“You’re fine company tonight,” Kate said, looking at him across her magazine.
“I’m sorry.” He smiled at her, experiencing the same curious feeling of gratitude he’d had the night Tom Deery had committed suicide. “How about a nightcap?”
“No thanks.” She suddenly raised a hand, and winked at him. “I think we’ve got a visitor. Brigid?” she called.
There was no answer.
Bannion grinned. “Come on in, baby,” he said.
There was a rush of feet and Brigid appeared, blinking with sleep, and ready to laugh or cry depending on her parents’ reaction.
“I can’t sleep,” she said, her head drooping, her voice and expression piteous.
“This is absolute nonsense,” Kate said. “You just trot right back to bed, young lady.”
She began crying and ran to her father’s knee. He picked her up and she snuggled against him, looking triumphantly at her mother.
“According to the book this is the age where they have trouble sleeping,” Bannion said. “The remedial treatment is to lead them back to bed with great kindness and firmness.”
“Well, supposing you try it,” Kate said.
Bannion sighed. “I walked right into that one, obviously. Okay. Bidge, would you like me to put you back in bed? You know everybody else is sleeping now. It’s very late.”
“All right,” Brigid said, with a long sigh.
Bannion stood up, cradling her tiny bottom in the palm of his hand. “This is final, remember,” he said. “No more hopping out of bed.”
“You didn’t put the car away,” Kate said.
“I’ll do my fatherly duty first.”
Kate put an arm around his waist and gave him a hug. “Well, if you’re taking over my chores, I’ll be a sport and put the car in.”
“Thanks, but never mind. I’ll do it.”
“Oh, come on, I won’t tear off a fender. Where are the keys?”
“You’ve never put it away, you’ll knock the garage down.”
“Well, we can chalk it up to experience. Where are the keys?”
“In my overcoat. But be careful, Kate.”
“Oh, stop it, for Heaven’s sake,” she said. She got the keys, slipped a coat over her shoulders and went out. Bannion carried Brigid back to her room. He put her in bed, gave her the toys she wanted, and tucked the covers up around her neck. She stared up at him, her eyes bright with excitement.
“Tell me a story,” she said, wriggling under the covers.
“Okay, but a quick one. A real quick one.”
“Yes, a real quick one.”
“Which one do you want?”
“About the pussy cat.”
“Okay, the pussy cat it is.”
There was an explosion in the street, a muffled, reverberating sound that shook the windows in the front of the house.
“Daddy, tell the story.”
Bannion got slowly to his feet. “Just a minute,” he said.
The echoes of the blast rolled away and in the silence he heard a man shouting in the street.
“Daddy, please tell the story,” Brigid said crossly.
“Bidge, I’ve got to go outside a minute,” he said. “You wait here, I’ll be right back.”
“But I—”
“Don’t get out of that bed,” Bannion said, and the sound of his voice made her begin crying.
Bannion left the room in long strides, ran down the hall and out the front door. Two men were trotting along the sidewalk, their heels sounding sharply in the cold, and across the street a window was being pushed up with a protesting shriek.
Bannion’s car was before the house, under the shade of a tree. Smoke was pouring from it and the front end looked as if it had been flattened by a blow from a mighty fist. He leaped down the steps, his heart contracting with horror, and ran to the side of the car. The front door wouldn’t open; it was jammed tight, buckled and wrinkled. Bannion smashed the glass with his fist, shouting to Kate in a wild voice. He got a hold on the door and jerked it open, pulled it completely away from the body of the car with a mighty, despairing wrench, not caring about, not even feeling the glass cutting into his hands.
There was no way to get her out; she was pinioned in the wreckage as if it were some medieval rack, but Bannion threw himself across her, shouting to her, and the sound of his voice, his insane, bellowing voice, halted the men who were running to the scene, brought pale, scared looks to their faces.
They crowded up behind him at last, seeing what he couldn’t see; but it was a long time before they could get him away from her, make him realize that she was dead.
Chapter 7
The apartment was clean and tidy, ashtrays emptied, newspapers and magazines in neat stacks, everything swept up, dusted, put in order. The flowers were gone, but their scent remained in the room, the faint, sickly smell of dying roses and lilies. Mrs. Weiss who lived above the Bannions’, had seen to these details the day after the funeral.
Bannion stood in the front room, his hands in his overcoat pockets, glancing about for the last time. There was nothing else to hold him here; Mrs. Weiss would take care of the sub-leasing, and of Kate’s clothes. He dropped his keys on the coffee table, and then looked around again, at the imitation fireplace, the mantel, bare of pictures now, at the radio, liquor cabinet, at the sofa where she had usually sat to read, and at his own big chair. It was a room he had known by heart, but it was strange and unfamiliar to him now, as impersonal as a furniture arrangement in a shop window. It was a clean and silent room in a clean and silent apartment, and he looked at it without any feeling at all.
He glanced once at his books beside his chair, his old, familiar companions. He wasn’t taking them with him, Hume, Locke, Kant, the men who had struggled and attacked the problems of living through all their lives. What could they tell him now of life? He knew the answers, and the knowledge was a dead, cold weight in his heart. Life was love; not love of God, love of Humanity, love of Justice, but love of one other person. When that love was destroyed, you were dead, too.
The front bell rang. Bannion frowned slightly and went to the door. Father Masterson from Saint Gertrude’s stood in the vestibule, a tall, earnest young man with pale skin and mild, unguarded blue eyes.
“Hello, Dave. I hope I’m not butting in.”
“No, but I was just leaving,” Bannion said.
“Well, I won’t hold you up then,” Father Masterson said. He turned his hat awkwardly in his big, gentle hands. “I just wanted to know if there’s anything I can do.”
“No, there’s nothing you can do, Father.”
“Do you mind if I come in for a minute?”
“No, of course not.” Bannion stepped aside and closed the door, after the priest entered the room. Father Masterson glanced around nervously, and then turned to him with an earnest but hopeless expression on his face. “Talking’s no good, Dave, and I know it. Some priests are good at it, but I’m not. When people say ‘Why, why did God let this happen?’ I just can’t answer them. There’s an answer, sure, and it’s all right in catechisms, I guess, but not at times like this, times when you need it. Maybe I’m just no good, Dave. But—”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Father,” Bannion said. He smiled slightly. He had changed in the last week; his face was thinner and pale, and his clothes hung loosely on his huge frame. His eyes were empty and expressionless. “I’m not asking for any answers. I know the answers. Perhaps we should reverse roles. I’ll help you out, Father. Kate was killed because there was a stick of dynamite wired to the ignition of our car. When she stepped on the starter she was killed. Why was she killed? Someone was after me, and got her instead. That’s all there is to it, Father.”