Mermaid

by Margaret Millar

  “I don’t want—”

  “You don’t want,” the lieutenant said. “But I want. Good day, Mrs. Holbrook.”

  She refused Aragon’s offer to drive her back to the school, but she let him walk her to her car which she’d left at a gas station. She didn’t move like the woman who’d run across the street to post the letter. Her gait was slow and awkward, as if she had, within the hour, grown years older and pounds heavier. She rested her head against the steer­ing wheel for a moment before putting the keys in the ig­nition.

  “Are you sure you can make it?” Aragon said.

  “I have to,” she said simply. “This has just been a pre­liminary event. The main bout’s coming up now.”

  The scarcity of cars in the Privileged Parking zone made it apparent that the board of directors’ meeting was over. She expected nothing further for the present than an informal note or a message from her secretary. Instead, her sec­retary had gone home and Hilton Jasper was sitting in the office, waiting.

  In spite of the no smoking please sign on her desk and the absence of ashtrays, he was smoking a cigarette. When she entered he crushed the cigarette in the wastebasket with obvious reluctance and rose to his feet.

  “I’ve been waiting for you”—he consulted his wristwatch—“for over an hour.”

  “Punching a time clock isn’t part of my job. This is my private office. Who let you in?”

  He indicated the girl Gretchen, who was in the opposite corner of the room, still dusting books but no longer hum­ming. “She’s not much of a talker but she’s a very good worker. I could use her in my business.”

  Gretchen gave no real sign that she heard or understood or cared, but she increased her pace and Mrs. Holbrook knew she had done all three.

  She said, “You’d better stop for the day, Gretchen.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “If you finish all the books today, you won’t have any left to do tomorrow.”

  “I can do them again.”

  “That’s nonsense, Gretchen. Now you hurry along and get into your swimsuit. It’s almost pool time. You’re such a strong swimmer, the timid students need your good example. Then afterwards maybe John will let you help him clean the pool.”

  The girl hesitated. She wanted to stay and dust the rest of the books but she also wanted to set a good example. Then suddenly she made up her mind, stuffed all the dustcloths into the tote bag and trudged across the room and out into the hall.

  Mrs. Holbrook closed the door behind her and bolted it. “I suspect Gretchen of being one of the main stems of the school grapevine. By dinnertime everyone in the school will know that Cleo’s brother was in my office and that he broke the no-smoking rule.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m Cleo’s brother.”

  “That’s what you think. There are very few secrets around here. It’s often wise to act as if every room was bugged.” Though the smell of smoke was making her slightly ill, she closed the three windows that were open, then went back and sat at her desk, her hands folded in front of her. “Did the directors reach a conclusion?”

  “Yes. In the best interest of the school, you are to ask Roger Lennard for his immediate resignation.”

  “That won’t be easy.”

  “It might be simpler than you think.”

  “Indeed?”

  “He won’t be surprised, believe me. He’s expecting it. I talked to him late this morning. He refused to admit he’d done anything wrong. In fact, he wouldn’t even tell me where Cleo is. He lied, said he didn’t know. I tried friendly persuasion to get the truth out of him. When that didn’t work I hit him. He still wouldn’t drop his injured innocence act, so I hit him again. He didn’t even have guts enough to fight back.”

  “Roger didn’t believe in violence.”

  “Well, maybe he does now.” But the satisfaction in his voice had undertones of guilt. “I haven’t hit anyone since I was a kid.”

  “Really? I hope you didn’t hurt your hand. I notice you’ve been keeping it in your pocket. Let me see.”

  He took his left hand out of his pocket and she saw with pleasure it was almost as swollen and discolored as Roger’s face.

  She feigned surprise. “My goodness. Does it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have this examined.”

  “I haven’t time to see a doctor.”

  “I didn’t mean a doctor. I meant the police.”

  “Police? Are you telling me that little pipsqueak called the police because I hit him, after what he did to my sister, enticed her away from home, seduced her with promises—”

  “No, that little pipsqueak didn’t call the police,” she said quietly. “I did.”

  “You did? Why?”

  “I was the one who found him dead. I phoned the police and then Aragon.”

  For a few moments he was stunned and speechless. Then: “I didn’t hit him that hard. I swear I didn’t.”

  “Don’t swear it to me. I have no jurisdiction.”

  “It’s impossible to kill a man with your fist unless you’re a professional boxer.”

  “Perhaps you missed your calling, Mr. Jasper.”

  Deliberately, almost maliciously, she withheld the infor­mation about the pills.

  “Another tenant heard you quarreling with Roger and saw you leave,” she said. “From his description and my own background knowledge I suspected it was you. But I didn’t tell the police. Perhaps I would have if I’d been ab­solutely sure.”

  “Now that you’re sure, what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I expect you to do it yourself. Just phone and inform them that you hit Roger twice with your fist be­cause he intended to marry, or had already married, your sister. Does that sound to you like a good story?”

