The Blunderer (24 page)

“A Boston tea party,” Bill said. It was local slang for a cocktail party that got started at four on a weekend afternoon.

At least he had been invited, Walter thought. But it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't heard anything about any Thanksgiving or Christmas parties yet. Ordinarily, at this time of year, there was talk of eggnog parties, costume parties, and even sleigh-ride parties if it snowed. Walter was sure there had been talk. It just hadn't been addressed to him. Walter had been eating slowly and uncomfortably. He laid his knife and fork down. Betty and Ellie were talking in polite platitudes about the benefits of seeing people and possibly even a change of scene for Walter. Walter felt the silence between him and Bill was full of words: Clara had been dead only a month, and here was Ellie, sitting in the house having dinner. There had been one afternoon, about a fortnight ago, when the Iretons had seen him and Ellie buying groceries in the supermarket in Benedict. Walter still remembered how Bill had only waved to him, and had not come over to talk.

“Had any more unpleasant interviews with the police?” Bill asked Walter.

“No,” Walter said. “I haven't. Have you?”

“No—but I thought you might be interested to know that Corby's been talking to people at the club,” Bill said in a low tone that did not interfere with Ellie's and Betty's conversation. “Sonny Cole told me. He talked to Sonny and Marvin Hays, I think it was. And also Ralph.” Bill smiled a little.

Walter barely remembered that Ralph was the name of the club barman. “That's annoying,” Walter said calmly. “What do they know about me? I haven't been to the Club in months.”

“Oh, it's not about you—I don't suppose. They were asking—that is, this fellow Corby—Well, after all, Walter, I suppose what they're trying to prove is whether she was a suicide or whether somebody killed her, aren't they? I suppose they're sounding around for possible enemies.” Bill looked down at his clasped hands. He was pressing their palms together and making sucking noises with them.

Walter knew Corby had been asking questions about him, not about possible enemies. He saw that Betty and Ellie were listening now, too. And he had been there, right at the bus stop. They all knew it. Walter felt they were all waiting for him to make the statement, for the ten thousandth time, that he didn't do it. They were waiting to hear just how it would sound this time, to take it home and test it, taste it, turn it over and smell it, and decide if it were true or not. Or rather, not
quite
decide. Even Ellie, Walter thought. Walter kept a stubborn silence.

“Corby was around to our house again, too,” Bill went on in the same impassive voice that was a lot different from the friendly, excited voice he had used the night he had telephoned about Corby. “Told me some story of how he'd found a newspaper clipping in your house about the Kimmel case.”

Bill rolled it off as if he knew all about the Kimmel case. Walter glanced at Ellie, and in that split second saw the same look of waiting to hear what he would answer, a look that was almost as bad as the Iretons' blatant curiosity.

“Seems Corby thinks there's a similarity,” Bill said. He shook his head, embarrassed. “I sure wouldn't like to be—I mean—”

“What do you mean?” Walter asked.

“I mean, I guess it looks bad, Walter, doesn't it?” Now there was a sneaking fear in Bill's face, as if he was afraid Walter was going to jump up and hit him.

It was worse than if Corby had put it in the newspapers, Walter thought. Now he was telling everybody about it, giving everybody the idea it was a vital piece of evidence in the proof he was collecting, still too secret and explosive to be put into print. “I explained that newspaper story to Corby. My explanation was satisfactory,” Walter said, reaching for his cigarettes. “It looks bad if Corby chooses to make it look bad. He's trying to imply that Kimmel and I could both be murderers. Kimmel hasn't been proved guilty. He hasn't even been indicted. I certainly haven't been.”

Betty Ireton was sitting bolt upright, listening with eyes and ears.

“He seems to think Kimmel also followed his wife,” Bill began tentatively, “and killed her that night at the—”

“That hasn't been proved at all!” Walter said.

“Do you want a cigarette?” Ellie asked.

Walter hadn't found his cigarettes. He took the one Ellie gave him. “I don't see any similarity in my case to Kimmel's except that both our wives died while they were on bus trips.”

