The Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  I thought about this. Mrs. Morneau seemed the more likely candidate except for one important detail: Joe and I had left her house at half-past two that afternoon and we had driven straight to the airport without stopping at unit 18. Considering this, how could I explain the van being returned to the Golden Kingfisher Motel and parked precisely under unit 18? It implied an intelligence that chilled me. It also had the effect of making sleep impossible, because even the most confident of murderers was bound to eventually notice that my van was gone; that would be a shock, and so mystifying that he would feel compelled to find it. What I had to do now was get back to Trafton, and to Joe, but without worrying him, for he at least was safe for the moment. What I also had to do was find John Tuttle but under no circumstances was I going to return to Anglesworth and ask Garwin Mason where he was.

  "Ask Nora," Mrs. Morneau had added with a touch of malice.

  Very well, I decided, I would ask Nora; there was no harm in that if I could get past Nurse Dawes and persuade Nora to talk. Greenacres was a safe one hundred miles away from Anglesworth and it was on my route back to Trafton. I was fairly sure that Nora would know about Tuttle because I had a hunch that he might be the mysterious friend of the family who paid her bills: I couldn't think who else would. Robin couldn't afford to, nor could Mrs. Morneau, and Nora had spent all her money on a glass house and drink.

  I left the motel feeling considerably older, and in a sense I was. For one thing I checked the back of the van again, and opened up the hood to make certain that no one had rearranged any wires. For that matter, if anyone had told me a week ago that I would choose to drive alone at half-past one in the morning I would have collapsed in laughter. It was surprising what a simple equation I had uncovered: when one terror outweighs another, the deeper one will triumph over the lesser.

  I had driven ten miles before I realized there was one other person who could have betrayed us to a murderer, and that was Mrs. Daniel Lipton if she had run out of drinking money again.

  12

  On my long drive down the coast in the middle of the night it seemed as if the most frightening thing about this dark world of greed and conspiracy, of people haunted by a past that relentlessly controlled them, this Hieronymous Bosch landscape that I'd entered— was that it might be reality. It was the old tightrope business again, except that if I glanced down this time I would see not only my mother but Danny Lipton, all bloody from his throat being slashed; Mrs. Morneau stifling her sobs behind a door; Nora lifting herself from her bed to cry over the photograph of a hurdy-gurdy. It was a vision I couldn't bear as I drove those dark, empty roads; it tempted me to give up, but that's what they had all done, and I wanted better company.

  Yet there was Joe, and he was reality too. And there was also Amman Singh, and there was Hannah, who had written a book in which the Grand Odium said, "You must carry the sun inside of you because you will meet with a great and terrifying darkness." Hannah had known all about the tightrope, of this I was sure, but in the photograph her eyes had been serene and unshadowed, except by a smile.

  Both Amman Singh and Hannah had found something important.

  Or was it, I thought suddenly, that each of them might have lost something, some illusion or impertinence that we're taught to regard as legitimately ours but which only keeps us bound hopelessly to a treadmill?

  This thought occupied me for the remainder of the drive but I felt the lighter for it.

  At half-past three I parked in a rest stop beside the highway, locked myself into the back in my sleeping bag, and slept until dawn filtered through the portholes. After that I drove on to Portland and found an all-night diner where I ate breakfast elbow-to-elbow with truckdrivers and night-shift workers. Obviously something was happening to my safety zones.

  At half-past eight I bought a toothbrush and visited Western Union to send Joe a telegram. It was a very difficult one to compose; I wanted to write / love you, I miss you, I'm scared but I've got to handle this alone so that I know that I can. The telegram I finally sent was returning home, may stop in new york to see robin, reach trafton late tomorrow afternoon hope griselda was spared love amelia. I would have preferred to telephone him but I was too much a coward, I was afraid I might say too much and alarm him, or say too little and alarm myself. I felt that a telegram was kinder for both of us: it left out attempted murder, panic, flight, a long night drive, somber thoughts, and breakfast in an all-night diner.

  The one thought that never occurred to me was that Joe might have telephoned the Golden Kingfisher Motel during the night to tell me he'd safely reached Trafton. It simply never crossed my conscious mind. This was a symptom, I think, of how I still undervalued myself, and how unaccustomed I was to being tenderly regarded.

