The Player on the Other Side (10 page)

‘Miss York will never know I know,' he assured her.

The eyes sparkled. With conspiratorial zest she said, ‘Turn
that
over!'

He followed her small finger to the wall, grasped the frame of a large yellowed street map of the settlement neighborhood and the nearby waterfront, turned it over and stepped back.

‘Sometimes we just sit here and look at it,' she half sang, half whispered.

It was a housing plan elevation. A box in one corner was occupied by an architect's rendering of a cottage. A flagstone path wound around a lawn to a porch whose roof was supported by square fieldstone columns joined by Byzantine arches, and enclosed by a low concrete-capped parapet. What could be seen of the porch floor was brick tile, and Miss Sullivan explained that the interior would be floored with tile also, a satin tin-finish ceramic which would clean easily, glow with color and last forever. The building itself would seem larger inside than it did outside, with its ells and gables. The small panes of the many windows, as well as the fanlight which repeated the porch arches, would have their occasional stained square, so that inside by day, outside by night, color would brighten the beholder.

‘Rambler roses across the front,' Miss Sullivan crooned, pointing. ‘Ivy on the south and west walls, and forsythia on the north side to look winter in the eye when it comes to bloom. Here mountain laurel and dogwood. And here bleeding heart. And all along the edge here babies'-breath. And every year, hollyhocks and sunflowers and zinnias and honeysuckle. You'll see!'

Looking over the larger plan, the Inspector asked, ‘Where's this going to be built?'

‘It's not far from New York — I mustn't say where, because Miss York only has an understanding about the land, and if people found out about the village, why, land values would go just sky-high and use up all the money.'

The Inspector suddenly saw the correlation between the cottage and the curving rows of identical inkblots on the large plan. ‘She's intending to build a whole
village
?'

‘Well, how else could we do it?' cried Miss Sullivan. ‘Forty-two cottages just like that one — it was to be thirty-five, you know, but now that poor Mr. York has passed away, and there's one less to share the estate, we'll be able to manage seven cottages more. And an administration building, and the help's quarters and so on. Over here, by the way, is a stone outcrop big enough for us to quarry all the stone we'll need for the cottages and other buildings. All this here — eighty acres — is fine farmland. Here in the south quadrant we'll have a modern cow barn; pigs here; geese and ducks and chickens here. Maybe turkeys, too, though we're not sure of that yet — they're said to be
very
hard to raise. And over here we'll have the slaughter shack for the fowl, the smokehouse, the refrigerator rooms — oh, and of course this is going to be a huge hay barn. This section is for the workshops — carpentry, ceramics, a wool shop if we decide to raise sheep … Oh, and here! These are our greenhouses. Three for forced truck-gardening — for out-of-season things, you know — and two for flowers.'

‘I see,' murmured Inspector Queen. ‘Self-supporting, eh? Maybe even showing a profit?'

‘Well, of course we'll have a large staff, and they're to be
well paid
,' Miss Sullivan said with sudden severity, as if he had assumed an
ante-bellum
society, ‘so in the beginning we'll be satisfied to keep our heads above water. But we'll be producing milk and butter and cheese and bacon and hams and dressed fowl and vegetables and flowers, and Miss York said something about perhaps making our own bread and of course country furniture and hand-turned pottery and' — she paused for a long and happy gasp of breath — ‘and
goodness
knows what else. So we ought to manage most of our expenses even without the guests.'

‘The guests?' the Inspector echoed mystified.

‘Those gentlemen you saw downstairs.'

‘Those —?' He coughed hurriedly.

‘Yes,' Miss Sullivan said with asperity, ‘those — gentlemen!' and he cursed himself for his
lapsus linguae
. The one inside — the one behind the eyes — could shoot bright bolts of indignation. ‘Dignity, Inspector Queen,
dignity
. Who needs it more than the weary and sick and homeless who never learned a skill or belonged to anyone or anything? Here they'll have the opportunity to grow strong, to be treated with decency, to acquire an individual
meaning
. Every last man of them will be called
Mister
. Each will have his own room, with his own possessions in it, and we'll be there to — yes, to
cater
to him, to find out what he likes and doesn't like, what he's able to do and what he's not. Oh,' Miss Sullivan cried, ‘it will be wonderful!'

