Little Less Than Kind

by Charlotte Armstrong

  In a moment, he reached for the telephone. As he dialed, David became bitterly amused. Modern man, rock and hero, what does he do in the face of danger and responsibility? He reaches for the telephone.

  Nevertheless, David made some calls. But he did not call Rafe Lorimer. A phone bell ringing in that house would be too cruel if it bore no news of Felicia, safe and found. So he stirred himself and walked out of this house and over to speak to Rafe, old-fashionedly, in his person and his flesh.

  He was coming back through the hedge, three-quarters of an hour later, when he saw Ladd Cunningham, in swim trunks, standing at the pool gate, rattling it rather angrily. “Where is the key?” the boy demanded.

  David came toward him, giving him full attention. Nice-looking boy, not too tall, rather slim but well muscled, not flabby, well tanned, healthy-looking. His nose a trifle long, like Hob’s. His chin a trifle short, like Abby’s. His dark eyes—like whatever ancestor’s dark eyes. Inside—who could say?

  “The key’s not here,” Ladd said. Young lord of the manor, wishing his morning dip, somewhat annoyed. Nothing abnormal in that. That’s if you did not count his mother, and one, two, three, maybe four other suffering people whose lives this boy had touched and altered for the worse.

  “I’ll get the key,” said David heavily. “I have it.”

  He went into the house and upstairs and found his own swim trunks. As he changed, he thought, I wish I had the key to unlock that boy.

  He had been awake during the night and some of his night thoughts still held firm. To encourage Rafe to a lawsuit, just in the hope that during the slow grinding of the machinery of the law it would appear to some authority that this boy must be put where he would get psychiatric treatment. No. Not at the price of tormenting poor Rafe and the little girl (if God willing she was safe somewhere). The price was high, and gain not guaranteed. And what, he had thought in the night, would the boy be doing in the meantime?

  Now, in the morning, there was an added feature. The boy, in the meantime, would be trying to murder David Crown. How did the victim find the key to unlock his murderer’s intention?

  David got into the trunks. He was fifty years old, but not too far gone to seed. Pale, yes. Modern—he fought by desk and telephone. No athlete, he. Yet he was not without his skills. Not without his principles. Not without his faith.

  These old texts, thought David, keep coming back to me because my father and my mother sent me to Sunday school, a long time ago. Yet … “I will maintain my ways before Him.” And that I will, of necessity. Because the only key I have is the key that I am.

  Abby had breakfasted and was on the terrace when David came down in trunks, towel and robe. “Not the office?” she exclaimed. “Oh, then I won’t go to my luncheon.”

  “I called Mike Palermo,” David said. “Gave him a jolt by dropping the morning on him. But I think he’ll cope. He may do.”

  He had a momentary glimpse of a difference between himself and Hob Cunningham. David trained people up and then trusted them. Hob, to the last, was personally riding herd on his wild young men.

  It was a sweet morning, in Hob’s castle-keep. Abby, in a blue dress, sat in a white chair. The roses were pink. Up the steps drifted the tanned boy.

  “You went over to see Rafe, didn’t you, David?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “She isn’t home yet, I suppose.”

  “No. But Rafe is better this morning. Mrs. Wells is there. It seems, or so she says, that Felicia has done some baby-sitting and therefore does have some money of her own.”

  “Oh? Oh, I suppose that’s good.”

  “It’s better. And Rafe isn’t alone in the house, at least not now.”

  Rafe was being stern and reticent, this morning. He would not hash things over. Yes, he had gone to Abby to explain the trouble between the children and to protect his daughter, who had the right to reject a boy’s attentions. The boy had reacted insanely, in Rafe’s opinion. Then and there. But Rafe would not soil his mouth with repetition. He understood, he said loftily, and he would do nothing, say nothing, simply wait and pray—until Felicia came home.

  “Can’t the police find her, David?” Abby was asking.

  “They haven’t. I called.” (The boy was near enough to hear.) “I called the hospital, too. Mr. Harper had a good night but he can’t have visitors today.”

