“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t come as a tremendous surprise—I seem to have heard it before—but I couldn’t have passed a test on the subject.”
Kitty raised her voice slightly. “Take the next exit, please.”
Our driver inclined his head to indicate that he’d heard. The official car—well, I thought it was an official car, although it had no markings—swung off the freeway, ducked beneath it by means of an underpass, and entered a maze of hilly little streets below, with individual houses bearing no resemblance to each other set back on reasonable-sized lots. It was the kind of oldfashioned suburb that existed before bulldozers and developments and identical split-level ranch houses were invented. There were trees and lawns. I made no effort to look for familiar landmarks. It had been a long night. I could work on improving my memory some other time.
We stopped in front of a white, two-story, frame house, still within sight and hearing of the freeway. I got out, since it seemed to be expected of me, and helped Kitty out.
“Thank you, Mr. Ross,” she said politely to the driver. Her voice was perfect, but she seemed to be quite unaware, standing there in the rain, that she was rapidly getting soaked again after having pretty well dried off. “It was very nice of you to give us a lift, Mike,” she said.
I was worried about her. She’d been totally calm and self-possessed about everything. Yes, she had shot Dr. Somerset. No, she didn’t know very much about guns, but Paul had been busy dealing with the guard and she, Kitty, hadn’t thought he wanted to let the woman get away. Yes, she was quite all right, thank you. No, she felt no need for a tranquilizer or sedative, thank you very much.
Now, for God’s sake, she was lecturing me on local geography and graciously thanking our chauffeur for his trouble, like a normal young lady who hadn’t just endured a lengthy imprisonment including a couple of days of ingenious torture, and hadn’t just put three bullets out of six into a human target at six paces. Well, that was about average shooting for a beginner under stress, I seemed to recall, at that range, but the rest of her reactions, weren’t average at all. Either she was an iron-nerved maiden I’d misjudged completely, or she was grimly forcing herself to go through the civilized motions and keeping everything under control with a tremendous effort, probably the latter. Having enough mental problems of my own, I didn’t particularly want to be present when hers surfaced and the strict control let go, but I had a hunch I would be.
“That’s quite all right, Miss Davidson,” the driver said. I had a feeling he might have called her Kitty if I hadn’t been there. I gathered that we’d all got to know each other fairly well, working together earlier. But my loss of memory, and the gory mess out at Inanook, had him treating us both with careful, impartial, policeman formality tonight. “Mr. Madden?” he said.
I closed the rear door of the car and moved up to the open front window. “Yes?”
“We still have a few matters to discuss. It’s late now and you’re tired. Where can I get in touch with you in the morning?”
Kitty took my arm possessively. “He’ll be right here.”
“Then, if I may, I’ll come here. Around eleven?”
“That will be fine,” she said. “I’ll have some coffee for you.”
We watched the car drive away, an ordinary, American-type, blue sedan. I was happy to see it go. I was a little tired of Canadian officialdom. Particularly, I was tired of Mr. Ross. Regardless of our previous association, he’d given me a tough time tonight. Apparently, in Canada, you weren’t supposed to escape from insane asylums in which you were being illegally detained and semi-electrocuted. It got everybody all upset.
I reminded myself that, after all, I wasn’t in jail. I didn’t have handcuffs on. Maybe I was being ungrateful.
I turned to Kitty, who was fumbling in her purse—our smaller personal belongings had been found in the office safe, which Dr. Albert had been persuaded to open. We’d been told that, if our coats and bags were ever located, they’d be delivered to us. On the whole, I had to admit, we’d been treated with reasonable politeness, but there had been a strong aura of disapproval, strong enough that it hadn’t seemed advisable to ask any nosy questions about how Ross and his associates were planning to dispose of, or explain away, the four dead bodies with which Kitty and I had saddled them…
“It’s the attic apartment,” Kitty said, passing me a leather key-case with one key separated from the rest. “Don’t you remember? The stairs are at the side of the house, over there. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t twit you about your memory, should I?”
“Twit away,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt my feelings a bit.”