Very carefully Inspector Queen said, ‘I think you might wind up with — well — a gang of long-term freeloaders.'

There came into the child-eyes a shimmer of scornful wisdom.

‘They will be
paying
guests, Inspector!'

‘With what will they pay, Miss Sullivan?'

‘With
themselves
, don't you see? Each one will be extended credit, depending on his needs. The longer he stays, the greater his debt, true.
But
. For everything he does for the village after we teach him a skill — making a chair, hoeing a row of corn, tending the chicken plucker — his debt is reduced.'

‘And if he never gets out of the red?'

She smiled. ‘Do you know, Inspector, most people — even fine people like yourself — have the minds of accountants?' The Inspector blushed, something he had not done for forty years. ‘Never get out of the red! Won't he have learned a trade? Won't he be rested, well fed? Won't he have discovered the satisfaction of a clean body and the stimulus of a fresh attitude toward life? And if he should find himself wanting to belong to something bigger than our village he'll go back into the world, but with what a difference! He'll be
new
, self-confident, full of hope.' She was so illuminated from within he could have groaned. ‘Inspector, it will
work
. You'll see!'

I don't have to see, the Inspector thought. I see daily.

He saw Centre Street line-ups — shills, pimps, muggers, gunsels, sharks, sharpies, touts, shiv artists, bums, pushers, addicts, creeps, morons, dips, muscle men, maniacs, and all-around misfits. In a parade, a cascade, that never stopped. He thought piously: Dear God, let this pipe dream of hers stay just that. She's too old to have to take the dirty truth. Or is it possible — I mean, am I such a jaded old crock …?

His ears pricked a warning, alerted by a note in that burble of half song. ‘… just to give them those things, those simple and essential things, like the right to be called “Mister.”
That's
what Emily York wants her money for.
That's
why she lives the way she does, in just two rooms of that big house, on a social worker's salary, turning practically her whole income over to the settlement house here. And that's why she'd do — oh, anything — to protect the York estate.'

‘Sorry,' said the Inspector, controlling his voice with the discipline of a TV announcer. ‘I didn't quite get that, Miss Sullivan. Protect the York estate from what?'

‘Well … from anything that might threaten it.' She was suddenly troubled. ‘I mean, anything that might reduce her share of it …' He could almost see the girlish Miss Sullivan deep inside place little palms against an appalled mouth. ‘I'm afraid I'm talking too much.'

‘I wouldn't misuse it,' he said, quickly and warmly.

‘Thank you.' She hunted for something in his face and seemed to find it. ‘Thank you,' she said again, and went to the plan and set her frail fingers under the frame. The Inspector hastened to help her. Together they turned it over, and for a moment they stood tandem, looking at the yellowed street map of the blighted neighborhood and the noisome waterfront. Then Miss Sullivan turned her back on it and asked, ‘Was there anything else you wanted to know, Inspector?'

‘Well I don't mean to pry —'

‘Don't you, now!' Miss Sullivan laughed her gasping laugh. ‘And you a police officer.' She stopped laughing, and sighed, and lowered her great mass carefully into the vast chair behind the desk. ‘Sit down, Inspector Queen. I'm afraid you're no better at deception than I am.'

He grinned feebly, drawing up a chair, feeling chagrin and guilt and something else that eluded classification. ‘I'm taking up too much of your time. You've been to York Square, Miss Sullivan?'

‘Goodness, yes. Often.'

‘Just in Miss Emily York's house?'

‘Oh, no, I've been asked to dinner, one time or another, in all but Percival York's. Chiefly at Emily's, of course. Many's the time the two of us have worked through the night on plans for the village.' Miss Sullivan said suddenly, ‘You think we're both impossible dreamers, don't you, Inspector?'

‘Oh, no,' he said.
Was
it possible?

