Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  “Because if it weren’t for the van I’d kidnap you and take you back with me on the plane.”

  “There’s only one seat available,” I reminded him.

  “I don’t like leaving you.”

  I didn’t particularly like being left but I thought it would be a good chance to gain a sense of perspective. I mean, in the space of four and a half days a great deal had happened to me, and I could see that some stabilization might be therapeutic. Was I, for instance, still me? Could I still function alone, or was my confidence going to collapse as soon as Joe left? I remembered that originally I had planned to take this trip alone, which seemed inconceivable to me now.

  The airport was a far cry from La Guardia. We bumped over a dirt road to a parking lot surrounding a wooden building, parked the van, and walked into a room with long wooden benches and a tiny counter. Out by the hangar in the back a few small planes sat like swollen birds. A bearded young man dozed in one corner, his feet on his dufflebag. While Joe paid for his ticket I read the same ubiquitous political posters: VOTE FOR SILAS WHITNEY! VOTE FOR ANGUS TUTTLE! but I was spared any photographs this time. A noisy family of six arrived, followed by a well-dressed businessman with an attaché case. The businessman wore huge round spectacles and appeared singularly out of place. As if aware of this he was careful not to look at anyone.

  In the interests of seeing Garwin Mason before he left his office I kissed Joe good-by as soon as he’d bought his ticket, and resolutely walked out without looking back. I shed a few tears as I drove away, watching myself like a hawk for any more dubious forms of grief. “Forty-eight hours, Amelia,” I reminded myself. “You’ll be back in Trafton in forty-eight hours and it’s no big deal, right?”

  Wrong. I was going to have to keep very busy.

  It was at this moment, driving down the highway and still brooding over Joe’s departure, that one of those crazy thunderbolts interrupted my thoughts to prove how industriously the subconscious works over puzzles long after they’ve been put aside. I mean, I know quite a lot about the subconscious because once therapy started opening me up, it was amazing the dreams that surfaced to explain what had happened to me and how I’d really felt about things; it was like a little box that had recorded everything I’d forgotten or couldn’t understand. Now there slipped into my mind four small words from Hannah’s letter that I’d never really noticed.

  Hannah had written, “I will hide this somewhere in a different place and perhaps someday someone will find it.”

  In a different place.

  Different from what place?

  I’d read the letter dozens of times, and so had Joe, and I’d skimmed over the phrase assuming she’d meant the hurdy-gurdy was a “different” kind of place in which to conceal a note, as indeed it was. Now I found myself looking at these four words from a new angle, as if I were inside of the mind that wrote them, and from this angle it seemed a very curious phrase to use unless Hannah had already hidden something else. I saw it as four words written without awareness or intention, a trick of Hannah’s thought processes that insisted on accuracy. It suddenly meant to me “I will not hide it in the same place.”

  I put my foot down on the gas pedal and roared into the parking area of the Golden Kingfisher Motel, raced into unit 18, and fumbled through my papers for a copy of Hannah’s note. The words were waiting for me, I hadn’t imagined them: my subconscious had known they were there all along. I stood with the note in my hand and thought about this carefully. I was remembering the length of time that Hannah had been locked in that room, long enough to acquaint her very well with all its corners and to learn its hiding places. What might she have wanted to conceal from the “faceless ones” as soon as she realized that she was a prisoner?

  Garwin Mason had stated firmly that Hannah’s second book had been completed. Because it had never been found I had leaped to the conclusion that Hannah’s murderers must have destroyed the manuscript. Could she possibly have been carrying In the Land of the Golden Warriors with her when she entered the box room, and hidden it there?

  It all depended, of course, on just how she’d been lured there in the first place, which was something I’d not thought about before. Considering it now, however, I couldn’t conceive of John Tuttle enticing her there because she would have known, then, that he was involved. It seemed to me quite logical to suppose that she’d gone there of her own volition: to get something out of a trunk, perhaps? Was it where she did some of her writing, or did she use the room for what Mrs. Morneau called her “thinking” and her meditating? The latter seemed to hold the more potential: the room was too hot for working but it was dim and quiet, far removed from the distracting sounds in the house. It would have been a very good place for meditating.

