“You think so?” He looked up hopelessly. “That’s what they said at the hospital. It’ll get less and less, they said.”
“It will.”
“Don’t tell them.” His hand was gripping fiercely into my arm. “Please don’t tell them. Don’t let it get around the village.”
I steered him to the bed and got him to sit down. I lit a cigarette for him and handed it to him. He took it automatically, like a baby taking a proffered rattle.
I said: “Hold onto yourself, Caleb. This is going to take a lot of guts.”
He looked up blankly through the blue smoke.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Okay—what?”
“To hear what you’re going to hear.”
That jolted him back into control. He sat up straight.
“Hear what?”
I said: “It’s got to come out, Caleb. And I think you’ll be better off when it does. It’s this keeping it to yourself that’s killing you. Your mother, the village, everyone’s got to know you ran out on the patrol tonight. And they’d better know the real reason. I’ll tell them. I’ll put it the right way. They’ll understand. They’ve got to.”
He was clenching his teeth as if I had him naked on a rack, turning the wrenches. “Why, Doctor? Why?”
“You were on duty outside the church, Caleb. The Reverend Jessup got killed—stabbed in the back at the altar.”
He got up unsteadily. His hand ran across his silver blond hair as if he had to touch himself to prove that everything was still real.
“You didn’t kill him, did you?” I asked.
He didn’t seem to hear that question. “Killed!” he echoed. “Jessup got killed after I quit, after—” His hand dropped down to cover his eyes. “I did it then. I’m responsible. I ran away and I’m responsible.”
“Shut up,” I said. “You’re not responsible—not unless you killed him. Tell me. Did you kill him?”
“No.” The word burst out of him in a sudden upsurge of fury. It wasn’t fury against me. It was fury against himself. “Christ, no. I never killed him.”
“Then you see what we’re up against, don’t you? You were on duty outside the church. Jessup was killed. You went off. The whole village is going to talk unless they know why you went off.”
“What does it matter?” He sank down again on the bed, his arms dropping listlessly to his sides. “Let ’em think it. I’m as bad as a murderer, anyway. I’m a coward, a goddam sneaking, sniveling little coward.”
I crossed so that I was standing directly in front of him. “Listen,” I said, “it’s about time you got this straight. You were in the war. You fought. You got injured. Some boys got blinded. Some boys lost an arm. Some boys got a bellyful of shell fragments. It hit you in the nerves. Can’t you see it’s all the same thing? You’ve nothing more to be ashamed of than any of those other kids with no arms and legs. You’ve nothing more to be ashamed of and you’re a darn sight luckier, because you’re going to get well. You’re a coward, yes, but only for one thing. For keeping it hidden inside you as if it were something repulsive—instead of coming right out and saying: ‘This is what the war did to me. So—what?’ Okay, you fouled things up tonight. So admit it and tell the world why it happened, and once you’ve faced that out, you can laugh at the dark.”
He listened in silence, but I could tell he was taking in what I said. When I was through, there was a flicker of hope in his eyes.
“You think it can work out that way?”
“It’s the only way.”
“Okay.” He stared down at the golden hairs on the backs of his hands. “Want me to go down right now and spill it to Mother?”
“That’s the boy.” I put my hand on his hair. “No need to rush things. Cobb will be talking to you tomorrow. Might as well begin with Cobb. Now stop worrying about it. Do something.” I glanced at the half-completed map on the drawing board. “Work on your map awhile. It’ll calm you down. By the way, what’s it for?”
“The map?” He looked up. “Oh, it’s nothing. I like fooling around with maps. Aunt Ernesta asked me to make it for her. She’s nuts about hiking, you know. She doesn’t really need it. She knows every track and path around Skipton. I guess she only asked for it to give me something to do that would keep me out of trouble.”
He laughed. It wasn’t his usual, jerky laugh. It had much more stability to it.
“Keep me out of trouble. That’s good, isn’t it? Gets me to make a map to keep me out of trouble.”
