The Deep End

by Fredric Brown

  I knew Nina would be curious as to why I wanted the information and I wasn’t ready to talk to anybody yet about what I suspected, so I got a story ready on the way over.

  The address was an apartment building, nice-looking but not swanky. I found Nina’s name and pushed the button beside it, then caught the door as the lock clicked.

  Nina opened the door to my knock. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and she was beautiful. Dark brown hair neatly but not precisely waved; it looked soft and touchable. Oval face with skin like a schoolgirl’s, even to a few faint freckles on the nose; full lips, smiling, parted just enough to show the edges of perfect teeth, parted just enough to be perfect for kissing. A quilted silk housecoat molded the curves of her body.

  She closed the door behind me. “I haven’t looked it up yet, Sam. I’d just finished eating when you called and I wanted to do the dishes and straighten up the place.”

  “No hurry. Let’s make a drink first.” I handed her the bottle I’d bought. “You know where things are, so I’ll let you make the first one.”

  “All right, but you can help by breaking out a tray of ice cubes. I guess you can find them.”

  I guessed that I could, since the refrigerator was in plain sight in the alcove of the room that formed a kitchenette. It was a one-room apartment but a largish room, nicely furnished. Wall-to-wall carpeting in beige that matched the upholstery of the chair and sofa, matching walnut in the wooden pieces, walls papered in unfigured tan. A room in shades of brown, an attractive, peaceful room.

  We made drinks and sat down with them, I on the sofa and she on the matching chair, a safe six feet distant.

  “Nina,” I said, “I’m really curious why you haven’t married. You said it was a long story–but unless it’s something you don’t want to tell me–”

  “It’s not really a long story, unless I wanted to go into detail about every man I’ve known. I’ve had chances to marry, several times. But none of them–well, none of them happened to be anyone I thought I’d be satisfied to spend a lifetime with. Probably I was too fussy–and will end up an old maid because of it.”

  “I doubt it. But don’t tell me that you haven’t–” I didn’t quite know how to put it, but she spared me from trying.

  “Had any affairs? A few, Sam. I haven’t been promiscuous, but I haven’t been completely celibate all the time. I’m human. But any time it’s happened it’s been more than–than–”

  “A romp in the hay?”

  She laughed. “Yes, more than a romp in the hay. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with most men; they think sex is only that.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with most women,” I said; “they think sex must necessarily be more than that. Not that it can’t be. But even hay is nice stuff.”

  She laughed again. “Let’s not fight a skirmish in the war between the sexes. Sam, you make us another drink–now that the ingredients and paraphernalia are out on the sink where you can find them–while I see what I can find about those accidents in my journals. But–why are you interested in them?”

  I said, “I’m writing an article, something I hope to sell to a magazine, and I want to finish it this week while I’m on vacation. You’ve heard of accident prones, haven’t you?”

  “People who keep having accidents? Of course. The current theory, I think, is that subconsciously they want to die; they have a death wish that their conscious mind isn’t aware of.”

  “Right. Well, my article is going to try to prove–partly seriously, partly facetiously–that the current theory is wrong because there are buildings as well as people that are accident prone. And a building hasn’t got a subconscious mind.”

  “Buildings? Are you out of your mind, Sam?”

  “Maybe out of my subconscious one. But it happens to be a fact, Nina; there are buildings that have more accidents happen in them than the law of averages allows. And not because they’re badly designed or dangerous in themselves. It’s just that they’re prone to have accidents happen in them.”

  “Sam, that’s crazy.”

  “Maybe it is–and that’s why I’m writing it as though I’m writing tongue in cheek, whether I am or not. But I’ve got a lot of data on buildings that have had considerably more than their share of accidents. And I want to add South Side High to my roster.”

  “But–four accidents in three years. That’s not so awfully many.”

  “Isn’t it? Four fatal accidents? There are three other high schools in town, all about the same size as South. Each of those three is over twenty years old and two of them never had a fatal accident. The other had one, about five years ago, and that happened on the football field; kid had his neck broken in scrimmage. South Side’s the newest of the four, about fifteen years old, and it’s had four fatal accidents, and all of them within the last three years.”

  “But it didn’t have any before. Doesn’t that prove–?”

  “It proves, if anything, that it became accident prone three years ago. Accident prones among people aren’t born that way; they become accident prone at some time in their lives.”

  “Sam, that’s such a weird idea that it really might make a good article–for a Sunday supplement anyway. All right, make those drinks and I’ll get my journals.”

  I made the drinks and when I came back with them she was sitting with three largish volumes, the size of ledgers, on her lap; one of them open. I could see that it was handwritten, in the small neat handwriting that I now remembered from our high school days. Each of those three books, presumably one each year for the last three years, must have contained a hundred thousand words or so if it was filled.