  In the meantime, at some point during the night I had decided I must deliver Hannah's manuscript to Robin because it belonged to Hannah's heirs, and Robin was certainly the only one to whom I could entrust it. I was also hoping that I might find a tactful way to ask him why he had never appealed that Probate Court decision; I thought I knew the answer but Joe's passion for verifying was infectious.

  But first there was Nora to see before I closed the books on this search and turned it over to the police, this Nora who had given everything, including her integrity, to a man who had gone off and left her. I couldn't understand why Jay Tuttle had abandoned her, but every question I asked seemed to lead into a new one. It was like one of those novelty boxes that you open to find a second box neatly fitted inside of it, and then another and another and another. Why hadn't Tuttle married her? Nora was beautiful, and heaven only knows she'd been devoted. After the murder she was also rich and, as an accomplice, dangerous to him as well. By every law of logic he should have married her, if only to make sure she would never testify against him, but he hadn't. Why?

  This was a good question but unfortunately it exposed another one: Tuttle had gone to enormous lengths to change Hannah's will before she was murdered but if he'd simply killed her and then married Nora without that bogus will he would have married a woman with an inheritance of a million dollars.

  It implied that Jay Tuttle had wanted $700,000, but not Nora.

  But if this were so there was still another question waiting inside of it: Lipton had been murdered because he was an accomplice. Nora, who was even more involved and more dangerous to them both, had been allowed to survive. Why?

  By half-past nine I was circling Greenacres, bumping over the woods roads that surrounded it and keeping my eyes on the rear lawn. I had remembered the nurse saying that Nora would be all right after we left her, and by the next morning would be sitting in the sun in the back with the rest of the patients. By ten o'clock there were a number of people sitting in chairs in the sun, distributed like dolls, each very carefully apart from the other, with a nurse in uniform sitting quietly on the rear porch and reading a book. I parked at the south side of the property and finally saw Nora off to one side, in a white chair with her feet on a hassock. From where I stood it looked as if she was staring into nothingness; the waste of it struck me as appalling.

  I slipped through the hedge and walked under the pine trees, their needles soft and pliant under my feet, until I came out on the lawn, which was as soft as a foam rubber carpet. The nurse sitting near the stairs was preoccupied with her book; no heads turned to watch me. I reached Nora and knelt beside her chair.

  "Miss Harrington," I said.

  She was wearing expensive pale green slacks and a matching pale green blouse that hung on her as if no one had known her size. She wrenched her gaze from some unfathomable dream and frowned at me. It took her eyes a moment to focus. "Yes," she said dully.

  "Miss Harrington," I asked, "where can I find John Tuttle?"

  This startled her out of her apathy. "He comes here," she faltered, looking surprised. "Sometimes. Once a month I think. He comes to see me." She looked horribly vulnerable, like a child.

  "I'd like to know how to reach him," I said gently. "Can you te
ll me where to find him?"

  She peered closer at me, struggling against fog. "Who are you? Did he send you?"

  "I'm Amelia Jones, Miss Harrington, and I'm wondering if you can tell me where to find John Tuttle."

  "I remember you," she said suddenly. "I've seen you before, you came about the hurdy-gurdy."

  "Yes, and I've come back to ask you, please, how to locate Jay Tuttle."

  "Jay," she murmured. "Dear Jay. Bastard Jay."

  "Yes, but can you tell me where I can find him. Now. Today."

  She said sharply, "But he doesn't have anything to do with hurdy-gurdies. You showed me pictures and I cried. You made me cry."

  "Yes, you cried when you saw your aunt Hannah's hurdy-gurdy."

  "What has that to do with Jay? He doesn't know anything about hurdy-gurdies. It's Robin and I who played with it, it was ours and it was Aunt Hannah's, and we loved it."

  "Yes, and you kept it awhile, and then Robin bought it at the auction and kept it awhile, too."

  She nodded. "We took turns choosing things and I chose the hurdy-gurdy. I had first choice," she said proudly.

  "Yes."

