An Air That Kills (17 page)

“Blake. Of course.” He recalled Blake now as a brash youngster whose good opinion of himself had been consider­ably higher than his grades. “What are you doing this year, Blake?”

“A little of this and that. I've got my sights set on a job. A good one. Why start at the bottom, I always say.”

“Well, good luck.”

Turee was impatient to leave, but the young man took a step to the left, blocking his way. It was an unobtrusive and expert motion, as if Blake were accustomed to people trying to get away from him and had practiced means of cir­cumventing them.

“Nothing the matter with your family, I hope?” Blake said.

“They're all well, thank you.”

“That's good. I thought your being here in this ward might indicate . . .”

“I was visiting a friend who had an accident.”

“Nothing serious, I trust?”

Turee glanced at the policeman who appeared bored, either by the conversation, his job, or Blake. “Nothing serious, no. Well, good night, Blake.”

“It was a real pleasure bumping into you like this, Profes­sor.”

They shook hands, firmly, like old friends or secret enemies, and Turee went out into the spring night.

The cold wind evaporated the moisture on his brow and spread a chill through his entire body.
I flunked him in the course. He hates my guts. I wonder what his angle is.

SIXTEEN

It was characteristic of Blake that when he wanted something badly he went after it with such tactless determination that he weakened his own chances. The job at the
Globe
and Mail
was a case in point.

He had decided on journalism as his field because it appar­ently offered glamour and excitement and a chance for advancement “Wait'll I'm
editor,” he'd told one of his girlfriends. And he had chosen the particular newspaper, the
Globe,
because it was old, established, solvent, and the news editor was a man named Ian Richards whom Blake respected as much as he could respect anyone.

Every day or two, for the past month, he'd been dropping in at Richards' office, trying to prove, by means of story ideas, plans for a new sports column, revamping the front­-page format and so on, that the
Globe
had tired blood and needed a quick transfusion of Blake. He oversold himself. Richards' preliminary interest had turned into dislike, his amusement into acidity. Yet no matter how clearly Richards indicated these changes, Blake seemed to remain obdurately unaware of them.

Late Tuesday afternoon he appeared at Richards' office in an elated mood. Richards didn't pay much attention to the mood. He'd seen samples of it before, and it usually meant only that Blake had been thinking beautiful thoughts of himself again.

“I'd ask you to sit down,” Richards said, “but I'm busy.”

Blake grinned. “I can talk on my feet.”

“You can talk on your head, I'm still busy.”

“You'll be sorry if you don't listen. I'm on to something.”

“Again?”

“This time it's big. You've been following the Galloway case?”

“I read my own newspaper, naturally. What about it? Suicides are a dime a dozen.”

“And the stories behind them?”

“I'm sure they're all very interesting, but it's not the kind of thing we print.”

“You might want to print this one. You, or some other newspaper. I'm giving you first chance. Nice of me, eh?”'

“Dandy.” Richards' mouth puckered as if he'd bitten into something sour. “Just dandy.”

“Well, the whole thing started in kind of a chancy way. Last night I dropped in at the Emergency Ward at General. It's a good place to pick up things, there are always policemen around waiting to question accident victims and so on. Anyway, I was just standing there minding everybody else's business when I happened to see an old prof of mine from U. C., Ralph Turee. He handed me a bum deal in his course but I figured, let bygones be bygones. Besides, I had a hunch—it seemed like the last place in the world you'd meet a guy like Turee. I mean, he's just not the type you associate with accidents or emergencies or the like. He's cold, and cautious, probably never even had a parking ticket in his life—maybe a little like you, eh, Richards?”

“So you had a hunch. Go on.”

“It seems Turee was in the ward, visiting a friend of his who had an accident. That much I got from him, the rest got from the nurse in charge. I had no trouble at all. Nurses always go for me. I gave her the treatment and she opened up like a flower. The friend Turee was visiting was a guy named Harry Bream who'd been brought in drunk after hitting a street car. Bream did a lot of ranting and raving during which he dropped some names. Galloway was one, Ron Galloway. As soon as I heard that, bells started to ring.”

“Same old bells, or new ones?”

Blake brushed away the sarcasm as he would a fly, with sweep of his hand. “So I began checking. First the records at City Hall, then your file room downstairs. When Gallo­way was married, nine years ago, to his present wife, Harry Bream was his best man. And get this, he was also best man at Galloway's first marriage to the heiress Dorothy Reynold. The conclusion's obvious: Bream and Galloway have been very good friends for a very long time.”

“So?”

“Well, Bream now has a wife himself. They were married about three years ago, no children, live out in Weston. Her name is Thelma. Mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.”

“You should get around, Richards. Like me. That suicide note Galloway left—well, let's put it this way: I've got a pretty good friend in the police department.”

“He let you see the note?”

“No, but he told me what was in it.”