We followed the wet walk to the side of the house and climbed the outside stairs in the steady rain. If I ever got out of this, I reflected, I’d find myself a nice tropical island with balmy breezes playing under cobalt-blue skies. I unlocked and opened the door and let Kitty pass me. She turned on the light, revealing a small modern kitchen mostly finished in natural wood.
“I think we need a drink, don’t you?” she said. “Everything’s over there to the right of the stove, except you’ll find ice in the fridge. It’s a little chilly, don’t you think? Why don’t I light the fire while you mix the drinks? I do think a fire would be nice, don’t you? It’s such a raw night out.”
Her pleasant hostess manner was in sharp contrast with her rained-on and generally beat-up appearance, and the odd, unsmiling look in her eyes.
“Very nice,” I said.
“It’s Scotch with just one ice cube, darling. No water. And you’re a martini man in case you forget. Oh, dear, I do keep referring to your poor memory, don’t I?”
When I brought the drinks into the living room, which included a small dining nook by the window to the right, she was kneeling to stare into the fire. It was well alight; it must have been already laid. The fireplace, with a deep shaggy rug in front of it, was a brick installation in the end of the low, slant-ceilinged room. There was a door beside it that presumably led to a bedroom and bath beyond.
“Here you are,” I said, reaching over her shoulder to put a glass into her hand.
She took it and sipped from it. She spoke without looking around, in the bright and cheerful voice she’d been using: “Those pressed sawdust logs aren’t so romantic, but they’re much easier to find nowadays, and it’s nice to know that the sawdust from all our lumber-mills is being put to some use, isn’t it? They used to simply dump it, waste it.” She took a deep drink from her glass, and another, and polished off the contents with a final gulp, and handed it back to me. “Kitty wants more,” she said in a phony-childish voice. “Kitty wants to get sozzled. Kitty is a murderess.”
“It’s your liquor,” I said, and went back to the kitchen for refills, draining my own martini glass on the way. Whatever she had in mind, it didn’t seem advisable to let her get too far ahead of me; and now that we were out of that place, the idea of getting sozzled, as she’d called it, had a definite attraction. There were things that had happened that could, I felt, be studied better through a rosy haze of alcohol. When I returned, she hadn’t moved. I placed the glass into her hand as before. “Go a bit easy on that one, doll,” I said. “It’s loaded.”
“I hope you’re not planning to stay sober, darling.” She was still kneeling there staring straight into the fire. “I need company. Sozzled company.”
“I’m right with you,” I said. “What are we celebrating, besides Liberation Day.”
“I told you,” she said. “I’m a murderess.”
“Swell,” I said. “Join the club.”
There was a little pause while she struggled to her feet and turned at last to face me, already displaying some unsteadiness. I remembered that she’d been given no substantial food for quite a while. I remembered also that, a few beers excepted, I’d had no liquor at all within the extent of my limited recent memory. I could feel the unaccustomed alcohol taking effect. It promised to be an interesting, inebriated evening, what was left of it; but
after what we’d both been through we had it coming. I couldn’t see a single good reason for staying sober. Kitty took a deliberate, deep swig of her fresh drink, and looked at me gravely.
“No, you don’t understand, Paul,” she said, speaking carefully and clearly. “You don’t understand at all. I didn’t shoot that woman just to keep her from getting away, as I told everybody. I lied. I did it because I wanted to do it.”
“Sure.”
“But you don’t understand!” she protested. “It was all that kept me alive in that dreadful room, knowing that some day, somehow, I’d have the pleasure of killing that sadistic bitch.”
I said, “So what else is new?”
She frowned. “You, too?”
“Me, and probably everybody else who ever wore those straps and electrodes, at least for non-medical reasons. She said as much, remember?”
Kitty shook her head quickly. “It just seems so incredible. I’ve been prattling bravely about revenge but I never dreamed I’d really… I was only thinking in terms of getting evidence so the law could… I never suspected I was capable of…” She giggled abruptly. “I seem to be quite incoherent, don’t I?”
