“Stella and I are leaving,” he announced quickly, a little nervously. “In fact, Stella has already left.”
Harriet Kopping did not interrupt him.
“We had a long talk last night and decided the work was too much for me here. I am sorry we cannot give notice. I am sorry I cannot plant any more rose bushes. Stella has already left on the early morning bus to the city. I am going to see to the trunk, and then I will catch another bus as soon as I can, and will meet Stella. She forgot her suitcase, and I will have to take both suitcases with me...”
He stopped. He had expected her to give some evidence of anger, or at least of surprise. But she sat there silently, hearing him out, almost smiling. Yes, she was smiling!
So he stood there for a moment, silent himself, puzzled over her reaction, uneasy, suspicious. It was not like Mrs. Kopping to smile at any time, much less at a time when there was reason for her to be angry.
“Are you quite finished with your story, Anton?” she asked finally. She sat like a queen in judgment, her silvery hair like a crown.
“Yes, I am finished,” he stammered.
“Then I shall tell you what really happened,” she said. “You seem to have forgotten that, although I am an old woman, I have sharp eyes and ears. You quarreled with your wife last night, and you killed her.”
Instantly he was keyed to this new and unexpected threat. And he was calm at first. “Yes, we quarreled,” he admitted. “Stella did not want to leave here, but I convinced her. She is a good wife really. She decided to do the best thing for her husband’s health. She took the early morning bus to the city...”
“You buried your wife between the fourth and fifth rose bushes.”
For a moment his brain would not accept what his ears had heard. This could not be. He knew it could not be. He had buried Stella in the dark, and there had been no one there to see him. Yet...
“She has taken the early bus...”
“She is dead.”
“No...”
“Come now, Anton, there is no use in lying.”
He said nothing for a long moment. His mind accepted and rejected a dozen different replies and defenses. He was still reasonably calm. The best course, he decided, was to try to find out what this old woman intended to do about her information.
“Well now, we understand each other,” she said, guessing at his decision. “I am simply not as stupid as you must have thought me. I heard your quarrel. I heard the loud voices. And then I heard the voices suddenly stop. This is not natural. I waited patiently, because I was very curious. I could not sleep. I saw you bury Stella. Of course my eyesight is not so good that I could see from my window that you buried her between the fourth and fifth bushes. I discovered the exact spot by investigating after you had gone back to bed.”
He saw now how stupid he had been, how stupid he had thought this old lady to be. No, she was not stupid — but he was.
“You may be wondering now, Anton, what I intend to do. I wondered myself at first, but I’ve had all night to think about it. I don’t believe I shall call the police, Anton. That would stir up quite a hubbub, and I should lose my very good gardener. Fortunately I’m not plagued with too tender a conscience. So I shall not mind having a gardener who has murdered his wife.”
Instinctively he fought against the net which he could see was closing around him. “But I do not want to stay here...”
“You shall stay here and be my gardener, Anton. That is the price of my silence.”
He no longer felt calm. His mind groped out desperately for a weapon to counter hers. A thought struck him, and he blurted it out. “I’ll move the body... I’ll dispose of the body... I’ll take it with me in the trunk... then you can’t prove...”
Her smile grew wider, more tolerant, more superior, and again it was her smile that halted his flow of words. “Yes, Anton, you reason correctly. I would have no hold on you if I could not prove that you had murdered your wife. And to prove a murder, one must have a body. Again must I ask you, do you imagine I am stupid? I have already thought of this. And I have foreseen the possibility you just mentioned. You could dispose of the body some time. I would have no proof of murder, and I would have no hold on you. I have taken care of that problem, Anton.”
He stared unbelievingly. He was a helpless listener now.
“Stella’s body is no longer between the fourth and fifth bushes. I have moved it.”
“Where?”
“That I will not tell you.”
But his mind would not accept this last revelation. “You took her out of the ground? You picked her up and moved her? She wasn’t a small woman.”
For the first time in his life he looked hard and searchingly at Harriet Kopping’s physical features. She was not a small woman either. Could she really have uncovered Stella’s body, lifted it out of the grave, carried it somewhere?
“I will go and see,” he said.
Not waiting for her usual permission to leave, he hurried from the dining room, went outside, got his spade from the tool shed. He was no longer calm. He was both angry and frightened. Before he started to dig, he had to count over and over again to make sure he had the right spot. Between the fourth and fifth bushes.
Then he shoveled fast, with greater speed than he had shoveled last night with his hands fresh from Stella’s throat. The already several times loosened dirt yielded easily. And he did not have to go down very far before the bitter truth became all too apparent. The body was not there.
Yet for a few minutes longer his numbed brain would not accept the plain fact. His spade dug deeper, striking the hard-packed, underlying subsoil, then finally an impregnable layer of rock. He stopped then, sweating, panting, staring incredulously at the empty hole and the mound of earth beside it that was big as the mound a regular grave digger produces when he digs an ordinary grave. But Stella’s grave had been a shallow one! He had gone down to rock, but Stella was not there.
He stood there for a long time, leaning on his spade. His weariness of last night did not match the utter exhaustion he felt now. He wanted to lie down in that empty hole, to ask that the dirt be laid over him.
Slowly, only ever so slowly, the ebb of life, the stubborn, senseless desire of every man to go on living, flowed back into him. His simple brain began once again to grasp toward survival. He threw down the spade and marched back toward the house, emotion helping to numb his fatigue.
He found Harriet Kopping still in the dining room, awaiting him. Her smile was ugly, confident, superior. “Did you find Stella?” she asked him.
“No...”
“It was a waste of good digging, wasn’t it?”
“But I will find her... because I will make you tell me where she is.”
Mrs. Kopping’s still-black brows raised half an inch, making her narrow face look longer. “Do you dare to threaten me, Anton?”
“You may have been strong enough to move Stella, but I am stronger than you.”
“Of course you are.”
“Then I will make you tell me?”
“Before you touch me, Anton, let me assure you of one fact. You can kill me before I would tell you where Stella’s body is. And do you think you can kill me with the same freedom as you killed Stella? Do you think that Harriet Kopping’s death could pass unnoticed? Do you imagine that a person of my prominence and importance would not be instantly missed in this town? Yes, you could kill me, Anton, and then run away. A rich old woman dead and her gardener disappeared. How long do you think it would take the police to catch up with you?”
She spoke calmly and incisively, and he realized that what she said was true. He could not kill her as simply as he had killed Stella. He could not even hurt her or threaten to hurt her.