Death of a Tall Man (24 page)

It was dark in the room and she was suddenly lonely, “bereft,” she thought; this was what “bereft” meant—loneliness in a dim room at evening. She switched on the lamp on the desk, but that merely deepened the shadows around her. She shook her head, as if she had been arguing with herself, and, abstractedly, picked up her cocktail glass. It was empty. She looked toward the hall and, beyond it, could see the light in the living room. Now that she listened, she could hear voices. Perhaps Dan—

She went quickly across the hall and into the living room. Evelyn Gordon and Lawrence Westcott were sitting close together on a sofa and they had started a fire. Westcott's arm lay along the back of the sofa behind Eve; and Debbie felt, without knowing, that he had just at that moment lifted it from her shoulders. With the other hand, as she stood there, he reached out to the coffee table in front of them and filled their glasses from a shaker. There was nobody else in the room and now they were not talking. But she felt as if they had just been talking, as she felt that Lawrence Westcott had just moved his left arm from around Eve.

Westcott filled the glasses and then, unhurriedly, looked back over his shoulder at Debbie. So they had heard her. He smiled at her.

“Come in by the fire,” he said. He looked at her and seemed to be studying her face. Then he smiled. “Dan's all right,” he said. “Come in and have a drink.”

“Of course,” she said. “I was just—watching the storm. From the study window. It's—quite a storm.”

She walked across the room and stood for a moment in front of the fire. Then she sat on one of the chairs across from the sofa and stretched out her legs. She looked at her glass and tried to be careless, casual.

“Empty,” she said, in a carefully plaintive voice. “Entirely empty.”

They took care of that.

“That stepson of mine will be getting pretty wet,” Eve said. Something in her tone, in the way she described Dan, underlined the absurdity of Dan's being her stepson. It made her sound, if anything, younger than Dan.

“You can say that again,” Debbie said. And as she said it, she thought how strange familiar talk—the clichés of familiar talk—could sound when you thought of it, how far away, sometimes, the words you used were from the things you were saying.

“He'll get under something,” she said. “He always does.”

“Well,” Lawrence Westcott said, “he's had practice.” He said it in a dry, meaningless voice; too dry and meaningless. Eve suddenly patted his hand.

He smiled at her.

“All right,” he said. “All the same, a man felt funny going around in—” He paused. “As if you didn't belong to anything,” he said.

He means about the war, Debbie thought. He wasn't in it, for some reason, and he's—hurt about it. Inadequate. Even now. And it's made him, for some reason, not like Dan. She was embarrassed, and did not know what to say.

“He'll find some place,” she said. “Definitely.”

There was strain in the room; it had come into the room with her, Debbie thought. It had not been there before, when the two of them were sitting in front of the fire.

Eve looked at her watch.

“Almost seven,” she said. “You'll stay to dinner, Larry.”

Lawrence Westcott turned his head so that he could look out of a window at the rain.

“I'll have to, I guess,” he said. He smiled. “Which is very convenient, since I'd like to. Only—”

He looked at Eve Gordon. She shook her head. What that meant, Debbie did not understand. Perhaps Lawrence Westcott thought he ought to go, even in the rain; that he had called long enough on a woman so recently, and publicly, widowed. Perhaps he was thinking about the neighbors. He had cause, Debbie reflected.

She sipped her drink and looked into the fire and remembered Andy. Her sadness about Andy came and went; her sense of loss came and went. He had been very good to her; he had been very kind and gentle, like a very good kind of uncle. But it was hard, precisely because his death had been so unreally dramatic, to think of him as Andy, dead. He was a—a “murder victim.” It was sometimes hard to remember that he was also Andy, who had been like such a good kind of uncle. Sitting now, drinking slowly, she thought of him. The other two talked about nothing, leaving her out.

A maid came to the door of the dining room and stood as if about to speak. But just as she was beginning, the doorbell rang and, at a nod from Evelyn Gordon, she went across the room and out into the hall. Eve and Lawrence Westcott went on talking, but as if they were listening. Debbie stood up, thinking it was Dan, and then, although almost at once she realized that Dan would not need to ring, she continued to stand, looking at the door to the hall.

