“I’ll be your first patient,” Meecham said, “if you’ll let me in to see Loftus.”
“I can’t, Meecham. The boy’s sick. Honest-to-God sick, not like some of the fakers I get.”
“I know that.”
“Besides, he’s sleeping. He had a sedative three hours ago.”
“I’ll wait.” Meecham sat down on the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette. “If he’s too sick to talk, all right, I promise not to ask him any questions. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? After all, the sight of me isn’t going to scare him to death. I’ll walk quietly in, and if he’s asleep, I’ll walk quietly out. Where is he?”
“In the bridal suite,” Gill said. The phrase had lost any connotations of humor long ago; it was the standard term used to describe the building’s only private room where the very ill or the post-operative patients were kept. “You go to a lot of trouble just for curiosity’s sake, don’t you?”
“Occasionally.”
“Who are you working for?”
“Myself only.”
“Well, come on. I’ll see if he’s awake.”
“Thanks, Gill. Show up at my office around the middle of February and I’ll help you with your income tax.”
“Who are you kidding?” Gill reached into a drawer and took out a ring of keys. It wasn’t as large as the ring Miss Jennings had at the county jail but there were more keys on it, of every size and shape. “You know, I get kind of sick of locking things up all the time. Lock the doors, lock the windows, lock the lavatory, lock up the thermometers, the rubbing alcohol, the dishes, even the spoons.”
Meecham followed him to the door. “Why the spoons?”
“A couple of years ago a guy was in here who’d been beaten up in a family brawl. He tried to choke himself by swallowing some orange peelings and pushing them down his throat with a spoon. So, no spoons and no oranges.”
He unlocked a door that led into a long narrow hall. In spite of the sun and air, paint and disinfectant, the odor of rotting wood clung to the old house. It trailed up and down the hall and up and down the hollowed steps like the restive ghost of the superintendent looking for a trace of himself.
There were four rooms on the lower floor. From three of them the doors had been removed and full-length gates had been substituted, made of the same material as the fencing around the grounds.
From inside one of the gates a man began to groan with sudden fervor.
Gill paused. “Oh, stop it, Billings,” he said pleasantly. “Be a good boy.”
The boy was an elderly Negro with a tobacco-stained beard and white hair that reached his shoulders. “Them prunes I had for breakfast, they’s setting hard on my belly like billiard balls.”
“Can that phony dialect. Last time you were here you were talking like a Yale man.”
“I’se rumblin inside.”
“I’ll give you something in a little while.”
“Listen. Come here and listen, white boy.”
“I can’t now, Billings. I’m busy.”
“Listen. I’se full of sin. It’s rumblin round my belly. Oh, sweet Jesus stop that rumblin, stop clackin them billiard balls in my insides.”
“There aren’t any billiard balls in your insides,” Gill said. “It’s gas.”
“I’m only an old nigger full of sin, sweet Jesus, no one to turn to ceptin you. Now they’s gonna cut off my hair, cut off my beard, they’s gonna take away what’s rightfully mine, saying I got lice. I never had a lice, Lord, all I got’s the rumblin.”
“Haven’t you heard, Billings? Everybody’s wearing their hair short these days, even the women.”
“You’ll be crawlin through the fires of hell, white boy, and I’ll be ridin into heaven.” The old Negro rolled over on his cot and, face to the wall, he resumed his low melodious groaning.
Gill turned away with a shrug and went on down the hall.
The fourth room had its original oak door, but a small rectangular peephole had been cut out at eye level. Gill looked in through the peephole before he unlocked the door.
The shades were drawn and the room was almost in darkness, so that only light-colored objects were visible at first, the bed, basin, a covered trash container, a white chair lying overturned in the corner, and above the chair Loftus’ face. He had grown enormously during the night. His face reached nearly to the ceiling.
The old Negro was groaning to sweet Jesus and Gill was breathing like a tired horse, and there was a rattle of branches against the windowpane.
