the power of your will alone?”

  He stirred restlessly in the seat beside me. “I gave her oxygen and adrenalin.”

  “Have you done this with other clients of yours?”

  “Many times, yes.”

  “Is this procedure usual among members of your profession?”

  “For me it was usual,” McGowney said earnestly. “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. I was in the Medical Corps during the war, and I picked up a little knowledge here and there.”

  “Enough to perform miracles?”

  “It was not my knowledge that brought her back to life. It was my will. She had lost the will to live, but I had enough for both of us.”

  If it is true only a thin line separates sanit
y and madness, McGowney crossed and recrossed that line a dozen times within an hour, jumping over it and back again, like a child skipping rope.

  “You understand now, Meecham? She had lost all desire. I saw it happening to her. We never spoke—I doubt she even knew my name—but for years I watched her pass my office on her morning walk. I saw the change come over her, the dullness of her eyes and the way she walked. I knew she was going to die. One day when she was passing by, I went out to tell her, to warn her. But when she saw me, she ran. I think she realized what I was going to say.”

  He was telling the truth, according to his lights. Mrs. Keating had mentioned the incident to me last spring. I recalled her words: “A funny thing occurred this morning, Meecham. As I was walking past the undertaking parlor, that odd little man rushed out and almost scared the life out of me...”

  In view of what subsequently happened, this was a giant among ironies. As we drove toward the Bay Bridge and Berkeley, McGowney told me his story.

  It was midday at the end of June, and the little back room McGowney used as a lab was hot and humid after a morning rain.

  Mrs. Keating woke up as if from a long and troubled sleep. Her hands twitched, her mouth moved in distress, a pulse began to beat in her temple. Tears squeezed out from between her closed lids and slithered past the tips of her ears into the folds of her hair.

  McGowney bent over her, quivering with excitement. “Mrs. Keating! Mrs. Keating! You are alive!”

  “Oh—God.”

  “A miracle has just happened!”

  “Leave me alone. I’m tired.”

  “You are alive, you are alive!”

  Slowly she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “You officious little wretch, what have you done?”

  McGowney stepped back, stunned and shaken. “But—but you are alive. It’s happened. My miracle has happened.”

  “Alive. Miracle.” She mouthed the words as if they were lumps of alum. “You meddling idiot.”

  “I— But I—”

  “Pour me a glass of water. My throat is parched.”

  He was trembling so violently he could hardly get the water out of the cooler. This was his miracle. He had hoped and waited for it all his life, and now it had exploded in his face like an April-fool cigar.

  He gave her the water and sat down heavily in a chair, watching her while she drank very slowly, as if in her short recess from life her muscles had already begun to forget their function.

  “Why did you do it?’’ Mrs. Keating crushed the paper cup in her fist as if it were McGowney himself. “Who asked you for a miracle, anyway?”

  “But I— Well, the fact is—”

  “The fact is, you’re a blooming meddler, that’s what the fact is, McGowney.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now what are you going to do?”

  “Well, I—I hadn’t thought.”

  “Then you’d better start right now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He stared down at the floor, his head hot with misery, his limbs cold with disappointment. “First, I had better call the doctor.”

  “You’ll call no one, McGowney.”

  “But your family—they’ll want to know right away that—”

  “They are not going to know.”

  “But—”

  “No one is going to know, McGowney. No one at all. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now sit down and be quiet and let me think.”

  He sat down and was quiet. He had no desire to move or to speak. Never had he felt so futile and depressed.

  “I suppose,” Mrs. Keating said grimly, “you expect me to be grateful to you.”

  McGowney shook his head.

  “If you do, you must be crazy.” She paused and looked at him thoughtfully.

  “You are a little crazy, aren’t you, McGowney?”

  “There are those who think so,” he said, with some truth. “I don’t agree.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Can’t afford to, ma’am.”

  The windows of the room were closed, and no street sounds penetrated the heavy frosted glass, but from the corridor outside the door came the sudden tap of footsteps on tile.

  McGowney bolted across the room and locked the door and stood against it.

  “Mr. McGowney? You in there?”

  McGowney looked at Mrs. Keating. Her face had turned chalky, and she had one hand clasped to her throat.

  “Mr. McGowney?”

  “Yes, Jim.”

  “You’re wanted on the telephone.”

  “I—can’t come right now, Jim. Take a message.”

  “She wants to talk to you personally. It’s the Keating girl, about the time and cost of the funeral arrangements.”

  “Tell her I’ll call her back later.”

  “All right.” There was a pause. “You feeling okay, Mr. McGowney?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sound kind of funny.”