  What else could she have possibly concealed earlier, before she hid her letter in the hurdy-gurdy?

  The contrary part of me pointed out that she might have wanted to hide an extremely valuable diamond ring that she wore on her finger. Or an heirloom pin.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, “I know Hannah now and she wouldn’t have considered jewelry important enough to hide. With all her money she chose privacy and simplicity, I doubt that she even wore jewelry.”

  “Well, she certainly wouldn’t go around carrying a manuscript with her,” retorted that perverse self.

  “Why not?” I asked. “It’s a large house, she might have carried it the way some women carry around their knitting, or she might have been planning to work on it as soon as she left the box room.”

  “And have hidden it where?” asked that other me.

  “Exactly,” I said out loud, and felt the first lift of excitement. There was the bureau, for one thing, which I’d given only a cursory inspection. I was sure it was the same bureau, never removed, for who would want to refurbish a box room? There was also the filthy old mattress, so full of craters and hills that it must have lain there for years; and there was the floor. I hadn’t looked for any loose floor boards, it hadn’t even occurred to me until now.

  The possibilities were fragile but my hopes were rising; I had convinced myself now that Hannah had hidden the sequel in the box room. It might no longer be there but I knew with absolute certainty that I couldn’t leave for Trafton in the morning without looking for it. Even the remotest possibility of finding an unpublished Gruble manuscript—the missing sequel to The Maze in the Heart of the Castle—left me shaken. If it was there—poor Joe, I thought, to miss such a triumph!

  I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock and I’d promised Joe that I’d leave early tomorrow. I didn’t think I’d be able to find Bob Tuttle in his real estate office at this hour and, even if I did, I wondered how I could possibly explain my interest in taking apart the box room. I sat down on the bed and thought about this problem, and of course there was only one solution, which I accepted very calmly.

  11

  I drove first to a hardware store and purchased what I needed, and then I headed for Carleton, conscientiously remaining inside the speed limit to please Joe. I passed Simon Pritchett’s General Store, veered right at the intersection on to Tuttle Road, and turned into the driveway of Hannah’s house. I drove the car across the grass and around to the rear, out of sight, and cut the engine. Climbing out, I grasped the flashlight and the tool kit I’d bought, and prepared to burgle Hannah’s house.

  Morally I felt relatively sanguine about committing this illegal act, for the crusading spirit was high in me and I thought that if pressed hard I could always buy the house, although all I wanted from it was a manuscript. But I soon discovered certain practical drawbacks to the tidy professional job I’d planned. For one thing the wind was rising in that insistent and menacing way that suggests a brewing thunderstorm, and the back door, which I’d considered removing by unscrewing its hinges, was over-sized and built for the ages. Expediency won: after studying the situation I simply broke one of the small panes of glass in the door and reached inside to unbolt the lock. I told mys
elf that, if I recovered a sequel to Hannah’s book, Bob Tuttle might forgive my larceny but just in case he didn’t see things my way I would place ten dollars in an envelope and mail it to him in the morning.

  Once inside the house the cold hit me like a fist, a flat damp cold that had been building for eight months and needed more than a few warm days to dispel. I was surprised at the difference that companions had made on my earlier visit. For instance, as I left the kitchen and passed the door to the cellar, I could feel prickles run up and down my spine as if four murderers walked behind me, and at any moment I might hear Hannah’s scream. The house was not at all quiet, either; every board that I put a foot on sent out a small groan of protest in the cold, and the wind outside wrapped itself around the exterior and made whispery moaning sounds. I hurried up the staircase to the second floor and here I found it so dark that I had to turn on my flashlight: I didn’t like this, either. Only one thought kept me going: Hannah’s manuscript In the Land of the Golden Warriors, and what Joe would say if I found it after all these years. It would certainly be a smashing denouement to our trip north. I could picture his explosion—“Amelia, you promised!”—and then his quick, marvelous smile, a hug, a kiss and about three minutes of intense questioning during which I would be given a few hints as to how wonderful I was, how intelligent, and how clever.

