She was an intruder in the little room that she had known so intimately for so many years. She was not welcome here. The room wanted her to leave. She could feel the pervasive hostility in the still, stale air, the corrosive bitterness of the abandoned, the sad, sour lassitude of the lost. But this was just her imagination, of course. It was part of the encroaching terror she had brought with her across town. The room was no different. The room was the same. There was the desk at which she had written daily in her diary, the fanciful log of hopeful days, and there above the desk was the framed copy of Gauguin’s Yellow Christ, which she had admired and hung to appease some distorted hunger in her heart. There on the walls was the same pale blue paper, perhaps a little more faded and soiled, stained at one corner of the ceiling where the probing rain had seeped through from the attic below the low roof. And there against the wall between the room’s two windows was the long mirror that had reflected her imperceptible growth from day to day and year to year, and had told her all the while that she was a pretty girl and would be a lovely woman. She wanted suddenly to run away from the walls and the mirror and the Yellow Christ, but she sat and stared at her folded hands. She wanted to scream, but she was mute. She sat fixed and mute in the terror she had brought with her. Having fled from the fear of death, she wished irrationally that she could die.
She heard her father’s steps on the porch outside. She heard them in the hall, moving toward the rear of the house. For a while, after they were gone, she continued to sit quite still on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap, and then she got up abruptly, as though prodded by sudden compulsion, and went out of the room and followed the footsteps into the kitchen. Her father, his back turned to her, was standing before the open door of the refrigerator. Hearing her behind him, he turned, holding a can of beer in one hand, pushing the refrigerator door closed with the other. He was a tall, lean man with stooped shoulders and long, lank hair grown shaggy over his ears and on the back of his neck. About him, like a miasma sensed but not seen, there was an air of stale accommodation to dismal years, the atmosphere of repeated frustrations. He peered at his daughter through the dim light of the kitchen.
“Ellen?” he said. “Is that you, Ellen?”
“You can see very well that it’s me,” she said.
He carried the can of beer to the kitchen table and sat down facing her. There was a metal opener on the table. He plugged the can and took a long drink of the beer.
“I was just surprised to see you here, that’s all.”
“Is it so surprising that I’d come to see my own father?”
“I didn’t see your car outside. Where’s your car?”
“I didn’t drive today. I walked.”
“All the way here?”
“All the way.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice thinned, took on an angry, querulous tone. “You know I don’t have a car. Now it will be late before you can get back.”
“That’s all right. I’m not going back.”
“You’ll have to call a taxi, that’s what you’ll have to do.”
“Listen to me. I said I’m not going back.”
He looked at her for a moment, now that he had listened and heard, as if he was unable to understand. He drank again from the beer can, wiping his lips afterward with the palm of his hand. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. If I can’t stay here, I’ll go somewhere.”
“You’ll go back, that’s where you’ll go. You’ll go right back where you belong.”
“Do you think so? I don’t.”
“What’s the matter with you? Are you out of your head?”
“Don’t start that. I’ve heard enough of that.”
He apparently received some kind of warning from her words, for his attitude changed suddenly. He smiled, nodding his head, but the smile was more an expression of slyness than of understanding or affection. “Well, something has upset you, that’s plain. Come. Sit down and talk it over with your father. You’ll feel better then. You’ll see. Will you have a beer?”
Knowing him for what he was, recognizing from long experience another of his repeated efforts to deceive her, she sat down across the table from him, nevertheless, simply because she was tired and it was easier to sit than to stand. “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want a beer.”
“Well, then, tell me what’s wrong. You’ve had a foolish quarrel with Clay. Is that it?”
“Clay doesn’t quarrel with me. Clay doesn’t quarrel with anyone. He’s far too cold and contained. He has other methods.”
“Clay’s rich. A successful man. They say at the yards that he’s worth millions. The richest man in town. You can’t expect a man like that to be like other men.”
“He hates me. I can see it in his eyes. When we are alone, I can hear it in his voice.”
“Oh, hell! That’s crazy. He married you, didn’t he? Just two years ago, he came and took you away and married you. He didn’t have to do it, either. Don’t try to tell me he did, because I know better. I was here. I remember how you were. No crazy talk about hate then. He could have had whatever he wanted from you, marriage or nor, and he probably did.”
“That’s right. I sold myself. And you—because he was rich, you thought you were onto something big. You didn’t care about anything else.”
“You were lucky—lucky to be born with a face and body to rile a man’s blood and make him lose his head. How many poor girls from this part of town get a chance to marry a rich and powerful man liked Clay Moran?”
“They’re the lucky ones. The girls who don’t get the chance.”
“What kind of curse has been placed upon me? It’s almost more than a man can bear, and that’s the truth. I’ve never had any luck with my women. All those years I had your mother on my hands, and now I’ve got you.”
“Don’t start on Mother! Don’t start!”
