The Blunderer (16 page)

“It's a piece of real bad luck,” Jon's deep voice said. “Is it going to get in the papers?”

“I don't know. I didn't ask.”

“You should have.”

“I should have done a lot of things.”

“Are they convinced it was suicide?”

“I don't think so. I think it's still open. Open to some doubt.” He didn't want to tell Jon just how openly suspicious Corby had been. Walter realized that Jon could be just as suspicious as Corby—if he chose to be suspicious. Walter looked at Jon, wondering what he was thinking. He saw only Jon's familiar profile, a little frowning, the underlip pushed out.

“It might not get in the papers, even if you're possibly under suspicion,” Jon said. “In a few days, something conclusive might turn up, proving it a murder or a suicide. Personally, I believe it's suicide. I wouldn't worry about the papers.”

“Oh, it's not that that I'm worried about!”

“What is it then?”

“The shame, I suppose. Being caught in a lie.”

“Take a nap. It's a long way to New York.”

Walter didn't want to sleep, but he put his head back, and a few minutes later he did doze off. He woke up when the car made a swerve. They were driving through a gray section of warehouses—watertanks on stilts, a gin factory that looked like a glass-fronted hospital. It struck Walter that he had made a very stupid mistake in being obviously resentful of Corby's questions. Corby after all was only doing his job. If he met Corby again, he thought, he'd behave very differently.

“Where'll it be?” Jon asked. “My house or yours? Or do you want to be alone tonight?”

“I don't want to be alone. My house, if you don't mind. I wish you'd spend the night.”

Jon drove to his garage in Manhattan to pick up his own car. Before he got out of Walter's car, he said, “I think you'd better be prepared that this
can
get into the papers, Walt. If there's anybody you want to tell it to before it does, maybe you ought to, tonight.”

“Yes,” Walter said. He would tell Ellie tonight, he thought.

21

I
t was nearly 11 p.m. when they got to Benedict, but Claudia was still there. She had stayed to take the telephone messages, she said. She had a handful for him. Ellie had called twice.

Walter told Jon to see what he could find to eat in the refrigerator, then he drove Claudia into Benedict so she could get the eleven o'clock bus for Huntington. On the way back, he stopped at the Three Brothers Tavern and called Ellie.

“Claudia didn't know where you were,” Ellie said. “Why didn't you call me all day?”

“I'll have to explain when I see you. Is it too late for you to come over to the house? Jon's here and I can't come to you.”

Ellie said she would come.

Walter drove home and told Jon that Ellie was on her way over.

“Have you been seeing much of Ellie?” Jon asked him.

“Yes,” Walter said stiffly. “Now and then I see her.” He made himself a drink, and picked up one of the roast beef slices that Jon had put out on a plate. He was conscious of Jon's silence. Walter didn't want the roast beef. He gave it to Jeff, who was prancing nervously around the room, then went to the telephone to call Mrs. Philpott, whose message had an underlined
Please call
on it.

Ellie arrived while he was talking to Mrs. Philpott, and Jon opened the door for her. Mrs. Philpott had nothing of any importance to say, and after a moment Walter realized she was drunk. She was praising Clara extravagantly. She commiserated with him. He had lost the most brilliant, the most charming, attractive,
liveliest
creature in the world. Walter wanted to crush the phone in his hand. He tried several times to get away, and kept interrupting her with thanks for her call. Finally, it was over.

Jon and Ellie stopped talking as he came back into the living-room. Ellie looked up at him anxiously.

“Would you rather be alone, Walt?” Jon asked.

“No, thanks,” Walter said. “Ellie, I have to tell you something I've already told Jon. Last night—Thursday night—I followed Clara's bus. I followed it to the place where she was killed, where she jumped off the cliff. I was looking for her and I never found her. It must have happened just before I got there. I waited and looked all around for her until the bus left, and finally I came back.”

“She was missing and you knew it?” Ellie asked incredulously.

“I wasn't absolutely sure. I thought she might have got off the bus somewhere else without my seeing her. Or I thought I might have been following the wrong bus.”

“And you didn't tell anybody?” she asked.

