Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense

by Armstrong Charlotte

  But as she walked, in air so fantastically clean and to seem like some other substance, Hallie could not help but begin to feel physically better. Her spirits lifted. All she had to do was to be honest and straight forward and brave, according to her lights. And so she would be.

  When she came to one of the principal streets she turned downslope, with her feet on pavement. She passed some shops. She came to the corner where Ruby’s cafe stood and, on impulse, she turned in.

  Ruby, herself, looked up and said sourly, “Well! You look mighty spry, considering.”

  “I’m all right,” said Hallie soberly. Too late she realized that it would have been more politic to have come in, head down, feet dragging, spirits low. “I came by,” she said, “to say I’m sorry that I forgot to pay for the coffee or to thank you.”

  “That’s O.K.,” said Ruby in such a way as to indicate that it was not.

  “I was upset,” Hallie began.

  “Looks like you shoulda been,” said Ruby shortly.

  Too late, Hallie realized that what she, herself, thought of as courage, the courage to face up to an unhappy fact, was exactly what Ruby had misunderstood. “But don’t you see . . .” Hallie begged, “that I couldn’t afford to break down then—in any way? I had to stay as calm as I could . . .”

  “Yeah, you stayed real calm, I thought,” Ruby said rather nastily.

  “I guess you knew you didn’t have to worry. I guess you knew Henry Green would take care of it.”

  Hallie was shocked. She said, quietly, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s mighty nice,” said Ruby with a lowering look, “to have an ex-boy-friend on the police . . . especially when he’s still carrying the torch for you.”

  Hallie opened her mouth to express the outrage she felt, but Ruby added . . . “And he don’t mind hauling other people into the police station when they didn’t have a single thing to do with what you did!”

  Hallie closed her mouth. There was nothing she could say to dispel this hostility and no use pursuing this conversation. She glanced up at the list of foods and prices and took a nickel and a dine out of her purse. She put the coins on the counter, saying, “Thank you.”

  “You trying to insult me?” said Ruby fiercely.

  Hallie hesitated. Then she picked up the coins. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She went out. Her head down, her feet dragging, her spirits dashed.

  She’d got away, all right. She simply didn’t understand these people. Then, as Hallie walked on down the slope, a vision formed. Now she remembered Ruby Kearns. Skinny little girl with her hair in a fringe and a dirty neck. Little girl who said Hallie White was “too stuck up,” in her opinion. Envy and spite?

  Hallie turned in at the police station.

  Henry Green said in an easy and friendly way, with no torch in sight, “Hi. How are you, Hallie?”

  “I’m all right. I came to sign that thing. Perhaps you forgot?”

  She was in a strange and touchy state and she knew that he perceived it. His eyes glinted sideways. “No hurry,” he said carelessly.

  Hallie spoke out, from her own outraged feelings. “I should have signed it last night. I don’t ask any special privileges for auld lang syne, you know.”

  Henry let his sandy lashes down and said, “Right. Get her statement, will you, Sam?”

  “Sure thing, Henry. How you feeling, Hallie?”

  “All right.” She’d known Sam Miller, once. She tried to be easy and friendly, but she could not use his name. She barely remembered the shape of his face.

  They were in the outer office space. Henry sat on a desk corner, as seemed to be his habit. He looked exactly as he had looked some hours ago. Or even years ago. She had never forgotten his face. He had known her all her life, and he knew too much . . . or too little . . . Oh, he was not and never could be just the town policeman. Hallie said flippantly, “My mother thinks I ought to stay in a darkened room and have the vapors. Do you?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “Maybe I can imagine what’s ailing Ruby, but the whole town can’t be holding an accident against me. Can it?”

  Henry said wearily, “There’s no such thing as ‘the whole town,’ Hallie.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling rebuked, all ready to quarrel, anyway, with this man . . . (as if she must, she had to). “We are going to be precise, are we?”

  Henry said, “Yep.”

  Then Sam Miller came with the typed sheets and Henry handed them to her. “Read it over,” he urged.

