Curtain for a Jester

by Frances Lockridge

  Sergeant Fox reached the landing and found a door. He found a bell-push. Remembering what Mrs. North—and wait until he told Mullins he had finally met the Norths, under circumstances as screwy as were to be expected—remembering what Mrs. North had told him, Sergeant Fox braced himself for a woman’s scream. But he heard, instead, melodious chimes. He waited, heard nothing more, pushed again. He pushed several times.

  “Wha’s the matter,” a thick voice said, finally. It came closer to the door. “Wha’s going on, eh?”

  “Police,” Fox said.

  “Don’ want any policeman,” the voice said. The voice was very fuzzy. Since it did not clear, Fox decided it was fuzzy with drink.

  “I want to talk to you, Mr. Wilmot,” Fox said. “It is Mr. Wilmot?”

  “Don’ wanta talk to you,” the voice told him, fuzzier than before.

  “You are Mr. Wilmot?”

  “So I’m Mr. Wilmot. Go away.”

  “An—an object seems to have fallen,” Fox said. “Apparently from your terrace.”

  “Keep it,” the voice said. “Jus’ keep it, captain.”

  “Listen,” Fox said. “Open the door, will you?” He tried the knob. The knob did not turn.

  “Castle,” the fuzzy voice said. “Home is my castle. Talk about it in the morning.”

  The trouble, Fox thought, was that Mr. Wilmot had something there, had a good deal there. He had, presumably, dropped a dummy from his terrace to the sidewalk. Listening to the voice, this seemed to Fox quite likely. He might have killed someone. But—he had not killed anyone. He had violated a city ordinance. But his penthouse remained his castle, short of a warrant for search, or a warrant for arrest. Fox could, of course, stick a summons under the door.

  “You might have killed somebody,” Fox said, to the door.

  “Can’ hear you.”

  “Killed somebody,” Fox repeated.

  “Didn’t hit anybody,” the fuzzy voice said. “Looked. Smashed the dummy, s’all.”

  “So you admit—”

  “Go away,” the voice said. “Wanna get some sleep. Talk about it in the morning. Accident, anyway. Damned thing cost money.”

  “You do admit—”

  “Pushed it out on the terrace. Pushed it too far, s’all. Coulda happened to anybody.”

  “I’d still like—”

  “Morning, keep telling you. Gotta make something of it, come ’round in the morning. Hear me?”

  “Well—”

  “That’s a man,” the voice said. “Morning, eh? Fix it all up in the morning. Pay the fine. Whatever it is. Gotta sleep now.”

  “Well,” Fox said again.

  It was not satisfactory. It left the report messy. But—if Wilmot did not want him in, he was not going to get in. Wilmot was, in any case, clearly in no condition to talk coherently. He probably had, further, told all he could ever remember—he had pushed the dummy onto the terrace; he had pushed it too far. It was all extremely silly.

  “Somebody’ll be around for a statement in the morning,” Fox told the door.

  There was no answer. It occurred to Fox that Wilmot had already gone back to bed. Fox went down the stairs, and down in the elevator. Anyway, somebody else would see Wilmot in the morning. Fox would be in bed himself.

  III

  Thursday, 10 A.M. to 11:35 A.M.

  This would be the last time. That Martha Evitts promised herself, and again pressed the bell-push, heard again the melodious chimes from within. She had let it drift too long, and that was something she too often did. It was because there is a kind of violence about decision, and a violence which, at any given moment, usually seems excessive to the occasion. Such excessive violence becomes melodrama, and demonstrates that one has taken oneself too seriously, and so one becomes ridiculous, at any rate in one’s own eyes. But now, quite simply, she had had enough.

