“Yes.” The merry chase was over, the lively one dead.
Dalloway turned and walked out of the room, unaware that he still had the red rose crushed in his right fist.
Mrs. Cushman puffed along at his heels like a toy locomotive. “You don’t have to run off so sudden-like.”
“Sorry, I have an engagement. You’ve been very kind,” he added, seeing her disappointed expression, “and very helpful.”
“I was hoping maybe you’d stay and we could have a little chat about Rose?”
“Perhaps some other time.”
“I wish there was more I could tell you, like the names on the map.”
“There might be,” Dalloway said. “Did she ever mention any of those people to you — Minnie, Baker, Bernard, and so on?”
“She knew a Minnie that’s a checker down at the Safeway, but only in the line of business. Not likely she’d concern herself with that Minnie’s birthday.”
“It doesn’t seem so.”
“As for Phil, there’s a Phil Dickerson lives over on Bagnos Street, but he’s just a boy going to high school, delivers for Fred’s Drugstore on the side. I don’t know any Bakers or Bernards, not that I can recollect offhand. You know what I think? I think all those people were people she knew a long time ago, not ones she was associating with in the here and now. They were figures from her past, in my opinion. And there’s only one person that Rose ever let down her real back hair in front of, and that’s Frank Clyde.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed.” Mrs. Cushman echoed the word lovingly. It was a good word and she intended to use it frequently in the future. When one of the boarders complained about something, Mrs. Cushman would say “Indeed?” raising her eyebrows just as Dalloway had done.
“Why?”
“Why did she talk to Frank, you mean? Well, first and foremost, she liked him. She never let on she did, she even insulted him, but you could tell that underneath she considered him a real good guy. Which he is.”
“I agree. I’ve met him.”
“Grade A, in my opinion, and I’m not the one to say that about everybody. I’ve met too many Grade C’s in my lifetime and they look all right on the outside but just try cracking their shell, if you get my meaning.”
“Quite.”
“Quite.” Mrs. Cushman beamed with pleasure. She liked the way Dalloway talked, the nice crisp words he used like “quite” and “indeed.” A most distinguished man. She wondered if he was married.
Dalloway saw her wondering and edged toward the front door. “Thank you for your trouble, Mrs.—”
“Cushman. Blanche.”
“Ah... yes, I believe I’ll go and have a talk with Mr. Clyde.”
He opened the door decisively, and Mrs. Cushman knew in her heart that he was walking out of her life forever. She made one final move to stop him.
Crossing her arms on her chest, she said ominously, “You know what I think? What I think is, Rose was murdered.”
10
The Clydes’ house was one of a row of identical almost-new stucco houses in the west end of town. Even the plantings were identical and had been chosen for their rapid growth: flowering maples less than a year old were already as big as trees and in full bloom, and castor beans the same age loomed above the flat roofs, their smooth red trunks glistening like oil in the afternoon sun.
Miriam came to the door, a pretty, dark-haired young woman with a demure smile and sharp intelligent eyes. She had on a T-shirt, denim pedal-pushers and a blue cotton apron that looked as if she had made it herself. She wore this strange costume with a certain style and self-assurance that seemed to say, I can’t afford to buy good clothes but with my figure I don’t have to.
“Mr. Dalloway? I’m Miriam Clyde.”
“Very glad to know you.”
“Come in, won’t you? Frank will be back in a minute. After you phoned he decided to go down to the office and pick up the file on Rose.”
“I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a file on her.”
“There is. I’ve read it.”
“You have?”
“Surprised? Don’t be. When a man is as wrapped up in his work as Frank is,” Miriam added cheerfully, “I have to get wrapped up with him to survive.”
The living room and the furniture in it were obviously new, but already they bore the marks of living: a child’s handprint on the woodwork near the light switch, strands of dog hair on the loveseat by the fireplace, black scars of rubber heels on the hardwood floor, and a deck of cards spilled over the piano like fallen leaves.
Miriam made no attempt to pick up the cards or apologize for the room. She accepted a certain amount of disorder as she accepted the weather and the quarterly payments of income tax. She was a fighter, but she never fought the inevitable or started a battle that she wasn’t sure of winning. The main battle was money, and though it was still going on, Miriam was confident of final victory some day.
“I realize this is an intrusion,” Dalloway said, “coming here on Frank’s afternoon off.”
“Frank doesn’t mind.”
“You must.”
“Oh, I do, a little. I don’t mind you personally, Mr. Dalloway — just the general idea of never getting any free weekends. Frank carries that office of his around like a turtle carrying his shell. It goes with us to the beach, the movies, and down to the corner drugstore.” Her sudden, bright smile took the edge off her words. “Sometimes I think my kids will get the impression that the entire world is populated by Frank’s patients.”
Dalloway returned her smile. He liked this calm, candid woman and he wished that Lora could have acquired some similar qualities, a sense of humor, perhaps, or a hard core of common sense. Lora was an idealist without ideals, a rebel without a cause, a woman who affected to despise money and yet was completely dependent on other people for support.
He said aloud, “It would be handy, anyway, having an office you can carry. And the turtle can’t afford to despise his shell.”
“I guess not.” From the backyard came the shouts of children and the shrill barking of a small dog. “Frank’s like a turtle in another respect. He’s always sticking his neck out.”
“Oh?”
“He has no time — no right, even — to go around investigating Rose’s death.”
“Is that what he’s doing?”
“That’s what you’re doing, why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“More or less.”
“Mostly more, though?”
“Very well, mostly more.”
“Why?” Miriam said. “Why is everyone so suspicious about Rose dying?”
“You aren’t?”
“No, I’m not. I think both you and Frank simply feel frustrated by her death. Frank didn’t have a chance to finish his job on her, and you didn’t have a chance to question her about your daughter.”
“You seem to be full of both theories and information,” Dalloway said, sounding amused. “As a matter of fact you may be right about my part of it. I do feel frustrated. I think it was extremely inconsiderate of Rose to die before I could talk to her. I’m not sure whether she would have been able to tell me any news of Lora or not. I believe she would. When Lora was in one of her sullen moods, she frequently toyed with the idea of a reunion with her mother. You get the picture? — one sensitive, artistic soul crying out to the other across the bourgeois wilderness.”
“I’m afraid my imagination boggles at the idea of Rose being sensitive and artistic.”
“Mine boggles even more, in Lora’s case. She has the hide of a rhinoceros, as so many people do who confuse sensitivity with egocentricity. When she makes a childish fuss at the dentist’s, for example, she always manages to convince herself that it’s because she feels more pain than ordinary people.”