by Frances
But she could not turn to Brian now, could not turn to anyone. That was in the bargain. It was the bargain that she was stubborn and unafraid; incapable of foreseeing danger, or imagining terror. She went into the small elevator and closed the door behind her and was solitary in the moving box, obedient now to the pressure of her finger. (As it will be to any finger, so that anyone may come.) Liza O’Brien, small and young and frightened, wanted to beat on the wall of the box, wanted to scream through it. But there was no danger while she was in the moving box.
What was almost panic passed, had passed when the car stopped at her apartment floor. It was only momentary, Liza told herself; the first plunge was all that was hard. Walking away alone from Pam and Jerry North, from their offer of safety—that had been hard. And really, of course, there was no danger. That was part of the bargain too. She walked down the corridor to her apartment door, fingering in her purse for the key. Party of the first part covenants with party of the second part that—that—that what? It will be stopped in time? That party of the first part is almost sure it can be; will do everything possible to see it is? For—how did it go?—good and valuable consideration? Was that it? If the contract is duly fulfilled, if there are no acts of God, nothing which could not be anticipated, then tomorrow will be like, will be almost like—She had to remember back. Monday had been a good day; a fine day. She had made sketches of cats and they had come out well. Tomorrow would be like Monday, if she were good and brave, and there were no act of God, nothing which could not have been allowed for. It would be all over tomorrow.
That was the consideration, good and valuable. Not that it was promised so; nobody had undertaken that tomorrow would be like Monday. That was the interpretation of her own mind; the deep certainty of her own mind. Nothing they found out tonight, if they found out anything, could touch Brian; it would be all right for Brian. (Essentially all right for Brian; it was not to be supposed that any solution would leave any of them, for a long time to come, carefree; murder is no localized infection; murder spreads far. Afterward, even for those on the perimeter of its contagion, there is a time of convalescence.)
Liza opened the door of her apartment and went in, making her movement confident, making her body deny its fright. (It was too soon; far too soon. Nothing could happen for a long time yet; for hours yet. Now she only rehearsed assurance.) She switched on the lights, and closed the door behind her. She put the chain on the door. (It must not look too easy; it must not be impossible. That was the bargain.) The little living room was as she had left it, and she was surprised to find that there was evidence she had left hurriedly. What had she been doing when, so many hours ago, Brian had finally telephoned? Had she been reading the magazine which now sprawled on the floor by a chair and tossed it there, heedlessly, when she went across the little room to the telephone? Or had it been the drawing pad, as carelessly thrown onto the sofa, so that some of the sheets were bent back, she had discarded when she heard the telephone bell?
Liza stood for a moment inside the door and looked at the room and said to herself, you’ve got it bad, my girl. You’ve got it very, very bad.
The kitchenette was in a closet at her left and she opened the door and looked into it, hardly realizing that looking into it was a precaution. The inadequate alcove, with everything compacted into something else, was orderly. She went down the living room, toward its window, and around the corner into the bedroom, which paralleled the living room, had full possession of the other window, had the bathroom behind it. She had certainly been in a dither that afternoon while she waited for Brian to call. She had spilled bathpowder and then walked in it, so that tracks led to a chair, on which she apparently had sat to put on stockings. Anyway, she thought, looking at the footprints, the girl had nice arches. They can always say that about her. Liza O’Brien came to a bad end, but she had nice arches.
That’s the way to do it, she told herself. Be flippant; you are young and gay. (Oh, Brian! Oh, darling! I’m so afraid!)
She straightened the bedroom somewhat, went back to the living room and looked at it irresolutely. What did she do now? Oh, yes—now she was to behave as usual; now she was not to worry. Well, her usual behavior at this hour was to go to bed. That much of it, at any rate, she could do.
She lowered the Venetian blinds at the living room and bedroom windows, turning the slats so that air could enter while privacy was assured. She undressed, hanging her clothes up neatly; much more neatly than usual. (Liza O’Brien came to a bad end, but she was a neat girl.) She remembered that her grandmother had always stressed the importance of neat underthings, because one never knew when one might be in an accident. Well, Liza thought, that was one way to look at it. Liza stepped into the stall shower and let the water plunge on her; shut out the world and the world’s sounds. She left the shower reluctantly. She dried, dusted herself (she might as well smell nice too, while she was about it) and remade her face. Really, she thought, I ought to do all these things every night. After this I—She stopped suddenly, holding lipstick to her lips, not moving it. My eyes are so frightened, she thought; so terribly frightened.
She put on a long, close-fitting robe and zipped it up the front; she drew the belt tight about her waist. It had been a long time now since she got home, she thought; perhaps nothing was going to happen after all. She took her watch from the chest and looked at it as she clipped it on her wrist. It had been only about half an hour since she had walked away from the Norths into the lobby of the building. It was twenty minutes after two.
