The Blunderer (21 page)

“Oh, sure, Mr. Kimmel.”

26

“L
ieutenant Corby to see you, Mr. Stackhouse,” Joan's voice said over the speaker on his desk. “Shall I tell him to wait or will you see him now?”

Walter glanced at Dick Jensen, who was standing beside him. They were busy with a tax case brief that had to be ready by five o'clock. “Tell him to wait just a minute,” Walter said.

“Shall I leave?” Dick asked.

Dick probably knew who Corby was, Walter thought. Dick and Polly must have had a visit from Corby—the Ireton's had had two—but Dick had said nothing about it. “I suppose I'd better see him alone, yes,” Walter said.

Dick picked up his unlighted pipe from Walter's desk and walked to the door without a word or a glance.

Walter told Joan he was ready, and Corby came in at once, brisk and smiling.

“I know you're busy,” Corby said, “so I'll get to the point. I'd like you to come over to Newark with me this afternoon to meet Kimmel.”

Walter stood up slowly. “I don't care to meet Kimmel. I've got work that has to be—”

“But I want Kimmel to meet you,” Corby said with his mechanical smile. “Kimmel is guilty, and we're winding up his case. I want Kimmel to see you. He thinks you're guilty, too, and it's got him scared.”

Walter frowned. “And you think I'm guilty, too?” he asked quietly.

“No, I don't think you are. I'm after Kimmel.” Corby's smile brightened his blue eyes with a completely false cheer. “Of course, you can refuse to go—”

“I think I do.”

“—but I can make your own situation several times as unpleasant as it is for you now.”

Walter's thumbs gripped the edge of his desk. He had been congratulating himself that Corby hadn't released the story of the Kimmel clipping to the newspapers yet, had even entertained some hope that Corby had realized it might all be a series of coincidences and that he could be innocent. Now Walter realized that Corby meant to hold the Kimmel clipping over him. “What's your objective in all this?” Walter asked.

“My objective is to get the truth out,” Corby said, smiling self-consciously. He lighted a cigarette.

Suddenly Walter thought: his objective was to advance himself, to trap two men instead of one if he could, to win commendation or a promotion for himself. Suddenly Corby's ruthless ambition struck Walter as so patent, he was amazed he hadn't realized before that it was Corby's only motivation. “If you're talking about publicizing the Kimmel clipping episode,” Walter said, “go ahead, but I don't care to meet Kimmel.”

Corby looked at him sharply. “It's more than just a story, just an episode. It could ruin your whole life.”

“I fail to see the picture as clearly as you do. You haven't yet proved Kimmel guilty, much less guilty of the particular actions that you seem to think both of us—”

“You don't know what I've proved,” Corby said confidently. “I'm reconstructing exactly what happened between Kimmel and his wife just around the time she was killed. When that's spread out in front of Kimmel he's going to break down and confess exactly what I'm accusing him of.”

Exactly what
I'm
accusing him of. His arrogance stunned Walter to silence for a moment. The implication was that Kimmel's confession—or Kimmel's retaliatory statement that he had visited him in his shop last month, which Kimmel might already have made—would drag himself down in the same guilt, make him confess, too.

“Do you agree to come? I'm asking a favor of you. I can promise you, if you do, that nothing of it will get in the newspapers.” Corby's voice was eager, supremely confident, and to Walter appalling.

After he saw Kimmel it wouldn't need to get in the papers, Walter thought. Maybe Kimmel had already told Corby that he had been to his shop. Why
wouldn't
Kimmel have told him? Corby looked as if he knew, as if he were waiting for him to admit it now. If he refused to go Corby would bring Kimmel to the office, Walter supposed. Corby would force the meeting one way or another. “All right,” Walter said. “I'll go.”

“Fine,” Corby smiled. “I'll be back around five. I've got a car. We'll drive over.” Corby waved a hand and turned to the door.

Walter kept on gripping the desk after Corby was gone. What terrified him was the fact that Corby believed him guilty now, too. Until five minutes ago Walter had dared to believe that Corby didn't, or at least that Corby was willing to hold his attack in abeyance until he was sure. Walter felt he had just agreed to walk straight into hell.