  "And that's what I wanted most of all, it was in the box room and I chose it." And then she repeated, "In

  the box room. . ." She looked at me and I looked at her

  and the words hung between us. "The hurdy-gurdy was in the box room," she whispered, and her eyes grew wider and wider as horror and intelligence filled them.

  "In the same room as " One hand flew to her mouth.

  "Why are you here? Why are you asking me these questions?"

  I said, "Miss Harrington—" But I was too late; she closed her eyes, flung back her head and began screaming.

  The young nurse reached her first. She gave me a mute, reproachful glance as she leaned over Nora and then I saw Nurse Dawes running across the lawn to us. "You again!" she shouted. "Out—I'll call the police if you come again, you've no right to sneak in here and harass a patient. What have you done to her? What have you done to her?"

  "Nothing, I'm going now," I said angrily above Nora's screams. Heads had turned dully toward us in wonder; my eyes held a picture of vivid green lawn and Dr. Ffolks racing toward us in his white jacket, Nora's screams growing sharper and more hysterical. Nurse Dawes was already rolling up Nora's sleeve for still another injection to bring her peace.

  "We'll get a court order, Miss Jones—Miss Amelia Jones, isn't it?" shouted Mrs. Dawes over her shoulder. "We're paid to protect our patients."

  "I won't bother her again," I said coldly, and I walked away and didn't look back until I'd reached the van. When I turned they were all clustered around Nora, whose screams had turned into sobs now.

  I felt a little sick. I climbed into the van and closed my eyes and then I opened them and said "Damn" in a loud voice. I started up the van for my long drive south and that, I thought, was that. It was going to have to be Detective Zebroski after all, unless Robin knew what had happened to Tuttle, but 1965 was a long time ago.

  I am not one for marathon driving. I stayed the night in a motel near Westport, Connecticut, and from there I telephoned Robin in New York City. I explained that I was on my way home from Maine, where I'd been tracing the hurdy-gurdy I'd asked him about on the stairs, and could I see him for a few minutes the next day?

  He said very politely that he would be at home during the morning hours, and then with some amusement he gave me the directions I asked for on how to approach the city by car. I carefully wrote them down, feeling an absolute coward about all those parkways and expressways. I think it's a fear in me of getting lost; when a person has felt basically lost for half of her life it is not a situation to be lightly entered or courted.

  It was thus with a sense of astonishment and triumph that I successfully pulled up in front of his building on East Ninth Street at eleven o'clock the next morning. It was a sultry day, with the sun hidden behind clouds, and the humidity oppressive; I was still wearing blue jeans and sweater, so I noticed. I was also nervous about how much to tell Robin and had tried out a number of censored versions of how I came to find Hannah's manuscript in an old mattress.

  He must have been watching for me, because no sooner had I backed into a parking space in front of his building than he came out of the door and waved at me. He was wearing faded jeans, a white shirt and sneakers, and again he gave the illusion of great youth until the light picked out the lines in his face. "Good morning," he said. "Quite a van, that. I hope you're locking it up from stem to stern."

  I felt inexplicably shy as we shook hands; I realized that when I'd last seen him he was a complete stranger, an actor named Robert Lamandale sandwiched between my visit to the colonel and the next day's auction. Now he was Hannah's nephew Robin, someone Hannah had loved, and I knew much more about him. I also knew—it came over me with a sense of Tightness—that because of this I was going to tell him the whole story.

  I could see that he was puzzled by my being here, and too polite to say so. He turned and led me past the broken intercom and we began the climb to apartment 12

  . "So you actually went to Maine and visited my cousin," he said over his shoulder.

  "Yes," I said, stopping to catch my breath on the third landing. I wanted to ask him if he'd gotten the part he auditioned for on the day I first met him, but I thought it better not to. There was one more landing before he unlocked a door with three locks.

  "I've put together some iced tea and peppermint for us," he said. "It's a warm day. I hope my directions worked? No detours, no bad advice?"

  "They were perfect," I told him, looking around. It was a one-room apartment, long and narrow, but it was a corner apartment and with the building on its flank gone it was full of light. There was a shabby kitchenette on my right, with a stained refrigerator and an ancient gas stove, but the other end was very different: the' white walls held a line of well-framed theatrical photographs over the low couch, there was a low square table with one flower in a vase, three square cushions on the floor, and a wall of bookcases built out of lumber and bricks; the result was a feeling of space carved out of smallness. I walked over to the bookcase and saw that one shelf was filled with books on Zen: van da Wetering, Humphreys, both Suzukis, Lama Yongdan, Evans-Wertz, Herrigel. "I see you're interested in Zen," I called over my shoulder.