“Oh, they're not suspecting
you
,Walter,” Betty said reassuringly. “Good heavens!”

Walter looked at her. “Aren't they? What are they doing? Can you imagine how it is when you've told the same story over and over, every inch, every move you made, and they still don't believe you? As a matter of fact the police do believe me. It's Corby who doesn't—or pretends he doesn't. What I should do is appeal to the police for protection against Corby!” But he had already tried that. There was absolutely no way of stopping a detective on a police force from investigating a man he thought ought to be investigated.

“Walter-r,” Ellie said deprecatingly, trying to quiet him.

Walter looked down at his napkin. His shaking hands embarrassed him. The sudden waiting silence of everybody embarrassed him. He wanted to blurt out that if you keep repeating the same story over and over, you finally begin to doubt it yourself, because the words stop making sense. That was an important fact, but he couldn't say it because they would all make capital out of it. Even Ellie. Walter got up from the table and walked away, then turned around suddenly.

“Bill, I don't know if Corby told you also that Clara tried to kill herself last September.”

“No,” Bill said solemnly.

“She took sleeping pills. That's why she had that stay in the hospital. She had suicide on her mind. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but in view of this—these other facts—I think you ought to know about it.”

“Well, we heard something of that,” Bill said.

“We heard the
rumor
,” Betty Ireton corrected carefully. “I think it was Ernestine who told us. She thought so. Not from anything definite, but she's very intuitive about things like that. She knew Clara was in a bad state.” Betty spoke with the sweetness and decorum befitting the dead.

Betty and Bill still looked at him, expectantly. It took Walter aback. He had thought the sleeping pill episode would fairly prove that she killed herself. They were looking at him with the same question in their faces as before.

“I wonder what I'm supposed to do?” Walter burst out. “Who'll ever prove anything in a case like this?”

“Walter, I don't think they're investigating
you
.” Betty repeated. “You shouldn't feel so nervous—
personally.
My goodness!”

“That's very easy to say. I wouldn't like to be up against Corby myself,” Bill said. “I mean—I see what he's trying to do.”

“I'm sure he explained it,” Walter said. “He explains it to everybody.”

“I do want to tell you, Walter—not that I have to say it, I hope—that I told Corby I was absolutely sure you'd never do a thing like this. I know what they say about people who
do.
I mean that you never can tell about them. I feel differently about this.” Bill gestured with his open hands. It didn't make his words any stronger. “Even though you didn't get along, you never would have killed her.”

To Walter it sounded like total nonsense, and insincere nonsense at that. He wasn't even positive that Bill
had
said it to Corby. Walter swallowed down what he wanted to say about Corby, and came out with only a croaking “Thanks.”

There was another silence. Bill looked at Betty. They exchanged a long, trout-solemn look, and then Bill stood up.

“Guess we better be taking off. Let's go, hon.” Bill often proposed leaving before his wife did.

Betty hopped up obediently.

Walter felt like holding them physically while he said one thing more, one thing that would make them believe him. These were supposed to be his best friends in the neighborhood! He went with them to the door, stiffly, his hands in his jacket pockets. They were ready to turn against him, already were turned against him. The old favorite sport of the human race, hunting down their fellows.

“Good night!” Walter called to them. He managed to make it sound actually cheerful. He shut the door and turned to Ellie. “What do you make of that?”

“They're behaving like any other average people. Believe me, Walter. Probably better than most.”

“Well, have you seen any worse—towards me?”

“No. I haven't.” She began to clear the table. “If I had I'd tell you.”

From her tone Walter felt she wanted him to change the subject. But if I can't talk to you, he thought, who the hell can I talk to? Suddenly he imagined Jon being told about the Kimmel clipping, and Walter felt a sickening in his stomach. He imagined that pushing Jon over a brink of doubt into certainty. He began to help Ellie with the things on the table. Ellie already had it nearly done. She knew where everything went. She was faster than Claudia. The coffee was already started in the Chemex. She was going to wash up the dishes, but he told her to leave them for Claudia tomorrow morning. By the time they had straightened the kitchen the coffee was ready, and they took it into the living-room. Walter poured it.

