The Blunderer Page 13

  Walter smiled. “Good night, Ellie.”

  She drove off. Walter whistled to Jeff, who had come out with them, and they went back into the house. Neither he nor Jon said anything for several minutes.

  “I like Ellie,” Jon said finally.

  Walter only nodded. There was another silence. Walter could imagine exactly what Jon was imagining about Ellie. Walter pressed his hands together tensely. His hands were sweating.

  “But until this blows over,” Jon said, “I’d keep Ellie strictly out of the picture.”

  “Yes,” Walter said.

  They did not speak of Ellie again.

  The next morning, Jon came into Walter’s study with the paper in his hand.

  “It’s in,” Jon said, and tossed the paper down on Walter’s couch.

  22

  In the roomy square kitchen of his two-story house in Newark, Melchior Kimmel sat breakfasting on rye bread with cream cheese and a mug of rich black coffee with sugar. The Newark Daily News was propped up in front of him against the sugar bowl, and he was staring at the lower corner of the front page. His left hand had stopped in mid-air with the half-eaten piece of bread in it. His mouth stayed open and his heavy lips grew limp.

  Stackhouse. He remembered the name, and the photograph clinched it. Stackhouse. He was positive.

  Kimmel read the two short columns shrewdly. He had followed her and had been identified, though there still seemed to be some doubt as to whether he had killed her. “Murder or Suicide?” was the heading of one paragraph.

  … Stackhouse stated that he did not see his wife at all at the bus stop. He waited about 15 minutes, he reported, then drove back to Long Island after the bus departed. He claimed that it was not until the next day, when he was asked by the Allentown police to identify his wife’s body, that he knew that any harm had come to her. Official autopsy indicated no injuries other than those which would have been inflicted by her fall down the cliff…

  Kimmel’s bald head bent forward intently.

  “Why Didn’t He Report Wife’s Absence?” was the heading of the last paragraph. Why indeed, thought Kimmel. That was exactly his question.

  But the last paragraph stated only that Stackhouse was a lawyer with the firm of Cross, Martinson and Buchman, and that Stackhouse and his wife had been about to be divorced. The last was an interesting point.

  A chill went over Kimmel, a kind of panic. Why had Stackhouse come all the way from Long Island to see him? Kimmel stood up slowly from the table and glanced around him at the chaos of beer bottles under the sink, at the electric clock over the stove, at the worn oilcloth on the drainboard, patterned with tiny pink and green apples that always reminded him of Helen. Stackhouse must have done it. There was no explaining away a lot of funny coincidences like this! And Stackhouse was going to be nailed. He would probably break down and admit it after two hours’ pressure. And suppose that would give the police ideas about himself?

  Well, he wasn’t the kind of man who would break down. And what kind of proof could they ever get on him? Especially after more than two months? Kimmel calculated carefully just when Stackhouse had come to his shop. About three weeks ago, he thought, early in October. He still had the order slip for the book, because it hadn’t come in yet. He wondered if he should destroy the order slip? If the book arrived, Kimmel thought, he wasn’t going to notify Stackhouse. By then, Stackhouse might be in prison, anyway.

  Kimmel began to tidy up his kitchen. He wiped the white enamel table with a moist dishcloth. There was always Tony, he thought. Tony had seen him in the movie, and that story of his having spent the evening at the movie was so entrenched in Tony’s mind by now that Tony believed he had looked at the back of his neck all evening. But Tony had spent only five minutes here and there with the police. What if they questioned him for several hours?

  But it hadn’t happened yet, Kimmel thought.

  He began to gather up beer bottles by their necks, the oldest bottles first. The beer bottles extended along the wall from under the sink all the way to the kitchen door. He looked around, saw an empty cardboard carton by the stove, and kicked it clumsily over near the bottles. He loaded the carton and took it out the back door to his dark Chevrolet sedan that stood in the yard. He came back with the carton empty and he filled it up again. Then he washed his hands with soap and water, because the bottles had been dusty, and went upstairs to his bedroom to get a clean white shirt. He was still in his underwear and trousers.

  He took the bottles to Riccos’s Delicatessen on the way to his shop. Tony was back of the counter.

  “How’re you today, Mr. Kimmel?” Tony asked. “What’s a matter? Cleaning house?”