“I’m with you every step of the way,” I said. “To incoherence, long may it wave.”
We drank to that, and she said, “I was dreadfully shocked when you killed that guard, but now… Really, all I feel is relieved, Paul. I suppose that’s dreadful, but nobody should be allowed to do such degrading things to other people and survive. Now she’s gone and I can breathe again. I don’t have to think of her alive somewhere with that horrible face knowing things about me nobody ought to know… Oh, my God!”
She was staring past me, wide-eyed. I turned, half-expecting attack, conscious that all the weapons I’d managed to commandeer with considerable effort had been taken from me, but nobody was there. Only the door of the coat closet was there, standing open to expose the full-length mirror inside that was designed to permit the lady of the house to make a last-minute hose-and-hairdo inspection before appearing in public.
I heard Kitty give a choked little giggle that was half a sob. She moved past me and posed in front of the glass to get the full effect: the stringy hair, the limp blouse collar above the snagged and sagging sweater, and the shapeless, voluminous pink slacks, ripped at one knee, smeared with the black loam of the landscaping through which we’d crawled, with the wide cuffs abjectly downtrodden and hopelessly filthy.
She began to laugh, staring at the apparition laughing back at her. She raised her glass to the woebegone Kitty-caricature in the mirror, and finished off the contents. Then she swayed a little, choking on her laughter. I stepped forward to take the empty glass before she dropped it. Setting it aside with mine, also empty, I put my arm around her to steady her. She made an odd strangled sound in her throat, and turned with a shudder, and pressed her face against my shoulder.
“Easy,” I said. “Take it easy, Kitty. It’s all over now. You’re all right now.”
But the hysterics I was expecting didn’t come. I felt her fight for control and win. She drew a deep, gasping breath and straightened up, running her grubby sweater-sleeve across her eyes.
“Good girl,” I said. “Now you can duck into the bedroom and get out of those ridiculous pantaloons while I repair to the bar and replenish both our… What’s the matter?”
Her eyes were watching me in a speculative manner. Something had changed in the room. It had happened when I held her—when, about to let herself dissolve into helpless weeping and wild laughter, she’d clamped down the iron discipline once more. I decided that there was a great deal about this supposed fiancee of mine I didn’t know. Suddenly she was no longer a poor weak girl on the edge of hysteria being comforted by a strong man after a terrible experience. Our roles had subtly been switched somehow, but I didn’t know how.
She spoke deliberately: “If you want my ridiculous pantaloons removed, darling, why don’t you do something about it?” There was a funny, hard edge to her voice. “You’re the big Prince Rupert zipper expert, aren’t you?”
I’ll admit it shocked me. Not that I’d thought her sexless in spite of earlier misunderstandings, or that I would have totally rejected the idea, if it had been presented to me, that dainty Miss Davidson might even take the initiative under certain circumstances, but these weren’t the circumstances. I would have bet on champagne and candlelight and filmy lingerie. Obviously, I’d have lost my bet. My slim and lovely lady, finding herself in an embarrassingly bedraggled condition, had apparently conceived a lowdown bedroom game that involved having me liberate her slender body from its cruel prison of grimy rags…
“Well?” she demanded in that same hard voice. “What’s the matter, Paul? Does your dream girl have to have a nice sharp crease in her pants before you’ll condescend to undress—” She stopped abruptly. There was a moment of silence; then she drew a shaky breath and spoke in quite different tones, softly, almost pleadingly: “Please, darling. I make such an unconvincing nympho-maniac, don’t I? Please help me. Don’t you want to know?”
Something stirred uneasily in my mind. “Know what?”
“You’re being stupid!” Some of the hardness returned to her voice. “You know perfectly well what I mean. You must understand!”
“Tell me,” I said, but I knew I didn’t really want to be told.
