The Puzzled Heart (16 page)

“Ye gods,” Kate said. She realized that she had to face what she had been carefully avoiding while concerning
herself entirely with Harriet. “In other words, I’m responsible for what happened to Toni.”

“In a way, you are,” Reed said. He never tried to hide the truth from her, which was, she supposed, what above everything she loved him for. “But that’s like saying if the police are shot by a person burglarizing a store, the store owner is to blame. Toni worked as a detective, a licensed detective. Risks are part of the job. And she must have let whoever it was into the office. I haven’t asked Harriet about that yet, but New Yorkers don’t leave their office doors open unless there’s a receptionist just inside, and even then there’s usually a buzzer to release the door.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Kate looked abashed. It was startling to realize the extent to which she hadn’t really begun to think at all.

“So,” Reed said, “what you’ve got to do is work even harder on trying to locate this woman whose possible motive Leslie described. She may not be the key to the whole thing; she may only be a small part of it. But the coincidence, the timing of the attack on Toni, certainly suggests the possibility of a connection. My instincts tell me the solution lies in that direction.”

“Reed, we don’t even know if she exists. And if she does exist, how on earth am I going to think of her? The whole thing’s absurd. We need a few clues, at least. My God, she may even go back to nursery school, and I can’t remember anyone I’ve met later than the last decade—and not most of those.”

“Nonsense. What did you do when you thought it might be a professor in your department? You made lists: probable, improbable, impossible.”

“There are only thirty professors in the department. Maybe thirty-one—I haven’t counted lately.”

Reed ignored this. “If you made such an impression on her that she has seethed with it ever since, you must at least have some memory of her, however recessed. You’ll have to dig it out. It hardly seems likely that a casual remark or a one-time meeting is the cause of all this. It’s possible, but if that’s the case we’re dealing with a lunatic”—at Kate’s raised eyebrows, he amended this—“with an insane rather than an obsessed person. You know what I mean. In that case, we may never find her or him, or this may have nothing to do with you. But if the same person is behind this and the former caper, and that’s what I believe, the sooner you can come up with a list of possibilities, the better.”

“Going back to nursery school?” Kate almost sneered.

“Let’s start a bit later—say, high school. On through college, jobs, boyfriends, travels—I’m suggesting the situations in which you and she may have both been involved.”

“Well, thanks for leaving out childhood anyway. I’m bored to death with childhoods. That’s all anyone seems to write about these days. There’s a fancy new theorist people are reading in lit crit circles named Adam Phillips. I recently looked at a book of his
called
On Flirtation
, and he quotes something from Philip Larkin that I endorse most heartily.”

Reed, who earlier that day had been distressed by her quoting of Auden, took hope now from her return to her customary patterns of thought. “I know you admire Philip Larkin’s poetry, but I thought you were still reading a biography of him.”

“That was last year.”

“I can never keep up with your reading.”

“Some of us read a lot, fast. Some of us read slowly, a few pages in bed at night before drowsiness overcomes us.”

Reed smiled to see her old habits of speech reappearing. She smiled back at him.

“The quote from Larkin is relevant,” she said, understanding his relief. “He said this to an interviewer: ‘Whenever I read an autobiography I tend to start halfway through, when the chap’s grown up, and it becomes interesting.’ That’s how I feel about my life. So I’ll do a hasty survey of high school and college and then concentrate.”

“You’d better concentrate from the beginning,” Reed said. “We’re looking for a murderer, even if it’s one who failed, as we hope. Remember that. Sorry, I’m sounding officious.”

There was no further news from the hospital about Toni that night. Harriet woke up and eventually agreed to be put to bed and to swallow a sleeping pill and a
bit more Scotch. When all was quiet Kate went to call Leslie.

“A fine mess you’ve gotten me in,” she said.

“Remembering your past, are you?”

“Yes, damn it,” Kate said. And told her about Toni. They talked about that for a time, Kate asking again for reassurance that Leslie’s analysis of the situation would turn out to be anywhere near the mark.

“It’s just a guess, a supposition, a trial balloon,” Leslie said. Kate could picture her in her studio, perched on a stool with her legs looped around its legs. She often retreated to the studio in the evening to brood over her painting and contemplate tomorrow’s work. “The worst that can happen is that you’ll waste some hours making lists and remembering. Who knows, it may all turn into a best-selling memoir, like Gore Vidal’s.”

Kate decided to let that pass. “The real problem is that I can’t imagine anyone getting that angry, let alone staying that angry so long, or actually planning this whole mess.”

“That’s your personality,” Leslie said. “Quick anger, short stew, complete forget. Well, you’ve got to stop forgetting just now. And don’t underestimate anger in women. Hold on. I’m going to put down the phone and get a book.”

“What book?”

“Just hold on.” And Kate heard the receiver being put down and Leslie’s footsteps. It seemed a good
while till she returned. “Sorry,” she said. “I had trouble finding the book. It’s
Little Women
.”

“Little Women!”
Kate shouted.

