“Weren’t you, though?” Francie said. “I just got the creeps watching him.”
“It’s time to go,” Mrs. Deerman said. “I want to tell you, Bernice, how much Francie and I appreciate your coming along with us to Mr. Behren’s office. We’re so helpless. Both of us. We can’t thank you enough for standing by us like this.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Bernice said.
It was the last thing she wanted to do. She never wanted to see any of the Deermans again. She wanted to get Lloyd out of her mind.
Earlier in the week she had gone to her mother’s apartment and removed the money from Lloyd’s account book. On her next visit to Deerman’s old house she had replaced the empty account book on its shelf.
She thought, Wouldn’t Findlay love to poke around and find that book? What if he did? And what if it was empty? There was nothing to show it had ever held almost twenty-five thousand dollars in tight green stacks. There was no title pasted on it as there was on each of the others. And if her fingerprints were all over it? So were they all over the other account books, too.
Let him find it, she thought coldly. Seven days had passed. She’d not seen him again. She forgot the cold thread of fear that stitched a tight patch at the base of her throat when his gray eyes settled on her.
She thought impatiently, I want to get away. Away from Lloyd’s mother and Lloyd’s sister, and Findlay, and everything that reminds me of Lloyd. I’ll be all right then...
“I want you to know you won’t be forgotten,” Mrs. Deerman was saying. Bernice had to drag her attention back to the stout woman. “Lloyd spoke warmly of you. He wouldn’t have forgotten you if his accident hadn’t taken him so—so untimely. We’ll see you’re not forgotten, Bernice.”
Bernice flushed, wishing she could get away from the woman’s kindness. “I don’t expect anything,” she said.
“Of course you don’t, dear. But it would be Lloyd’s wish.”
“Mother has spoken to Joe Sanders about it,” Francie said.
The first person Bernice saw in Behrens’ plush office was Fred Findlay.
He was a gray shadow in a corner of the fifteenth-story office. Anger beat inside Bernice. He’s hounding me. I won’t have it. I won’t. I won’t.
She felt her throat tighten up. Findlay seemed unaware of her. The room was crowded with other people. Lloyd’s three servants were there. They nodded briefly at Bernice.
It was not that they disliked her or suspected her. They each one found her without charm. That was all. Bernice thought, They laughed when I sat down at my typewriter. They felt Lloyd should have had a movie queen to take his dictation. Poor, plain little Bernice. That had been in their faces. Well, she hadn’t liked them, either.
Behrens said, “We all know why we are here. The people here are business associates, servants, or relatives of my late client and pal, Lloyd Deerman. It wouldn’t be feasible to attempt to introduce you people to each other. So to get into the thing, I’m going to tell you that I’m Clive Behrens, attorney at law, and that I’m going to read the provisions of Mr. Deerman’s last will and testament.
To Bernice, the will was involved and detailed. One fact made an impression on her as Behrens read. Lloyd Deerman had been a very wealthy man. She sat there, feeling Findlay’s gray eyes fixed on a spot at the nape of her neck. She knew she could have married Lloyd Deerman and had all that wealth.
She shrugged her coat up about her neck. She didn’t regret what she had done. Not all his money would have made it worth being his seeing-eye wife. No. She would buy what she wanted, with the money she had got from him.
Each of the servants received a thousand dollars each. All the relatives were remembered, and all his business associates who had been with him longer than five years.
Finally it was over. The relatives straggled out of the office. Behrens motioned for Bernice to remain in her chair. It seemed that suddenly there were only three people remaining in Behrens’ office: Bernice, Behrens, and Fred Findlay.
Bernice tightened her fingers on her purse to keep them from trembling. She wanted to run. She was sure something had gone wrong. Findlay had kept poking around. She had made one mistake, she couldn’t even think what, and Findlay had found it.
She held herself rigid in her chair. Findlay sat down beside her.
“Hello, Miss Harper.”
“Hello, Mr. Findlay.”
“I did you an injustice last week,” Findlay said.
