“I found him sociable.”
“You did, sir?”
“I found him delightful, as a matter of fact.”
Maurice swallowed hard and turned away.
“He’s hardly old enough to be senile, is he? Let’s see. About your age, Maurice?”
“Yes, sir,” Maurice said tightly.
“Fond of him?”
“I have been with him for nineteen years.”
“It doesn’t follow, Maurice. Suppose you are fond of him, why not quit treating him like an imbecile? Get him down to meals, get him talking.”
Maurice flushed a deep red. “One would think to hear you that the family was mistreating him.”
“Perhaps they are,” Sands said, wishing he had never started the conversation. “From ignorance, not malice. Perhaps this family doesn’t understand human values. When the girl Kelsey was dying and afraid to die alone, she asked a kitchenmaid to sit with her.”
Maurice said stiffly, “She suffered from delusions, sir.”
“What, another one?”
“There is such a thing as heredity. Miss Kelsey imagined the eyes upon her and because Ida had come to the house after she first imagined the eyes she trusted Ida. It’s very simple. I must make Mr. Heath’s breakfast now.”
“Go ahead. I’ll watch.”
“I prefer...” Maurice began, but Sands was already arranging himself at the kitchen table.
“Why doesn’t the cook make Mr. Heath’s breakfast?”
“She has a migraine.” Maurice placed two slices of bread in a toaster with such careful attention to detail that the act seemed very difficult, one to be attempted only by an expert like Maurice.
“All sorts of nervous disorders in this house,” Sands said, “from delusions of persecution through senility to neurosis. Or has the cook an allergy?”
“I don’t know,” Maurice said grimly.
“The toast is burning.”
“The toaster is automatic and can’t burn the bread.”
“You think,” Sands said, watching a plume of smoke rise to the ceiling. “Maybe the toaster has a complex.”
Maurice folded his lips and removed the charred bread and flung it on the table. One of the pieces slid across to Sands. He caught it neatly.
“Good for retreads,” he said. “I’ll keep it.”
“Why are you here annoying me?” Maurice said savagely.
“I don’t know,” Sands said, and he didn’t know. He was aware only that he wanted to annoy someone because he was tired and uneasy and the refined stupidities of the Heath family irritated him.
Yet the reason was more basic than this. He was a reformer who despaired of reform. He wanted to sting them all into awareness, and change; but he had merely the sting of a bee, not the fangs of a snake. He couldn’t change any of these people. Let Maurice keep his prissy ceremonials, let Alice freeze over and Mr. Heath sink deeper into his bog and Ida wiggle her way to heaven.
He pushed back his chair and there was the high wail of wood on wax.
“Go to hell,” he said, and left Maurice brooding over the toaster like an alchemist over a crucible, intense and important.
“Watch it, Maurice, you never know what might come out of a toaster, might even be toast.”
Chapter 15
Johnny Heath, at thirty, should still have been at college. It was the life he liked, the life that suited him: people to talk to and drink with, girls who didn’t expect him to propose after two dates, careless comfortable clothes, men to look down on (those who got A’s) and to sympathize with (those who shared his own C’s). No woman to boss him, except by post and long-distance telephone. Fun and games, horseplay and rugby.
He had even thought, once or twice, of going back to take a post-grad course. But it wouldn’t be the same, and besides they wouldn’t let him into grad work since he had required five years to finish a three-year course.
But still. Nice to think about. Nice to have everything planned for you again, to have a goal post set up. All you had to do then was get there, any way at all, gain yards inch by inch or make a spectacular touchdown. And after the goal, what? Another goal post further away and hazy, with blurred lettering: Success. Make something of yourself.
Get a job. Be at the office at nine. Sell bonds. Sell five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds and then look up and see if the goal post is any nearer, or if you’ve reached it. It isn’t and you haven’t.
Somebody’s moved the damn thing further back, the lettering is no clearer. Or maybe your eyes aren’t so good, you’re older, your uniform’s wearing out, somebody’s got a grip on your ankle and your face is on the ground and the umpire went home to lunch. Get up. Another day, another nine o’clock, another bond.
He snapped the radio off and yawned.
“You’re late,” Philip said.
“I hope so,” Johnny said. “I hope to God so.”
“I thought they gave you a week off.”
“They did,” Johnny said. “One week off. But I’m too noble to take it. I go down today, stricken though I am. Then I break down. Then the boss says, ‘Heath’s a fine fellow, let’s give him two weeks off.’ You begin to perceive?”
“Yes,” Philip said shortly, “and I don’t like it.”
“You’ll live.” Johnny waved his hand and went out into the hall.
Inspector Sands was standing at the front door with his coat over his arm.
“Good morning,” Johnny said. “Going or coming? I’m going.”
“I want to talk to you,” Sands said.
“Sure, but I’m late.”
“I’ll drive you down.”
“I always take my own car.”
“Always except this morning,” Sands said. “Get your coat and hat.”
Johnny whistled. “Tough. Very, very tough this fine fall day.” He went to get his coat.
“I am investigating the death of Geraldine Smith.”
“Geraldine...?” Johnny turned around, his eyes blank. Sands knew the blankness was real, that Johnny had forgotten the girl.
“Smith,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Died, apparently, in an accident while riding in your car. Remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Johnny said irritably. “That was settled years ago.”
“Your mistake. I’m just settling it now.”
“I don’t understand. Why rake that up?”
“Get your coat and hat.”
“I’m not going,” Johnny said. “If you want to talk, talk here.”
“As you like.” Sands put his coat on the hall table and followed Johnny down the hall into a small room furnished with sun, wickerwork and yellow chintz. Johnny filled one-half of the room nicely which, Sands thought, made the whole thing far cosier than was necessary.
Johnny dangled one leg over the arm of a wicker chair and smiled at Sands.
“Why be cute?” Sands said. “Or can’t you help it?”
The smile faded. “Why be tough for that matter?”
“I just wanted to make it clear that no matter how charming your smile or glistening your teeth or open your countenance, you leave me cold. Save yourself trouble and just answer questions. How long had you known Geraldine Smith before she died?”
“A month or so, maybe. I met her at the club and took her out a couple of times. She was their singer then.”
“Nice girl?”
“Average. Rumor had it that she raped easily, but I wouldn’t know about that. I didn’t try it. She always acted very prim. Anyway, she had a boy friend at the time.”
“Who?”
“She never told me and I didn’t give a damn. I wasn’t trying to get her away from him. She was just a girl.”
“What happened the night of the accident?”
“It’s a long time ago...”
“Go ahead.”