The Plot (17 page)

She would say—would have said five minutes ago—“Four o'clock, Jamey.”

Jamey would have said, “Time for my nap, dear girl.” Jamey, in his monk's robe, would have moved slowly out of the room. Jamey would have closed his door after himself. He would have checked the thermostat. (He was so careful about everything that didn't matter.) He would have arranged himself on his chaise longue. (Sitting down as cautiously as if he were made of glass. The little things, the little man, the poor, little man, O God! Always so cautious in nonessentials.) The vacuum jug would have been on the table, the sleeping pills would have been on the little tray. She could so easily have changed those pills for something fatal, or, if that were dangerous, since an autopsy would show it up, then she could have waited until Jamey had fallen into his drugged sleep and then have crept into his room, pressed a pillow over his mouth, over his shallow breathing. He was such a small old man. Louis shouted, “What time is it now?”

“Four-fifteen. What's eating on you, Louis?” Budder had let Sis Lib drive because he wanted to study on Louis. Understanding came hard to Budder, but if he could understand why they were rushing back to the plantation—he felt this—it might pay off. He tapped the check in his pocket while he watched how Louis sat forward in the seat as if to push the car ahead.

Louis groaned, thinking: What was the matter with me? How did I get so dumb all of a sudden? Why, there were fifty opportune ways in which Ethel could have killed Jamey. He snapped his fingers. Tolerance! That was it, tolerance! Ethel had handed him the key to her plan when she had told him about Jamey's becoming tolerant of the sleeping pills so that the doctor had needed to increase the dose. Jamey had not acquired any tolerance to his sleeping pills; Ethel had been substituting some inert drug for the real stuff; all Ethel would have had to do today was give Jamey the genuine pills, the pills to which he had not acquired a tolerance, and he would be finished neatly. They could autopsy all they wanted to; all they would find in Jamey was what the doctor ordered. Louis stared blindly through the windshield. He was remembering Ethel asking him, “And how is your tolerance for Jamey?”

He asked himself, “Why didn't I see? Why didn't I see that it could only end in death, that Jamey had to die?” Alex had seen death and come here to prevent it. Maum Cloe had smelled it, the murder was so strong, even far away in the big house, but he hadn't smelled it. Louis thought that a blind man, a deaf, a dumb man, should have seen that there was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in Jamey's death. There was Ethel's revenge in Jamey's death. Anyone should have seen that she had to kill Jamey. Anyone should have seen that she wouldn't take the chance of the whole thing slipping through her fingers, which it could have done at any time, with Jamey alive.

He thought: I am as guilty as Ethel of Jamey's death, because if I didn't want him to die, I would have seen his danger. I helped Ethel kill Jamey. I did the murder when I wrote his story. I committed murder when I wrote the biography. I killed Jamey when I let myself get messed up with Libbie Mae. I killed Jamey when I fell into Ethel's trap and rushed off to Charleston to save Alex, leaving Jamey in her power. He thought:
Mea culpa, mea culpa
!

Budder, watching Louis' face, knew better than to talk to him. There was no noise except the racket the little car made going as fast as it could, because Sis Lib had her foot jammed down on the accelerator.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Joseph Reas heard the car approaching and was at the gate when it pulled up. When he saw Louis he opened the gate, but before he could get it more than a foot open, Louis had squeezed through it and was racing up the road. Maum Cloe, standing on the piazza, observed with approval that her son was closing the gate again before either Libbie Mae or Budder could try to follow Louis.

Budder looked at Joseph Reas and shrugged. He called to his sister, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket, “Got a pencil handy, hunh?” He wrote laboriously.

Maum Cloe sucked her false teeth into place. She said to Joseph Reas, “Go for follow he, Joseph Reas.”

Her grandson scowled, but he followed Louis, beginning a song partly to take the edge off his obedience to his grandmother and partly because he liked to sing. His vibrant, keening voice swelled into the air, and Louis, halfway to the little house, heard it and shivered, then set his teeth and ran faster.

