The Blunderer Read online

  “No, I’ve got a friend here,” she said softly.

  “Pete?”

  “No, a girl.”

  Walter imagined her standing at the telephone in the hall, her back turned to the doorless living-room. “I wanted to tell you that I’m going to Reno next Saturday. I’ll be gone six weeks. It’s the only way I can get it.” He waited, but she said nothing at all. Walter smiled. “How are you, darling?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Do you ever think of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you.” Walter said.

  They listened to each other’s silence.

  “If you still feel that way in a couple of months, I’ll be here.”

  “I will,” he said, and hung up.

  Clara met him at the front door. “Did you hear what happened? I’ve had a wreck. My car is ruined!”

  Walter dropped his briefcase on the hall table. He looked at her trembling body. He saw no sign of any injury. He put his arm around her shoulder and guided her towards the sofa in the living-room. It was the first time he had touched her in days.

  She told him a truck had hit her, backing out of a side road in some woods near Oyster Bay. She hadn’t been going more than twenty-five miles an hour, but she hadn’t seen the truck for the trees, and the truck hadn’t made a sound because it had been coasting backwards down a slope.

  “The car’s insured,” Walter said. He was pouring a drink for her. “Just how bad is it?”

  “The whole front end is smashed. It nearly turned me over!” She jerked her hand away from Jeff’s solicitous kisses, then reached down and patted him nervously.

  Walter handed her the brandy. “Drink this. It’ll calm you down.”

  “I don’t want to be calmed down!” she cried and got up. She ran upstairs, holding a Kleenex to her nose.

  Walter fixed an iceless Scotch and soda for himself. His own hand was shaking as he lifted it. He could imagine the impact on Clara. She had always prided herself on never having had an accident. Walter carried his drink upstairs. Clara was in the bedroom, half reclining on the bed, still weeping.

  “Everybody runs into an accident once,” he said. “You shouldn’t let it throw you. The Philpotts can let you have a car with a driver, can’t they? You probably shouldn’t drive for a few days.”

  “You don’t have to pretend you care how I feel! Why don’t you just stay out this evening and go to see Ellie?You don’t have to come home to a woman you hate!”

  Walter set his teeth and went out again, downstairs. He knew Clara thought he was with Ellie every evening he spent away from the house. He ought to move now, he thought. But the real truth was, he was afraid Clara would do something like set the house on fire and burn herself up in it. He wouldn’t put that past her at all. So he was guarding her, he supposed. And becoming as jittery as she in the process.

  Claudia came into the room. “Are you and Mrs. Stackhouse ready for your dinner, Mr. Stackhouse?”

  That wasn’t the way she usually announced dinner. Walter knew she had heard Clara shouting upstairs. “Yes, Claudia. I’ll go and call her.”

  14

  The front door chime sounded while they were at breakfast. Claudia was in the kitchen. Walter got up. It was a telegram for Clara. He had a feeling it was from her mother.

  Clara read it quickly. “My mother’s dying,” she said, “This is from the doctor.”

  Walter picked up the telegram. Her mother had had another stroke and was not expected to live more than thirty-six hours. “You’d better catch a plane,” he said.

  Clara pushed her chair back and stood up. “You know I won’t fly.”

  Walter knew. Clara was afraid of flying. “But you’re going, at least.” Walter followed her into the hall. She had to leave the house very early that morning in order to be somewhere by nine o’clock.

  “Of course. I’ve got to settle some financial matters that she’s been neglecting all these years,” Clara said in an annoyed voice. She collected some papers from the hall table and put them into the cardboard folder she always carried.

  “Too bad your car’s laid up,” Walter said.

  “Yes. It makes the whole thing more expensive.”

  Walter smiled a little. “Do you want to take my car?”

  “You’ll need it.”

  “Only today and tomorrow. By Saturday I won’t need it.” Walter was flying to Nevada on Saturday morning.