  “I’m glad,” said Abby gravely, “that he had a good night.”

  Now the boy was near enough to speak. “How about the key?”

  “Good morning,” said his mother.

  “Hi.” The boy scarcely looked at her.

  His mother said to her husband, “David, be careful. You really shouldn’t swim so soon after breakfast.”

  “I’ll be careful,” David promised. He started toward the pool and Ladd followed.

  Ladd said, “What’s the idea? Why did you take the key?”

  “So that Felicia Lorimer wouldn’t drown herself in this pool at least.”

  “What?”

  David said nothing. He closed the gate behind them, leaving the key in the padlock.

  “I don’t get it,” said Ladd angrily.

  “You mean you don’t understand?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m pretty tired,” said David, staring soberly at the water, “of trying to understand you.”

  Ladd ran to the deep end and arched off the board. He surfaced and swam in a fast and beautiful crawl.

  Showing off? thought David. Yes or no? I don’t know. Or care.

  He lowered himself to the coping and put his feet into the water, his old white feet. Ladd made a tumbling turn and raced back to the board end and helped himself out on his arms in one quick twist.

  David thought, That was the truth. I’m tired of trying to understand. I am also tired of being devious, of influencing people, of leading them, as I led those women last night. I am tired of tact. Tired of trying to outguess reactions. Tired of pulling my punches. In my business, if I want to know something, I inquire.

  So he asked, conversationally, “Did you manage to get hold of a gun at all?”

  “A what?”

  “You heard,” said David wearily.

  The boy sat, dripping.

  “You want to get rid of me?” said David, in a moment. “With a gun, for instance?”

  The boy got up and walked out upon the board. He began to bounce on it, making it rattle. Then he landed hard on both feet and made the board still. A foxy look took over his whole face. “What’s wrong, sir?” he said innocently. “Are you feeling guilty about something?”

  “I’m pretty tired,” said David, “of worrying about who is guilty of what. Aren’t you?”

  “Who worries about it?” the boy said. “Some are. Some aren’t.”

  David lowered himself into the water grimly and struck out across the length of the pool with his old-fashioned middle-aged stroke. When he was three-quarters of the way across, the boy’s body sailed over his head in a high twisting dive. David made it to the other side and pulled himself around the rim of the pool by the use of his hands. He climbed out at the board end and sat, dripping. The boy came knifing back the length of the pool, swift and easy. His brown hand caught the coping, not a yard away.

  “Swim competitively, do you?” David asked him.

  The dark eyes were on his face. “Why not?” the boy said contemptuously.

  “Speed or endurance?” (No answer.) “Let me guess,” said David. “Speed?”

  The boy pulled himself out of the water twisting away, landing with space between them. “In spite of all that stuff you said the other night,” he said slyly, “I wonder why you care.”

  “Oh, I can’t say that I care, passionately,” said David. “Mild curiosity. How was Hob in the water? I can’t remember.”

  The boy became rigid.

  “He was my friend,” said David, “before you were born, and I’ll speak of him when I like.”

  “Not to me yo
u won’t,” the boy snapped.

  These exchanges of open rudeness were something, at least. David said quickly, “If you have got it in your mind that your father was murdered, get it out. He was not. If you have got it in your mind that I did it, get it out. I did not.” He expected nothing much from a statement of facts, but he would state them.

  The boy said, “Oh. Yes. That bothered you, didn’t it?” Now the foxy look was back, and the eyes were bright.

  David said, deliberately, “But if it isn’t in your mind, in the sense of reason, then there’s nothing you or I can do to get it out. A trained man like Aaron Silver—”

  “You might as well keep still about that damned doctor,” Ladd exploded. “You’re not going to con me into anything.”

  “That’s right,” said David. “Neither you nor anybody else. I’m too tired. I’m not going to stand between you and anything, either.”

  “Between me and what?”

  “Between you and the consequences of what you do.”

  The boy looked furious. “What I do!”

