Something in the Shadows (15 page)

After he shaved, he drove to Doylestown to buy the newspapers, and four or five more “thrillers.” His stomach was queasy and he had a slight headache. When he came to the Cross Keys Diner on his way back from Doylestown, he went in for a coffee. He took the newspapers with him, and spread them before him in a back booth while he sipped the coffee. The
Times
was not giving the story very much space, and it was buried in the back pages, but the local papers were playing it up big, as were the Philadelphia papers. The
Doylestown Daily
had a photograph of Muriel, a different one from the picture in the
Bucks County Journal.
She was sitting in a rocking chair knitting, before a television set. She seemed very small and thin and unhappy, and over her photograph was the headline: “THE NIGHTS ARE LONG NOW …”

Under the picture was the story.

• • •

Tonight is Thursday. At eight-thirty, after the children are in bed, Muriel Duncan will walk into her small, cozy, front room on Landers Lane in Lambertville, New Jersey, and turn on the television. She will sit and knit on the red sweater she is making for her youngest boy, and watch “Bat Materson.” She will watch “The Untouchables,” and she will watch “The Million Dollar Movie.” It will have seemed like any other Thursday night for Muriel Duncan, were it not for one fact. Her husband will not be there watching their favourite shows with her.

Tonight is Thursday, and Billy Duncan will not be home, not unless his wife’s prayers are answered. He is not working late at the office, and he is not ill in the hospital, and he is not out of town on one of his frequent business trips as a salesman for the Merriweather Mayonnaise Corporation. “Please bring him back to me,” Muriel Duncan prays each night. Back from where? Nobody knows. Back from a hunting trip he went on Monday morning, or back from the dead — nobody knows. The green station wagon which was found in the yard of Dr. Louis Hart, of New Hope R.D. No. 1, is once more back in the Duncan garage, but there is no trace of the man who set off in that car on the first day of deer season.

There are many mysterious rumours. Rumours of a fight between Billy and the doctor on last Friday night, in Danboro, Pennsylvania. Rumours of a “lost weekend” during which the doctor registered at a Trenton motel, under the name Duncan Tondley. Why “Duncan”? The doctor has no answer. Why “Tondley”? The answer to that question embarrasses the doctor. Five years ago Dr. Louis Hart was charged with negligence in the death of another war hero, Fredrick Tondley, victim of an electric-saw accident. The doctor was never able to explain fully why he said he would be there to aid Tondley, and then set off in his car only to pull to the side of the road and nap while Tondley was dying.

There are rumours, theories, and some plain old-fashioned hunches, but there is still no answer to the question: Where is Billy Duncan?

“When Billy was overseas in all that fighting and war,” Mrs. Duncan said, “I somehow knew he’d get back to me. I don’t have that feeling this time. The nights are long and I can’t sleep wondering about it all.”

“The Million Dollar Movie,” then the news, and then? Maybe another movie. The nights are long for Muriel Duncan.

Joseph folded up the paper, paid for his coffee and drove home. He read some of the paperbacks for a while, then he sat back deep in his chair and shut his eyes and thought for a while. In a way, he was sorry that Louis Hart had not been Ishmael’s killer. It would all be poetic justice then. It was just messy now. If it had not been for the fact Louis had remembered that the Sunday night Ishmael was killed, a mechanic had driven his Benz, even Louis might be convinced he was both the cat’s killer and Duncan’s. A “blackout” killer — it would all at least have been more interesting that way.

As it was, it was shabby. Was the world really supposed to mourn over Muriel Duncan watching “Bat Masterson” alone on Thursday nights? Joseph sighed and went downstairs to the kitchen. Even though it was only three o’clock, he fixed himself a before-dinner martini.

By the time Maggie came home, he was very jolly, as usual, with the gin inside him. At the sound of her footsteps on the side porch, Joseph hurried to the door to greet her. Maggie was smiling, and in her arms she held a Siamese cat.

“Surprise, Joseph!”

It was not a kitten, but it was not yet a year old. It was badly frightened. When Joseph took it from Maggie’s hands to hold it close, the cat squirmed and scratched and Maggie urged him to be careful with her. “Not too rough, Joseph!”