“She was my wife, and I’ll say what I please. She was crazy—so crazy I had to put her away.”
“She wasn’t crazy. She had a nervous breakdown. Small wonder, being married to you.”
“She died in an institution. The same place you’ll die if you keep on.”
“It would be better than dying before my time in the house of Clay Moran.”
“What’s that: What did you say? You really must be crazy!”
“He wants me to die. He plans to murder me.”
His mouth hung open, his mind groping in darkness behind his eyes for some sense and sanity in her words. Then, stunned by the enormity of what she had clearly said, he pushed back from the table in his chair and stood up deliberately. “I knew it. I’ve been fearful of it. You’re crazy like your mother. Do you know what you’re saying?”
“I’ll say it again. He wants me to die. He murdered his first wife, and he plans to murder me.”
“His first wife drowned. It was an accident. What kind of hellish trouble are you trying to breed for yourself and for me? Clay Moran is a powerful man in this town. A rich and powerful man. What do you think he’s going to do if he hears his wife has been going around making such insane accusations? I won’t hear anymore. I won’t listen to you.”
“Don’t. I knew you wouldn’t. I should never have come here.”
“Be reasonable. Try to be sane for a minute. Has he ever tried to murder you?”
“Not yet. You don’t know Clay. He’ll only need to try once.”
“Has he ever threatened you?”
“He looks at me. He says sly things with double meanings. It’s not his way to threaten directly. He’s incredibly cruel and clever.”
“It’s in your mind. Can’t you understand that? You imagine these things.”
“He plans to murder me, as he murdered his first wife, because he
hates me, as he surely hated her. I think he must hate anyone who marries him. It’s a kind of madness in him.”
“Now look who’s crazy! You ought to be right back where you came from, and that’s where you’re going. It’s not right for you to bring this kind of trouble into my house.”
He jerked his narrow shoulders, as if shaking off an intolerable burden, and started for the door. She could hear him in the hall, dialing the telephone. After a few seconds, she could hear his voice, angry and urgent.
“Is Mr. Moran at home? Let me speak with him, please. It’s important.”
She didn’t hear anymore. She isolated herself in silence, hearing nothing, sitting still and mute. She had wasted her strength and will. Having fled this short way to no good end, she could flee no farther.
Sitting so, futile and spent, she thought of Roger. She had not thought of him for a long time, and now that she did, after all this while, she was filled with regret and fruitless pain.
She awoke with a start and was instantly attuned to the sounds of the day, perception hypersensitized by apprehension. She could hear the soft whirring sound of the electric current driving the delicate mechanism of the little ivory clock on her bedside table. She could hear the remote and measured drip of a lavatory tap in the bathroom between her room and the next. She heard the gimping footsteps of the upstairs maid, who had suffered as a child from poliomyelitis, pass by her door in the hall. She heard from a tree outside her window the clear, repeated call of a cardinal. She thought that she could hear, deep below her in the bowels of the house, the deadly, definitive closing of a door.
It was about eight o’clock. She could tell by the slant of the sun through a window in the east wall of the room. She could measure time by the distance the sunlight reached into the room. Not exactly, of course, not with the precision of the little ivory clock she could hear on her bedside table, for the distance was longer or shorter at any given time of the morning as the sun rose earlier or later in the course of the season, but she was, nevertheless, surprisingly accurate in spite of having to make minute adjustments from time to time to the inflexible schedule of the universe. It was, like her keen perception of almost indiscernible sounds, a part of her hypersensitive attunement to everything around her. Her senses had been refined and directed by persisting danger.
She turned her head and looked at the other bed, the twin of her own, across an intervening aisle. It was empty. Neatly made. Clay had not slept in it last night. It gave her an exorbitant sense of relief, the empty bed, although she had known perfectly well, before turning her head, that no one was in it. If Clay had been there, she would have been aware without looking. She would have been aware in the instant of waking even if he had lain as still as stone and made no sound whatever. She would have known through the cold, instinctive shrinkage of her flesh. She would have smelled him, the aura of him, the sickening, sweet, pervasive scent of death.
He was in the other room, beyond the bath. She could not hear him. She sensed him through her infallible senses. He was standing in utter and deliberate silence, motionless, his head canted and his eyes watching her through double walls, waiting to detect through his own acute senses the slightest movement of her body, the merest whisper of her bated breathing. Slowly she closed her eyes in an effort to preserve the secret of her wakefulness. No use. He knew her secret. He was coming. She heard him in the bathroom. She heard him crossing the room to her bed. She heard his voice.
“Good morning, Ellen,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
Knowing the futility of simulation, she opened her eyes and looked at him. He was, she had to admit, very deceptive. He did not look at all like a man, a devil, who had murdered his first wife and was planning to murder his second. His body was slender and supple, just under six feet, and his expensive and impeccable clothes hung upon it with an effect of casual elegance. His smooth blond hair fitted his round skull like a pale cap. His mouth was small, the lips full, prepared to part unpredictably, at the oddest times, in an expression of silent laughter. His eyes were azure blue, brimming with a kind of candid innocence, a childlike wonder, as if he were listening always to a private voice telling an interminable fairy tale. Oh, he was deceptive, all right. He was deceptive and deadly.