  I opened the door to the attic and propped it wide with a brick in spite of its having neither lock nor key. I walked up the several steps to the box room, which Bob Tuttle had left unlocked, and opened the door and walked in, closing it behind me to shut out the darkness and the sounds of wind.

  Hannah, I said silently, I’ve come back.

  It was dim and silent in here; I switched on my flashlight and placed it on the bureau, and then with the screwdriver I’d brought I began to remove the rear panel of the bureau. This didn’t take long because the back had been made of cheap wood that began to splinter before I’d removed two of its screws. I felt a little foolish when it was done: the bureau was quite simply a bureau, and empty at that.

  Carrying the flashlight with me I went down on my hands and knees and started examining the wide oak floor boards, but I succeeded only in adding a decade of dust to my skirt and hands. The floor had been well made and I couldn’t even find a squeaky board or a telltale scratch. With a sigh I gave up on the floor as a repository and turned my attention to the bed. I pulled aside the flannel cover to the mattress and ran my hands over its break-neck lines: there were holes, bulges, and a complete redistribution of whatever cheap mattresses are stuffed with: an atrocious thing to lie on. My hands explored every deviation; I turned the mattress over and began again.

  Suddenly as I probed a particularly devilish hole in the mattress my fingers encountered resistance down near the foot; there was a difference in texture here, too, from the wads of compacted stuffing I’d groped through. I thought, It has to be, it has to be, dear God please let it be.… My suspense was so unbearable that I gave up my polite tuggings and feverishly ripped the surface of the mattress into shreds.

  And there it was: perhaps two hundred sheets of white paper tightly rolled up and bound by string. I tore off the string, unrolled the pages and saw neatly typed on the first sheet: In the Land of the Golden Warriors, by H. M. Gruble.

  I had found Hannah’s sequel. I was actually holding it in my hands.

  I sank down on the remains of the mattress and ran the flashlight over the first few pages. Colin’s name occupied almost every paragraph, which delighted me, because Hannah could have jumped ahead in time to Colin’s children, or chosen another character from the first book, like the prince of Galt, or Serena, but my beloved Colin was here, and apparently only two years older. I couldn’t wait to read it. I began eagerly, “One morning in the country of Galt, when the grass was silver with dew and the primroses scarlet in the meadows, a messenger on horseback rode up to Colin’s door with a message from the prince. Colin was.…”

  At that moment I heard the lock on the door to the box room snap with a strange ping! sound, and as I looked up in astonishment a floor board creaked on the landing and I heard the very definite sound of the outer door to the attic closing.

  Someone was in the house with me.

  I had been in a different world, totally immersed in Hannah’s book, and it took a moment to apply intelligence to this improbable discovery. My mind, for instance, absolutely rejected it and yet I noticed that my hands were trembling. My mind told me it was inconceivable that I was not alone; I had entered an empty house, no one had known I was coming here, no one knew that I was here, and therefore I was alone. I had to be alone.

  My senses knew better: my heart was racing and thudding, my hands shaking and I was slowly breaking out into a cold sweat. I laid aside Hannah’s manuscript, tiptoed to the door and gently tugged at the knob. It resisted and I pulled harder—very hard—and now there was no doubt about it, I was locked inside. I put my head against the door and listened. I had the distinct feeling that someone was there, and I wondered if he or she were listening on the other side of the door. A faint sound reached my ears that I couldn’t quite identify, a crackling noise, as if someone was crumpling up very stiff paper, and then I heard a floor board creak some distance away, as of someone leaving. My mind told me that I should call out, scream, shout, there had to have been a mistake, possibly a caretaker or the real estate agent checking the house, but my senses told me to be quiet and think, because I was in grave danger.

