Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 (10 page)

 
          
“When
I got to
England
,” the quiet voice went on, “I learned what had happened to the others.
They had all been taken the week after I was caught, except Georges and two
others who had escaped. Georges had been killed later on, with the Maquis,
helping an American flyer who had been shot down. But the Gestapo had got all
the rest that week. After a while she said, “Don’t you see? I don’t know. I don’t
know that I didn’t betray them. I can’t remember.”

 
          
He
leaned against the dresser without moving and looked at the girl sitting now
childishly cross-legged in the center of the big iron bed. There was bitterness
inside him. The war always came back. You had managed to stay out of it while
it was going on; and now everywhere you went they threw the war you had not
fought in your face and asked you to judge what had been right about it, and
what had been wrong.

 
          
A
knock on the door made him start. He crossed and pulled at the knob. The
freckled boy was outside.

 
          
“I
couldn’t get any
Chicago
papers, sir. I got the
St. Louis
Post
and the
Omaha
Sun,
in case you’d…”

 
          
Emmett
took the papers and his change. He gave the boy a dollar and closed the door.
The girl on the bed was watching him as he came back across the room. There was
something disconcerting about her steady questioning stare. He clapped the
papers on the bed beside her and unfolded the top one.

 
          
“Aren’t
you going to say anything?” she asked softly.

 
          
“No,”
he said without looking at her.

 
          
“That
isn’t much better than saying it, is it?”

 
          
“You’re
jumping to conclusions,” he said. “I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say
about it? I mean, even supposing I was going to get indignant about it, I’d
better make sure you’d done it, first, hadn’t I?”

 
          
A
small sound made him look at her. He saw that she was crying. She looked at him
with the tears running unheeded down her face.

 
          
“I
thought it would help, telling somebody else,” she whispered. “My folks don’t
even guess. They think I won’t talk about it because… because I had such a bad
time in that place… They don’t even suspect…” She tried to brush the tears
away. After a little she stopped crying and attempted, by craning her neck, to
dry her face on the shoulder and sleeve of her blouse. He opened her purse and
pulled two wadded handkerchiefs out of it; the one he had lent her earlier in
the day and a smaller one. Something fell out and shattered on the bare boards
of the floor. He gave her the handkerchiefs and turned to look down at the
broken mirror. There was always something ugly and symbolical about a broken
mirror, and particularly now after the story she had just told him.

 
          
“No,”
he heard her say as he bent over. “No, I’ll get it.”

 
          
He
heard her push herself across the bed and drop to the floor in one quick movement
that startled him with its abruptness; a moment before she had been crying. He
put himself in her way.

 
          
“Please,
give it to me,” she gasped.

 
          
He
looked down at her streaked pale face. “I think I’d like to see it first, if
you don’t mind,” he said slowly, holding the broken mirror away from her, as
she reached for it, as if keeping it away from a playful puppy, or a child. Her
face seemed to contract a little; and for a moment he thought she would strike
him. Then her shoulders sagged in defeat.

 
          
“There’s
just the clipping,” she breathed. “You’ve already read it And—” She watched him
draw a small card from behind the shattered glass. “—and a picture,” she said,
her voice trailing off in silence.

 
          
He
was looking down at a small studio photograph, on fairly stiff paper, of a size
to be carried in the compartment of a wallet with the driver’s license and
identification cards. The picture had apparently been carried flat for easy
visibility for a long time; the face of it had the scuffed, smudged, worn look
of paper that had rubbed against celluloid or leather for years. It was flat
now, but at some intervening time it had been folded so that the crease broken
into the photographic emulsion ran directly across the smiling face of the girl
it represented: a younger Ann Nicholson than the girl he knew, with her hair
worn longer and a young fullness to her face that she did not now have. The
broken surface of the photograph marred the expression of the smiling young
face, but he could see that even that long ago she had been lovely. The picture
had been inscribed on the back:
To
Georges, with all my love—Ann.

 
          
“It’s
mine,” she murmured. “Please, may I have it now?”

 
          
The
momentary panic had left her, he thought; and then he saw her eyes avoid his as
he looked at her. He glanced again at the picture in his hand; it seemed quite
innocent, although there was something vaguely unpleasant and frightening about
the wanton way it had been creased. You might fold a photograph like that
before throwing it away, but this photograph had not been thrown away. Someone
had carried it for a long time, treasuring it; and then the same person, or
another, had broken it ruthlessly, but had not thrown it away.

 
          
Then
the answer came to him. This was a picture she had given to the man she had
apparently married in
France
.
To
Georges, with all my love…
Georges had carried it; it was possible that
Georges had broken it after the death and capture of his friends. But Georges,
she had just told him, had been killed with the Maquis later, helping an
American flyer escape. He glanced at her, feeling suddenly cold and rather
scared.