“Walter!” Dick snapped his fingers. “What's the matter? In a trance?”

Walter glanced at Dick, then looked down at the stapled papers on his desk that were labeled “Burden of Proof.”

“Listen, Walter, what goes on with this?” Dick nodded towards the door. “The police still questioning you?”

“One man,” Walter said. “Not the police.”

“I don't think I told you,” Dick said, “Corby came around to see Polly and me one night at the apartment. He asked me questions about you—and Clara, of course.”

“When?”

“About a week ago. A little longer.”

It was before Corby found the Kimmel clipping, Walter thought. The questions must have been mild. “Asked you what?”

“Asked me frankly if I thought you were capable of it. He doesn't mince words, apparently. I told him emphatically no. I told him how you reacted when Clara came out of the coma. A man doesn't react the way you did if he wants to kill his wife.”

“Thanks,” Walter said weakly.

“I didn't know Clara tried to kill herself, Walter. Corby told me that. I can understand the whole thing a lot better, knowing that. I can understand that Clara—well, that she killed herself the way she did.”

Walter nodded. “Yes.You'd think everybody would be able to understand it.”

Dick asked in a lower voice, “You're not in any particular trouble, are you, Walt—with this detective Corby?”

Walter hesitated, then shook his head. “No, no particular trouble.”

“
Any
kind of trouble?”

“No,” Walter said. “Shall we get back to work?” Walter wanted to get the job done so he could be downstairs to meet Corby at five.

At five o'clock, Corby repeated his offer to drive Walter to Newark and back in his car, and Walter accepted it. They rode in silence to the Holland Tunnel. In the middle of the tunnel, Corby said: “I realize you're going out of your way to help me, Mr. Stackhouse. I appreciate it.” Corby's voice had a vibrant, buried sound in the tunnel. “I expect this to have some results, though they may not show up right away.”

Corby drove the intricate way to the bookshop as if he had driven it many times. Walter had slipped unconsciously into a role of pretending he had never seen the place before, though he asked no questions. The smell of the shop—stagnant, dusty, permeated with the sweetness of dry-rotting pages and bindings—seemed intensely and terrifyingly familiar to Walter. There was nobody else but Kimmel in the shop. Walter saw Kimmel get slowly to his feet behind his desk, like an elephant rising, on guard.

“Kimmel,” Corby said familiarly as they approached him, “I'd like you to meet Mr. Stackhouse.”

Kimmel's huge face looked blank. “How do you do?” Kimmel said first.

“How do you do?” Walter waited tensely. Kimmel's face was still expressionless. Walter could not decide if Kimmel had already betrayed him to Corby, or if he was going to, in a cold quiet way, as soon as Corby asked the proper questions.

“Mr. Stackhouse has also had the misfortune of losing his wife recently,” Corby said, tossing his hat on to a table of books, “and by a catastrophe at a bus stop.”

“I think I read of it,” Kimmel said.

“I think you did,” Corby said, smiling.

Walter shifted, and glanced at Corby. Corby's manner was an unpleasant, unbelievable combination of professional bluntness and social decorum.

“I think I also told you,” Corby went on placidly, “that Mr. Stackhouse was also acquainted with the story of your wife's murder. I found an August clipping about her murder in Mr. Stackhouse's scrapbook.”

“Yes,” Kimmel said solemnly, nodding his bald head a little.

Walter's lips twitched in an involuntary, nervous smile, though he felt panicked. Kimmel's tiny eyes looked completely cold, indifferent as a murderer's eyes.

“Does Mr. Stackhouse look like a murderer to you?” Corby asked Kimmel.

“Isn't that for you to find out?” Kimmel asked, placing the tips of his fat, flexible fingers on the green blotter of his desk. “I don't understand the purpose of this visit.”

Corby was silent a moment. An annoyed frown was settling in his eyes. “The purpose of this visit will come out very soon,” he said.

Kimmel and Walter looked at each other. Kimmel's expression had changed. There was something like curiosity in the little eyes now, and, as Walter watched, one side of the heart-shaped mouth moved in a faint smile that seemed to say: We are both victims of this absurd young man.

“Mr. Stackhouse,” Corby said, “you don't deny that Kimmel's actions were in your mind when you followed the bus your wife was on, do you?”

