Who Killed Blanche DuBois?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  “You see, Detective, I’m not much for confined spaces, and now that the jig is up, as they say, I’d rather just throw in the towel, so why don’t you just go ahead and shoot? You know, you could always say that she just ran in the way of the bullet at the last moment. I think that’s a fair offer, don’t you?”

  “Now, just take it easy. If you give yourself up now, we can work something out,” Jackson said.

  “Oh, you are stupid, aren’t you—but then, I already knew that. I mean, to have fallen for my little ruse with the planted syringe—that was just for fun, for God’s sake, a little joke! But you actually believed it and arrested that poor excuse for an editor! Of course, I did use his syringe originally, and I wasn’t going to plant it at all, but you were having such a hard time I thought I’d give you something to go on. Good Lord, it was hardly a challenge, deceiving you— though I must admit I did have fun with the subway caper!”

  “So you did murder Amelia Moore,” Jackson said, his voice steady.

  “Let’s just say I assisted her with a well-timed shove, and the train did the rest. She was a talker, that woman. I found that out at the Duke class reunion; I found out a lot of other interesting things, too, by the way—like what our friend Blanche was up to. Too bad she was such a busybody. I don’t know how she found those photographs; my old friend Jeff assured me the negatives had been destroyed, but I guess he lied to me. I should have taken him out, too.” He laughed and tightened his grip on Claire. “I should have taken you out in the woods, too; I gave up after one shot because I was afraid someone would see me.

  “Your friend Blanche was stupid, though. If she had called the police instead of you that night she saw my picture at the party, she might still be alive. She was right about one thing, though: I did kill that nigger she was dating at UNC.”

  He ran the sharp edge of the letter opener lightly over Claire’s throat. “Didn’t you wonder just a little bit why things moved so fast between us, sweetheart? Not that you aren’t fascinating, of course, but did it never occur to you that I was a little too interested in your line of work?”

  “So you were just using me to get to Blanche,” Claire said.

  “Well, her address and number were unlisted; I had to get them somehow. And you have to admit, you kept me well posted on her career. I couldn’t very well allow her to finish that book, could I? You know, it’s funny; I thought that killing white people would feel different than killing niggers, but it really isn’t any different.”

  Jackson took a step forward.

  James White tightened his grip on Claire. “One more step and she goes over the railing.”

  Jackson looked up at Claire, who was white-faced, her eyes closed. He took a step backward and glanced behind him for Meredith, but she was gone. Maybe she had run into the street to flag down the backup cars that were patrolling the street, though Jackson wasn’t sure what use they would be right now.

  Actually, Meredith had left the house, but not to find the police. Closing the front door softly behind her, she ran down the side alley to the back garden, let herself in through the gate, and then in through the kitchen door, which was unlocked. She crept through the kitchen, and saw the perfectly sharpened knives in their rack. Her hand trembling, she removed one—a long, thin, carving knife—from its wooden slot, then she crept up the back staircase. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she reached the top, but she had to try something. She tiptoed through the back bedroom and into the hallway, stopping when she caught sight of Claire and her captor.

  “Go ahead, Detective—shoot. What are you waiting for?” he was saying, and did not hear Meredith as she crawled up to the door separating the bedroom from the hall. A long thin green carpet ran the length of the hall, and Meredith saw that one of his feet was on the runner, the other on the wood floor.

  Claire whimpered a little as he tightened his grip around her neck. “Do you know, I was getting a little tired of this already? Well, Detective, what shall it be? What are you going to do? Do I have to make all the decisions around here?”

  Meredith reached for the carpet. She took a deep breath, swallowed, then pulled it as hard as she could. Caught off guard, James White staggered as the foot on the carpet was pulled out from under him. Claire screamed and pulled away, and his grip on her was momentarily loosened. He recovered, though, and grabbed her again, and it was at that moment that Meredith leaped forward and plunged the carving knife into his leg. He screamed and instinctively reached for his leg, this time allowing Claire to break free.

  “Run, Claire—run!” Meredith yelled as the murderer wheeled and saw her. He started to reach for her, and the look on his face was so horrible that Meredith screamed, so loud that the sound filled her own head completely and she did not hear the gunshot. The murderer’s hand holding the letter opener shot out toward her, then suddenly jerked and twitched. His eyes widened in surprise. The look of hate that had twisted his features was suddenly transformed into one of astonishment, and he turned awkwardly back toward Jackson. It was then that Meredith saw the tiny trickle of blood that seeped from his chest just above his heart. Moving in slow motion, he grasped the banister and took one unsure step down the stairs, ignoring Claire, who had collapsed weeping in the corner. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then his legs gave way and he fell, tumbling down the stairs as if he were a rag doll, arms and legs banging against the steps all the way. When he reached the bottom he lay still, facedown. It was then that Meredith realized she was still screaming, and had been screaming non-stop since the moment when she pulled the rug. She quieted abruptly, and the sudden silence was startling.

  Jackson approached the inert form warily, holding his gun with both hands out in front of him, pointing it at the man’s head. Claire picked herself up slowly, shakily, using the wall for support. Slowly she began to walk down the stairs, her legs trembling with every step. Meredith followed, her throat dry and sore from screaming.

