The Listening House Page 12

  “Yep, I’m all alone.” He grinned more widely. “If you want to bump anybody else off, all you’ve got to do is bump me first.”

  “Oh, forget it.” I was sick of death. Policemen, too.

  In my kitchen, I drank tomato juice and discovered I was ravenous. The only time I have any use for skipping meals is when I’m sick, and now I hadn’t eaten since dinner last night—nearly twenty hours ago!

  When I came up for air, my icebox was as bare as a striptease artist at the end of her act. But I felt better.

  It was a good thing I waited until after I’d eaten to take a good look at my rooms. They were an awful blow. The kitchen linoleum was gray with ground-in grime and ashes; I picked cigarette and cigar butts out of the sink, off the stove, off the floor, out of the cupboards, off the washbowl, off the toilet rim, off the buffet, the rug, the chairs. There were even a few in the ashtrays.

  Violently I went to work. Cleaning. That’s what my intentions were: to clean. I pushed away to the back of my mind all wonder as to how Mrs. Garr had died, naturally or otherwise, and if otherwise, who had done it and why. Questions such as that, I said to myself, were for the police. All I had to do was wait. Sooner or later all the mysteries would be solved, and I, like the rest, would know the truth. It wasn’t any of my business anyway. All I had to do was keep my nose at home, and they’d see how innocent I was, forget suspicion of me, concentrate on the real criminal.

  If there was a criminal.

  That was what I thought I thought.

  But you’ll notice I didn’t think of getting away, of moving out of Mrs. Garr’s house.

  I couldn’t have, of course; the police wouldn’t have let me.

  But I didn’t even think of moving.

  That shows you how a girl who thinks she is completely honest with herself can be an awful liar.

  Because I hadn’t any more than started scrubbing the kitchen floor when my mind was biting into the mystery around me as if it was a steam shovel. By the time I had finished, I was already so intent on digging out the answers to some of my questions that you couldn’t have deflected me with guns.

  Weeks afterward, when this whole thing was over, I began reading about homicides in the newspapers closely; murder stories in books, too. The big difference I noticed was how understandable the work of the police was in those other stories. The reporters in the newspapers and the characters in the fiction always seemed to comprehend what the police were working toward.

  I don’t see how they do it. From beginning to end, in the case of Mrs. Garr, I never knew what the police were going to do or think, and when I did find out, afterward, I usually disagreed strenuously. Every time they jumped on anyone, it was a complete surprise to me. I learned a lot about the case from them, because they did all the routine work, and we usually heard the results sooner or later.

  On the whole, though, they didn’t seem nearly as keen, as pushing, as intuitive, as right as they should have been. Not nearly as much so as detectives in stories, for instance.

  I suppose it’s discouraging to work on a case when you haven’t even a decent corpse to go on, and the details are so gruesome, the papers won’t print them and you can’t get any publicity.

  By nine p.m. of that Friday, June fourth, my rooms were shining clean again. The Irish policeman had stuck his head in a couple of times and grinned to see me go at it, but no one else had been near me.

  I didn’t know if the Tewmans had come back or not; I hadn’t heard a sound below. I’d heard the Wallers move about overhead, seen Miss Sands drag herself in at six o’clock; she must have been dead to the world by the time I finished cleaning. Mr. Grant had slid quietly out at the dinner hour, and as quietly back again.

  Had Mr. Grant killed Mrs. Garr? He alone had admitted seeing her that Friday night. Had he been quietly opening, closing things in her kitchen there below when she came in; had he sprung at her . . . ? Blinking little old Mr. Grant.

  Or the Wallers. They’d been having trouble with Mrs. Garr.

  She’d asked them to leave. Funny, I’d forgotten to tell that to Lieutenant Strom.

  Miss Sands. She had lived in the house with Mrs. Garr for twelve years. You can work up a lot of hate in twelve years.

  Or Mr. Buffingham. Bad blood. His son was already engaged with criminals, was in jail. Mr. Buffingham himself had been held by the police for a week. But then, criminals’ parents were usually innocent, though some, like Ma Barker . . . Lawyers and trials were costly, too; he must be hard-pressed for money. He might have been hunting money, the pitiful little worn bills a poor old lodging-house keeper might have hidden . . .

  “I don’t believe in banks . . .” A ghost was whispering it in my ears. Was that why she’d listened, was that why she’d suspected people of snooping, because she had poor little heaps of savings hidden here and there around the house?

  I was practically shaking with excitement, like a dog at a gopher hole, by the time I’d thought that out.

  I tried to calm myself; after all, I didn’t want to spend my time at the wrong gopher hole. I needed someone to talk it over with; I needed to talk to someone who had been in the house longer than I had.

  I wished Mr. Kistler were home.

  Mr. Kistler.

  I was pretty sure, wasn’t I, that he wasn’t the one?

  Of course I was sure.

  Was I?

  It might be well, before I allied myself with Mr. Kistler, to think a little about it.

  Mr. Kistler.

  He had awfully strong hands.

  I walked over to the west bay of my living room, where Mr. Kistler had stood so much of the time during the night before. I stared out of the middle window.

