The Puzzled Heart

by Amanda Cross

  Marjorie knelt, the better to steady the gun, and took careful aim, and at that moment Kate raced across the space between them and threw herself on Marjorie. The gun went off, clearly missing Banny, whose bark could be heard. Kate tried to wrench the gun from the other woman, whose grip was amazingly powerful. Kate was taller, and had had surprise on her side, but now Marjorie began to fight, tossing aside the gun and throwing her weight onto Kate; she was by far the stronger, and Kate, despite her struggles, was soon pinned to the ground. Kate tried to push against the other woman, but seemed unable even to move her own limbs. Marjorie’s hands went around Kate’s neck and Kate felt the hands tighten. Struggling seemed only to increase the pressure of the other woman’s grip.

  “Marjorie?” Kate heard the voice of the kennel girl—or was it someone else? She heard Banny barking, and then she heard nothing at all.

  Sometime later, when consciousness returned to Kate, she took up the struggle once again, thrashing about. She was still being held down.

  “Kate, Kate, stop fighting. It’s me; it’s Reed. You’re in the hospital. You’re all right, Kate.”

  “Banny?”

  “Banny’s all right too. Everyone’s all right. But my God, you might have been killed. Do you never stop to think of the trouble you are to me? Does it never occur to you to tell a person where you’re going? I’ve had a ghastly time.”

  “ ‘ “I weep for you,” the Walrus said: “I deeply sympathise.” ’ ” Kate managed a smile, but even that small motion, and her speaking, made her throat ache and she winced.

  “You’ve also got a black eye and a nasty head wound. I hope you’re satisfied. And don’t quote anything else to me. Just rest. Let me do the talking, if any.”

  “Did you save me?” Kate whispered.

  “I only wish. No, my dear, you were saved by a wonderful young woman named Judith who works for Marjorie and apparently took the scene in without standing around asking questions, as would no doubt have been your response. As far as I can gather, she picked up the shotgun by the muzzle end and swung it for all she was worth. It caught Marjorie in the head, and she’s got a beauty of a concussion. It seems the kennel girl plays golf in her spare time.”

  “Marj—” Kate croaked.

  “Try not to talk. I know that’s like asking a seal not to swim, but make an effort. Having taken a golf swing, the promptly acting Judith called an ambulance and here the two of you are, in the same small town hospital but in widely separated rooms. You will be asked, upon recovery, if you want to press charges. Marjorie, of course, may decide to accuse you of assault and attempted robbery of a Saint Bernard, but fortunately we have a witness in dear, never-to-be-sufficiently-appreciated Judith. Who is, by the way, staying on to tend to the dogs until Marjorie regains her health.”

  “Not dies like Toni?”

  “No. No fear. It wasn’t, oddly enough, nearly that serious a blow. It all depends, apparently, on where you hit someone and with what strength. Toni was smashed more directly and harder than Marjorie. Our golf champion succeeded in getting her off you, but not in seriously endangering her life. I gather she didn’t even knock her out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I should jolly well think so. Now, listen. Leslie and Harriet are outside and want to see you and say a brief hello. They will be allowed in only if you promise not to move or utter a word. Agreed? And don’t shake your head, you fool, that only makes the pain worse. Raise one finger for yes, two fingers for no.”

  Kate raised a finger and Reed opened the door to two very anxious women.

  “You look like hell,” Harriet said. “I thought I was the one who was being a private eye. Don’t answer, you’re not supposed to talk.”

  “I’m glad they kidnapped Reed and not you,” Leslie said. “You’d probably have forced them to kill you in the first hour you were with them. Imagine your getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight. And one thinks one knows one’s dearest friends!”

  Sixteen

  A week later Reed drove Kate home from the hospital. Kate still had the feeling that her neck didn’t turn quite as it ought to and that a headache might start at any moment, but she was planning to return to teaching, having missed only a few classes.