After a long moment, Kitty licked her lips and spoke carefully: “Well… well, she did some weird things to me, didn’t she to you, darling? Didn’t she? And don’t you want to know if… if you’re still a human being with all your reactions and impulses intact and not just a cheap electrical toy twitching obscenely on the end of a wire? And…” She licked her lips once more. “And there’s really only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
There it was. She’d faced the thing I’d put aside. I’d shoved the nagging doubt far back into the dark recesses of my mind—there had, after all, been a few other things to worry about besides sex—and ordered my mind to forget it, something it seemed to be very good at these days. Now I had a sudden, clear, unwelcome memory of the steel table in the Torquemada room and the agonizing, electrical experiments performed by the woman with the stone face who’d made such a wonderful adjustment to her unfortunate disease.
“Okay,” I breathed. “Okay. I dig you, doll. It’s a little coldblooded, but okay.”
We looked at each other for a moment—a rather embarrassed moment. Kitty laughed abruptly, looking down at herself.
“Of course, I’m not very sexy like this, am I? But then you’re not exactly God’s gift to women right now. I think we can manage without perfume and aftershave lotion, don’t you? If… if we can manage at all.”
“What fornication-location did you have in mind, ma’am?”
“What about right here, darling? I always did have a secret ambition to get laid, as you Yankees so picturesquely put it, on a nice shaggy rug in front of an open fire. If you don’t mind?”
“It sounds fine to me,” I said judiciously. “Interesting. Beds are so commonplace, aren’t they?”
“Paul.”
“Yes?”
“This is rather ridiculous, isn’t it? We’re just standing here talking. Lift your arms, there’s a good boy.” When I obeyed, she grasped my turtleneck at the bottom and pulled it off over my head and tossed it aside. She put her arms up. “Your turn.”
I stripped off and discarded her ruined sweater. Suddenly she was in my arms, turning her face up for the kiss. I felt as awkward and inexperienced as if I’d never held a woman before. I told myself that, as she herself had pointed out, she wasn’t the most seductive figure in the world at the moment; but I knew I was just kidding myself. Actually, I found her kind of perversely appealing in her dirty-pink tramp outfit, if only because it was so obviously expendable. We didn’t have to worry about preserving any expensive gowns or fragile nylons, we could let ourselves go. It should have been good, or at least good enough, but it wasn’t. As I faced the possibility o
f inadequacy, a sharp pain stung my lips. Kitty had bitten me. As I recoiled, she hooked a foot behind my ankle and shoved hard. I sat down abruptly on the shaggy rug, which didn’t do a great deal to cushion the shock.
“Kitty, what the hell—”
“Stop treating me like a porcelain doll or your baby sister, dammit!” Looking up at her, I had a sudden memory of the slender, fastidious person who’d objected to getting all mussed and excited on a hospital bed, but this wasn’t the same girl. She giggled. “It really looks very silly! The ruthless secret agent sitting there with its mouth wide open… Ouch!”
I’d caught an ankle and brought her down beside me. She kicked at me, breaking free, and tried to scramble away, laughing. I grabbed for her and got only a pantaleg and yanked hard on that. Already damaged, it tore further, baring part of a slim, flailing girl-limb. This seemed like a hell of a fine, drunken project, and I proceeded to shuck the leg in question as you’d peel the cornhusk off a tamale. We were both laughing as we struggled breathlessly, both moderately intoxicated and maybe both pretending to be just a little more alcoholically uninhibited than we really were. After all, we had to justify to ourselves and each other our undignified behavior, two grown people roughhousing wantonly and destructively on the floor like a couple of crazy kids. I let the slacks go, half-demolished, and tackled the much flimsier and more satisfactory blouse, feeling her clawing fingers get away with most of my undershirt and some of the skin beneath…
Abruptly, simultaneously, we stopped laughing. I felt her yield, moving against me urgently; I felt myself respond. It took us only a moment to rid ourselves of the tangled wreckage that still obstructed our access to each others’ bodies…
15
It was a peaceful awakening. I was lying between clean sheets in a soft bed in a quiet attic room full of diffused daylight and somewhere a girl was singing happily. I felt quite happy, too. I’d survived an endless institutional nightmare, and some fairly violent experiences; but at least I wasn’t in an institution any longer. I wasn’t anybody’s patient any longer except, perhaps, my own.
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