‘Thank you, Count,’ said Craig, ‘but I had better be on my way.’
‘Thank you, Count Jacobsson,’ said Sue Wiley.
He was gone, and the two of them were alone in the high, quiet room. Craig walked to the coat-rack, and removed his hat and overcoat. He realized that Sue Wiley had not left her chair, but remained seated, watching him speculatively.
When he turned to depart, she spoke. ‘I suppose you think that story makes me look rotten, don’t you?’
‘Does it matter to you what the devil I think?’
This seemed important to her, and her eyelids palpitated nervously, ‘I have my job, Mr. Craig, can’t you see that? I have my job to do.’
‘No one’s stopping you from doing it.’
‘I don’t like the way you and Jacobsson and some of the others look at me-like I’m some kind of reptile or adder or something crawly. Well, I don’t like it, and neither would you. I’m a person the same as anybody. I know you’re sore at me because of that question I asked at the press conference. I got a lead on you, and I wanted to know if it was true or not. Maybe I should have asked you personally, instead of in front of all the others-’
Craig stood beside the door. ‘I assure you, it doesn’t matter, Miss Wiley.’
‘But it matters to me. I work from information that is picked up all over, from Consolidated’s bureaux, just the way Associated Press and Time magazine and Newsweek magazine put together a story from leads they get from their bureaux. Before I saw Schweitzer, I didn’t just depend on questions I might think of, or ones based on what I’d read, or just depend on anything we might talk about. All of our bureaux and stringers pitched in. They went digging in Kayserberg, in the German Alsace, where he was born-in Günsbach, Strasbourg, Berlin, Paris, Aspen, Colorado-wherever Schweitzer had lived, studied, worked, and then they shot me all the dope, some good, some not so good, and then I was able to get up my questions and go to Lambaréné and get the true story.’
‘The true story, Miss Wiley?’
‘That’s right. It comes in from all over-interviews, gossip, tips, leads, solid research-and I sift it, and check it out, and there’s the true story. That’s exactly the way I went about getting information on all you Nobel laureates. Take you. How do you think I got the idea that maybe you take a nip at the bottle now and then? Do you think I made it up? Not on your life. We put your name on the wire, and pretty soon our bureaux were spading up every day of your life-on the newspaper in St. Louis, London and Marseilles and New Jersey in the war, Long Island with your wife, and your honeymoon in Europe, and finally the whole rural bit in Wisconsin.’
Although he would not admit it to her, Craig was impressed at the breadth of research. It was discomforting to know how much they must know, but yes, it was impressive.
Sue Wiley was going on compulsively. ‘Don’t think our Chicago bureau didn’t yell about having to send a reporter up to a one-horse town like Miller’s Dam. You’d think we were sending someone to Tibet. But after you won the prize, there was this man of ours snooping around Miller’s Dam for material to feed me-he got there a few days before you took off for Stockholm, and he stayed on through most of this week-and he was all over the county, casually asking questions, looking in here and there, searching back issues of newspapers and all kinds of documents. Mr. Craig, what I could tell you about yourself would make you blush. At least three people hinted that you got pickled to the gills every day, morning till night. At least one person tipped us that you visited a house of prostitution once in a while. I know your sister-in-law’s shopping list at the grocery store, so I know what you eat, and I know who your friends are, and I have photocopies of the mortgage on your house, and I know the words chiselled on your wife’s tombstone. I even know how she got there-’
Craig’s heart quickened, and he wished that he was out the door, so that he need not hear the sickening secret again, and from someone other than Leah. He waited.
‘-because I know every detail of the accident,’ Sue Wiley went on, ‘and we dug it out because-painful as it is for you to be reminded-it’s dramatic and will make good reading, and it is truth, and that’s my business. I can reconstruct that accident better than you can remember it-tell you how many inches of rain there was that night, tell you how much time you spent at the Lawson Country Club, tell you how the birthday cake looked and how many presents your wife gave you, tell you the exact time you left the party, and the exact time your car smashed into that oak tree, and even how that tie rod dropped off under your car and put you in that skid-though I am no mechanic-and then I can tell you-’
Craig felt the chill from his knees and chest to his scalp. He could not have heard her right. It was a mistake. Automatically, he moved towards her, and the incredulous expression on his gaunt face made her words hang in the air.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said, frightened. ‘Are you sore at me again or something?’
‘Miss Wiley, repeat what you were just saying.’
‘About what? Repeat what?’
‘The accident.’
‘Why, I was just saying I knew-’
‘The car,’ said Craig. ‘What did you say about the car-your not being a mechanic-the skid-’
‘Oh, that,’ said Sue Wiley with relief. ‘I was just showing off how thorough we are, and how I don’t talk through my hat like maybe you think. You had lousy luck with the accident, that’s all. When you came around the curve, your tie rod-you know, that thing underneath, under the front, that controls the wheels-’
‘I know. I know-’
‘It must’ve been defective or something, because when you came around the curve it broke-that happens to other people, too-and zing-one front wheel kind of buckles, goes out of control, you can’t steer it-and if you’re on a curve-well, I don’t have to tell you, you know what can happen.’
‘Where did you hear this?’ said Craig with agitation. ‘How do you know it’s true?’
‘How do I know? Well, don’t you know? After all, it was your accident. Our man from Chicago went to the county sheriff’s office, that’s all, to find out about the crash and how your wife was killed-and there it was, with everything else-including their routine police report on your car after you smashed it up. The phrase on the report, as I remember, was “accident due to mechanical failure”, and something about the tie rod snapping, and your inside wheel going flooey, and then the measurement of the skid marks on the wet road. I have the photocopies right in my hotel. Also, the coroner’s report waiving inquest, because there was no criminal liability, it was all open and shut, and they knew you anyway.’
‘Yes, we’re all neighbours. I never bothered learning the details. I was laid up in the hospital-at home-a long time. And there was no reason to go into it afterwards. I think my sister-in-law handled everything.’
‘That’s right,’ said Sue Wiley. ‘Somebody in the sheriff’s office told our man that they called Miss Decker down there, after the funeral, while you were still half-conscious in the hospital, and gave her a copy of their police report on the case for you, to close it up.’ Sue Wiley stared at him. ‘Didn’t you see it? What did you think caused the accident?’
‘What?’ he said vaguely. His mind was stumbling backwards, groping backwards through the months and the years, trying to remember every detail, and knowing with frigid certainty that Leah had hidden the truth from him, and in its place offered the guilt of his drunkenness and irresponsibility. The lie, half told him at first, then fully told him, then constantly told him, had been her hold on him and her insurance, and the enormity of her evil, and the depths of her unbalance and sickness, made the years a nightmare and made the memory of his self-hate a nightmare, and he knew his face was bloodless and the gorge was in his throat.