The Albatross

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Audrey whimpered. “Ah, if she did, she did it for me …” She swayed. She mourned. “She did it for me, I suppose …”

  “You suppose,” said Esther scornfully.

  “What if I did?” Joan said. “Hello, Esther.”

  Esther turned. Joan was in the door to the foyer, both hands on the wheels by which she moved herself in the chair. There was something in her drab-coloured lap. Her face was pale and determined. “I didn’t exactly plan to kill him. It was just an accident that he died.” Joan said. “I couldn’t have done it on purpose. I found that out, yesterday.”

  Esther could feel Audrey shrinking and huddling herself against the kitchen counter, almost as if she sheltered behind Esther’s strength.

  “But there’s another way,” said Joan, “and it won’t be an accident, this time.” The thing in her lap was a hypodermic needle.

  Esther said, almost with laughter, “Why Joan, you can’t hurt me! Why do you want to hurt me?”

  “You lummox!” Joan said viciously. “You don’t care how you jump up and down on Audrey’s feelings. You haven’t any refinement. Your heart isn’t generous. Now you think you can put me away. But you can never put me away from Audrey. Never!”

  “I … never … tried …” gasped Esther.

  “Don’t think I don’t know! Doctor! Doctor! Shouldn’t poor crazy Joan see a doctor …? Making Audrey cry at night. I’ve heard her. Audrey needs a man to be kind. You wouldn’t have that, would you? She doesn’t want to marry Tom. She doesn’t care about that sort of thing. Just kindness. But you can’t stand that, can you? You mean, jealous—”

  Esther said, backing slowly, “Audrey, she’s out of her mind. I’ll watch her. I’m stronger. You call a doctor—somebody.”

  Nothing stirred behind her, where Audrey and the phone both were. The phone still clicked. Esther didn’t dare look around.

  Joan turned the wheel slowly. The chair pivoted. Esther could plainly see the thing in her lap.

  “You can’t get that needle into me,” said Esther rather gently, “because I won’t let you. Audrey won’t let you.”

  Joan laughed.

  “They’ll put you in jail,” said Esther, as if to a child.

  Joan said, “What you don’t understand is this. You can’t hurt me. Nobody can. I don’t care for myself. Only for Audrey. And Audrey needs to be rid of you.”

  She peered around Esther’s body. The beaming light in her eyes that said, “See my crown? How unselfish?” was sickening. Esther risked a swift look. Audrey was still huddled, her face hidden, paralysed or playing paralysed.

  “All right,” said Esther almost patiently. “I’ll go next door and call the police.”

  She took another step sideways. Joan was off her rocker and Audrey was no good, so Esther would have to do something herself. She was going to pretend to be sliding toward the back door, and when she had lured Joan into turning the chair, then Esther would spring to her right and snatch up the phone.

  Then something hit her eyes. She felt a stinging pain, and her lids squeezed shut too late. They seemed to swell, in an instant, and tears flooded through the pain and she could not see. She yelped once. Then she stopped making any noise. She couldn’t afford even a scream. She must listen against danger—now that she was blind.

  Her hands, that had flown to her inflicted eyes, came away. What was in her eyes? Salt? Pepper? She licked a finger. Pepper. It hurt. It wouldn’t hurt for ever. Her hands began to grope. She tried to orient herself. Her back against the counter. The back door to her left.…

  She was blinded and in pain and Joan had that hypodermic—loaded with insulin, Esther supposed. (Audrey had so carefully suggested this.) But there was no time for speculation about the effect the drug would have on a normal body. Esther didn’t want any insulin and wouldn’t have any. Something cool and steady rose in her. All she had to do was simply get away, remove herself from the presence of these pitiful, warped, and ridiculous creatures. She, Esther Gardner, was not going to be drugged and then killed in her own house in the afternoon. No, indeed!

  She blundered into a hard wall, bounced away from it. Fingers trailing along the wall, she made her way to an opening. Any opening. She was going toward the interior of the house. Very well. The front door, then.

  Wheels whirred.

