The Cry of the Owl

by Patricia Highsmith

  “No, Mother, I don’t think it is, but they’ve got to make sure. This is a police case, Mother, this is a crime.” It was oddly reassuring to say “crime” to his mother—she believed so utterly that he was innocent of any crime, believed it more than Jack, more than the doctor, more than himself. He was holding the telephone against his left ear with his right hand. “Sure, Mother, I can call you tomorrow, or Sunday’s better, I’d imagine, because I’ll know more. … All right, Sunday before twelve noon. … Give my love to Phil. … Goodbye, Mother.”

  “How were you planning to go to New Mexico?” asked the doctor.

  “I was thinking of driving,” Robert said automatically, at that moment thinking of the newspapers his mother would see today, if she hadn’t seen some already. There were bound to be the hostile comments of Langley citizens, his neighbors, the stories of the suicide, the sniping, the prowling, all put together and focused now on the corpse in the Rittersville morgue. Robert felt a bit faint again. “I’m pretty sure by Sunday I’ll feel up to driving. It’s either that or store my car here.”

  “Hmm. Well, if you take it easy till Sunday,” said the doctor, watching him. “Sit down, Mr. Forester.”

  Robert sat down.

  “Your mother lives in New Mexico?” The doctor was getting Robert’s toothbrush and razor from the bathroom.

  “No, she lives in Chicago, but she and her husband have a summer place near Albuquerque. It’s like a small ranch. They have a couple living there, taking care of it when they’re not there.” Robert wanted to lie down again.

  “That sounds very pleasant. Probably do you a lot of good to go there for a while. Take this.” The doctor held out his palm.

  “What is it?”

  “A Dexamyl. Just to pick you up till we get to Rittersville. You can rest up this afternoon.”

  A few minutes later, Robert went out with the doctor, and followed him in his car to Rittersville.

  The house at whose driveway the doctor turned in was indeed a manse in the old style. It looked made of snowy-white meringue, and it bulged with bay windows on the first and second stories. All the windows shone in the sunlight as if they had just been washed. On the freshly mown front lawn stood a huge weeping willow, its branches gently swaying. The willow and the hydrangea bushes gave the place a softer and more Southern appearance than the other houses on the street had. Robert drove his car into the remaining half of the garage at the end of the driveway.

  The doctor closed the garage doors.

  “I didn’t stop to get anything for us to eat, because I told Anna Louise to do it, and now we’ll see if she has,” said the doctor, opening the back door with a key on his key ring.

  Robert carried one smallish suitcase, which the doctor had helped him pack. They went into a large square kitchen with black-and-white checked linoleum and a well-worn wooden drainboard by the sink. The doctor opened the refrigerator, gave an “Ah” of satisfaction, looked into the freezing compartment, then announced that Anna Louise had done her duty.

  “I’ll get you settled upstairs first,” said the doctor, beckoning Robert to follow him.

  The doctor led him through a living room, down a carpeted hall, and up a stairway with a heavy, polished banister. The house looked spotless, dustless, and yet lived in, and every piece of furniture, every picture and ornament, Robert supposed, had some special story or meaning for the doctor and his wife. Robert only hoped that he was not going to be installed in his late wife’s room or her sickroom, then the doctor said, throwing open a tall door, “This is our guest room.” He looked around. “Yes—I suppose it’s all right. Needs some flowers to make it cozy, but—” He paused, obviously wanting Robert to like it, to pay his house a compliment.

  “It doesn’t need a thing,” Robert said. “It’s a beautiful room. And that bed—”

  The doctor laughed. “Feathers, believe it or not. A feather bed. My wife’s mother made the quilt. That’s a design based on the state flower of Oregon, the Oregon grape. It’s an evergreen, Mahonia aquifolia.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nice little blue grapes, aren’t they? My wife always loved that quilt—that’s why she put it in the guest room. She was like that. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable, and I’ll let you alone for a few hours. The bath’s next door to your right.” He started to go out. “By the way, you might just as well sleep this afternoon, and that Dexamyl’ll keep you awake. I’ll bring you a mild sedative and you can take it or not, as you like, but I’d advise you to put on pajamas and loaf.”

