The Blunderer Page 18

  Kimmel stepped around his desk.

  It was going wrong. Walter had thought out a long dialogue between himself and Kimmel that even allowed for Kimmel’s resentment, but which let him say the things he wanted to say. Now he couldn’t get them out. He began again when Kimmel came back.

  “Neither do I care whether you are guilty or not,” Walter said very quietly.

  Kimmel, who was leaning over his desk where he had just written something in a notebook, turned his head towards Walter. “And what do you think?” he asked.

  Walter thought he was guilty. Corby thought so. But did he act guilty? He didn’t, Walter thought.

  “What?” Kimmel asked boldly, straightening up, recapping his fountain pen. “That’s of prime importance, your opinion, isn’t it?”

  “I think that you are guilty,” Walter said, “and it doesn’t matter to me.”

  Kimmel only looked confused for a moment. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter to you?”

  “That’s the whole thing. I have intruded on your life. People think I am guilty, too. At least the police are investigating me as if they believed I was guilty.We’re in the same position.” Walter stopped, but that was not all he had to say. He waited for Kimmel to reply.

  “Why do you think I should care if you are innocent?” Kimmel asked.

  Walter abandoned it. Something more important pressed at him to be said. “I want to thank you for something you had no need to do. That’s not telling Corby that I’d come to see you before.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Kimmel snapped.

  “It wouldn’t have injured you to say so. It would have injured me—maybe fatally.”

  “I can still tell him, of course,” Kimmel said coldly.

  Walter blinked. It was as if Kimmel had spat in his face. “Are you going to?”

  “Have I any reason to protect you?” Kimmel asked, his low voice shaking. “Do you realize what you have done to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you realize that this will go on and on indefinitely, for me and probably for you, too?”

  “Yes,” Walter said. Only he didn’t really think so. Not for himself. He was answering Kimmel like a child who was being reprimanded, catechized. He ground his teeth against any further answers to Kimmel, but Kimmel asked no more questions. “Did you kill your wife?” Walter asked. Walter could see very distinctly Kimmel’s ugly mouth, one round corner trembling upward in an incredulous smile.

  “Do you possibly think I would tell you, you prying idiot?”

  “I want to know,” Walter said, leaning forward. “I meant I didn’t care from the point of view of whether you are proved guilty by the police. I don’t. I only want to know.” Walter waited, watching Kimmel. He felt that Kimmel was going to answer, and that everything—his life, his fate—was poised like a great rock on the edge of a precipice, and that Kimmel’s answer would decide whether it fell or not.

  “You don’t care whether I’m proved guilty or not,” Kimmel said in an angry whisper, “yet every move you’ve made, including being here now, is a move to incriminate me!”

  “You’ve protected me. I’m not going to betray you.”

  “I would never tell you. Do you think you’re to be trusted with anything? Even a man’s innocence?”

  “Yes. With this.” Walter looked Kimmel in the eyes.

  “I am not guilty,” Kimmel said.

  Walter did not believe him, but he felt that Kimmel had reached a condition of believing himself not guilty. Walter could see it in the arrogant way Kimmel straightened up, in the injured, defiant glance he threw at him. It fascinated Walter. He suddenly realized that he wanted to believe Kimmel guilty—and that logically there was still a possibility that Kimmel was not guilty at all. That possibility terrified Walter. “It never crossed your mind to do it?” Walter asked.

  “To kill my wife?” Kimmel snorted astonishment. “No, but it obviously crossed yours!”

  “Not when I tore the story out of the paper. I tore it out for another reason. It did cross my mind that you’d killed your wife. I admit it. I admit that I thought of killing my own wife that way. But I didn’t do it. You’ll have to believe me.” Walter leaned on a corner of the desk.

  “Why do I have to believe anything you tell me?”

  Walter didn’t answer.

  “And do you blame me for your troubles?” Kimmel asked impatiently.

  “Of course not. If I was guilty—guilty in my thoughts—”

  “Oh, just a minute!” Kimmel called out over his desk. “That’s from Wainwright’s?” Kimmel walked away towards the front of the store, where Walter saw a man with a crate of books on his shoulder.