  “Naturally.” She went to one of the straight chairs, sat down and began to read. She felt self-conscious to be doing this with their eyes upon her. But she persisted. Henry didn’t have to be so stuffy about a figure of speech . . . she was thinking, perversely. If the normal give-and-take between human beings—who jumped omissions and inaccuracies every day of their lives in the interests of understanding—was going to be abolished, then she would be cautious and correct and precise. And the thinker of her own thoughts and the rememberer of her own memories, too. Hallie did not permit herself to recognize the sense of fear that was creeping up in her because she could not understand either herself or the situation she was in. She read along stubbornly. When she had finished she said, “Yes, that is it.”

  “That’s all correct, is it?” Henry asked briskly, “for the record.”

  “That’s the truth, as far as I know it.”

  “The whole truth?”

  Hallie’s temper leapt up. They clashed glances. But she said, coolly, “Yes, and ‘nothing but the truth,’ also.”

  “You don’t want to put in about the blood on your hand?”

  “The . . .!” Hallie felt her face getting hot. “Oh, for pity’s sakes!” she cried. “I forgot all about that. How’d you know?” She was flustered and ashamed.

  Henry didn’t say how he knew. He spoke to Sam. “Take it down in pencil. Then you can type it on the end of her statement.”

  So Hallie found herself dictating in detail exactly how she had drawn her coat up over the man’s body in the darkness and how the back of her right hand had encountered what she had supposed at the time to be the man’s lips.

  “If that’s when you touched the blood, it was somewhere about his face or chin?”

  “It must have been, as far as I can imagine,” Hallie faltered.

  “And your statement is complete now?” Henry was very much the policeman.

  “I think so.” (Oh, she had been shaken.)

  “Whose blood was it, Hallie?” Sam Miller put in brightly.

  “Whose blood? What do you mean?”

  “May I see your hands, please?” said Henry quickly. “Sam, you go type that.”

  Hallie held out both hands, knuckles up. Henry didn’t touch them. But he inspected them carefully. When he looked up, she curled her fingers in to stop their trembling. She said, “There is blood on them.” Then quickly, “I’m sorry. I’ve tried not to whine about it. It happened.”

  The green eyes were unfathomable. Sam Miller, who had not moved, began to speak. “It sure is peculiar . . .”

  Henry turned on him. “Type what she just gave you,” he snapped. “So that she can sign it.”

  “Yeah, sure, Henry. Right away.” Sam went across the room to a desk there.

  Hallie said, “What is peculiar?”

  He said lightly, “Lots of odds and ends. Our job to check everything out, you know.” He hesitated. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea for you to lie low while we do that.”

  “Why should I lie low?” There was no use pretending that he was just a policeman. He was Henry Green, after all. “I wish you’d tell me,” burst Hallie, getting up, “why I have to be a pariah in this town. I suppose Ruby would have enjoyed it if I’d broken down and had hysterics and wept and wailed. But I didn’t because I happen to believe that it would have been self-indulgent and not useful to get emotional . . .”

  “Don’t, then,” said Henry mildly.

  Hallie came clo
se to an old-fashioned foot-stamp. “For myself, I don’t care what this town—or any part of it—thinks,” she cried, “but I care for my mother’s sake. She says you are fair. Are you being fair to let Ruby spread it around that I’m a cold-hearted monster? Why can’t you spread it around that I wasn’t to blame for hitting the man with my car? You say you can tell that from the skid marks.”

  “Calm down, Hallie,” Henry said. “I tried to stop Ruby and Bob from reckless talking, but I shouldn’t have tried.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because now they think I’m favoring you for auld lang syne.”

  “But that’s nonsense! You’re a policeman! You’re not on my side.”

  “I shouldn’t be,” he said thoughtfully.

  “What is it?” she cried. “Do you still doubt what I’ve told you?”

  He said, tonelessly, “If you’ll try to be patient. Leave it to the police to investigate thoroughly. There’ll be an inquest. Everything will come clear then. Forget about Ruby.”

