The Black House Page 3

  Michael said, “Must’ve been within half a mile of this house. Portland Bill doesn’t venture farther, I think. He’s been doctored, poor old Bill.” The cat looked up at his name. “You trust this Peter?”

  “I do. I knew his father and so did my father. And if I were asked—I’m not sure I could say who struck the fatal blow, I or Peter. But to be correct, I’d take the responsibility, because I did strike two blows with the hammer. I can’t claim self-defense, because Reeves hadn’t attacked me.”

  Correct. An odd word, Michael thought. But Dickenson was the type who would want to be correct. “What do you propose to do now?”

  “Propose? I?” Dickenson’s sigh was almost a gasp. “I dunno. I’ve admitted it. In a way it’s in your hands or—” He made a gesture to indicate the downstairs. “I’d like to spare Peter—keep him out of it—if I can. You understand, I think. I can talk to you. You’re a man like myself.”

  Michael was not sure of that, but he had been trying to imagine himself in Dickenson’s position, trying to see himself twenty years younger in the same circumstances. Reeves had been a swine—even to his own wife—unprincipled, and should a young man like Dickenson ruin his own life, or the best part of it, over a man like Reeves? “What about Reeves’s wife?”

  Dickenson shook his head and frowned. “I know she detested him. If he’s absent without tidings, I’ll wager she’ll never make the least effort to find him. She’s glad to be rid of him, I’m sure.”

  A silence began and grew. Portland Bill yawned, arched his back and stretched. Dickenson watched the cat as if he might say something: after all the cat had discovered the fingers. But the cat said nothing. Dickenson broke the silence awkwardly but in a polite tone:

  “Where are the fingers—by the way?”

  “In the back of my garage—which is locked. They’re in a shoe box.” Michael felt quite off balance. “Look, I have two guests in the house.”

  Tom Dickenson got to his feet quickly. “I know. Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about, but I’ve really got to say something to them because the Colonel—my old friend Eddie—knows I rang you up about the initials on the ring and that you were to call on us—me. He could’ve said something to the others.”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  “Could you stay here for a few minutes while I speak with the people downstairs? Feel free with the whiskey.”

  “Thank you.” His eyes did not flinch.

  Michael went downstairs. Phyllis was kneeling by the gramophone, about to put a record on. Eddie Phelps sat in a corner of the sofa reading a newspaper. “Where’s Gladys?” Michael asked.

  Gladys was deadheading roses. Michael called to her. She wore rubber boots like Dickenson, but hers were smaller and bright red. Michael looked to see if Edna was behind the kitchen door. Gladys said Edna had gone off to buy something at the grocery. Michael told Dickenson’s story, trying to make it brief and clear. Phyllis’s mouth fell open a couple of times. Eddie Phelps held his chin in a wise-looking fashion and said “Um-hm” now and then.

  “I really don’t feel like turning him in—or even speaking to the police,” Michael ventured in a voice hardly above a whisper. No one had said anything after his narration, and Michael had waited several seconds. “I don’t see why we can’t just let it blow over. What’s the harm?”

  “What’s the harm, yes,” said Eddie Phelps, but it might have been a mindless echo for all the help it gave Michael.

  “I’ve heard of stories like this—among primitive peoples,” Phyllis said earnestly, as if to say she found Tom Dickenson’s action quite justifiable.

  Michael had of course included the resident worker Peter in his account. Had Dickenson’s hammer blow been fatal, or the blow of Peter’s ax? “The primitive ethic is not what I’m concerned with,” Michael said, and at once felt confused. In regard to Tom Dickenson he was concerned with just the opposite of the primitive.

  “But what else is it?” asked Phyllis.

  “Yes, yes,” said the Colonel, gazing at the ceiling.

  “Really, Eddie,” said Michael, “you’re not being much of a help.”

  “I’d say nothing about it. Bury those fingers somewhere—with the ring. Or maybe the ring in a different place for safety. Yes.” The Colonel was almost muttering, murmuring, but he did look at Michael.

