After the door closed I looked at the clock and decided I’d stay as I was another ten minutes so I could still pretend to be asleep if she came back for a purse or a coat or a handkerchief. But she didn’t. I got up and read the note first
Dearest: I’ll not work long today. My nine o’clock appointment will take me at least an hour but maybe I’ll make that my only call of the day and come home right after. If I make another call or two they’ll be short; I’ll be back between half past ten and eleven o’clock. If you’re up sooner than that, why not make yourself some breakfast here and wait for me? I can make us a picnic lunch and we can go somewhere out in the country and have a wonderful quiet Saturday afternoon together. And I won’t hold you to what you said last night, but I’d love to hear you say it again. Or was it the Martinis talking? If it was, I’ll forgive you.
Nina
Yes, it made me feel ashamed of myself, that note. But I still had to do what I was going to do. And it wasn’t quite nine o’clock now so I had an hour and a half to do it in. An hour, to give myself a big factor of safety.
I dressed quickly.
The lock on the desk drawer in which Nina kept her journals looked as though it would open with a hairpin but it would be easier and better if I could find where Nina kept the key to it. I tried to remember where she’d taken the key from and where she’d put it afterwards, the night she’d opened that drawer to get me data on the accidents at the school. No, I’d been making drinks and hadn’t seen her get the key or open the drawer, but afterwards she locked the drawer again and put the key in the pocket of her housecoat. A quilted silk one.
I found the housecoat among her clothes in the closet, but of course the key wasn’t in its pocket. That would have been a temporary repository until she could put it in its usual place while I wasn’t watching.
I tried the unlocked drawers of the desk itself first; it wasn’t there. But my second guess, the dresser, was right.
It was under the paper lining the bottom of the drawer. A minute later I was on the sofa with the current volume of Nina’s journal.
I leafed through the blank pages quickly until I found the most recent entry, dated July 17, 9:15j p.m. That would be Thursday evening, two days ago, just after I’d phoned Nina. There was about a page of it beginning: “S. just called and wanted to come over. Wanted him to, but I’m too awfully tired, too much in need of a full night’s sleep and if he comes over I know what will happen. I’ll turn in as soon as I finish this …”
I managed to stop there, remembering that I’d resolved not to invade Nina’s privacy any more than I absolutely had to and that what she might have written about me wasn’t any of my business.
I leafed back a full week to the pre-Sam period, reading only the dates of the three entries, two short and one several pages long, she’d made during that week. I managed not to read them but couldn’t help noticing that my initial occurred frequently in the long entry, which was dated Tuesday afternoon, the day after the night I’d first slept here. I’d have given a lot to read that entry but my conscience wouldn’t let me.
I skimmed rapidly over entries, mostly shortish ones, for a month’s time, averaging two or three entries a week, and mostly things about her social service work. Names were either written out in full or abbreviated for convenience rather than disguise; I saw Anna Choj. several times. Apparently Nina used initials only for entries concerning matters clandestine. Knowing that let me leaf more quickly through the next few weeks, back into May.
An entry dated May 20 stopped me because it didn’t seem to contain any names or even initials. I started skimming it and then found myself reading carefully.
So it’s been a week now and I guess I’m over the worst of it. But I’m glad that it happened; it was the most wonderful experience, the most wonderful month, of my life. Yes, right or wrong, I’m glad it happened. And of course I knew that it couldn’t last. Too, it was such a terrible risk; if it were even suspected. I’d have lost my job, both my jobs. And probably have had to move away to another city and start over again; it would have been terrible. And yet, oh God, I just couldn’t help myself. …
There was a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t finish it. I jerked back a dozen pages at once. May 7, 4 a.m.
Again O. came just after midnight; he left a few minutes ago. I love him, I love him, and I mustn’t let myself love him. I must keep this just a physical affair to me as I know it is to him. But how can I? He is superb; he is everything a woman dreams of.
I heard the door opening and turned; Nina stood there smiling. Whatever was in my face as I looked at her she didn’t notice at first. “Sam darling, Mr. Wolfram was called away suddenly just as we started to talk and I thought since that was off I’d come right home and we could–”
Then she must have seen my face, really seen it, for the first time. Then the book I was still holding open and the open drawer of the desk.
She did it the way that was best for both of us; I’ll give her that. She turned white with anger. She came around and jerked the book out of my hand and threw it; then she slapped my face again and again with force that rocked my head and hurt me almost as much as I was already hurt inside in another way. And monotonously in a low voice she was calling me things and using words that I’d never heard a woman use before.
And there wasn’t anything I could say or wanted to say even if she’d have given me the opportunity. And then, I don’t know exactly how I got there and it doesn’t matter, I was outside the closed door, in the hallway. I still hadn’t spoken.
I walked downstairs and around the corner to my car.
2
Home felt different. It felt like home, empty as it was, something I had come back to instead of fleeing from. Just the familiarity of it threw things into better perspective. A lot of things.
