Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  “What has that to do with Jay? He doesn’t know anything about hurdy-gurdies. It’s Robin and I who played with it, it was ours and it was Aunt Hannah’s, and we loved it.”

  “Yes, and you kept it awhile, and then Robin bought it at the auction and kept it awhile, too.”

  She nodded. “We took turns choosing things and I chose the hurdy-gurdy. I had first choice,” she said proudly.

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s what I wanted most of all, it was in the box room and I chose it.” And then she repeated, “In the box room.…” She looked at me and I looked at her and the words hung between us. “The hurdy-gurdy was in the box room,” she whispered, and her eyes grew wider and wider as horror and intelligence filled them. “In the same room as.…” One hand flew to her mouth. “Why are you here? Why are you asking me these questions?”

  I said, “Miss Harrington—” But I was too late; she closed her eyes, flung back her head and began screaming.

  The young nurse reached her first. She gave me a mute, reproachful glance as she leaned over Nora and then I saw Nurse Dawes running across the lawn to us. “You again!” she shouted. “Out—I’ll call the police if you come again, you’ve no right to sneak in here and harass a patient. What have you done to her? What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing, I’m going now,” I said angrily above Nora’s screams. Heads had turned dully toward us in wonder; my eyes held a picture of vivid green lawn and Dr. Ffolks racing toward us in his white jacket, Nora’s screams growing sharper and more hysterical. Nurse Dawes was already rolling up Nora’s sleeve for still another injection to bring her peace.

  “We’ll get a court order, Miss Jones—Miss Amelia Jones, isn’t it?” shouted Mrs. Dawes over her shoulder. “We’re paid to protect our patients.”

  “I won’t bother her again,” I said coldly, and I walked away and didn’t look back until I’d reached the van. When I turned they were all clustered around Nora, whose screams had turned into sobs now.

  I felt a little sick. I climbed into the van and closed my eyes and then I opened them and said “Damn” in a loud voice. I started up the van for my long drive south and that, I thought, was that. It was going to have to be Detective Zebroski after all, unless Robin knew what had happened to Tuttle, but 1965 was a long time ago.

  I am not one for marathon driving. I stayed the night in a motel near Westport, Connecticut, and from there I telephoned Robin in New York City. I explained that I was on my way home from Maine, where I’d been tracing the hurdy-gurdy I’d asked him about on the stairs, and could I see him for a few minutes the next day?

  He said very politely that he would be at home during the morning hours, and then with some amusement he gave me the directions I asked for on how to approach the city by car. I carefully wrote them down, feeling an absolute coward about all those parkways and expressways. I think it’s a fear in me of getting lost; when a person has felt basically lost for half of her life it is not a situation to be lightly entered or courted.

  It was thus with a sense of astonishment and triumph that I successfully pulled up in front of his building on East Ninth Street at eleven o’clock the next morning. It was a sultry day, with the sun hidden behind clouds, and the humidity oppressive; I was still wearing blue jeans and sweater, so I noticed. I was also nervous about how much to tell Robin and had tried out a number of censored versions of how I came to find Hannah’s manuscript in an old mattress.

  He must have been watching for me, because no sooner had I backed into a parking space in front of his building than he came out of the door and waved at me. He was wearing faded jeans, a white shirt and sneakers, and again he gave the illusion of great youth until the light picked out the lines in his face. “Good morning,” he said. “Quite a van, that. I hope you’re locking it up from stem to stern.”

  I felt inexplicably shy as we shook hands; I realized that when I’d last seen him he was a complete stranger, an actor named Robert Lamandale sandwiched between my visit to the colonel and the next day’s auction. Now he was Hannah’s nephew Robin, someone Hannah had loved, and I knew much more about him. I also knew—it came over me with a sense of rightness—that because of this I was going to tell him the whole story.

  I could see that he was puzzled by my being here, and too polite to say so. He turned and led me past the broken intercom and we began the climb to apartment 12. “So you actually went to Maine and visited my cousin,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” I said, stopping to catch my breath on the third landing. I wanted to ask him if he’d gotten the part he auditioned for on the day I first met him, but I thought it better not to. There was one more landing before he unlocked a door with three locks.

