Voice Out of Darkness (3 page)

Two weeks, thought Katy, being firm and gentle with Mr. Wilsham. Two weeks in Fenwick will be enough, because then I’ll either know who and why or I’ll know I can never find out…

It was, finally, two-thirty when Michael called. Katy had sat, wriggling, through an endless copy meeting in which the advertising manager made windy statements about an institutional approach to all copy in the future and Stan, sitting beside Katy and listening with a rapt and reverent face, wrote a letter to her mother in San Antonio. Immediately after the meeting, Katy had maneuvered for and been granted a two-weeks’ leave of absence, based on one large inspired lie. She had then rushed a protesting Stan through a sandwich at lunch, and at two-twenty-five was smoking a cigarette she didn’t want. When the phone rang and Michael’s far-off voice said, “Hello? Katy? Is Miss Meredith there?” she was lightheaded with relief. “It’s me,” she said. “I. Hello.”

“Was going to call you earlier,” Michael said, “but I had to get in touch with a friend of mine. He’s a lieutenant in homicide. He—er—we’d like to have a drink with you tonight.”

All at once Katy felt chilled again. “Oh, Michael—”

“You’ll like him.” Michael was firm. “He’ll be quite unofficial. He’s probably come up against this before and he’ll know whether there’s anything in it and what you’d better do.”

“But I know what I’m going to do,” said Katy, bracing herself. “I’m—”

“—can’t hear you,” Michael said, himself receding. His voice came back. “Is eight all right?”

“I’m going there,” said Katy. “Going there, Michael.”

“You’re going out?”

“No, I said-”

“Will you be back at nine-thirty?” said Michael, baffled.

“Five cents, please,” said the operator.

“Eight,” said Katy desperately.

“Five, madam,” said the operator coldly.

“Dear God. Eight, Michael,” Katy said, unnerved, and put an end to it by hanging up.

Michael Blythe and a stranger in a gray overcoat were standing in the fourth floor hall when Katy stepped out of the elevator that night. She had worked late and had dinner at a small Italian restaurant on Tenth Street on her way home. She had told herself, briskly, that she simply had to get next week’s headlines written. She knew perfectly well that she hadn’t wanted to come back, alone, to the unlighted silence of her own apartment.

She was disconcerted, in the midst of her apologies for lateness, by Lieutenant Hooper’s mild and wrenlike appearance; he looked, she thought, like a portrait of a Pelham commuter. Rubbers. Plaid woolen muffler, an air of having been assembled, eyed critically, and finally dismissed on the 8:32 by a bustling, dutiful wife. Except for his eyes: shrewd, steady, impartial as jewelers’ scales.

Katy collected coats and hats, bore them off to the bedroom, and came back to the living room to find Michael and Lieutenant Hooper talking amiably about the governor’s speech. Now that the time had come to discuss the letters with an unofficial representative of the law, she felt childish and a little guilty, as though she had just turned in a false fire alarm. Lieutenant Hooper would think she was upset over nothing, he would say kindly that these things happened every day and not to worry, and go off musing tolerantly about taxpayers who wanted to get their money’s worth out of the police force. Katy cursed Michael silently and said aloud with an effort, “I suppose Michael’s told you about the letters, Lieutenant. Have you seen them? ”

“Yes,” Lieutenant Hooper said. “They refer, according to Mr. Blythe, to the accidental death of your foster-sister. I’d like that in detail in a minute or two. Do you happen to remember the date when you got the first of the letters, Miss Meredith?”

“Early in October,” Katy said slowly. “The fourth or fifth, I think, because I’d forgotten to send the rent check and I thought at first it was about that.”

“And the second letter?”

Katy shook her head. “At around the middle of November—I don’t know the exact date. I’d been away for a week-end in Philadelphia, and it was here when I got back. The last one came yesterday.”

The lieutenant nodded. He said, “Now if you’d tell me, yourself, what you told Mr. Blythe last night—” and Michael winked reassuringly down the room at Katy and Katy began to talk.

The room was very quiet when she finished. The night was cold and windless and there was, in the living room, the maddening ghost of Monica: drenched blonde hair streaming across her forehead, bluish lips moving, voice saying coldly, “Katy pushed me.” Katy looked down at her hands. She said, “I suppose I’m getting nerves over nothing. It’s probably… just spite, just—”

“Maybe,” said Lieutenant Hooper demurely. “Maybe not. Why do you think Monica accused you of pushing her, Miss Meredith?” When Katy looked up, startled at his tone, he went on, “If what you say is true about her being quite coherent, if you hadn’t come close enough to touch her before the ice broke, she couldn’t honestly have thought that you pushed her. But she said so, in no uncertain terms.”

