Hanno’s Doll (10 page)

There was the K.K.K. talking to a man in a State-police uniform. The swashbuckle hats they wore. (Now came the uniforms.)

The K.K.K., made official by proxy, nodded stiffly. The uniformed man glanced at him in the new way to which he must become accustomed and without asking his permission (naturally!) disappeared into his room.

For what?

He said, “Mr. Starter … Mr. Starter …” He did not know what he wanted to ask, and then he knew. He said, “Mr. Starter, if I'm going to be sitting here, could I have my book?” Because this was a
déjà vu;
this had happened before. This was the jail in Wien all over again. He had suffered the policeman's kind of stare before; his room had been searched before. The request for his Montaigne came from the other time. The other time they had come to search his room and he had asked whether it was permitted to take his book to read.

A book was not a file, after all, not a gun, made of paper, harmless, not
Verboten
.

“B-b-book? I'll ask.”

The K.K.K. went into his room, and now, with the door open, he could see the bed being stripped. He heard the question asked, and a grunt for an answer. He shivered suddenly.

“It's too drafty in this hall. I'm going to take you into the sunroom.”

The nurse had turned the wheel chair so violently that he felt dizzy. (Or was it the abrupt return to the past?)

“I'm not keeping you in this drafty hall no matter
what
they say.”

The sunroom, at the end of the corridor, had no sun. It was invaded by the gloom outside, overrun by it, conquered. The colors of the cretonne cushions on the wicker chairs, the flowers on the cretonne curtains were faded by gloom, not sunlight. But the nurse, he knew, had meant well, and he said, “Thanks,” trying not to shiver again.

Then he saw that there was someone sitting on the rattan chair in the corner, feet planted, hands around something wrapped in a kitchen towel. Yellowed face and grim mouth. Anni. He said thankfully, “Annchen! And the chicken soup! That's your chicken broth, isn't it, Annchen?”

Her haunted eyes put chicken broth (even hers!) in its place.

“Annchen, don't look like that. It was an accident, Annchen.”

She nodded, set the towel-wrapped soup on the floor and stood up.

From the corridor, they heard, “Wh-wh-what the h-h-hell! What the h-h-hell!”

The K.K.K. Coming running.

“Miss Claremot.”

Miss Claremot was his nurse. She went to meet the K.K.K. “That hall's drafty. I'm not leaving a patient in that drafty hall for nobody!”

The K.K.K. came hurrying in. “You shoulda asked me f-f-first, Miss Claremot.”

“He is my patient,” she said.

He soothed her. “Okay. O-k-k-k-kay. I'll stay here with him.”

“Okay for me to get on with my duties?”

“S-s-sure. Sure.”

The nurse left, flouncing. Exit flouncing.

“H-h-here's your book, Mr. D-D-Dietrich.” He looked at it, at anything but him or Anni's haunted eyes. “
Essays of Montaigne
, h-h-huh?”

“Yes. Not a who-done-it, Mr. Starter. You think I wouldn't have been such a fool as to try to hide a body if I had read less Montaigne and more whodunits? Anni, this young man thinks I should have read more whodunits, and then I wouldn't have tried to hide a body in Felix's funk hole.”

She said, “Why did you hide it, Hanno? Why
did
you, Hanno?”

“For Puppchen, of course! That doesn't convince him, Anni. For Puppchen, quite simply. Mr. Starter, Anni will tell you. She understands. Look at Anni's face, Mr. Starter. She finds it quite understandable that I hid the body for Puppchen's sake.”

“Certainly I believe it. Believe it! Of course! He would do anything for her, Mr. Starter. There is nothing he wouldn't do—for Puppchen. The highest. The lowest. Take my word for it, there is nothing, nothing, he wouldn't do for her.” She tapped her breast militantly, as if it weren't a woman's breast any more.

(He began to wonder. Was this Anni?)

She looked at him. Her nostrils flared. “I will get on a witness stand and swear that to anyone. Oh, yes,” she said, “on the Bible.”

How quickly thought carried you. How far thought carried you … because of what Anni had just said, not the words so much but the tone of it; the tone of “nothing he wouldn't do … the highest … the lowest …” because of that. From nothing, from a tone merely, a cut to a voice, from the rolling way Anni was now standing, one hand on her hip, from the sneer on her face; from these things Anni and the boy became, in thought, one person.