Gill crossed the room and pulled up the shade. Then he went to the corner and touched one of Loftus’ dangling hands. Loftus began to swing very slowly back and forth as if a wind was rocking him.
“It’s not my fault,” Gill said. “If they want to die bad enough you can’t stop them. It’s not my fault. I gave him the sedatives and he promised he’d take them and go to sleep.”
He’d kept one part of his promise, Meecham thought, but the two yellow capsules were still lying on the metal table beside the bed.
“White boy, you there, white boy? I’se been talkin to the Lord, white boy, and he says you’re full of sin, says you oughtn’t give a poor old nigger prunes for breakfast. You listenin, boy?”
“How could I have stopped him?” Gill said. “How could I? Maybe all night while he was talking, he was making plans, looking around trying to see what he could use.”
The room had nothing in it that was sharp or pointed, nothing that could be broken to form a cutting edge; even the light bulbs were inaccessible. But Loftus, like other desperate men, found a way. He pried the wire handle off the trash container and attached it to a ventilation hole in the wall near the ceiling. To the handle he fastened a twisted strip torn off the gray hospital blanket from his bed. Standing on the chair he tied the other end of the strip around his neck. He stood there like that, perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour, before he shoved the chair away with his foot.
He had died quietly, without a fight. On the white wall behind him there were no marks of feet kicking in anguish or struggling to get a hold on the wall to ease the pressure around his neck. There were no scratches or fingernail marks on his throat. It was as if he had died by willing, before the twisted strip of blanket had time to cut off his air.
His face was not discolored, and though his mouth was slightly open, his tongue didn’t protrude. He looked quite tranquil, as if the long night that he’d been dreading had turned out well and the dreams it held were pleasant. Its shadows were without terror, and its streets were the same strange streets that Birdie had walked along.
“I hears you, white boy, I hears you talkin and whisperin. You get down on your knees and ask the sweet Jesus to loose the devil in you standin in there whisperin and laughin bout a poor old nigger’s insides.”
Gill wheeled around suddenly and screamed toward the open door: “Shut up! Shut up, I tell you!”
“Whisperin and laughin . . .”
“Shut up, goddam it!”
“Cursin and yellin and whisperin . . .”
“I’ll come in and brain you, goddam it!”
“Threatenin, threatenin a poor old man that’s full of sins and lice and gonna have his hair cut off. Get down on your knees, white boy, and ask for the devil to loose you.”
Gill stood with his fists pressed against his ribs, the color draining out of his knuckles. “All right, Billings,” he said at last. “I got down and the devil loosed me.”
“Sing Hallelujah.”
“Hallelujah,” Gill said, with the tears streaming down his face. “Hallelujah.”
17
The street was still five stories down, but the sky seemed closer than it had during the morning. Now at twilight it pressed against the window of Meecham’s office, a shapeless changing mass, the color of br
uised flesh.
Mrs. Christy was gone for the day, and the telephone was ringing. There was a typewritten note propped against the lamp on Meecham’s desk and he read it before he reached for the phone.
“E.J.M: Following calls came in. 11:35 Cordwink. 12:10 Mrs. Hamilton, no message. 1:15 Mr. Geo. Loesser, will call back. 1:40 Checker Cab, motion for new trial denied. 3:10 Miss McDaniels can’t find her copy of will. 3:15 Sweeney Dry Cleaners, rug shrinkage unavoidable and refuse to settle. 3:45 Mrs. Alistair re trust deed. 4:05 Mr. Loesser, call him at 5-5988 before six. 4:33 Mr. Post won’t be in tomorrow. L. E. Christy.”
He picked up the phone. “Hello, Meecham speaking.”
“This is George Loesser, Mr. Meecham. I may be wrong, but I think we met a year or so ago at a convention in Chicago.” Loesser spoke in a thin nervous voice with a slight New England accent. “Does that ring a bell?”
“It could,” Meecham said. He hadn’t been to a convention for ten years. “Bring me up to date a little.”