There was the sound of the outer door closing and then the maid's voice saying something which ended “—don't believe so, sir, but Mrs. Gordon is in” and then a man's voice which she did not at once recognize, except that it was not Dan's. “Wet night,” the man's voice said, and there was the sound of a hat being slapped against something. Then the maid came to the door and said, “Mr. Smith, ma'am,” and went on across the living room and out into the kitchen. Nickerson Smith came to the door, looked at them and then looked down at his trouser legs, which were wet.

“Quite a storm,” he said, mildly. “Young Dan around?”

Lawrence Westcott stood up and Eve turned to look across the back of the sofa.

“Hello, Nickerson,” Eve said. “No, he doesn't seem to be.” She looked at Smith. “You're wet,” she said. “Come over and dry out.”

Nickerson Smith, deliberate, at ease, came across the room and stood in front of the fire.

“Turns out Dan's got to sign something else,” he said. “Decided to bring it out myself.”

“He went for a walk,” Eve said. “He ought to be in eventually. Larry, give Nickerson a drink.”

Nickerson Smith took the drink, raised it slightly toward Eve, raised it to his lips. He stood with his back to the fire, teetering gently from heel to toe to heel.

“Lovely night for a walk,” he said. “Fit of sulks, I suppose?”

“Of course not,” Debbie said. “It was nice when he started. He—he's not built just to sit around.”

“My dear,” Smith said. “My dear Miss Brooks. I didn't mean to imply—” He let the sentence finish itself.

“Anybody'd think there was something funny about Dan,” the girl said. “Something—peculiar.”

“I didn't mean—” Smith began, but Eve Gordon cut in.

“There is, Debbie,” she said. “Why don't you face it? It's only just now, of course. He'll be all right. But there is something—well, funny, about him now. Naturally.”

“Dan's all right!” Debbie said. She was defiant. Her cheeks flushed.

“Debbie,” Eve Gordon began. Then she saw the maid standing in the door to the dining room. “All right, Susan,” she said. She turned to the others. “Dinner,” she said. “You'll stay, Nickerson? I'm sure Dan will be along.”

Nickerson Smith hesitated. He had, he said, planned to drive back at once, getting a sandwich on the way. Later he was meeting—He looked out at the rain.

“However,” he said, “it's rather important to get this signed. I suppose I can give him a ring and—”

“Of course,” Eve said. But, at almost the same time, Debbie said, “No.” They looked at her. “Because I'm afraid there's something the matter with the telephone,” Debbie said. “I tried to call and I was—I couldn't get through.” She did not know why she changed the sentence.

“Really,” Eve said. “Telephones in the country! When was this, Debbie?”

“A little after six,” Debbie said. “I'd just heard the news and I—I wanted to make a call.”

It was lame. It sounded lame. It said too much—and too little. But nobody picked it up.

Perhaps the trouble was corrected, Nickerson Smith said, and he went across the hall to the study. But he came back in a moment, shaking his head, and said, “Nope. Still dead.” He went back to the fire, stood in front of it for a moment and then shrugged. “In any case,” he said, “I'd better wait for Dan. I'll just have to explain tomorrow.”

They went in to dinner a few minutes later. The storm, which had seemed to lull, increased again. They were eating grapefruit when there was a sudden, very close, flash of lightning, with thunder almost on the flash. The lights went very low, came up for a second, went out.

It was a routine thing, an ordinary thing. There was no reason why anyone, knowing the way of electric storms with country power, should sit holding herself tight, trembling uncontrollably, while the maid brought candles, flickering in the semidarkness, throwing moving shadows which grew quiet as the candles began to burn steadily on the table. It was an ordinary thing.

But Debbie did sit trembling. I'm afraid of the dark, she thought; after last night, I'm afraid of the dark.

But this was an ordinary accident. Nobody had turned the lights off, as somebody had—as she better than anyone knew somebody had—the night before. This was merely something that happened, off and on, in the country when there were thunderstorms.

