Death of a Tall Man (33 page)

“I'm all right, Father,” she heard her voice saying. “All right.”

It was Celia who fainted. Curtis Grainger caught her, held her in his arms, found a sofa to lay her on.

Blake looked at Freddie. There was concern in his expressive face. There was also puzzlement.

“I am going to marry Senator Kirkhill, Sergeant,” she said. She made her voice steady. She was conscious, as she spoke, how carefully—with what desperate care—she had chosen the tense. “I am—” But it was not true.

“Probably this man isn't the senator,” Sergeant Blake said. “You understand that, Mrs. Haven? You must—”

“Hope that,” Freddie said. “Yes, Sergeant.”

Fay Burnley was bending over Celia, keeping the girl's head down, rubbing her wrists, talking to her.

“It isn't your father, honey,” she said. “Of
course
it isn't. Of
course
it isn't Bruce.”

“The girl can't go, Sergeant,” the admiral said. He spoke with finality, with command. “You see that.”

But Sergeant Blake shook his head.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Sooner or later, I'm afraid, she'll have to, you know. If it should be the senator—well, she's next of kin.”

“Not now,” the admiral said. “We all knew Kirkhill. We'd all—know. I'll go myself.”

Sergeant Blake hesitated. He looked at the girl, motionless on the sofa. He reached a decision.

“Very well,” he said. “The other can come later. If it's necessary.” He looked at the admiral. “You would be sure?” he asked.

“I'll go,” Freddie said. Her father looked at her. “Yes, Dad,” she said. “I—I can't just sit here. Just—wait. You and I, we'll go.” She tried to smile. “Please, Dad.”

The admiral looked at her a moment without speaking. Then, abruptly, he nodded.

“You and I,” he said. He turned to the sergeant. “You have a car?” he asked.

Sergeant Blake nodded.

“Then,” Freddie said. “Now?”

Sergeant Blake nodded again. He said, “Please.”

It was going too quickly, Freddie thought. It was ending too quickly. It took too little time to get a coat, too little time down in the elevator, too little time in the car to the police mortuary. There was a wait, then, in an anteroom, and now, strangely, the waiting was too long, although in fact it was brief. Sergeant Blake had left them; then he returned. He held open a door.

A man in white pulled back a sheet which had covered a face.

The blackness swirled in again, she fought it back, fought out of it. She heard her voice.

“Yes,” Freddie Haven said. “Yes. It is Senator Kirkhill.”

She felt her father's arm around her shoulders. But the blackness was going away. She was not going to faint. It was merely a kind of numbness. It was as if this were happening, had to be happening, to somebody else.

III

Saturday, 3:25 A.M. to 5:05 A.M.

There was really nothing difficult about inserting a key into a keyhole. You held the key very firmly, approached the keyhole slowly, deliberately, with confidence, and the key went in. That was all there was to it; you did it dozens of times a day. Well, you did it several times a day. It was, Jerry North decided, probably the basic operation of civilization. Civilization was distinguished from non-civilization by keyholes and keys to put into them; a man's place in the world was assured, or at least not hopelessly precarious, so long as he had a ring of keys in his pocket and those keys, or a majority of them, fitted keyholes to which he had unchallenged access. If you were in a very assured position, you had a great many keys; probably if you were of the mighty, you had so many that a servant carried your keys for you. But the key to your own front door was the basic key, and all you had to do was hold it very firmly in your right hand, move it toward the keyhole with assurance, twist it to the right, so—

“Jerry,” Pam said. She was leaning against the corridor wall, waiting. She had seemed to be fast asleep. “Jerry,” Pam said, “why don't you open the door? I want to go to bed.”

“What,” Jerry North said, with gravity, with precision, “do you think I am doing, Pamela?”

“Chinking,” Pam said. “Clinking. Making funny noises. Why don't you use the front door key?”

“I—” Jerry began, haughtily. Then he looked. “Naturally I'm using the front door key,” he said. It was true now, at any rate. He had, perhaps, while thinking about civilization, momentarily tried to unlock the apartment door with the key to his office desk, but now he was using the proper key. Pam had no business—

“You,” Jerry told Pamela, “are sound asleep.”