  “I’ve put together some iced tea and peppermint for us,” he said. “It’s a warm day. I hope my directions worked? No detours, no bad advice?”

  “They were perfect,” I told him, looking around. It was a one-room apartment, long and narrow, but it was a corner apartment and with the building on its flank gone it was full of light. There was a shabby kitchenette on my right, with a stained refrigerator and an ancient gas stove, but the other end was very different: the white walls held a line of well-framed theatrical photographs over the low couch, there was a low square table with one flower in a vase, three square cushions on the floor, and a wall of bookcases built out of lumber and bricks; the result was a feeling of space carved out of smallness. I walked over to the bookcase and saw that one shelf was filled with books on Zen: van de Wetering, Humphreys, both Suzukis, Lama Yongdan, Evans-Wertz, Herrigel. “I see you’re interested in Zen,” I called over my shoulder.

  “An aunt of mine was,” he said almost curtly, dropping ice cubes into two tall glasses. “Shall we sit here?” he suggested, carrying the glasses to the shabby chrome-and-plastic dining table.

  “Your aunt Hannah Gruble,” I said deliberately, “who wrote The Maze in the Heart of the Castle.”

  He stopped short, the glasses still in his hand. He said quietly, “I think you’d better tell me what this is all about, don’t you? It was a hurdy-gurdy you were tracing last week. Or so you said.”

  “It was a hurdy-gurdy,” I told him, “but I was tracing it because of a note I found inside it, a note signed with the name Hannah. Just Hannah. No last name.”

  He looked baffled. “A note inside a hurdy-gurdy?”

  “Your aunt originally owned it, didn’t she?”

  “Yes she did, but she wasn’t the sort of person to—” He stopped, frowning. “May I ask what on earth the note said to inspire such curiosity on your part?”

  I hesitated, wanting to ease into this gently. “It suggested that an accident was being arranged for her, and that she was going to die soon.”

  “But that’s preposterous,” he said. “It’s absolutely ridic—” He bit off his words, abruptly turned away and walked over to the window where he stood with his back to me. There was a long silence; when he turned to face me again he looked shaken. “I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”

  “Because it doesn’t entirely surprise you?”

  He returned to the table. “Shall we sit down?” he said wryly. “I take it that you’ve been doing a bit of research into my family.”

  I nodded. “You’re Robin, for instance, Robin Gruble. And your cousin is Nora.”

  “That matters?”

  “The names were in the note,” I said. “Robin and Nora.” I began digging in my purse for Hannah’s note. “My friend Joe Osbourne was in Maine with me until he had to fly home. We visited Nora, and we visited your aunt’s house in Carleton, her attorney Garwin Mason, and your aunt’s housekeeper Mrs. Morneau.”

  “All those people?” He looked startled. “I’ve never cared to go back, you know. I’ve not set foot in Anglesworth or Carleton since 1965. I’ve done summer stock in the playhouses but I’ve always avoided Anglesworth.”

  I brought out the note and said, “Mr. Lamandale, could I ask you why you
went to all the trouble and expense of a Probate Court hearing on your aunt’s will and then didn’t appeal the verdict, or carry it to the higher court? Why did you give up?”

  He whistled soundlessly through his teeth. “You really go for the jugular, don’t you.”

  “Why?” I repeated.

  “And why should I tell you?” he asked calmly.

  “Was it because of Nora?”

  He shrugged and lifted his glass of tea. “Cheers,” he said and then, “Look, I’m sorry but I don’t know a blasted thing about you. You stop in here on a cloudy May morning and out of the blue you tell me, or suggest—”

  “Here’s a photostat of the note,” I told him, and handed it across the table.

  As soon as Robin saw the handwriting he looked shaken. “Oh my God,” he whispered, and when he’d finished reading it he carefully placed it on the table, his face white. “This was inside the hurdy-gurdy?”