  “Is he . . .?” she said in a voice so soft that it was barely a whisper.

  Jackson rolled the body over with his foot, and as soon as Meredith saw the upturned face with its open staring eyes, she knew. Meredith had never seen death before, and she realized at that moment that at some point she had lost control of her bladder.

  Chapter 27

  The media circus that followed the resolution of the case centered around Meredith and Claire, and while Claire quietly yearned for it to be over, the girl enjoyed the whole thing enormously. She returned reporters’ phone calls, gave interviews, and even appeared on the popular PBS children’s program Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? When her father came into town to take her back to Connecticut for the Christmas holidays, she presented him with a pile of newspaper clippings.

  “Of course, it was my idea for Detective Jackson to go through Amelia’s mail,” she said, swinging her legs under her stool as she and Claire sat with her father at the counter at Rumplemeyer’s. “But when he finally came across the entry from Blanche’s diary, I had already solved it.”

  “What was in the diary?” said Ted Lawrence.

  “It said, ‘He has returned—he is here to get me, if he doesn’t get Claire first,’” said Meredith. “Detective Jackson showed it to me.”

  “So then what did you find on the answering machine?” said Ted Lawrence, stirring his pot of chocolate.

  “Oh, there was a message from Blanche to Claire. The night of Amelia’s party Claire showed her a picture of Robert, and she recognized him as James White, her old boyfriend from college, the one she had always suspected of murdering Cliff, her black boyfriend—the one she threw James over for.”

  Ted Lawrence nodded. “I see. So Blanche tried to warn Claire that night.”

  “Right. She left a message saying that she was sure Robert and James were the same person, and that Claire should call her immediately.”

  Ted Lawrence turned to Claire. “But why didn’t you ever hear the message?”

  “Mered
ith asked me the same thing. I went over all of my actions the weekend Blanche was killed, and I finally remembered coming back from a walk and finding Ralph playing with the answering machine. The tape was lying on the floor; I must have put the tape in on the wrong side, because Meredith told me that she turned the tape over to hear Blanche’s message.”

  The same two well-dressed old ladies who had eaves-dropped on the earlier conversation at Rumplemeyer’s sat at the other end of the fountain counter, resplendent in their flowered hats and white gloves. When they heard the word “killed” there was a noticeable upward adjustment in their posture. “So Robert—James—was just pretending to be English all that time?”

  “Yup,” said Meredith. “It was part of his cover. It’s not that much of a stretch from upper-class Virginian to British.”

  “Did you ever find out who was calling you and hanging up?” Ted Lawrence asked.

  Meredith licked whipped cream from her spoon. “I’m pretty sure it was Robert—I mean James White—checking up on Claire. I think he heard Blanche’s message to Claire the night of the party, and that was how he knew he had to act quickly.”

  “How could he have heard it?”

  Meredith turned to Claire. “You said you went out Saturday morning, right?”

  “Right—and when I returned I found the cat playing with the tape on the floor.”

  “Right. Well, I think Robert called in from Hudson, picked up the message for you from Blanche, and that’s when he decided to kill her.”

  The two ladies at the end of the counter stopped stirring their chocolate and leaned toward Meredith.

  “But how . . .?” said Claire.

  “It’s easy enough. I saw you pick up your messages from Hudson: you just call your machine and then press the ‘2’ key on a Touch-Tone phone. Anyone could do it.”

  “But how did Robert know?”

  “Oh, come on, Claire,” Meredith said scornfully. “All he had to do was look over your shoulder once when you were checking your messages to see what key you pressed—child’s play for someone like him.”

  “Hmm . . . I see what you mean.” Claire shuddered at the thought of Robert having access to all her phone messages.

  “Well, it’s over now,” said Ted Lawrence sympathetically. “You can go on with your life.”

  The ladies at the end of the counter relaxed visibly at these words, their faces expressing both disappointment and satisfaction.

  If Meredith was basking in the publicity surrounding her triumph, Claire was blaming herself for Blanche and Amelia’s deaths. She felt that if she had been able to see Robert for who he was, the entire tragedy would have been avoided.

  “But it wasn’t you, don’t you see that?” said Sarah one day over a glass of Merlot. “He would have found another way in sooner or later, and maybe even more people would have died.”

  Claire shook her head. She appreciated Sarah’s kindness—she had grown fond of Blanche’s sister during the events of the past few months—but she still felt responsibility lie heavily on her shoulders. If she had only seen him for who he was, she might have discovered clues that could have prevented everything. The idea haunted her days and nights, until she had to talk to someone about it. When she came to this conclusion, only one person came to mind: Wallace Jackson.

  It was a rainy Tuesday in December when they met, at the same Indian restaurant where she had first stumbled upon him by accident so many weeks earlier. The garden was closed now, so they met in the main dining room, sitting within view of the rapacious devourer of goldfish, who ignored them, swimming around slowly in his tank. Claire thought that he was sinister looking, even if you weren’t a goldfish.

