Someone Is Bleeding (9 page)

“Poor baby.” she said, “poor helpless baby.”

Audrey needed someone to talk to. I listened.

“He never had a chance,” she said. “Money, sure he had money. Is that what they call a chance nowadays?”

She looked at me and the anger slipped from her thin features. She started working on her second drink. She put the glass down and pressed her right hand to her breasts as if she wanted to rub the liquored heat into her flesh. She reached up and dragged off the black veiled hat with a sob.

“I
hate
funerals.” she said miserably. “They stink. You hear me! They stink.”

“I hear you.”

She leaned her head onto her right palm and then ran shaking fingers through her hair. “Poor baby,” she said.

She lost breath for a moment as a sob clutched her throat. Then she drank some more. Her eyes on me. Red. Lost eyes. “You know what he said to me a few nights ago?”

“Jim?” I asked.

Dennis. Jim never talks to me.” Another sob. “Dennis said—
you’re
my family, Aud. The only family I have.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly

Imagine it,” she said. “Just his sister by marriage, but to him, I was his family. And he kissed me on the cheek. And he hugged me.”

Her teeth clamped together. Her lips pressed tightly, drained white under the lipstick.

“If I find out who did it,” she said, “if I find out for sure that she did this I’ll . . .”

”What?” I said.

Her eyes dropped. She shook her head and picked up her glass

“You’ll do what?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“I’ll tell you who killed Dennis. Steig killed him.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

‘You don’t want to know,” I said. “You’d rather believe it was Peggy.”

“Buy me another drink?”

“No, I won’t buy you another drink. I’m taking you home. I’m never buying you another drink again. Drink yourself to death on your own money. I’ve lost sympathy.”

She didn’t say a word all the way to Malibu. She got out of the car and I drove away. I imagine that she went to her room and locked herself in. There, she probably took off all her clothes and went to bed with a bottle of whiskey and drank it until she was senseless Happy college days gone. Betty Coed in a drunken stupor.

Later that afternoon I stopped by Peggy’s apartment. Apparently Jim had to entertain a few visiting firemen he happened to be related to. And, naturally, since Audrey wasn’t around he’d have enough trouble explaining that without having Peggy around to arouse comment too. As a matter of fact I found out later that Jim was burned up because I’d taken Audrey away. Lord know why. She certainly was in no shape to play hostess to ferret-eyed relatives.

Peggy was sitting in the living room listening to the radio. I recognized the introduction the orchestra was playing. In a moment Lanza would start heaving his lungs out and using up his incredible gift a little more.

The door was open to let the breeze in so I went in and sat beside her. She smiled a little and patted my hand as I sat down.

“How long have you been here?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t been keeping track. Where were you?”

“I took Audrey home,” I said.

“Oh. Jim took me home. That is, he had Steig take me home.”

“I imagined he would.”

Casual conversation with
Che gelida manina
in the background. And my mind tearing at me to ask her once and for all if . . .

But how can you ask a girl you love to tell you—yes or no— whether she’s murdered?

“I’m sorry you went,” I said, unable to ask.

“Went?”

“To the funeral. They’re depressing. And you have enough troubles.”

She smiled mirthlessly.

“I’m used to funerals,” she said. “My mother. An uncle. An aunt. A cousin. Dennis.” She shrugged. “Everybody dies,” she said.

I looked at her closely. At her finely etched profile, the light from the dying sun on her cheeks.

Then she started to talk. More to herself than to me, I think. Just her thoughts spoken aloud.

“He looked nice lying there,” she said. “He wasn’t a . . . a man anymore. I mean there was nothing ugly about him.”

Was that a smile? It was gone too quickly for me to be sure.

“You know what he looked like?” she asked.

She began to examine her white hands. “He looked like a gentleman,” she said.

It took about an hour to drive to Pasadena. I followed winding Sunset all the way to its end, then turned off into the speedway that led to Pasadena. The car worked fine. I hit eighty once. A good thing the car was in working shape. I was in no mood for more troubles. I had enough.

Driving gave me time to think.

