“…THREE AND FOUR; NO, NO, SUSAN, YOU MISSED FRANCE; TURN RIGHT DUM AND DAH AND DEE…” I am marching, Seal discovered, horrified.
He skipped militarily out of step; he quickened his own cadence. Bloody little William anyway; what was this, skulking about after someone two feet tall with a celluloid propeller atop his skull? When would they begin to respect his retirement? He did not barge around asking the free services of his casual friends.
On he hurried, grumbling discontent, miffed at the collision of his romantic interest and the mysterious peculations of a five-year-old…
“…And so, well, the marriage ‘didn’t work out,’ as they say, and I took back my own name and went off for study in Europe and came home decided on teaching, and here I am,” concluded Miss Springer,
Seal, his eyes bleary, nodded understanding. The venue was his brownstone on Crown Street, above the park. He was not yet comfortably used to its grandeur. A wealthy aunt had died, willing him the two-story house, eighteen potted plants, and the money that made possible his early retirement. Side by side, in twin easy chairs, they dwelt on the lights of the city. Behind them a marble staircase coiled upward. Around them was the good aroma of gourmet cooking from the skilled hands of a borrowed maid.
“The brass plate on your door reads Creighton T. Seal, C.I.E. What is that?”
“Chief Inspector Emeritus,” he answered. “An honor they gave me when I retired.”
She changed the subject. “You mentioned your late wife. Should I ask how—?”
Seal, the pupils of his eyes still dilated and useless from the drops (dammit, he must be allergic to them), struggled to pour a second Scotch into their glasses. “She died in India,” he said. Scotch flowed down his hand and up a shirt sleeve. “She fell off an elephant.”
Her gasp did not seem genuine. Nothing was right, he thought. She’d been two hours late getting here (it was nearly nine) and had offered no apology. He could not see anything. Observing her from close range made his head ache. Eyes squinting, he groped for her hand with a highball glass and said, “How did you settle on the Peter Pan School?”
“So revolutionarily progressive,” she answered. “Dr. Grivas’ own method. Where else will you find kindergarten-age children reading and writing after two months?”
“And what is the method?”
“But I’ve said twice I don’t want to talk about it. I work hard all day and when I leave the school I leave it.”
“My apologies.” Not that he felt apologetic. Disgruntlement was more his mood. She was not the Miss Springer of a month ago. On that occasion, over drinks and red wine at the Italian restaurant, she had warmth and sparkle and had amused him with a cascade of fey chatter. It contrasted ill with her lacquered rigidity of tonight, her reluctance to accept his invitation, her blitheness as she floated in two hours late. Grudgingly he deferred to Hinschelman: she was some kind of fire-breathing liberal and he was a cop.
True, he hadn’t, on that first evening, told her; each had paid decorous heed to the other’s privacy, as if questions would sanction counterquestions. It was while walking with him to his car that a patrolman tipped his cap and said, “Good evening, Inspector.” Abruptly she’d recalled a forgotten engagement; she’d insisted on taking a cab.
Or had he now antagonized her, by probing and asking questions, hoping he might turn her in the direction of William Wagner? Once a cop— He pleaded guilty. Here was his choice: pursuit of such romantic endeavor as his Chief Inspectorship had for many years precluded, or the solution of a kiddie crime. Repeatedly he chose the latter. Always a cop… “I could never do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Compartmentalize my life. Leave the office and let a curtain drop. My work went with me night and day.”
“Yes, you’ve made that quite obvious,” she said.
“Obvious?”
“Grilling me, asking me questions.”
“My dear, you know perfectly well I’m retired.”
“Oh, come off it, C.I.E. You contradict yourself. A month, five weeks ago, your work followed you ‘night and day.’ Has retirement, in this short time, erased all your keyhole instincts and tendencies?”
Part of him bristled. He had mooned about over this razor blade? “I saw the children leaving school as I met you yesterday. I thought them charming. I’m interested in many things. I showed interest in your work. If that’s prying—”
“It is when you’re this insistent. Dr. Grivas has spent his adult life perfecting a radically new educational method. It’s now getting its first full test. He is not about to have his record ruined by a bunch of half-informed, ignorant-rich parents jerking their children out of Peter Pan in mid-term out of some stone-age seizure of horror at ‘something new.’ He does not want his method bandied about or misrepresented at this time. He’d fire me in five minutes, he’d strangle me, can’t you understand?”
“Severe payment,” murmured Seal, again squinting to try to improve his blurred vision. The phone rang. He fumbled for it on the table beside his chair. He said, “Yes,” and then, “Oh, my God,” and then, “Yes, right away.” He replaced the phone and stared blankly at his feet.
“Bad news?” asked Miss Springer.
“Quite bad,” he said, standing. “A friend — gravely hurt in an — an accident.”
“Not dead?”
Seal, mind deadened, scarcely heard her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Yes, you must go to him right away.”
“I can’t see to drive. I’ll get a taxi and drop you home.”
Miss Springer would not hear of it. Suddenly she’d remembered an engagement. She would take her own cab.
On the sidewalk he apologized profusely. Their goodbyes were polite.
The woman named Louise Potchernik led him through an ugly fourth-floor room to the doorway of the bedroom where Hinschelman lay. His face was pale, his eyes were closed. He was heavily bandaged around the left shoulder and upper trunk.
“He’s had a hypo,” she said. “He’ll be out for four or five hours. I ran straight for Dr. Mendez. He just lives down the block.”
Yes, Mendez. Unfrocked and delicensed on an illegal abortion count, but a competent doctor with a brisk underworld trade.
She said, “Nobody else I dared go to with Hinsch on parole. One reason Hinsch kept mumbling your name, I guess. Thought you might help if the cops came.”
“But they haven’t.”
She shook her head. “Listen, I got a mop and bucket of water and washed blood off the stairway and clear down to Blake Street between those old empty condemned warehouses where it happened.”
“What did happen?”
“Shot twice, shoulder and chest. Mendez said another two inches and—”
“No, I mean from the start.”
“First he came home. Eight-twenty or so. Started to phone you but remembered you had an engagement. Had some things to tell you. Said something about a candy store and then, talking more like to himself than to me, said, ‘every one of those kids had a brand-new quarter.’ Couldn’t seem to get over that, whatever it meant. Said to tell you that ‘in case something happens,’ the stuff came from the school-house.”
“He went into that school?” asked Seal incredulously.
“Some school somewhere. He talks to himself a lot more than to me. I think it’s a habit from prison.”