  “Not when you put it like that, when you leave out all the details.”

  “The details will come out later.”

  “For God’s sake,” he said, “I never meant—”

  “That’s irrelevant, isn’t it?” She took a certain pleasure in watching him suffer. “The policeman I talked to this afternoon was a Lieutenant Peterson. I asked him what if I’d come sooner, and he stopped me. He said his job was tough enough without the what-ifs. Well, mine is tough enough without the I-never-meants.”

  “I went there only to reason with him. But he wouldn’t be reasonable.”

  “If you’re setting out to hit all the people who aren’t reasonable, you’re going to be a very busy man, Mr. Jasper.”

  “I didn’t intend to kill him.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t,” she said. “He took some pills also. The actual cause of death won’t be known until after an autopsy.”

  “Damn you, why didn’t you tell me about the pills sooner?”

  “Because I don’t like bullies,” she said. “And Roger was my friend.”

  11

  Frieda spent the afternoon sorting through clothes and bric-a-brac and books to be donated to the Assistance League rummage sale. The clothing would be sent to the cleaners, the bric-a-brac washed or polished, the books dusted. She carefully avoided Cleo’s room and Ted’s. Ted’s would be half-empty and Cleo’s exactly the way she’d left it when she walked away with the dog.

  The house was quiet and orderly without the two of them. Each hour came in a neat little package and piled up in corners unopened.

  When Hilton arrived home for dinner she went down­stairs to meet him.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “I can tell time.”

  “Oh, we’re in a mood, are we? You must have had a bad day.”

  “It was—interesting.”

  “That’s more than mine was.” She noticed his hand when he put his hat away in the hall closet. “What’s the matter with your hand?”

  “I
hurt it.”

  “That’s obvious. Let me take a look at it.”

  “Stop fussing. It doesn’t suit you. Is dinner ready?”

  It was ready. Cook had left some time ago and Lisa, the college girl who did the serving, was waiting in the kitchen. Someone—the cook? Valencia? Lisa?—had removed one or two of the extension boards of the dining room table, so it was smaller and appeared less deserted.

  “If you’re going to have difficulty handling a soup spoon with your right hand,” Frieda said, “we can skip that course and go on to the salad.”

  “Get rid of the girl.”

  “What do you mean, get rid of her? Fire her?”

  “Tell her we won’t need her for tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “I have something important to discuss with you in pri­vate.”

  “That sounds ominous. I don’t like it. You’re frighten­ing me, Hilton.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Is it about Cleo?”

  “It’s about me.”

  Lisa came in wearing her usual uniform: skintight jeans and T-shirt partly covered by an apron. She carried two bowls of soup, hot consommé floating sprigs of parsley on lemon rafts.

  Frieda spoke in the too-bright voice she used as a cover-up. “Lisa, we’ve decided to have dinner alone tonight. You’re free to leave.”

  Lisa put the soup bowls on the table in a manner that clearly indicated her displeasure. “I don’t want to leave just yet. My boyfriend’s not picking me up until eight o’clock.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “The university library.”

  “Suppose you go and meet him. I’ll give you five dollars for cab fare.”

  “That might not cover it and I’m broke.”

  “All right. Ten dollars.”

  “I still think it’d be simpler if I just stayed and served dinner as usual. A cab might get caught in a traffic jam. Or Brent might finish his term paper early and we’d miss each other. I don’t see why I can’t sit quietly in the kitchen and watch television until Brent comes.”

  “I don’t want to hear any television sounds coming out of the kitchen,” Jasper said. “And I don’t want any dining room sounds going into the kitchen. Have I spelled that out clearly enough for you?”

  “Okay, okay. But I don’t like having my plans screwed up like this.”

  “Here.” He took a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and shoved it at her. She stared at it a moment before accepting it. Then she folded it and tucked it into the rear pocket of her jeans. “I see you hurt your hand.”

  “Yes. Good night.”

  She phoned for a cab in the kitchen, speaking in a very loud, distinct voice to make sure they overheard. Then she went out the back door, slamming it behind her.

  “Twenty dollars was too much,” Frieda said.

  “I didn’t have a ten.”

  “You could have asked me.”

  “I could have, yes.” I could have . . . I never meant . . . what if . . . Useless phrases belonging only to the past.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “I hit a man.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe it. You’d never do anything so primitive.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I wanted to make him tell me where Cleo is. I was sure he knew. She probably went directly to him the morning she left here. He refused to admit anything.”

  “You should have tried to bribe him. God knows that’s not above you. We just had an example of it a minute ago.”

  “I wanted to hit him.”

  “That’s always been the governing principle of your life. You wanted to do something, so you did it . . . Do you want to eat your soup? If you don’t, I’ll take it back to the kitchen and we’ll go on with the rest of the meal.”

  He looked at her bitterly. “There’s no sympathy in you, is there, Frieda?”

  “I’m reserving mine for the man who was hit.”

  “Don’t waste your time. He’s dead.”