  There would be no need to say why, so to reveal how seriously the whole ridiculous business had affected her—so to reveal that she could not, actually, “take a joke.” There was no reason to let him know that she knew what he had been up to—no reason to take an attitude about it, and lay herself open again to being laughed at. Or even, which was worse, pitied. She had been pitied last night and, standing alone before an unopening door, she flushed softly as she remembered. There had been sympathy, which was pity, in the eyes of the bright-haired woman named Mrs. North. It had been quick and warm and friendly, but that made it no better. Mrs. North had realized that she could not “take a joke” of this kind, although Mrs. North could hardly have realized the full implication of the “joke.” But perhaps she had—perhaps they all had. Certainly, and that mattered most, John Baker had. That was of course what had been intended.

  Probably it had spoiled things, which also probably had been intended. It had made it impossible—and it had all along, of course, been difficult enough for her—to accept this matter of a few years as a matter entirely trivial. It was, certainly; by any reasonable approach, it surely was. John had laughed about it, and she had believed his laughter, believed he thought it ridiculous of her to labor the matter of some three years and seven—no, eight, really—months. He had tried to laugh her out of it, and—part of the time—had almost succeeded. Almost he had persuaded her it was who you were, and how you felt, not a count of the days of your life, which mattered. He had been angry once, and the only time with her, when she had used an old phrase and a tired one—had said she would feel like a “cradle-snatcher.” But he had ended by laughing, making her laugh with him.

  But she had not, finally, been tough enough. A hundred young women—and twenty-nine was young; of course twenty-nine was young—would be tough enough, and good luck to them. She ought to be. She wasn’t. Wilmot had seen that; had based his joke on that. He knew how to hurt, which is a knowledge as useful to the practical joker as to the wit. To the world’s eyes, he said, she was an ancient crone, John Baker a boy in rompers. “Laugh at the fools,” he had said. “Or be sorry for them. Let them see how they look to the rest of us.”

  They should have known; should have refused. But they had hardly thought of it, having expected safety in numbers. Everyone would be in some fashion absurd in costume; they would not be singled out; nobody would notice anything. Oh, it had been well planned enough. And between her and John it would always be an ugly thing. Coming as it had before they had achieved any sureness of each other, it might be an ineradicable thing. If they went on, they would always fear that some moment which should go on wings would flounder, weighted by the grotesque.

  At least, Martha Evitts thought, reaching in her bag for the key she was going to have to use, it would be that way with her. She could never hope again that any part of it might be perfect. Perhaps John would mind less, but even of that she was not sure. There had been an uncharacteristic hardness in him, when he took her home. The hardness underlay all the gentleness he showed toward her. So, no doubt, he realized, as she did, that things were spoiled.… Well, he had taught her to laugh at Wilmot’s heavy, middle-aged approaches; Wilmot’s suggestions of an “arrangement.” They had laughed together, in that equally young together. Mr. Wilmot, however, had laughed last.

  And now, for the last time, she was appearing dutifully at Mr. Wilmot’s apartment to take dictation, provided with a door key for use in the event that Mr. Wilmot had gone out to breakfast and lingered over it. For the last time she would avoid Mr. Wilmot’s words, and Mr. Wilmot’s patting hands. For the last time she would pretend not to notice what he was about. And for the first time, she would tell him she had had enough. That—

  No, she thought again, turning the key. What would be the use? She would tell him she had another offer, was going on to a job with a better future. There was no point in making the issue plain. There was no point, she thought, opening the door, in much of anything.

  As Martha Evitts stepped into the foyer she hesitated, and looked around warily. This was almost automatic; in the foyer of Mr. Byron Wilmot’s apartment, thi
ngs often jumped at you. There was a strong possibility, this morning, that Mr. Wilmot might have a few tricks left over from the party, and would play them on her. But nothing jumped at her, nothing made alarming sounds at her, nothing slithered on the foyer floor. She took off her coat and hung it in the closet, made sure that her notebook was in her purse, unconsciously straightened her soft, brown hair. Then she went into the living room.

  Just inside she stopped, as if she had walked into a wall. She put both slim hands up in front of her, as if to protect herself from the wall. And she thought, No! This is too much. This is utterly too much.

  This time, presumably for her benefit, Mr. Wilmot had really gone to town. This time he had spared no effort, done anything for a laugh.