 
          
“How
did you get this?” he asked.

 
          
“It
was… sent to me,” she whispered.

 
          
“By
whom?”

 
          
“By
Georges. When he was dying.” She hesitated. “He… wanted me to know… to know
that he had kept it in spite of…”

 
          
“I
see,” Emmett said. “And wounded to death, he sauntered out to the nearest
mailbox and—”

 
          
“Do
you have to be so cruel?”

 
          
“I
have to know how you got this,” he said evenly. “I have to know why you jumped
to keep me from seeing it. How was it sent?
When
did you get it?”

 
          
“I
got it—” Her lips were gray in her white face. “I got it… yesterday. That’s why
I—”

 
          
He
was silent for a long time, and she did not finish. Then he shivered a little,
and licked his lips. “That’s why you started off for
Denver
?”

 
          
She
nodded mutely.

 
          
“Who
brought it to you?” He remembered what he had been told. “A young fellow at the
party sent you off, Dr. Kaufman said. Everything was going fine until you
talked to him.”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“And
Georges died in 1944 or thereabouts, but you just got the picture yesterday.”

 
          
“Yes.”
She caught her breath and said quickly, “He couldn’t reach me before, don’t you
see? I was in the sanatorium when he came out of the army last year.”

 
          
“What
did he have to say to you?”

 
          
“He
said—” She hesitated. “He was the one… the aviator whose life Georges saved. He
gave me the picture and said that… that Georges wanted me to know… to know he
hadn’t blamed me. That he had forgiven me.”

 
          
He
tried to see the expression on her averted face, but she would not turn. At
last he said, “Then Georges believed you’d done it.”

 
          
Her
head moved in a tiny nod.

 
          
“Then
you do know,” he said. “You said you—”

 
          
She
whirled to face him. “I said I didn’t remember,” she gasped. “I didn’t lie. I
didn’t! Even Georges could have been mistaken, couldn’t…?” Her voice ran out
abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.

 
          
“And
the lad who carried the message?” Emmett asked. “What else did he say?”

 
          
“I’ve
told you what he said.”

 
          
Emmett
watched her with wary objectivity. It was like catching a mouse in a closed
room; you had it, you would get it eventually, but it always found something to
hide behind. “No,” he said, “you’ve told me what the message was from Georges.
Didn’t—?” He cleared his throat, “—didn’t the guy have anything to say for
himself? After all, he’d gone to some trouble to look you up personally, when
he could have stuck the picture in the mail with a note, and forgot about it.
Did he just hand you the picture and quote Georges’ dying words and walk out?”

 
          
She
took the picture from his hands and ripped it in two along the crease, and
dropped the pieces in the wastebasket. Then she faced him stiffly.

 
          
“No,”
she said flatly, her head well back. “No, you’re perfectly right, Mr. Emmett.
That wasn’t all he said. He gave me the picture, folded like that, as if he had
not wanted to be contaminated by looking at it. He told me what Georges had
said as if it hurt him to say it. Then he made a little speech. I don’t have to
tell you what it was, do I? You can guess, can’t you?”

 
          
Emmett
said slowly, “I think so.”

 
          
“He
said he was going to take the story to the newspapers,” she whispered. “I
wanted to die. I always want to die, but I never have the courage. I tried
once, in the camp, with a knife… I couldn’t even manage to cut myself!”

 
          
“And
then?”

 
          
“That’s
all,” she whispered. “I ran away. I knew I had to… to see Dr. Kissel. To make
sure. If he could just say something that would make me remember… To be told
you’ve done something like that and not
know
—”

 
          
He
had been in the little room too long. He could no longer feel anything for her;
she had made too many demands on his emotions already, and it was too hot. When
she buried her face in her hands, he found himself wondering whether or not she
were peeking through her fingers to see how the gesture affected him. He could
not help remembering that a man had been murdered in
Chicago
. He could not help the dreadful suspicion
that he now knew who the victim must have been. After a time he looked away.

 
          
He
turned to the papers on the bed, but as she moved behind him he found himself
suddenly concentrating on tracing her path across the room by the small sounds
of her feet and clothing and breathing; then she was beside him, putting her
feet into the dusty black pumps by the bed; then moving away. The bathroom door
closed on her. He felt himself slowly relaxing and he knew that, ridiculously,
he had been afraid to have her behind him. There was no news of a
Chicago
murder in either paper. He took out the
card Dr. Kaufman had given him and read the telephone number the doctor had
written: R. Austen Nicholson,
Evanston
, Lake-view 2210. He picked up the telephone
and asked for
Evanston
,
Illinois
.