I Married A Dead Man (21 page)

               
Neither of them said anything. He didn't, because he was content. He'd done what he'd set out to do. He did whistle lightly, once, for a short while, but then he stopped that again. She didn't say anything, because she was undone. Destroyed, in the fullest sense of the word. She'd never felt like this before. She didn't even feel pain of mind any more. Struggle was ended. She was numb now. She'd even had more feeling left in her after the train-crash than now.

               
She rode all the way with her eyes held shut. Like a woman returning from a funeral, at which everything worth keeping has been interred, and to whom nothing left above ground is worth looking at any longer.

               
She heard him speak at last "There, was that so bad?" he said.

               
She answered him mechanically, without opening her eyes.

               
"Where are you--? What do you want me to do now?"

               
"Exactly nothing. You go on just as you were before. This is something between the two of us. And I want it to stay that way, understand? Not a word to the Family. Not until I'm ready. It'll be Our Little Secret, yours and mine."

               
He was afraid if he took her with him openly, they'd change the will, she supposed. And afraid if he left her with them, and they learned of it, they'd have it annulled for her.

               
How did you kill a man? There was nothing here, no way. The country was flat, the road level, straight. If she snatched at the wheel, tried to throw the car out of control, nothing much would happen. You needed steep places, hairbreadth turns. And the car was only trundling along, not going fast. It would only roll off into the dirt maybe, strike a telegraph-pole, shake them up a little.

               
Besides, even if that had been the feasible way, she didn't want to die with him. She only wanted him to die. She had a child she was devoted to, a man she loved. She wanted to live. She'd always had an unquenchable will to live, all her life; she still had it now. Numbed as she was, it was still flickering stubbornly inside her. Nothing could put it out, or--she would already have contemplated another alternative, probably, before now.

               
Oh God, she cried out in her mind, if I only had a--

               
And in that instant, she knew how to do it. Knew how she was going to do it. For the next word-symbol flashing before her senses was "gun," and as it appeared it brought its own answer to the plea.

               
In the library, at home. There was one in there, somewhere.

               
A brief scene came back to mind, from many months ago. Buried until now, to suddenly reappear, as clear as if it had just taken place a moment ago. The reading-lamp, comfortably lit and casting its cheerful glow. Father Hazzard, sitting there by it, lingering late over a book. The others gone to bed, all but herself. She the last one to leave him. A brief kiss on his forehead.

               
"Shall I lock up for you?"

               
"No, you run along. I will, in a moment"

               
"You won't forget, though?"

               
"No, I won't forget." And then he'd chuckled, in that dry way of his: "Don't be nervous, I'm well-protected down here. There's a revolver in one of the drawers right by me here. We keep it specially for burglars. That was Mother's idea, once, years ago--and there hasn't been hide nor hair of one in all the time since."

               
She'd laughed at this melodramatic drollery, and told him quite truthfully "It wasn't prowlers I was thinking of, but a sudden rainstorm in the middle of the night and Mother's best drapes."

               
She'd laughed. But now she didn't.

               
Now she knew where there was a gun.

               
You crooked your finger through. You pulled. And you had peace, you had safety.

               
They stopped, and she heard the car-door beside her clack open. She raised her eyes. They were in a leafy tunnel of the street trees. She recognized the symmetrical formation of the trees, the lawnslopes on either side of them, the dim contours of the private homes in the background. They were on her own street, but further over, about a block away from the house. He was being tactful, letting her out at a great enough distance from her own door to be inconspicuous.

               
He was sitting there, waiting for her to take the hint and get out. She looked at her watch, mechanically. Not even eleven yet. It must have been around ten when it happened. It had taken them forty minutes coming back; they'd driven slower than going out.

               
He'd seen her do it. He smiled satirically. "Doesn't take long to marry, does it?"

               
It doesn't take long to die, either, she thought smoulderingly.

               
"Don't you--don't you want me to come with you?" she whispered.

               
"What for?" he said insolently. "I don't want you. I just want what eventually--comes with you. You go upstairs to your unsullied little bed. (I trust it is, anyway. With this Bill in the house.)"

               
She could feel heat in her face. But nothing much mattered, nothing counted. Except that the gun was a block away, and he was here. And the two of them had to meet.

               
"Just stay put," he advised her. "No unexpected little trips out of town, now, Patrice. Unless you want me to suddenly step forward and claim paternity of the child. I have the law on my side, now, you know. I'll go straight to the police."

               
"Well--will you wait here a minute? I'll--I'll be right out. I'll get you some money. You '11 need some--until--until we get together again."

               
"Your dowry?" he said ironically. "So soon? Well, as a matter of fact, I don't. Some of the men in this town play very poor cards. Anyway, why give me what's already mine? Piecemeal. I can wait. Don't do me any favors."

               
She stepped down, reluctantly.

               
"Where can I reach you, in case I have to?"

               
"I'll be around. You'll hear from me, every now and then. Don't be afraid of losing me."

