It was late afternoon before the autopsy report came in from Cold Harbor Hospital.
Florence Wainright had been white, female, in her late forties or early fifties. She had been well-nourished. Visceral analysis showed 11.6 mg of barbiturate in 500 gm liver tissue. Blood analysis showed 2.5 parts of alcohol per thousand in the blood. Death had resulted from congestion of the lungs.
The pathologist added information for the nonprofessional. “Probably in a coma at time of death from combination of alcohol and barbiturates. Percentage of alcohol in blood would indicate considerable state of intoxication at time barbiturate was ingested. Almost certainly a degree of physical incapacity and difficulty of articulation.”
So Mrs. Florence Wainright had staggered on the way up the stairs to the room she died in, and her husband had needed to help her up. She had slurred her words, if she had had words to say.
13
For Lyle Mercer it was a dark afternoon of odds and ends. “Dig up what you can about Florence Wainright.” She dug up what she could, which was not much. She telephoned a resident she knew at the Cold Harbor Hospital and asked about the results of the autopsy on the body of Florence Wainright. The resident was sorry, Lyle, nothing for the press on it. Anyway, he didn’t know whether it had been completed. Anyway, it would be the pathologist who would report the findings, assuming the State cops wanted him to, which they probably wouldn’t.
She telephoned the Wainright house and got “Mr. Wainright’s residence” and no, Mr. Wainright wasn’t talking to anybody, and neither was anybody else. She looked in the files and there was nothing about the Wainrights, except that they had bought the Kynes house on Long Hill Road and that Paul Wainright was a “distinguished architect.” She looked up Paul Wainright in “Who’s Who”—last year’s, which was all the Citizen had—and he was not listed in it.
Rain beat against the Citizen building and wind shook it. And this was to have been the day of the annual Sidewalk Sale, during which the merchants along Van Brunt Avenue put out on sidewalk tables at reduced prices articles which weren’t moving very well. She called the Chamber of Commerce and learned that the Sidewalk Sale had been postponed until Thursday because of “inclement weather,” and the radio said it was going on raining cats and dogs at least through tomorrow. So it was to be, “The Annual Sidewalk Sale, postponed from Tuesday because of the heavy rain, was scheduled to have been held today (Thursday) along the length of Van Brunt Avenue.” A weekly newspaper encounters a good many “was to have beens” in regard to events scheduled for press day. She telephoned the Van Brunt police and learned that the Van Brunt area known as The Flats was flooding and that cars were still getting through if they were careful but that the village policeman—name of Asa Purvis—wouldn’t want to guess how long they’d be able to. She telephoned the “Activities Director” at Van Brunt High School and learned that preparations for the Hallowe’en party to be held in the school gymnasium—with the idea of keeping the kids away from rural mailboxes—were going along swimmingly and that there was going to be an accordion. She wrote several paragraphs about the death, in Coral Gables, of Angus Ferguson, formerly a resident of Van Brunt, in his ninety-eighth year.
Behind the closed door of Robert Wallis’s office a typewriter was sounding in frantic spurts and longer pauses. He certainly bangs hard when he bangs at all, Lyle thought. It was fun having lunch with him after he got over being so mad at Inspector Heimrich. Reginald Peterson’s typewriter tapped slowly. There was always a kind of anxiety about the sound of Reggie’s typewriter.
Lyle edited the weekly report, “Happenings in Cold Harbor,” taking out exclamation points, to which Hazel Frompton was addicted. She took out little else; Hazel was paid space rates and needed the money. Besides, she almost always spelled names correctly and she used a lot of them.
At a little after five, the telephone rang on her desk. She said, “The Van Brunt Citizen,” into it and her mother said, “Lyle darling. They say the Saw Mill’s flooded and your father thinks—”
Lytton and Grace Mercer had driven into the city that morning, Mercer to the office it was his day for, and Grace with him to “do some shopping.” They were not people to let a little rain stop them, and anyway, it probably wouldn’t last long. Grace Mercer was one to look on the bright side of things.