CHAPTER XIII
Phoebe was waiting for me in the living room. She had built up the fire, and coffee was ready. In the Stone house even the unearthly hour of five o’clock in the morning seemed amiable. Phoebe poured coffee for me, and I dropped into a squeaky old wicker chair which somehow managed to be more comfortable than the most upholstered of Ernesta’s sofas.
Phoebe squatted on a stool at my feet, her small feet in their dilapidated garden shoes pointed toward the fire.
“I want terribly to be flippant,” she said. “I want to say something very funny and laugh. Or even something not so very funny. But I can’t. Doctors are supposed to have poker faces. You don’t. Tell me what’s happened, Hugh. Let’s get it over.”
I didn’t mention Caleb’s part, but I told her everything else. As I talked, she seemed to shrink into herself like a leaf curling up in a fire. Her face seemed to have shrunk too when she turned to me, and something about her reminded me of Caleb, the same hurt, lost look, the same defiant tilt of the chin.
“Hilary! Poor Hilary! He asked me to stand vigil with him in the church. I thought how cold and uncomfortable it would be and refused. I’ve never been very holy, you know.” She shivered. “If I’d gone with him, I might have saved him.”
“Or been number five,” I said.
“Number five.” Her quick eyes flashed to mine. “‘Five for the symbols at your door.’ I see now why you were staring at Caleb’s carvings.”
“You’d better not take any chances.”
“Hugh, you really think it’s the song?”
“Think! What else can it be? The lily-white boys, the rivals, the gospel maker.”
“And the knife—Ernesta’s paper knife. It proves it was one of us?”
“Almost for certain.”
“One of my close friends. Someone I know better than I know you.”
I thought she was going to add that she couldn’t believe it, but she didn’t. I had finished my coffee. I reached for the percolator and poured myself another cup. I never thought about formalities in Phoebe’s house.
I said: “You’re the smartest person in Skipton, Phoebe. Tell me your slant. Have you had any suspicions?”
“Of course. Lots of them. You know me. I enjoy thinking horrible things about my friends.” She sighed. “None of my ideas makes any sense though.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“You’ll think I have a deplorable mind.”
“I know that anyway.”
I smiled at her. She smiled back palely.
“All right. If you really want to know. At first I thought it was Love. When the twins died, I mean. Of course Love’s my best friend. That proves what sort of a mind I’ve got. But it had to be someone. And Love suffered the torments of hell from Bobby and Billy. Oh, it’s strained, I know, to suspect a woman of killing two little children because they brought mud into the house and broke her china. But that cottage is Love’s obsession. She puts newspapers on the carpets when the sun shines. She’ll get up in the middle of the night when she thinks that maybe she didn’t dust one of the Staffordshire dogs on the mantel. And even with George … Love’s very prudish about sex, almost as bad as Ernesta. With much more justification, because she never had any, poor dear. She suspected Avril of having an affair with Renton. I know that, because she told me. She despised George, too, for being a complacent husband. I thought it was just conceivable that … But now, with Hilary dead, it cuts Love out completely. She was terribly fond o
f Hilary, and she’s a terribly orthodox churchwoman. Love killing Hilary in front of the altar! Oh, the whole theory was preposterous anyway.”
“What else?” I asked.
“Everything else is just as preposterous.”
“Even so.”
“Well, I thought of Renton. If Renton had wanted Avril and George had stood in the way. I think Renton would have killed George without turning a hair—provided there was a sporting chance of his getting away with it. That’s one of Renton’s main attractions. He gives the impression of being ruthless, reckless. But then he didn’t want Avril. I know that. The only woman around here that interests him is Ernesta, worse luck. I had designs on him once myself.”
She took a cigarette from the pack I had thrown on the table, something she rarely did. She lit it, puffing intently as if she were afraid it would go out.
“And then, of course, Renton wouldn’t have been too squeamish to kill the White twins if there’d been a good solid motive, if they’d been his wards or something and he’d insured them. But they weren’t his wards. And when you get to Hilary …” She gestured with the cigarette. “Renton couldn’t have killed Hilary. Oh, the sacrilege of it, the Thomas à Becket at the altar, that wouldn’t have worried him. But Hilary was the only person in Skipton who played chess, and Renton has a passion for chess. They played together every Tuesday night. You know that.”