  Walter looked at the floor and shifted, feeling hopelessly incapable of saying what he wanted to say, feeling his whole mission was useless, would be useless. He was sticking it out, like a bad performer on a stage who has been hooted at and told to go off, but who was still sticking, in spite of mortification and shame. Walter gathered himself for another attempt as Kimmel came back.

  Kimmel had receipts in his hand. He signed one, stamped the other, and gave the signed one to the delivery man. He turned to Walter. “You’d better get out of here. You can never tell when Lieutenant Corby is going to walk in. You wouldn’t like that.”

  “I’ve one thing more to say.”

  “What is it?”

  “I feel—I feel we are both guilty in a sense.”

  “I’ve told you I am not guilty.”

  Their bitter dialogue in subdued tones went on. “I happen to think you are,” Walter said. Then he burst out, “I’ve told you that I thought about it, that I might have done it that night if I had seen my wife. I didn’t see her. I couldn’t find her.” He leaned close to Kimmel. “I have to tell you that, and I don’t care what you make of it, or if you tell the police what they’ll make of it. Do you understand? We are both guilty, and in a sense I share in your guilt.” But Walter realized it made sense only to him, that it was only his own belief in Kimmel’s guilt that evened the scales, not Kimmel’s guilt, because that wasn’t proved. Now Kimmel was listening to him, he could see, but as soon as he realized this, his words were shut off with shyness. “You’re my guilt!” Walter said.

  Kimmel’s hand fluttered. “Shut up!”

  Walter had not realized how loudly he spoke. There was still a man in the shop. “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I’m very sorry.”

  Kimmel’s annoyed frown stayed. He leaned his heavy thighs against the edge of his desk and picked up some notebooks, threw them down one by one on the desk again, petulantly. Walter had the feeling he had seen him making the same gesture before. Kimmel glanced, with an apprehensive lift of his eyebrows, towards the front of the store, and then he turned to Walter.

  “I understand you,” he said. “That doesn’t make me like you any better. I dislike you intensely.” Kimmel paused. He looked as if he were waiting for his anger to mount. “I wish you had never set foot in this shop! Do you understand that?”

  “Of course I understand,” Walter said. He felt curiously relieved suddenly.

  “And now I wish you would go!”

  “I will.” Walter smiled a little. He took a last look at him—massive, the glasses empty circles of light again, the mouth precise and lewd yet intelligent. Walter turned and walked quickly to the front of the store.

  He kept walking quickly until he came to the corner where he had hesitated. He stopped again, and surveyed the slightly darker scene with a feeling of pleasure and relief. He put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it. The smoke was fragrant and delicious, as if he had not smoked in days. He put the cigarette in his mouth and walked on towards his car.

  He felt more strongly than ever that Kimmel was guilty, though he could not remember any specific thing that had happened today that should make him think so. I’ve told you I am not guilty, Kimmel’s voice repeated in his ear, with the vibrance of truth in it. I understand you, That doesn’t make me like
you any better, I dislike you intensely.… Walter walked with a spring in his step. He felt relieved of a terrible strain, though just what the strain had been he did not precisely know. Kimmel hadn’t cared if he was innocent or not! Walter felt so much better, he could not believe that the only reason for it was that he had disburdened himself of a statement that Kimmel had not even been interested in hearing. Why in hell had he thought that Kimmel would be? What kind of a confession was a confession of innocence? It’s equally damning, if you only thought of killing Clara, Walter thought, as he had often thought before. It’s just as ruinous if you only intended to kill her without ever having laid a hand on her. Walter felt his thoughts were spilling over, running nowhere, running dangerously. He had just thought of telling Ellie about the conversation with Kimmel! Because it had been a good thing, a felicitous thing, this interview with Kimmel, and he wanted to share it with her because he loved her. Only perhaps he didn’t: he remembered last week, Ellie wanting him to stay the night at her apartment, and he had insisted on going home. Not that his staying or going proved or disproved anything, but the way he had refused to stay struck him now as selfish and callous. He was ashamed of that, and ashamed also of the first night in Elbe’s apartment when Clara was still alive. For a moment, to justify himself, Walter tried to recreate the ugly atmosphere of those days—Clara’s maddening accusations, that had driven him to Ellie. He could not make it as ugly as the present, or as maddening, or as wrong. Clara at least had been alive then.