               
No, it had to be tonight, tonight, she kept telling herself grimly. Before the darkness ended and the daybreak came. If she waited, she'd lose her courage. This surgery had to be performed at once, this cancer on her future removed.

               
No matter where he goes in this city tonight, she vowed, I'll track him down, I'll find him, and I'll put an end to him. Even if I have to destroy my own self doing it. Even if I have to do it in sight of a hundred people.

               
The car-door swung closed. He tipped his hat satirically.

               
"Good night, Mrs. Georgesson. Pleasant dreams to you. Try sleeping on a piece of wedding-cake. If you haven't wedding-cake, try a hunk of stale bread. You'll be just as crummy either way."

               
The car sidled past her. Her eyes fastened on the rear license-plate, clove to it, memorized it, even as it went skimming past It dwindled. The red tail-light coursed around the next corner and disappeared. But it seemed to hang there before her eyes, like a ghost-plaque, suspended against the night, for long minutes after.

                                               
NY09231

               
Then that, too, dimmed and went out.

               
Somebody was walking along the quiet night sidewalk, very close by. She could hear the chip-chipping of the high heels. That was she. The trees were moving by her, slowly rearward. Somebody was climbing terraced flagstone steps. She could hear the gritty sound of the ascending tread. That was she. Somebody was standing before the door of the house now. She could see the darkling reflection in the glass opposite her. It moved as she moved. That was she.

               
She opened her handbag and felt inside it for her doorkey. Hers, was good. The key they'd given her. It was still there. For some reason this surprised her. Funny to come home like this, just as though nothing had happened to you, and feel for your key, and put it into the door, and--and go into the house. To still come home like this, and still go into the house.

               
I have to go in here, she defended herself. My baby's asleep in this house. He's asleep upstairs in it, right now. This is where I have to go; there isn't any other place for me to go.

               
She remembered how she'd had to lie, earlier tonight, asking Mother Hazzard to mind Hughie for her while she visited a new friend. Father had been at a business meeting and Bill had been out.

               
She put on the lights in the lower hall. She closed the door. Then she stood there a minute, her breath rising and falling, her back supine against the door. It was so quiet, so quiet in this house. People sleeping, people who trusted you. People who didn't expect you to bring home scandal and murder to them, in return for all their goodness to you.

               
She stood there immobile. So quiet, so still, there was no guessing what she had come back here for, what she had come back here to do.

               
Nothing left. Nothing. No home, no love, even no child any more. She'd even forfeited that prospective love, tarnished it for a later day. She'd lose him too, he'd turn against her, when he was old enough to know this about her.

               
He'd done all this to her, one man. It wasn't enough that he'd done it once, he'd done it twice now. He'd wrecked two lives for her. He'd smashed up the poor inoffensive seventeen-year-old simpleton from San Francisco who had had the bad luck to stray his way. Smashed her up, and wiped his feet all over her five-and-tencent-store dreams, and spit on them. And now he'd smashed up the cardboard lady they called Patrice.

               
He wouldn't smash up anybody more!

               
A tortured grimace disfigured her face for a moment. The back of her wrist went to her forehead, clung there. An inhalation of terrible softness, yet terrible resolve, shook her entire frame. Then she tottered on the bias toward the library entrance, like a comic drunk lacking in sufficient coordination to face squarely in the direction in which he is hastening.

               
She put on the big reading-lamp in there, center-table.

               
She went deliberately to the cellarette, and opened that, and poured some brandy and downed it. It seemed to blast its way down into her, but she quelled it with a resolute effort.

               
Ah, yes, you needed that when you were going to kill a man.

               
She went looking for the gun. She tried the table-drawers first, and it was not in there. Only papers and things, in the way. But he'd said there was one in here, that night, and there must be, somewhere in this room. They never told you anything that was untrue, even lightly; he, nor Mother, nor--nor Bill either for that matter. That was the big difference between them and her. That was why they had peace--and she had none.

               
She tried Father Hazzard's desk next. The number of drawers and cubicles was greater, but she sought them all out one by one. Something glinted, as she moved a heavy business-ledger aside, in the bottommost under-drawer, and there it lay, thrust in at the back.

               
She took it out. It's inoffensive look, at first, was almost a disappointment. So small, to do so great a thing. To take away a life. Burnished nickel, and bone. And that fluted bulge in the middle, she supposed, was where its hidden powers of death lay. In her unfamiliarity, she pounded at its back with the heel of her hand, and strained at it, trying to get it open, risking a premature discharge, hoping only that if she kept fingers clear of the trigger she would avert one. Suddenly, with astonishing ease at the accidental right touch, it had broken downward, it slanted open. Round black chambers, empty.

               
She rummaged in the drawer some more. She found the same small cardboard box, half-noted in her previous search, that she had hastily cast aside. Inside, cotton-wool, as if to hold some very perishable medicinal capsule. But instead, steel-jacketed, snub-nosed, the cartridges. Only five of them.

               
She pressed them home, one by one, into the pits they were meant for. One chamber remained empty.

               
She closed the gun.

               
She wondered if it would fit into her handbag. She tried it spadewise, the flat side up, and it went in.