Ethel's door was closed. Louis reached Jamey's room without challenge. He put up his hand to knock, grimaced at himself, and opened it. His eyes went straight to to the chaise longue where Jamey should be lying. He was lying there; his lips were blue and his eyes were closed; his face seemed smaller than it had been. On his table were the water carafe, a tumbler, the little tray from which he had taken his capsules, one by one, with a sip of water to help each capsule down. Louis went down on his knees next to the chaise longue. He thought:
Mea culpa, mea culpa
. This happened because I let it happen.

Jamey's voice was the thinnest whisper, a breath. “Dear boy. Doctor.”

Louis yelled, scrambled off his knees, dashed out of the house and down the path. “Joseph Reas! Doctor!”

About two hours later, Louis said, “Doctor? Well?”

The doctor said, “He'll do. Angina. He'll do this time.” He shook his head toward Jamey's door. “Won't come to the hospital where he belongs. Highhanded, isn't he?”

“Angina?”

“A bad attack of anginal pain. He'll do. He should be in the hospital, son, certainly not here with no telephone. Well, it's his pain, or so he told me. I warned him it might return at any time. He said if it became too bad he would go. Don't look at me like that, son, I can see a double meaning as well as the next one; if it gets too bad, he will go. Well, I'm a physician, not a keeper; if he wants to go, I can't keep him.”

“Can I see him?”

“Why not? When an anginal attack is over, it's over. When it's good and over, it's good and over. This time he'll do.”

“You said angina? Heart disease?”

“That's the diagnosis, son. I've got to get back where patients mind their doctors. You look pretty rocky, son.”

“I thought he was dead. I walked in, and I thought he was dead, lying there … When he spoke …”

“Well, he wasn't dead. How's my other patient?”

“She's all right. She's in Charleston.”

“You don't seem to have it on your mind much that she's in Charleston. Well, that's a good place to be, Charleston. Lots of young beaux in Charleston. Son, I'll bet you she's talking to a beau in Charleston this minute.”

Alex was not talking to a beau, however, but to Manny Klein in New York City. Alex had telephoned Manny because she had to talk to someone and there was no one in Charleston she could trust to understand. Louis was a writer, and Manny Klein was equipped by experience to understand writers. Manny would set her mind at ease about Louis. She called on him because Jamey used to call on him, because Jamey trusted Manny Klein. She begged him to come down to Charleston on the next plane; she told him she was terrified for Jamey. Manny was very sensitive to the timbre of a voice; he listened to Alex' voice as she made her request and told her he would leave immediately. He was a very kind man. And he had loved Jamey.

Jamey had better color now. His lips were no longer blue. He had not moved since the doctor said that if the chaise was comfortable, the chaise was the place for him. Nothing had been changed except that there was a new vial of medicine on Jamey's little tray. Louis regarded it with horror. Jamey, looking up smoothly, smiled. “For my heart, dear boy. Angina pectoris. Horrid.”

“Jesus, Jamey!”

“You shouldn't have been so surprised, dear boy.” His voice was almost natural now. “You were so cross with Jamey. It is quite appropriate that my heart should break at your sudden departure, Louis.”

“I've caused you nothing but trouble.”

“Don't say that, dear boy! I have had a long and good life, but you have been what even I haven't deserved.” He wrinkled his small nose mischievously. “It is not given to many men to avoid the messiness, the squalor, of paternity—and then have their spiritual son, all perfect, all finished, sent to their gates.”

“Cut that out about spiritual son, will you, Jamey?” He stared at the new vial of medicine: Not today, then? He had figured today because Ethel had made sure that Alex was out of the way and he out of the way after her; because Ethel had maneuvered him today into accepting her check and signing it over to Budder. Not today, then. Tomorrow, then? Here today and gone tomorrow, then? “Jamey, let me hang around here some more, will you?”

“Let you? I will hang myself if you leave.”

“Don't talk like that. Look—one thing: where is Ethel? Why were you alone? Couldn't you even call out to her?”

“Ethel is gone, dear boy. Ethel, Alex—no more women here except for that androgynous witch—all witches are androgynous—Maum Cloe.”

“Ethel is gone?”

“I asked her to leave.”

This was difficult. This was dangerous. “Why did you ask her to leave, Jamey?”

“Dear boy! It was quite obvious that since she and Alex went to Charleston, since she came back and you immediately dashed chivalrously off after dear Alex, that Ethel had tried to do dear Alex a mischief. It could only have been chivalry that could make you leave Jamey so unceremoniously, Louis! So naturally I asked Ethel to go.” He giggled lightly. “She left after dinner; trust Ethel to leave after dinner!”

