by Rufus King
“As I have said, Mr. Heffernan, there were so many more important things which have intervened—but I must have lifted the bags to the luggage rack, not Sheffield—you both forget and imagine things easily after you’ve turned a century, and some people believe that Sheffield has—and the dressing case must have fallen out of the Gladstone when I lifted. I am certain that the bags were open. Mr. Heffernan. I can swear that the bags were open.”
He looked at this puny effort and brushed it aside. What under the sun did she take him for? A complete chump?
“Do you know anything about blood, Mrs. Elser?”
“Blood?”
“About the four groups into which it’s divided?”
“Yes, in a general fashion. You read so much nowadays about blood donors.”
“The groups are called One, Two, Three and Four. Sometimes they are referred to as Group O, Group A, Group B and Group AB. It happens that Group AB is rare.”
“Is it, Mr. Heffernan?”
He wanted to stick not one but a good many and long pins into her. “Parne’s blood was of Group AB.”
“Yes, Mr. Heffernan?”
“I shall ask you this, Mrs. Elser. While Parne was alive were you at any time in his room while he himself was in it?”
“No.”
“Now after Parne was killed you tell us that you stood on the threshold of his room but did not enter it. I shall ask you did you in any fashion contact his body? I shall forget all former statements, Mrs. Elser.”
Lily saw now where this was heading. It hadn’t been simply blood which she had rinsed out down the sink but a rare and special kind of AB blood with which, surprisingly, Mr. Parne had been filled. Surprisingly because nothing else about him had struck her as rare. She said after several moments, coming up from nightmare depths like swimming up through smothering treacle to a surface which would even be worse, “Yes, I think I did.”
“Just tell me about it. As you now remember it, Mrs. Elser.”
“I think the shock, the fear at later finding blood on the sleeve of my negligee, I think that is what has kept me from mentioning this before.”
“Yes, Mrs. Elser.”
“I did go into the room. My memory continues to be confused because of the excessive faintness I felt at the time. I think I tried to determine whether Mr. Parne was still alive. The blood stained my negligee then.”
“How?”
“How?”
“Yes, Mrs. Elser, how?”
“Why—by coming in contact with the wound, I suppose.”
“My dear Mrs. Elser”—pins, even the longest of them, were too short and he wanted spikes—“Parne was on his back. He had been shot in the back. There was no wound of exit in his chest. There was no blood on his chest. What blood there was lay beneath him on the floor.”
“Then—I must have put an arm beneath him.”
“Yes?”
“To raise him up.”
“Yes?”
“To see whether he was still breathing.”
“Minkle!”
“Sir?”
“Find Miss Elser, please. Ask her if she will join us.”
“Yes sir.”
“No—not Nan, Mr. Heffernan. Ask me what you like, but please not Nan, Mr. Heffernan.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Elser. Go get her, Minkle.”
* * * *
Heffernan said, “It’s about Detroit.”
Nan said, “Yes?”
“And about your father.”
“Yes, Mr. Heffernan?”
“I want you to tell me first about your father.”
“But how?”
“Tell me everything you remember about him.”
“But I don’t. I don’t remember anything.”
“Miss Elser, you are young. We’ve both known each other casually for a good many years. I can remember seeing you as a very little girl as far back as the Mansion House. I’ve seen you grow. And—well, mature.”
(She had, too, now that he had pinned the thought down with words. There was a riper look which had supplanted her general legginess and other awkward-colt effects, a sort of tightening up and smoothing out. All this on the surface, of course, and he imagined that the same process must have been also going on inside, otherwise she never could have got herself involved in this infernal mess.)
He went on a bit less paternally, “I’m telling you as I’ve told your mother that my job here is distasteful. It is especially so from the fact that I know both of you and have always liked you. I realize that the truth is hard, but I earnestly want you to appreciate that you will be doing yourself a kindness in the end by sticking to it.” He added uncomfortably, as if wishing to make untrue a fact about which he had no doubts, “There is no escape.”
Lily said, “Nan darling, would you like Gene to be up here with us?”
“Oh no, Mother. Why?”
“To advise us, dear. To advise us what to say?”
“Oh, please no, Mother. Honestly, Mr. Heffernan, the first thing I knew about Father, even about such people as fathers, was when Mother told me that mine was dead. I think I must have been about four or five then, Mother?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Four or five.” Heffernan made mental calculations. “Five—that would be the year, or rather at the end of it, when your mother obtained her divorce. You were told about that, of course, Miss Elser?”
Lily said sharply, “No! Nan has never known.”
“But I did, Mother.”
Lily looked blank and stunned. She thought: Nan has known about it all these years. She has known that her father was alive. She has said nothing. Never by any word has she indicated this knowledge. It was an affront, sort of, and verged on duplicity, a lingering duplicity that had obviously continued through adolescence right down to now. It occurred to her how right Nan was about the littleness with which they truly knew each other.
“Did your mother tell you about the divorce, Miss Elser?”
