Brass Bed

by Flora, Fletcher

  “I admire tolerance. If there’s anyone in the world I admire, it’s the person who is willing to allow the other fellow his idiosyncrasies. ” Jason turned his head and looked levelly at me. “As I understand it, you are merely a friend. Is that so?”

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s so.”

  “You must be a pretty special friend, as a matter of fact. I’m sure a person who gets called in a case like this even before the doctor and the police must be pretty special.”

  “All friends are special,” Jolly said, “but Felix is more special than most.”

  “Yes. I thought that must be the way of it. And a special friend is very good to have around at certain times, I’ll admit that. Now a little more about Mr. Pollock. Sid, as you call him. Since you have not mentioned them or called them, I assume that he has no relatives in the city.”

  “No. So far as I know, he has only a mother and father who live in a small town named Clearvale. It’s about a hundred miles northeast of here.”

  “I know the town.”

  He wrote the name of it in the little notebook, which was the first and only thing he wrote during all the time we talked, and then closed the notebook and put it into a pocket with the pencil.

  “I want to thank you for answering my questions,” he said, “and chances are I’ll want you to answer others later that I’ve forgotten to ask now. In the meanwhile, I’ll go back out to the garage and see that things are progressing in order.”

  He turned and went out into the hall, and a moment later we heard the kitchen screen door bang behind him, and another moment later a car came into the drive and stopped. In her chair, Jolly smiled at me quietly, but I was unable to smile back.

  “In my judgment, I got through that very well,” she said. “The truth is, I am quite proud of myself.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “You were in perfect control of the situation.”

  “Do you think so? When it came down to it, I was not frightened after all.”

  “I could see that you weren’t.”

  She sat looking at her hands and smiling at them. After a while the car that had stopped in the drive started up again and left, and I knew that it had come for Sid and got him.

  I left then, and Jolly went silently upstairs — to her brass bed.

  18

  “YOU KNOW something?” Harvey said. “That story sounds a hell of a lot like a stretcher to me.”

  I had gone down to Nick’s, having nothing else to do, and Harvey was there and demanded that I tell him the whole story of Jolly and Sid.

  I nodded at Harvey’s remark. “I thought it would,” I said, “and that’s one reason I was reluctant to tell it to you. Jason also thought it sounded like a stretcher.”

  “Jason? Who’s Jason?”

  “He’s the policeman who came out and investigated it. He asked a lot of questions and didn’t seem to be satisfied.”

  “I can’t say that I blame him. No offense, old boy, but since I am not satisfied myself, I can hardly blame someone else for not being, can I?”

  “No, you can’t. What do you consider most objectionable about the story?”

  “It just seems unlikely in several ways.”

  “It’s only hypothetical, of course. Can you think of a better way to explain how it happened?”

  “None that I would care to offer seriously.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing, old boy. Just forget that I said it. Do you think this Jason will make heavy weather for old Jolly?”

  “I don’t see how he can do it, but I think he may try.”

  “As a policeman, he is obligated to poke into things, I suppose. You’ll have to admit it looks rather peculiar coming so soon after Kirby.”

  “He mentioned that. It seems to be on his mind.”

  “Just between the two of us, old boy, I’ve done a little wondering myself about the handy way old virile Kirby zoomed off. Just in an academic sort of way, I mean. I don’t think really that Jolly actually pushed him out of the boat or anything, but I couldn’t blame her much if it turned out that she didn’t try her level best to haul him out.”

  “That’s crazy, Harvey. I wish you hadn’t said it.”

  “Really? Well, at any rate she had absolutely no reason that I can think of to chuck little old Sid under an exhaust pipe, so I can’t see that it matters whatever about Kirby and how she might have had better reasons in his case.”

  “Cut it out, Harvey. If you must have academic thoughts, please do me the favor of not expressing them.”

  “It’s just between the two of us, old boy. Absolutely no harm in it.”

  He sat and thought, and I thought too, and what I thought was that Sid had been off among the trees along the river when Kirby drowned and had not returned until Jolly herself had come to tell us about it. This was one of the thoughts I had been trying not to think, and although Harvey had been helpful all summer, along with the goliards, he was now no help whatever.

  “Unless she’s schizzy or something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Schizophrenia, old boy. The truth is, old Jolly’s always been pretty damn dippy in lots of ways. If you’re fair about it, you’ll have to concede that. I’ve read a little about these schizzy characters, and you can’t always tell off hand just how far gone they are, and sometimes one or another of them will go off the deep end and get all crafty and violent, and the funny thing is, they seem to think whatever they care to do is perfectly justified. Do you think something like that would be worth considering relative to Jolly?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Harvey, God damn it. What the hell are you trying to do?”

  “You’re pretty vehement about it, aren’t you, old boy? I can see clearly that you’re not inclined to be objective in the matter, so there is no use in discussing it further.”

  He was silent and a little sulky, and I tried to drink some more of the coffee, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to offend Harvey, and I tried to think of something to say that would make things all right.