  I am not proud of the several minutes that followed: I must have given a great deal of nourishment to Amman Singh’s demons who feed on violence because my thoughts were dark and grim. I paced, wept, and apologized profusely to Joe, who must have guessed I might do something irrational like this. It did not escape me that my mother had died in an attic and now, irony of ironies, I was to die in an attic, too, and in exactly the room where Hannah.…

  But Hannah hadn’t died here, I remembered. Nor had she, I realized, suddenly galvanized by the thought, possessed a tool kit for breaking and entering.

  This punctured my spasm of self-pity. My hysteria subsided and I crept to the door and listened again to find out whether anyone was waiting around to learn what I’d do. This time there was only silence and I set to work at once. Pulling the bureau over to the door I climbed on top of it, carrying screwdriver and hammer, and looked over the possibilities. I found the top hinge of the door and applied my screwdriver to its screws but they’d been painted over so many times that the tool found no leverage. I gave this up and inserted the blade of the screwdriver into the dry wood under the hinge, hammered away at the handle until it prised up one corner of the hinge, and at last saw the hinge pull loose from the wall.

  As the door shuddered from the loss of the one hinge I smelled smoke for the first time.

  “Smoke!” I cried furiously, and felt my hands begin to shake again.

  It was, of course, a very shrewd maneuver to set Hannah’s house on fire; there had always been the possibility that the real estate agent would find me before I died of thirst. Obviously I had only an ordinary criminal mind, given to common things like burglary; I lacked the cunning of a killer, and whoever had locked me into the box room wanted me dead. This in itself was a shock.

  The smoke, I saw, was seeping lazily in under the door now. I realized that this was the sound I’d heard earlier, not paper but the kindling of a fire somewhere outside, and now the smoke had found me. A very thorough killer, I thought, enraged by his ruthlessness. It seemed a miracle to me now that I’d only broken a glass to get into the house; if he’d known about the tool kit he would never have gone off and left me.

  I tore off the scarf around my throat, tied it over my nose and mouth and went to work with a fury on the remaining hinge. When I freed it, the door sagged open, and then nearly fell on top of me as it tore away the lock as well. The landing was thick with smoke. Choking and gagging I grabbed Hannah’s manuscript and my purse, found the attic door, and pushed it open
. Here I nearly fell over the large pile of flaming rags on the threshold. Nothing beyond it appeared to be burning, but the stench of gasoline and smoke set me coughing wildly again. I made one flying leap through the fire and raced for the stairs.

  I had taken only two steps down when I heard the crackling noises below, and saw an astonishing brilliance illuminating the walls of the living room. I turned back and raced through the second-story hall until I found a bedroom overlooking the sunporch. I wrenched open a window, unhooked the screen, climbed over the sill, and jumped down to the roof. Here I paused for a better grip on manuscript and purse before I crept to the farthest corner of the roof and jumped again, landing in a bush on the ground and rolling over once. I picked myself up and ran around the corner of the house to my car.

  The van was gone.

  I stood staring blankly at the space where I had parked the van with its ignition locked. Here was still another shock to my already dazed mind: my van had completely disappeared.

  A small explosion inside of the house—no more than a muffled blop reminded me that at any minute the house could blow up; I ducked and ran for cover.

  From a copse of trees I looked back: the house still stood, inviolate, its exterior untouched, but from where I’d paused I could see the intense brightness of flames raging behind the windows. When I saw a tongue of flame curl out of one window and lick the clapboards I turned and ran. I had reached the intersection when I heard the scream of the town’s fire alarm.

  The thunderstorm struck before I had walked a mile, and I had five more miles to go. It didn’t occur to me to ask for help or call a taxi; I was officially dead and I knew I had to stay that way. Whoever had tried to kill me had carried away with him the assumption that my charred body wouldn’t be found until the firemen sifted the ashes but I thought that he couldn’t possibly have followed me to Hannah’s house without a car. He would have taken my van to confuse both firemen and police but eventually he would have to come back to retrieve his car from whatever hiding place he’d found, and I didn’t intend him to see me, still alive, limping along the highway. I walked at the very edge of the road, and ducked behind a tree whenever I heard a car approaching.