  After leaving the hospital they had stopped off at Marjorie’s kennels. Marjorie was not there, or if there, had chosen not to appear. But Judith was, and greeted them pleasantly. After waving from alongside the kennels, she had emerged with Banny beside her. Banny was not yet as large as she would become, but she was a big dog now, with a big dog’s dignity. Since she was also a Saint Bernard, she walked unhurriedly, with what one might in another connection have called measured steps, her great tail waving slowly like a plume.

  “Want to get in, Banny?” Reed had said, holding open the back door of the car. Banny, seeming to have grasped without major effort both that these two were now her people, and that she was too big a dog to ride with them in front, settled herself on the backseat, her tail still waving gently.

  “Goodbye, Banny my love,” Judith called. “You come see me when you’re a mama, hear?”

  Kate turned her neck so sharply toward Reed as he backed up the car that she winced, whether at the pain or at the thought of Banny’s motherhood was hard even for her to distinguish.

  “Anything more you didn’t tell me?” Kate asked. “We’re going to have puppies?”

  “Not immediately. The negotiations were a bit complicated, and seemed, apart from the astronomical price, to rest on an agreement to let Banny breed. It seems she’s a rare specimen who, mated with another rare specimen, is a natural to bring forth future champions. I had to agree. We can’t keep any of the puppies, which I had to agree to if her price was to be lowered into a sphere of financial sanity, but I didn’t think you’d want them anyway. As to Banny, I was told on good authority that a mother dog can’t wait to see the end of puppies once they’re weaned, and wouldn’t know them if they came up to her with their pedigrees around their necks. Banny will not feel like a regretful woman who had to give her baby up for adoption. So that seemed acceptable.”

  Kate was aware of an enormous tiredness, not fatigue exactly, which one felt after great exertions, but the tiredness of too much worry and of not having had sufficient rest for too long a time. “I suppose you’ve settled all sorts of matters without me,” she said with a petulance she knew to be entirely unjustified. She couldn’t seem to prevent herself from complaint. Reed said it was the aftershock, and not to worry.

  “You wanted Banny,” he said. “So did I. All the time in the hospital, you kept talking about Banny.”

  “Well, that damn woman nearly shot her. In cold blood. And now she seems to be demanding as much money for her as if she hadn’t tried to kill the poor beast in front of my eyes.”

  “It’s complicated,” Reed said. “Judith is managing the kennels for her, and being very businesslike as is only proper. Banny is a valuable dog.”

  “Bitch—I know that much. Are you valuable, Banny?” Kate said, reaching a hand back without quite turning her head. Banny’s plume waved in confirmation. “Have you thought how we’re going to manage?” Kate asked Reed. “We both work all day on many days, just for starters.”

  “You’d be amazed, Kate, to know the canine services available. Dog walkers, all sorts of people in the dog business. We’ll manage.”

  “Any other news you’re planning to break to me before we get home? I’d appreciate some warning if you’ve undertaken other profound renovations in our life.”

  “Oh, come off it, Kate. Not that I begrudge you the exquisite pleasure of having Banny forced upon you when you want her but hardly dare to say so. After all, you saved her life, you’ve a right to grumble.”

  “Do you think we should go on calling her Banny? Any name given by that dotty woman may carry bad vibes.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Anne Bancroft, is there? It’s not as though the dog had been named Marilyn Monroe or Joan Crawford. Obviously on
e couldn’t put up with that.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Good. The only other news is that Harriet will be there as a welcoming committee, and Archie as well, to explain the legal ins and outs. He’s been attending to what we might call The Case while I’ve been attending to you. But if you’re too tired, we can call it off.”

  “It sounds just the distraction I require. Did they get a lot of information out of Marjorie?”

  “Some. Now stop talking, close your eyes, and think only about long walks with Banny until we get home.”

  “Long walks?”

  “You’ve got to get into shape, Kate. Get your muscles into shape, I mean. You’re out of practice, and that woman could have killed you. Didn’t you ever fight with anyone? Never wrestled with your brothers and learned something about self-defense? I can’t think what the use is in having three brothers if they didn’t teach you how to fight.”

