Chapter 17
The country road, the blonde girl behind the wheel, the crash, the splintering of glass...
When Sands opened his eyes, he knew the answer. An impossible answer. He smiled and shook his head at the ceiling and said, “Nonsense.” It sounded like nonsense at first. It was like looking in the back of an algebra book and finding an answer that seemed impossible; and because it was so impossible you began to work over the equation and gradually everything came together and the answer was right.
He rolled off the bed, gave his suit a few ineffectual swipes with a clothes brush, and pushed his hat on his head. He moved briskly, like a man who is sure what all his actions for the day are going to be, or who is pretending to himself that he is sure.
He was pretending. As soon as he went out small things began to go wrong for him and hold him up. The ignition key wouldn’t fit the lock and when it did the engine wouldn’t turn over.
Delay. He drove a whole block with the emergency brake on. He stopped at green lights thinking that at any moment they might turn red. He let other cars pass him and didn’t pass anything himself except a popcorn man pushing his cart. The popcorn looked very buttery. You didn’t often get really buttery popcorn any more. He stopped the car and waited for the man to catch up.
When he drove on again he had two bags of popcorn on the seat beside him. At the next traffic light he glanced over at the two bags. He knew then that he was stalling himself and he began to swear softly.
“For Christ’s sake maybe I should get out and buy a couple of ties or do my Christmas shopping, or go for a swim at the Y.”
A blare of horns behind him. He let in the clutch and drove on, but he still didn’t hurry. He had no idea of what he was going to do. Talk, probably. Stall a little more. Give them all half an hour or more in their little world and then blow it up, sky high.
The beginning and the end. The first sight of the corpse and the last sight of the murderer. These were the moments to hold back.
But you couldn’t hold them back forever. He was on St. Clair already. When he stopped in front of the Heaths’ one of the bags of popcorn fell on the floor. He picked it up and thrust it savagely back on the seat, and got out of the car. Another car was pulling up behind his and he recognized Dr. Loring at the wheel.
Loring came up. He smiled from force of habit but the smile was brief and it fled, never touching the eyes.
“Well?” he said, clearing his throat.
Sands nodded. “Going in here? Social or professional?”
They looked at each other with cold hostility, yet the hostility was not personal, it was directed against their own situations and against the Heath family who were responsible for the situations.
“Social,” Loring said, “or both.” A falling leaf grazed his face and he brushed at it impatiently. “I’m a little worried and I don’t like to leave cases up in the air like this.”
“Your patient is dead,” Sands said, “not up in the air.”
He turned and began to walk up the driveway. After a moment Loring followed him and caught up.
He said, “Have you reported me?”
Sands shook his head. “Nothing to report, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Because bigger, more important things have happened? If they hadn’t happened, I suppose you’d report me?” He sounded bitter. “Don’t bother answering that. I should be grateful. I am grateful. Just look at me, how grateful!”
“Why are you a psychiatrist?” Sands said.
“Why? My father was one.”
“Personally, I don’t think you’re a very good one, are you? You upset easily.”
“Thanks. I’m grateful again, for the encouragement this time.”
“You should be,” Sands said mildly. “Probably no one else will ever tell you. I seem to have been divinely chosen to tell people things. Oh, skip it.”
“I don’t like being a psychiatrist,” Loring said, after a time. They had paused at the bottom of the steps of the veranda. “It’s so indefinite. You have to guess a lot and I’m no good at guessing because I’m afraid I’ll be wrong.”
“Aren’t we all?” Sands said, and went up the steps and put his finger on the doorbell.
While they waited Loring kept rubbing his foot absently on the doormat.
“Damn it,” he said finally. “I’m too old to start over. Why couldn’t you have kept it quiet?”
“Thirty-two, perhaps?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Ancient of days,” Sands said.
“I’d like to... well, I was pretty good at pediatrics.”
“Kids, you mean?”
“Yes. I sort of — I do, in fact, like them.”
“Extraordinary,” Sands said dryly.
“If I were a psychiatrist explaining it I’d say I had an inferiority complex and that the reason I prefer to deal with children and like them is that they do not challenge my superiority.”
“This is where I get out,” Sands said.
Alice opened the door. When she saw Loring she flushed slightly.
“Well,” she said. “Two of you this time. Come in.”
Loring coughed and said, “I... I just dropped in to see how things are going.”
“Oh, things are going beautifully,” Alice said, with a cold glance at Sands. “Mr. Sands here is trying to hang my brother and has driven Philip into heroic hysterics and Ida into a fit. Ida is praying, Johnny is drinking, Philip is girding his loins to go out and prove Johnny is innocent. And I—” she smiled bitterly “—am the keeper.”
“Sorry,” Loring mumbled. “I’ll wait, if you want to talk to the Inspector.”
“I do,” Alice said grimly. “But what I have to say to him is no secret.”
She turned to Sands. “And that’s not all, Mr. Sands. Maurice has given notice. He is up in his room taking a sunbath because you made him nervous! Of all the preposterous, ridiculous...”
She paused and beat her fists together. “I thought you were polite and quiet and very nice for a policeman. And yet here I am, the only sane one in the house now, thanks to you! I have to answer the phone and the doorbell and cook lunch and serve it and get people to eat it...” Her voice broke and she looked like a child about to cry.
“Oh, come now,” Sands said. “The exercise will do you good.”
She might have cried then from sheer rage but she was too conscious of Loring’s presence, aware that he was watching her, analyzing her.
She said to him quietly, “No, I’m not going to have hysterics. You won’t be called upon to...”
“Alice!”
Philip came lunging down the stairs, shouting, “Alice! I forbid you to have anything to — I forbid you to say anything more to that policeman!”
Alice turned, watching him come closer, her eyes narrowed. He had his topcoat on and was knotting a scarf around his neck. His hat was on the back on his head and a strand of hair hung over his forehead.
She thought, what a fool he looks, why must he, every time? I must protect him against looking foolish.
She went to meet him. She put her arm through his. He was too astonished to move, and stood silently with his mouth open, staring at her.
She knew that Sands and Loring were watching and that Philip had no dignity, no defense.
“Philip,” she said, smiling, and pressed his arm.
The surprise went out of his eyes and he began to smile too, gently, as if they were alone in the hall. He leaned down and brushed her forehead with his mouth, still smiling.
“Going out, Mr. James?” Sands said dryly.