She took a key ring from her bag, found a key, unlocked the little brass padlock, and took both chains off, putting them in her bag. “My, that feels good!” she exclaimed. “What a relief.”
“I think it’s time you went.”
“I’ll decide when I go!” She came over and slapped my face. “For the two hundredth time: I’m your wife and this is my home — you’re not putting me out and nobody’s putting me out, except me, when I’m ready to go!”
“As soon as you’re ready, I am.”
“Well I’m not, not yet.”
She went to Jane, lifted the pillow, and shook her. “Miss Jane,” she said, “I’m sorry, but there’s things I must say to you.”
Jane sat up, a broken, shamed old woman. “First,” Sonya went on, “Dale Morgan — does that name mean something to you?”
“I suppose so,” Jane answered dully. “Yes.”
“You know how she died?”
“In some sort of accident I heard.”
“Burl killed her, is how.”
Jane, who until now had taken no interest, opened her eyes wide. “What did you say, Mrs. Kirby?” she asked, very sharp.
“I said Burl Stuart killed her, in some slick way he alone could explain, for insurance he carried on her, fifty thousand dollars, which was paid — and which you’ve been living on, since you’ve been married to him. Miss Jane, here’s what I’m leading to: Burl Stuart means to kill you, for the land you’ve made him heir to, in that will you let him have, worth twenty times what he made on Dale. Miss Jane, you’re not to use your car, or go home, or give him inny kind of chance, to do to you what he did to Dale. And on top of that, right away quick, you must see your lawyer, have him do what it takes to cancel that will Burl has, so it’s not in effect inny more, and so he knows you’re no longer worth to him more dead than you are alive. Don’t tell him he must send it back — wild horses couldn’t make him, you’ll have to do more than that, your lawyer can tell you what. I would think draw a new will, maybe making Gramie your heir, as he was before and should have been all along — but that’s up to you, of course. Do you hear what I say, Miss Jane? Am I getting through to you?”
“I don’t believe one word.”
“You and the undertaker, you’re quite a pair, you are — he don’t take nobody’s word. He don’t have to.”
That seemed to reach Jane as nothing had until then, and Sonya went on: “I’m going now, so the coast is clear, for tonight. If I were you, I’d stay here if Gramie is willing — crawl in his bed and let nature take its course. Miss Jane, it just might. Because pay no attention to what Burl said, about Gramie not being normal — he’s just as normal as you are, maybe more so, being thirty years younger.” And, as Jane flinched: “Well I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but you haven’t been nice to me, spite of all I’ve been doing for you. So maybe I don’t mind cutting you up. Excuse me.”
Still carrying the coat and bag, she went scampering out to the kitchen, and for some minutes I sat with Jane, who began pulling herself together. Then, in a nervous but conversational tone she asked me: “Could any of that be true?”
“Jane, all of it’s true.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Jane, Burl means to kill you!”
At last, she seemed to get through her head that it wasn’t a game of some kind that Sonya had been playing, or a contest in nasty remarks, or something of that kind. She began gasping, as fear started to talk, and of all the things that can talk, I guess fear says it plainer. She sat there, trying for control, and occasionally massaging her lips, that sure sign of terror. Then she jumped up, saying: “I have to know more about this!” and went running out to the kitchen. Once or twice she called “Mrs. Kirby!” and then came stumbling back, a baffled look on her face. “She’s not there!” she said. “She’s not anywhere around.”
A horrible, frightening suspicion crept in on me, as I went charging back to the kitchen, whispering: “Sonya! Sonya, where are you?” But she wasn’t there, though the kitchen was in apple pie order. I went out back and called, looked for her car in the drive, then went out front and looked. It wasn’t there, it wasn’t anywhere. I let myself in the front door, went back in with Jane and sat down. She stared at me but nothing was said. Pretty soon the phone rang and I answered.
“Gramie?” said Sonya, very soft and friendly. “I’m at People’s. I called to say good-bye and blow you a kiss on the phone. I couldn’t have kissed you just now, not with her looking on.” She said more, but I kept cutting in, begging her to come back, saying I hadn’t meant it, what I’d told her before she went, and all kinds of stuff of that kind, and God knows I meant every word. But she kept holding to it, that she’d left me, that she was going away, that I mustn’t try to find out where she was or what she was doing. Then, saying she’d call now and then, “To see how you’re getting along,” she blew me the kiss and hung up.
Back in the living room, I sat for some moments with Jane staring at me. “You love her?” she asked, pretty soon.
“I’m nuts about her. She’s part of me.”
“I have to be going now.”
“Where?” I snapped. “Didn’t you hear what she said?”
“Well I can’t stay here, that’s certain!”
She was a little hysterical about it, and I took her back over it once, what Sonya had explained to her, why she couldn’t go home, why she had to go someplace where she’d be safe from Burl. All of a sudden I went to the phone and dialed Mother. “Can you put Jane up for one night?” I asked her.
“Put up with her, I think you mean!”
“Okay, call it that, but something has happened.”
“Is she there?”
“I’ll see if she wants to talk.”
Jane talked, like a schoolgirl holding her hand out to be blistered with a ruler. Then she motioned me back to the phone, and Mother said: “All right, send her over.” But instead, I took her over, on the way explaining to her what she had to do with her car: Have the garage men come and get it, first explaining to them it had better be towed, else the steering might go haywire, and she understood all right, as she collapsed into tears in the middle of it, and kept moaning: “I’m so scared! Oh, Gramie, I’m so scared.”
Mother was cool at first, but then suddenly warmed, when she saw the state she was in, and took her upstairs to bed. When she came down I explained, at least a little of it, what had happened today and tonight, and she stood there shaking her head. “Will I ever hear the end? Will there be any end to this mess?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
It was going on twelve when I headed home once more, to enter the bleakest house, and start the blackest night, that any man ever faced.
Chapter 22
The next six weeks were a mockery. Everything broke for me, in a material way, and also broke for Mother, but everything else went flooey.