“Perhaps it could. I merely wanted to check. Life has taught me to be suspicious.”
It had taught him well, Frank thought.
5
Willett showed the effects of a bad night. His eyes were rimmed with pink, and his breakfast stuck halfway between his stomach and his throat and refused to budge. When the front door chime sounded he dropped his spoon. Leaning over to pick it up, he bumped his head against the table and then clutched his heart dramatically.
Ethel watched these maneuvers with her customary detachment. “Did you hurt yourself, dear.”
“For heaven’s sakes, how many times do I have to remind you to get those chimes fixed? They’re loud enough to wake the... they’re too loud. They’ve got to be toned down.”
“What do I know about chimes.”
“You can wrap a handkerchief around them or something.”
“Your handkerchiefs are bigger than mine,” Ethel said, sounding very pleased at her ability to score a point, however small.
Willett could not allow this triumph to go unchallenged. “What’s that got to do with it? Couldn’t you use one of my handkerchiefs?”
“You know I never pry into your things.”
“It’s impossible to talk to you anymore.”
“Then why try?”
“We can’t live in total silence.”
“I can.” To a large extent this was true. Ethel could go for days without talking. It drove Willett, whose satisfactions were almost entirely verbal, to distraction. “Anyway we shouldn’t quarrel at a time like this,” Ethel added. “It’s disrespectful to the dead, isn’t it.”
Willett looked furious, but he didn’t say anything because Murphy had come into the room.
Murphy was a very thin, arrogant young woman with short, black hair and a great deal of what Willett described as class. Murphy’s right to this description was unassailable. She knew her place, which was high, and her duties which were few. From a practical viewpoint she was the worst maid Ethel had ever had; but Ethel, who was raised on a farm in Wisconsin, was impressed by Murphy’s niceties and quite willing to do most of the work herself as long as she was addressed as milady.
Murphy was, in her way, a jewel, and like most jewels she showed off well in the drawing room but was of little value in the kitchen.
“Captain Greer to see you, sir,” Murphy told Willett, making the sir sound like your lordship. “I took the liberty of showing him into the drawing room.”
“Thanks, I’ll see him right away.”
“I believe he also wants to talk to Mrs. Goodfield.”
“Me?” Ethel said.
“No, milady. The older Mrs. Goodfield. I explained to him that she wasn’t well but that I thought he might see her for a few minutes.”
“What in God’s name did you do that for?” Willett said, forgetting his lordshipdom. “I’m surrounded, surrounded by imbeciles.”
He went storming out of the room, and Ethel and Murphy exchanged glances.
“What’ll we have for lunch?” Ethel said.
“I’m very fond of shrimp, milady.”
“All right, I’ll make a shrimp salad. Willett’s an awfully hard man to live with, isn’t he? I mean, you know what I mean.”
Murphy knew what she meant. His lordship was hell on wheels.
“What I mean is,” Ethel added, “you can’t take him seriously, and yet you can’t take him not seriously either. You know?”
“Quite.”
“It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if people with bad tempers could just take a pill or something and become quite cheerful and sunny.”
“Hot rolls would go very well with the shrimp, milady.”
“Would they? Yes, I guess they would.” Milady sighed. She hated making rolls but Murphy refused to eat the bakery kind.
All of his life Willett had been immobilized by self-doubt, plagued by uncertainty over the most trivial matters like whether or not it was proper to shake hands with a policeman like Greer. When he finally decided that it was proper, he performed his duty with nervous reluctance and afterwards he unconsciously wiped his hand on the side of his trousers. Greer noticed the action and misinterpreted the reason for it. And so Willett was once again in the position of having incurred animosity without knowing why. The self-doubt, the action finally taken, wrong and late, and the ensuing unpopularity which bred more self-doubt — it was a circle of errors and Willett ran panting around in it wondering where the end was.
“I thought this business was settled yesterday,” Willett said. “The poor woman’s dead and all that. What more is there to do?”
“This.” Greer handed him a subpoena and Willett looked at it with grave suspicion.
“What is it?”
“A subpoena. The coroner’s inquest will be held tomorrow morning. You’re to testify, just tell the jury what happened.”
“I don’t want to. I’ve never had anything to do with this sort of thing before. It makes me nervous. I’m not a well man by any means. I have a kidney stone.”
“Be reasonable, Mr. Goodfield.”
“Reasonable? Is it reasonable to drag an innocent bystander into court? I have a good notion to break my lease and go back home. Surely I have grounds for breaking the lease — having a dead woman found in—”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have much to do with leases.” Greer didn’t argue about the subpoena. He just put it down on the glass coffee table while Willett stared at it as if he expected it to come alive, grow wings or legs or teeth.
“I hate sordid things,” he said finally. “Do you... do you suppose it will be very sordid?”
“Oh, not very.”
“No question of suicide or murder, anything like that?”
“That’s for the jury to decide.”
“I see.” Willett coughed. “Well, I suppose I have my duties as a citizen.”
“That’s a good way to look at it.”
“The poor woman who died — my wife and I were discussing it last night — I hope she’ll have a proper burial with flowers and all that?”
“I don’t guarantee the flowers, but she’ll be buried according to regulation. The county will foot the bill if no one else does.”
“It seems so cold-blooded, having no flowers.”
“Rose won’t know the difference.”
Willett turned quite pale. “I wonder — my wife and I were wondering — we feel a certain sense of responsibility in this affair. We’re not wealthy by any means, but we’re comfortably well off and I thought — Ethel thought — perhaps a check for a hundred dollars—?”
“You’re offering to bury Rose?”
“I... yes, you might put it like that. Ethel’s very softhearted, you know.”
Greer didn’t know. “You’ll have to take the matter up with the County Administrator.”
Willett had no idea what or who the County Administrator was, but he nodded wisely. “I see. There’s red tape involved. You think it might be better to forget the whole thing? I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want my generous impulses to get me into trouble. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“There are lots of worthy causes to give money to,” Greer said shortly. “Flowers are fine, but Rose can’t smell them.”
Willett took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He hated this callous policeman with such intensity that he felt nauseated. “I... if you’ll excuse me — I’m not well.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“We... we’re not a strong family. Things upset us.”
Greer believed it. “I just want to talk to your mother for a few minutes. I’ll try not to disturb her.”
Willett felt too weak and sick to argue. “Murphy will take you upstairs,” he said and headed for the door, pressing the handkerchief against his mouth.