He heard the double meaning in the word, and touched his rib-cage in a gingerly way, as if it held a sick animal which might bite him.
“How did you reach Phoebe?”
“I found a bill in Merriman’s pocket, a paid bill from the Champion Hotel, made out in Kitty’s name. I conceived the wild idea that she had survived somehow, that Merriman’s accusation was only a bluff. I flew to Sacramento that night after I talked to Royal, rented a car at the airport and drove to the Champion. When Phoebe came to the door of her room I still believed she was Kitty. There was very little light, and I was very willing to believe it. I thought some miracle had saved her, and saved me.
“I took her in my arms. Then she spoke to me. She told me who she was and what she was doing there.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. There was nothing I could tell her, then or ever. I did do my best for her, though. I gave her money and got her out of that wretched room into a decent place. The Hacienda was only a temporary expedient, of course. I saw as I talked to her that she needed medical care. I was in need of it myself. I was so completely exhausted by this time that I had to lie down in the other room of her bungalow. I wasn’t up to so much stress and activity.”
“Like hitting people on the head with a tire-iron?”
“I’m sorry about that, Archer. I heard the two of you in her room. I had to stop you in some way. I was afraid she’d talk herself into a murder trial.”
“Or talk you into one.”
“There was that possibility, of course.”
“Your tense is wrong, and it’s more than a possibility.”
My words hung between us on the air. “Have you been to the police?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re planning to go to them, of course.”
“I couldn’t keep them out of this even if I wanted to, and I don’t.”
“It won’t do Phoebe any good to put me on trial for murder. She’s had her fill of disasters. She deserves a chance at life, as you yourself said. You don’t want to saddle her with the knowledge that she’s the bastard child of a murderer.”
“She doesn’t know you’re her father. She doesn’t have to.”
“It’s bound to come out if there’s a trial.”
“Who will bring it out? You and I are the only ones who know.”
“But what about Catherine’s dying words?”
“Phoebe can be persuaded that she misheard them.”
“Yes. She actually did mishear them, in a sense, didn’t she?”
Trevor sat and studied me. His eyes closed and opened from time to time, so slowly that he seemed to be alternating between death and life.
“Phoebe is my chief concern,” he said. “I care nothing for myself. I’m thinking of her solely.”
“You should have been thinking of her when you killed her mother.”
“I was thinking of her. I wanted to protect her from the ugly reality. It’s uglier now, and I still want to protect her. I believe I proved something when I brought her back to Dr. Sherrill. I knew the chance I was taking.”
“You proved something.”
“Will you do something for me, and incidentally for her? My clothes are in the closet there.” He gestured towards a door on the far side of the room beside the bureau. “I have some digitalis capsules in the pocket of my coat – more than enough to kill me. I tried to get to them before you came, but I collapsed and had to be lifted back into bed.” He took a breath which whistled in his nostrils. “Will you bring me my coat?”
I was still on my feet, facing him. Nothing had changed about Trevor except his eyes. They were glittering and sharp-edged like the broken blue edges of reality.
I didn’t know what I was going to say until I said: “In return for a written confession. It doesn’t have to be long. Do you have writing paper?”
“There’s some in the bedside drawer, I think. But what can I possibly write?”
“I’ll tell you what to say if you like.”
I got a tablet of stationery out of the drawer and handed him my pen. He wrote on his knee to my dictation:
“ ‘I confess the murder of Catherine Wycherly last November second. She resisted my advances.’ ”
Trevor looked up. “That’s rather corny.”
“What do you suggest?”
“No explanation at all.”
“There has to be one,” I said. “ ‘She resisted my advances. I also killed Stanley Quillan and Ben Merriman, who were blackmailing me for her murder.’ Sign it.”
He wrote slowly and painfully, frowning over his penmanship. I lifted the tablet from his blue-nailed hands. He had added after his signature:
“May God have mercy on my soul.”
And on mine, I thought. I tore out the page and laid it on the bureau, out of Trevor’s reach. Shadows lay tike sleeping dogs behind the closet door. Darkness and silence. We didn’t speak again.
The End