Richards looked grim. “For how much?”

“Not a cent. He likes my pretty blue eyes.”

“I suppose policemen find you as irresistible as nurses do?”

“You might,” Blake said with a smile, “put it like that, yes.”

“You're a fresh kid, Blake. Full of ideas, some of them good, full of stories, some of them true. But mostly full of you-know-what. I wouldn't give you a job here even if I could. You're trouble.”

“Trouble or not, I have some very valuable information.”

“My advice is, take it to the
News.”

“The
News
has no class. Besides, I hear it's going to fold. I don't want to start a trip on a sinking ship. I can't swim.”

“You'd better learn.”

“O.K., the hell with you, Richards. Let a silly personal prejudice cut you off from a scoop.”

“We don't depend on scoops for our circulation.”

“All right, but would you turn one down?”

Richards hesitated, drumming his pencil on the desk.

“Listen, Blake, if you've got a story, I might buy it. I won't buy you.”

“How much?”

“That depends on the story. If it's good, if it's true. And if it's printable.”

“I'd print it, if I were news editor.”

“We don't always think alike. Let's hear the story.”

“Not yet. I have to check out one more thing before every­thing's positive. Oh, it'll check, don't worry. My methods may not come under the Boy Scout rules, but they work.” He perched on the edge of Richards' desk, clasping his hands together as if he were congratulating himself. “You know, that's the trouble with this paper, you need a live wire around with some high voltage.”

“You might blow the fuses.”

“Think it over. I've got guts, energy, youth, a nose for news . . .”

“What makes you hate yourself so much?”

“I've got to talk myself up. Who else will do it?”

“Haven't you got a mother?”

“Oh, come off it, Richards. How do you pick reporters around here, for their modest smiles and the way they sweet-­talk you? Anybody can do that. Oh, you're a great man, Mr. Richards, sir, I don't really deserve to work for such an out­standing newspaper, sir, but I'll do anything, I'll scrub floors, I'll wash out the cuspidors . . .”

“Beat it, Blake. I told you I was busy.”

“O.K., but I'll be back. Unless I get a better offer some­where else.”

“If you do, take it.” He picked up a piece of copy from his desk and began reading.

Blake craned his neck to look at it. “The autopsy report on Galloway, eh? You know what I bet you'll do with it? Take your little red pencil and reduce it to something as dull as a stock quotation.”

“That's my business.”

When he had gone, Richards took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. They felt gritty, as though he'd been buck­ing a strong and dirty wind. He felt more distaste for than interest in Blake's promises. If the police department had so many leaks that a kid like Blake could find out the contents of a supposedly secret suicide letter, this was a story in itself, perhaps a bigger story, in the long run, than any Blake could dream up.

He replaced his spectacles and turned back to the autopsy report. It was, as far as Richards was concerned, considerably duller than a stock quotation: death had been caused by drowning, water was found in the stomach and lungs, and foamy mucus in the trachea, and the blood chlorides on the left side of the heart were thirty percent lower than those of the right, a positive indication of drowning in fresh water.

The report revealed only one surprise, that Galloway had made a previous attempt at suicide in the earlier hours of the night, Saturday, that he had died. Considerable amounts of a barbiturate compound were found in the stomach and other vital organs. When questioned about this point, Dr. Robert Whitewood, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, stated that it was fairly common to discover traces of previous suicide attempts, which he compared roughly to the “hesita­tion marks” frequently found on victims of suicide who had used razors, knives, or other sharp instruments.

Nothing in the early part of the report affected Richards­—water in the lungs, chloride content of the heart, mucus in the trachea, these meant only that Galloway was a dead man. But the phrase, hesitation marks, conjured up a live one.

“Hesitation marks.” Richards repeated it aloud, thinking, Galloway was a man, like himself, going through all the mo­tions of living, until one day he no longer felt any incentive to move. He had tried to kill himself, and failing, had tried again. Between the two attempts there was the time of hesitation. At what point had he written the letter to his wife?

And who, Richards wondered, was Thelma?

SEVENTEEN

Thelma seldom read the newspapers. She was not actually concerned about other people, and though she had her share of female curiosity Thelma's ran round and round on a limited track like a toy train stopping only
at certain junctions, responsive only to the lever of Thelma's immediate interest.

On the front lawn the morning paper lay unopened, already yellowing under the sharp spring sun. For several hours Turee had been trying to reach her by phone to warn her about the small but strategically placed paragraph on the second page of the
News,
headed MYSTERY WOMAN HINTED IN GALLOWAY DEATH.
Thelma had heard the phone ringing and had refused to answer. She was practically certain that the caller was Turee and that he merely intended to repeat what he'd been telling her for the past two days, that, in the interests of good taste if nothing else, she was not to attend Galloway's funeral. Thelma had resisted this advice with voluble obstinacy. For one reason, quite unconscious, it presented her with something definite to rebel against, and so helped to take the edge off her grief. Turee's interference served as a counter-irritant, and the time she spent resenting and opposing it was time she would otherwise have spent in self-pity and regret and guilt.