  “I’m not sure,” said Gladys, frowning with thought.

  “I agree with Uncle Eddie,” Phyllis said, aware that Dickenson was upstairs awaiting his verdict. “Mr. Dickenson was provoked—seriously—and the man who got killed seems to have been a creep!”

  “That’s not the way the law looks at it,” Michael said with a wry smile. “Lots of people are provoked seriously. And a human life is a human life.”

  “We’re not the law,” said Phyllis, as if they were something superior to the law just then.

  Michael had been thinking just that: they were not the law, but they were acting as if they were. He was inclined to go along with Phyllis—and Eddie. “All right. I don’t feel like reporting this, given all the circumstances.”

  But Gladys held out. She wasn’t sure. Michael knew his wife well enough to believe that it was not going to be a bone of contention between them, if they were at variance—just now. So Michael said, “You’re one against three, Glad. Do you seriously want to ruin a young man’s life for a thing like this?”

  “True, we’ve got to take a vote, as if we were a jury,” said Eddie.

  Gladys saw the point. She conceded. Less than a minute later, Michael climbed the stairs to his study, where the first draft of a book review curled in the roller of his typewriter, untouched since the day before yesterday. Fortunately he could still meet the deadline without killing himself.

  “We don’t want to report this to the police,” Michael said.

  Dickenson, on his feet, nodded solemnly as if receiving a verdict. He would have nodded in the same manner if he had been told the opposite, Michael thought.

  “I’ll get rid of the fingers,” Michael mumbled, and bent to get some pipe tobacco.

  “Surely that’s my responsibility. Let me bury them somewhere—with the ring.”

  It really was Dickenson’s responsibility, and Michael was glad to escape the task. “Right. Well—shall we go downstairs? Would you like to meet my wife and my friend Colonel—”

  “No, thank you. Not just now,” Dickenson interrupted. “Another time. But would you give them—my thanks?”

  They went down some other stairs at the back of the hall, and out to the garage, whose key Michael had in his key case. Michael thought for a moment that the shoe box might have disappeared mysteriously as in a detective story, but it was exactly where he had left it, on top of the old jerricans. He gave it to Dickenson, and Dickenson departed in his dusty Triumph northward. Michael entered his house by the front door.

  By now the others were having a drink. Michael felt suddenly relieved, and he smiled. “I think old Portland ought to have something special at the cocktail hour, don’t you?” Michael said, mainly to Gladys.

  Portland Bill was looking without much interest at a bowl of ice cubes. Only Phyllis said, “Yes!” with enthusiasm.

  Michael went to the kitchen and spoke with Edna who was dusting flour onto a board. “Any more smoked salmon left from lunch?”

  “One slice, sir,” said Edna, as if it weren’t worth serving to anyone, and she virtuously hadn’t eaten it, though she might.

  “Can I have it for old Bill? He adores it.” When Michael came back into the living room with the pink slice on a saucer, Phyllis said:

  “I bet Mr. Dickenson wrecks his car on the way home. That’s often the way it is.” She whispered suddenly, remembering her manners, “Because he feels guilty.”

  Portland Bill bolted his salmon with b
rief but intense delight.

  Tom Dickenson did not wreck his car.

  Not One of Us

  It wasn’t merely that Edmund Quasthoff had stopped smoking and almost stopped drinking that made him different, slightly goody-goody and therefore vaguely unlikable. It was something else. What?

  That was the subject of conversation at Lucienne Gauss’s apartment in the East 80s one evening at the drinks hour, seven. Julian Markus, a lawyer, was there with his wife Frieda, also Peter Tomlin, a journalist aged twenty-eight and the youngest of the circle. The circle numbered seven or eight, the ones who knew Edmund well, meaning for most of them about eight years. The others present were Tom Strathmore, a sociologist, and Charles Forbes and his wife, Charles being an editor in a publishing house, and Anita Ketchum, librarian at a New York art museum. They gathered more often at Lucienne’s apartment than at anyone else’s, because Lucienne liked entertaining and, as a painter working on her own, her hours were flexible.