  Hallie said, “But it’s not only Ruby. My mother’s been having phone calls. It even started with Mr. John last night. He acted as if I’d done it on purpose.”

  “Please go home, Hallie.”

  “May I take my car?”

  “No,” he said. “Now we’ll have to check it over again.” Then Sam came with the papers.

  “You’d like to sign this, I believe,” said Henry briskly, turning away.

  “Yes,” Hallie leaned over the papers and signed her name. She straightened. “Is it so improper for an innocent person to ask a policeman what he is doing?” she inquired.

  “He is following police procedure,” said Henry crisply. “Go home now. I’ll be in touch later on.”

  “When?”

  “When I’ve done some more checking.”

  “Checking what?”

  Henry said wearily, “Either use your brain, Hallie, or go away and let me use mine.”

  “I may go?” she said, trembling.

  “Why, yes,” said Henry. “Although, technically, you are under suspicion of hit-and-run.”

  She sucked in a long shocked breath.

  “And the truth is,” said Henry Green, “I happen to be on your side . . . if only for auld lang syne.”

  “Don’t be . . .” she cried out. “Don’t!”

  “If I am not,” said Henry slowly, “then there is an unpleasant thing I should ask you to do. Will you go with me to the mortuary, later this afternoon?”

  “To the . . .?”

  “I was letting you off that,” Henry said. “I don’t think it will help much. But to be fair, I ought to check every little thing. Isn’t that so?” He was staring at her moodily.

  “I’ll go with you now,” she said boldly.

  “I can’t take you now. I’m waiting on a call.”

  She turned and walked to the door.

  Henry followed her. She stepped out into the bright air and he stepped with her, as if he were a host putting his guest on her way.

  She said coldly, “Run along home, little girl. There’s a good child.” She felt ready to shed hot tears. “I didn’t hit-and-run, Henry. I had to get to a phone, didn’t I? I spoke to him. I left my coat . . .”

  Silence fell between them. After a moment Henry said, “It would be better not to argue all these points. Don’t go talking to people. And don’t try to argue with a feeling, Hallie.”

  “Lie low?” she said, “While you check? Are you looking for my coat?” she blazed at him. “I can prove I own one, you know, and that I was wearing it. Find it, why don’t you?”

  “How will I do that, Hallie?” said Henry sadly.

  “You had better try.”

  “I may need help,” he murmured, looking up at the mountains.

  “Whose help?”

  “Help from the hills, maybe.”

  “You should have a cracker-barrel,” she snapped, “for your philosophy.” She moved away abruptly and began to walk very fast, with the sunshine warm upon her back.

  In another minute Sam Miller joined Henry on the doorstep. “Doc’s on the phone.”

  “O.K. Keep an eye on her, will you, Sam? See if she turns to go home.”

  “Who? Hallie White? Say, Henry, why didn’t you want to tell her there was no blood on the deceased?”

  “Because I’m not sure yet. I’m checking,” said Henry irritably. “And just because there was blood on her hands, I’ve got to check the other one out too. It has to be done. I have to be sure. She’ll have to worry and wait . . . like anybody else. Just — watch her.”

  “Well, sure thing . . .” said Sam stupidly.

  Hallie, hurrying up the street, was trying to understand her anger. It was ridiculous to be angry. She shouldn’t keep thinking that Henry Green ought to defend her. For auld lang syne, she thought bitterly, he ought to put me in jail just for his revenge. Nor should she, on the other hand, be wishing, right now, that he would go inside and not stand there watching her, because the town would see it, and the town remembered the old song . . . ‘Henry Green likes Hallie White . . .’ She wished she could forget it! Why couldn’t the two of them meet and talk to each other like grown up strangers?

