The Door Between (8 page)

A fire had recently gone out in the grate; there were still a few ashes, debris. Eva found herself thinking mechanically that it had been cool the evening before and that Karen was always feeling chilly. Karen, with her thin blood. But it was Karen’s blood on Eva’s handkerchief. Karen’s
blood
.

The wisp of cambric fell into the grate and Eva found her fingers trembling so badly she had to strike three matches before she could achieve a flame. Some coils of half-charred old paper beneath the kerchief caught fire and the fire touched the edge of the cambric.

Karen’s blood, thought Eva. She was
warming
Karen’s blood … The kerchief blazed up with a little hiss.

Eva got to her feet and stumbled back into the bedroom. She did not want to see that bloody kerchief burn. She really did not. She wanted to forget that handkerchief, that thing on the floor that was not Karen any more, that choking around her own neck.

“I won’t stay here any more!” she screamed, bursting in on him. “I’m going to run away – hide! Take me away from here – Dick, home, anywhere!”

“Stop it.” He did not even turn around. The light cloth was strained across his shoulders.

“If I get out of here –”

“You’re through.”

“The police –”

“They’re late. It’s a break. Did you burn it?” His brown face was shiny with perspiration.

“But if they don’t find me here –”

“The Jap saw you, didn’t she? Damn – this – bolt.” He chopped at it with the edge of his wrapped hand, savagely.

“Oh, God,” moaned Eva. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t –”

“If you don’t pipe down – I’ll clout you one. … Ah!”

The bolt gave suddenly with a scream. His wrapped hand yanked the door open. He disappeared into the gloom beyond.

Eva dragged herself to the open door and leaned against the jamb. It was a cramped space; there was a flight of narrow wooden steps leading up … To the room in the attic. The room. What was in the room?

Her own room in the apartment. Her bed, the lovely candlewick spread, yellow dots against the white crêpe; the third drawer from the top in her bureau, where she kept her stockings rolled into balls. The closet with her summer hats. The old suitcase with its torn labels. Her new black underwear that Susie Hotchkiss had said was worn only by kept women and actresses: how angry she’d been! The Bouguereau atrocity over her bed – it had bored her and scandalized Venetia and Dr. MacClure had liked it …

She heard the brown man swooping about overhead, heard the metallic click of a window-latch, the thin screech of a window being opened … She’d forgotten to put away the nail-polish. Venetia would scold her with all the good fury of her good black soul. She’d spilled a drop on the hooked rug …

Then he was bounding down the narrow staircase towards her, shoving her out of his way, leaving the door open. He looked around at the bedroom again, his chest rising and falling lightly.

“I don’t understand,” said Eva. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you an out.” He did not look at her. “What will I get for it – hey, gorgeous?”

She shrank against the jamb. So that was why –

“I’ll tell you,” he said bitterly. “A kick in the pants. Teach me to mind my own damned business.”

He lunged for the Japanese screen and set it carefully against the wall, out of the way.

“What are you doing?” asked Eva again.

“Giving the cops something to think about. The door was bolted from inside here, so I’ve opened it. They’ll figure the killer got in and out that way. They’ll figure he climbed from the garden to the ell-roof back there, up into the attic” He chuckled. “Two windows up there, both locked – from the inside, of course. Nobody
could
have got in. But I opened one of ’em. I ought to be in King’s Park.”

“I don’t understand it,” whispered Eva. “It’s not possible. It can’t be.”

“They’ll figure he got in through the attic window, came down here, pulled the job, and made his getaway the same way. Powder your nose.”

“But –”

“Powder your nose! Do I have to do that for you, too?”

Eva ran back to the sitting-room for her bag; it was on the funny couch where she had been reading that book … how long ago? There was a faint odor of fire and –

He was looking around the bedroom again, making sure, making sure.

Downstairs – they both heard it – the doorbell rang.

Eva opened her bag somehow. But it was torn from her fingers, snapped shut, flung on the couch. She found herself lifted off the floor and deposited with a thump beside it.

“No time,” whispered the brown man. “Better anyway – you look as if you’d been crying. What were your hands on in there?”

“What?”

“What did you touch? For the love of Mike!”

“The desk,” whispered Eva. “The floor under the windows. Oh!”

“For God’s sake!”

“I forgot! Something else. The bird with all those shiny stones on it!”