  “They were too much older to fight with me. I wasn’t worth the effort. I don’t think they really taught me anything, except how frightfully dull and pompous men could be. Having learned that, I searched for their opposite and found you.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a compliment, and I do know that it’s in no way true, but thank you all the same. As to the walks, I’ll do the mornings, you do the evenings, and one of us, or someone else, will function in between. You’ll discover a whole new meaning to life.”

  “I had enough meaning before all this happened, Reed. Although perhaps I didn’t know how much I would care if someone snatched you away. And I didn’t know that having had Banny for a while, I could not possibly let her out of my life. But none of this is to deny how perfectly happy I was before this whole sorry episode started.”

  “Close your eyes and try to relax,” Reed said.

  “E. M. Forster noticed that everyone in America is always telling everyone else to relax. But I’ll try.”

  When the four of them had, as Reed had warned, settled down for an extended consultation in the living room, Kate was lying on the couch under a light blanket with a pillow at her head. “I feel exactly like Elizabeth Barrett-not-yet-Browning,” Kate said, “though Banny is nothing like Flush.” Banny was lying beside the couch and Kate’s hand rested, from time to time, on the dog’s large head, causing the tail to wave gently in response. Harriet, Archie, and Reed sat in chairs grouped around the couch. “We look like one of those Victorian paintings of a domestic scene,” Archie observed.

  “Entitled The Reckoning, no doubt,” Reed added. “You begin, Kate, offering if you possibly can a brief but coherent account of why you rushed off to confront Marjorie in that ill-considered way.”

  “I suggest we omit personal attacks from this discussion,” Kate said, removing her hand from Banny’s head; Banny sighed deeply. “But I do admit, since you put it so delicately, that my actions were probably not the wisest. It was like this. After talking to Harriet about the ad for Banny and one thing and another, I began to realize that Toni must have been working for the other side, at least at the beginning. That seemed to explain why she had hired Harriet as a means of getting to me. Not,” Kate added with emphasis, “that Harriet didn’t turn out to be a damn good private eye. I’m certain Toni would have continued with her as partner if assault, attempted murder, and eventual murder had not intervened. Could I have some water?”

  Reed went to fetch a pitcher of water, returning with glasses and a bottle of single malt Scotch. “I thought we might need some fortification,” he explained, pouring the water for Kate.

  “I’m actually thirsty for water,” Kate announced, quaffing a large amount of the stuff. “I shall lie here in clarity and purity, while you three imbibe. Liquor isn’t supposed to mix with whatever it is I’m taking, and to tell you the truth, strange as it seems, I don’t want any of the hard stuff. I am certain it would give me a blinding headache. Now, how’s that for the effects of being throttled?” And she touched her neck.

  “To continue, then, without the aid of alcohol, I reasoned thus: the only person who could possibly have been Muriel was Marjorie, and the more I thought about it the likelier it seemed. She had hired Toni to work out the plot, probably telling her some wild tale or other, and Toni had arranged the kidnapping and all that followed with the aid of Bad Boy and his mother. I set off to confront Marjorie or Muriel, really with the idea of suggesting that this grudge had got a little out of hand, and maybe we could talk the matter out. Don’t interrupt,” she added, as both Reed and Harriet seemed about to burst into anguished speech. “I know it wasn’t the world’s brightest idea, but you asked what I was doing and I’m telling you.” She took some more water, and Reed refilled her glass.

  “While I was exchanging remarks with Marjorie, however, she standing there with that gun and Banny between us”—here her hand descended again onto the dog’s head—“she said something about recognizing my name when she heard it and joining in the fun and games. Well, something like that. So I guessed that she hadn’t been the one to initiate the plot but had joined in later. I was about to wave a flag of truce, when she announced that she was going to shoot Banny. You all know what happened then.