  Lucienne was thirty-three, unmarried, and quite pretty with fluffy reddish hair, a smooth pale skin, and a delicate, intelligent mouth. She liked expensive clothes, she went to a good beauty parlor, and she had style. The rest of the group called her, behind her back, a lady, shy even among themselves at using the word (Tom the sociologist had), because it was an old-fashioned or snob word, perhaps.

  Edmund Quasthoff, a tax accountant in a law firm, had been divorced a year ago, because his wife had run off with another man and had therefore asked for a divorce. Edmund was forty, quite tall, with brown hair, a quiet manner, and was neither handsome nor unattractive, but lacking in that spark which can make even a rather ugly person attractive. Lucienne and her group had said after the divorce, “No wonder. Edmund is sort of a bore.”

  On this evening at Lucienne’s, someone said out of the blue, “Edmund didn’t used to be such a bore—did he?”

  “I’m afraid so. Yes!” Lucienne yelled from the kitchen, because at that moment she had turned on the water at the sink in order to push ice cubes out of a metal tray. She heard someone laugh. Lucienne went back to the living room with the ice bucket. They were expecting Edmund at any moment. Lucienne had suddenly realized that she wanted Edmund out of their circle, that she actively disliked him.

  “Yes, what is it about Edmund?” asked Charles Forbes with a sly smile at Lucienne. Charles was pudgy, his shirt front strained at the buttons, a patch of leg often showed between sock and trousers cuff when he sat, but he was well loved by the group, because he was good-natured and bright, and could drink like a fish and never show it. “Maybe we’re all jealous because he stopped smoking,” Charles said, putting out his cigarette and reaching for another.

  “I admit I’m jealous,” said Peter Tomlin with a broad grin. “I know I should stop and I damned well can’t. Tried to twice—in the last year.”

  Peter’s details about his efforts were not interesting. Edmund was due with his new wife, and the others were talking while they could.

  “Maybe it’s his wife!” Anita Ketchum whispered excitedly, knowing this would get a laugh and encourage further comments. It did.

  “Worse than the first by far!” Charles avowed.

  “Yes, Lillian wasn’t bad at all! I agree,” said Lucienne, still on her feet and handing Peter the Vat 69 bottle, so he could top up his glass the way he liked it. “It’s true Magda’s no asset. That—” Lucienne had been about to say something quite unkind about the scared yet aloof expression which often showed on Magda’s face.

  “Ah, marriage on the rebound,” Tom Strathmore said musingly.

  “Certainly was, yes,” said Frieda Markus. “Maybe we have to forgive that. You know they say men suffer more than women if their spouses walk out on them? Their egos suffer, they say—worse.”

  “Mine would suffer with Magda, matter of fact,” Tom said.

  Anita gave a laugh. “And what a name, Magda! Makes me think of a lightbulb or something.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Must be Edmund.” Lucienne went to press the release button. She had asked Edmund and Magda to stay for dinner, but they were going to a play tonight. Only three were staying for dinner, the Markuses and Peter Tomlin.

  “But he’s changed his job, don’t forget,” Peter was saying as Lucienne came back into the room. “You can’t say he has to be clammed up—secretive, I mean. It’s not that.” Like the others, Peter sought for a word, a phrase to describe the unlikability of Edmund Quasthoff.

  “He’s stuffy,” said Anita Ketchum with a curl of distaste at her lips.

  A few seconds of silence followed. The apartment doorbell was supposed to ring.

  “Do you suppose he’s happy?” Charles asked in a whisper.

  This was enough to raise a clap of collective laughter. The thought of Edmund radiating happiness, even with a two-month-old marriage, was risible.

  “But then he’s probably never been happy,” said Lucienne, just as the bell rang, and she turned to go to the door.

  “Not late, I hope, Lucienne dear,” said Edmund coming in, bending to kiss Lucienne’s cheek, and by inches not touching it.

  “No-o. I’ve got the time but you haven’t. How are you, Magda?” Lucienne asked with deliberate enthusiasm, as if she really cared how Magda was.