She thought he was going to slap her again, his eyes were so hot and furious. “Bird. Stones. What the hell! Listen. Keep your trap shut. Follow my leads. Cry, if you feel like it. Faint. Do any damned thing you please, only don’t talk too much.”

He didn’t understand. The bird, the half-bird. “But –”

“When you have to talk, tell ’em what you first told me.” He was racing back to the bedroom again. “Only don’t say anything about the attic door being bolted. Understand? The way it is now is the way you found it.”

He was gone.

He was gone, and the only thing Eva was conscious of was the clamor of her heart. The police! She could hear voices – the new maid’s, Kinumé’s, a man’s heavy and vibrant … on the stairs at the end of the hall. The two maids seemed to be protesting and the man to be jeering at them.

He didn’t understand, thought Eva, sitting tight on the couch and clutching the edge of its seat with spread hands. That little half-scissors she had found on the desk, with its bright semi-precious stones, its bird shape, the blade the beak, the shank the body, the bow the legs … He had thought she was crazy. But she handled it!

She jumped from the couch, opened her mouth to call him.

A fist smacked against the sitting-room door from the hall.

Eva fell back on the couch. She started to say: “Come in,” but she was surprised to find that nothing came out of her mouth but a rush of breath.

From the bedroom the brown man’s voice was saying urgently: “Come on, come on, sister. Give me Police Headquarters. Where are you? Come on, there!”

He kept repeating the words “Police Headquarters” rather, loudly. The rapping on the door stopped and the knob spun and the door was smashed open.

Eva saw a small emaciated gray man with a brand-new felt hat on his head and an old blue serge suit standing alertly in the doorway, his right hand in his hip pocket.

“What’s this about Police Headquarters?” demanded the newcomer, not moving and looking around. The white maid and Kinumé were peering in fright over his shoulder.

“I think –” began Eva, then remembered what the brown man had told her and stopped.

The man in the doorway was puzzled. “You Miss Leith?” he asked courteously, still looking around without moving

“Police Headquarters!” yelled the brown man from the bedroom. “What the hell’s the matter with this line? Hey! Operator!” They heard the violent jiggling of the hook.

The little gray man moved then, swiftly; but the brown man moved even more swiftly, for they met outside the bedroom and the brown man’s shoulders filled the doorway.

Eva, sitting on the couch, felt like a spectator at an exciting melodrama. She could only sit and watch, and feel her heart hammering at the base of her throat. Only this was real. It was real melodrama …
real
.

“That’s service,” drawled the brown man. “They send a fly-cop up before you can even tell ’em there’s been a crime. Hello, Guilfoyle. How’s the missus?”

The grey-haired man scowled. “So it’s you again, huh? What the hell is this merry-go-round?” He turned to Eva. “I said you Miss Leith – Karen Leith? I was sent up here –”

Kinumé, from the doorway, burst into a cascade of sibilant Japanese. The brown man glanced her way, and she stopped. Both maids, thought Eva suddenly, seemed to know him. Then he caught Guilfoyle’s arm and spun him about.

“That’s not Karen Leith, you dumb cluck. That’s Miss Eva MacClure. Take your hat off to a lady.”

“Listen, Terry,” said Guilfoyle plaintively. “Don’t start, now. What is this, anyway? I was sent –”

“I said take your hat off,” laughed the brown man, and he twitched the new felt hat off Guilfoyle’s head. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “You’ll find Miss Leith in there.”

Guilfoyle stooped for his hat, petulantly. “Take your hands off me, you. What is this? I get an order from the boss to come down here and all of a sudden I walk into Terry Ring.” His pale features sharpened with suspicion. “Say! Crime? Did you say a crime?”

So that was his name, thought Eva. Terry Ring. Probably Terence. He did look Irish. And he was so different now with this man, Guilfoyle, this detective. Good-humored; yes, quite good-humored, his gray eyes crinkling like crêpe at the corners, his hard lips smiling. Only his eyes remained as they had been when he had walked in on her. Watchful. He had watched her. Now he was watching Guilfoyle.

Terry Ring stepped aside with a mock bow and the detective ran by him into the bedroom.

“Didn’t I tell you to take your hat off?” said Terry Ring. “Now will you take your hat off?”

He looked after Guilfoyle, still smiling; but his left hand made a slight soothing gesture in Eva’s direction that was so friendly she doubled up on the couch and began to weep normally and luxuriously into the haven of her hands.