  Wallace Jackson arrived looking rumpled as usual, but she noticed that the missing button on his trench coat had been replaced. The sight of it caused a wave of disappointment to pass over her: could it be there was a woman in his life now, and if so, was it serious? Or had he finally sewn the button on himself, prompted by the glare of the publicity spotlight which had suddenly been focused on the Ninth Precinct? Jackson was a hero to some people, but he had shot a suspect, and although it was actually the fall and not the shot that had killed James White, there was a routine departmental investigation of the shooting. (Peter had been cheered up to no end by this; after his close encounter with the justice system, he dined out for weeks on the story of his arrest.)

  Jackson settled into his chair with the same air of weary intelligence which had so impressed Claire on their first meeting.

  “How have you been?” he said in a way that made her feel he was really interested in the answer.

  “Oh, pretty good,” she answered, wanting to avoid coming to the point. Now that she was actually face-to-face with him, she felt her personal anguish was silly. The murderer had been caught; it was all over, so why couldn’t she just let it go?

  “Where’s Meredith?” he said.

  “Oh, she’s in Connecticut for the holidays.”

  “That’s too bad. I mean, you must miss her.”

  “Yes, I do. I—” she began, and then stopped. I what? I want you to say something to me to make me feel better, give me a reason not to hate myself over this whole thing.

  “Does she take full credit for the discovery of the murderer’s identity, or does she share it with me?” he said.

  “Oh, you mean the diary? Well, she likes to point out that you found it, but it was her idea that you go through Amelia’s mail.”

  “True enough. And of course she found the message from Blanche on your machine.”

  Claire picked at her vegetable samosa. “Right.”

  “Oh, by the way, did her stepmother ever turn up after her disappearance?” he said.

  “Yes, she did—the next day, actually. She had checked into a detox center and was too embarrassed to call her husband and tell him.”

  Jackson smiled and his hands twisted the pink linen napkin in his lap.

  “Oh, well . . . maybe that will improve Meredith’s home life.”

  “I hope so,” she said, and wondered why the thought gave her so little comfort. Perhaps it was because she wanted Meredith for herself, and she wasn’t sure what was going to happen after the holidays were over.

  “How is Sergeant Barker?” she said, searching for something, anything, other than what was on her mind.

  Jackson smiled.

  “Oh, he’s fine. He landed a role in a student film, playing a gangster, of all things.”

  “I would never buy him as a gangster.”

  “Me neither—but, then, you never know . . .”

  There was a pause and Claire heard the rain dripping slowly from the roof onto the street outside as cars whooshed by on First Avenue.

  “Do you think . . .” she began.

  “What?”

  “Do you think he would have tried to kill me if I hadn’t discovered the photographs?”

  Jackson shook his head.

  “I don’t know. I think they represented the main threat to him—unless the book itself revealed information which pointed to him.”

  “It’s so odd that he escaped being charged with the murder of those marchers. I mean, other people were charged.”

  “It’s not that odd, really. From what I read about the incident there was a lot of confusion that day. I can see how one of the shooters could have slipped away in the commotion. He was just unlucky that someone caught him on film.”

  Claire shook her head.

  “I’ll never know how Blanche tracked down those photographs.”

  “Well, she was a woman with a mission. When she discovered that the man she thought had murdered Cliff had probably also killed others, she must have seen her chance to bring him to justice.”

  “Yeah, and she did in a way, but the cost was . . .” Claire trailed off. She looked at the giant silver fish in its tank, swimming back and forth, back and forth. The little clump of goldfish hovered in the far corner of the tank, trapped in their glass prison until
their jailer got hungry.

  “You know, it can take a while to get over something like this,” Jackson said. “How are you doing with all of that?”

  “Oh, all right, I guess . . .”

  He looked at her, all the weariness drained from his eyes. “You don’t look all right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He coughed delicately and twisted his napkin.

  “Excuse me if I’m prying, but I’ve seen this before, you know. I’ve been through it myself, so I guess you might say I’m an expert on it.”

  It. Did it have a name, this obsessive replaying of the past, this refusal to accept the outcome of events, the incessant nagging desire to turn back the clock?

  “There was nothing you could have done, you know,” he said simply. It was neither an excuse nor an explanation: it was just a statement of facts.

  “But I keep thinking—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t keep thinking; it will only hurt you. What you have to do is stop thinking and just go on—move on with your life.”

  “But I can’t help wondering . . .”

  “Wondering what you could have done—should have done—differently? Stop wondering. The chances are that you couldn’t have done anything, but even if you could have, you have to stop thinking about it or it will poison your mind.”

  Claire smiled ironically. Poison. From beginning to end, she and her friends had been poisoned.

  “Like I said,” Jackson continued, “you’re going to have to stop thinking about it sooner or later, so why not stop now? You can’t spend the rest of your life wondering what you could have done. You just have to let it go.”

  The fervor in his tone made her look at him, and she saw his grey eyes, so full of need, so full of feelings she couldn’t even begin to identify. She felt at that moment how thin the line between compassion and desire, and she was flooded with both.

  “What did you do?” she said softly, not wishing to open old wounds, but needing the answer.