‘Oh, yes,' she retorted. ‘Well, perhaps we are. I remember Emily used to dream of turning the four castles into one neighborhood-house type of community. But that
was
impossible, she said, because her share of the estate simply wouldn't be enough to buy the others out. You see, the village upstate is planned for just men. But with York Square we could have a headquarters building and three houses for women — one a residence club, say, another a clinic, the third a school. It
would
be nice,' she said wistfully.

‘How about now?' the Inspector asked, and despised himself. ‘I mean now that Emily's share is going to be a million or so larger?' She looked at him, and he said, ‘There I go prying again, right?'

She gasped with laughter again. ‘Yes, bless you. But that's not a very nice thought, Inspector, is it?'

He thought: You can bet your lavender sachet it's not a very nice thought. But very not-nice thoughts are why I'm here. And he found himself wondering how old was the controversy over the end and the means. Did a perplexing whiff of it pass through the massive skull of some prehuman homunculus the day he hurled his brother into the jaws of a saber-tooth so that he himself might escape?

In this particular balance, lonely on one pan of the scales, stood Myra and Percival York — Myra a mental and physical invalid, Percival unlovable and unmournable; and on the other pan huddled a street swarm of human wreckage — to be reborn, to be grown whole again and (to the Inspector, above all) to be taken off the streets and out of the cluttered courtrooms. For possibly the first time in his life Inspector Richard Queen, the old hound dog of Centre Street, sniffed at the idea of being just a little blind, just a fraction forgetful, just a tiny bit obscure … It was this damned Sullivan woman!

The Inspector shook himself almost visibly, aware of her soft song-voice. ‘Beg pardon?'

‘Are you all right, Inspector?' she asked — was asking — anxiously. ‘Oh, dear, I've made you angry.'

‘Not at all,' he said gallantly, and grinned. ‘You couldn't.

‘You looked so very stern suddenly.'

‘I was thinking of how Robert York died,' said the Inspector, and told himself aloud with hushed force, ‘I don't
like
murder, no matter
why
it's done.' And felt much better for having said it.

‘Poor Emily,' murmured Miss Sullivan.

‘Would you say she's taking Robert's death hard?'

‘Oh, she is. Dreadfully.'

‘I wouldn't have said so.'

‘Because you don't know her, Inspector. Dear Emily is very controlled. Threats or violence' — surprisingly, Miss Sullivan chuckled — ‘are things she simply will not
allow
. Time and again I've seen her stand up to rampaging drunks, raving addicts, the worst hoodlums. She'll walk right into danger without a
thing
showing, though I'm sure she's as afraid as anyone else. She's the same way about grief, I suppose.'

‘Very controlled,' the Inspector repeated thoughtfully.

‘Take yesterday, for example. She just worked a bit harder, that was all. You wouldn't have realized anything was disturbing her unless you knew the signs. Like her losing patience. At little things, never the big ones.'

‘Oh?'

‘A door banging somewhere. Mustard on a sandwich when she'd ordered it without mustard — goodness! she never notices what she eats. But how she carried on about that mustard. And then there was that silly card —?'

A shooting thrill, much like a bolt of lightning, almost lifted the old man out of the chair. ‘Silly card?' he said. ‘What do you mean, Miss Sullivan?'

‘I saved it.' Miss Sullivan began opening drawers. ‘It's here somewhere … Why, she'd just come in and taken the mail out of her bag — she always brings her mail from home to the office — and settled down as usual to go through it. All of a sudden she made a kind of
tsst
! —'

‘
Tsst?
'

‘
Tsst!
' Miss Sullivan corrected him, repeating the exclamation point he had left out. ‘And she hurled the card and envelope to the floor.
The floor
—
Emily!
Here it is.' She handed the plain white envelope to Inspector Queen, who took from it the five-sided white card bearing the H.

After a while the Inspector looked up. ‘Did Miss York happen to say why this bothered her so much?'

‘Oh, I don't think it bothered her at all. Not the
card
. More the nuisance of it, I'm sure. You see, I know her.' Scanning his face, Miss Sullivan apparently read doubt there. ‘I mean, had it really bothered her — the thing in itself — she'd have called me over to look or made phone calls, or … or any number of things. She threw it like that because it
wasn't
important, you see, not because it was.' She said again, ‘I
know
her.'