“I don’t think she did think so,” Katy said candidly. “I knew Monica, you see. I think she was getting all set for a bad scolding at home. You know—I’d gotten in a temper because she wouldn’t come, and pushed her. Then too she’d had a terrible fright and a thorough drenching, and at that age she probably felt humiliated in front of Cassie. But she didn’t know she was going to die. None of us did, of course.”

“You don’t think,” said Lieutenant Hooper pleasantly, looking more like a wren than ever, “that your friend Cassie Poole could have… put ideas into Monica’s head?”

Cassie. Fourteen years old, and looking like a pocket-sized Powers model. Smoky three-cornered blue eyes over delicate cheekbones, shining brown-black hair, a charm that came partly from apparent unawareness of her own head-turning beauty; Cassie, the idol of the seventh grade even though the Pooles hadn’t, people in Fenwick said, a penny to bless themselves with. No, Katy thought violently, and shook her head.

“Or,” Lieutenant Hooper suggested gently, “that Monica could have said ‘Cassie’ instead of ‘Katy’?”

He asked a great many questions after that. When had the Merediths themselves died? In an automobile crash on their way back from Canada, when Katy was nineteen. How was the Meredith estate left? A few bequests—to a hospital, a doctor in Santa Fe, a cousin of Aunt Belinda’s, twice-removed, in San Francisco—and the capital, about ninety thousand dollars, to Katy.

“I haven’t touched it,” Katy said, suddenly and inexplicably defensive. “I did at first, of course, when I came to New York. Clothes and a room and things until I found a job, and after that expenses until I found a job that paid its way. But I’ve put most of it back since then, in a separate account. Not because of what happened, but just because—I wanted it to stay untouched.”

Because, said something inside her mockingly, Monica said a few words at the edge of the little pond, and threw a net over you. You didn’t notice it for a long time, because the net was loose and comfortable and you didn’t know it was there. But it is, and it’s tightening, and how do you like it, Miss Meredith?

“—the house in Fenwick?” Lieutenant Hooper was asking.

Katy made herself think. “A cousin of Uncle John’s—Pauline Trent. She has it for her lifetime. It comes to me, eventually.”

“You don’t know of anyone,” Lieutenant Hooper said intently, “anyone, Miss Meredith, who’d be apt to send letters like these?”

Cassie. Jeremy Taylor, much older than she, with whom she’d held hands in the movies, once, for an hour and a half of awe and delight. Cassie’s mother, Francesca Poole, who for all her poverty brought a faint redolence of Monte Carlo and Biarritz and a dazzling past to eager, curious, starved little Fenwick. Cassie’s father, Arnold Poole, tall and wiry and charmingly lazy, who had left Francesca and settled down, spang in the middle of town, with a mysterious, unattached sculptress. Pauline Trent, whom she’d met perhaps three times, and couldn’t even remember.

“No,” said Katy. “That’s why I’m going back—wait a second, Michael.” She was leaning forward now, hazel eyes bright between thick dark lashes. Good-looking, thought Lieutenant Hooper, gazing politely back at her. Not pretty, and too tall, but dash, as Mrs. Hooper would say, and plenty of it.

“It must be someone in Fenwick. It has to be,” Katy said, “because it happened so long ago, and who else would know the circumstances without having lived there? It wasn’t in any papers. And aside from you, Michael, I’ve nothing but casual acquaintances in New York.” She stopped suddenly, very pink. “Nobody, I mean, who knows where I lived before this. Or has any connection with anybody in Fenwick.”

“So far as you know,” Lieutenant Hooper pointed out. “But I’m inclined to agree with you. You think somebody might come out in the open, once you were actually there?”

“Either that,” said Katy, “or I might know. I might be able to tell.”

At the other end of the room Michael was still looking disapproving and unconvinced. He got up and took a few restless steps toward the window. He frowned out at the snowy roofs. He said, “Katy, don’t you think that’s what someone intends you to do? Go back to Fenwick and get tangled up in God knows what?”

“I don’t know,” Katy said, “but I do know that I can’t just sit here and—wait. I know it’s silly, but pretty soon I’d start being afraid to open the door when anyone rang.” And you’d go on thinking about Monica and the whole thing, her mind said, until maybe you wouldn’t be quite sure that your hand hadn’t touched Monica’s arm and sent her crashing through the ice.