  What’s the matter with you? she asked herself. Are you angry because Henry Green has turned out to be a better man than you are, Gunga Din? Because you bet he is a good policeman and he has a solid future? Whereas you’re not really getting anywhere at all? Or is it because last night he was even a better human being? Remembering to be thoughtful of your mother, when you were not? And that rankles? Or don’t you want to admit what an arrogant little idiot you were, fourteen years old, telling Henry Green, with such an air of condescending kindness, that the doctor’s daughter didn’t care to associate any longer with a member of the lower classes. And then . . . when he brushed all that aside and grabbed you to kiss you—to make a fool of yourself, and him, by acting as if you were being raped. All right, you were a fool . . . But he wasn’t so darned wise and solid and intelligent in those days either. We were children. So forget. Now he is police, and you are a citizen in trouble.

  Only remember what you know about this accident. And what you did, and know that you did, and why you did it. Stand on that. She turned at the intersection. I’ll not only stand on that, I’ll defend myself,” she thought, and she stopped to look around her. The drugstore on the corner was handy. Hallie went in and said to the clerk—a woman whose face she did not know, “Can you please tell me where Walter Bryson’s house is?”

  Sam Miller came in just as Henry hung up the phone.

  “No blood on his clothes,” said Henry. “No cut on the inside of his mouth. No nose bleed. Nothing.”

  Henry picked up the phone again, dialed, and said, “Long Distance.”

  He said to Sam, “Did she turn for home?”

  “Sure thing, Henry.”

  “Walter Bryson! Why, listen, he got killed last night,” the girl said to Hallie, her eyes rolling. “Some reckless dame, speeding after dark, hit him on the road and killed him.”

  Hallie said, “She was speeding, you say?”

  “Sure. She knocked the poor guy off the road, and now she’s telling it around that Walter Bryson was drunk! When everybody knows he never took a drop to drink is his life. Some people—What do they care how they tell lies, trying to put the blame on the victim. Walter Bryson was real nice —”

  “You do know where he lives?” Hallie reeled slightly.

  “Sure. Up the hill. Then east, on Verbena. It’s only the third or fourth house—on the uphill side. Four palms in the front. Why?”

  Hallie said, “I’m Hallie White.”

  The girl’s eyes popped. “Gee, I—listen—I didn’t—I thought you’s probably a tourist . . .”

  Hallie said bitterly, “I wish I were.”

  She went out and started uphill, not knowing whether she was angry or afraid. Henry Green, she thought grimly, or Con Meloney, or what authorities there’d be at the inquest . . . so
mebody is going to have to straighten this town out.

  Meantime, there was one person Hallie intended to straighten out herself. After all, it couldn’t have been Ruby’s prejudiced views that had reached her mother’s friends. Was it old John Bryson, then? Hallie remembered the look of fear and loathing in the old man’s eyes. But he had no ancient spite against her. She remembered him very well from the Post Office, in the old days, a mild man, kind to the children. Hallie believed that he might listen to her, now that his first shock was over. He could be made to understand that she was not guilty, that she had done, in her best judgment, the best she could have done.

  She was not going to feel or act as if she were a criminal. It was not true. She was, in a sense, a victim herself—having killed a man to the wounding of her soul.

  So Hallie continued to plod vigorously up the hill. On the mountains the shadows were shifting and the colors subtly changing, but Hallie White kept her head down. Was she afraid? Her reaction to fear was to fight, somehow. To be angry.

  But the insolence of Henry Green! ‘Use your brain,’ he had said. Well? The fact was, she really hadn’t, yet. So Hallie’s good mind began, for the first time, to pick over the discrepancies between fact and her own story.

  Henry slammed the phone down and said to Sam Miller, “That does it. Chief says nobody’s at the Smith house because the wife is on her way here, the boys are in school and . . . listen to this! William Smith is in the hospital with a broken thigh bone. And been there four days!”

  “Oh . . . oh,” said Sam. “What’ll you do now, Henry?”

  “A red, red herring,” said Henry Green grimly. “Too red to be true. I’m going up there.”

  “Going to put him under arrest?”

  “I haven’t got what it takes,” said Henry. “But I know . . .”

  “Why don’t you talk to Con Meloney?”

  “Because it’s my neck,” Henry said savagely. “I’ve got to jump.”

  “Listen, why be in a hurry?”