  I nodded. “The hurdy-gurdy came with my shop, the Ebbtide Shop in Trafton, when I bought out Mr. Georgerakis. I kept the hurdy-gurdy for myself, and then one night it wouldn’t play. This piece of paper had caught in the mechanism.”

  “And because of this—” I could see he was concentrating on me while he struggled to face the contents of the note. “Because of this you’ve taken time out of your life to learn who wrote it? I find that—I don’t know whether to say astonishing or touching or—”

  I said dryly, “You could, if you like, think of Joe and me as simply avenging angels or demons: Jones and Osbourne, witch and warlock, stirring up messy brews with a teaspoon.” I didn’t want to tell him how messy it had grown at the end, I preferred to wipe away the stricken look on his face. I brought out the manila folder I’d purchased in Westport, removed the pages of the manuscript and pushed them across the table to him. “There’s this, too,” I said gently. “Exhibit B, as proof of my sincerity. In exchange for information I’d like very much to have.”

  “Hannah’s book,” he said, staring at it incredulously. “Hannah’s book?” He added abruptly, “Look, do you mind if I have a drink of something stronger? You’re throwing shock after shock at me. I’ve only one shot of brandy left or I’d—”

  “Go right ahead,” I urged. “I think you need it.”

  He nodded, reached into a cupboard and emptied a bottle of brandy into a shot glass. He brought it back to the table and sat down, staring at it, not touching it yet. “You’ve brought back a very old nightmare,” he said slowly, “and one that I’m not sure I feel like talking about yet. But I can at the very least answer your questions, I owe you that if only for the miracle of your finding Hannah’s manuscript.”

  “You knew of its existence?”

  He nodded. “She told me about it when I visited her the Easter before her death. She said once it was typed up she’d Xerox a copy and send it to me.” He hesitated and then he added quietly, “I think you asked about the will.”

  “Yes,” I said, watching him.

  “I never quite believed in it, no. I find that people are creatures of habit and custom,” he said, “and Hannah was no exception. She’d always very scrupulously sent copies to us, you know—whenever she made changes in her will—and they were always drawn up for her by Garwin Mason, who was a good friend of hers. And then she went against habit and custom, typed up a will by herself, and her death happened so very soon afterward.…”

  He picked up the shot glass, tossed its contents down his throat and made a face. “But everywhere I turned,” he said, lifting his eyes to meet mine, “there was Nora.”

  I nodded. “And everywhere we turned there was Nora. Is that why you didn’t appeal the verdict?”

  “Of course,” he said simply.

  I waited; the brandy was having its effect and the color was returning to his face. “Garwin Mason warned me,” he went on. “Warned me that accusing Jay Tuttle of undue influence would fail—had to fail—because I wasn’t prepared to go far enough. Do you know what the legal definition of ‘undue influence’ is in Maine?”

  I shook my head.

  “I memorized it,” he said, and closing his eyes recited, “ ‘… amounting to moral coercion, destroying free agency, or importunity which could not be resisted, so that the testator, unable to withstand the influence, or too weak to resist it, was constrained to do that which was not his actual will but against it.’ ” He opened his eyes. “How could I accuse Nora of coercion? I went ahead with the hearing because I thought some piece of testimony given under oath might explain away my uneasiness. I hoped against hope the hearing would explain the inexplicable, but it turned up nothing except the increasing suspicion that pursuing the matter further could destroy Nora.”

  I said without thinking, “It destroyed her anyway, didn’t it?”

  He said with a sigh, “How was one to know? You can’t possibly realize how it was with us, or what Nora was like when we were growing up together. We were like brother and sister for each summer of the year, living in a magic world that Aunt Hannah created for us. If you’d ever read her book—”

  I didn’t interrupt.

  “—you’d know Hannah’s inventiveness, the wealth of her imagination. She applied that to living, too. There were picnics, treasure hunts, acting out plays on the sunporch, long evenings reading aloud to each other in front of the fire. Absurd games. A trip to the river every sunny afternoon with an incredible paraphernalia of swimming things, tubes, water wings, robes, and always Aunt Hannah’s Tibetan parasol.…”

  “It sounds—lovely,” I said with a catch in my voice.

