It was one in the afternoon: my alibi was perfect. As I dressed I suggested maybe she was just hungry, but the very mention of food made her pale. I called the doc, helped Elma with the bedpan, then went over to see if Alice was around—she seemed to have a soothing effect on Elma.
She was standing in the doorway as I came up the path. I had the gun hidden behind my back. She stared at me curiously as I came up to her.
“Lousy mosquitoes kept biting me all night,” I said, scratching myself, keeping the gun out of sight. Her face broke into a smile, “Same trouble myself, Marsh. How's Elma?”
“Not so hot. Why don't you run over for a while?” She said sure and as soon as she went over to the house, I cleaned the Luger with an improvised ramrod and patch and lighter fluid, slipped it back in Tony's drawer.
The murder seemed like something that had happened ages ago. Even the fingerprints didn't worry me; somehow I was certain I had my right hand on the gun all the time.
Back in the house, Alice was giving Elma the latest village gossip. I tried to eat but vomited. A slug of whisky stayed down, warmed my guts.
The doctor spent a long time with Elma. Alice and I sat in the kitchen and Alice said, “I'm worried, she really looks sick today.”
“Damn, she starts throwing up... that will be it.”
“The chemistry of the body is certainly an odd thing. We...”
The doc came into the kitchen, his wrinkled face worried. He said, “I gave her an injection of vitamins. Can't understand what she's worrying about. Doesn't seem afraid of birth...”
“She's worse?”
“Hard to say. Jameson, you and your wife aren't fighting over anything, are you? Even a very minor incident can upset a woman in her condition. You really want the child, don't you?”
“You don't know how much I want it!” I said, and my voice damn near broke at the thought of how much I wanted Elma to have her baby.... I'd murdered for Elma and the baby!
“Well, nothing more I can do. She must have peace of mind. And you take it easy, too. Sound a little hysterical.”
Elma seemed to grow weaker, more listless as the day wore on. It was a muggy, dreary day, and she was uncomfortable. I washed her down, changed the linen several times to cool her off. Alice and I spent every second with her, playing her favorite records, reading to her, discussing Alice's book... but Elma just lay there as though she no longer cared to live.
When the New York evening papers came on the late train, I read each line, but there wasn't any mention of the killing. It would certainly be in the Newark papers, but I couldn't get them....
Then it hit me—the stupid irony of the whole mess! The crazy joker in the deck that was our life! There wasn't any way I could tell Elma Mac was dead, without exposing myself!
Suppose she worried herself into a miscarriage, even death, before she found out about Mac? I would have become a murderer for no reason, then! It was pretty awful, sitting beside Elma, watching her suffer, and not being able to tell her the reasons for her being sick no longer existed... the baby was all hers, all ours. Yet I had to sit and watch and keep still. The doc said not to give her any more dope that day and her soft, pitiful cries drove me crazy.
I tried to tell her, beg her, to get control of herself. But she would only sob, “You're right, Marsh. It's so unfair to you... my wonderful Marsh. I am trying... really I am, but... but...” and her voice would fall off to a sob again.
The doc called and said he would stop in before he went to bed, so I knew Elma must be real sick. Alice and Tony dropped in after supper, asked me if I'd eaten. I lied that I had. I was half high, what with nibbling at the bottle all day. I went out to buy another fifth and it was a hard shock to realize that I was paying for it with his money.
There wasn't much in his wallet—a driver's license, membership card in a local merchants' association, a Legion card, a memo to pay some bills by the tenth, a couple of blank checks. I went out to the homemade incinerator back of the house, where we burned most of the garbage, spilled a can of lighter fluid over the wallet, carefully burned it.
Alice and Tony left. Elma was staring at the ceiling, without seeing anything. I sat beside her bed like a mourner. A disk jockey was knocking himself out on the radio. It was nearly nine. I'd either have to chance telling Elma— and that would probably kill her—or drive into New York in the morning and get a copy of the Newark papers... if Elma survived the night. And that would look phony, I'd never bought the Newark papers before. But I sure had to do something—murder wasn't enough, it seemed.
I lit my pipe, asked if the smoke bothered her.
“No.”
“This is your favorite brand—real aromatic.**
“Is it? I don't smell it.”
“How about a game of gin?”
“No, dear.”
“Shall I read to you?”
“No.”
The record jockey read a commercial and as the nine o'clock news came on, I tuned in another station for more music. A brittle-voice commentator said, “Now for another crime-doesn't-pay bulletin taken from real life. Today, a Newark businessman, Maxwell Morse, was shot to death in a hold-up. The unknown gunman took a life for fifty dollars in cash and a handful of jewelry....”
I tuned it up loud, asked, “Elma, did you hear...?”
She was sitting up in bed, one hand motioning for me to keep still. Her face seemed to be listening with every pore—a pose I'd love to sketch, put in clay.
“... Later in the afternoon, some children found the cheap jewelry off the main road, where the thug had evidently thrown it away. So a human life was snubbed out for a few dollars and a handful of cheap trinkets, worth less than ten dollars. What price death! And now a news item from Denver tells us of a freak accident in which...”
I cut the radio off. Elma fell back against the pillow, began to cry once more.
I stroked her hair, wanted to shake her. “Elma honey, may sound hard to say this but... well... our troubles are over! The baby is ours, we can be married tomorrow... you're a widow!”
“What a way for poor Mac to die... always hated that store and now...”
“Damn it, the hell with poor Mac! He didn't give a fat damn if you went through hell, worried yourself and the kid into a... Poor Mac, my ass!”
Elma held out her arms and I kissed her wet face as she bawled, “Marsh, don't talk like that. He was such a weakling, and the .world so strong. He never had any of the happiness we've known, and now he's dead and...”
“Baby, don't cry. You heard what the doctor said. You're shaking with sobs.”
“I'm okay, Marsh. Really I am. This is different... I only feel sorry for him, the way he lost out in life.”
And as I held her I realized the difference in her crying. Now it was the sort of abstract tears a person gives out when they see a sad picture, or a puppy run over. I held Elma gently and knew everything was going to work out. I began to cry too... because I was still damn scared.