  Walter stood with his hand on his car door, trying to collect himself. He felt shaky again, off his course, off the course he should be taking. Had he done the wrong thing again in talking to Kimmel? The obvious peril of it struck him now, and he looked all around him for Corby, for a plain-clothes spy. It’s a little late to be thinking of spies, Walter thought. He ducked into his car and drove off. It was only 4:10, but he didn’t want to go back to the office. Nearly four hours till he had to pick up Ellie. Suppose Ellie had called him in the office this afternoon? She seldom did, but she might have. He hadn’t even made up an excuse for the office. He had only told Dick that he was going out for an hour or so and that it was possible he wouldn’t be back at all. If Ellie had called, she would suspect he had been with Corby again. She probably wouldn’t believe him tonight when he told her he hadn’t been.

  28

  Walter waited in his car on the curving road that went from the school gates to the auditorium building. There were only four or five other cars on the driveway, all of them empty. And one was Boadicea, hulking, canvas-topped, homely as a wooden shoe. Walter was conscious of a faint shame as he sat there, a dread that someone he knew—the Iretons or the Rogerses—would see him and know that he was waiting for Ellie. But the rehearsals had been over at six, he knew, and only the instructors were left now, discussing costumes. And he had threshed this out with himself weeks ago, he remembered. If he was going to see Ellie at all, he’d do it with his head up.

  He got out of the car and went to meet her when he saw her come out of the door. Walter wanted her to drop her car in Lennert and come in his, but Ellie insisted on taking hers. She wanted to save him the trip to Lennert and back tonight.

  They drove to Walter’s house and started the dinner right away because they were both hungry. Walter had a drink in the kitchen. Ellie said she was too tired for a drink. But she kept talking to him, entertaining him with a story about the stinginess of Mrs. Pierson, the school treasurer, in providing costumes of the Hansel and Gretel show. The witches had gone through their rehearsal that afternoon in skirts and no tops. “I had to show her those half-naked kids on the stage before she’d believe me!” Ellie said with a big laugh. Finally, I got it. Fifty-five more bucks.”

  He loved to hear Ellie laugh. It was loud and unrepressed, filling a room with its vibrance, like the vigorous chord she struck when she finished a session on her violin.

  They put up a bridge table in the living-room. Just as they were sitting down to eat, the doorbell rang. Walter went to answer it. It was the Iretons, bubbling over with apologies for crashing in just when they were about to have dinner, but after a few moments, they were both sitting down, content to stay while Walter and Ellie ate. Walter couldn’t figure out whether they were slightly high, or covering up the fact that they wanted to snoop a little bit—and had struck it rich tonight—with a lot of animation.

  “I hear you’re playing the piano for the Thanksgiving show at Harridge,” Betty Ireton said to Ellie. “I’m going with Mrs. Agnew. You know, Florence’s mother?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ellie said with recognition, smiling. “Flo’s in the cuckoo chorus.”

  “Mine’re too young for school yet….”

  Betty was being much more amiable than necessary. Walter wiped his lips carefully. Ellie had almost no lipstick on.

  “How’s business, Walt?” Bill leaned forward on his knees, thrusting his pleasant, ruddy face towards Walter.

  “The same old grind,” Walter said.

  “Seen Joel and Ernestine lately?”

  “No. I couldn’t make it last week to something they invited me to. I forgot what.”

  “A Boston tea party,” Bill said. It was local slang for a cocktail party that got started at four on a weekend afternoon.

  At least he had been invited, Walter thought. But it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t heard anything about any Thanksgiving or Christmas parties yet. Ordinarily, at this time of year, there was talk of eggnog parties, costume parties, and even sleigh-ride parties if it snowed. Walter was sure there had been talk. It just hadn’t been addressed to him. Walter had been eating slowly and uncomfortably. He laid his knife and fork down. Betty and Ellie were talking in polite platitudes about the benefits of seeing people and possibly even a change of scene for Walter. Walter felt the silence between him and Bill was full of words: Clara had been dead only a month, and here was Ellie, sitting in the house having dinner. There had been one afternoon, about a fortnight ago, when the Iretons had seen him and Ellie buying groceries in the supermarket in Benedict. Walter still remembered how Bill had only waved to him, and had not come over to talk.