Terry Ring then stepped into the bedroom without looking back and shut the door; and through her sobs Eva heard the exclamation of the man Guilfoyle and the clatter of the telephone being snatched from Karen’s writing-desk.

Things happened after that. Eva watched them without really seeing them or hearing their meaningless sounds. Time must have passed, but Eva sat on the couch unconscious of it, suspended in haze.

The sitting-room was suddenly overrun, she was conscious of that; as if it had been a caterpillar’s nest one moment sleek and white and still and the next eruptive with crawling larvae.

There were men, many men, only men. First two uniformed officers from a radio car; she saw their insignia. Then two plain-clothes men from some precinct. Then a big man, bigger than Terry Ring, with the biggest shoulders Eva had ever seen; the man’s name was Sergeant Velie and although he seemed to know Terry Ring they did not speak. Then there was a little gray man, littler and grayer than Guilfoyle, with an air of authority and a mild voice and very, very sharp eyes, whom everyone greeted respectfully and whose name seemed to be Inspector Breen, or Queen – Eva didn’t quite catch it. There were also men with cameras and men who went about like women with little brushes and bottles. The two rooms filled with smoke. It was like Saturday night at a men’s political club.

Finally there was a man named Prouty with a black cigar and a doctor’s bag, who went into the bedroom and shut the door. When he came out two men in uniform brought in a basket and went into the bedroom and shut the door. Then the two men came out with the basket, and it seemed heavier than before, because Eva could see the effort with which they carried it.

Eva wondered what they would be carrying in a basket, like a side of beef.

There were questions, too, while Terry Ring jeered at the busy men about him and contrived always to be near Eva with a word, a glance, an air.

Inspector Queen asked some questions himself, speaking very mildly to Kinumé and the new maid, whose name Eva discovered was Geneva O’Mara; and in a most fatherly and sympathetic tone to Eva herself, asking his little questions and smiling and saying things in undertones to men named Flint and Piggott and Hagstrom and Ritter.

And all the while men wandered about without the least semblance of plan, and others crawled up and down the attic stairs and shouted for help and called encouragement to one another and made jokes that Eva felt dimly were in bad taste.

Once Eva felt a hand on her shoulder and she turned to find little Kinumé standing brokenly by the couch, the wrinkled old face contorted with pain, the slanted eyes red with weeping. She groped for Kinumé’s hand and pressed it, feeling very motherly towards the old Japanese woman. That was not long after the two men carried the basket out.

She made Kinumé sit beside her; and the old woman rocked a little in her grief, hiding her face in the folds of her kimono sleeves. Eva was surprised at that; somehow she had never thought of a Japanese as capable of emotion. It struck her suddenly that just because their eyes were shaped differently was no sign they possessed no tear-ducts. The discovery so warmed Eva’s heart that she embraced the old, fragile shoulders.

There was talk about the brown man, too – a bit here, some scraps there – hilarious references to his past, present, and probable future, and some cruel comments on his paternity. Eva found herself ignored and almost pleasantly listening in the ferment; nothing was real, anyway, and all this, while it had undoubtedly happened, couldn’t possibly have happened. All the rules of human conduct were suspended: one could eavesdrop, laugh, die, murder, do anything at all while one’s head swam in the hurly-burly and smoke and questions and merriment.

It seemed Terry Ring was one of those strange creatures known as a “private detective”. He knew all the regular police and they all knew him; but there was animosity between them. The gibes were thinly sheathed and barbed.

He was a “self-made man,” it appeared, rising out of the miasma of the East Side where, despite all better fortune, he still lived. He was twenty-eight – “a mere broth.” In the past he had been circus barker and sandhog, race-track gambler and checker in a meat-packing house, hobo, professional baseball player, pool shark, and, for a short time, Hollywood extra. Eva thought it odd a man so young should have been all these things; he must have begun early, she thought; she felt a spasm of pity for him. She knew instinctively that he was an orphan, a product of the streets, one of the very children she contended with daily at her settlement house. How he had drifted into his present occupation did not clearly come out; someone said it was “the breaks,” and there was reference to a notorious jewel-robbery in Hollywood, a grateful motion-picture star, innuendoes that Terry Ring tossed off lightly, while his eyes remained, unrelaxing, on Eva.