  David went right on. “There is a principle involved. I guess you could call it the masculine principle. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. All right, if you told that nasty lie about the Lorimers, then no matter why you did it, there goes your reputation. And if they need money, it will be your money that they get, out of your inheritance. And if anything very bad happens to Felicia, you can expect some very bad trouble. I won’t stand between you and these consequences. Your father might have. I don’t know.”

  The boy had that yellow look.

  “Don’t you have any idea of consequences?” David asked him. “Don’t you know what you’ve done to the Lorimers? Don’t you care?”

  “The Lorimers. The Lorimers. I’m tired of hearing about the Lorimers.”

  David looked sideways at that face. He said, “I’ll admit that I believe, without the proof, that you did it. I’ll get the proof, however, before I act.”

  “You believe what you want.”

  “That’s what you are doing? You want to believe that I killed your father?”

  “No, I don’t want to.”

  “Then why don’t you find out? That’s what I can’t understand. Why don’t you use your brain?”

  “Just don’t you worry about my brain.”

  “I don’t think there is anything the matter with your brain. But something may be wrong with your feelings. I’m not a doctor. I only want to get you to a doctor.”

  “A person who doesn’t feel that you’re just adorable,” said Ladd jeeringly, “must be crazy?”

  “All right,” said David. “Why don’t you get on with it? Go ahead. Try to kill me. Then you’d get to a doctor for sure. The police have doctors. How about right here?” David was angry, and knew he was angry, and let himself be angry. I’m tired, he thought. I am damned tired of “understanding” this kook. Let him understand me.

  “I’m a little bigger and heavier,” he went on, “and not as decrepit as you may think. You’d have trouble overpowering me on land. But I am a bum swimmer, as you can see. In the deep water, you’d have quite an advantage. Maybe you could drown me. It’s all laid on, very nicely. Your mother has already warned me.”

  “You’re faking!” the boy shouted.

  “How so?”

  “You won’t get me that way, I know what you want to do.”

  “I’ve told you. I want to get you to a doctor.” David turned around and slipped back into the water. He began to swim his clumsy back stroke, watching the boy. He was a little frightened. He thought, The boy could do it, as a matter of fact.

  But the boy did not do it. The boy stood up. For a moment David thought that he would jump in. But instead he sat down on the diving board. He sat very still, staring at the treetops.

  David lumbered around in the water for a minute or two, then he climbed out and sat, panting slightly. Now what? he thought. Have we made an advance here? Or did I descend to a childish level that has done harm. What’s the consequence?

  Somebody shouted, “Hey, Ladd? What do you say?”

  “Hey, Gare …”

  Gary Fenwick was coming along the drive outside the fence.

  Then Ladd said to David in a tense and demanding fashion, “You were my father’s brother, weren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “Yes, I beg your pardon, I heard.” David was baffled. “Hob and I were roommates, best friends.”

  “Brothers?”

  “If you mean fraternity brothers, yes, we were that, too.”

  “Just don’t kid me,” said the boy softly. “Just don’t kid me, Mr. David Crown.”

  “That’s a deal,” said David.

  Gary burst through the gate. He let his slacks fall, even as he stripped his tee shirt over his head and leaped (it seemed) instantaneously into the water with a mighty splash. The board clanged. Ladd’s body flashed. There was a great hurly-burly in the pool.

  Daivd picked up his towel and his robe and went out of the gate without looking back.

  The balance had swung. He was again a reasonable man. Going backwards over the course, he was wondering. What if Ladd had not tried to buy a gun? What if Ladd had not told the lie about the Lorimers? What if all Ladd knew about the phone call was what he had heard and seen when the policeman had been there? What if he had correctly divined that David had been “bothered”? (As he had been, on Abby’s account.) I must have looked, thought David, scared and even guilty.

  Then, what if the one whose notions were askew was not the boy, but David Crown?

  Would not a boy who disliked his stepfather (which, in all sanity, he was entitled to do) mightily resent the presence of a psychiatrist in David’s office that day, when it might very well have appeared to him that he had been lured into the meeting? And be further offended when Aaron came to dinner, correctly divining that Aaron was, in part, there as a spy?