Ellie sat down and put her head back tiredly against the sofa pillow. The light from the end of the sofa lay on her curving, Slavic cheekbone. She was thinner than she had been in summer, and she had lost nearly all her tan, but Walter thought her more attractive now than before. As he bent over her she opened her eyes. He kissed her on the lips. She smiled, but he saw a wary, wondering look in her eyes, as if she did not know what to make of him. She put her arm around his shoulder and held him, but she did not say anything to him. Nor he to her. He kissed her forehead, her lips, drawing peace and a kind of animal comfort from her body in his arms. But it was wrong that they didn't speak to each other, he thought. It was wrong that they kissed like this—he because she was there and available, and she because she wanted him, physically. He could sense it in her tense restraint, her held breath, and in the way she turned herself to him. It did not appeal to Walter, but still he held her and kissed her.

When Ellie got up to get a cigarette Walter could feel her desire like a pull, a drain on him across the space that separated them. He stood up to light her cigarette. She put her arms around his neck.

“Walter,” she said, “I want to stay here tonight.”

“I can't. Not here.”

Her arms tightened around his neck. “Let's go to my place, then—please.”

The pleading in her voice embarrassed him. And then he was ashamed of his own asinine embarrassment. “I can't, Ellie. I can't—yet. Do you understand?” He took his hands from her.

Slowly she picked up the lighter and lighted her own cigarette. “I'm not sure I do. But I guess I'll have to try.”

Walter stood there tongue-tied. It wasn't the house or even his own indifference tonight that he should have explained, he thought, or should be explaining. What rendered him speechless was that he couldn't even tell her that it would be different one day, that he had any plans at all where she was concerned.

“It'd be nice some time if we'd coincide—about the way we feel,” she said, giving him a sidelong look. But she smiled and there was humor in the smile. “So—Boadicea and I'll be going home.”

“I wish you wouldn't.”

“I'd rather.” She was gathering up her pocket-book and her gloves.

He was being unfair, he told himself, deliberately using her and hurting her. He followed her and went out to the car with her. She said a pleasant good night to him through the window, but she did not wait for his kiss.

Walter went back into the empty house. Did he hang on to the house, he wondered, only because it kept a barrier between him and Ellie? The house didn't depress him—it depressed Ellie, actually—but he knew he would never be at ease with Ellie here because Clara had been here, was still here. Upstairs, Claudia had rearranged the bedroom without his asking her to: the bed was in the rear corner, and Clara's dressing-table, its top empty of perfume bottles, powder boxes and the photograph of her and himself, stood between the two front windows. But the closet was full of her packed suitcases, her coats that still hung. He must do something with her clothes soon, he thought, give them away, give them to Claudia to give to people she knew. He had been putting it off.

The telephone rang. Walter was standing in the living-room. He had a feeling, as strong as if the telephone bell had been a human voice, that it was Corby calling him. On the fourth or fifth ring Walter made a start to go and answer it, but he didn't. He stood in the living-room, rigid, listening, while the hair crept on the back of his neck, until, after about a dozen rings, it stopped.

29

A
bout five hours later, Kimmel was awakened in his house by Lieutenant Lawrence Corby, made to dress and come to the 7th Precinct Headquarters in Newark.

In his haste to dress, Kimmel had not put on any underwear. The wool of his suit scratched the delicate skin of his buttocks, and he felt half naked. The police station was an ugly, square building with two outside flights of steps going up to the main entrance, steps that made the word
perron
spring to Kimmel's mind, and Vienna's Belvedere Palace, which had such steps—though the nineteenth-century hideousness of the building's architecture made such an association ludicrous—and as he climbed the steps Kimmel was repeating the word in his mind, “
Perron, perron, perron,
” in a terrified way, like a kind of personal and protective incantation against what might befall him in the building. The basement room where Corby took him was lined with small hexagonal white tiles, like a huge bathroom. Kimmel stood under a light. The glare of the light on the tiles made his eyes sting. There was nothing in the room but a table.