Now he had to force his eyes back to this new land of Anni to which omniscient thought had carried him, and raised his head just in time to intercept a signal from the K.K.K. to Anni.

The K.K.K. was advising her to leave the sunroom. (While she could?)

The K.K.K. had been quietly moving so that now he stood between Anni and the wheel chair. (He heard himself talking about “less Montaigne and more whodunits.”) He asked himself, Who done it? and gave the chair a savage thrust, whereupon the K.K.K. blocked the way. (So he could not get at Anni.) He now had to lean sidewise out of the wheel chair to see Anni's face. He said, “You told them about Felix's funk hole, Anni. Judas! You told them! Judas!”

She came around the K.K.K. “Dirty Judas, Hanno?”

“It was you!”

“It was me. Yes!
Ja!
”

The K.K.K. was at Anni's side again. He said pacifying, “They would have found it anyhow, Mr. D-D-Dietrich. Once th-they traced the guy t-t-to y-y-your place, it was j-just a m-matter of t-time.” He put up his hand to restrain Anni, but she thrust it away.

He said, “So? And how did they trace the boy to Felix's house, Anni? Tell me that. I want to know how they traced the boy to the place.”

“I will tell you.”

“Mrs. L-le-”

“He should know how it happened.”

“She's proud of herself for telling them. She's proud, my God!”

“I am going to sit here and tell him. Let me sit.”

The K.K.K. stationed himself between Hanno and the wicker chair into which Anni now lowered herself. (It creaked.) The K.K.K. stood there, alert, prepared for anything.

He was the one who should have been prepared. But was one ever prepared for betrayal by a friend? His eyes filled with tears.

She said, “If you will listen …”

He remembered how many times she had spoken those words, “if you will listen.”

He said, “I will listen.”

“Then listen. Stop crying. Listen!”

It hadn't started with her, Anni said. With the mail. “Do you hear, Hanno? With the mail.” It had started with his mail, which had been piling up.

It had started because they would not allow him visitors at the hospital in the beginning, when he had been so sick, and Ernest believed it would be good for Puppchen to have something to do. Then Puppchen suggested doing the mail for him.

It had started on the day after New Year's when Miss Metal came into his office, where Puppchen was trying to forget her worry in answering letters for him Anni had been with Puppchen in the office that day. Miss Metal had come in with still more mail, and when Puppchen saw how much there was—it was too much. Puppchen had thrown up her hands and asked Miss Metal if she could get him a new secretary.

It had started with Miss Metal. The request for a new secretary had started it.

Miss Metal had promptly thrown a fit, Anni said. “A fit.” She would never get another secretary for Mr. Dietrich. Never! They could cut her up into little pieces but she wouldn't get another girl for him to kill.

“A girl to kill? I killed? I
killed?
”

Yes, Miss Metal said he had killed, he had killed. If he hadn't ruined Miss Mildred, she wouldn't have needed to run away to marry Philip Scott, and then she would be alive now.

“I ruined? Me?”

“Yes, you, Hanno.”

Did anyone think that Miss Metal for one moment believed that it had been Philip Scott who had ruined Miss Mildred? Not in a million years! Miss Metal knew Philip Scott. Miss Metal had gone out with Philip Scott.

“
Ach Gott!
That, too? Jealousy, too?”

Miss Metal knew Philip Scott through and through and she knew—everyone knew—about men like Hanno. “Like you, Hanno!” Men like you got around a girl, Hanno, when she was stage-struck, theatre-crazy. Men like Hanno made promises, and girls like Milly fell for them and then when the girl got into trouble, men like him married them off to decent guys like Philip Scott. Philip Scott thought he was wonderful. Philip Scott thought Hanno was so wonderful because he had been on Broadway and everyone knew him and he was such a celebrity. Philip Scott thought it was so wonderful for the college when a Broadway and Hollywood big shot condescended to work in their theatre.

“She told Puppchen that I had seduced Miss Mildred?”

She had told Puppchen, but Puppchen hadn't believed it for a minute, not for a minute.

“
Ach,
” he said. Then he said, “Miss Mildred is dead now, Anni.…”

“Yes, dead.”

