“I know, Steve, I know.” The big man put his arms around the small man’s shoulders.
“I knew something was wrong with him. But I just wouldn’t believe it.” The small man choked, tears sliding down his cheeks. “I saw a lot of things. I kept making excuses for him. It’s my fault. If I’d beat it out of him, maybe? I don’t know. I did lick him good once, the time I saw him burn Mrs. Carter’s cat in the incinerator. He swore up and down he didn’t, but I saw him. The cat scratched him. I licked him more because he lied to me, I guess, and then I was scared because he’d do a thing like that. If I’d taken him to the doctor then, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You didn’t know, Steve. You can’t take all the blame on yourself for what happened. Maybe if we hadn’t left her there alone...” The night of the lodge party. He and Ellie had wanted to go. It had seemed safe enough. Joanie had laughed at his fears, called him her Darling Worry Bug. “I’m sixteen,” she had laughed. “I don’t need a baby sitter. For goodness’ sakes, Father, I’m practically grown up!” He could see her face, the smooth curve of her cheek, the roundness of her slender neck... Looking at his daughter from the open door, Ed had felt an urge to go back and kiss her goodbye, to tell her how much he loved her. All the rest of his life he would have that deep regret...
“Why did he kill her? What did he tell you?” Ed asked with slow pain.
Steve Parkson looked far up into the opaque and empty sky as though he too searched for an answer. “He talked to me today,” he said. “He never told the police anything except that he killed her. He told me that he loved her. Nobody could ever understand how much. She wouldn’t be true to him, he said. She wanted to date other fellows.”
“She was just a youngster, just past sixteen!” Ed Crossman cried.
“He says he saw you and Ellie leave and he went over to talk to Joanie. That was all he meant to do, just talk. They had quite an argument about it. Finally Joanie told Carl to leave. He says that’s when he — well, then something snapped. She looked so pretty when she was mad, with her eyes full of sparks and her cheeks all pink. He tried to kiss her. He told her if he couldn’t have her nobody else would either. She pushed him away and ran into the kitchen. She tried to get out the back door. Next thing the boy knew, he was standing over her with a kitchen knife in his hand and Joanie was on the floor... and blood over everything.”
Ed Crossman closed his eyes. They had come home early, driven by his unrest. It had been a night of brilliant full moon, clear pale light, and velvet shadows. He had been putting the car into the garage when Ellie had begun to scream. Rushing up the walk, he had found her kneeling over Joanie’s body. Bright red blood on the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor.
The unbelievable nightmare had begun then and it would never end. It would never end for Steve and Alice either. All their lives were caught up in this one senseless, maniacal act.
It was hard, hard not to hate. Ed drew in a deep breath and put his hand on his friend’s thin shoulder. “I’m sorry for all of us,” he said. “Most of all for Joanie. Her life would have been such a happy time. To her everything was wonderful. I know she wouldn’t even... even hate Carl for what he did to her. And because it wasn’t in her to hate, I can’t either — not and be fair to her. I’ll do what I can for your boy, Steve. Taking his life isn’t going to bring back Joanie. Maybe I can help. I’ll do what I can.”
Along the back fence a row of bronze chrysanthemums bloomed in bright defiance of the coming winter. The dying sun touched the top flowers and they glowed bright gold. Like Joanie’s hair, Ed Crossman thought with a quick stab that tightened his throat.
Parkson touched his arm almost timidly. “Thanks, Ed,” he said. “There aren’t many guys in the world would say what you just did.”
“We’ve been friends and neighbors — thirteen years, isn’t it, since you moved in here?”
“The fall of forty-eight.” Parkson hesitated a moment then asked, “How’s Ellie?”
Ed Crossman rubbed his cheek. “She’s still feeling the effects of the shock, Steve. She and Joanie were very close. She’s upstairs in bed now.”
The big man stood up. The air was rapidly growing colder and pale mists were gathering in the still air. The bare trees along the street raised skeleton arms.
“I’ve got to go home, Steve.”
“I’d ask you in but Alice — she don’t feel so good either. She hasn’t slept since we heard about the boy. At night I feel her lying so stiff and full of pain beside me. I know she is thinking like I am — of all the things we did we shouldn’t and what we didn’t do we should have. She never cried, not even when I told her — she just stared at me. She keeps it all bottled up inside her. She won’t go to see the boy. She doesn’t even ask about him. It’s like he never was. You know what she does, Ed? She cleans house like it’s killing her. We’ve got the cleanest house this side of hell.”
The small man looked at Ed Crossman. “I’d like to ask you in but Alice, she says she don’t want to see anybody.”
“Sure, Steve. I understand.”
Their hands met and Ed Crossman turned away. He looked across the street and saw Ellie coming toward them through the chilly dusk. She had changed her black silk for a clean starched housedress and her soft, graying hair was brushed back neatly. She walked with a firm step and her grief-lined face was calm. She saw the men and came toward them.
“Hello, Steve,” she said and touched his shoulder. “Where’s Alice?”
Steve Parkson nodded toward the house. Ellie looked at her husband. “You were right, Ed,” she said. She leaned forward and her dry lips brushed his cheek. “I saw you and Steve sitting together, talking together, and I knew this can’t be the end of things for us. I belong with you.”
Ed Crossman looked at his wife and knew that he had never loved her more. She climbed the back stairs and let herself in the back door. She called, “Alice! Oh, Alice! It’s me, Ellie!”
The men heard the sound of women weeping.
Michael Gilbert
The Future of the Service
© Copyright, 1962, by Michael Gilbert.
It is a long time since we have offered you a series of secret service stories. Surprisingly, the secret service story was not as common as one would think. Many of the demi-detectives of fiction, created by such authors as E. Phillips Oppenheim, William Le Queux, Sax Rohmer, and Edgar Wallace, have flirted persistently with international intrigue — but from a realistic point of view they are strictly amateurs or dabblers. Occasionally one of the master manhunters of fiction has taken a fling at counterespionage — Sherlock Holmes, for example, in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” and “His Last Bow”; but, as we once remarked, these are random shots in otherwise stately, if not affairs-of-stately, careers.
Now we bring you the first in Michael Gilbert’s new series of secret service short stories in the modern tradition — in the tradition of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Ashenden”... Meet Mr. Colder and his deerhound Rasselas and his old friend Mr. Behrens — they are secret agents (including the dog) of the “old school,” yet they are as contemporary as today’s spy and counterspy and spy-catcher...