“Here it is,” Leslie said, ignoring this. “This is Marmee speaking. You remember Marmee—good as gold, patient as Griselda. She is speaking to Jo, of course. Who else would understand her? She says: ‘I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years or so.’ Kate, women like you and me have learned to express anger, not to turn it inward, to turn it into depression, but to let it out. Some would say too much, but that’s not the point here. If even Marmee could feel that angry, if Louisa May Alcott knew that much about anger, can you doubt what a woman’s anger can do in someone a lot less angelic than Marmee?”

“How on earth did you remember that passage?” Kate asked.

“It comforted me once, long years ago, when I was reading
Little Women to
my children.”

“I’ll be damned,” Kate said. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. You’ve definitely made your point.”

Eleven

T
ONI
continued to mend. The reports were encouraging: she had opened her eyes, responded to questions, assuring them that she knew her name. The doctors still felt certain she did not as yet remember anything of what had happened in the office the day she was attacked, and Reed’s reports on the progress of the police were hardly helpful. Reed had once told Kate that the hardest murder to solve would be one in which someone hit a stranger over the head and disappeared. Motive and connection to the victim were what, in the end—together of course with all the marvelous new technology—trapped most murderers or those who attempted murder.

“How do we know whoever it was didn’t just want to put her out of commission for a while?” Kate had
asked. “Is there any reason to suppose that the assailant intended Toni to die?”

“Nothing I would want to demonstrate to a jury, at least at this point,” Reed said. “My guess is that murder was intended, but the person, whoever he or she was, did not know exactly how much force was needed, and probably panicked in the end, rushing out before making sure of Toni’s condition.”

“Reasons?”

“As I say, hardly convincing evidence. But if someone walks into an office, hits the occupant over the back of the head, probably with a baseball bat or something like it, and then rushes out, the supposition has to be what I guessed.”

“How do you know he or she rushed out?”

“The evidence is clear. Nothing else was touched except the doorknob. He or she wore gloves. The body wasn’t touched in any way, even superficially, to determine its condition. And Harriet came in quite soon after the assault—the doctors tell us that. I think the assailant fled as fast as possible, disturbing nothing in the office, and not waiting around. In fact, Harriet probably saved Toni’s life.”

“They don’t still suspect Harriet, do they?”

“They suspect everyone till they make an arrest, and sometimes even after that. I think you’d better face the fact, Kate, that there is quite a case to be made against Harriet.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I may not be, but the evidence is. Consider: she
says she went out to get cash, and we know she did indeed do just that, since ATMs kindly record the time and the amount of every transaction. Now it is, as you will readily see, easy enough for someone else, with the card and knowledge of the password or identifying number, to get money and leave the same record, thus providing a spurious alibi. No, no, don’t interrupt. I’m not saying that’s what Harriet did, but my assurances or yours would hardly satisfy the police. The police did, however, persuade the bank—no easy matter, that—to give them the names of those who had made deposits or withdrawals at the time Harriet did. Interviewed, some of these people described Harriet sufficiently well to assure the police that she was indeed there. A substitute made up to look like her might have been possible, but happily that occurred to no one but me, inspired by you and your peculiar adventures. That sort of thing happens in your world, doesn’t it?”

Kate glared at him. “Go on. If you’re trying to upset me, you’re succeeding.”

“Sorry. Harriet says she stopped in the women’s room on the way back from the bank, not knowing that Toni was lying in the office, bleeding to death. She says there was another woman in there, and the police are canvassing the other offices on the floor to see if they can find the woman. But of course she could have been a client or a visitor. That’s still up in the air. The point is that if Harriet didn’t stop in the
rest room, she had ample time to attack Toni, leave the office, and return to find her.”

“And what are supposed to be Harriet’s motives in this odd drama?”

“Who knows. Partners falling out, discoveries as yet unknown to us. Whenever there’s an attempted murder where burglary or sexual assault is not the purpose, the police are likely to suspect someone connected to the victim.”

“It makes no sense,” Kate observed, trying to keep her voice from rising. “Harriet could have killed Toni in a million other ways on a million other occasions. Besides, if Harriet wanted to commit a murder she would be far cleverer about it. She loves intrigue—you know that.”

“She could just have been clever enough to figure out that that’s what everyone would figure. As I’ve already mentioned, the murderer who hits and runs is the hardest to unearth. No”—he held up a hand as Kate looked alarmed—“I don’t think Harriet’s in serious trouble, unless, of course, she decides to try to solve this herself and gets in the way of the police or, worse, the would-be murderer. But my faith is based on what I know of her, and what you know of her. I think perhaps you had better let her know, in somewhat vague terms, that she’s something of a suspect.”

“I’ll call her. If I know Harriet, she’s already figured this out, and will mention it to me, unless she’s in one of her protective moods. But I’ll insist on a face-to-face encounter. That’s harder to wiggle out of.”

Kate did, in fact, call Harriet, but was able only to leave a message. The message was urgent, while revealing nothing of the trouble on Kate’s mind. There was nothing more she could do, at the moment.

“Meanwhile,” she told Reed as he was leaving, “I’ll labor here at the task you and Leslie have given me. I know everyone in the world is writing a memoir at this very moment, but it does seem unfair that I, the only person with no interest in the past, have to dig it up this way.”