  Mr. Wilmot, in a dressing gown and pajamas, lay on his back on the green-tiled floor. He lay there neatly, his arms by his sides, the dark blue of his robe smooth over his rolling abdomen.

  For some distance around the recumbent Mr. Wilmot, there was a shallow, dark expanse of what anyone—not knowing Mr. Wilmot—would have taken for blood. Sticking upright from Mr. Wilmot’s chest was the haft of what anyone who did not know the Wilmot habits would have taken for a knife, its blade embedded. Versimilitude was complete; one could have sworn that Mr. Wilmot lay there murdered.

  Having given the effect the tribute of a convulsive halt, Martha Evitts now gave it the further acknowledgement of a gasp of horror. (After all, much trouble had been gone to. Antagonistic as she felt toward Mr. Wilmot, she could not entirely let him down.) Momentarily, she waited for Mr. Wilmot to rise, to laugh, to tell her that he sure had fooled her that time.

  When he did not rise (to take his bow), Martha decided that more was expected. A scream—at least a moderate scream—was indicated. Martha drew in breath to scream.

  And with the breath she drew there came a kind of muskiness—something not quite a recognizable odor—something that made the nerves at the back of her neck tighten, as if she were a furred creature and the fur were lifting.

  She did not scream. Her face drained white, her hands trembling before her face, she backed from the dead man—from the sweet muskiness of blood—from murder on a green-tiled floor.

  For seconds she stood so, her hands shutting away the sight of Mr. Wilmot with a knife in his chest; her mind sickly accepting what her eyes had seen. She felt nausea beginning, and backed farther toward the foyer.

  Then she not so much saw as became aware of in her nerves some movement in the room. She made herself take down her hands, and look beyond the body, across the room. She saw him then, for an instant.

  John Baker was not in the room. He was on the terrace outside; she saw him, for that fraction of a second, through the glass of the french doors. She saw his face. He looked at her, across the dead man. Then, as if he had not seen her, he was gone.

  She saw him so briefly, his movement from her vision was so flickeringly quick, that it was almost possible for her to think she had not seen him—that the shock of what she had seen, and now still saw, had somehow so jangled her perceptions as to wreck their reliability. But she could not really think this. John Baker had been on the terrace, looking into the room—looking at her without seeming to see her, at what was on the floor, at—

  She stood, shuddering, and waited. A thought hammered at her mind. At the man he had killed? At the man—

  She would not let the thought into her mind. John would not kill a man. (But last night he had been hard, bitter, not like himself.) John had come to the apartment before her (for what reason?) and had found what she had found. Something (but what? What?) had taken him to the terrace. He had looked in, but it was darker in the room. He had not seen her. (But the room was full of light.) Or—or he had gone to another door, he would come to her, tell why he had come to the penthouse, how he had found—

  She waited. It seemed she waited for a long time, and as she waited her body shook. And John Baker did not come.

  When she turned, the movement was almost convulsive in its quickness. But it seemed to her that the foyer was dark, and that she groped through it to the closet, then to the door, and that the hall outside was darker still. She stumbled on the stairs, and caught herself, and when she reached the elevator she pressed the bell and kept her finger on it long after the car had started up—kept pressing it with a kind of desperation.

  John Baker swore to himself. Martha had not told him she was coming there that morning. Not, of course, that it would have made any real difference if she had, although he might somehow have stopped her. The other, he had not been able to stop. Things had got out of hand.

  That she had seen him, he was almost certain, although she had looked so shocked standing there, so shaken, that it was hard to tell how much she had seen and taken in. It was, all around, a bad mixup. She would, of course, get onto the police before—well, before it was time for the police.

  The whole thing had gone haywire. There wasn’t much to be done about it. He watched, out of sight, until Martha had gone through the foyer and he waited, after that, for a few minutes longer. Then he went into the living room and began to work. He worked fast, and as he worked he listened.

  He had had some five minutes, which was more time than he had counted on, when he heard someone at the foyer door. He had expected more warning than that. It was a near thing. But he was on the terrace, looking in, when Sylvester Frank entered the living room.