  What I saw wasn’t the windy June night outside, the one scraggly tree, the light of the streetlight; what I saw was Mr. Kistler chinning himself on the bar that first night I talked to him, pulling himself up and up by those heavily muscled arms.

  He’d held my hand, once or twice since then. His hands had calluses across the palms. From the chinning bar, he said.

  Fancy a printer, a publisher, with calluses on his palms!

  I tried to picture those hands as the hands on my neck, choking me that night. But I couldn’t make myself believe it.

  Mrs. Garr, the police obviously believed, had died on Friday night, exactly a week ago. Hodge Kistler had been working that Friday night. So he’d said. He hadn’t come home until after midnight, when he’d seen the light under my door and roused the house.

  Nice, wouldn’t it have been, if he’d been the one to dump me on my kitchen floor, half strangled, just a few minutes earlier?

  All right, let’s suppose he had.

  Mrs. Halloran had made that telltale remark about banks to him, too. He was hard up for money; he’d said that repeatedly. The city council had taken all the money he had, and all he could beg or borrow. He’d had to overbid the Comet, with plenty of money behind it. He needed new presses badly. Maybe he wanted money to take me out to dinner.

  That last was a nice possibility.

  So when he knew Mrs. Garr was going to be away, he might have come to the house after train time to start looking. His quick, strong hands opening dresser drawers in the room under the stairs, flicking through the contents. His sure fingers prodding into sugar bowls and cream pitchers in the cellar kitchen. Mrs. Garr coming upon him, screaming:

  “Thief!”

  He’d jump to silence her.

  He might not have thought how strong his hands were. Then quick, to hide it, to save himself . . . The cats . . .

  I thought of his sick face the night before.

  Impossible. But go on supposing. Suppose he had. What could I find out by?

  Money.

  If he’d found any, it might be around his rooms somewhere. He couldn’t put it in a bank; wouldn’t dare, so soon.
Couldn’t give it to friends to keep; they knew he never had any.

  He’d had very little money with him on Memorial Day.

  The key.

  Mrs. Garr’s key to the cellar kitchen. Where was that? If that could be found in anyone’s room . . .

  My fingers itched.

  Right before my eyes, I could see Hodge Kistler’s right hand unlocking his own door on that tour of inspection a week ago. See the key in his hand. It was as identical to the key that opened my own double doors as two Hollywood eyebrows. My grandmother had a big old house, and I know how her inside locks were—the same skeleton key opened them all.

  I decided I’d look through Hodge Kistler’s rooms. If I found anything, that would be that. If I didn’t, I’d propose that he join me in hunting down Mrs. Garr’s killer.

  I knew that if Mr. Kistler came home and caught me—well, I didn’t intend to be caught. A look at my clock told me it still wasn’t much past nine o’clock. If Mr. Kistler had had to work until midnight last Friday he should do so tonight, too; he seldom came home much before then. It wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes—thirty at the most—for what I wanted to do.

  The Irish policeman was gone from the hall; the stranger in his place looked at me apathetically when I locked my double doors behind me and stood before him, jiggling my key in my hand.

  “Is it all right, Officer, if I go up to gossip with the Wallers?” I asked brightly.

  He waved a listless hand.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  I went up, walking as heavily as I could, knocked on the Wallers’ door. Mrs. Waller answered and I went in.

  We talked about Mrs. Garr, of course: had she been murdered or hadn’t she? They weren’t very communicative. They said they hadn’t slept much that day; they’d been talking instead. They seemed nervous, discouraged, uneasy. Mrs. Waller once called me “ma’am.” After their friendliness before, it was a change to be treated as a superior, and a superior under suspicion, at that. But I had too much else on my mind to worry about it.

  I said good-bye inside their door, waited for them to answer, then opened and closed their door softly.

  I stood outside their door, but I believed I had been so quiet the detective below would think I was still in the Wallers’ rooms.

  Lightly I stole down the long, sparsely lit hall. If my key didn’t fit Mr. Kistler’s door . . .

  But it did fit. The lock turned as smoothly as if my key and no other had been made for it.

  That showed me how wise I had been to keep chairs under my doorknobs!

  Rapidly I flicked down Mr. Kistler’s curtains, clicked on his lights. I remembered the layout of the rooms: the big room you walked into, used as a living room, the smaller room to the left used as a bedroom. In the bedroom, I opened the two doors in the back wall. The first one led to a closet, the other, bolted on the bedroom side, to a lavatory connecting with Mr. Buffingham’s room.

  I bolted that door again.

  Having to leave things as they were slowed me down. But I did a thorough job. Fortunately Mr. Kistler’s closet and drawers were those of a masculine man: neat, uninteresting, bare of clutter. Two hats on the closet shelf. A row of shoes beside them. Shoe trees to take out so I could feel in the toes. Nothing there. Suits and overcoats hanging from the rod; I went into every pocket, patted every inch of lining. Chest of drawers next. Shirts. Underwear. I squeezed all the socks. Looked under the pillows, the mattress, the rugs.

  The bedroom netted me nothing.