Bernice felt her heart slow a little. “Did you?”
“Don’t you want to know what I mean?”
“No. You found me innocent. I knew that all the time.”
“I had my job to do,” he said. “The department has closed the case. It was an accident. I only came to hear the will. You’re mentioned nowhere. There’s no insurance tie-up. You’re in the clear. I just wanted to tell you, you’re looking better. I’ve seen it happen. A woman has her first baby and blossoms out into a real beauty. Or she paints a masterpiece. Or flies an ocean, or writes a book—and she’s no longer the same. She doesn’t even look the same any more. Changes ‘em. Some kind of inner chemistry, I guess. Havin’ a baby, writin’ a book, paintin’ a picture—”
“Or killing a man.” Bernice’s voice was loud.
Behrens’ head jerked up. “Not in here, Findlay!” he snapped. “You told me you wanted to hear the will read. I agreed to let you. Lloyd’s death has been officially called an accident. I didn’t allow you in here so you could hound Miss Harper.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Findlay demurred. “I was trying to pay her a compliment.”
Bernice stared at him. She knew her face was flushed.
She could feel her cheeks burn. “I didn’t like it,” she said. She had to force her voice to remain level.
Findlay said he was sorry. But Bernice was looking at him. His face didn’t change, he didn’t look sorry. He didn’t seem to be laughing, either. But Bernice knew he was.
Inside, Findlay was roaring with laughter. Pleased as hell.
Behrens came around his desk. Something about him, the way he walked, the way he held his wide shoulders, excited Bernice. She wondered what it would be like to go to bed with him. My God, she thought, it’s been years since I thought a thing like that about any man. He was old enough to be her father. And she knew that didn’t matter, either...
She was more aware of the chemical fusions and stirrings in the crannies of her body than she was of what he was saying. She had to force herself to listen to the meaning of his words and not the hypnotic timbre of his deep voice.
He sat on a chair beside her and crossed his knees. She was aware that he was holding out a business card to her.
“Joe Sanders asked me to give this to you,” Behrens said. “He said you could have an appointment with him at your convenience today at this address. I hope you’ll go this morning, Miss Harper.”
Joseph Sanders kept her waiting an hour.
Just when Bernice had made up her mind to tell Sanders’ full-breasted secretary that she would come back later, he sent word for her to come into his private office.
“Sorry, but the things that came up were urgent,” Sanders said when she sat beside his desk. He had spread his lunch out on his blotter—milk and soda crackers. Sanders suffered from ulcers. “I’d ask you to join me,” he said with a smile, “but I don’t even like the stuff.”
If she’d been lovely enough, she thought, he’d have taken her to lunch instead of asking her in here to see him eat crackers soaked in milk.
“We wanted to do something for you, Bernice,” Sanders said. “The whole family—and the firm. Lloyd would have wanted us to.”
“I don’t expect anything,” Bernice said.
He glanced at her, his expression saying, Naturally you don’t. You should have been happy as hell with Lloyd.
“If there were any openings with the firm...” Sanders said. But the regret in his voice wasn’t well done. Bernice looked at him. She let him
see that she knew he was lying. “Just now there isn’t a thing. Why, I wouldn’t ask you to take what I could offer just now. I’m sure, though, you’ll get on somewhere without any trouble.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“I know you will. Because I’m going to give you references that will get you in anywhere, Bernice.”
Except here, she thought.
He handed her a thick envelope with a Deerman & Sanders return address. She took it and thanked him without warmth. She stuffed it into her handbag.
“Well, and that’s just part of it, Bernice. We all got together. Marsha Deerman, Behrens, all of us. We want to make you a gift. Naturally, you weren’t mentioned in Lloyd’s will. But he regarded you highly”—his unbelieving eyes went over her again—”and though he died without making any provision for you, you’re not forgotten. Lloyd and I were close. No secrets between us. That’s why we’ve been so successful. They left the actual gift up to me, and Bernice, I want you to know that when I give you this five hundred dollars, it comes from all our hearts.”
