She never thought of me, Alice thought bitterly. I was always to remain here, managing and controlling but never living. I was the older, I had more right to the money, more right to Philip.
“Excuse me,” she said and rose abruptly from the table and went out into the hall. She could feel Philip’s eyes following her, and she knew if she turned around that he would be looking puzzled but not really interested. She closed the door quickly so she wouldn’t look back.
Other women fell in love and were loved. They might lose their men to death, to other women, but they had had something more than this patient, puzzled stare, this hand patting, this brotherly touch of shoulders. I have all this love and no one to give it to, no one wants it. I’m a farm girl who’s come to market with baskets of produce and can’t sell it, can’t even give it away. Take it home to rot or give it to the pigs or dump it out on the road. Get rid of it some way, it’s beginning to smell.
It’s my mind. I’m worse than Ida. I don’t want physical love, I want simply to know I am loved.
She passed a mirror and stopped to smile wryly at herself.
“Passionate by post,” she said in the cold reasonable voice she used even to herself. “That’s my limit. My idea of a bedroom scene is lots and lots of lovely conversation.”
Perhaps if I were to be loved I’d become different, I’d learn all the tricks, I’d be seductive.
The Idas, and the girls that Johnny knew, were brought up to have all the tricks, they knew these things instinctively and had never been thwarted. They lived in homes where the man was master, the man breadwinner and boss, having to be coaxed, cajoled and flattered. The man, the important figure.
If you had a father who was important in the home, Alice thought, perhaps all males were important to you all of your life.
Mr. Heath had been never more than a guest in his house, and his wife and children were never more than polite to him. He had no part in their lives, made no plans or decisions, or contributions to their income. If he was kind his kindness was unnoticed and unnecessary. If he cut any figure at all it was a comic one, a huge helpless ghost moving around the house.
Perhaps my parents aren’t to blame, Alice thought.
A brief picture of Dr. Loring flashed into her mind. He was wearing his white coat and was smiling in his half-gentle, half-exasperated way.
Ahead of her the door to the kitchen was closed, but Ida’s tearful whine crept through the cracks.
“A good girl I am! The nerve of... A good girl!”
Smiling dryly to herself, Alice moved quietly up the stairs.
“Take it easy,” Sands said. “Have you a handkerchief?”
It appeared that when you wore an apron a handkerchief was excess baggage. Ida snuffled into starched broadcloth.
“Wait’ll I tell my mother,” Ida said. “I’ll tell her what you...”
“I’m asking you once more about the doors. Once more. Maurice tells me the self-lock is kept on all the time. When Maurice and the nurse came in that night after twelve the self-lock was on. So was the light in your room. The nurse saw it.”
“Her!” Ida said. “And my light was on because I had a toothache!”
“Some time later in the night the lock was slipped back. We know that because when Mr. Heath came into the house the door was unlocked.”
“Why didn’t he lock it then?” Ida said sulkily.
“He did, but it was too late. The man was already inside.”
“Man! Always this man! You don’t have to go looking around for someone to throw it on, not if you got eyes in your head. They all wanted her dead excepting me. Her own sister making calf-eyes at...”
“There was a man,” Sands said, “and the door was left open for him by someone in this house.”
“Well, why don’t you pick on the rest of them? Old high-and-mighty pussyfoot could have done it the same as me. The old goat sniffing around that nurse!”
Sands smiled, pleased with this picture of Maurice with a cloven hoof.
Ida did not return the smile. To Ida smiles and jokes were always personal. If you and somebody else smiled, that was all right, the joke was on a third person. But if someone smiled at you...
Her mouth shook with rage. “Ask them all! Ask them about money! Ask them why my only friend in this house tried to kill herself!”
“With your help,” Sands said quietly.
She stared at him with her mouth open. Then she bounded toward the door and hurled herself against it “Wait,” Sands said. “No one is going to bring any action against you.”
“I didn’t know!” Ida screamed. “I didn’t know what she was asking me to do! She said a box on the top of the bathroom cupboard. She said to make her sleep. She said, sit there, Ida, with me, while I go to sleep. I’m tired, she said, and I’m scared, alone here in the dark. So I sat there and told her things, about my mother who is a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and the sparks fly from her in the dark and she talks with people not of this world. And pretty soon she is quiet and I think, she is dead. I think, I’ll ask my mother to get in touch with her spirit.”
“And why did she want to die?”
“She was scared. There was these eyes on her watching her. She said, someone is waiting for me to die; someone is watching me and waiting, someone hates me.”
“And you didn’t think it might be her imagination?”
“You can feel hate,” Ida said simply. “It’s like she said, it’s like eyes on you. And when you got no eyes yourself and people are wishing you dead and you’re scared of what comes after you’re dead... Me, I’m not scared because I know if I’m a good girl...”
“You’ll go to heaven. All right,” Sands said. Ida, enchanted angel, purged of sin and acne and provided with a handkerchief. Ida, ectoplasmic wraith, writing on slates and rapping on tables: this is Ida, I am well and happy here. Green pastures and streets of gold, smelling faintly of sweat and cabbage, hair and Ben Hur perfume. This is Ida, come to heaven. Hello, momma.
“Sarcasm don’t hurt me,” Ida said. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”
“Irrelevant, surely,” Sands murmured, but he moved to let her out of the door. He had reached the saturation point with Ida and he was convinced that she had not unlocked the door for Murillo. His conviction came from nothing she said, but the impression she gave to him and would have given to Murillo. He felt strongly that Murillo would never have bothered with her under any circumstances. Murillo, vain and dapper in black fedora, mauve silk shirt and pointed shoes, would never have stooped to Ida.
Joe Lee would have the clothes by now, would be finding out from the hat what color Murillo’s hair was now and how much there was of it and if he had dandruff. The coat would give the weight, the shoes the height. Joe had Mamie’s black kid gloves. The case would soon be closed. They’d have Murillo within a week or two and the loose ends would be caught up or snipped off. Yet Sands felt uneasy.
He phoned the hospital and talked to Pearson, Stevie Jordan’s doctor. Pearson inclined to the dark view: Mr. Jordan was still unconscious and would probably remain unconscious for a long time, if not forever. The bullet had been removed and sent to the police lab.
“I beg pardon, sir.”
Sands swung around and said, “Don’t sneak up on me, Maurice.”
“No, sir. I didn’t intend to, sir. I merely wondered if you were through with the kitchen. I am going to prepare Mr. Heath’s breakfast. Mr. Heath doesn’t come down to breakfast.”
“Why not?”
Maurice coughed. “Well, sir, he’s not what you might call a... a sociable man.”