Lieutenant Hooper stood up. He put the letters into her reluctant hands. He said formally, “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Miss Meredith. Going back to Connecticut may turn out to be the quickest way after all. I don’t want to alarm you, but under the circumstances, I’d be careful.”

Michael pounced on that. “You think it might be dangerous, don’t you, Ed? Look here, Katy—”

“Not necessarily,” said Lieutenant Hooper mildly. “But—you can’t tell. The type of mind that writes unpleasant anonymous letters isn’t completely normal at best. Those letters aren’t as vague as some I’ve seen, and they don’t seem to have just a lot of general ugly ill-will behind them.” He looked vaguely around for his coat. Katy stood like a statue, waiting.

“There seems,” said Lieutenant Hooper, “to be something specific in somebody’s mind. Not anything very sensible, necessarily, but still. Odd that it should take thirteen years to develop. I think—” He paused. Both Katy and Michael looked unwinkingly at him, breaths held. “I think I had a muffler?” said Lieutenant Hooper gently.

At the door, with Michael behind her, Katy thanked him. “You probably think I’m jumping at shadows,” she said, smiling, “and picked a very nasty night to bring you out to tell you about it.”

“Not at all,” said the lieutenant gravely, “and it’s only to Pelham. As I say, Miss Meredith, I don’t think there’s any actual physical danger involved. I’d be circumspect, that’s all. Our friend Mr. Blythe here might keep me informed. Good-night.”

“Michael,” said Katy at close to midnight. “I have to pack. Somewhere between now and train-time I even have to sleep.”

“All right,” Michael said. “I suppose there’s no use arguing with you.” He swished the last of his drink in the bottom of the glass, set it down abruptly, and came over to the couch. Katy looked at him and looked rapidly away. Her skin tingled a little. She reached out to the low coffee table and moved an ashtray very carefully a half-inch to the right.

“Katy,” said Michael, “before you pick up a magazine and get engrossed in it I wish you’d look at me.”

Katy turned her head and looked at him, fingers curled tightly in her lap. His eyes were blue and steady under peaked dark brows, his mouth was quiet and almost expressionless. She was suddenly conscious of the faded flowery slipcover against his shoulder, of lamplight warming an angle of his cheek, of the texture of wool under her fingers. She started to say, “I’m looking at you.” What she managed was a blurry questioning sound.

“I’m not going to ask you anything right now,” Michael said, “because you’re all mixed up and worried and I’d be afraid of what you’d say. But I wish you’d wear this when you go back to Fenwick.”

He opened his hand. Katy, heart beating shakily, only half-saw a circle of shining platinum, a drop of liquid sparkle.

She said, “Oh, Michael—” and Michael, misunderstanding, said hastily, “You could wear it on the other hand if you wanted, until—No explanations, I mean.” He stopped, and said, “For now, that is.”

“For now,” Katy repeated gravely. She held out her right hand and thought, Oh, Michael, you fool, you innocent, and buried her face against his shoulder, which had somehow come closer. “I was going to do this nicely, like a gentleman,” said Michael’s voice over her hair. “Some damn fool in Fenwick has me all crossed up. Katy, my darling, am I always going to have trouble getting you to look at me?”

“No,” said Katy dizzily into his coat, and lifted her head.

At close to one, Katy said, “I’ve got to pack. Really.”

“Yes,” said Michael, not moving. “And get some sleep.”

She had forgotten, as completely as though it weren’t on the map, the little Connecticut town where she had grown up, where Monica Meredith had lived the brief child’s life from which she had exited so violently. She and Michael had sat on the flowered couch, not talking except at intervals, admiring Michael’s ring. “It’s beautiful,” Katy said, stretching out her long fingers. “Mmm,” Michael said off-handedly. “Look better on the other hand, probably.”

“Mmm,” said Katy carelessly. “Might.”

No more than that. They didn’t, self-consciously, try it on Katy’s left hand. They didn’t say, “When we’re married—” or “Who’ll we ask?” or “When did you know?” After all, thought Katy, I haven’t been asked, really. Maybe Michael’s being gallant and doesn’t want me to go back there looking friendless and alone. But he’s so nice when he’s gallant.

She moved away and stood up and inquired solemnly if Michael had had a muffler. His coat on, Michael wanted to know where she’d be in Fenwick.

“The Fenwick Inn,” Katy told him. “It’s weird and dark and very General Grantish, but it’s the best Fenwick has to offer.”