About my novel, which was getting nowhere at an exceedingly rapid clip. About my life, which was getting more and more complex and unenjoyable. About Peggy, who seemed more an enigma by the day.

That’s why I was going to Pasadena to see her father.

I wanted to meet him, talk to him. There had to be some beginning to all this. Some cause for all this unbalanced effect.

The house was a small bungalow near the California Institute of Technology.

The place was fastidiously kept. I don’t know whether the captain or his son or hired help did it. It was probably hired help. Whatever the case, the lawn was cropped close, the house was neatly painted and everything was square and neat and clean. You could almost guess that a very appearance-conscious man lived there. A man to whom exterior presentation was half the essence of personality, if not a good deal more than half.

I stood on the porch waiting for someone to answer the bell, looking at the porch railing scrubbed clean recently, the smell of soap and lye still in the air. The welcome mat was dusted and swept but no more welcoming for that.

It was a young man in his teens who answered the door. He was pale, he wore glasses. I knew him, though. It was Peggy’s face. I noticed the black coat sweater over his white shin, the small, tight knot on the tie.

“Yes?” he said.

Myopia. A lot worse than mine. Braces on his teeth Nothing to glean a Mr. America vote.

“Are you Philip Lister?- I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s, right.”

”I’m a friend of Peggy’s,” I said. “I don’t know whether she’s mentioned me.”

He looked confused. “No . . . she didn’t.”

I extended my hand, feeling awkward, feeling a slight sense of anger with Peggy. Was she ashamed of me? The inevitable question popped into my overly male brain.

“I’m David Newton.”

“How do you do?” His handshake was weak. “Won’t you . . . come in?”

The same hesitating way of speaking as Peggy. As if he weren’t sure that what he was about to say was the right thing.

I was in the hallway. It was as fastidious as the outside. Scrupulously arranged. It was more like the waiting room of a doctor than a home. Lister probably ran his house like they said he ran his ship before the war. With a tyrannical insistence on the immaculate.

“Won’t you sit down?” Phillip asked me. He was a little taller than Peggy, about five ten I guessed. He was quite lean. And overstudied, it was obvious. I could just picture him in the early morning hours poring over complex engineering volumes.

I sat on the couch. He sat on the edge of a chair. Like a timid man in a furniture store, afraid to damage anything because it isn’t his property.

I noticed the room, too. Everything in its place. A sterile cleanliness. The fireplace obviously unused and swept clean, the andirons polished to a bright luster, the unneeded screen dusted and standing in precisely the right spot. On top of the fireplace, polished candlesticks, empty. Over them, pictures, all hanging at the right angle. Pictures of Navy men and ships; Captain Lister’s only concession to nostalgia, I imagined. A discharge prominently displayed. Or did an officer get retirement papers? I didn’t know. Maybe it was a citation.

Phillip was clearing his throat.

“How is Peggy?” he asked.

“Fine.” I said.

“She . . . she was here about a week or so ago.”

“So she said,” I said, nodding.

“Mmm-hmmm,” he said, nodding too. He swallowed. “What is she doing now? Has she found a job yet?”

“Uh . . . no, no, not yet. Still in the process, I guess.”

He smiled. It faded.

Have you known Peggy long?” he asked.

“About a month,” I said.

He looked surprised. Then he hid it. “Oh?” he said. “Are you from California?”

I got the impression that he’d spend the whole day chatting about nothing before he’d ask me what I’d come for.

“I’m from New York,” I said. “Say, is . . .”

“I was going there once,” he said.

“Oh, I . . .”

“But Father . . .” He paused, smiling falsely. “I changed my mind.”

“Is your father home?” I asked.

He looked at me blankly.

“Uh, he’s . . . he’s upstairs. He’s taking his nap.”

“I see.”

“Did you want to see him?”

“Yes.”

He stirred restlessly. “Oh,” he said, “I . . . can I help you in any way?”

I hesitated. Then I said, “Maybe you can. I want to find out about Peggy.”

“Oh.”

The glasses, the coat sweater, the lean, bowed form. Student. Driven son. I threw off the thoughts about him.