  “Did you have a pleasant time last night?” I said.

  “Yes, I did.” The sulky look left his face, and it was apparent that he was remembering things that had happened. “That Fran knows how to make things as pleasant as you could want.”

  “I know,” I said. “She’s passionate.”

  “That’s right. She certainly is passionate.”

  “You’ll probably miss her while you’re on the farm.”

  “I’ll miss her, all right, but it will also be pleasant to be on the farm for a while.”

  “I’m sure it will, and I hope it is an exceptionally good year for watermelons.”

  “Thanks, old boy. The truth is, however, I am now wondering if I shouldn’t stay on for Sid’s funeral. I don’t want to do it, to be honest about it, but perhaps it should be considered a kind of obligation, especially since I missed Kirby’s.”

  “I don’t think so, Harvey. I’m sure it would be all right for you to go on to the farm.”

  “Good. I consider your judgment on these things to be sound. On your advice, I’ll just go on to the farm tomorrow as I planned.”

  He stood up and counted some money onto the counter in payment for what he had eaten.

  “Are you going back to your place?” he said. “If you are, I’ll walk with you to the corner where I turn.”

  “I’m going,” I said.

  We went out together and walked along and once he said, looking down at his feet, “Old Sid. Just imagine something like that happening to old Sid,” and he sounded suddenly rather sad, and I didn’t answer. At the corner we shook hands and said goodbye, and I went on alone to the apartment and got through the night and most of the next day, and in the afternoon Jason came around to see me.

  He came up into the hall and knocked on the door, and I thought at first that it might be Jolly, but when I opened the door it was Jason standing there waiting. He said hello and came into the ro
om, and I invited him to sit down, and he did, laying his hat on the floor beside his chair and looking for a while without speaking at the typewriter on its table in the corner.

  “You’ve been doing a lot of typing,” he said at last.

  I looked at the thin stack of paper beside the machine, and it might have looked like a lot to him, but it was actually only about sixty pages, and it wasn’t much.

  “I’ve been trying to write a novel,” I said.

  “Is that so?” He shifted his eyes from the typewriter to me. “What’s it about?”

  “It’s about a goliard and the things that happened to him.”

  “I never heard of a goliard before. What is it?”

  “Goliards were twelfth century poets.”

  “Oh. In that case, it’s no wonder I never heard of them. It must take a lot of education to write a novel, especially one about someone like a goliard. I never had much education myself.”

  “Lots of people without much education write novels.”

  “I find that hard to believe, and probably you’re just saying it. Anyhow, I’ve gotten to be a pretty good reader, what with having a lot of time to kill and all, and I’ll make a point of reading about the goliard when the book gets published.”

  “It may never get published. It may never even get finished.”

  “That would be a shame after all the work you’ve done. Actually, however, not intending to knock the novels or anything, I mostly read books about what makes people do things. Crazy things, you understand. I get a lot of odd balls in this lousy work, and I thought it might pay me to know what makes them tick, if possible.”

  “Abnormal psychology, you mean? That kind of thing?”

  “Yes. That’s it. I don’t always understand all about it, but it’s pretty interesting trying. The characters who get me are the ones who act one way part of the time and another way the rest of the time. They used to call them split personalities, but now they got a fancier name for them. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well, it seems like a lot of people have got killed by other people like that, and mostly it’s been because no one ever got the idea, until it was too late, that these split characters had anything like that in them.”

  “What the hell are you driving at?”

  “Me? Nothing at all. I was only trying to explain how the books say these things happen. To be truthful, I guess I was just trying to show off that I’ve done a little reading. That’s the trouble with us guys who started late. We can’t get over being proud of it, and I guess what I’d better do now is get down to business.”

  He stopped and gave me a chance to say something, but I didn’t have anything to say, and so he went on.

  “Come to consider it, though, I guess I don’t really have any business. I just thought I’d drop around and talk about things I’ve been doing. Mostly I’ve been poking around and talking, and one of the people I’ve talked to is Logan Pierce. You remember Logan?”

  “Yes, I remember him.”

  “I didn’t learn much from him. All he could tell me was how this fellow Kirby Craig got drowned, and that didn’t amount to any more than what someone else had said about it. Only thing I learned that was very interesting was about this little fellow Sid who got drunk and killed by carbon monoxide night before last. Logan said he was around the day of the drowning, this Sid was, and that he was off in the trees by himself when the drowning happened. You were there too, weren’t you? Is it true what Logan said?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Sid may have been off in the trees, but I didn’t pay particular attention.”

  “Well, no matter. I guess Logan would have the story straight about something that simple. What I really had in mind when I decided to come around here was that you, being such a special friend and all, might be able to tell me something that would make me feel all right about all this. I admit that I’ve got a peculiar feeling about it and don’t like it much, but maybe that’s just because I’ve been a cop so long and have developed a perverted view.”

  “What do you mean, a peculiar feeling?”