“No, Mr. Heffernan. I don’t think either you or Mother appreciates how much a girl of five or six really knows. I think when people get older, I mean a lot older, that they forget about the time when they were five or six themselves, that they had thoughts and wants and feelings even then, really strong feelings, Mr. Heffernan, and that they could figure things out. They forget all that and simply—well, they make pets of boys and girls—like animals—”
“Darling!”
“It’s true, Mother.”
“You still haven’t told me, Miss Elser. I mean about how you knew.”
“That was perfectly simple, Mr. Heffernan. I simply saw the papers on Mother’s desk and read them. I just wanted you to understand.”
“Understand?”
“Yes, why I kept it a secret. Because I knew it was a secret of Mother’s and I didn’t want to violate it. I would dream and think about it, and I know now how young I was about it and how I dramatized it, how I thought of my mother as a tragic figure and how much it made me love her and how much—how much—”
This, thought Heffernan, is simply fierce. Even Minkle’s lush eyes seemed damper than usual. As for Lily and Nan Elser, in an instant the two of them were likely to be dissolved, fused in the saltiest of floods, and his ax would fall through butter. He thought: I am as fit to be a district attorney as a marshmallow puff. He hadn’t the faintest idea what such a thing was, but it sounded right.
“Miss Elser!”
“Yes, Mr. Heffernan?”
“Are you getting this, Minkle?”
Minkle gave him a moist nod.
“Did you also know that your father had been declared legally dead, Miss Elser?”
“Yes, I knew about that too.”
“Now I want you to tell me, please, the real reason for your having gone to Detroit.�
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“Why, I won a contest—”
Heffernan deliberately forced himself to be rude. How else could you remain unmelted? He broke in on Nan impatiently with, “I know that. You won a contest conducted by the Detroit Free Press in fashion design and, being a graduate in fashion design, you went to Detroit and got jobs in fashion design on the strength of it. Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, Miss Elser. You had a home here. Your friends are all here. Your mother was left alone here. Your mother who had but briefly been bereft” (there I go again!) “of her husband. You left her in that state of grief. Why?”
“My mother had also been left pretty penniless, Mr. Heffernan.”
“Oh, come—really, please, I don’t know what sort of commissions you made with your designing but surely, Miss Elser, they’d be drops in a bucket?”
“Nan, darling, really, dear, I never knew.”
“There’s a lot you’ve never known, Mother. I will tell you why I went to Detroit, Mr. Heffernan. I went there to get money. I went to get a lot of money.”
Heffernan thought, now that the truth was at long last popping out at him: I know you did. I knew it, you poor, wicked, sweet, nice kid. (For she still was a kid, no matter how apparently a ripening one.) You vile accomplice.
“Make money by what means, Miss Elser? I take it you had other plans than just fashion design?”
“Naturally.”
“Well?”
“I shan’t tell you. I simply won’t tell you, Mr. Heffernan. I’ve had one person despise me, and I simply shall not have you despise me, and I shall not have Mother. Or Mr. Minkle.”
“Miss Elser.”
“Yes?”
It was like water. You got your hands on something that looked solid and away it ran through your fingers. There was a bitter sort of comfort in knowing that you could put a stop to all such leakage by freezing it.
“How did you get onto the fact that Worthby Haines of Detroit was your father, Robert Warden?”
“I didn’t.”
“Your mother told you, didn’t she?”
“Mother? But this is sheer madness, Mr. Heffernan.”
“Please, Miss Elser, we’re not dramatizing now. For God’s sake, please realize how serious this is. Two men are dead. They have been killed. They have been murdered.”
Nan suddenly stopped looking mature. She dropped her pitiful cloak of being a fallow and an efficient woman of the world and shriveled into a terrified child.
“Yes, I know.”
“Oh, Nan darling.”
“It’s all right, Mother.”
“Please, Mrs. Elser, I’m handling this. You ask me to accept your statement that you did not know that Haines was your father, Miss Elser, so I must do so. Will you also ask me to believe that you did not know Worthby Haines as Worthby Haines?”
“No, I knew him to be Worthby Haines. But I never knew him, Mr. Heffernan. I told Mr. Hangaway that I didn’t know him, didn’t I, Mother?”
“Nan!”
“Oh, so you told Hangaway that, Miss Elser?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
He didn’t see, of course, but the fact in a vague fashion seemed to fit, as any fact might fit in the obvious combine of Hangaway, Haines and Parne. And naturally the two Elsers.
He said, “Just what do you mean by the statement that you knew him but you didn’t know him?”
“I didn’t meet him.”
“Your dealings with him were through Parne, then, or Hangaway? They were your go-betweens?”
“Nan—don’t answer that, Nan!”
Heffernan slammed his clenched fist down on the piecrust table. It became no longer a table. He ignored the wreckage. He ignored everything but his great confusion and his hot, sudden anger. He ignored Nan. His hot, badgered eyes blazed directly at Lily, no longer lovely or a friend. A common murderess. “Here’s my last question for the record, Mrs. Elser.”