Like hell she would pass it all up. “Where did she go?”

“I didn't allow her to say. I couldn't care less, dear boy.”

After all, she could have decided to take the manuscript and wait until he died of natural causes. The heart attack had changed her plans, that was it. She could have seen the onset of the heart attack and decided he would die soon enough without her needing to——And since Jamey had sent her away, she wouldn't dare argue with him. She wouldn't want to get him angry enough with her so that he would change his will.

“Now, dear boy, not another thought to Ethel. I haven't so much time left that I wish to waste a moment of it troubling about dear Ethel.”

But wouldn't she need to be on hand in case any contingency arose? In the mails, say? “She'll be back. She'll wait until you've cooled off, Jamey—about Alex, I mean—and then come back.”

“Perhaps. You must send her away if she does, Louis. I do not wish to make the effort again.” He laid his finger to the side of his nose. “It is more—romantic—to believe that this dreadful attack was brought on by your abrupt departure, dear boy, but perhaps it was caused by the effort of being firm with dear Ethel. I simply don't feel up to doing it again.”

He did not look up to anything. He was such a frail old man. (How could I have been afraid of him? How could I have been jealous of him?) If Ethel had lost her temper and hauled off at him just once—but not Ethel! She wouldn't lose her temper. She wouldn't take revenge by telling Jamey about the story, or the biography, when she could get rich by keeping her temper, not Ethel! “I'll take care of Ethel, Jamey.” He could, now. He was cleansed of the ambivalence that had blinded him to Ethel's purpose. “Don't worry about a thing, Jamey.”

“Enough.” Jamey turned his eyes to the clock enclosed in a block of crystal. “Where is your supper, Louis?”

“Never mind about my supper, Jamey.”

“Ah, but you must eat! Please trot over to the big house and tell them we will have our supper now. What a pity you missed three-o'clock dinner! It was the greatest menu Jamey ever planned.” He lifted the ivory menu card and sighed over it. “And now,
hélas
, that doctor fellow has restricted my diet. Horrid man! ‘If the salt shall lose its savor,' Louis? Well, for Jamey, even at seventy-eight, the salt has not lost its savor, so they take it from me. No salt from now on. Well, dear boy, take this menu away, too. Put it in the top drawer of that chest. I will not be able to plan such a meal again, and I wish to keep this as a fond memory.”

Fond memory. Souvenir. How one thing led to another, how he had been led from one thing to another by the nose! How he had led himself from one thing to another! Someday he would write about a guy who——“Don't get excited, Jamey.”

“I am not excited. Put it in the drawer. Good. Now your supper!”

Louis, at the great window, staring out into the shadowy garden, at the river that gleamed in the distance, did not see the garden or the river; he was afraid that Ethel might be out there, and then, when he went to the big house to ask for supper, leaving Jamey unprotected, she would——The doctor, having just been here, would call it a second and fatal attack. Ethel wouldn't need to depend on fancy stuff, about Louis' possibly turning out man enough to stand up and say he didn't care how much he was implicated if he could see her hanged. She could come in, walk out … “I'm not hungry, Jamey.”

“Of course you are.”

“Well, well—I don't trust you, Jamey. You're just as apt to get up and take a walk. I'm going to lock you in while I'm gone. O.K.?”

“O.K. Gracious, what an expression to sully these pure old lips; but O.K., Louis.”

When William Reas brought dinner, he brought the note from Budder. It said:

Louis boy, remind Ethel we got a date. She might think that three thousand was enough pay for keeping a pretty girl overnight. It isn't enough, Louis boy, and besides, Ethel and I got more business I want to see her about
.

Sincerely, yours
,

Jeremiah H. Green
.

Budder's name was Jeremiah H. Green. Budder had written the note on a sheet of the same paper Louis had used for the biography; Louis recognized it immediately because he was meant to recognize it, even if there wasn't a word on it that wasn't Budder's. It was a cover sheet, and Budder knew he could spare that. Louis folded the paper and thrust it into his pocket. Jamey looked at him curiously, but asked no questions.