  Her calves took a sharp blow. Her knees buckled. But Esther recovered her balance and stepped high and got away. “No you can’t—” she said. Then her hand went into a hole of space. Door to the foyer? She got down on all fours nimbly and crawled fast. (The chair couldn’t knock her down if she was already down.) Now she could smell the carpet. Here was the little throw rug. Yes, living-room to the left now. Front door to the right.

  Esther tried to open her stinging eyes but she could not.

  Tom, driving home with mechanical skill over the familiar way, could tell that the weight was sliding off his back. Either way. Even if the X-rays were to show him guilty, and guilty beyond a doubt, even then he would keep his eyes open. He would look at Audrey Caldwell and her sister, Joan. He had never really looked at Audrey. What she might be, in herself, he did not know. She had been his victim, the woman he had wronged.…

  I—me—mine—he thought. What was the matter with me? Some kind of spiritual pride? I was blind!

  Esther was blind.

  But she made a decision. She turned, in her crawl, to the living-room. (No use to try the phone in there. It wouldn’t be working.) But her own bathroom was perfect safety. Joan couldn’t get through that door. And there would be cold water. Once Esther could see again, the danger would be over. But if she went out into the street, on her hands and knees, blind—would she find any help? Would she know her way to a neighbour’s house? Would the neighbours be home? And wouldn’t it, just, be a juicy scandal!

  She didn’t hear the wheels on the carpet, but she felt pressure in the floorboards and Esther rolled.

  The chair, going by, caused a whiff of air upon her cheek.

  “You can’t do it, Joan,” she said, half gasping, half laughing. “It isn’t so easy, you see. You shouldn’t go by these TV dramas.”

  Esther wondered if this was sensible, to speak so to the woman. She realized that she needed to fear not only the hypodermic, but anything. A blow could happen to her head. Or something sharp could pierce her. Anything.

  Still, she couldn’t help wanting to laugh.

  It was all so ridiculous.

  She got up on her knees and felt over a chair with her fingers. Which chair? The big yellow chair, she guessed, by the feel of the fabric. She walked on her knees around it. Now she was in a narrow slot between the chair and the bookcases. But she could move either way and the chair couldn’t get in.

  “You can’t possibly do it, Joan,” said Esther calmly. “I’m too tough and I won’t let you. And I am beginning to see.”

  This was not true. She fluttered her lids, admitting a little light and the sharpening of pain.

  “Audrey,” she called out. “Audrey, call her.”

  It was as if she spoke to the dog’s master.

  Nobody answered.

  “Audrey,” said Esther, high and clear, “if you don’t stop her now, you give yourself away, don’t you? You’ll go to jail, too. Don’t you know that?”

  “Keep still,” Joan said, somewhere in the living-room. “Shut up! Audrey doesn’t care for what you say.”

  The wing chair shook. Esther felt this with hands and thighs. Had Joan launched herself upon it? Was she trying to drag her body over the chair?

  Esther thought: If she does, I’m all right. I’ve got her. I can slip out and around and kick the wheel-chair away and she’ll be hung up and helpless.

  Esther waited, every fibre tense and ready for some thrust.

  She said quietly, “If you try anything with that needle, Joan, at the first touch I will simply break your arm.”

  Joan was making some panting sounds.

  “Can’t you see that it’s not going t
o work?” said Esther, gaily. “You just can’t do it. I’m not going to be hurt by you. It’s not that easy. Don’t be so silly, Joan.”

  She listened.

  A new sound began.

  Esther did not breathe. Nobody breathed in the living-room, anywhere near that chair.

  A clickety sound, familiar, the dial on the telephone!

  Audrey’s voice said, “Mr. Gardner, please.”

  “Audrey?” said Joan, very near to Esther’s ear. It was a question with a little wail in it.

  “Oh, isn’t he?” mourned Audrey’s voice, far away. “Oh, he did? Oh, I see … Yes, it’s very important. This is Mrs. Caldwell.… Please. No, never mind …”

  “Try the police,” called Esther.

  “Audrey?” The wail in Joan’s voice was touching the near edge of panic.

  “She’s got to dump you now, Joan,” Esther said quietly. “She can’t be on your side now that you’ve failed. You’ll take all the blame.”

  The wing chair creaked.

  Esther pried at her eyelids. She saw light but it swam formlessly.

  Joan said hoarsely, “You …!”