Joseph knew he was very high. He went about fixing up a bed by the fireplace for the cat, telling Maggie that he would name her Yillah, jumping about the kitchen and talking too fast, and all the time thinking he really only wanted to get everything over with so he could sit down and have his next drink. Maggie had several drinks with him, and that was what he liked, sitting there with the drinks and the talk; and when Maggie lit the candles and served a modest dinner of lamb chops and salad, Joseph picked at the food to please her, and talked and talked. He told Maggie that Yillah, in Melville’s book
Mardi,
was a beautiful golden-haired girl who represented truth. Maggie seemed fascinated with his account of the book, with the stories of the heroes in
Mardi
who searched the world for Yillah. At one point Joseph became so excited with his recollections of the beautiful novel, that he stood up on his chair and recited: “Yillah! Yillah! now hunted again that sound through my soul. Oh, Yillah! too late, too late have I learned what thou art!”

“You really like the cat?” Maggie asked.

“Of course!”

He went to sleep very early, very drunk, and happy. Before he dropped off Maggie ran a cool hand across his brow. “It’ll be all right now, Joseph,” she said.

Friday morning when Joseph woke up, he did not remember the cat right away. He mixed himself a Bromo and shaved and dressed, trying to recollect a dream he had had about Muriel Duncan. Something about her glasses, about getting new frames for them. He was disgusted with himself for caring about the woman enough to dream of her. He opined that if he were to dream of anyone, it ought to be of Louis. It was Louis who was coming out the worst in the matter. Yet Louis, to Joseph’s mind, was like some lost cause he had already wasted too much time on. Hating Louis had taken too much energy, too; and the knowledge that it was all for nothing, made Joseph even more tired of Louis Hart when he thought about him.

When he went downstairs, he saw the cat. She was sitting in the box he had made for her, by the fireplace. She was not a very handsome cat, scrawny and scared, with a fat face that was oddly out of proportion with the rest of her. Joseph remembered too that he had decided to call her Yillah. He did not know why he was annoyed with her presence in his house, but his hangover was too painful to dwell on the annoyance. He walked across and said, “Hello, Yillah,” bent over to pick her up.

She spat at him and he pulled his hand away.

“Did I handle you too roughly last night, is that it?”

He put his finger by her chin and she bit him hard.

“All right, have it your way.”

Joseph wandered across to the stove for coffee. On the counter-top was a note from Maggie, Scotch-taped to the toaster. He ran the water in the sink to get it good and cold for a drink, and read Maggie’s message.

Joseph drank two full glasses of cold water and stood by the sink thinking of Maggie and Tom Spencer. “Give him a cat,” he could imagine Tom Spencer advising, “something to take his mind off Ishmael and all the rest of it.”

“Perfect!” Maggie had probably said, “but won’t he think that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, and resent it a bit?”

“Oh,” Tom Spencer undoubtedly countered, “tell him I got the cat from a neighbour, and it’s sort of a premature Christmas gift from Miriam and me.”

Joseph went back to the fireplace and stared down at the cat. She stared back, blue eyes like ice.

“Be sure thy Yillah never will be found,” Joseph quoted, “or found will not avail thee.”

The cat made an ugly face, crying back at him.

The moment Janice Hart arrived at the Meakers’ on Saturday evening, she knew they were fighting. She had telephoned Maggie just one half-hour before she pulled in the drive, and Maggie had sounded quite cheerful then, but now there was a pall of tension over the place. Joseph took her coat without smiling, and Maggie made some crack about the jolly host, then, in an aside to Joseph, said, “Go on out and
drag
her in then!”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Janice. “I didn’t want to go into all of this over the phone, and I didn’t think it would be right to make you come to our place.”

Joseph said to Maggie, interrupting Janice. “You could at least call her! You know she doesn’t answer
me.”

“Our cat,” Maggie explained. “We have a new cat. It seems she prefers the outdoors to the indoors, and I don’t mind saying I can see why!”