  “A wee bit,” Kimmel said lightly. “How’s the liverwurst today?”

  “Oh, fine as usual, Mr. Kimmel.”

  Kimmel ordered a liverwurst sandwich and one of herring-in-cream with onions. While Tony made them, Kimmel drifted along the stands of cellophane-wrapped foods, and came back with a package of mixed nuts, peanut-butter crackers, and a little bag of chocolate marshmallow cookies, which he spilled out on the counter.

  Tony still owed him money when he figured the deposits on the bottles. Kimmel bought two bottles of beer: it was too early for beer to be sold, but Tony always made an exception for him.

  Kimmel got into his car and drove at a leisurely speed towards his shop. He loved Sunday mornings, and he generally spent Sunday morning and part of the afternoon in his shop. His shop was not open for business on Sundays, but it gave Kimmel a greater sense of leisure and freedom to pass his only free day in the same place in which he worked all week. Besides, he loved his shop better than his house, and here on Sundays he could browse among his own books undisturbed, eat his lunch, doze, and answer at length some of the correspondence, erudite and whimsical, he received from people he had never seen but whom he felt he knew well. Booklovers: if you knew the kind of books a man wanted, you knew the man.

  Kimmel’s car was a black 1941 Chevrolet, its upholstery spotted and badly worn, though its outside looked almost as good as when it had been new. Kimmel would have liked a new car, because Nathan and a few others and even Tony joshed him about the 1941 model, but since he hadn’t the money for a brand-new car, Kimmel preferred to keep his ancient one rather than acquire something slightly newer on a trade-in. Kimmel drove his car with dignity. He detested speeding. He had told all his friends that the 1941 model suited him perfectly, and Kimmel had come to believe it himself.

  His fat lips pursed, and he began to whistle Reich’ Mir die Hand, Mein Leben. He gazed up at the sky and at the buildings he passed, as if the ugly section of Newark through which he happened to be driving were actually beautiful. It was a fine autumnal morning, just crisp enough to feel bracing. Kimmel looked up at the black stone eagle on the pediment of a building across the street, its reared-back head silhouetted against the sky, one taloned claw outstretched. He was always reminded of a certain building in Breslau when he looked at the eagle, though he never actually thought of Breslau: he thought rather of how peaceful Newark was, how comfortable his routine of bookshop and home, his friends and his wood carving and his reading, how calm and happy he was since Helen no longer lived in the house. He would remember that he had killed her, and it seemed a quiet but meritorious achievement on his part, an achievement endorsed by the rest of the world, too, because no one had ever called him to account for it. The world simply rolled on, as if nothing had happened. Kimmel liked to imagine that everyone in the neighborhood—Tony, Nathan, Miss Brown the librarian, Tom Bradley, and the Campbells next door—knew that he had killed Helen and didn’t care at all, actually looked up to him for it, and considered him above the laws that governed other men’s behavior. Certainly his status in the community had risen since Helen was no longer with him. Tom Bradley invited him to meet important people at his home, and Tom had never invited him when Helen was his wife. And there was also the fact that there had never been the least suspicion against him. He was on exc
ellent terms with the Newark police, and in fact with everyone who had ever interviewed him.

  It was 9:55 when Kimmel opened his door. He never opened shop before 9:30, even on weekdays, because he loathed getting up early, though he supposed he missed some student trade occasionally because a lot of students passed in the morning on their way to the high school three blocks away. Kimmel had had a girl, Edith, to open shop for him and work mornings until a couple of months ago. She’d got nervous, and Kimmel had thought she might be pregnant. Finally, she had quit. Now and then, Kimmel wondered if she had quit because she suspected him of having killed his wife. Edith had witnessed a lot: that fight that had broken his glass lampshade, and all the times Helen had come in to ask him for bits of money and a quarrel had started and he had had to twist Helen’s wrists a couple of times, because that had been the only way to shut her up.

  Kimmel shuddered. It was all over.