  “All right,” said Esther, “try. But can’t you hear her dialling?”

  “Audrey?” Now a cry.

  The whole house listened.

  It heard a car’s brakes squealing outside.

  It heard Audrey saying, agitated and loud, “Give me the police.”

  A car door banged.

  “Police?” cried Audrey. “Send someone quick! A crazy woman!”

  Esther could feel nothing through the chair.

  Esther heard feet on flagstones, heard the front door. She began to whimper in her throat.

  Tom’s angry voice said, “What’s going on here?”

  She heard Audrey’s voice go higher. “Please, please hurry! I’m afraid. She’s violent.”

  Joan gave a sad little cry. “Audrey!”

  Then Esther shied and shuddered and jumped away, so strung was her body against being touched, before she was sure it was Tom’s touch, Tom’s hands, Tom’s arm.

  Tom Gardner didn’t wait to be told what went on here. He held Esther with his right arm, tightly, and with his left hand he turned up her face to see what was wrong with it.

  “I can’t see,” she whimpered. “They blinded me.”

  He lifted her.

  “Watch out for Joan,” she warned.

  Tom looked down at Joan. She was sprawled across the arms of the big chair. Her right hand was hidden, down in the seat, concealed by her body. Her left hand clawed at the wing. Her legs trailed limply. Her head was bent back. She didn’t look insane. She looked beaten.

  He lifted Esther high in his arms, and as he came around behind the sprawling woman, he kicked hard at her wheel-chair. It went rattling across the carpet until it hit the wall. “She’s helpless,” Tom said. He wouldn’t trust himself to touch Joan. (Medals for safe driving! Go and sin no more!)

  Now Audrey was at his back, her voice kept following, tagging along, babbling.

  “I’ve called the police. Oh, Tom … They’re coming. Oh, Esther … Tom, is she all right?”

  He entered the bedroom. He put his wife down on her bed. She clung to him. She couldn’t bear to let him go. He said calmly, “Get a cold wet cloth, Audrey, will you? Soak a towel.”

  “I called your office, but you’d gone. Oh, Tom, so terrible! So glad you’re here—” The voice babbled on.

  He didn’t even look around. “Esther, honey, what happened to your eyes?”

  He thought she said, “Pepper.” He put his head closer. It was pepper all right. He could smell it. She said, loudly, “They killed Courtney Caldwell. You didn’t.”

  “Mueller called me,” he told her. “I know all about it.” He stroked her hair. He watched her struggling with what he guessed was the let-down of safety after a bad scare.

  Then Audrey came, with her mourning cries. “Oh Tom! Joan—poor Joan, she killed poor Courtney. She told us what she did. Didn’t she, Esther? Here, dear. Here’s for your poor eyes.”

  Tom took the wet wash-cloth and used it gently. Esther had already stopped, he noticed, the soft hysterical gasping. But a woman’s gasping sobs were in the room still. It was Audrey sobbing.

  “Joan confessed?” he demanded.

  “Oh my poor Joan!” sobbed Audrey. “Yes, she confessed. But I had begun … to guess … already.”

  Esther’s left hand, which was frozen in a grip upon his sleeve, twitched violently. The more noise Audrey made, the stiller Esther seemed to become.

  Tom said, “Take it easy, Audrey.” The only way to tackle a mess like this, a house full of mad or weeping women, was to take it easy, to proceed calmly and reasonably, from one thing to another. “Eyes better?”

  “Yes,” said Esther.

  “Shall I get the doctor?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Try to tell me what went on here, one of you. What was Joan trying to do?”

  “Joan was trying to give me a shot of insulin,” said Esther clearly. “She thought it would kill me.”

  “Kill you! Insulin!”

  “Wasn’t it, Audrey?”

  “I … don’t … know,” wept Audrey. “… don’t know.”

  Esther pushed the cloth away from her eyes. Tom could see her pupils through the swollen slits. “They threw pepper to blind me—”

  “Of all the insane …!” Tom exploded. He couldn’t hear anything from the living-room. Audrey seemed to have closed the bedroom door. He didn’t want to hear anything, or go out there. He wasn’t sure he’d remember that the woman was ill.