  “But afterward,” he went on, his voice tightening, “Nora would go home to a cold father and an impossible stepmother, both of whom argued tirelessly over money and gave evidence of disliking Nora very much, and I would go back to my father who, following my mother’s death, packed me off to private schools or camps as hastily as possible. Which, by the way, I’ve no doubt that Aunt Hannah paid for. During those endless dismal months of reality we exchanged letters: Aunt Hannah’s tranquil and supportive, Nora’s desperate, and mine lonely.

  “We were, you see, very close,” he concluded, and then he added, “at least until Nora fell in love.”

  Ah, yes, I thought, now we come to it, and I could feel my pulses quickening. “With Jay Tuttle.”

  “You guessed, then?”

  I said, “I have the advantage of you, I read your aunt’s manuscript last night. You’ll understand what I mean when you’ve read it, too. Until then I’d hoped she was blackmailed.”

  His smile was bleak. “I wonder if one can exclude blackmail in an unholy kind of love like Nora’s.” He shook his head. “It must always have been there but I never saw. Hannah did, because I remember one day when Nora was only eleven or twelve years old, we were down by the river and I saw Aunt Hannah watching her with a very sad expression. I asked her what was wrong and she said, ‘Robin, I want you to promise to be very patient with Nora, and very wise. There’s an emptiness inside of her, a desperate need to be loved, and there’s nothing you or I can do but try and protect her.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about then, but only a few years later the words came back to haunt me. From the moment that Nora met Jay—she was fourteen, I think—no one else existed for her. She dumped everything she was or could be into his lap.”

  “Compulsion?”

  “Compulsion, obsession, emotional deprivation—” He shrugged. “Whatever you choose to call it. She was so lovely, like a fairy-tale princess. I have snapshots somewhere, I’ll show you in a moment.” He got up and began rummaging in a desk drawer. “She could have had anyone, but Jay arrived first and that was that.”

  “Did he seem to care for her too?”

  “It was always difficult to know what Jay was thinking or feeling, he was always so bloody charming.” He came back with a large, bulging envelope. “Certainly he was very attentive the last time I saw them together. At Easter, that was, when Hannah told me—in confidence—about her new book. Several w
eeks after that Nora phoned me in New York one night, terribly excited, to say that she and Jay were going to be married in the fall.”

  “Married,” I repeated, calculating dates very cynically. In the fall … after she had lent her help to a murder.

  “Which led,” he added bitterly, “to my final rationalization: it occurred to me after her death that Hannah could have changed her will on impulse if she felt that it would make Jay and Nora ‘equal’ enough to marry.”

  “That could always have been possible,” I told him for comfort.

  He laughed bleakly. “It seemed so to me, too, even though it was completely uncharacteristic of Hannah. But of course the only other possibility was too god-awful to contemplate: that Nora had been just unstable enough, besotted enough—” He shivered. “She adored Hannah, which makes it so—so—”

  “They never married,” I pointed out.

  “No.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I never asked,” he said. “I remained stubbornly in New York, sinking my inheritance into plays that only proved what poor judgment I had, and nursing a dazzling career that shot down as fast as it had shot up. If I considered Nora’s situation at all I’m sure I told myself that Aunt Hannah would never have wanted to see Nora destroyed. Not that I ever considered it consciously,” he explained. “I shoved it under, burying my nagging little doubts.” He looked at me steadily and took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “What do you believe happened? I think I can take it now.”

  And so I told him. His aunt a captive. The long days and nights in the box room where I’d found her manuscript. The signing of the will at last, and then being taken out of the box room and led downstairs.

  “God,” said Robin, going white again. “And then?”

  “It’s only a theory but I think she must have been blindfolded,” I told him. “I think they confused her sense of direction, hurried her along the hall toward the kitchen with the cellar door ahead wide open at the end of that long hall—”

  “Yes, I know that hall,” he said, nodding.