The funeral was scheduled for three o'clock that afternoon at the Galloway home, and though it was not yet one, Thelma was already dressed for the occasion in an old black wool suit that didn't quite accommodate her new proportions. She had bathed her eyes to reduce the swelling and used powder on the lids to hide their blisterlike transparency. She wore no other make-up, and her light hair was pulled back from her face into a small tight knot. She looked more like a sorrowing widow than Esther could have looked after a month of practice. She was aware of this fact, too, and it gave her a grim sense of triumph.

But the thought of Ron brought tears to her eyes and she was on the point of breaking into sobs when the telephone began to ring again, and, almost simultaneously, the front-­door bell.

“Damn you,” she whispered. “Damn you, leave me alone!”

Then she turned deliberately away from the ringing phone and, wiping her eyes on her sleeve like a small girl, she went to answer the front door.

On the threshold stood a good-looking young man with a crew cut, a handful of pamphlets showing the advantage of owning a water-softener, and such a fast opening spiel that Thelma didn't even hear all of it.

“ . . .
not more than a few pennies a day, ma'am, and the luxury of rain water right out of your tap.”

“It's no use wasting your time. I simply haven't the money right now.”

“A softener will save you twice that amount in soap and detergent, water bills, wear and tear on clothing, and what's more, it will conserve your water heater. If I could just step inside a minute and show you the actual figures . . .”

“Well, I don't know.”

The young man took quick advantage of her hesitancy. Feigning clumsiness, he dropped one of the folders he was carrying, and in bending down to pick it up he changed posi­tion expertly so that when he rose again he was inside the house. The maneuver was so smooth that Thelma couldn't help admiring it. At one period of her life she'd sold cos­metics from door to door and she knew some of the tricks, but this one was new to her.

Thelma closed the door behind him, somewhat amused at the idea of playing dumb and letting the young man think he was getting away with something. It did not occur to her that he actually was, that until an hour ago he'd known no more about water-softeners than a baby and the pamphlets he was presenting to her were distributed free at the Hy­droelectric office.

“My name is Blake, ma'am. Rod Blake.”

“I'm Mrs. Bream. Sit down if you like.”

“Thanks. Now about this water-softener, of course it may seem like a large initial expense, but in the long run it will more than pay for itself, believe me. Now take this model. Begging your pardon, ma'am, but if we could have a little more light . . .”

Thelma pulled open the drapes, unaware that Blake wanted more light so that he could study her more care­fully. Observing the bulge beneath the shabby black suit, the pallor of her skin, her tear-swollen eyes, he felt no pity at all, only a glow of exultation that his hunch had been right. This was the woman. He was more sure of it than ever when he noticed the framed tinted picture on top of the piano. A wedding picture, obviously, and the self-conscious, stiffly smiling bridegroom was the man he'd seen in the emergency ward at General Hospital on Monday night. The bride was Thelma, looking ten years younger than she did now, though Blake knew the Breams had been married for only three years.

“My house is so small,” Thelma was saying. “There wouldn't be room for it.”

“Ah, that's the story I hear all the time. It usually turns out that there's some corner nobody's thought of. Mind if I take a look for myself?”

Thelma didn't answer or turn from the window. She was staring out at the street, her small plump hands clenched rigidly together like desperate lovers.

“Ma'am? I asked if I could . . .”

“Be quiet.”

Surprised, Blake followed her gaze. He could see nothing extraordinary, nothing even worth watching: a couple of children having a tricycle race, an elderly lady walking slowly between two canes, a young mother wheeling a pram, a man painting his porch, a trio of small, giggling girls lurching along in their mothers' high-heeled shoes.

“Mrs. Bream . . .”

“Is that your car parked in the middle of the block facing this way?”

“I don't have a car. I'm just getting started in the busi­ness.”

“The car—I don't see very well these days—is it a Buick?”

“I think so.”

“About five years old?”

“About that, I guess. I don't under—”

“Is
there a man in it? My eyes—all this crying—I'll go blind if I don't stop . . . Is there a man in the car?”

“Yes.
”

“Oh, my God, he's watching me. Maybe he's been there for hours, all morning . . . My God, what will I do? Why can't he leave me alone?”

Blake shifted uncomfortably. What had started out, on his part, as a kind of lark was disintegrating before his eyes,
like a sawdust doll spilling its insides. “I think maybe I'd better be on my way. If your kitchen's too small and all that . . .”

“You can't go now.”

“But I . . .”

“He's getting out of the car, he's heading here. You can't leave me here alone with him.”

“It's none of my business.”