She led Janice into the living room without acknowledging Joseph’s suggestion, and when they were out of his sight she made circles by her ear with her finger, then pointed the finger in the direction of the kitchen, and sighed.

Janice felt a little hurt at the fact Maggie was her old self, teasing about her husband and wisecracking with him, as though it were any ordinary evening. Maggie lit a cigarette and casually offered one to Janice, and seemed not at all eager to hear what Janice had to say.

In a whisper she said, “I’ve had
some
day with him! God!”

Janice thought of Lou’s sad and tired eyes when he had come back from the State Police Barracks that afternoon, and she resented Maggie’s petty attention to her own troubles at a time like this. Joseph Meaker, to Janice Hart’s way of thinking, was a spoiled neurotic! The whole thing might not have happened if Joseph Meaker hadn’t — but she stopped that thought dead in the middle. It was spilled milk. For all Maggie said about Joseph’s guilty conscience, and Joseph’s sensitive reacting to Lou’s plight, Joseph Meaker seemed no different than usual. He had not once come to the house, not once called Louis. Now she could hear him out on the back porch shouting for the cat.

Maggie said, “I thought a new cat would make things a little better around here. Well, the cat hates Joseph and Joseph hates the cat, and everything around this place is just ducky!”

“I’m sorry, Maggie,” Janice said, feeling more and more like a martyr. “Oh, he’s impossible!”

“How’s the drinking?” When she said it she thought of Lou home alone. She had told him she would not be long. She had not dared hide the bottle of Jack Daniels, but she had wanted to.

“He hasn’t
been
drinking today. He has the cat to occupy him!”

“It’s a mess, isn’t it? Look, I have something to tell you.”

Behind Janice in the kitchen she could hear Joseph say, “She won’t come in!”

“Then the hell with her!” Maggie shouted. Her face was very red and her hand was trembling as she knocked the ash off her cigarette.

“Go on,” she said to Janice. “Never mind us.”

“Lou was at the State Police Barracks all afternoon. Maggie, he decided to tell the truth, what he knows of it. He told them he was here too on Friday night, but he didn’t remember it. He told them about Joseph thinking his cat had been killed by Lou, and about the book Joseph bought and gave to him, and well — the works!”

“Oh God! Really?”

“Yes. I think he was right. This is very serious, Mag. He had to tell them everything.”

“Oh, Lord, I hope he didn’t bring Amos Fenton into it.”

“I’m afraid he did. It was Fenton he had the fight with. He
had
to bring him into it.”

“Lord, oh Lord! Look, I’m not angry or anything. I just have to think.”

Angry,
Janice Hart thought; the hell with Amos Fenton! She said, “I can’t see what it matters! Lou’s being questioned like he was a murderer! Don’t you realize that?”

“Yes, honey, yes! It’s just that everything is so complicated. Did they ask Lou
why
Fenton fought with him?”

“Lou told him the same thing you told us, that Fenton couldn’t get him to leave, so there was a fight.”

“Of course — I suppose poor Amos will be dragged into it now!”

“Well, Maggie, after all! After all! Lou’s been dragged into it, hasn’t he?”

“I’m sorry, honey. I’m just thinking of the newspapers.”

Janice Hart felt like getting up and marching out of the Meakers', but Joseph walked into the room then and said, “Are you going to call the cat, Maggie?”

“No, Joseph, I’m not going to call the cat. The cat can sit out there on the woodpile until next May for all I care!”

“It’s ominous!” said Joseph Meaker.

“Oh, the hell with it!” Maggie said. “Mix yourself a drink! Say, honey,” turning to Janice now, “did you want a drink? I didn’t even ask.”

“I could
use
one.”

“How about it, Joseph? We could all use a drink.”

“The cat’s one of these strange kind,” Joseph said to Janice. “It’s omnious, that’s all.”

Janice said, “Well,” smiling, detesting Joseph Meaker at that moment, “I’m not very superstitious.”

“Many people are, you know, particularly about cats. Welsh sailors say if the ship’s cat mews constantly it portends a difficult voyage. And in some parts of France the cat was believed to be the devil and — ”

“Thank you, Doctor Folk Lore!” Maggie said. “Next week the Ladies Auxiliary will present another interesting lecture entitled ‘When You Entertain Guests Be Sure To See They Have A Drink In Their Hands Before You Start To Bore Them To Death!’”