But now, calling from New York, there was no bright side of things to look on.
“He thinks,” Grace told her daughter, “that it would be foolish and even risky to drive home on a night like this and that we’d better stay over at the Princeton Club and drive up tomorrow, and will you be all right, dear? Because it’s Katy’s afternoon off, you know, and you know what the television means to her.”
Katy is half the Mercers’ couple. She is an admirable cook and a woman who knows her rights.
“I’ll be fine, Mother,” Lyle said. “Just fine. I’ll get something out of the freezer.”
“Not one of those terrible TV dinners,” Grace said, and was firm about it. “Promise me that, dear.”
“Promised,” Lyle said. “Have a good time, both of you.”
“There aren’t any taxicabs,” Grace Mercer said. “And you know how your father is about parking the car. Is it raining up there?”
“Torrents.”
“You will be careful driving?”
“Very careful, Mother.”
“You should have gone home hours ago while it was still light.”
“There were things to do,” Lyle said. “And Mr. Wallis hasn’t given me good night.”
“That man,” Grace Mercer said. “Do be careful, dear.”
“I’ll be very careful, Mother,” Lyle said. “I’ll be perfectly all right.”
A trouble with older people is that they worry about the simplest things. They don’t understand that young people can take care of themselves.
At a quarter of six, the door of Robert Wallis’s office flew open and Wallis jutted out of it. He said, “You still here? I told you to go home, child.” On the first sentence his voice grated; on the second it was unexpectedly softer.
“I didn’t hear you, Mr. Wallis,” Lyle said.
“Unless you want to come upstairs and have a drink with me,” Wallis said.
“No,” she said. “Not with all this rain to drive in.”
He said, “All right. Be careful, child,” and went back into his office, closing the door. After a few minutes, while Lyle was putting on a coat and a rain hat, Wallis’s typewriter started up again. It started up fast, and then it stopped. As she went out of the outer editorial room, Lyle could hear Robert Wallis walking in his office. He was stamping, really. When he was writing his lead editorial he always wrote in spurts and stamped between them. This week, Lyle thought—going out into the rain, running to her little Volks—it probably will be about the zoning board. He’s very annoyed with the zoning board.
Wind shook the little car as she drove it a block up Van Brunt Avenue and rain beat on it. The lights groped dimly through driving rain as she climbed familiar hills toward home. To get anywhere in the town of Van Brunt it is necessary to climb hills, or creep down them.
There wasn’t really anything to worry about, Lyle thought, creeping around curves. There were, to be sure, signs of warning—“Slippery When Wet.” But she had no attention to pay to signs.
Most people were staying home tonight. Only once in the four slow miles from the Citizen to the big house she lived in did contesting lights blur at her through the rain. She slowed and pulled far right and the other car slowed too and they edged past each other. She almost missed her own drive when she got to it, but didn’t miss it and went up it, wet gravel crunching under tires.
The house was not quite dark; Katy had left the hall light on. Not the porch light; Katy believes electricity is meant to be saved.
Lyle turned the Volks toward the big three-car garage and said, “Damn.” All three doors of the garage were closed. She had, she was quite sure she had, left open the overhe
ad door to the section the Volks lived in. Katy? Who thought that doors open to an empty garage enticed burglars and worse? Lyle said “Damn” again, which didn’t help particularly, and got out of the Volks and ran to the garage and jerked the door up. It stuck for a moment, as it always did. It flew up and banged against its stops. She ran back to the car and drove into the garage, her lights flooding it.
And at the far end of the garage there was movement—movement quick and light and out of the car’s beams. For a moment she was frightened and for that moment merely sat in the car and felt that she was shaking slightly. Then she rolled her window down and said, loudly, “Who is it?”
For a moment there was no answer. Then a very small voice came out of the semidarkness—out of a shadowy corner of the big garage. It was a woman’s voice—almost a child’s voice—and it trembled.
“Miss Mercer? Is it Miss Mercer?”