  Robert smiled. “Thank you. I’d like to see the papers first. I’ll go down and get them.”

  “No, no, I’ll bring them up. Stay there.” The doctor went out.

  Robert looked around the room once more, a little incredulously, then opened his suitcase to get his pajamas. The doctor knocked on the door, came in with the papers that he had bought on the way, laid them on a gros-point chair seat, and with a wave of his hand disappeared out the door again. Robert carried the papers to the bed and sat down, but he sank so deeply into the bed. … At last, he sat down on the floor with the papers. There was also the New York Times, and he looked into this first to see how much coverage they gave the story. He had turned to page 17 before he found it, a five-inch-long column reporting quite sedately that the Rittersville police were awaiting the arrival of Wyncoop’s dentist, Dr. Thomas McQueen, and that Robert Forester, who had fought with Wyncoop on May 21st, had been “fired on Wednesday evening in his house near Langley.” That was, of course, the salad-bowl bullet. The Rittersville Courier and the Langley Gazette were different matters. They reported the five bullets of last night, “which brought a score of alarmed neighbors to the Forester house. Forester was wounded in the left arm and was treated by Dr. Albert Knott of Rittersville. This was the second time Forester had been fired on by an assailant or assailants who are believed to be friends of Gregory Wyncoop. …” Neither paper suggested that the assailant might be Wyncoop himself.

  Dr. Knott returned with a glass of water in his hand. “What’re you doing on the floor?”

  Robert stood up. “It seemed the easiest place to look at the papers.”

  “Tch-tch.” The doctor shook his head. “That’s an old house for you. Nothing really comfortable, if you come right down to it.”

  Robert smiled and accepted the water and the pill, a white one, from the doctor. “I think I will take this.”

  “Good. I’m going out just before three. If you’re hungry, there’s cheese and some other things in the refrigerator. We’ll have something more substantial tonight.” He turned to the door.

  “Wouldn’t you like to see the papers?”

  “Yes, I would. You’re finished with them?”

  Robert gathered them up. “Yes.” He handed them to the doctor. The doctor’s eyes met his for an instant, pleasant and smiling, but the doctor’s small mouth seemed to belie the eyes. His mouth was tense. Was that doubt, Robert wondered, suspicion? Or a remnant of the doctor’s own grief? Or was he imagining suspicion?

  Robert put on pajamas and slept.

  When he awakened, the sun seemed to be coming straight into the room. The sun was setting. It was a quarter to seven by his watch. Robert went into the bathroom and washed, brushed his teeth, and dressed. From the hall, he could faintly hear someone in the kitchen downstairs, the tinkle of a spoon against a bowl. Robert couldn’t imagine the doctor cooking, even though he had done quite well with the scrambled eggs this morning. Robert felt his arm again, squeezing it. There was almost no pain. He had a surge of energy and confidence, and ran down the steps, his hand just above the banister, and for an instant remembered running down the stairs in Nickie’s house.

  The doctor was cooking, and he had an apron on. “Have a rye,” he said. “Do you care for rye? There’s the bottle.” He nodded toward a counter by the refrigerator.

  “I don’t mind if I do. One for you, sir?”

  “Got mine here, thanks, Sherry. Bristol Cream
.”

  Robert fixed his drink, then asked if he could help. The table in the dining room, he noticed, had already been set for two. The doctor said he didn’t need any help, as they were having something simple, cold turkey and cranberry sauce from the delicatessen and macaroni with cheese from the freezing compartment.

  The doctor produced some amontillado when they sat down at the table. He and his wife, he said, had been great sherry fanciers, sherry and tea. He had sixteen varieties of Chinese tea in the kitchen.