Five hundred dollars. Five hundred. Five. Five hundred dollars. His servants got twice that. You’re looking at me, thinking Lloyd took me to bed with him, pitying him because he was blind, and thinking he had no taste, but sure I was his mistress. And you’re making me a gift from your heart. Five hundred dollars.
She longed to laugh at him. She wanted to laugh in his face. She could even feel the laughter swirling and itching in her throat. Oh, but it didn’t matter. The money didn’t matter. The insulting little man with his ulcers and his milk and crackers, he didn’t matter either.
But to have to take that five hundred dollars!
To have to thank him for it.
Bernice felt her face twist into a false, ugly smile. So false it made her teeth itch.
But she took the money. And she managed to thank him.
Six
Bernice ran toward the plaster bridge.
The inverted mushrooms, pink, green, and gaudy orange, quivered and undulated as she sped past.
The color of the water didn’t frighten Bernice any more. Nothing mattered except that she must cross the white plaster bridge that spanned the odd-shaped pool. She had to get to the other side, where there was laughter. Where Bernice looked lovelier even than Rita Baehrs. More beautiful than Rita, who could trade beauty for advancement! The thought made Bernice run faster. It made her close her eyes to the awful bloody color of the stagnant water.
She began to feel free. Self-confidence flowed into her and her step was steadier. For the first time she knew where she was going—across that bridge and upward along the hillside to the sunlit crest.
Behind her Bernice could hear the rumbling of subway trains, the cry of somebody’s whistling teakettle. She remembered how popular they’d been up in the Bronx. Everybody was buying them at Woolworth’s. The teakettles, the subway, the shouting trailed after her. But she didn’t care, because she knew it could never touch her now.
The smells belonged to a kitchen. Meat loaf, strong with onions. Roast beef. Boiled foods. But even the odors were weaker, the nearer she came to the little bridge.
She didn’t even hesitate at the brink of the pool. She stretched out her foot, feeling the warm breeze that was coming down the pleasant hill into the gaudy room of mushrooms.
But as her foot touched the plaster bridge, it shattered under her feet.
The sound of its ripping and tearing was exactly the sound the stair railings had made the night Lloyd’s huge body toppled crazily against them as he plunged down the steep stairs to his death.
In horror and panic, Bernice thought, I’ll fall into the pool! I’ll fall into the blood-colored water!
She tried to leap back from the shattering bridge, but she couldn’t. She’d been running too fast, the bridge was too flimsy.
She sprawled out, arms flung ahead of her. The pool was so small. Maybe she’d fall beyond it.
She was thrown downward, headfirst. But she didn’t land in the water, nor did she strike the other side of the pool.
She began to fall, rolling and twisting down into nothingness. She had a horrible sense of loneliness. Loneliness more than the fear of being injured. She was without support, without security, she was falling and there was no one to help her. The fall snatched her breath away. She reached out in terror, seeking something to cling to. She began to scream.
She woke up, wet with sweat. She had the giddy sense of having screamed as she woke up. For a long time she lay in the darkness, panting. She couldn’t have screamed. Someone would have heard her.
Her breathing slowed. She rolled over on her side. The covers were twisted under her. Her window was opened to the night. The sounds of the city subways, moving vans, the sudden starting of cars, the noises that never cease, floated up into her room.
For a moment Bernice couldn’t even remember where she was.
The familiar objects of her apartment took shape in the darkness. It was a month now since Lloyd had died. Bernice assured herself she never thought of it any other way. She had rented these rooms. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to escape the baleful glances of her mother. She wanted to begin the wonderful new life she dreamed for herself.
She swung her feet off the bed. She went over to her window, feeling a moment of giddiness as she stood beside it. She wondered how it would feel to lift her legs over the sill and walk out there into emptiness, walk and fall, the way she did in her dreams.
She watched the stragglers move along the street below her. Their shadows bobbed at their sides. Even those people seemed to have somewhere to go.