  He was thinking of Stackhouse’s order slip in the cubbyhole as he walked towards his desk, but when he sat down he took out the letters that he meant to answer from another cubbyhole, and dropped them in the middle of his desk. There were also some publishers’ catalogues and brochures that he had not finished reading. Kimmel loved publishers’ catalogues, and he read them thoroughly, whether he ordered the books or not, with the delight that a gourmet might show in perusing a well-varied menu. Here was a letter from old Clifford Wrexall in South Carolina to be answered. He wanted another esoteric book of pornography. Pornography was Kimmel’s main source of profit. He was known—among serious collectors of such books—as a dealer who could be relied on to get a book if it existed at all. Kimmel hunted down books in England, France, the Isle of Man, Germany, and in the library of an American eccentric in Turkey, a retired oilman of Texas and Persia, who meted out his valuable titbits to Kimmel only after months of elaborate and tantalizing exchanges of letters. When Kimmel wrested a book of pornography from Dillard in Turkey, he made the client pay for it.

  Kimmel lighted his gas stove, a necessary supplement to the feeble heat that came up through the two radiators behind the front windows, sat down again and reached into the cubbyhole where he kept his orders. He picked Stackhouse’s out from among about a dozen others and looked at it. Stackhouse. And the Long Island address. Kimmel refolded the paper and folded it once more. Stackhouse’s book hadn’t come in yet. There was no real reason why he had to destroy the paper, Kimmel thought. That might look more suspicious than ever. But he still had an impulse to hide the order slip in the secret compartment under the lowest little drawer on the left, or at the bottom of the cigar box that was filled with pencil stubs and rubber stamps. Kimmel held the folded paper between his thumb and forefinger, debating.

  The front door opened and a man came in.

  Kimmel stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The store isn’t open today.”

  The man kept walking towards him, smiling. “How do you do? You’re Melchior Kimmel?”

  “Yes. Can I help you?” Kimmel asked, though rather breathlessly, because he had not realized until the man asked his name that he was a police detective—and Kimmel was usually faster.

  “I’m Lieutenant Corby, Philadelphia Police. Do you have a few minutes to spare?”

  “Of course. What is it?” He slipped the hand with the paper into his trouser pocket, slipped the other hand into the other pocket, too.

  “A coincidence of circumstances.” The young lieutenant leaned an elbow on Kimmel’s high desk and pushed his hat back. “Did you happen to see the story of the woman who was killed near a bus stop the other day?”

  “Yes, I saw it just this morning.” Kimmel was affecting his earnest, straightforward and, as he thought, American manner. “Naturally, I read it.”

  “I wonder if you’ve thought of the possibility of a common killer, or if you’ve found out anything since your wife’s death that leads you to suspect a particular person?”

  Kimmel smiled a little. “If I had, I’d certainly have reported it. I’m in touch with the Newark police.”

  “Yes, and I’m from Philadelphia,” Corby said, smiling. “But this death the other day happened in my state.”

  “I thought the paper said it was suicide,” Kimmel remarked. “Is the husband guilty?”

  Lieutenant Corby smiled again. “He’s not entirely clear, let’s put it that way. We don’t know yet. He acts guilty.” He got out a cigarette, lighted it, took a few steps away from the desk and turned back.

  Kimmel watched him with annoyance. His expression looked silly and prankish. Kimmel could not yet tell how intelligent he was.

  “It’s such a convenient way to do a murder, after all.” Corby said, “follow the bus, wait until it stops.” Corby’s blue eyes lingered on Kimmel. “He could hardly fail, because the wife’s going to come with him to some secluded place….”

  Kimmel fairly sneered at his naïve approach, and to cover it blinked his little eyes, readjusted his glasses then removed his glasses entirely and blew on them and wiped them slowly with a clean handkerchief. Kimmel was trying to think of something withering to say, or at least deflating.

  “Only Stackhouse hasn’t even got an alibi,” Corby said.

  “Perhaps he isn’t guilty.”

  “Did the possibility occur to you that Stackhouse could have killed his wife like that?”

  What a question, Kimmel thought. The paper had actually stated that he might have killed his wife like that. Kimmel looked at Corby with hauteur. “The subject of murder depresses me—naturally, I think. I only glanced over the story this morning. I’ll read it again. I have it at home.” Mr. Stackhouse, lying on the kitchen table. Kimmel liked Corby even less than Stackhouse. Stackhouse may have had his reasons. Kimmel folded his arms. “What specifically did you want to ask me about?”