  “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is for me to have your company,” said the doctor during a silence in the meal. He had just been asking Robert about his work, and Robert had told him also about the insect book, which he had finished for Professor Gumbolowski. He had had to do six or seven drawings over, but he had finished in March. “You know, you’re the first guest I’ve had since my wife died,” said the doctor. “People ask me out—you know—but it’s difficult, because they’re making such an effort for you. Strangely enough, I wanted to ask a lot of my old friends over, have a real good dinner party, but I thought they’d think I was off my head, trying to have a good time so soon after my wife died. So I did absolutely nothing. Until you.” He smiled happily, sipped his sherry, then lit a small cigar. “And you a stranger. It’s funny.”

  It was much the same after a divorce, Robert thought. He found nothing to reply, but the doctor didn’t seem to mind. Until you, Robert thought. A man whose neighbors abhorred him and wanted him out, a man responsible for a suicide, a man who might have knocked another man in the river and who had denied that he had. What did the doctor really think, and really think of him? Or did it matter to the doctor, obsessed with his own grief? Wasn’t Robert something like a small distraction merely, like a television program the doctor had turned on to take his thoughts for a while from the absence of his wife? Robert supposed he would never know the answers to those questions, not tonight, not even tomorrow or Sunday, by which time some pronouncement would have been made on the corpse. The doctor, he felt, would never pass a judgment, never reveal his opinion. But certainly he had one, and certainly he was interested in Robert’s situation. The doctor had cared enough to want to see the papers.

  “Do you play chess?” asked the doctor.

  Robert squirmed back in his seat. “A little, but badly.”

  They went upstairs to Robert’s room to play. There was a game table up there of inlaid teak and ivory. Robert had noticed it, but he thought the doctor also chose the room because it was upstairs and at the back of the house. It was dark outside now. When they climbed the stairs, they left no lights on downstairs. The doctor carried their coffee cups and the coffee decanter on a tray. Robert knew the rules of chess and had even read a couple of books on it years ago; his main problem was that he had no real desire to win. But he tried hard, in order to please the doctor. The doctor chuckled and murmured to himself as he contemplated his moves. In a good-natured way, he was out to checkmate Robert as quickly as possible. Two games were over in twenty minutes, Robert the loser. In the next game, Robert concentrated harder, and the game lasted nearly an hour. The result, however, was the same. The doctor sat back in his chair, chuckling, and Robert laughed, too.

  “I can’t say I’m out of practice, because I never was in,” Robert said.

  In the distance, a car shifted gears. Otherwise there was no sound, and Robert could hear even the slow ticking of a clock downstairs.

  “Ten-twenty! How about a spot of brandy?” said the doctor.

  “Not brandy, thanks. It’s apt to—”

  “Oh, I know. Some of my sherry then. Really, it’s delicious.” The doctor was up. “No, don’t come down. I’ll just be a minute.” He was gone.

  Robert walked toward the double bed, and turned, listening. His tension made his left arm hurt, and he forced himself to relax. There hadn’t been a sound outside. Robert heard a squeak and a slam from downstairs, as of a liquor cabinet door being closed. He watched the half-open door, listening for the doctor’s step on the stairs.

  There was a shot, then a crash of glass.

  Robert ran down the stairs.

  The doctor was lying in the wide doorway between the living room and the hall, only a few feet from the stairway. His eyes were open, his head askew against the doorjamb.

  “Dr. Knott?” Robert shook him slightly by the shoulder, watching the slightly open mouth that Robert expected to move, to speak, in the next second. Robert saw no wound on him.

  Robert stood up, looked into the lighted living room, at the partly open window, the five- or six-inch gap between sill and frame of the bay window in the corner. Robert went into the hall, opened the front door, and went out on the porch. In the corner by the bay window there was only black silence. The empty lawn was pale green from the light thrown by a nearby street lamp, and black with the shadows of trees and bushes. Robert stood without breathing, trying to hear if anything was moving either to right or left on the sidewalk. Then a window went up in the house next door.

  “What was that?” a woman’s voice cried. “Dr. Knott?”

  Robert went back to the doctor. He had not moved. Robert pulled him to a sitting position, and his head lolled forward. Then Robert saw a red gash along the back of his head, blood running down through the thin hair into his white collar. It was a gash made by a bullet, Robert thought, but it looked like only a graze. The doctor might have been knocked unconscious by falling against the doorjamb. He started to lift him, but a glassiness in the doctor’s eyes stopped him. Quickly, Robert felt for his heartbeat. It was there.