“Yes,” Lyle said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
She was no longer frightened; the trembling young voice had no threat in it.
“Lucy, ma’am,” the girl said, and then she came out into the brightness of the headlights. “Lucy Fowler. I thought you’d never come. Never, never come. That nobody would come to help me.”
Lyle swung out of the car and went up to the girl, who stood still in the light.
“Help you, Lucy?” Lyle said. “I don’t understand.”
“I had to run,” Lucy Fowler said, and her voice shook. “They’ll blame me. They always blame us. You know they do, Miss Mercer. You know they do.”
Lyle went up to the slight, dark girl and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. The girl was trembling; her shoulders were wet. She wore the uniform Lyle had seen her in at the Wainright house, and the thin cotton uniform clung, was plastered to, Lucy’s slender body.
“You seemed nice,” Lucy said. “I had to get away and hide. I don’t know anybody around here, miss. And it’s awfully cold.” The slight, wet girl was shaking with the cold.
“Inside,” Lyle said. “You can tell me inside.”
She put an arm around the shaking shoulders.
“It’ll be all right,” Lyle said. “Nobody will blame you for anything.”
“You don’t know,” Lucy said. “You’re white, miss. You don’t know. She’s dead, Miss Mercer. Dead and cold.”
“Yes,” Lyle said. “Mrs. Wainright is dead. Come on!”
She had to tug at the girl to get her to move. But then she did and, with Lyle’s arm still around the shivering shoulders, they ran together through the rain to the porch. Lyle found her fingers were shaking as she groped for the key in her handbag. Released from the holding arm, Lucy moved as if she were about to run out into the night.
“No,” Lyle said, “it will be warm inside,” and the slim, dark girl in a cotton uniform which dripped on flagstones went with her to the wide front door.
The key turned—sometimes it stuck—and Lyle pushed the wide door open. It was warm inside—warm and dry inside. She closed the door after them and said, “Come on, Lucy,” and again put a guiding arm around wet shoulders. “Upstairs,” Lyle said, and when they had crossed the big entrance hall to the staircase at the far end of it, flicked a light switch, and light went on bright at the head of the stairs.
Lucy Fowler was obedient to the guiding arm around her shoulders. She kept on shaking, shivering. They went along a corridor and Lyle pushed open the door to her room and flicked another switch and light leaped into the room.
“I had to run,” Lucy said, in the same small, shaking voice. “I had to run. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“You’re all right now,” Lyle said. “Nobody’ll chase you here. Get out of those things.” She closed her bedroom door. “Before,” Lyle said, “you catch your death.” The worn words sounded strange in her own ears. “Or pneumonia, anyway,” Lyle said. She reached for the zipper of the soaked uniform.
“No, miss,” Lucy said. “You don’t need to help me. I’ll do it.”
She pulled the zipper down and the uniform sopped on the floor. She stood shivering in pants and bra.
“Everything,” Lyle said. “And then a hot bath.”
She went into the bathroom and turned hot water on in the tub. When she went back, Lucy was still in bra and pants and white shoes. She was looking around the big, softly lighted room; at the wide, low bed.
“Get undressed,” Lyle said. “The water’s running.” For seconds, Lucy Fowler stood without moving, except that she still shook with the cold. “Do what I say,” Lyle said. “Do you hear me, Lucy?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “I hear you, Miss Mercer.”
She did what she had been told to do. Actually, Lyle thought, looking at her, watching her cross the room, carrying her wet clothes, toward the bath, it’s good color to be. If it were only a color, only a skin’s color. It’s a warm, fine color.
“As hot as you can stand it,” she said to the back of the delicately moving, slender girl.
Lucy said, “Yes, Miss Mercer,” and went into the bathroom and closed the door after her. Lyle wished the frightened girl had left the door open, but when she went across the room and stood outside the closed door, she heard splashing sounds from beyond it and then, a girl’s “Ow!” Too hot, obviously. But that was up to the girl.