  “So what have I figured out since? I know”—she motioned to Reed with her other hand—“I was only supposed to tell you what I was doing, but surely my conclusions are part of what I was doing. Anyway, I’m going to tell you. It won’t take long, and will take even less time if you stop interrupting me.”

  Reed threw back the Scotch in one dramatic gulp, as they do in Western movies, and adopted an expression of determined silence.

  “That’s better,” Kate said. “There’s not much more, really. I’ve more or less decided that Mama and the right-wing types were behind the kidnapping scheme before Marjorie got wind of it—probably from Dorothy Hedge, whom, after all, she knew—and decided to join in the fun. Over to you all,” she said. Harriet and Reed looked at Archie.

  “It’s odd as it’s worked out,” Archie said. “When Reed brought me into this rather odd situation, he explained that you had at first thought it was a right-wing plot, and then had decided, upon the advice of Emma Wentworth—whom, by the way, I know and respect—that an individual was behind it. Emma was wrong about its being a colleague, but she at least got you to consider an angry individual as the instigator. Thus you first suspected Kate’s less enlightened colleagues, and then, at the suggestion of Kate’s friend Leslie—and it was a damn smart suggestion—you began to search for a revengeful individual from Kate’s past, someone Kate might have forgotten but who had certainly not forgotten her. The intriguing fact, at least from my point of view as an outsider who was persuaded into looking at the situation”—here he glared at Reed—“by the highhanded calling in of a good many chips, is that all the suppositions were in part correct.” He paused to sip his Scotch, eschewing Reed’s dramatics.

  “Like Kate, but for different reasons, I determined that Muriel, if she existed, and unless she had some close connection to the university, could hardly have instigated the whole thing. I didn’t then know, of course, that she had joined the Kate Fansler offensive at a later date. The question for me became, how did all this begin?

  “I had one advantage over the rest of you. I knew none of the players and could therefore begin to examine the situation with an open mind. I had been called in to defend Harriet from charges, should any be made, but the police had no grounds on which to hold her and only interviewed her. All of you demonstrated great faith in Harriet’s innocence of the plot and of the attack on Toni, but to me at first she seemed the likeliest suspect. I’ve already explained this to Harriet,” he added, glancing her way. Harriet raised her glass to him in a mocking salute.

  “Several things ultimately convinced me that she was innocent,” he continued. “First, I did a certain amount of checking back through her history with Toni, and it seemed clear enough that she had not joined Toni’s outfit in order to undertake this siege against Kate. By then I had decided that t
he woman Harriet had met in the ladies’ room was probably Toni’s attacker. And I then did what, if you three will forgive me, you ought to have thought of a lot sooner. I do realize that clear thinking was hardly to be expected under the circumstances in which you all found yourselves, but I have to brag a little to justify imbibing this excellent booze.”

  “What did we overlook?” Kate asked. “Break it to me gently.”

  “I got hold of the university’s record of suits against them by women who failed to get tenure. My aim was to find someone with a special grudge against Kate. No,” he said, in answer to Kate’s smacking herself on the forehead in self-rebuke, and then wincing from the pain, “in whatever flattering light I am succeeding in putting myself, do remember that Reed had been kidnapped, Kate had been threatened with the possibility of having to publicly refute her deepest convictions about feminism, and Reed, when rescued, admitted to having been sexually tempted by nymphets. None of these are situations likely to clear the mind. But to continue:

  “It didn’t take very much time to go through the tenure fights, particularly since the records I was examining were of women who had sued, gone to court. The great number of women unfairly denied tenure do not sue, and were not, therefore, in the proceedings I was examining. I hoped, naturally enough, for a suit against the English department, which would obviously have involved Kate, but there wasn’t one. Nor, though I’d hoped, had I expected it, since the likelihood of Kate’s not remembering a suit in her own department was remote. Sorry, I seem to be being rather long-winded about this—a habit of the profession when addressing a jury, arising from the need to cover all the necessary details.