  He half carried, half dragged the doctor to the sofa, then ran to the kitchen and fumbled around for the light, found it, and wet a few paper towels under cold water. He went back to the doctor and wiped the blood from the back of the doctor’s head. There was enough of the paper left clean to wipe the doctor’s face and forehead. Still the eyes remained glassy and open, the mouth ajar, and now the doctor drooled a little. Robert ran up the stairs to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet on a confusion of little bottles on three or four glass shelves. Robert knocked a couple of the bottles into the basin in his search, but they didn’t break, and he found what he wanted, aromatic spirits of ammonia. He read the label a second time to be sure. “Dose: ½ to 1 teaspoonful diluted with water. An excellent and quick stimulant.” Robert smelled it—it was strong—and ran downstairs with it.

  Holding it under the doctor’s nose had no effect. Robert was afraid of choking him if he tried to give him any in water. Now the doctor’s hands were cool. The pulse seemed weaker. Robert grabbed a fringed shawl that was folded on a love seat and spread it over the doctor. Then he picked up the telephone and dialed the operator. He told her he wanted a doctor and that it was an emergency. Waverly Avenue, Dr. Knott’s house. Robert didn’t know the number.

  “It’s a white house. I’ll have a light on in front. Do you think you can get a doctor immediately?”

  “Oh, yes, that should be possible. It’s near the Rittersville Hospital. I’ll call them right away.”

  Robert went back to the doctor and waited, holding his wrist to feel the pulse. The doctor’s shiny blue eyes seemed to be looking straight at Robert.

  “Dr. Knott?” He looked about to speak, but he did not move at all.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Robert opened it.

  “Oh!” A plump, fiftyish woman stood there with a man of about the same age. “We thought we heard a shot over here.”

  “Yes. Come in.” Robert stepped back. “The doctor was hit. I think only—He’s unconscious.”

  “Dr. Knott!” the woman gasped, rushing toward him, stopping. She looked at her husband. “Oh, George!”

  “Did he shoot himself or—Where’s he hit?” asked the man.

  Robert told him what had happened, and said that he had just sent for a doctor.

  “You’re a friend?” said the man, squinting. “Say, you’re not—”

  “Robert Fore
ster,” Robert said.

  The woman looked at him openmouthed. “The prowler!”

  “We read in the papers Dr. Knott took care of you last night,” said the man.

  “Yes. He did.” The man and the woman seemed to be edging away from him, the woman moving toward the front door.

  Robert glanced at the doctor, who had not moved.

  “We might stay here till the doctor comes, Irma. I’m interested to know how he is,” said the man.

  “Yes, George.”

  Nobody sat down. Nobody said anything for what seemed like three or four minutes. Robert felt again for the doctor’s pulse. The doctor’s open eyes unnerved him. Now they seemed accusing, and also dead, but he wasn’t dead, because the pulse was still there. Until you, the doctor’s eyes seemed to say. Robert could hear the doctor’s voice: I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is for me to have your company. … You’re the first guest. … Robert blinked and looked at the two people in the room.

  The man called George was smoking a cigarette, holding it close up in the fork of his fingers. He looked at Robert challengingly, with contempt, as if he had a right to be in the house and Robert had none. Then he sat down in a straight, upholstered chair, and said, “Sit down, Irma.”

  “No, I’m all right, George.”

  The man drew on his cigarette, then asked, “You call the police, too?”

  “No,” Robert said. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  Robert took a breath. “I thought getting a doctor was the most important.”

  The man stared at him. “Who fired the shot?” he asked coldly.

  Robert returned his look calmly. It seemed funny to Robert that the man could sit there with his back to the windows, funny that he hadn’t asked before where the shot came from. “I don’t know,” Robert said. “Maybe the same person who fired at me last night.”

  “You were hit?”

  “Yes, in the arm.” Robert’s sleeves were rolled down, the bandage out of sight. He detested the man and the woman and wished he could send them away.