  “Very well, thank you, and you?” Magda was in brown again, a light and dark brown cotton dress with a brown satin scarf at her neck.

  Both of them looked brown and dull, Lucienne thought as she led them into the living room. Greetings sounded friendly and warm.

  “No, just tonic, please . . . Oh well, a smidgen of gin,” Edmund said to Charles, who was doing the honors. “Lemon slice, yes, thanks.” Edmund as usual gave an impression of sitting on the edge of his armchair seat.

  Anita was dutifully making conversation with Magda on the sofa.

  “And how’re you liking your new job, Edmund?” Lucienne asked. Edmund had been with the accounting department of the United Nations for several years, but his present job was better paid and far less cloistered, Lucienne gathered, with business lunches nearly every day.

  “O-oh,” Edmund began, “different crowd, I’ll say that.” He tried to smile. Smiles from Edmund looked like efforts. “These boozy lunches . . .” Edmund shook his head. “I think they even resent the fact I don’t smoke. They want you to be like them, you know?”

  “Who’s them?” asked Charles Forbes.

  “Clients of the agency and a lot of the time their accountants,” Edmund replied. “They all prefer to talk business at the lunch table instead of face to face in my office. ’S funny.” Edmund rubbed a forefinger along the side of his arched nose. “I have to have one or two drinks with them—my usual restaurant knows now to make them weak—otherwise our clients might think I’m the Infernal Revenue Department itself putting—honesty before expediency or some such.” Edmund’s face again cracked in a smile that did not last long.

  Pity, Lucienne thought, and she almost said it. A strange word to think of, because pity she had not for Edmund. Lucienne exchanged a glance with Charles, then with Tom Strathmore, who was smirking.

  “They call me up at all hours of the night too. California doesn’t seem to realize the time dif—”

  “Take your phone off the hook at night,” Charles’ wife Ellen put in.

  “Oh, can’t afford to,” Edmund replied. “Sacred cows, these worried clients. Sometimes they ask me questions a pocket calculator could answer. But Babcock and Holt have to be polite, so I go on losing sleep . . . No, thanks, Peter,” he said as Peter tried to pour more drink for him. Edmund also pushed gently aside a nearly full ashtray whose smell perhaps annoyed him.

  Lucienne would ordinarily have emptied the ashtray, but now she didn’t. And Magda? Magda was glancing at her watch as Lucienne looked at her, though she chatted now with Charles on her left. Twenty-eight
she was, enviably young to be sure, but what a drip! A bad skin. Small wonder she hadn’t been married before. She still kept her job, Edmund had said, something to do with computers. She knitted well, her parents were Mormons, though Magda wasn’t. Really wasn’t, Lucienne wondered?

  A moment later, having declined even orange or tomato juice, Magda said gently to her husband, “Darling . . .” and tapped her wristwatch face.

  Edmund put down his glass at once, and his old-fashioned brown shoes with wing tips rose from the floor a little before he hauled himself up. Edmund looked tired already, though it was hardly eight. “Ah, yes, the theater—Thank you, Lucienne. It’s been a pleasure as usual.”

  “But such a short one!” said Lucienne.

  When Edmund and Magda had left, there was a general “Whew!” and a few chuckles, which sounded not so much indulgent as bitterly amused.

  “I really wouldn’t like to be married to that,” said Peter Tomlin, who was unmarried. “Frankly,” he added. Peter had known Edmund since he, Peter, was twenty-two, having been introduced via Charles Forbes, at whose publishing house Peter had applied for a job without success. The older Charles had liked Peter, and had introduced him to a few of his friends, among them Lucienne and Edmund. Peter remembered his first good impression of Edmund Quasthoff—that of a serious and trustworthy man—but whatever virtue Peter had seen in Edmund was somehow gone now, as if that first impression had been a mistake on Peter’s part. Edmund had not lived up to life, somehow. There was something cramped about him, and the crampedness seemed personified in Magda. Or was it that Edmund didn’t really like them?