She looked at the bed; she even turned the covers back. But she could not make herself get into it. In bed, one is defenseless. It is easy to die in bed. She went into the living room and, at the moment she entered it, the buzzer of the apartment door sounded. It was raucous, insistent. Involuntarily, Liza lifted both hands to her throat, the fists clenched. She could feel the blood of the neck arteries pulsing against her knuckles. Now—
I am not to seem frightened; I am to seem surprised. I am to deny, but not so I will be believed. I am to manage to leave the door chain—I must reset the catch on the door—I must—
She walked to the door and opened it against the chain, cautiously. With the chain on it opened only a few inches.
“Yes?” Liza O’Brien said. She had the word ready, the tone ready—the tone of surprise, of slight annoyance; the tone which would indicate only that she was tired and had had a day, was on her way to bed, wanted no callers. The word came out as it had been formed to come out before her mind caught up, the identity of the caller became clear. “No!” Liza said then. “Oh—no!”
There hadn’t been enough time, not nearly enough for an adequate job. If any professionals were involved, they would spot it instantly, have it out in no time. It might, one could hope it would, be a different matter with only amateurs concerned. One could hope that this would, as the lieutenant was betting, wind it up quickly, before anyone else got hurt. One could hope—Sergeant Stein could hope, sitting in a commandeered room, at a strange desk, earphones clamped over his head—that the one they were after was as stupid as the lieutenant assumed; as the lieutenant insisted he all along had proved himself to be. That was one of the reasons the lieutenant wanted it wound up quickly, on the theory that stupid murderers are dangerous, are of any the most dangerous.
Stein looked at his notes.
“0151, L.O. in.”
“0152–0201, moves around apartment, apparently straightens up.”
“0201, leaves living room, apparently to bedroom. Bad pickup.”
You can’t do a decent job without time; can’t even cover an apartment as small as that without time. Stein had left the theater before the others; he and the technicians had worked fast. Still there were, there had to be, dead spots. He had been able to hear the girl faintly as she moved in the bedroom; had gone into the bathroom. The sound of the shower had come through better.
“0216—telephone rings. Not answered. L.O. in shower.”
It h
ad been a toss-up whether she would hear the telephone; it was not surprising, not alarming, that she had not. But Detective Sergeant Stein had been relieved when he had again heard movement in the apartment. The whole thing was ticklish, although it was pretty certain they had it covered. Certainly there had been no one in the apartment when the girl had gone in; certainly no one had come in since unseen—and unheard.
“0216—door buzzer.”
“Here,” Stein said. “Get on it.” He waited until the police stenographer was seated, then pulled the headset off, watched it go, fast, on the other’s head. “O.K.,” the stenographer said. “Got it.” He pulled a pad toward him.
“Taking the chain off the door,” he said, at the same time making the hieroglyphics of his craft.
“I hope to God she remembers to leave it off,” Stein said. “And remembers the catch.”
The stenographer held up his hand for silence.
“Sounds surprised as hell,” he said. “Said ‘Yes?’ as if she were just a little put out. Then said ‘No—oh, no!’ as if she were surprised as hell. Wait a minute.”
He twisted one receiver away from his ear, and Stein leaned down to put his own ear to it. He listened a moment. Then he said he’d be damned.
“Get it all,” he said, put the receiver back against the stenographer’s ear, and reached for a telephone. What, he wondered, was the lieutenant going to make of this?
“I say you’ve got to,” Brian Halder told Liza. He had come in; she had let him in. She shrank back and let him in, and color drained out of her face. He did not seem to notice this at first; he was filled with his own anger, insulated by it. “I don’t care what you agreed.”
“Nothing,” she said, but her voice was thin with fright. “I don’t know what you mean, Brian.”
He paid no attention. He seemed to Liza even taller than usual; it seemed to her that a kind of violence emanated from him—from his face, his voice.
“Get dressed,” he said. “I’ll get you out of here. Before—” He stopped. “Whatever you know,” he said. “Whatever it would prove. The point’s to get you out.” He reached forward and took her shoulders. They resisted, her whole body tried to shrink away.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, Brian!”
Still he was oblivious to what she said; still insulated by his seeming anger, by his own determination.
“Get dressed,” he repeated, still in the same harsh voice. “I’ll take your somewhere. You can’t stay here. Wait for—”
“Please,” she said. “Please listen, Brian. What is it? What do you mean?”
She was to wait; someone would come. She was to wait. And Brian came. She tried to pull herself away.
“What do you want?” she said, and now she looked up at him. “Why did you come here?”
“To get you away,” he said. “Good God, what do you think?”
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “I tell you I—I don’t know anything.”
That was not the way she was supposed to say it; that was what she was supposed to say, but not that way of saying it. She was to hesitate, to sound as if—But this was Brian. This was Brian!
“Nobody believes that,” he said. “Can’t you understand? Nobody. The police don’t. Weigand made that clear enough.”
“He—” Liza began, and then she stopped. But the bargain—what was the bargain? This was Brian.
“He was pretending,” Liza said. “It was the way he planned it.”
For an instant, then, Brian Halder seemed to listen. She saw his eyes go quickly around the room, take in the room—its single door, its window far above the street. He laughed, shortly.
“I came here,” he said. “Nobody stopped me. If I—if I were the one who needed to, you see what I could do.” His hands were still on her shoulders. He shook her, his fingers biting into her. He looked at his hands. “It could be your throat,” he said. “What could anybody do?”