“God knows what he's thinking, seeing you come into the house. He may believe that you and I—oh, I don't know. But you can't leave now, without explaining to him that you're just a salesman. You must have some card or iden­tification from the company you work for.”

Blake had begun to sweat. “I'm new at the job. This is my first day. The company's just trying me out.”

“You can tell him that.”

“No, no. I mean, I don't work for any particular comp—”

“The pamphlets are from the Hydroelectric Company.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“All right, you work for the Hydroelectric Company. You needn't be afraid,” she added contemptuously. “Harry can be unpleasant but he'd never hurt anyone.”

“Why drag me into it, for Pete's sake?”

“You dragged yourself. No one invited you.”

Harry knocked on the door, and when Thelma didn't an­swer it immediately he let himself in with his own key . . .

They met in the hall.

“Hello, Harry,” she said. “So you got out of the hospital. How are you?”

He peered at her through the dimness, blinking, like a man accustomed to wearing spectacles, who without them finds the world strangely altered. “You're dressed funny.”

“Am I?”

“I don't remember that suit.”

“I had it before we were married.”

“Black . . . You're going to the funeral?”

“Yes. Are you?”

He shook his head. “Turee says it would be bad form if either of us went, under the circumstances.”

“Turee says this, Turee says that . . . Well, Turee can run your life for you but he's not running mine. I'm going to the funeral. I have a
right
to go.”

Harry smiled at her sadly. “We all have rights we don't, or can't, use. Technically, I have a right to come into my own house, kiss my own wife, make love to her if I want . . .”

“Is this another of Turee's ideas?”

“No. My own.”

“Well, you can stop that kind of talk, speaking of bad form. If you and Turee pretend to have such fancy manners, why don't you practice them?” She turned away. “Besides, I—we have a visitor.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“He's nothing, nobody. A man selling water-softeners. Claims they save money. I wonder if they really do.”

“I wonder.” Harry still wore his smile but it seemed oddly changed. It was sly, wary, incongruous, a cat smile on a cocker spaniel. “You have a perfect right to have visitors, to buy water softeners . . . But then, as I said, I have rights too. It's when our rights conflict that there's bound to be trouble.”

“I'm not afraid of your threats.”

“You're trembling.”

“Oh, I admit you make me nervous, only it's like walking in front of a small boy with a supply of snowballs—the idea of being hit by a snowball makes me nervous. But even if one should hit me it wouldn't be so bad. It's only snow. So go ahead. Throw one.”

“It's spring. There's no snow. Small boys might switch to rocks.”

“Oh, stop all this talk. Do what you came to do and get it over with!”

“I will. I thought I'd better explain myself first. I've ap­pealed to you in various ways, Thelma, to save us both. I've begged for your mercy, and I've asked for your pity. But no matter what words were used it always amounted to me asking you. Now I'm
telling
you.”

She looked at him, silent and sullen.

“My bags are out in the car, Thelma. I haven't unpacked since I left here on Monday afternoon.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm coming back,” he said calmly. “I'm moving back into my house with my wife.”

“Stop talking like a fool.”

“I'm not a fool. Or a small boy. And I have something in my pocket more authoritative than a snowball or a rock.”

“What?”

“A gun.”

“You must be cra—Harry! Harry, listen to me . . .”

She put out her hand to stop him, but he brushed past her and went into the living room. She could see, quite dis­tinctly, the contours of the gun in the lower left pocket of his suit coat.

Blake was standing in the far corner of the room, clutching his pamphlets as if they were a passport to the outside world. Drops of sweat wriggled down his temples and behind his ears, leaving moist, shiny trails like slugs.

“Hello there,” Harry said brightly. “About this proposition of yours, I think my wife and I might be interested. Tell me, does soft water make shaving any easier?”

“I—I don't know.”

“Come, you're old enough to shave, surely? How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“A mere boy. Do you throw snowballs?”

“I . . .”

“Never mind. You must excuse my wife and me for ring­ing you in on our private little difference of opinion. My wife hasn't been well lately. We're expecting a child in a few months, our first. Say, that's going to mean a lot of extra washing, isn't it? I think a water-softener might be a good investment. How about it, Thelma?”

“Harry,” she said dully. “Don't. Stop.”

“Go take a pill, Thelma. You're not well.” He turned back to the young man who had managed one surreptitious step toward the door. “You look familiar to me. Have I seen you before?”

“No,” Blake said, thinking, it's true. He couldn't have seen me, he had his eyes closed when I was talking to the nurse. She said he was out, out like a light . . .

“What's your name?”

“Rod Blake.”

“Funny, I'd have sworn we met some place. A hospital—­have you been in a hospital recently?”

“No.”

“Well, no matter. Tell me more about your product.”

“We have—several models.”

“Go ahead, talk about them. Speak your piece.”

“Well—well, as I was just saying to your wife, this is my first day on the job.”

“So?”