“Can you tell me about Peggy’s marriage?” I asked.

“Her marriage?” He looked at me carefully, “Tell me,” he said, “is Peggy really involved in all these . . . these terrible . . . things?”

He finished weakly as if the word “murder” were more than he could speak.

“I’m afraid she is,” I said.

“Oh. Poor Peggy.” He bit his lip. “She must be terribly upset. She wouldn’t tell us much when she was here. And Father . . .” He broke off, ill at ease.

“Did Peggy kill her husband?” I asked abruptly.

He flinched. As if someone had cracked a whip over his head. He looked over into the hall. I got the idea he was looking to see if his father were around. “She. . .”

”Did she?”

He nodded jerkily.

I closed my eyes for a moment. It was true. I couldn’t even take the pleasure of doubting it vaguely any more. “Do you know why?” I asked.

I shouldn’t have asked. I should have realized how it would hurt him. But curiosity was conquering any sense of consideration I had.

“Well.” he said. “I really don’t . . .”

“I’m not just prying for its own sake,” I said. “Peggy is suspected of these other two murders and . . .”

Silence from both of us. It clung to us. He was shocked, looking at me with disbelieving eyes. And I was shocked too by my own words.

Peggy is suspected.

I knew then, finally, objectively, that she could have committed either crime. And the knowledge was like a wedge between us. And more knowledge would be like hammer blows on the wedge, hurting us, separating us. I was almost afraid to learn anymore, to admit anymore to myself,

“Peggy?” Phillip said. “Peggy is suspected?”

“Yes. You see she . . .”

“Who rang, Phillip?”

Stentorian voice. Our eyes shifted quickly to the hall. There in the doorway, straight and bleak Aaron Lister.

He was tall. There was some resemblance to Peggy. In the frame. In the touch of masculine strength in Peggy’s face. That strength that hinted of flint-like resolution. He was her father, all right.

His eyes were on me as he spoke to Phillip.

“Father, this is . . .” Phillip looked at me for help.

“David Newton,” I said.

I was standing up as he came walking in. Captain Bligh on the main-deck, I thought. Ready to squelch mutiny or flog a dead man. His face was unmoving and rock like, like one of those faces carved out of that mountain out west.

“Newton,” he said. He seemed to taste the word to see if it were poisonous.

Then his eyes moved over me in examination. I might have been before his court martial board, a twenty year A.W.O.L.

“Mr. Newton is a friend of Peggy’s,” Phillip said nervously.

Lister didn’t speak. He walked over to the fireplace and turned. Still not a flicker on his face. This guy even makes Vaughan look transparent, I thought. World, oh world, full of people afraid to show themselves as they are.

“You wished to see me?” he said and it wasn’t a question. It apparently never occurred to him that anyone might come there to see Phillip.

”Yes,” I said, “I did.”

“May I ask why?”

Phrased politely. But behind it, the unspoken words—Speak, man, or I’ll have you thrown to the dogs.

I looked at him, wondered why I always felt that momentary sense of uneasy timorousness when I came across these people were bent on dominating all relationships. Was it because I wasn’t ever pushing hard? Because I just took life easy and was thrown off stride by these intent ones? These people to whom life is a challenge and a never-flagging combat. I don’t know. But I felt a little nervous at first. Until I realized, as I ultimately did in all such cases, that they were born the same way as I was and were no better. No Olympian horn had sounded the nascence of Aaron Lister. Just a squawling like mine. Ten fingers, ten toes, et cetera. I looked at bleak Captain Lister without a qualm then. The regal manner was just show to me.

“I’m interested in your daughter,” I said.

“Are you?” Amusement? Contempt?

“I plan to marry her,” I said. I felt a slight twinge in the knowledge that I wasn’t sure whether I said it because I meant it or because I wanted to get a rise out of the captain.

His cheeks seemed to twitch. His whole body seemed to be galvanized, then stiffened as if his spine had transformed itself into a long iron rod. His poker face changed an iota.

“I believe my daughter is expecting to marry another gentleman,” he said. Final words, the clap of doom.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

There went my plan. He wouldn’t talk to me now. Why did I always bristle before smug minds?