  “I’m fine, Jim. Absolutely first-rate.”

  “Okay. Just thought I’d ask.”

  The footsteps tapped back down the tile corridor. “Mary loses no time.” Mrs. Keating spoke through dry, stiff lips. “She wants me safely underground so she can marry her electrician. Well, your duty is clear, McGowney.”

  “What is it?”

  “Put me there.”

  McGowney stood propped against the door like a wooden soldier. “You mean, b-b-bury you?”

  “Me, or a reasonable facsimile.”

  “That I couldn’t do, Mrs. Keating. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  “It’s every bit as ethical as performing unsolicited miracles.”

  “You don’t understand the problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “For one thing, your family and friends. They’ll want to see you lying in— What I mean is, it’s customary to put the body on view.”

  “I can handle that part of it all right.”

  “How?”

  “Get me a pen and some paper.”

  McGowney didn’t argue, because he knew he was at fault. It was his miracle; he’d have to take the consequences.

  Mrs. Keating predated the letter by three weeks, and wrote the following:

  To whom it may concern, not that it should concern anybody except myself:

  I am giving these instructions to Mr. McGowney concerning my funeral arrangements. Inasmuch as I have valued privacy during my life, I want no intrusion on it after my death. I am instructing Mr. McGowney to close my coffin immediately and to see it stays closed, in spite of any mawkish pleas from my survivors.

  Elinor Regina Keating

  She folded the paper twice and handed it to McGowney. “You are to show this to Mary and Joan and to Mr. Meecham, my lawyer.” She paused, looking very pleased with herself. “Well. This is getting to be quite exciting, eh, McGowney?”

  “Quite,” McGowney said listlessly.

  “As a matter of fact, it’s given me an appetite. I don’t suppose there’s a kitchen connected with this place?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’d better get me something from the corner drugstore. A couple of tuna-salad sandwiches, on wheat, with plenty of coffee. Lunch,” she added with a satiric little smile, “will have to be on you. I forgot my handbag.”

  “Money,” McGowney said. “Money.”

  “What about it?”

  “What will happen to your money?”

  “I made a will some time ago.”

  “But you, what will you live on?”

  “Perhaps,” Mrs. Keating said dryly, “you’d better perform another miracle.”

  When he returned from the drugstore with her lunch, Mrs. Keating ate and drank with obvious enjoyment. She offered McGowney part of the second sandwich, but he was too disheartened to eat. His miracle, which had started out as a great golden bubble, had turned into an iron ball chained to his leg.

  Somehow he got through the day. Leaving Mrs. Keating in the lab with some
old magazines and a bag of apples, McGowney went about his business. He talked to Mary and Joan Keating in person and to Meecham on the telephone. He gave his assistant, Jim Wagner, the rest of the afternoon off, and when Jim had gone, he filled Mrs. Keating’s coffin (the deluxe white-and-bronze model Mary had chosen out of the catalogue) with rocks packed in newspapers, until it was precisely the right weight.

  McGowney was a small man, unaccustomed to physical exertion, and by the time he had finished, his body was throbbing with weariness.

  It was at this point Mary Keating telephoned to say she and Joan had been thinking the matter over, and since Mrs. Keating had always inclined toward thrift, it was decided she would never rest at ease in such an ostentatious affair as the white and bronze. The plain gray would be far more appropriate, as well as cheaper.

  “You should,” McGowney said coldly, “have let me know sooner.”

  “We just decided a second ago.”

  “It’s too late to change now.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “There are—certain technicalities.”

  “Well, really, Mr. McGowney. If you’re not willing to put yourself out a little, maybe we should take our business somewhere else.”

  “No! You can’t do that—I mean, it wouldn’t be proper, Miss Keating.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Wait a minute. Suppose I give you a special price on the white and bronze.”

  “How special?”

  “Say, twenty-five percent off?”

  There was a whispered conference at the other end of the line, and then Mary said, “It’s still a lot of money.”

  “Thirty-five?”

  “Well, that seems more like it,” Mary said, and hung up.

  The door of McGowney’s office opened, and Mrs. Keating crossed the room, wearing a grim little smile.

  McGowney looked at her helplessly. “You shouldn’t be out here, ma’am. You’d better go back and—”

  “I heard the telephone ring, and I thought it might be Mary.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Yes, it was, McGowney. I heard every word.”

  “Well,” McGowney cleared his throat. “Well. You shouldn’t have listened.”

  “Oh, I’m not surprised. Or hurt. You needn’t be sorry for me. I haven’t felt so good in years. You know why?”