“Absolutely. Well, right now I’m with a Detroit firm, Lewenstein, Adler and Birch. The reason I’m in town is that I had to meet a client at the airport this morning and then I drove her over here. My client happens to be very interested in seeing you.”
“As a lawyer?”
“Not at all,” Loesser said sharply. “My firm handles all her affairs. This is quite a different matter, a personal one. She would like to talk to you because the Sheriff mentioned your name in connection with Virginia Barkeley. You were looking after Mrs. Barkeley’s interests, weren’t you?”
“For a time.”
“My client is Lily Margolis.”
“Oh.”
“As you may know, she was in Lima visiting her sister at the time of Mr. Margolis’ death.”
“I knew that, yes.”
“She returned as soon as she could. She’s been with the Sheriff this morning and part of the afternoon. She hadn’t anything much to tell him, of course. It was just a formality.”
“If she’s seen Cordwink, why does she want to see me?”
“Frankly, I don’t know.” Loesser sounded sincerely puzzled. “Curiosity, probably. Cordwink didn’t tell her a great deal, and you know women, they like details, never get sick of details. That’s understandable, of course, in Lily’s case. She’s never come up against anything like this before. She’s led a very sheltered life, you might say, and this business has been a great shock to her emotionally, mainly because of the children. Naturally I’ve done my best to keep her and the children out of the papers.”
“I knew someone had.” Loesser had been successful too. No photograph or snapshot of either Lily Margolis or her children had appeared in any newspaper, and very few facts about her personal life had been mentioned. It was possible, though, that there were very few facts to mention, that Lily Margolis was one of those dull and virtuous women who had no interests outside of her children and the mechanical operations of her home. Meecham had met a great many such women, and sometimes their dullness, and often their virtue, was a surface covering, a thin sheet of ice over a running river, dangerous to cross.
“My own feeling about the matter,” Loesser said, “is that it would be better to forget it. In fact, I’m phoning you now under protest. I didn’t want to, and I don’t think anything will be gained by mulling over the sordid details. But Lily wants it that way. If you come and talk to her you’ll be reimbursed for your time, of course.”
“You realize that the case is settled.”
“Of course. Since the young man killed himself this morning . . .”
“How did you find that out?”
“Strangely enough, Lily was in the Sheriff’s office when the message was phoned in. She couldn’t help overhearing.” Loesser coughed, but it was more of a nervous mannerism than a real cough. “I understand you were a friend of the young man?”
“I knew him.”
“It’s a sad affair all around, but especially for Lily and the two children. Fortunately, they’re well provided for. One of the few sensible things Margolis did in his lifetime was to take out enough insurance.”
“Double indemnity has healed a lot of broken hearts.”
“It helps, and why not?” Loesser said defensively.
“Why not, indeed.” Meecham looked at the clock on his desk: 5:10. “I’ll be glad to see Mrs. Margolis. When?”
“How about tonight after dinner? Or right away, if you’d prefer.”
“That would be better.”
“I’m at Lily’s house now. Do you know where Lancaster Drive is, near the golf course?”
“Yes.”
“It’s 1206, a white-and-green colonial house. You can’t miss it. The kids have spent all afternoon building a couple of snowmen at the driveway entrance.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
The floodlight was on at the entrance gate, and the snow figures stood like sepulchers, one on each side. Loesser had made a mistake about them, though. They weren’t snowmen. One of them was a lady, with a pink ruffled apron tied around her lumpy waist and a bandana covering her head to hide its baldness. One of her charcoal eyes had fallen out of its melting socket. She had a witch’s nose made out of a carrot and a moist beet-mouth, and stuck in her chest was a long dripping icicle that gleamed in the light like a stiletto with a jeweled handle. The snow lady seemed to be aware of the wound: her blurred beet-mouth was anguished, and her single eye stared helplessly into the night.