“She can't tell them that I never touched her. She can't throw Miss Metal's stupid lie back in her teeth.” God, God, if only Puppchen knew it was a lie! If the rest of them believed Miss Metal … If they think that I was the child's father and that the boy came to Felix's house to—to knock his block off.… Or, he thought, to blackmail him. Suppose they believed that the boy had come there to Felix's house to blackmail him. How could he prove that it was an accident, if all now believed Miss Metal? He wiped his hand across his face.

Anni said, “I know. It is bad, Hanno. It is very bad.”

He looked at the K.K.K. and turned away. “Anni, if they call it murder … if they call it a murder because they think they have found a motive …”

She said, “They will call it murder, Hanno.”

“Thanks! Thanks, Anni. For what you did to me, thanks.”

“Hanno—let me tell you …”

“That it was Miss Metal who knew about the funk hole and showed it to the police?”

“Hanno, let me tell you! If you will listen, Hanno.”

He said, “So?”

So Puppchen had not believed Miss Metal. Puppchen had defended him. Yes, Miss Mildred had been pregnant, Puppchen said, and that was why it had been necessary for her to marry Philip Scott. But, Puppchen said, he, Hanno, had helped Miss Mildred only because he was a good man, not because he was in any way responsible. He had helped Miss Mildred the way he would help anyone who was in trouble.

Then who was the father? If he wasn't the father, who was the father? Philip?

Not Philip. Someone.

Someone who? Who someone?

Puppchen didn't know.

Well, Miss Metal knew. Miss Metal knew there was no such someone. There had been no one but Hanno Dietrich. If Milly had had a decent love affair with a young fellow … If Milly had been decently in love, she would have told Miss Metal about it. Miss Metal would have understood such a thing. She was not so narrow-minded. Milly didn't tell. Milly had kept it from Miss Metal (not like Milly at all) because she had sold herself to Hanno Dietrich and Milly knew what Miss Metal would have thought about
that
! No better than a prostitute, Miss Metal would have said, and Milly knew it.

Puppchen had not been able to convince Miss Metal. Anni had not been able to convince Miss Metal. No amount of faith in him, Puppchen's faith and (yes!) Anni's faith, had been able to convince Miss Metal.

Puppchen would have to have proof to convince Miss Metal. And then she got the proof. It was the wool.

“The wool?” he asked Anni. “What do you mean ‘the wool'?”

Puppchen had been, remember, working at Miss Mildred's desk. Miss Mildred's desk had been left just as Miss Mildred left it. Miss Metal hadn't been able to bring herself to touch it, and when Puppchen had opened Miss Mildred's desk drawer, she had seen the wool there. She had seen what remained of Miss Mildred's wool, what had been left over from the sweater Miss Mildred had knitted and which Puppchen had seen Miss Mildred knitting. There it was in the drawer: little balls of wool, the needles and the printed directions for making the sweater.

(Do you think I haven't seen you stuffing away your guilty knitting in that drawer?

Oh, it's finished. I finished it
. And Miss Mildred had told him how she had given it to the boy that evening, and how it had fitted so well and how handsome he had looked in it.) Then he remembered Puppchen once asking him how he liked the pattern of that sweater. She, too, had seen Miss Mildred knitting … before that night, oh, long before that night.

So Puppchen, having seen the wool in the drawer, asked Miss Metal who Miss Mildred had knitted that sweater for if not for some man. Perhaps this man was Miss Mildred's lover.

Perhaps. Perhaps.

Did Miss Metal believe that Miss Mildred had knitted that sweater for Hanno Dietrich?

No. Yes, Miss Metal had also seen the sweater being knitted. Perhaps, Miss Metal said, it had been for Milly's father, she had no brother. Yes, Miss Metal had asked Milly whom she was knitting the sweater for, but Milly wouldn't tell her, had teased her, “Wouldn't you like to know? Wouldn't you like to know?” Miss Metal had been sensitive about being thought nosy, so she had dropped her questions; it had been Milly's business, of course, whom she knitted sweaters for … but why not simply for Milly's father?

So Puppchen and Anni had asked Miss Metal to telephone Miss Mildred's father from the office. Miss Metal hadn't wanted to call Milly's father. She felt responsible in a way for Milly's death. It had been she who had brought Milly to Bradley. Her fault, too! But Puppchen and Anni had made her see that it wasn't fair to make the accusation she had made and not try to clear it up.