The Exorcist (17 page)

"No, I'll come to the kitchen," he told her, following. "I hate to be a bother."

"No bother."

"No, really, you're busy, I'll come. You've got children?" he asked as they walked. "No, that's right; Yes, a daugther;. you told me; that's right. Just the one."

"And how old?"

"She just turned twelve."

"Then you don't have to worry," he breathed. "No, not yet. Later on, though, watch, out." He was shaking his head. Chris noticed that his walk was a modified waddle. "When you see all the sickness day in and day out," he continued. "Unbelievable. Incredible. Crazy. You know, I looked at my wife just a couple of days ago--- or weeks ago--- I forget. I said, Mary, the world--- the entire world--- is having a massive nervous breakdown. All. The whole world." He gestured globally.

They had entered the kitchen, where Karl was polishing the interior of the oven. He neither turned nor acknowledged their presence.

"This is really so embarrassing," the detective wheezed hoarsely as Chris was opening the refrigerator door. Yet his gaze was on Karl brushing swiftly and questioningly over his back, and his arms and his neck like a small, dark bird skimming over a lake. "I meet a famous motion-picture star," he confinued, "and I ask for some Calso water. Ah, boy."

Chris had found the bottle aced now was looking for an opener. "Ice?" she asked.

"No, plain; plain is fine."

She was opening the bottle.

"You know that film you made called Angel?" he said. "I saw that film six times."

"If you were looking for the killer," she murmured as she poured out the bubbling Calso, "arrest the producer and the cutter."

"Oh, no, no, it was excellent--- really--- I loved it!"

"Sit down" She was nodding at the table.

"Oh, thank you." He sat. "No, the film was just lovely," he insisted. "So touching. But just one thing," he ventured, "One little tiny, minuscule point. Oh, thank you."

She'd set down the glass of Calso and sat on the other side of the table, hands clasped before her.

"One minor flaw," he resumed apologetically. "Only minor. And please believe me, I'm only a layman. You know? I'm just audience. What do I know? However, it seemed to me--- to a layman--- that the musical score was getting in the way of certain scenes. It was too intrusive." He was earnest now; caught up. "It kept on reminding me that this was a movie. You know? Like so many of these fancy camera angles lately. So distracting. Incidentally, the score, Miss MacNeil--- did he steal that perhaps from Mendelssohn?"

Chris drummed her fingertips lightly on the table. Strange detective. And why was he constantly glancing to Karl?

"I wouldn't know," she said, "but I'm glad you liked the picture. Better drink that," she told him, nodding to the Calso. "It tends to get flat."

"Yes, of course. I'm so garrulous. You're busy. Forgive me." He lifted the glass as if in toast and drained its contents, his little finger arching demurely away from the others. "Ah, good, that's good," he exhaled, contented, as he put aside the glass, his eye falling lightly on Regan's sculpture of the bird. It was now the centerpiece of the table, its beak floating mockingly and at length above the salt and pepper shakers. "Quaint." He smiled. "Nice." He looked up. "The artist?"

"My daughter," Chris told him.

"Very nice."

"Look, I hate to be---"

"Yes, yes, I know, I'm a nuisance. Well, look, just a question or two and we're done. In fact, only one question and then I'll be going." He was glancing at his wristwatch as if he were anxious to get away to some appointment. "Since poor Mr. Dennings," he labored breathily; "had completed his filming in this area, we wondered if he might have been visiting someone on the night of the accident. Now other than yourself, Of course, did he have any friends in this area?"

"Oh, he was here that night," Chris told him.

"Oh?" His eyebrows sickled upward. "Near the time of the accident?"

"When did it happen?" she asked him.

"Seven-o-five," he told her.

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, that settles it, then." He nodded, turning in his chair as if preparatory to rising. "He was drunk, he was leaving, he fell down the steps. Yes, that settles it. Definitely. Listen, though, just for the sake of the record, can you tell me approximately what time he left the house?"

He was pawing at truth like a weary bachelor pinching vegetables at market. How did he ever make lieutenant? Chris wondered. "I don't know," she replied. "I didn't see him."

"I don't understand."

"Well, he came and left while I was out I was over at a doctor's office in Rosslyn."

"Ah, I see." He nodded. "Of course, But the how do you know he was here?"

'Oh, well, Sharon said---"

"Sharon?"' he interrupted.

"Sharon Spencer. She's my secretary. She was here when Burke dropped by. She---"

"He came to see her?" he asked.

"No, me."

'Yes, of course. Yes, forgive me for interrupting."

"My daughter was sick and Sharon left him here while she went to pick up some prescriptions. By the time I got home, though, Burke was gone."

"And what time was that, please?"

"Seven-fifteen or so, seven-thirty."

"And what time had you left?"

"Maybe six-fifteenish."

"What time had Miss Spencer left?"

"I don't know."

"And between the time Miss Spencer left and the time you returned, who was here in the house with Mr. Dennings besides your danghter?"

"No one."

"No one? He left her alone?"

She nodded.

"No servants?"

"No, Willie and Karl were---"

'Who are they?"

Chris abruptly felt the earth shift under her feet. The nuzzling interview, she realized, was suddenly steely interrogation. "Well, Karl's right there." She motioned with her head, her glance fixed dully on the servant's back. Still polishing the oven... "And Willie's his wife," she resumed. "They're my housekeepers." Polishing... "They'd taken the afternoon off and when I got home, they weren't back yet. Willie..." Chris paused.

"Willie what?"

"Oh, well, nothing." She, shrugged as she tugged her gaze away from the manservant's brawny back. The oven was clean, she had noticed. Why was Karl still polishing?

She reached for a cigarette. Kinderman lit it.

"So then only your daughter would know when Dennings left the house."