That would be Nickerson Smith, the man in the black slicker decided, from his glimpse of license numbers. Anyway, that would be Smith's car. So Smith would be snug inside, where Westcott was staying snug. The man in the slicker swore at the weather. He went back to the car, parked off the road not quite opposite the entrance to the Gordon drive. Snug indoors—that was swell. That was simply swell. He got into the car and turned on the radio, and static crackled and snarled at him. He got out and stood against the car, sheltering himself as much as he could. It wasn't much.

It was a hell of a night for this kind of thing. On a nice, moonlit night, with the peepers sounding, it wouldn't be so bad. It didn't help to think of the others snug inside. Maybe, the man thought, one of them won't be so snug after a while. Maybe the time would be coming when one of them would be glad to change places—if he could. There might come a time when being out in the rain would seem a mighty fine thing—and a mighty unobtainable thing—to one of those snug people.

He looked at the house, its windows softly luminous through the rain. Then lightning struck somewhere close and he ducked involuntarily. It was a fool thing to do; ducking lightning. A man did fool things, alone in the rain. He looked out from under the brim of his rubber hat and for a moment thought he must be looking in the wrong direction.

Then, as his eyes recovered from the flash, he saw the outlines of the big house through the rain. He wasn't looking in the wrong direction. All the lights in the house had gone out.

“Well,” the man in the slicker said, aloud. “Well, well.”

He left his shelter and began to cross the road.

The wind and the rain hit the police car near Elmsford, and the heavy sedan seemed to shudder. The windshield wipers fluttered, caught swished across reluctantly and the glass streamed again as they passed. Bill swore and reduced speed; the road was suddenly bright in a glare of lightning, and as suddenly dark again. The speedometer arrow fell to forty and hung there. Then it crept up again.

Mullins looked at it with disfavor and wondered what the hurry was. When you couldn't see your way—

“If we've missed this one,” Bill said savagely, “we can hand 'em in, Sergeant. Both of us. If we miss it again.”

The speedometer needle went to fifty, although still the headlights caught little more than a torrent of rain.

“Watch it, Loot!” Mullins said. “Jeez!” Weigand watched it, leaning forward over the wheel, trying to force his eyes. But he did not slow.

“Ten minutes one way or the other, Loot,” Mullins said, his voice mildly wistful. “Jeez.”

“A day,” Weigand said. “A day one way or another. And the nurse gets it.” He wrenched the car around a curve. “Because we let routine become—just that. Because we figured we've got plenty of time.”

“How could we figure it, Loot?” Mullins asked. “I don't see how we could figure it. Watch it!”

Bill swerved the car around a station wagon which groped, reasonably, through the rain.

“It hit us in the face,” Bill said. “My God, Mullins—it hit us in the face. All the time.”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said, equably. “O.K., it hit us in the face.”

He did not sound as if anything had hit him in the face. He sounded as if he were agreeing for the sake of calm. Weigand did not answer.

“O.K.,” Mullins said. “Suppose it wasn't Oakes. Even so, how do you know?”

“My God,” Weigand said. “Use your head. Who fits? Now we know the trick.”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. He sounded puzzled. “Do we?” he said.

“What other way is there?” Bill said, after a moment. The car slowed at a crossroads; suddenly swung right toward Mount Kisco. It went across railroad tracks, not hesitating. Mullins looked anxiously down the tracks on his side. They went through Mount Kisco, deserted in the storm. They went on beyond, cutting across country on secondary roads. In a dip of the road they plunged through water which slapped against the underside of the car. For a moment it was like being in a boat. Water fanned out on either side in great wings.

Mullins' silence was brooding. Bill broke it.

“There were six of them,” Weigand said. “One of them wasn't Oakes. What more do you want?”

Mullins thought about it.

“O.K.,” he said. “O.K., Loot.” He thought a moment longer. “A name would be nice,” he said.

“Oh,” Bill said. “That! I'll give you a name. Where's your mind, Sergeant?”

Bill gave him a name. Mullins was silent again. Then he said “Yeah.” Then he said, “It would be nice to have some evidence, Loot. It'd be real nice.”

Bill Weigand was savage. He said it wouldn't be so nice to get the kind of evidence they were likely to. He said it wouldn't be so damned nice.