I could see my affair now with Nina for what it had been–an affair and nothing more. A very pleasant affair while it had lasted. And I could have wished it to end differently, but at least that ending had been final, for both of us.
I found that I didn’t hate her, either; I felt sorry for her. But just the same I never wanted to see her again, however casually. Even if she ever wanted to see me again–and she wouldn’t–and even if this was the end of the road between Millie and me, I could never again want to kiss her or touch her.
And I’d never forget that giggle and what had prompted it.
What now, though, about Obie? Not about his amours; they were very definitely no concern of mine. But about the murders, the killings. I hadn’t anything besides my hunch and my suspicions, of course, not a shred of concrete evidence. But with those suspicions so strong and with every fact I’d been able to learn seeming to corroborate them, did I have the moral right to drop the matter now and forget it?
No, I didn’t. But there was a simple answer that would free me. When I’d started this it had been a hunch built on a few flimsy indications. Maybe they were still flimsy but now I had a lot of indications. Enough to go to Chief of Police Joe Steiner with. I could tell him everything–well, almost everything–that I’d learned.
And then it would be up to him and I’d be out from under. Even if he laughed at me, I’d be out from under. And maybe he wouldn’t laugh. I could put the case, now, so it would sound strong enough to make him want to dig a little even if only to prove to me that I was wrong.
But not today. I still felt too lousy about Nina to want to do anything about it today. And my mind felt a bit foggy, too, and I wanted it clear when I talked to Steiner, so I wouldn’t miss any points.
I killed some time doing housework again and when it got near noon I decided that, since I’d be eating some meals here from now on even if Millie didn’t return right away, I might as well restock the larder and have food on hand. I made a shopping trip to the nearest supermarket.
Getting myself a lunch and eating i
t and washing the dishes from it lasted me until two o’clock and at two o’clock the phone rang. It was Harvey Whelan. “You all right, Sam?”
“In the pink,” I told him.
“Uh–whatever it was you went back to town for, it’s all okay? You got it under control?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. We got back a little sooner than we’d planned, too. Last night. Got tired of playing cards two-handed. And we’re going to have a Saturday afternoon poker game, two-bit limit, seven-handed if you come; we got four others already.”
“Swell. I’ll be there. How soon?”
“Come on as soon as you can. Five of us are starting now. We called you twice about an hour ago, Sam, but you weren’t in.”
“Out shopping. Okay, be there in half an hour.”
The game didn’t break up till almost midnight and I cashed out forty-two bucks to the good.
SUNDAY
1
The alarm clock wakened me and it was still the middle of the night, still completely dark, only when I reached out and pushed the button that should have stopped it, it didn’t stop. It kept on ringing. Not steadily; it stopped a few seconds every once in a while and then started again. And in the few seconds of silence I could tell that the alarm clock in my hand, an electric one, wasn’t even humming, wasn’t running at all. The luminous hands stood at five minutes past three. And it wasn’t the telephone; the telephone sounded different. The doorbell. Someone was ringing my doorbell at five minutes after three only maybe it wasn’t five minutes after three because the clock wasn’t running. But anyway it was the middle of the night and somebody was ringing the doorbell. I got my feet out of bed onto the floor and by that time I was thinking a little bit, but not much. I was thinking, as I started groping my way across the room toward the light switch, that Millie had come home on a train that got her back in the middle of the night, and then I remembered that Millie has her own key and wouldn’t ring the doorbell. So it had to be a telegram, a telegram in the middle of the night, and a telegram in the middle of the night is bad news always, at least until you read it, somebody dead, and the only person I’d be sent a telegram about in the middle of the night was Millie and Millie must be dead or anyway hurt, an auto accident, sudden sickness, and the bell downstairs ringing, ringing, ringing and I couldn’t find the light switch. And then my fingers found the switch and clicked it and nothing happened, nothing at all, no light came on and the doorbell kept ringing, ringing, still ringing as I groped my way across from the useless light switch to the hallway door and through the door to the blacker blackness of the hallway, a blackness almost tangible engulfing me, holding me back, and I had to hurry, hurry, hurry before the telegram went away and I wouldn’t know what had happened to Millie. Hurry, hurry, running my hand along the hallway wall to guide me to the head of the stairs. The doorbell stopped ringing, started again. Hurry. (All of this taking time to tell but only seconds to happen.) Hurry, hurry; the doorbell not ringing any more, the telegram going away because the man would think by now, surely by now, that I wasn’t home. My right hand groping for the knob at the top of the banister, my left hand still guiding along the wall, walking faster than I dared. It was my left hand that saved me, my left hand touching the light switch at the head of the stairs. I still wasn’t thinking coherently but I did realize that I could go down those stairs faster if there was a light. I stopped and flicked the switch. It clicked uselessly, as had the one in the bedroom. But the fact that I’d stopped, or at least slowed down, to click it saved me from going head first down the long straight flight of stairs to the first floor. For I was leaning slightly backward when I put my foot forward for the first step of the stairs. My bare toes kicked into something that was between me and the step. Kicked hard, because I was still in a hurry to get down there, darkness or not.