"It was really an accident?"

"Oh, of course. It's routine, Miss MacNeil, its routine. Mr. Dennings wasn't robbed and he had no enemies, none that we know of, that is, in the District."

Chris darted a momentary glance to Karl but then shifted it quickly bade to Kinderman. Had he noticed? Apparently not. He was fingering the sculpture.

"It's got a name, this kind of bird; I can't think of it. something." He noticed Chris staring and looked vaguely embarrassed. "Forgive me, you're busy. Well, a minute and we're done. Now your daughter, she would know when Mr. Dennings left?"

"No, she wouldn't. She was heavily sedated."

"Ah, dear me, a shame, a shame." His droopy eyelids seeped concern. "It's serious?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

"May I ask...?" he probed with a delicate gesture.

'We still don't know."

"Watch out for drafts," he cautioned firmly.

Chris looked blank.

"A draft in the winter when a house is hot is a magic carpet for bacteria. My mother used to say that. Maybe that's folk myth. Maybe." He shrugged. "But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans," he said earnestly.

Chris relaxed. The shaggy dog padding fuddled through cornfields had returned.

"That's hers, that's her room"--- he was thumbing toward the ceiling--- "with that great big window looking out on these steps?"

Chris nodded.

"Keep the window closed and she'll get better."

"Well, it's always closed and it's always shuttered" Chris said as he dipped a pudgy hand in the inside pocket of his jacket.

"She'll get better," he repeated sententiously. "Just remember, 'An ounce of prevention...' "

Chris drummed her fingertips on the tabletop again.

"You're busy. Well, we're finished. Just a note for the record--- routine--- we're all done."

From the pocket of the jacket he'd extracted a crumpled mimeographed program of a high-school production of Cyrano de Bergerac and now groped in the pockets of his coat, where he netted a toothmarked yellow stub of a number 2 pencil, whose point had the look of having been sharpened with the blade of a scissors. He pressed the program flat on the table, brushing out the wrinkles. "Now just a name or two," he puffed. "That's Spencer with a c?"

"Yes, c."

"A c," he repeated, writing the name in a margin of the program. "And the housekeepers? John and Willie...?"

"Karl and Willie Engstrom."

"Karl. That's right, it's Karl. Karl Engstrom." He scribbled the names in a dark, thick script. "Now the times I remember," he told her huskily, turning the program around in search of white space. "Times I--- Oh. Oh, no, wait. I forgot. Yes, the housekeepers. You said they got home at what time?"

'I didn't say. Karl, what time did you get in last night?" Chris called to him.

The Swiss turned around, his face inscrutable. "Exactly nine-thirty, madam."

"Yeah, that's right, you'd forgotten your key. I remember I looked at the clock in the kitchen when you rang the doorbell."

"You saw a good film?" the detective asked Karl. "I never go by reviews," he explained to Chris in a breathy aside. "It's what the people think, the audience."

"Paul Scofield in Lear," Karl informed the detective.

"Ah, I saw that; that's excellent. Excellent. Marvelous "

"Yes, at the Crest," Karl continued. "The six-o'clock showing. Then immediately after I take the bus from in front of the theater and---"

"Please, that's not necessary," the detective protested with a gesture. "Please."

"I don't mind."

"If you insist."

"I get off at Wisconsin Avenue and M Street. Nine-twenty, perhaps. And then I walk to the house."

"Look, you didn't have to tell me," the detective told him, "but anyway, thank you, it was very considerate. You liked the film?"

"It was excellent."

"Yes, I thought so too. Exceptional. Well, now..." He turned back to Chris and to scribbling on the program. "I've wasted your time, but I have a job." He shrugged. "Well, only a moment and finished. Tragic... tragic..." hebreathed as he jotted down fragments in margins. "Such a talent. And a man who knew people, I'm sure: how to handle them. With so many elements who could make him look good or maybe make him look bad--- like the cameraman, the sound man, the composer, whatever.... Please correct me if I'm wrong, bud it seems to me nowadays a director of importance has also to be almost a Dale Carnegie. Am I wrong?"

"Oh, well, Burke had a temper," Chris sighed.

The detective repositioned the program. "Ah, well, maybe so with the big shots. People his size." Once again he was scribbling. "But the key is the little people, the menials, the people who handle the minor details that if they didn't handle right would be major details. Don't you think?"

Chris glanced at her fingernails and ruefully shook her head. "When Burke let fly, he never discriminated," she murmured with a weak, wry smile. "No, sir. It was only when he drank, though."

"Finished. We're finished." Kinderman was dotting a final i. "Oh, no, wait," he abruptly remembered. "Mrs. Engstrom. They went and came together?" He was gesturing toward Karl.

"No, she went to see a Beatles film," Chris answered just as Karl was turning to reply. "She got in a few minutes after I did."

"Why did I ask that? It wasn't important." He shrugged as he folded up the program and tucked it away in the pocket of his jacket along with the pencil. "Well, that's that. When I'm back in the office, no doubt I'll remember something I should have asked. With me, that always happens. Oh, well, I could call you," he puffed, standing up.

Chris rose along with him.

"Well, I'm going out of town for a couple of weeks," she said.

"It can wait" he assured her. "It can wait." He was staring of the sculpture with a smiling fondness. "Cute. So cute," he said. He'd leaned over and picked it up and was rubbing his thumb along is beak.

Chris bent over to pick up a thread on the kitchen floor.

"Have you got a good doctor?" the detective asked her. "I mean for your daughter."

He replaced the figure and began to leave. Glumly Chris followed, winding the thread around her thumb.

"Well, I've sure got enough of them," she murmured. "Anyway, I'm checking her into a clinic that's supposed to be great at doing what you do, only viruses."