  “Well, I’ve asked it really,” Corby said more modestly. He moved restlessly about in the little clear space between Kimmel’s desk and one of the long tables of books. “I’ve just been going over the police files on your wife’s murder this morning. You were at the movie that evening, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Kimmel’s hands played with the closed knife in his left pocket and with the folded paper in the other.

  “Alibi supported by Anthony Ricco.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And your wife also had no enemies who might have killed her?”

  “I think she had.” Kimmel lifted his eyebrows almost humorously and looked down at the brightly lighted desk in front of him. “She was not a pleasant character, my wife. Not to everyone. But at the same time, I know of no one who would have killed her. I have never named a single name that I suspected.”

  Corby nodded. “Were you never suspected?”

  Kimmel lifted his eyebrows even higher. If Corby wanted to antagonize him, he would be unantagonizable. “Not that I know of. I wasn’t told about it, if I was.” He posed, tall, erect and completely in command of himself, while Corby studied him.

  “I wish you would read over this Stackhouse case carefully. If you’d like, I’ll send you the police records—those we’re able to release.”

  “But it really doesn’t interest me that much,” Kimmel said. “I suppose I should thank you for thinking it would. If there’s anything I can do to help you—but actually I don’t see that there is.” He was the earnest American again, his head tilted attentively.

  “Probably there’s not.” Corby’s lips smiled again below the small brown mustache. “But don’t forget—I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that your wife’s murderer was never found. The most amazing connections can turn up.”

  Kimmel let his mouth open a little. Then he asked brightly, “Are you looking for a man who preys on women at bus stops?”

  “Yes. One man, at least.” Corby stepped back, taking his leave. “That’s about all. Thank you very much, Mr. Kimmel.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Kimmel watched him go, watched the inscrutable angular back of his rust-colored topcoa
t until it moved beyond the range of his near-sighted eyes, and he heard the door close.

  He took the order slip from his pocket and put it back where it had been amongst the other orders. If Stackhouse’s book came in, he thought, he would let it lie around without notifying Stackhouse. If they found Stackhouse’s order in his desk, he would say he didn’t remember the name on the order. It was safer than destroying the order, if they should ever possibly make such a thorough search of his papers that they would notice a missing order.

  He was getting too anxious, too angry, he thought. That was not the way. But still, no one until now had actually guessed how he had done it. And suddenly Stackhouse had, apparently, and now Corby. Kimmel sat down and made himself read through Wrexall’s letter again, carefully, in preparation for answering it. Wrexall wanted a book called Famous Dogs in the 19th Century Brothels.

  About an hour later, Kimmel had a telephone call from Tony. Tony said that a man had come to his store to ask about that night, and to go over all the facts Tony had given the police. Kimmel made light of it. He did not tell Tony that the man had been to see him. Tony did not sound very excited about it, Kimmel thought. The first few times, Tony had come running over in person to tell him all about an interview with the police.

  23

  Walter stayed at home on Monday, the day after the funeral, though there was nothing for him to do at home, and it seemed he only waited like a willing victim for the polite callers, most of whom he didn’t know at all. It was amazing how many people who had been Clara’s real estate clients came to tell him how sorry they were to learn of her death.

  Nobody seemed to suspect him, Walter thought, nobody at all. The story in the newspapers—though the more sensational newspapers had made all they could out of it—had blown over with amazingly little comment, at least to his face. Two or three people, practically total strangers, had sympathized with him for his ironic bad luck at having been there almost in time to save her—and some assumed that to have been the motive for his following her—but no one seemed to doubt his innocence, not even so much as Walter had felt Jon doubted it the night he had gone with Walter to Philadelphia. Walter suspected that Jon doubted his motive in following the bus, and he had reason to, Walter thought. Jon knew more about his and Clara’s relationship than anyone else, much more than the Iretons, for instance. Walter hadn’t told Jon until after Clara’s funeral about his plans to go to Reno and get his divorce; Jon had thought that very strange. And Walter had been acting strange for the last several weeks, not calling Jon, not seeing anybody. Walter sensed Jon’s suspicions more than saw them. He had an impulse to have it out with Jon, make a clean breast of the whole story, including Kimmel, including his own muddled intentions the night he followed the bus. But Walter didn’t.