Joseph walked out of the room.

While Janice talked, she could hear him rattling the ice-cube trays in the kitchen. She told Maggie of Lou’s meeting with Muriel Duncan, and of Captain Plant’s hammering the desk at one point and shouting at Lou that he was holding something back, and she broke down finally and wept into her handkerchief. Maggie was comforting her when Joseph finally reappeared with a trayful of drinks, and a smile.

“Our host is one up on us, I think,” Maggie said, “or is it two.”

“My apologies to both of you,” Joseph said. “It’s two. I had to calm down. I’m sorry.”

“Lou met Muriel Duncan today, Joseph, at the State Police Barracks.”

“I’m not really antagonistic towards that cat. I think it’s the other way around.” He was smiling again, pulling the hassock up to sit by Janice. “I think Yillah doesn’t like me,” he said.

“Joseph! This is hardly the time to talk about Yillah!”

“No, it’s just the time. Yillah is truth, truth is Yillah!”

Janice Hart fought for control, knotting the wet handkerchief around in her palm, thinking of Lou home alone — and the bottle of Jack Daniels. He had said he was never going to drink again; they would move, he had said, when it was all over; maybe go back to Paris with Tony; a whole new environment, they would find. Throughout the ordeal, Janice had never once asked him if there were any possibility that he
did
know something about Duncan’s disappearance. But last night she had dreamed of a courtroom, and Lou was on the stand, drunk. He was telling the jury he missed all the old magazines he used to read at home. Janice was sitting far in the back of the courtroom, wanting to scream at him that he was hurting his cause; didn’t he realize he was on trial for his life? She had awakened trembling, grabbing hold of Lou, waking up. Just a dream, she had told him; I don’t even remember it.

“… can tell you one thing,” Joseph was saying now, “this girl Muriel does not have the right kind of frames for her glasses.”

“You’re not funny, Joseph,” Maggie snapped.

“Nor am I trying to be funny. It’s the truth.”

“Janice, what was she like?”

“Lou said she was very pathetic, homely, tired-looking, and tried to be very nice to him. She lost control once and begged him to tell her if he knew anything about her husband. But otherwise, she was as nice as she could be. She told Captain Plant she had never set eyes on Lou, nor heard his name before last Thursday.”

“She’ll probably get married again, even if she is homely. She has a square face though,” Joseph said, “and the rimless glasses emphasize it. Somebody ought to tell her.”

“Joseph just needs a whiff of the cork, Janice. That’s all.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood for jokes tonight. Anyway, Lou’s home alone. I don’t want to stay long.” Janice put her cigarettes in her purse. “I just wanted to tell you Captain Plant will probably be around asking you questions now.”

“Asking us?” said Joseph. “Why
us?”

“Don’t bother going into it again, honey. He won’t remember it, anyway.”

“We have nothing to hide,” said Joseph. “We’ll have him to dinner, this Captain Plant. How about it, Maggie?”

“Sure, sure. We’ll have the whole police force to dinner.” Maggie put her hand on Janice’s knee. “I’m sorry, honey. I apologize for him.”

“We’ll have the police and Amos Fenton and the Risestaver Coffee Corporation, and T. S. Eliot and Miriam and Tom, and you can come too, Janice. Bring Louis.”

He was emptying the rest of the martini pitcher as Janice stood up.

“We love the whole world,” he was saying while Maggie saw Janice to the kitchen, “and you can blame it all on gin!”

At the kitchen door Maggie said, “Do you notice how he avoids any serious discussion of Lou or the entire subject?”

“Is he just drunk?”

“Drunk
or
sober he simply ignores it. Jan, I’m damn worried!”

“I’m sorry,” Janice Hart said, but she was far, far sorrier for Janice Hart.

When Maggie returned to the living room she found Joseph holding up a copy of
Vogue.

“This is what I mean,” he said, “look here, Maggie.”

“Look at what?”