  “No, that was pretty smart,” Esther was saying. “Once I was blind … but I didn’t let them get me. Audrey had to dump her.”

  “Hold it,” said Tom, striving for reason and order. “Audrey, what made your sister want to kill my wife?” It was in his mind that Joan was insane and that was all the trouble.

  Audrey was wringing her delicate hands. She leaned, a black figure upon the white door. “I don’t know,” she said sadly. “Joan’s been—angry with Esther for days. I tried so hard to talk to her.” It was the dove’s voice. The same dove’s voice. The same little woman with purple eyes and tragic face. He hardly knew her.

  He said, “Better go see to Joan.”

  “Yes, I will. I will go. It’s my problem. Give me a minute.”

  “Sit down before you fall,” Tom said. He rose. “I better soak this again. Okay, Es?”

  Esther was sitting straighter, with her knees drawn up, with her fingers at her temples as if she were holding her eyes open by pressing and spreading the flesh. “Audrey made her,” he thought she said.

  Tom went into the bathroom and soaked a clean towel. When he came back he could feel the throbbing tension. All the house was silent, but in here there was war.

  Audrey had slipped down upon a straight chair beside the door. Esther had swung her legs over the side of the bed and she still held her eyes open with her fingertips. “You really can’t get out of it, Audrey,” Esther said. “Listen, Tom.”

  He stood still.

  “She’s back of everything Joan did. She’s even legally an accessory, if she knew who killed Courtney and didn’t tell … isn’t that so?”

  “Knew?” Tom’s voice sounded odd to himself.

  “I?” said Audrey faintly. “But I haven’t had anything to do with all this. I am not a suspicious woman. I … trust too much.” Her head came forward and drooped off the stalk of her neck like a dying flower-head.

  “She had everything to do with it,” Esther said. “She knew about the doctor.”

  Audrey said in that fainting voice, “When was there … a doctor’s bill? Was it the day you gave the mail to Joan?”

  “That Tuesday,” said Esther grimly. “But you can’t get out of it.”

  “Who paid that bill?” Tom said abruptly. “On Tuesday.”

  Esther’s mouth spread. “Well?”

  But Audrey’s hand
went to her throat. The purple eyes roved, bewildered. “Joan had a lit-tle money.” She separated the syllables.

  “Not Joan. You paid it.” Esther was loud and hoarse.

  Audrey stood up unsteadily. She looked hunted. “How can you talk of bills and money?” she wailed. “How can you, Esther? When my sister has gone mad and I—have had to be the one to call the police to come for her. Can’t you see … my heart is breaking!”

  Tom was watching lest she start to faint. He said, “Sit down. I better go out there …”

  But Audrey braced up and cried, “No, not you! It’s my place. My sister. You have had enough trouble, both of you.”

  Esther said, “It took you a while to call the police, didn’t it, Audrey?”

  “But my throat … closes.”

  “Like yesterday? When Joan tried to kill me with the chair? Did your throat close so you couldn’t warn me?”

  “Closes,” choked Audrey. “Yes, I do think she tried. Oh, Esther, I had begun to be afraid.”

  “Begun!” Esther was standing.

  “I wanted to get her to a doctor. You heard that, Esther,” Audrey reproached.

  “I heard. When you gave her the bright idea about insulin.”

  “Take it easy, Es,” Tom said.

  “They took the phone off the hook,” Esther was wild. “They tried to get me out of my room where they could get at me.”

  “How funny,” said Audrey, “when I was so worried … about you, dear.”

  “What’s this about the phone?” snapped Tom.

  “I found it off the hook,” said Audrey, “as I told you, Esther.”

  “No, you didn’t. You said you were calling Mr. Saunders.”

  “So I was.”

  “What for?”

  “Why, to say we couldn’t take the apartment. I told you, Esther.”

  Tom saw by Esther’s face that this was true.

  But Esther said, “You lied to Joan. You said I wanted to put her away.”

  Now Audrey’s eyes streamed tears. “Tom! Don’t let her say these wild, cruel things! I wouldn’t lie! I wouldn’t hurt anyone.…”

  “I can see,” said Esther, “that you’re going to have an answer for everything.”

  Tom said, “Tell me this. What happened to your husband, Audrey? How did Joan do it?”