“I’m feeling quite well, thank you,” she said.
“Improved from last night, I hope.”
“Wasn’t I feeling well last night? I can’t remember that I wasn’t.”
“Well, never mind. A good sleep will sometimes work wonders. Did you sleep well?”
“I slept quite well, thank you.”
“You see? It was the work of the sedative I gave you. You were a bad girl to try to avoid taking it. They have done some remarkable things in drugs these days. It’s absolutely amazing what can be done with them.”
What did that mean? Why did he suddenly, when you least expected it, say such disturbing things? Why did his words, so overtly innocent, have so often under the surface a sinister second meaning?
“I don’t like to take drugs,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid of them.”
“Well, one must be cautious with them, of course, but it’s foolish to avoid them when they’re needed. I was very careful not to give you too much. Did you imagine for an instant that I would be careless where you were concerned?”
There! There! Did you hear that?
“They make you vulnerable,” she said.
“Vulnerable? Nonsense. Vulnerable to what?”
“Who knows? Who knows what the effects may be?”
“My dear, you sound like a Christian Scientist. Or do you? I’m afraid I don’t know just what Christian Scientists believe.” He revealed his small white teeth in the unpredictable expression of silent laughter. “Anyhow, I assure you that you were sleeping like a baby when I looked in on you later last night. I didn’t want to risk rousing you, so I slept in the next room. Did you miss me this morning?” There he had stood. There he had stood in the dark and dangerous hours of the night, surrounded by the silent, waiting house, watching her and watching her as she slept a drugged sleep, and death had stood at his side.
“Your bed hadn’t been slept in,” she said. “I saw that when I awoke.”
He sat clown and took one of her cold hands and held it in both of his. “Tell me, Ellen,” he said, “why did you run away yesterday?”
“I didn’t run away. I went to see my father.”
“Your father was disturbed about you. He said you didn’t want to come home again.”
“My father is a foolish man. He says foolish things.”
“He seemed to be concerned about your mother—or about you, rather, as your mother’s daughter.”
“What do you know about my mother?”
“I know that she died in a mental institution. I knew it when I married you. After all, it was no secret.”
“There was nothing wrong with my mother that my father didn’t cause.”
“It’s all right, Ellen. Everything will be all right. I was just wondering about something, that’s all. Would it make you feel better to see a good doctor?”
“A psychiatrist, you mean?”
“If you wish.”
“I don’t wish. I don’t wish at all.”
“It might be the best thing for you. To tell the truth, I’ve been concerned about you myself the past year or so. I don’t know what it is, exactly. You changed somehow. You seem to be more imaginative. Confused about things.”
“I’m not confused.” In a moment of defiance, she looked squarely into the wonder of his childlike eyes. “I see everything quite clearly.”
“Well, I only want to help if I can. You know that, my dear.” He leaned forward from his position on the side of the bed and brushed his lips across her forehead. “Now I must be off to the office. You had better stay
in bed and rest. Would you like me to have your breakfast brought up?”
“No. I can’t just lie here. I’ll go down.”
“As you wish. I suggest, however, that you stay in the house today.”
“Is that an order?”
He had stood up and turned away, and now he turned back, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “Certainly not. Whatever made you say such a thing?”
“I thought perhaps I was being put under a kind of house arrest to keep me from running away again.”
“Run away? Nonsense. You are my wife, not my prisoner. You are free to go whenever and wherever you please.”
“Thank you.”
He walked to the door and turned to look back at her once more. Blue, candid eyes. The sudden unpredictable expression of silent laughter. “You are my wife, my dear. Remember that. Whatever your trouble is, if there is trouble at all, we will work it out together, you and I. There is a cure for everything, you know. One balm for many fevers.”
He opened the door and went out, leaving his words hanging in italics in the breathless air of the room.
One balm for many fevers! Hadn’t she heard that before? Had she read it somewhere? It meant death. Death was the balm. Death was the only cure for all ills and troubles.
Her thoughts acted on her like a catalyst. She got out of bed immediately and started for the bathroom, but on the way, between her bed and the bathroom door, she caught an oblique glimpse of herself in a full-length mirror on the wall. She halted abruptly, as if fixed and held static in the flow of action by cataleptic trance, turned her head slowly and looked at her reflection directly. Then, drawn magnetically by what she saw, she moved toward the mirror and stood in front of it. Slowly she turned this way and that, assuming positions as a model assumes them on display, and her slim body in her sheer nightgown was the body of a dryad rising in a cloud of cool blue mist from the floor of an ancient forest.
The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK Page 42