  The butler—who now was only a slight man in his thirties, wearing a business suit—stopped, too, as if he had run into something. But his face, from the distance at which John Baker stood, did not appear to change. He stopped; he looked at the body of his employer. There was, to be sure, a slight tremor of his body. It looked uncommonly like a shrug.

  He stood for a moment, looking at the body. He walked around it, skirting the spreading blood. He stopped and looked around the room, and out through the doors, and Baker was out of sight, he hoped quickly enough. But he could not see without being seen. He waited a moment, and risked a quick look. Frank was at the telephone.

  Whether Frank was calling the police or not—and Baker could only guess and wonder—there was at the moment nothing more to be done at the penthouse. Baker had done what he could; things had gone haywire. There was no immediate help for that.

  There were more ways than one off the penthouse roof. Baker took one little frequented.

  Pamela North had been sure there was another can of coffee. She had remembered distinctly that there was another can of coffee. She had known precisely where it was; it was where the coffee always was. It wasn’t.

  Jerry awakened to hear the news. Jerry groaned. He reported a headache.

  “It’s the most mysterious thing,” Pam said. “I can just see it there. Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh no!” Jerry said.

  She would, Pam North said, just go around the corner. It wouldn’t take a minute.

  “I’ll get some clothes on,” Pam said, and started to. For a time, Jerry watched her, gloomily. Then he groaned again, but with less assurance—this was a reminiscent groan. He swung out of bed, said, “Ouch!” and then that they might as well both go. They could drink their coffee and buy it too. In due course they went, sat at a counter, drank coffee and ate eggs. Jerry revived, but not excessively.

  “I suppose,” he said, after the second cup, “that you feel fine?”

  “Yes,” Pam said, simply.

  Jerry looked at her. She looked fine. He groaned again, mildly. He said it was an unfair world.

  “Why go to the office?” Pam asked. “Let illiteracy flourish.”

  Jerry was tempted. His conscience raised shocked hands. He would be no good anyway, Jerry told his conscience. His conscience shook its head. It isn’t as if I had a hangover, Jerry told his conscience. I need sleep. “Pooh!” Jerry’s conscience said. “Of course you have.”

  Jerry hailed a cab. Pamela bought coffee—also oranges, bacon which would turn out to have really been cured and could be
returned if not (and which had not, and was not returned), English muffins, a dozen eggs and a jar of red caviar. These things she carried home, as penance. It was a bright morning; it was almost as if New York City might, for once, have spring. It was, Pam thought, too bad about Jerry and mornings. Mornings were fine.

  The morning still was fine, although the grocery bag was beginning to grow heavy, when Pam went into the lobby of the apartment building. It was fine as, having pressed the signal button, she waited for Joe to bring the elevator down. It was fine until the elevator door opened.

  A slim young woman, holding a cloth coat tight about her, came out of the elevator. Her face was very white, her lips moved, white teeth rubbing them; the eyes in her drained white face seemed inordinately large, and seemed tormented. Before she took this in, Pam North started to smile, remembering. This was the girl last night in the awful—

  But the smile faded. The young woman did not appear to see Pam North. She did not appear to see anything. It seemed to Pam that the girl moved unsteadily, as if in partial darkness. She brushed past Pam and went toward the door and the street. When she was near the door she began almost to run. It was as if she were running in darkness, although she was in fact running toward the sun.

  Pam had turned to watch her. She turned back, now, to Joe. Joe was looking after the hurrying girl, and his mouth was open.

  “She sure acts scared,” Joe said. “She’s a girl works for Mr. Wilmot in the penthouse.”

  “She was—terrified,” Pam said. “It was—something dreadful must have happened.”

  She made no move to get into the elevator. All the fineness had gone out of the morning. It was chilly in the lobby, by the elevator.

  “All right a while ago,” Joe said. “Comes maybe twice a week. Stenographer, I guess. Secretary or something. A little while ago I took her up and she was all right. Not chatty or anything, but all right.”