“When you say Kimmel's actions—”

“We've discussed that,” Corby said sharply.

“Yes,” Walter said, “I do deny that.” In the last seconds a sympathy for Kimmel had sprung up in Walter so strong that it embarrassed him, and he felt he should try to conceal it. He was positive now that Kimmel had never told Corby about his visit to the shop, and that he was not going to.

Corby turned to Kimmel. “And I suppose you deny that it crossed your mind that Stackhouse killed his wife the same way
you
did when you read about Stackhouse's being at the bus stop?”

“It could hardly have failed to cross my mind, since the newspapers either implied it or stated it,” Kimmel answered calmly, “but I did not kill my wife!”

“Kimmel, you're a liar!” Corby shouted. “You know that Stackhouse's behavior has betrayed
you.
And yet you stand there acting blank about the whole thing!”

With magnificent indifference, Kimmel shrugged.

Walter felt a new strength flow into him. He took a deeper breath. It occurred to him now that Kimmel had been afraid he would betray the visit, practically as afraid as he had been that Kimmel would betray it. Kimmel evidently intended to reveal as little as he could to Corby. Suddenly it seemed so heroic and generous on Kimmel's part that Kimmel appeared a shining angel in contrast to a diabolic Corby.

Corby was moving about restlessly. He had lost the well-bred schoolboy look. He was like a long, limber wrestler maneuvering, ready to take an unfair grip. “You don't think it's the least bit unusual that Stackhouse had torn the story of your wife's murder out of the papers and then followed the bus with his own wife on it the night she was killed?”

“You told me Stackhouse's wife was a suicide,” Kimmel said with surprise.

“That has not been proved.” Corby drew on his cigarette and paced up and down between Walter and Kimmel.

“Just what are you trying to prove?” Kimmel folded his arms in the white shirtsleeves and leaned against the wall. His glasses were empty white circles, reflecting the light over his desk.

“I wonder,” Corby sneered.

Kimmel shrugged again.

Walter could not tell if Kimmel was looking at him or not. He looked down at the book spread open on Kimmel's desk. The back of his neck ached as he moved. It was a very large old book with double columns on each page, like a Bible.

“Mr. Stackhouse,” Corby said, “didn't you think when you read the newspaper story of the Kimmel murder that Kimmel might have murdered his wife?”

“You asked me that,” Walter said. “I didn't think that.”

Kimmel slowly reached for a leather humidor on the top of his desk. He removed its top, offered the humidor to Walter, who shook his head, then to Corby, who did not look at him. Kimmel took a cigar.

Corby dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and ground it under his toe. “Another time,” he said bitterly. “Some other time.”

Kimmel pushed away from the wall, and looked from Corby to Walter and back again. “We are finished?”

“For today, yes.” Corby picked up his hat. Then he walked towards the door.

Kimmel bent to pick up the cigarette butt that Corby had dropped, and for a moment he blocked Walter's passage. He dropped the butt into the wastebasket by his desk. Then he stepped smartly aside for Walter to pass him, and followed them both to the front door. His huge figure had an elephantine dignity. He swept the door open for them.

Corby went out without a word.

Walter turned. “Good night,” he said to Kimmel.

Kimmel's eyes surveyed him coldly through the glasses. “Good night.”

At the car Walter said, “You don't have to drive me back. I can take a taxi from here.” His throat was tight, as if all his tenseness had suddenly gathered there.

Corby held the door open. “It'll be hard getting a taxi to New York tonight. I'm going back to New York anyway.”

To call on some more of my friends, Walter thought. It had started to rain in thin drizzling drops. The dark street looked like a tunnel in hell. Walter had a wild desire to rush back into the bookstore and talk to Kimmel, tell him exactly why he had torn the story out of the paper, tell him everything he had done and why. “All right,” Walter said. He dived quickly into the car and struck his head so hard on the door frame that he felt dizzy for a few seconds.

They said nothing to each other. Corby seemed to be fuming inwardly at the failure of his afternoon. They were back in Manhattan before Walter remembered that he had an appointment with Ellie. He looked frantically at his wrist watch and saw that he was an hour and forty minutes late.