“Yes, Mr. Heffernan?”
“Get this carefully, Minkle!”
“Yes sir.”
“Mrs. Elser, I have you on record for the following false statements. You opened the window on discovering Haines’ body because you felt faint. A lie. You opened it to throw the gun out. You did not recognize the gun. But your fingerprints are on it. Now go back. You lifted Parne’s luggage onto the stand. I believe, on the contrary, that Sheffield’s statement is correct and that it was he who did so. You did not search Parne’s bags. Your fingerprints are on the toilet-article case that was in his Gladstone, so you did search his bags. Now the blood.”
“Please, I beg of you, Mr. Heffernan, I want Nan to go.”
“I want her to stay. I repeat, the blood. Parne’s blood. You stated you never entered the room after his death. His blood is on the sleeve of your negligee. So you tell us you lifted him up, by shoving your arm beneath his back, to see whether he was still breathing. Mrs. Elser, no child and, God knows, no jury would believe any stuff like that.”
“Go, Nan darling—”
“Stay right where you are, Miss Elser. Mrs. Elser, I am giving you your last chance. I submit to you that you were not only in Parne’s room after Hangaway had told you about finding the body but you were there at the time of Parne’s death!”
“No—”
“I’m asking you to confess. I’m begging you to confess, Mrs. Elser.”
“No—”
Heffernan’s anger, his stuffed feeling of pumping blood, the hot ringing in his head, all dropped from him, leaving him a little shaken and weak. He shrugged faintly in a gesture of resignation which was, paradoxically, one of defeat at the wry moment of his indisputable triumph.
He said quietly, “After you shot Parne, Mrs. Elser, you wiped your fingerprints off the gun. You then dragged Parne’s body to the hall door and placed his fingerprints on the two knobs. It was an awkward and an obvious job. The sleeve of your negligee became bloodied in that fashion. You dragged Parne back to the spot where he had fallen and then placed the gun in his hand.”
His mouth had an ashy dryness and he tried to moisten it by swallowing before going on. “I will tell you how I know this. I have already explained to you that your fingerprints were clearly found on the smooth leather of his toilet-article case. Well, they were also dearly found on the smooth leather of his bedroom slippers, which came off his feet while you were dragging his body and which you put back on his feet after you had accomplished your stupid purpose.” He ended almost lamely, almost apologetically: “As I have said, there is no escape.”
Lily did not stir. She did not look at Nan. She could tell pretty well, without having to see it, how Nan would be looking. She hoped in her great despair that Nan would not speak, but in her heart of hearts she waited for the word from Nan that would save her, ready to deny it, to deny anything that Nan would say, but wanting the love and the feeling and the comfort of it even if only to remember during that interval when she would be, to all human purposes, alone. She waited just a little while.
And then she said, “How long will I have, Mr. Heffernan?”
He said miserably, “There is no special rush, Mrs. Elser. There’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t stay here in your home while I’m arranging about the warrant. You can get your things in order.” He started to hold out his hand and then drew it back, flushing hotly. “I’ll come for you, Mrs. Elser.”
Dull daylight grayed the windows, and a clock struck six.
* * * *
The kitchen was warm, with a cozy warmness from the range, and bathed in an eerie light from lamps which were absorbed and seemed vitiated by the strengthening gray of morning daylight through the windows.
Nan poured two cups of coffee and said to Gene, “Shall we have it black?”
“Yes, please. Black.”
He meditate
d on the hideous quarter of an hour she must have just gone through to get that wrung look on her face.
Nan said, “Not even sugar?”
“No, thanks. Just black.”
“Here.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve read that the first effects of coffee are to make you drowsy, the way any warm drink will, and that it isn’t for over an hour or so before the caffeine gets to work and peps you up.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I read it either in a paper or in a book.”
It must have been hell. But wasn’t it coming to her, Gene reflected, when you looked at it impartially, with a man-of-the-world point of view? You elected your own role or roles in life, and if you failed to put them across you suffered the consequences. So just! So satisfactory! And so bitter. Fate felled you, regardless of the beauty, charm or sweetness of your shell. It simply ignored all that, and reached inside and twisted your middles. Life was a pendulum—nuts, he said to himself.
“Nuts,” he said aloud.
“Gene!”
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
“Well?”
“About you.”
“Well?”
Scarcely conversation, this. But who wanted it? It chilled Gene to realize what he really did want. He wanted nothing else, no single thing on earth, but to take this creature, this designing tramp, into his arms and let her cry her eyes out against his chest. The folly of it appalled him and vigorously insulted his matured and, now added, worldly sense.
“I’ll have some more, please.”
“Certainly.”
Nan poured coffee with fingers that quite rightly trembled, making the lip of the pot a castanet against the cup.
“I was thinking about your prospects.” (Amazing that these words should be coming out, shoving a rude course up through all of his good worldly wisdom!) “I was thinking that the best thing you can do is to marry me and be damned quick about it.”