  “Oh, you can see how it is. Sid did all these things that you keep thinking he surely wouldn’t have done unless he was crazy as well as drunk, and he just happened to do them right after a big strong guy you’d have thought had better sense simply fell right smack out of a flat-bottomed boat and drowned, and these crazy things happened to guys who were with, or almost with, your special friend Jolly. Mrs. Craig, I guess I ought to say. You know what’s actually got into my mind about it? It’ll just show you how warped a mind can get. It’s got into my mind that maybe she deliberately drowned her husband, or at least permitted him to drown, and was seen doing it from among the trees by Sid. I understand this Craig left quite a lot of dough. You think Sid was the kind of fellow who would have tried to cut himself in for some of it?”

  “I think you’re crazy, that’s what I think.”

  “Do you? I could be, at that. This job is enough to drive a guy crazy, and I’ve been working at it too damn long. Anyhow, that’s what’s in my mind about it, and I’ve got what’s called a tenacious mind. It gets something in it, it’s hard as hell to make it let go, and it worries the hell out of me and makes me feel peculiar.”

  “Why should she have wanted to kill her husband?”

  “I don’t know. I was told that he cut up rough now and then, and Mrs. Craig herself told me that he hit her in the eye and blacked it.”

  “You don’t kill someone for hitting you in the eye. Not a long time afterward, anyhow. You might do it right at the time by hitting him with something or shooting him or some way like that, but you don’t plan it and do it afterward in cold blood.”

  “I thought of that myself, and it’s true. In the case of an ordinary person, that is. Of course it might be different in the case of one of these odd balls I’ve read about in books. The way it’s told in the books, these people sometimes get all festered up around something, and you don’t even realize it until something’s happened that may be pretty bad and all out of proportion to what caused it.”

  “In my opinion, you’ve been reading too many books about odd balls.”

  “That could be, and I admit it. It isn’t good for a person to read too much of that stuff. As a special friend of hers, could you offer a more natural and acceptable reason why she might have wanted to get her husband out of the way?”

  “As a special friend, I couldn’t offer any reason at all, and if I did I wouldn’t be a special friend.”

  “That’s a fine loyal response. I admire loyalty.”

  “I’m not being loyal. I’m only being sensible.”

  “That’s even more admirable. There are too few sensible people in the world these days, and sometimes I’m afraid I’m not one of them. I get these peculiar feelings, you see, and I’ve got this tenacious mind, and I seem to keep worrying at things in the hope of getting to feeling better.”

  He put his hands on his knees and sat looking at the floor, and after a while he sighed and retrieved his hat and stood up.

  “I guess I’d better be going,” he said. “Maybe if I quit bothering you, you’ll be able to write a little more about the goliard. I imagine a writer considers it quite a nuisance to be bothered when he might be writing.”

  He went over to the door and opened it and stood looking back at me.

  “She killed them, all right,” he said. “I’d bet dollars to dimes on that, but what I can’t make up my mind about is whether you’re what we call an accessory, before or after, or just a guy who’s too special for his own good.”

  He went out then and closed the door, and I was cold. I sat there quietly feeling the coldness, and I knew perfectly well that he was right, that she had killed Kirby for a brass bed, and had killed Sid in order to keep him out of the place in the brass bed that she was saving for me, and I wondered why I didn’t feel a great revulsion in thinking of her, but I didn’t.

 
I felt only the coldness. And that’s the way it was.

  19

  THEY TOOK Sid home to Clearvale to bury him, and I went out there the day of the funeral with Fran and Jolly in Jolly’s Caddy. She asked me to drive, and I did. Fran sat alone in the back seat and didn’t say anything, and Jolly sat over against the door in the front seat and said very little, and we drove all the way out there, about a hundred miles, almost in silence.

  Clearvale was in a long, narrow valley, and the highway went down the length of the valley with the fields rising gently on both sides, and it was quite pretty. The town itself was also pretty. It had wide, quiet streets with a lot of elms and oaks and maples growing around everywhere and spreading their branches over everything, and what you got in the streets and on the lawns was this dappled effect of light and shade, which is about as pleasant as anything can be on a summer’s day.

  The first part of the funeral was in the home of Sid’s parents. His mother is someone I can’t even remember, and I suppose she had dimension and quality and everything that makes a woman what she is instead of something else, but even so I can’t remember her in the slightest, and not even her loss and her grief were enough to make me. I can remember his father, however, because he looked exactly as Sid would have looked if he had lived three or four more decades instead of dying drunk under an exhaust pipe. He was small and gray and drying on his bones, and he watched and listened to the things that were said and done as if he were trying to understand what had really happened to Sid and what was now really happening to him.

  Two rooms of the house were used for the funeral, and we sat on folding chairs that were supplied by the undertaker. It was hot in the rooms, and the chairs were very uncomfortable, and after a while there was constantly this uneasy rustling and creaking that meant that everyone was tired of it and wanted it to stop. A woman with a big bosom sang Beautiful Island of Somewhere, and she sang it much too loud for the small rooms, and I got the impression from her professional approach that she too, like the chairs, was supplied by the undertaker.