The thing I kicked went over the edge and bounced noisily down the steps. At that, I almost lost my balance and went after it, but my right hand found the ball of the newel post and pushed me back; I fell, but I fell backward and not forward headfirst down the stairs. I think I let out a yelp of pain too, for my big toe felt as though it had broken from kicking whatever object it had kicked.
Whatever I’d kicked bounced several times on the stairs and hit bottom with a thud that seemed to shake the house. The doorbell broke off in mid-ring.
And in the sudden stillness I could hear footsteps run lightly across the porch, down the walk. And a scraping sound that I couldn’t quite identify, and then silence.
If I’d run immediately into the front bedroom and looked out the window, I’d probably have seen him. But I didn’t; just at that moment I was still too confused to do anything. If I had any thought at all it was the thought that the man with the telegram was going away before I could catch him. Only after seconds, after I’d got to my feet again and was standing at the head of the stairs ready to try again, did it come to me that there was anything strange about what had just happened, that telegraph deliverers don’t run away if they decide no one is home and that a telegram would be delivered to me at night only if it couldn’t be telephoned and that I hadn’t left any heavy object right at the head of the stairway.
In any case, whoever had rung the doorbell was gone; I’d missed him. And now the first and most important thing was light.
I hobbled back into the bedroom, taking my time now, found my trousers over the back of the chair and got matches out of the side pocket. I struck one, and there was light. I wasn’t blind, at any rate.
I parlayed another match into an old flashlight that I remembered on the shelf in the closet. The batteries were weak but it was still usable.
I flashed it ahead of me and had dim light to guide me along the hallway and down the stairs.
A few feet from the bottom of them lay my portable typewriter, half in and half out of a broken carrying case. It had been, when I’d seen it last, only a couple of yards from where it now lay, just inside the front door and in its case. In messing around the house this morning, yesterday morning, I’d remembered that it was overdue for cleaning and oiling and had put it in its case and stood the case near the front door so I’d remember Monday to take it to town with me when I went back to work. Well, now the frame was probably sprung and it wouldn’t need cleaning and oiling.
But how had it got to the top of the stairs? During the last few hours of that poker game we’d done a little drinking but not too much; I’d been too nearly sober when I’d got home to have carried that typewriter up the stairs and left it standing crosswise at the edge of that top step.
I looked out through the glass panel of the front door and saw nothing but the porch, the yard, the sidewalk, the street, all dimly illuminated by faint yellow light from a street lamp half a block away. And I was still thinking in terms of telegrams; I opened the door and looked to see if there was a card hung on the outer knob, one of those cards that tells you a messenger has tried to deliver a telegram in your absence.
I looked down to be sure nothing had been pushed under the door and I stepped out on the porch and made sure nothing had been put into the mailbox.
Silence and an empty street.
No car had driven away after I’d heard those lightly running footsteps; I was sure of that. But what had that scraping noise been? And then, as I realized what that sound might have been, I began for the first time to get scared.
A bicycle left lying across the curb could have made that sound when it was picked up, the scrape of a pedal against cement.
I stepped back into the dark house and closed the door and then opened it again to see if the night latch was on. It was; the door was locked from the outside.
I remembered that the lights upstairs were on a different circuit from the downstairs ones and I flicked the hallway light switch by the front door. The light went on.
I went into the living room and turned on the lights there. I was awak
e by now, damned wide awake and damned scared. I stared at the telephone, wondering if I should phone the police.
And got a better idea. Obie, if it had been Obie, had left here not much over five minutes ago. On a bicycle it would take him at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen, to get home. Another five to get undressed and back to bed. If I phoned the Westphal home and woke up his parents and told them to look for Obie in his room– Well, he’d have some tall explaining to do. Then, too, unless they lied for him, and I doubted if both of them would, I’d have more than a guess to take to the police.
I’d forgotten the Westphal phone number but it took me only a minute to look it up and place the call. I heard the buzz that meant the phone was ringing and I waited, thinking out just what I was going to say.
But no one answered. After a while the operator’s voice singsonged, “They do not answer. Shall I keep on ringing?” and I told her yes, that it was important.
But another few minutes convinced me that I’d been outsmarted. Obie would have thought of that possibility and he could easily have muffled the bell of the telephone so it couldn’t have been heard upstairs, could even have wedged something between the bell and the clapper so it wouldn’t ring at all. The sound of ringing that you hear while a number you call is being rung isn’t really the sound of the other instrument ringing; it’s a sound that originates in the switchboard circuit. It synchronizes with the ringing of the other phone but you hear it just the same even if the other phone’s bell has been silenced.
And this wasn’t Obie’s first dead-of-night venture while his parents slept. There was proof of at least one other in Nina’s diary. He’d have figured out long ago some way of being sure that no phone call would wake his parents while he was gone and lead to possible discovery of his absence from his room.
Reluctantly I put the phone back in its cradle.
The Deep End Page 16