Meecham pressed hard on the accelerator and the wheels of the car spun for a moment in the slush and then took hold. The driveway was on a steep grade and it hadn’t been shoveled. Neither had the steps of the house, or the wide pillared veranda. There were sounds of dripping everywhere, as in a greenhouse.
Nearly every window was lighted and wide open, as if the rooms were being aired after a period of disease.
Loesser answered the door himself. In contrast to his thin nervous voice over the phone, he was a heavy-set moon-faced man in his forties, with a smile that flashed off and on with the precision of a traffic signal. He had courtroom manners and a way of talking to a person without looking at him, as if he was really aiming his words at an unseen and very critical jury.
“Good of you to come, Meecham.” The two men shook hands. “Let me take your coat. The maid’s upstairs with the kids.”
He took Meecham’s coat and hung it in a small closet that opened off the foyer. Meecham noticed that the closet was empty except for a pair of child’s rubber boots.
“Lily hasn’t had time to unpack or get organized,” Loesser said. “I’m her cousin, by the way, in case you were wondering how I come in on all this.”
“I wasn’t wondering very hard.”
“No? Well, I thought you might. The fact is”—he tugged at his tie—”the fact of the matter is that I’ve stood by Lily all during this unfortunate marriage of hers.”
It was the sort of remark that demanded an answer of some kind: Oh? How interesting. Is that a fact? Good for you, old boy. Stout fellow. Meecham merely made an indeterminate noise.
“Well, Lily’s waiting in the den,” Loesser said. “It’s the only room in the house that doesn’t smell of moth crystals. The place has been closed up, you know.”
The den wasn’t what Meecham expected from its name, a book-and-pipe sanctuary for a man. It turned out to be a small room on the southeast corner of the house, equipped for activity, not rest. There was a sewing machine, a drawing board, a small hand-loom, a dressmaker’s dummy, and a long unpainted wooden table filled with children’s toys. The pine walls were covered with children’s art, sketches and watercolors and fingerpaintings, some of them hanging from the molding in frames, and some of them fastened loosely to the wall with thumbtacks. The pictures were all signed, most of them ri
ght across the middle, Ann M. or Georgie.
Activity had given the room an air of pleasant untidiness. But there was nothing untidy about Lily Margolis. She was a slim muscular young woman in a tweed suit with flecks of blue in it that exactly matched the color of her eyes. Her brown hair was clipped short in rows of curls, and the curls were so uniform that it seemed as though she had weighed and measured each of them before letting herself be seen in public. Her face was deeply sunburned, so that her eyes looked very bright and clear in contrast, and her teeth very white. Her features were plain, but the carefully chosen tweed suit, and the carefully acquired sunburn, gave her quite a striking appearance.
She repeated the words Loesser had used, but her New England accent was stronger than his, as if she had retained it deliberately to show her contempt for the Middle West.
“It was very good of you to come, Mr. Meecham. Please sit down, won’t you? And George, would you mind awfully bringing us a drink?”
Loesser got up obediently, but he looked slightly pained and he turned at the doorway to give Mrs. Margolis a don’t-say-anything-interesting-while-I’m-gone glance.
Lily Margolis returned to the wooden bench by the drawing board where she’d been sitting before she rose to greet Meecham. She sat, stiff and erect, her feet planted squarely on the floor, her large competent-looking hands crossed on her knees. “You see, Mr. Meecham, I don’t know quite what happened, or why. Everything is fuzzy and confused. It’s like trying to understand someone else’s nightmare.”
Someone else’s, Meecham noted, not her own. The statement fitted in with his previous conception of her; she seemed to have the occupational schizophrenia of the perfect secretary, a self-effacing manner combined with a positive knowledge of her own superiority. Yes, boss on the one hand, and silly boy on the other. Perhaps not exactly the perfect wife.
She leaned forward slightly toward Meecham, but without bending her back. “I had taken the children down to Lima to spend Christmas with my sister—her husband is a mining engineer. I was only there two weeks when the message came that Claude had had an accident. Rather delicate wording, don’t you think, for what really happened.”
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