  In the living room, I took a look around for hiding places before I tackled the table with the typewriter and the stacks of papers that stood in the front bay. It would take a long time to go through those thoroughly. I lifted the cushion of the overstuffed chair, felt along the cracks. I shook out the books and magazines on the table by the chair. That reminded me there had been a couple of books on the table by the bed; I returned to the other room to shake those out.

  Nothing there.

  Walking back toward the living room past the chest of drawers, I stopped to look at it again: brushes, combs, and bottles on its top. An ecru linen cover.

  Under that dresser cover is where it was. Mottled green paper with black printing. A railroad ticket.

  A Memorial Day excursion ticket to Chicago on the Great Western.

  I just gaped at it.

  I didn’t even have strength enough to scream when the voice spoke from the doorway.

  “Don’t tell me I’ve lived all these years to be mistaken at my age,” it said.

  The words were light, but the brown eyes I whirled to see were intent.

  “Oh, I didn’t think you’d be home yet,” I gasped weakly, like a fool.

  “So I gather.” Mr. Kistler walked toward me, still intent. “How’d you get in here?”

  “My key fits—Keep away! I’m going downstairs!”

  “That’s what you think.”

  I tried to dart past him, but he lunged and caught me by the shoulders; I opened my mouth to scream, but his hand closed over it. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me down beside him, his hand still over my mouth.

  “Feel that hand? Well, I’m going to clap it right back if you start to yell. Now talk fast, baby. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  He lifted his hand from my mouth, holding it ready about a foot in front of my face; he held my left arm captive against his side; his arm across my back held my right.

  “I was trying to—” I opened my mouth again, to scream.

  He promptly clamped the hand down.

  “See? It doesn’t work. When you’re ready to talk and not yell, nod so I’ll know.”

  I nodded, gasping for air. His hand covered most of my nose, too; I could just as well be killed as smothered to death. I wasn’t too frightened to think that out.

  “Well, I was looking for clues.”

  “I see. The lady detective.”

  “Yes. I thought over who it might be if she was killed. If she was murdered, I mean. And you seemed the least likely.”

  “I seem the least likely, so you come in my room looking for clues.”

  “That was to eliminate you.”

  “I see.”

  “I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything against you; we could work together on finding out who did the murder, if she was murdered.”

  “Articulate, aren’t you?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Too damn much so. And what did you find?”

  “I—nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look at me.”

  I looked at him as innocently as it is possible for me to look, but I was sweating inside.

  “Aw, baby,” he said, his grimness dissolving a little, “is this a nice way to behave?”

  “Now may I go?”

  The grimness came back.

  “No, you don’t. Wait a minute. What were you looking at when I came in?”

  “There wasn’t anything.”

  “Under that cover on the chest you were looking.”

  “No. I was just going to look under there.” I was panic-stricken now, and I must have shown it. If he knew I’d found . . .

  “Liar. I’m always sticking junk under there. Okay, let’s see what’s under there now.”

  He carried me along with him, one arm around my neck with its hand on my mouth. I couldn’t stop him.

  He lifted the cover with his free hand.

  There it was before us both.

  The hand dropped from my mouth.

  I opened my mouth for screaming. This time it wasn’t a hand that stopped me; it was the dumbfounded look on his face.

  “Whew!” he said unextravagantly. He turned, stared at me.

  He began laughing, went back to the bed, sat w
eakly down, laughed until his face was dark red.

  “Oh, baby, that’s funny. Oh, God, that’s funny. The sins of the transgressor come home to roost. Oh, God!”

  “I don’t think it’s funny.” It was my turn to be grim. “The police won’t, either.”

  He stopped in the middle of a laugh, his mouth still open.

  “No. I guess they won’t, will they?”

  “No, I guess they won’t.”

  “Ye gods and little brass fishes. Here—sit down.”

  “No, I’ll go downstairs, I think.”

  “I think not. You sit right here on the bed.”

  He pushed me onto it, stood in front of me, his hands jammed in his pockets.

  “I suppose I’ve got to tell you.” His eyebrows were crowding his nose again. I could almost see his mind working, fast, behind his eyes.

  “Don’t bother to use your imagination. I know fiction when I hear it. A copywriter writes so much of it.”

  “This isn’t going to be fiction. It’s going to be a lot worse. Truth.”

  “Your turn to talk.”

  “Friday. That Friday night. A week ago. I wasn’t working.”

  “That’ll be a big help to you.”

  “I’ve already told Strom. He could see why I’d twisted the truth a little Friday night, and I knew he’d check on my alibi. I didn’t expect you to.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. You see, the paper goes out on Thursdays. So by Friday afternoon we’re all cleaned up, and we usually celebrate. A couple fellows and I went into a bar for a drink, and we met a couple girls. They said they were getting set to start on a long hard journey, so we helped ’em to get set. One thing led to another—Say, you’re a big help, you are.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Well, the hell with it. These girls didn’t go to Chicago—that’s where they were headed for—that same Memorial Day excursion. Sometime during the evening, this one girl hauled a ticket out of her handbag and gave it to me. Said she wanted me to keep it in memory of a big evening.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “So when I emptied my pockets after I finally got to bed that night, there the damn thing was. I stuck it under the dresser cover where I always stick things. I forgot it.”