  "An aunt of mine was," he said almost curtly, dropping ice cubes into two tall glasses. "Shall we sit here?" he suggested, carrying the glasses to the shabby chrome-and-plastic dining table.

  "Your aunt Hannah Gruble," I said deliberately, "who wrote The Maze in the Heart of the Castle."

  He stopped short, the glasses still in his hand. He said quietly, "I think you'd better tell me what this is all about, don't you? It was a hurdy-gurdy you were tracing last week. Or so you said."

  "It was a hurdy-gurdy," I told him, "but I was tracing it because of a note I found inside it, a note signed with the name Hannah. Just Hannah. No last name."

  He looked baffled. "A note inside a hurdy-gurdy?"

  "Your aunt originally owned it, didn't she?"

  "Yes she did, but she wasn't the sort of person to—" He stopped, frowning. "May I ask what on earth the note said to inspire such curiosity on your part?"

  I hesitated, wanting to ease into this gently. "It suggested that an accident was being arranged for her, and that she was going to die soon."

  "But that's preposterous," he said. "It's absolutely ridic—" He bit off his words, abruptly turned away and walked over to the window where he stood with his back to me. There was a long silence; when he turned to face me again he looked shaken. "I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say."

  "Because it doesn't entirely surprise you?"

  He returned to the table. "Shall we sit down?" he said wryly. "I take it that you've been doing a bit of, research into my family."

  I nodded. "You're Robin, for instance, Robin Gruble. And your cousin is Nora."

  "That matters?"

  "The names
were in the note," I said. "Robin and Nora." I began digging in my purse for Hannah's note. "My friend Joe Osbourne was in Maine with me until he had to fly home. We visited Nora, and we visited your aunt's house in Carleton, her attorney Garwin Mason, and your aunt's housekeeper Mrs. Morneau."

  "All those people?" He looked startled. "I've never cared to go back, you know. I've not set foot in Anglesworth or Carleton since 1965. I've done summer stock in the playhouses but I've always avoided Anglesworth."

  I brought out the note and said, "Mr. Lamandale, could I ask you why you went to all the trouble and expense of a Probate Court hearing on your aunt's will and then didn't appeal the verdict, or carry it to the higher court? Why did you give up?"

  He whistled soundlessly through his teeth. "You really go for the jugular, don't you."

  "Why?" I repeated.

  "And why should I tell you?" he asked calmly.

  "Was it because of Nora?"

  He shrugged and lifted his glass of tea. "Cheers," he said and then, "Look, I'm sorry but I don't know a blasted thing about you. You stop in here on a cloudy May morning and out of the blue you tell me, or suggest-"

  "Here's a photostat of the note," I told him, and handed it across the table.

  As soon as Robin saw the handwriting he looked shaken. "Oh my God," he whispered, and when he'd finished reading it he carefully placed it on the table, his face white. "This was inside the hurdy-gurdy?"

  I nodded. "The hurdy-gurdy came with my shop, the Ebbtide Shop in Trafton, when I bought out Mr. Georgerakis. I kept the hurdy-gurdy for myself, and then one night it wouldn't play. This piece of paper had caught in the mechanism."

  "And because of this—" I could see he was concentrating on me while he struggled to face the contents of the note. "Because of this you've taken time out of your life to learn who wrote it? I find that—I don't know whether to say astonishing or touching or—"

  I said dryly, "You could, if you like, think of Joe and me as simply avenging angels or demons: Jones and Osbourne, witch and warlock, stirring up messy brews with a teaspoon." I didn't want to tell him how messy it had grown at the end, I preferred to wipe away the stricken look on his face. I brought out the manila folder I'd purchased in Westport, removed the pages of the manuscript and pushed them across the table to him. "There's this, too," I said gently. "Exhibit B, as proof of my sincerity. In exchange for information I'd like very much to have."