  She tried to cover her alarm with a show of cynicism. “If this is one of your attempts to build yourself a macho image, forget it.”

  “I’ll have to go to the police. I’ve been trying to get in touch with some of the company’s lawyers but they’re in Washington or L.A. or Sacramento. One is even hunting capercaillie in Scotland. They’re everyplace but here. And they’re not accustomed to dealing with cases like this any­way. It’s a criminal matter.”

  “Roger Lennard,” she said. “You killed Roger Len­nard?”

  “I’m not sure. He took some pills. Maybe he’d already taken them when I arrived. He made no attempt to fight back. I thought it was because he didn’t have the guts, but maybe he was already dying. We have to wait for the re­sults of an autopsy.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She sat twisting the soup spoon around and around be­tween her fingers as though she was trying to wring its neck. “Chalk another one up to Cleo. She’ll beat us all be­fore she’s through.”

  “Don’t blame Cleo. It’s my fault. Cleo wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “No, she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or a dog or a horse. But what about the rest of us? We’re the ones who get our wings pulled out, our paws stepped on.”

  “Please, let’s not argue about Cleo. We have to decide what to do next.”

  “We? You mean I now have a part in the decision mak­ing?”

  “You always did.”

  He was down and she would have liked to kick him a few more times to make sure he remembered after he got up again. But she was a reasonable woman with a keen sense of survival. He was down. That was enough.

  “Give me the whole picture,” she said. “You knocked at his door. Was it locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell him who was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he unlocked the door and let you in?”

  “Yes, right away. I had the peculiar feeling that he might even have been expecting me. He seemed almost re­signed. He knew who I was, of course. Cleo probably talked about me to him the way she does to everyone.”

  “All right, he let you in. Then what?”

  Her husband stared into his soup bowl. The little lemon raft with its cargo of parsley had floated to one side as if his breath had provided enough wind to move it. “He lives—lived—in a mobile home, a very small one where every­thing is wall-to-wall. There was a typewriter on the table, I remember, and a magazine on the couch. I asked him right away where Cleo was and he claimed he didn’t know, that she’d walked out on him. He talked very slowly and calmly and that made me even angrier. I began to yell at him. One of the neighbors overheard me and reported it later to the police.”

  “When you hit him, did he fall down?”

  “No. I hit him again.”

  “Then did he fall down?”

  “No.”

  “How could you have killed him when he wasn’t even knocked over by the force of the blows?”

  “The effects of head injuries aren’t always immediately apparent.”

  “But he was still standing up when you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the chances are that you had nothing to do with his death?”

  “I made it clear to him that he didn’t have much of a future in this town or in his profession or with Cleo. If that caused him to take an overdose of pills, then I have some moral responsibility for his death.”

  “A man doesn’t commit suicide because of a few words spoken in anger. He may have been planning it for weeks, months, even years. He had many personal problems, according to Aragon.” She paused. “What about Aragon? He might be able to help you.”

 
“He’s too young and inexperienced.”

  “At least he’s not hunting capercaillie in Scotland,” she said sharply. “Whatever the hell capercaillie is. Shall I call him?”

  “If you like.”

  “If I like? What I’d like is a nice peaceful life without a husband who goes around slugging people.”

  She had hit him once too often while he was down. He was getting up now, and it showed in his face and his voice.

  “The person I should have slugged is you, Frieda.”

  “It’s a bit late for that. It would cost you too much, espe­cially where it hurts, in the pocketbook.”

  “You intend to leave me, don’t you?”

  “If Cleo comes back, yes. I can’t face another year like the past fourteen.”

  “Have things been that bad?”

  “Worse. You don’t realize that because you were away most of the time, at the office or at meetings out of town, while I was stuck at home watching her every minute, trying to teach her to talk properly and to read, looking after the succession of stray animals and birds she dragged home only to lose interest in them almost immediately, the way she lost interest in the dog Zia. She took him with her that morning and then she must have simply left him somewhere, forgot all about him.”

  “Why do our conversations always revert to Cleo?”

  “Because she’s been the focus of our lives, not you or I or Ted.”

  He said, “Here I am, in serious trouble, sitting in front of a bowl of cold soup, across the table from a wife who hates me, talking about a sister who ran away from me.”

  “At least we can take care of the cold soup part.”

  She carried the soup bowls back to the kitchen and re­turned with two plates of salad. “I repeat the question, Hil­ton. Shall I call Aragon? You don’t have to take his advice, just see what he has to say.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You might want to do it yourself.”

  “No. You handle these things very well, Frieda. It’s one of your talents.”

  She used the wall phone in the kitchen. There was no answer from Aragon’s apartment, so she left a message with the answering service at his office for him to call back. She saw the headlights of a car coming up the driveway and she thought at first what a nice coincidence it was, to have Ara­gon show up at the very time she was trying to get in touch with him. But as she listened she knew the car couldn’t be his. The engine sounded too quiet and smooth.