“Okay,” I said. “No Love. No Renton. Then—who?”
“Avril?” Phoebe stared rather balefully into the fire. “I left Avril till last because I’ve always disliked her and I want it to be her, which means I’m prejudiced. I can’t really think of a case against her, though. Of course, she’d do anything to get the spotlight. You know how Ernesta always snubs her and keeps her down. With Ernesta away, she might have run amok. She just adores being the tragic widow. You saw her playing it tonight. And I wouldn’t put it past her to have killed George just to boost her next book. But why would she kill the White twins and Hilary? There’s no limelight in that for her. Besides, she’d never have carried the twins into the duckpond and got her little twinkling feet wet. I’m sure Avril would never get her feet wet, not even while she was committing murder, unless there was a big, strong man to kiss them and make them well.” She sighed again. “It’s no use, is it? I’m being facetious and unattractive and I’m not even being useful. Nothing fits.”
“Nothing fits,” I said, “because you’re trying to find sane motives. A maniac doesn’t have to have a motive—except an insane urge to kill, an insane fixation on an ancient, creepy song.”
It seemed to me that her small body suddenly stiffened.
I said: “That’s all Cobb’s working on now. A maniac. He’ll be searching into everyone’s past, trying to trace insanity in the family. Not that it proves much, but it’s a clue. Phoebe, maybe you could help on that. You’ve lived here most of your life.”
She turned to me very slowly. “He’s going to do that? Trace people’s families back?”
I nodded.
Her face was shockingly pale. The cigarette burned close to her fingers.
“I knew it would have to come,” she said.
Startled, I said: “What come?”
“I thought you’d guessed at lunch yesterday. I was frightened. I tried to stop you. Oh, it’s not because of the murders. It’s because we’ve kept it secret so long—Ernesta and I, all of us. When you keep a secret for so long, you begin to think you’re safe and that it’s never, never going to come out.”
Her eyes moved upward and settled with stricken intensity on the portrait of the girl in gray which hung above the mantel. I remembered then the strange awkwardness that had settled on the family group when I had asked polite questions about Phoebe’s mother. I also remembered the ghastly hush which had followed Dawn’s silly remark about Mary Lamb.
“She was a wonderful woman, Hugh. Brilliant, beautiful. Everyone worshiped her. No one ever dreamed. Oh, she used to have terrible headaches. Ever since Ernesta and I can remember, she’d have her headaches and go to bed. But everyone else had headaches. It didn’t seem—strange. And then, suddenly, it came. Mother was forty-seven, just Ernesta’s age. Ernesta and I weren’t married then. Mother was in bed with a headache. Father took her supper up to her. And there was a terrible scream. Ernesta and I ran up. Father was stumbling out of Mother’s room. There was blood streaming over his sleeve. She had stabbed him in the arm, tried to kill him. And it was Mother who was screaming. She screamed for an hour without stopping. She was quite mad.”
Phoebe buried her face in her hands. There was something infinitely pathetic about that childish gesture contrasted with the untidy gray hair.
“Father wouldn’t send her away at first. He did everything, everything. But it was hopeless. She was diabolically clever at stealing knives, anything sharp. And it was Father she attacked always, and she loved him. She’d always loved him. There was nothing we could do. Father took her to a place upstate in New York that was supposed to be good. It broke his heart, and he died soon after. Mother’s never recovered. She’s been there thirty years. And it’s just the same today.”
In a choked little voice, she added: “We never let anyone know. People know she’s alive. Maybe Love—some of them—suspect, but we’ve tried so hard.”
I put my hand over her small cold one. She gave a little sob.
“That’s why I’m so afraid,” she whispered. “When Caleb came home, when he seemed so different … he’d never tell me what was the matter, what had happened to him in the Marines. I never dared ask. I never dared think, hardly. But it gnaws and gnaws like a rat.” She swung round, her eyes suddenly fierce. “But he didn’t do these things, Hugh. Believe me. A mother knows. I know, I know, I know. He didn’t do these things.”