  “Had any more unpleasant interviews with the police?” Bill asked Walter.

  “No,” Walter said. “I haven’t. Have you?”

  “No—but I thought you might be interested to know that Corby’s been talking to people at the club,” Bill said in a low tone that did not interfere with Ellie’s and Betty’s conversation. “Sonny Cole told me. He talked to Sonny and Marvin Hays, I think it was. And also Ralph.” Bill smiled a little.

  Walter barely remembered that Ralph was the name of the club barman. “That’s annoying,” Walter said calmly. “What do they know about me? I haven’t been to the Club in months.”

  “Oh, it’s not about you—I don’t suppose. They were asking—that is, this fellow Corby—Well, after all, Walter, I suppose what they’re trying to prove is whether she was a suicide or whether somebody killed her, aren’t they? I suppose they’re sounding around for possible enemies.” Bill looked down at his clasped hands. He was pressing their palms together and making sucking noises with them.

  Walter knew Corby had been asking questions about him, not about possible enemies. He saw that Betty and Ellie were listening now, too. And he had been there, right at the bus stop. They all knew it. Walter felt they were all waiting for him to make the statement, for the ten thousandth time, that he didn’t do it. They were waiting to hear just how it would sound this time, to take it home and test it, taste it, turn it over and smell it, and decide if it were true or not. Or rather, not quite decide. Even Ellie, Walter thought. Walter kept a stubborn silence.

  “Corby was around to our house again, too,” Bill went on in the same impassive voice that was a lot different from the friendly, excited voice he had used the night he had telephoned about Corby. “Told me some story of how he’d found a newspaper clipping in your house about the Kimmel case.”

  Bill rolled it of
f as if he knew all about the Kimmel case. Walter glanced at Ellie, and in that split second saw the same look of waiting to hear what he would answer, a look that was almost as bad as the Iretons’ blatant curiosity.

  “Seems Corby thinks there’s a similarity,” Bill said. He shook his head, embarrassed. “I sure wouldn’t like to be—I mean—”

  “What do you mean?” Walter asked.

  “I mean, I guess it looks bad, Walter, doesn’t it?” Now there was a sneaking fear in Bill’s face, as if he was afraid Walter was going to jump up and hit him.

  It was worse than if Corby had put it in the newspapers, Walter thought. Now he was telling everybody about it, giving everybody the idea it was a vital piece of evidence in the proof he was collecting, still too secret and explosive to be put into print. “I explained that newspaper story to Corby. My explanation was satisfactory,” Walter said, reaching for his cigarettes. “It looks bad if Corby chooses to make it look bad. He’s trying to imply that Kimmel and I could both be murderers. Kimmel hasn’t been proved guilty. He hasn’t even been indicted. I certainly haven’t been.”

  Betty Ireton was sitting bolt upright, listening with eyes and ears.

  “He seems to think Kimmel also followed his wife,” Bill began tentatively, “and killed her that night at the—”

  “That hasn’t been proved at all!” Walter said.

  “Do you want a cigarette?” Ellie asked.

  Walter hadn’t found his cigarettes. He took the one Ellie gave him. “I don’t see any similarity in my case to Kimmel’s except that both our wives died while they were on bus trips.”

  “Oh, they’re not suspecting you,Walter,” Betty said reassuringly. “Good heavens!”

  Walter looked at her. “Aren’t they? What are they doing? Can you imagine how it is when you’ve told the same story over and over, every inch, every move you made, and they still don’t believe you? As a matter of fact the police do believe me. It’s Corby who doesn’t—or pretends he doesn’t. What I should do is appeal to the police for protection against Corby!” But he had already tried that. There was absolutely no way of stopping a detective on a police force from investigating a man he thought ought to be investigated.