  Had anything the boy had said, just now, been in any way irrational of itself?

  No. If you looked at the whole exchange from the other point of view, there had been only one thing that was even mysterious. What the boy had asked about the fraternity. Surely, unimportant.

  As David came up on the terrace, where Abby was, he thought, But she knows. If she would tell me what he said to her, then I might have the clue. It had upset her. But … there again … how little it took to upset Abby.

  “Could you talk to him at all?” she asked him anxiously.

  He could not answer. He shook his head, in doubt.

  “But look at them! They are like puppies.” The two boys were wrestling at the end of the pool, with grunts and cries, like any two boys anywhere. “It doesn’t seem possible,” said Abby. “I wonder if Rafe Lorimer could have made some silly mistake.” Rafe Lorimer was, in fact, the man who could.

  David said, “I’ll make sure. Mr. Harper may be available tomorrow.” He would not ask her what the boy had said to upset her. Shaky ground. This way, the way of checking up with the testimony of a witness, an identification of the boy who had told the lie, this was the better, surer, more rational way.

  Abby had her hands clasped, holding off, he thought, with all her nerves, some ugly thing. “Felicia is such an odd child,” Abby said. “I never have understood her.”

  How shall any of us, thought David, understand or be understood? What a ridiculous ambition! He told her that he was going to the office after all. Abby said she would go to her luncheon.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When David came into the house again, at a quarter after six o’clock, Abby called to him from the library. Davic turned into that room and found her lying on the sofa, full of woe.

  “Oh, David, I went to see Rafe.”

  “Oh, Abby …” (He wished she had not.)

  “He breaks my heart. He wasn’t angry with me, or with anyone. He was s-saintly. Poor Rafe. He swears he won’t set foot in his studio … He looks so old. I cried. I can’t si
t to the table, David. Cleona is bringing me a tray. I won’t want much. Oh, where is that girl! Why doesn’t she phone him, at least? How can she be so discourteous!”

  David bent to touch her and give comfort, when she saw something over his shoulder. She raised on an elbow. “Ladd? Cleona will have your dinner on the table,” Abby said loudly to her son. Then, “David, you’ll stay with me?”

  David straightened his back and turned to look. Ladd was dressed for dinner, informally, but immaculately. The dark eyes watched. Abby’s hand had seized David’s, and he could feel her pleading.

  He said, “I’m sorry you went over there. Let Cleona bring you your bite and you be quiet. Ladd and I will sit to the table.”

  The flesh of her face seemed to fall.

  He said, gently, “Yes, that’s best.” Her lids fell over her fear.

  “So I’ll just wash” said David briskly. “Ladd, tell Cleona fifteen minutes, will you, please?”

  The boy blinked, “Yes, sir.”

  As David walked past him to go upstairs, he heard Abby say piteously, “Ladd, will you please? I need to be quiet.”

  “Of course, Mother,” he answered politely. Indifferently?

  The boy turned. He stood, looking up the stairs.

  Then the two of them were at the table. There were the normal “thank you’s” and “pleases” as they settled to the meal. David had collected himself. His normal antennae were out. He became aware that he had the boy’s attention. Ladd was, somehow, examining David Crown with fierce interest.

  Finally David said, “I’m sorry about that set-to this morning.” A faint change on the boy’s face alerted him. “That is a courteous phrase,” David added, “but let me put in a better way. I think I made a bit of a fool of myself. I don’t know, yet, whether I am going to be sorry.”

  The boy’s mouth quirked. He ate a bite. He said, “Mother thinks discourtesy is the only crime.”

  David sensed the behind-the-scenes, confidential amusement that he disliked. It made him think of Dr. Jones. “You might have mistaken her meaning just now,” he said thoughtfully. “About Felicia Lorimer. Because your mother values courtesy so much, she believes there must be some very great and overpowering distress that makes Felicia leave her father in his present misery.”