“At this woman’s face. It’s square, like Muriel Duncan’s. Notice the glasses this woman is wearing! These are the frames Muriel should wear. You see! They de-emphasize the squareness.”

“Sit down, Joseph, and try to listen to me. Will you do that?”

“Certainly.” He sat back down on the hassock, smiling, looking very interested in whatever it was she had to say.

“Joseph, you need help. Lately, you’ve been drinking and it’s put you in a very euphoric mood, but how do you always feel the next day?”

“I have hangovers. Doesn’t everybody?”

“How do you feel about your work?”

“Remember when I did my preliminary paper on the ‘German Sectarians of Provincial Pennsylvania,’ Maggie? Remember you said I worked too rapidly. You said I should take more time submitting my work, because it impresses people more. Remember? Well, you’re right, dear.”

“You’re not working at all, are you?”

“Not much. No.” He grinned at her.

“And what about the stuff you’ve been reading, Joseph? Let me see if I can remember some of the titles.
Bury the Hatchet, Blood Money, Dance with the Dead.
What about it, Joseph? You never read anything like that before.”

“I don’t mind that you go through my desk. You always did. You used to look for the Varda file too. I know that.” He turned the empty pitcher upside down over his glass. “We’ll make more, hmm?”

“All right, in a minute, if you want to. Just let’s talk a bit.”

“You’re right, Varda was a red. She loved my soul. She had me spotted long before this! You know what she used to write to me, Maggie? She used to write, ‘… and my dear I love your soul, wise, sad, profound and exalted, like a symphony.’ That’s beautiful.”

“Yes, Joseph, that’s beautiful. What about those twenty-five-cent books?”

“Thirty-five, dear. Thirty-five cents’ worth of stupidity! How stupid to make a murderer a drunk, don’t you think? I
love
people when I’m drunk!”

“And when you’re sober?”

“Oh, you mean all that about the cat tonight, hmm? You see, the cat doesn’t like me. I don’t blame her.”

“Joseph, the cat hasn’t had a chance to like you. You were drunk when I brought it home and you were rough with her. The next day when you were sober, you didn’t pay any attention to her.”

“You’re wrong, Maggie. I tried to get her in. I did!”

“She’s a cat, Joseph. She likes it outdoors. She was an outdoor cat.”

“I realize that now. I don’t mind it. She sits out there by the woodpile all the time. ‘There’s nothing to me and nothing to you, we all gotta do what we gotta do.’”

“You keep reciting that, Joseph. Where is it from?”

“Eliot. T. S. Eliot.”

“What’s it about?”

“The same thing those thirty-five-cent books are about, only it’s not so low, you see? This man in Eliot’s poem did a woman in. A man doing a man in isn’t classic.”

Maggie said, “You doing Lou Hart in, for example?”

“I never would have done in Louis, Maggie. Oh, I hated him, dear, because I thought he killed Ishmael, but I was looking for something more subtle to do Louis in with.”

“And it turned out not to be so subtle. It was a fluke, wasn’t it? One of those strange flukes. And now Lou is blamed for something you would have liked to do to him yourself, subconsciously.”

“Say, you’re good, Maggie. You ought to take it up.”

“You admit it, then? All this — this suffering, Joseph, is because you feel responsible for what’s happening to Lou.”

“Well, let’s say, I
should
feel responsible.”

“You
do,
Joseph! Oh my God, it’s hard to reach someone who isn’t on the qui vive about psychology! You
do
feel responsible, face it!”

“Over a drink?” He got up and reached for her glass, the same vacant grin on his face — but she was getting somewhere, wasn’t she? “Okay, over a drink.”

“And then I’ll propose a toast, Maggie. You know who I’m going to toast?”

Maggie felt as though she were on the precipice of a break-through, but she was not going to spoil the moment by saying Lou’s name herself. Joseph had to say it.

“Do you know who I’m going to toast, Maggie?”

“Who?” She hung suspended — sure — waiting.

“Because it’s Saturday night and nearly midnight,” Joseph said, “I’m going to toast the other Joseph, upstairs in his study, listening to every word of our conversation!”