“Your opinion is immaterial to me,” said Captain Lister.

That was that, it appeared. Thirty days, next case.

Dead silence. Lister apparently expected me to retire, bowing.

Phillip cleared his throat. “Mr. Lister,” I said.

“Captain Lister,” he corrected.

I licked my lips.

“Captain Lister,” I said

“I have nothing to say,” he said.

“Captain Lister, I want to know about your daughter. This is very important. She’s involved in murder and . . .”

“I have no interest in it.” he said, deceptively mild. “I do not care what my daughter is implicated in.”

“Well, for God’s sake, can’t you . . . !”

I stopped. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything out of him. I might as well try to melt an iceberg with a match.

“That’s all, I believe,” Aaron Lister said. Still on the board. He’d die on that court martial board. I could see him instructing his pallbearers.

“Captain Lister,” I said, “you have no idea what a shock it is to see a father who doesn’t give a damn about his own child.”

He closed his eyes.

“Lister!”

“Mr. Newton!” he exploded. “My daughter is no longer a part of my family!”

I looked at him. I shook my head. Then I turned on my heel. “Good day,” I said.

“Good day,” he answered,

I slammed the door in a fury and started down the walk. So That was her father. A starchy, heartless ramrod. I could just visualize Peggy’s bringing-up by him. The unbending discipline, the harsh cowing of her young personality. Like taking a bird and holding its wings so that all it could do was flutter in mute impotence.

Then I heard the door open. I turned.

“Mr. Newt . . .”

“Phillip!”

The voice rang out inside. Phillip looked at me. Then he tried to smile but it didn’t come off. He shut the door quietly and I stood there looking at the white door, the polished brass knocker, the entrance to emptiness.

I couldn’t concentrate as I drove back. I was too distracted. Peggy had been brought up by
that
. Her impressionable brain assailed with hardness and cruelties. Her entire youth sterile of love after her mother’s death. No wonder she was hungry for it. She’d been starving for it all her unhappy life.

I wanted to run to her, to make it up. I drove to her apartment when I got to Santa Monica. She wasn’t there.

I waited a while but she didn’t come back. I tried to think she wasn’t with Jim. She couldn’t be. Not now, after what she’d told me. Could she trust him after he threatened her? If she could . . . I tried to think it out as I drove to Malibu to see if Jim were out. Yes, it made sense. I finally decided that. She’d never had anyone she could really count on. Jim had been the rock she needed. She had never known real love. Was it surprising then that she misinterpreted and decided that Jim loved her the way she needed? How could she really know that being given things and having favors done for her wasn’t being loved? No one had ever taught her differently.

A maid opened the door at Malibu.

“Mr. Vaughan in?” I asked her.

“No, he isn’t,” she said.

“Oh.” I stood there looking at her.

“Who is it, Jane?” I heard a voice calling from the head of the stairs. Audrey I leaned in and looked up.

“Hi!” she said, smiling. “Come on in. All right, Jane.”

The maid nodded, closed the door and disappeared down the hallway.

“Come on in the living room,” Audrey said, coming up to me. “I’ll make you a drink.”

“Where’s Jim?”

“He’s down at the police station.”

“Oh.”

We went up the stairs and into the high-ceilinged living room. I remembered the first night I’d gone there, met Jim again for the first time since graduation. Since then—murder, murder and here I was again.

“What’d you want to see Jim about?” she asked, pouring drinks. I shook my head.

That’s right,” Audrey said, “we went through that routine once, didn’t we? Well skip it this time. Soda?”

“A little.”

“None for me. thank you,” Audrey piped to herself. “I like to drink it straight if you don’t mind I don’t mind at all well that’s nice you thank you you’re welcome.”

She was drunk again. Good and . . .

I went over to the big picture window and looked out. Way down below, across the highway, I could see rocks and blue-green ocean dashing out its white brains on them. Foam flashed and drops sparkled in the crystalline air. The breeze coming through the windows was crisp and tangy with the smell of the sea. To live in a house like this, the thought came. It had everything.