“I believe it.” I took both her hands and drew her around to face me. “I know what’s the matter with Caleb. I won’t tell you, because he’s going to tell you himself. It is something of the mind, yes. But it’s something that happened to hundreds of other soldiers. It’s an occupational malady. It has nothing to do with insanity—hereditary or otherwise. And it’ll go.”
“Something of the mind?” she repeated the one phrase that tormented her.
“You mustn’t worry, Phoebe. He’ll tell you. You’ll know.” Quietly I added: “Does he know about your mother?”
Phoebe shook her head dully. “Ernesta and I knew we would have to tell the children sometime, but when he went away to the Marines, he seemed so young. I put it off. And now that he’s home, I … I haven’t dared.”
“But Lorie knows?”
“Ernesta told her. Only a few weeks ago. I don’t know whether she did the right thing. She asked me first. We argued. I was against it. But she did. You see, there’s a complication.”
“A complication.”
“Caleb and Lorie.” She wasn’t trying to keep up a pretense in front of me now, and her haunted eyes gave me a glimpse into what she must have been suffering all this time while she had played, so perfectly, the role of the caustic, carefree dispenser of tea and local gossip. “They’re in love, Hugh. They’ve been in love since they were old enough to know what love was. Oh, they’re difficult, stubborn, both of them. Half the time you’d think they were hating each other instead of loving each other. But I’ve always known. So has Ernesta.”
She reached for an old coat that lay on one of the wicker chairs and threw it around her shoulders as if she were cold.
“I don’t know—about heredity, I mean. I don’t think anyone knows really. I’ve read books. I’ve asked people. But I still don’t know. Neither does Ernesta, but Ernesta makes up her mind anyway, and she made up her mind that it would be too dangerous ever for Lorie and Caleb to marry each other. They were safe enough if they married into new blood—look at Ernesta and me. But marrying each other—” she broke off. “Ernesta made up her mind anyway, and there’s nothing on earth can change Ernesta’s mind. When Lorie and Caleb were young, it didn�
��t matter, but now with Caleb back from the wars and Lorie more crazy about him than ever—”
“Ernesta told her to keep her from marrying Caleb?” I asked.
She nodded, a small, weary nod. “I don’t mind myself. If they love each other, I think that’s the only important thing. I think it’s worth risking anything for. But Ernesta’s so heartlessly practical. She was terrible with Lorie, terrible. She not only told Lorie the truth; she told her—oh, that she’d do awful things if Lorie did marry him.”
“Like disinheriting her?”
“No. She can’t do that. Lorie is to have money of her own. But … but she said she would break with her forever. She was only doing it to be kind, of course. She desperately wants to save Lorie. That’s all she’s thinking of. The memory of that day with Mother, it haunts Ernesta. It’s with her all the time. It’s worse with her than with me. If Lorie and Caleb were to marry and had a child that … It would kill Ernesta. That’s why she was so brutal. And to Lorie, Ernesta’s God, of course; she’s never done anything Ernesta didn’t want her to do—never.”
I was beginning to see so many things now. I understood why Ernesta was so eager to keep her marriage to Renton secret. She was terrified that, if Lorie knew, it might prove an incentive for her to break the maternal apron strings and marry Caleb in defiance. I saw Lorie and Caleb in a different and tragic light too. Two kids in love with each other, one fighting against it because the mother she worshiped had warned her that love meant insanity; the other, eaten up with a sense of his own cowardice, feeling himself unworthy of the girl he loved and even flirting with the preposterous Avril so that Lorie could see just how unworthy he was.
Quietly Phoebe said: “You can tell the inspector, of course. He’d find out anyway.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Hugh, when he knows, do you suppose he’ll…?”
“Suspect you, Caleb, and Lorie? I guess he’ll have to suspect you, won’t he?”
“Caleb and Lorie aren’t doing it,” she said.
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