“I certainly am,” Pam said. “I can go to sleep right here. Leaning against the wall, waiting for you—”

Jerry put the key to the apartment door lock into the keyhole of the apartment door lock. The trouble with civilization, he thought, was that it gave you too many keys; it imposed the strain of remembering which key entered which keyhole. All over the world, he thought, as he turned the key (so, to the right) men are suffering nervous breakdowns because they have too many keys, too many keyholes, minds too limited to cope with variation so multiplied. He was, he realized, on the verge of a thought of profundity; just beyond the fingertips of his mind was, in all probability, Solution. He would have to tell Pam—

He pushed the door and it opened. Three cats sat in a semicircle regarding the Norths. Pam North moved to Jerry and he put an arm around her.

“Carry me over the threshold,” Pam said, sleepily. “Start the New Year—”

Jerry lifted her in his arms. The cats looked at them in astonishment. Sherry, the blue-point, a creature of almost over-acute sensibility, bristled, cried in fright, and plunged under the sofa. Gin, sparked by Sherry's excitement, growled questioningly, but stood her ground. Only Martini, their mother, wiser in the way of these troublesome charges of hers, sat unmoving, her enormous round eyes fixed, her whiskers slightly curled.

Jerry kissed his wife, not casually, tightened his arms around her and then put her down.

“You know,” he said, “standing out there—there's something wrong with that lock, incidentally—I almost had something—” He nodded to her. “Almost had it,” he said. “Now it's gone.”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “Tomorrow? I want to go to bed.”

“It was about civilization,” Jerry said. “And—I don't know. Keys and keyholes. Like the rats, you know? The ones that jumped at little doors and finally got confused and—”

“Listen, darling,” Pam said. “I'm terribly tired of those rats. All my life I've heard about those rats, jumping at doors.” She paused. “All my life,” she said, “I've wanted to go to bed. And you want to talk about rats.”

Jerry North ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. He said, “Oh.”

“All your life,” he said, “you've wanted—what did you say?”

“I want to go to bed,” Pam said, and then stopped and looked at Martini, who had rolled over on her back, with her feet in the air, and was looking at them between her forelegs. “Wants to have her belly rubbed,” Pam said. She sat down on the floor and began to caress Martini. “Is the major cat,” Pam said. “Is the cat major. Is—”

Then the telephone rang. It rang with horrible loudness, with a kind of anger. Martini swirled from under Pam's hand, rolled to her feet, dashed into the hall, from whence the ringing came, and looked up at the box which held the doorbell.

“Confused,” Pam said. “It's the telephone, Martini. It's—Jerry, it's the
telephone!
”

Jerry had the telephone in his hand. He said “Yes?” to it.

But the telephone continued to ring.

“Jerry,” Pam said. “The other telephone. The house telephone. Who on earth?”

Pam North was on her feet. She was almost as quick as Martini had been. She was in the hall, at the house telephone on the wall. She said, “Yes?”

“Mrs. North?” a woman said. Her voice was young, now it was hurried, strained.

“Yes,” Pam said.

“This is Winifred Haven,” the woman in the lobby downstairs said, the words hurried. “May I come up?”

“Why,” Pam said. “Of—of course, Mrs. Haven.” But it was hard to take the request as a matter of course; hard to keep surprise out of her voice.

“I know,” Freddie Haven said, answering the tone. “It's—it's impossible. But—” She seemed about to go on, to change her mind. “I'll come up, then,” she said.

Pam turned back to the living room. Jerry was still holding, still looking at the wrong telephone. His look was reproachful.

“Simplification,” he said, in a grave, distant voice. He returned the wrong telephone to its receiver. “Too many everything. Keys. Telephones—”

“Jerry!” Pam said. “Mrs. Haven's coming up. Your admiral's daughter.”

Gerald North came wide awake at once. He looked at his watch. He said, “What the hell?”

“I don't know,” Pam said. “She's excited. Something's happened.”

“At twenty-five minutes to four,” Jerry North said. “In the
morning
.”

They heard the elevator stop at their floor. The sound of its doors reverberated down the corridor. They heard heels tapping down the corridor. Pam went to the door and opened it and Freddie Haven, coming toward her, said, “This is awful. Unforgiveable.”