She pressed her fingers against her aching forehead. She knew she needed to get out of this room. She needed to be among people, people who knew how to laugh and enjoy themselves. That was the only way she was going to get Lloyd out of her mind. Alone in this room, she had only to close her eyes. She could see Lloyd then, lying at the foot of the wide stairs, neck twisted back, sightless eyes watching her.
Her breath quickened. I’ll get over that, too, she told herself. She was willing to pay for what she wanted—and that was part of the payment. But she had a new fear now.
Hadn’t it been too easy?
Everyone but the detective Fred Findlay had believed her. Lloyd Deerman was forgotten by almost everyone as though he had never even existed. It had been too easy.
She turned on the lights and got the twenty-odd thousand dollars from its hiding place. Smiling a little, she slowly counted it.
The green bills leered and winked up at her. It was almost as if they dared her to begin spending them.
Dared her. Her breath caught. Her fingers clenched on the money.
Perhaps, she thought, the money is counterfeit!
Why not? Was that too fantastic? Why had Lloyd hidden it so carelessly in his study? At first it had seemed a good hiding place. Who would think of his dusty account books as a cache? But now the idea seemed preposterous. As a matter of fact, where had the money come from? Wasn’t Lloyd an importer? Wasn’t he a blind importer as well? Maybe he had got mixed in some secret deal with someone like Abulchetty—or some other silly name—and been paid off in lovely counterfeit dollars. He couldn’t yell copper if the deal were shady, could he? What could he do?
She was suddenly violently ill at her stomach. He could have done—just what he did. Put that money in a book in his study. A constant reminder against shady deals involving—oh, my good God in heaven, Bernice sobbed inside—counterfeit money!
She stared at the open window with its curtains barely stirring in the early-morning breezes. Her teeth began to chatter. She pushed the money away from her and it fell in stacks about her feet. Voices screamed at her from bottomless voids, empty, frightening voices, crying and weeping at her. Die, Bernice, die. Get out of it. Run away from it. Escape, Bernice. Die!
She clenched her teeth together to keep them from shaking. Her thin fists were knotted in her lap. She looked down at the lovely nightgow
n she’d bought. That was only to be the beginning. She looked about the room. All the time those wailing voices sobbed inside her. I’ll kill myself if this money isn’t real. I won’t live, I won’t go on living.
She got up. She stepped on the money as she prowled the room. It wasn’t the first time those voices had sobbed inside her mind. They were often there. They’d been there many times before. When hurts and bitterness piled up, and there seemed to be no use to try to go on living, she’d heard those whispering voices. They begged her to die. But they’d never been so real or so violent as they were at this moment.
Nothing has ever been so important before.
She tried to stay away from that window as she paced the room. But she was drawn to it. And when finally she did walk almost to it, some unbearable weight dragged at her, pulling her across the open sill. She sank to her knees and the weight settled at the nape of her neck. She laid her head against the window facing.
She was afraid to spend the money now. Yet she knew she had to try. She had killed for it, for what she wanted. She didn’t know how she would wait through the rest of the night, but when morning came, she would try to spend the money.
She sobbed tiredly. She had to try. She had to know.
Bernice dressed carefully. She brushed her hair, thinking of a vain general going to his execution. He would die looking his best, with his boots polished. It was like that with Bernice. She hadn’t dared buy clothes and accessories yet. But she was wearing the best she owned. At least she’d look her best when she found out that she had killed for nothing; for less than nothing—for counterfeit money.
She had hidden the money again. For a moment she surveyed the room. She went along the hall and down the elevator to the street.
The brilliance of the morning sun hurt Bernice’s eyes. Her head began to ache. But Bernice hardly noticed the pain. It wasn’t important enough to matter now.
She looked at the crowds at the bus stop, chattering dialects from the various corners of New York City. She hesitated before a gleaming cafeteria. But she knew she couldn’t even keep a cup of coffee on her stomach this morning. She kept walking.
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