“I wasn't absolutely sure that it was
Clara
who was missing.” Walter said impatiently. “I was about to report it to the police yesterday morning after I called Harrisburg and found she hadn't arrived, but the police notified me first—that they'd found her body.” Walter looked at Elbe's puzzled face. He knew there was no explanation but the real one: that he'd felt guilty even as he had waited around the bus, that he had even had some crazy hallucination afterwards, driving back to New York, that he had taken her into the woods and killed her. He picked up a glass from the coffee table and drank. “Well—this evening I went to the police in Philadelphia. I was seen around the bus stop. I was identified. It'll probably be out in the papers. I don't think I'm suspected of murder. It's still considered a suicide. But if they
do
want to make anything of it in the papers—well, they could, that's all.”

Jon sat with his head tipped back against the sofa pillow, quietly listening, but Walter had the feeling Jon didn't like his story, was beginning to doubt it.

“Who identified you?” Ellie asked.

“A man named De Vries. Corby—either the man remembered me because I looked strange, walking up and down the restaurant looking for Clara, or Corby really suspects me and took the trouble to describe me to this fellow. De Vries was one of the passengers on the bus.”

“Who is Corby?”

“A detective. From Philadelphia. The one I talked to when I identified Clara.” Walter managed to keep his voice steady. He lighted a cigarette. “According to him—at least what he said at first—Clara was a suicide.”

“If the man saw you the whole time—”

“He didn't,” Walter interrupted her. “He didn't see me when I first arrived, when Clara must have jumped off the cliff. He saw me waiting in the restaurant afterwards.”

“But if you'd done it—killed her—you wouldn't have waited around the restaurant looking for her for fifteen minutes!”

“Exactly!” Jon said.

“That's right.” Walter sat down on the sofa. Ellie took his hand and held it between them on the sofa.

“You're afraid aren't you?” Ellie asked him.

“No!” Walter said. He saw that Jon saw their hands, and he pulled his hand away. “But it couldn't look worse, could it? A thing like this never can be proven one way or the other, can it?”

“Oh, yes,” Jon drawled impatiently. “They'll hammer at you for a while, they'll get more facts, then they'll decide that it's suicide, that it couldn't have been anything else.”

Walter looked at Jeff, curled up asleep in the armchair. Whenever a car rolled up, Jeff was at the door, looking for her. Walter jumped up to get another drink.
He
had loved Clara once, too, he thought. Nobody seemed to remember that he had loved Clara except old Mrs. Philpott. He smiled a little bitterly as he shot the soda into his glass. When he turned around, Ellie was looking at him.

Ellie stood up. “I've got to be going. I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Walter asked.

“To see Irma—my friend in New York. I'm going to drive her out to East Hampton. She has some friends there and we're invited for lunch.”

Walter wanted to beg Ellie to stay a little longer, and he didn't dare in front of Jon, didn't even have the courage for that. “Will you call me tomorrow?” he asked. “I'll be home all day—except between three and five.” Between three and five was the funeral ceremony at the church in Benedict.

“I'll call you,” Ellie said.

He walked with her out to her car. He sensed a coolness in her that he felt helpless to do anything about. Then she said through her car window: “Try not to worry, Walter. We'll come through all right.” She leaned towards him, and he kissed her.

Walter smiled. “Good night, Ellie.”

She drove off. Walter whistled to Jeff, who had come out with them, and they went back into the house. Neither he nor Jon said anything for several minutes.

“I like Ellie,” Jon said finally.

Walter only nodded. There was another silence. Walter could imagine exactly what Jon was imagining about Ellie. Walter pressed his hands together tensely. His hands were sweating.

“But until this blows over,” Jon said, “I'd keep Ellie strictly out of the picture.”

“Yes,” Walter said.

They did not speak of Ellie again.

The next morning, Jon came into Walter's study with the paper in his hand.

“It's in,” Jon said, and tossed the paper down on Walter's couch.

22

I
n the roomy square kitchen of his two-story house in Newark, Melchior Kimmel sat breakfasting on rye bread with cream cheese and a mug of rich black coffee with sugar. The Newark
Daily News
was propped up in front of him against the sugar bowl, and he was staring at the lower corner of the front page. His left hand had stopped in mid-air with the half-eaten piece of bread in it. His mouth stayed open and his heavy lips grew limp.