  She closed the opened one as she took the drink I handed her. “I’ve found two of them already, Sam, the first two; they both happened three years ago. The boy who fell out of the tower window was the first one.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I was right about the name, Wilbur Greenough. He was a freshman.” She shivered a little. “I remember that one well because it was the first serious accident I’d ever seen, the first dead body I’d ever seen–except at a funeral, of course.”

  “You mean you actually saw it happen?”

  “No, but I heard it, and I saw him right afterwards. He fell from one of the front tower windows and landed on the front steps. I was working at my desk–the school offices are still in the same place, on the first floor front–and I heard a noise outside that sounded like–well, a hard thud. Then I heard a girl scream and I ran to the open window and looked out, and he was lying there on the steps. And it was awful–his head had hit and cracked open and there was blood and–”

  I saw that wasn’t doing her any good, so I said, “Skip that part if you want, Nina. Was there any investigation made?”

  “Yes, of course. But it didn’t bring out much. Nobody saw him fall–until he landed, that is. It was during second lunch period, near the end of the period; he’d already eaten. He must have gone up into the tower and either leaned too far out of the window looking down or else climbed out on the ledge. There’s a six-inch ledge along the row of three windows. And all three of the windows were open; he might have climbed out of one and tried walking along the edge to come in at another window. They found out that other boys had done that.”

  “Were any other students up there in the tower room with him?”

  “Apparently not; at least they never found out that there were any other boys up there at the time. Since then the door to the tower has been kept locked, unless it’s actually in use. And that isn’t often. The Drama Club uses it for rehearsals and the school band practices up there; that’s about all. It’s unlocked only when either of those groups is scheduled to use it.

  “That was in late September, not long after school had started. And the next accident was in January, the boy who fell in the locker room. His name was William Reed. I didn’t put any d
etails about it into my journal, but I guess there wasn’t much to put down. Nobody knows just how he fell because he was alone in the locker room at the time, as far as they could find out, but he’d hit his head on the sharp corner of a bench. He wasn’t found for several hours.”

  “Several hours? Good Lord, how could he lie there that long?”

  “It was the last period and he was about the last, or one of the last ones getting dressed; he’d taken a shower after gym–probably didn’t have a tub or shower at home and took a long one. And his locker was in the last row back; even if there were a few boys left dressing in other rows they wouldn’t have passed him on their way out. The janitor found him when he got around to sweeping in the locker room.”

  “Investigation again?”

  “All the accidents were investigated. But since nobody saw the accident happen, there wasn’t much they could find out. There was a recommendation made that the benches be replaced with ones with rounded edges and I think it was done; I’m not sure.”

  “And the next one, the freshman girl who drowned, was two years ago? Will it be hard for you to find that one?”

  “No, because I’m pretty sure it happened right after school started and that gives me about the right date, so I may find it quickly.”

  She’d put her drink down on the coffee table and was leafing through another of the books. After a few minutes she said, “Here it is. Oh yes, her name was Bessie Zimmerman. I didn’t put down much about it because I didn’t even know her, but I remember that it happened during a swimming period in the morning.”

  I said, “When we went there, girls and boys didn’t use the pool together; a swimming period was for one group or the other. Is that still true?”

  “Yes. It was a girls’ class. There were a lot of girls in the pool and she must have got a cramp and gone under right away and nobody saw her.”

  I could rule that one out, I thought, but to keep up my pretense I’d have to show it as much interest as the others.

  I asked, “How long was she under? It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two before somebody found her, could it?”

  “It probably wasn’t, but they couldn’t resuscitate her; they tried for a long time. People seem to differ a lot in how they respond to resuscitation; some have been brought back after they’ve been under water a relatively long time. And with others a minute or two under water is too long.”

  “And that leaves the teacher who drowned. You said her name was Bonner?”

  “Constance Bonner. That was only four or five months ago, February or March or thereabouts. In this other book, the current one. Do you think I’m silly to keep a journal like this?”

  “No, but isn’t it a lot of work?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. Half an hour or so several times a week. I don’t make entries every day, just when something happens worth recording. Pleasant things as well as unpleasant ones. I started doing it five years ago.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “That means I’m not in it. Unless you put in having lunch with me today.”

  Her head was bent over the book in her lap. “I haven’t yet, but maybe I will. I can’t seem to find about Constance Bonner.”

  “Sure that you made an entry?”

  “Yes, almost a page.” She looked up. “Sam, that’s the only one that might not have been an accident. And if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t fit your article.”

  “You mean she might have been killed deliberately?”

  “No, of course not. But there was a strong suspicion that she committed suicide. The circumstances–wait till I find it; I might as well wait to tell you. It’s here somewhere.”

  Pages turned some more. “Here it is. It was in January, earlier than I thought. Wait till I read it.”

  “Why not read out loud?”

  She looked up again. “I’d rather not, Sam. It’s just–well, some of the things in these books are so personal that I’ve never let anyone read a line of it or read any of it to anyone. This particular entry wouldn’t matter but–well, it’s a matter of principle.”

  “Okay, I can understand that. Read it to yourself then. Want to kill the rest of that drink so I can make us another?”