The strain was in Freddie Haven's eyes, as in her voice, as in her face. Her face was almost colorless; it was marked with weariness, with shock.

“It's all right,” Pam North said. “Of course it's all right.” She held the door open.

Jerry was on his feet. He did not look sleepy any longer. His face grew intent as he saw Freddie Haven's face.

“It's all right,” he said, reinforcing what Pam had said. “What is it, Mrs. Haven? The admiral—?”

She stood, holding her fur coat around her, as if even in this warm apartment she still was cold, her face drained of color save for the brightness of her lips. The red of her hair was so deep that it was almost some different color, some new color. She shook her head, without speaking.

“Sit down,” Pam said. “Sit down.”

The young woman shook her head again, but it was not a response. She sank into a deep chair, leaned back a moment with her eyes closed. Then she sat up, quickly, nervously.

“Bruce is dead,” she said. She looked at them. “Senator Kirkhill,” she said. “He's—he's been killed. It's—horrible.”

“Oh!” Pam said. “I'm—I'm—”

“Somebody killed him,” Freddie Haven said. “The police say somebody killed him.” She looked at them, shock living in her eyes. “Meant to kill him,” she said.

Pam North made coffee, then; Jerry North brought brandy. While they waited for the coffee, Freddie started to speak, but Pam had shaken her head, said, “Wait!” They drank coffee, brandy in it. Some color came back into Freddie Haven's face.

“Now,” Pam said.

They waited a moment while Freddie Haven, shock slowly leaving her brain, her body, arranged her thoughts. Then she tried to smile. The smile was unreal, tormented.

“I want you to help me,” she said, finally, her words chosen. “Mrs. Burnley—somebody—said you were—that you—” She paused, the words lost.

“That we were detectives?” Pam said. “Investigators? Something like that?” She shook her head. “We're not,” she said. She looked at Jerry North.

“We know a police lieutenant,” Jerry said. “A man named Weigand. We've been—involved. But your friend is wrong. We're not detectives. I'm a publisher. Pam's—” He paused and looked at his wife. Pam was what? Housewife? True, legal—ridiculous as description. “Pam's not a detective,” he said.

Freddie Haven looked from one to the other. She looked at Pam North.

“I thought, tonight,” she said. “I thought you—saw things, understood things. That I was worried, that something was wrong. Afterward somebody said—” She broke off. “I was going to be married to Bruce,” she said. “They say he was—murdered.” She looked at them, as if there were an answer to this.

Jerry North had been standing, looking down at her. Now he sat down in a straight chair.

“Mrs. Haven,” he said. “Listen. Will you listen?”

She nodded, her eyes on his face.

“If that's true,” Jerry said, “if Senator Kirkhill was murdered, the police will find out about it. Find out who did it. That's what you want? That's why you came to us?”

She shook her head.

“No?” Jerry said. He felt thrown off.

“That's only part of it,” she said. “Can I tell you?”

Jerry hesitated, he wanted to say “no.” “Of course,” Pam said. “Listen, Jerry.”

“It's about my father,” she said. “He—I'm afraid he—he knows something he hasn't told the police. Isn't going to tell the police.” She looked at Jerry. “He's a dear,” she said. “He's—an innocent.”

Jerry North looked at her blankly. Innocent? He repeated the word aloud and she nodded.

“Your father?” he said. There was incredulity in his tone, and in his mind. Vice Admiral Jonathan Satterbee, “Johnny Jump-up,” was not an innocent. The word was absurd. He was a man of wide experience, wide knowledge, marked skill at his trade. He had been important in the Pacific—not Halsey, not Spruance, certainly not Nimitz. But his book about the Pacific war, the book on which Jerry had bet an advance which now and then slightly alarmed him, was not the book of an “innocent” man, if by the word his daughter meant a man without experience, without “savvy.”

“You don't know,” Freddie Haven said. “I know how it sounds. He's a wonderful man. He was a fine officer. He's been everywhere. But—” She shook her head. “He's been sheltered,” she said. She almost smiled. “All of them have,” she said. “Army men, Navy men. Dad's wonderful, he's special—but he's one of them.”