Stackhouse. He remembered the name, and the photograph clinched it.
Stackhouse.
He was positive.

Kimmel read the two short columns shrewdly. He had followed her and had been identified, though there still seemed to be some doubt as to whether he had killed her. “Murder or Suicide?” was the heading of one paragraph.

… Stackhouse stated that he did not see his wife at all at the bus stop. He waited about 15 minutes, he reported, then drove back to Long Island after the bus departed. He claimed that it was not until the next day, when he was asked by the Allentown police to identify his wife's body, that he knew that any harm had come to her. Official autopsy indicated no injuries other than those which would have been inflicted by her fall down the cliff…

Kimmel's bald head bent forward intently.

“Why Didn't He Report Wife's Absence?” was the heading of the last paragraph. Why indeed, thought Kimmel. That was exactly his question.

But the last paragraph stated only that Stackhouse was a lawyer with the firm of Cross, Martinson and Buchman, and that Stackhouse and his wife had been about to be divorced. The last was an interesting point.

A chill went over Kimmel, a kind of panic. Why had Stackhouse come all the way from Long Island to see him? Kimmel stood up slowly from the table and glanced around him at the chaos of beer bottles under the sink, at the electric clock over the stove, at the worn oilcloth on the drainboard, patterned with tiny pink and green apples that always reminded him of Helen. Stackhouse must have done it. There was no explaining away a lot of funny coincidences like this! And Stackhouse was going to be nailed. He would probably break down and admit it after two hours' pressure. And suppose that would give the police ideas about himself?

Well, he
wasn't
the kind of man who would break down. And what kind of proof could they ever get on him? Especially after more than two months? Kimmel calculated carefully just when Stackhouse had come to his shop. About three weeks ago, he thought, early in October. He still had the order slip for the book, because it hadn't come in yet. He wondered if he should destroy the order slip? If the book arrived, Kimmel thought, he wasn't going to notify Stackhouse. By then, Stackhouse might be in prison, anyway.

Kimmel began to tidy up his kitchen. He wiped the white enamel table with a moist dishcloth. There was always Tony, he thought. Tony had seen him in the movie, and that story of his having spent the evening at the movie was so entrenched in Tony's mind by now that Tony believed he had looked at the back of his neck all evening. But Tony had spent only five minutes here and there with the police. What if they questioned him for several hours?

But it hadn't happened yet, Kimmel thought.

He began to gather up beer bottles by their necks, the oldest bottles first. The beer bottles extended along the wall from under the sink all the way to the kitchen door. He looked around, saw an empty cardboard carton by the stove, and kicked it clumsily over near the bottles. He loaded the carton and took it out the back door to his dark Chevrolet sedan that stood in the yard. He came back with the carton empty and he filled it up again. Then he washed his hands with soap and water, because the bottles had been dusty, and went upstairs to his bedroom to get a clean white shirt. He was still in his underwear and trousers.

He took the bottles to Riccos's Delicatessen on the way to his shop. Tony was back of the counter.

“How're you today, Mr. Kimmel?” Tony asked. “What's a matter? Cleaning house?”

“A wee bit,” Kimmel said lightly. “How's the liverwurst today?”

“Oh, fine as usual, Mr. Kimmel.”

Kimmel ordered a liverwurst sandwich and one of herring-in-cream with onions. While Tony made them, Kimmel drifted along the stands of cellophane-wrapped foods, and came back with a package of mixed nuts, peanut-butter crackers, and a little bag of chocolate marshmallow cookies, which he spilled out on the counter.

Tony still owed him money when he figured the deposits on the bottles. Kimmel bought two bottles of beer: it was too early for beer to be sold, but Tony always made an exception for him.

Kimmel got into his car and drove at a leisurely speed towards his shop. He loved Sunday mornings, and he generally spent Sunday morning and part of the afternoon in his shop. His shop was not open for business on Sundays, but it gave Kimmel a greater sense of leisure and freedom to pass his only free day in the same place in which he worked all week. Besides, he loved his shop better than his house, and here on Sundays he could browse among his own books undisturbed, eat his lunch, doze, and answer at length some of the correspondence, erudite and whimsical, he received from people he had never seen but whom he felt he knew well. Booklovers: if you knew the kind of books a man wanted, you knew the man.