The man outside the door, bending to the lock, worked with infinite slowness, infinite care. He looked up at Bill Weigand, standing over him.
“Got it,” he said, his lips forming the words almost without sound. “Do we?”
“No,” Weigand’s moving head told him. Weigand bent, spoke into the man’s ear. The man looked doubtful, said, as softly, “I can try.”
Patiently, slowly, so that the door made no sound, he pushed it open, only inches open. He could reach a finger in then and press the button which released the catch. He pulled the door closed again. The resetting of the lock had made the slightest of sounds, the closing door made none. “She remembered the chain, anyway,” the man said, and stood up. Weigand nodded. There was no use regretting that she had not remembered the latch. She had been surprised. So, Bill Weigand admitted to himself, had he. But he should not have been.
The telephone bell rang. It was shrill, absurdly loud, in the tiny living room. Liza moved, seeking to turn toward the telephone, but the strong fingers on her shoulders only tightened.
“No,” Brian said. “Let it ring, Liza.”
His hands were heavy, they would not let her move.
“Whoever it is will think you’ve gone,” Brian said. “That’s the best way.”
The bell continued to ring. It stopped; started again. But now Liza O’Brien did not try to move toward it, did not try to resist the hands which held her. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered. Mind and body both went limp. All that mattered was that it had been Brian who came—came filled with anger and violence, trying to get her to go away somewhere, came to put hands heavily on her shoulders, tell her how easily hands could move to a throat. There had been heavy hands, strong hands, on the throat of the little man whose eyes once had been so bright, the little man who had known too much. Well—if it was to be this way, to be Brian, nothing mattered enough to fight. It—
“That’s better,” Brian Halder said. “You make sense now. You’re—” But then something in her attitude, her limpness in his hands, seemed to reach him, and he stopped abruptly and looked down at her. She should not look at him. That she could do; she could avoid looking at him. She could know it was Brian, but she did not have to see it was Brian. The hands could be merely hands, heavy, hurting. In the end it might even seem that they were not Brian’s hands.
“Liza!” he said. “You’re shaking!”
She would not look at him, would not answer him. The telephone was no longer ringing.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Brian demanded. There was a strange note in his voice now. One might have thought something about her surprised him. “Liza!” he said again. His voice was not raised, but it seemed as if he were shouting at her. “What the—” He stopped again. “For God’s sake!” he said. “You don’t—”
He shook her as if she were asleep and must be wakened. Again, insistently, he repeated her name.
“Why,” he said, “you thought—!” Suddenly his hands dropped from her shoulders. And then she looked at him.
“My God!” he said, standing in front of her, looking down at her. “My God, Liza!” He moved as if to touch her, but his hands fell back to his sides. “You thought I—” he said, and seemingly could not, still could not, put into words what she had thought.
It was hard to stand alone, to look up at him, to hear the note in his voice of unbelieving surprise, of defeat. For a moment, so complete was the change, so utterly had everything become different, one tension been superseded by another, Liza was only strangely helpless. Even horror can be a bulwark; one can cling even to fear. But then new emotions came, mixed, confused. Relief was one of them, and something beyond that—hope beginning again. And with this there was the beginning of a kind of heat, almost of anger. Why you! she thought of Brian. Why—you!
“You were afraid of me,” Brian told her. “After everything—you were afraid—again!”
She was shaking more than ever now; now she wanted his hands. Now she hated his hands.
“You were the one who came,”
she said. “It was you!”
“Before someone else did,” he said, and now his voice was dull.
“What did you think I’d think?” she said. “You were the one who—”
“You thought I came to kill you,” he said, in the same dull voice. “Or to take you away somewhere and—I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly. “I’ll never know what you think,” he said. “You think I killed Dad, Sneddiger—could hurt you. You.”
She was not shaking now.
“You come here and grab me,” she said. “You—you talk about choking me. You order me around. You ask a lot.”
“Too much,” he agreed. There was the beginning of bitterness in his voice. “Too damn much. Evidently. You thought I hit you at the—”
“Keep still!” she said. “Keep still! You frighten me. The bottom falls out. And it’s my fault. My fault.”
Her voice was bright with anger. She wanted to put her arms around him, hold tight to him. She wanted to hit him in the face—to hold his face between her hands and kiss his lips—to touch his eyelids gently with her fingers—to shake him until his teeth rattled.
“Damn it all,” she said, “I love you—you—you!” There was no word. She shook her head. “You enormous fool.”
Suddenly she was closer to him.
“You!” she said, and began to beat his chest with her fists. It made her hands hurt. It was fine.
And the buzzer sounded.
The commandeered room was just across the hall. Stein stood at the door, now. The door was inconspicuously open. He turned, held up a hand just as the stenographer with the headset spoke, in a low voice, to Bill Weigand. Weigand had just said, “Right,” into a telephone. “She just called him a fool. An ‘enormous’ fool.” The adjective became a quotation, its choice admittedly puzzling.
“Maybe he is,” Weigand said. “On the other hand—”
Then Stein’s gesture stopped him. He moved quickly to join the tall, dark sergeant.