Lyle Mercer went to her closet and got a winter robe out of it. She hung the robe on the knob of the bathroom door and, belatedly, took off her own coat and rain hat. The coat was wet. Lyle turned a thermostat up and a radiator began to talk about the hot water running through it. Lyle looped the wet topcoat over the radiator and sat in a low chair and lighted a cigarette. Now, she thought, I could use that drink he offered me. She waited.
After a time she heard a splashing sound as the girl got out of the tub. Then for minutes, which seemed like long minutes, she heard nothing. She crushed out her cigarette and started to get up to go to the closed door. But then the door opened and Lucy, slim and rounded and brown, stood in the doorway. She said, “I washed the tub, miss. Is it all right if I leave the wet things on the radiator?”
“Of course,” Lyle said. “Put the robe on, Lucy.”
Lucy looked at the white, warm winter robe. She looked at Lyle.
“Put it on,” Lyle said, and Lucy put the woolly white robe on. Involuntarily, Lyle thought, she snuggled in it.
“Come and sit down,” Lyle said. “Have a cigarette.”
“No, miss,” the girl said. “I don’t smoke.”
But she came to a chair and sat in it. She pulled the robe close around her, and Lyle thought, She’s hiding her darkness in the robe.
“Why were you scared, Lucy? Tell me what frightened you.”
“She’s dead,” Lucy said. “They’ll blame me somehow. I was supposed to take care of her. Mr. Wainright told me to take care of her.”
Lyle shook her head.
“You don’t understand,” Lucy said. “Really you don’t, miss. They always blame us when something bad happens. They’ll say I did something to her to—to make her die that way. They’ll tell the policemen I did something and the policemen will hurt me.”
“Lucy,” Lyle said, and spoke slowly, “nobody did anything to make Mrs. Wainright die. She took too many sleeping pills. They’re almost sure of that. Maybe she forgot how many she’d taken. Maybe she meant to take too many. But nobody thinks anybody did anything to her.”
“She did forget things,” Lucy said. “Especially when she—” The girl stopped with that and shook her head.
“Lucy,” Lyle said, “we brought her home the other night. Mr. Wallis and I. She’d—well, she’d had too much to drink. She forgot things that night. Was she that way last night?”
“Sort of,” Lucy said. “She was a nice lady, miss. But sometimes she got that way. She didn’t use to. When I first went to work for her she never did. That was in the city. After Mr. Gant died and before she married Mr. Wainright.”
“It was after she married Mr. Wainright she
started drinking too much?”
“No’m. Not right away. It was after that awful accident in the other place. You hear about that, Miss Mercer?”
“When her daughter was killed,” Lyle said. “Yes, I’ve heard about that. Last night, Lucy. Had she had a good deal to drink last night?”
“Yes’m,” Lucy said. “I guess so, miss. Mr. Wainright helped her upstairs and told me to take care of her. Sometimes she wanted me to sleep in the room with her. Not in the same room, really. There’s a sort of dressing room off her bedroom and I sleep in there when she wants me to.”
“Was that often?”
“The last few weeks it was almost every night,” Lucy said. “I was already there last night when he—when she came upstairs. I hadn’t gone to bed because—because I never did until I was sure she was all right.”
She’s more relaxed now, Lyle thought. It is good for her to talk about it. To tell somebody about it.
“Mr. Wainright came up with her,” Lyle said. “And?”
“Told me to take care of her. So—”
So, she had helped Mrs. Wainright into bed, after Wainright had gone downstairs again. “To be with Mr. Gant and Mrs. Gant.” She had got a glass of water and got out Mrs. Wainright’s pills. “The yellow pills she always took.” Lucy had held her up while she took one of the pills and left another on the table by the bed, because sometimes Mrs. Wainright woke up in the night and wanted another pill.
“And I put the bottle back in the table drawer,” Lucy said. “The way I always did. Because Mr. Wainright was afraid she’d forget she’d had her medicine and take it again. He told me always to do that. And I did last night, miss. They’ll say I didn’t, but I did.”
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