  “All right. Or are you trying to get me drunk?”

  “Deponent refuses to answer,” I said.

  I heard her close the book while I was making the drinks; out of the corner of my eye I saw her take the three books to a desk in the far corner of the room and lock them into the bottom drawer. She slipped the key in a housecoat pocket and came over to join me at the sink.

  “Now that I’ve read it again, Sam, I think that it was suicide. But there wasn’t any proof that it was–just circumstances – so the police put it down as accidental, whether they really thought so or not. I mean, they decided she could have fallen in the pool. She couldn’t have gone in to swim because she couldn’t swim a stroke, and besides she had all her clothes on. But she could have fallen in, except that she had no reason to be there beside the pool.”

  “It was outside school hours, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was in the evening. There was an evening meeting of the Drama Club and Miss Bonner was the faculty adviser of the club so naturally she was at the meeting. It was from seven till nine. When the meeting broke up she told the kids she wasn’t leaving right away, that she was behind in her work and might as well put in an hour or two in her classroom while she was there, grading papers–it was just after mid-year exams. So when they left, she went to her room–”

  “Had she acted normally during the meeting?”

  “There were conflicting stories on that from the kids, I remember. Some of them thought she had, others thought she acted strangely. They all agreed that she was pretty quiet and didn’t say much, though. Anyway, she walked to the front door with the club members and let them out and locked the door again. She must have gone to her own classroom for at least a while because she turned on the light there although there wasn’t anything to indicate that she’d graded any papers.

  “Well, about three o’clock in the morning a squad car went by on its regular rounds and the policemen in it saw a light on in the basement of the school and they decided to investigate; sometimes, they knew, teachers worked evenings there, but never until three in the morning. They carried a key to the school, for emergencies, and they let themselves in. They found the light was on in a classroom and that a woman’s hat and coat were on the desk there, as though she might still be in the building, so they looked around. They kept opening doors and when they opened the one to the room with the pool in it they saw the lights were on in there and they went in. They found her body in the pool.”

  “That’s entirely an inside room,” I said. “The lights wouldn’t have shown outside. Was Miss Bonner’s classroom a basement room?”

  “Yes. And not far from the pool. Oh, it could have been an accident; she could have gone in there for some reason and fallen in accidentally, and without being able to swim she’d have drowned all right. But why, unless she wanted to commit suicide, would she have gone in there at all?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Did they find that she had any reason to kill herself?”

  “Well, no specific reason. But her parents–she lived at home with them–said she’d been acting strangely for a few weeks. Happy at times and very unhappy, moping, at other times. Almost–they didn’t put it this way–almost manic-depressive. But she wasn’t in any trouble that they knew of. I think the police would have called it suicide if they could have found any reason at all for her to have killed herself.”

  I said, “It sounds like suicide to me, Nina. A person’s reasons for killing himself wouldn’t necessarily show on the surface. Especially if it was true that she was mentally unbalanced. And the symptoms you said her parents described do sound like manic-depressive all right. How well did you know her?” />
  “Just to speak to. Last year was her first year at South Side, and it just didn’t happen that we got acquainted. She was even younger than I by a year or two, about twenty-four, I think. She taught English.”

  That one, too, I thought I could forget about. The circumstances just didn’t fit, and suicide really seemed like the probable answer. Only two out of the four were left and maybe I was crazy in thinking what I’d been thinking, even about those two.

  All right, I thought; I’ll quit thinking for tonight.

  4

  I made us another drink. I was feeling mine a little, but I wanted to feel them.

  We talked about not much for a while. And then I actually got as far as the door, with my hat on, and Nina with her hand on the knob to open it for me. But I put one arm lightly around her and kissed her. And then both my arms were around her and both hers around me, her hands pressing my head forward, my lips against hers hungrily, so hard that it almost hurt.

  After a minute or two I whispered, “I don’t want to go, Nina.”

  “I don’t want you to. I know it’s wrong, but–’

  My lips stopped hers. It seemed right, very right. And I knew now that I’d known all along, since Nina had surprisingly opened the door of Mrs. Chojnacki’s flat, that this was going to happen.

  It happened very wonderfully, and it still seemed right.

  TUESDAY

  1

  I was alone in bed when I awakened. There wasn’t a clock in sight and I remembered that Nina was one of those people, she’d told me, who don’t need alarm clocks; they make up their minds to awaken at a given hour and always do. My wrist watch told me it was twenty minutes after eight.

  I sat up on the edge of the bed and reached for my clothes on the chair beside it. There was a note for me lying on my clothes where I couldn’t have missed it.

  Sam: You’re still sleeping so soundly that I won’t wake you. Get yourself breakfast here if you wish–there’ll be coffee left in the pot that you’ll only have to heat and you’ll find bacon and eggs in the refrigerator–but please be quiet about it. And be quiet when you leave. If you want to phone me during school hours the number is Grand 6400.