  “You keep your car,” she said.

  Walter drew on his cigarette. “What time do you think you’ll leave?”

  “Late this afternoon. There’s some business in the office I have to take care of, mother or not.”

  “I’ll try to call you,” Walter said. “What time can I get you in?”

  “What for?”

  “To find out when you’re leaving! Maybe I can help you in some way!” he said impatiently. He was vexed with himself. Why in hell should he help her?

  “Well, if you must, call me around twelve.” She glanced out of the window as the big Packard of the Philpotts came into view. “There’s Roger. I’ve got to go. Claudia! Would you lay out some things on the bed for me to pack? My gray dress and the green suit. I’ll be back around three or four.” Then she was gone.

  Walter called Clara at twelve in her office. Clara said she had decided to go by bus, and that she would be leaving from the 34th Street terminal at 5:30.

  “Bus!” Walter said. “You’ll get exhausted, Clara. It’ll take you hours.”

  “It’s only five hours to Harrisburg. The trains don’t fit my schedule. I’ve got to go, Walter. I have a lunch in Locust Valley at twelve-thirty. Good-bye.”

  Walter put the telephone down angrily. He loosened his collar and heard the button give and hop twice on the cork floor. He’d be there to see her off, he supposed, but he rebelled against doing her that courtesy. He really wanted to find out some things that he had planned to ask her before Saturday. What she was going to do with the house, for instance. The house was hers, of course. And why should he care what she did, anyway? Was there ever a woman better able to take care of herself?

  He slid his tie up to close his collar, and dragged a comb through his hair. Then he rang for Joan. He had some letters to send out. Joan didn’t answer, and Walter realized suddenly that it was her lunch hour. He started to do the letters himself, and then Joan came in, carrying two paper bags.

  “I brought you some lunch,” she said, “because I don’t think you’d eat anything if I didn’t. It’s my good deed for today.”

  “Well, thanks,” Walter said, surprised. It wasn’t like Joan to do anything as personal as this for him. He reached in his pocket. “Let me pay you for it.”

  “No, it’s my treat.” She pulled out a sandwich and a container of coffee and put them on his desk. “Mr. Stackhouse, I don’t know what’s happened around here—between you and Mr. Cross, but I just wanted to say, if you’re thinking of leaving or going into another office, I hope you can arrange for me to stay on with you. The salary wouldn’t matter.”

  It touched Walter to the point of self-consciousness. The office had agreed too readily to his taking a six-week leave. Walter imagined that Cross was going to inform him sometime during those six weeks that he needn’t come back at all. Cross had implied that he knew that he and Jensen planned to leave the firm, and Cross had also told him, yesterday, that he was not satisfied with his work. “There might be a change,” Walter said. “In fact I hope there is. If I don’t come back, Joan, I’ll keep in touch with you.”

  “Fine,” Joan’s round face smiled.

  “But don’t say a word around the office, please.”

  “Oh, I won’t. And I hope you take care of yourself, Mr. Stackhouse.”

  Walter smiled. “Thanks.”

  As soon as Dick got back from his lunch hour, Walter went in to ask him how much he thought Cross knew about their plans. Dick said only that Cross had told him that he wasn’t satisfied with Walter’s wor
k, that he thought he lacked enthusiasm. Dick told Walter to pull himself together and work for the remainder of the time they would be with the firm.

  “I don’t care if I never see it again after tomorrow,” Walter said.

  Dick frowned at him.

  Walter went out and closed the door.

  He was at the bus terminal at 5:15. He spotted Clara at once, bustling around the newsstand. She was in her new closely-fitting green tweed suit.

  “One thing more,” she said as soon as he came up. “The car’s ready tomorrow, and don’t pay them extra for the rechroming job on the front bumper. That was included in the first estimate. The foreman there’s trying to say it wasn’t.”

  Walter picked up her blue suitcase. She had to go to a window to ask something. Walter waited, staring at her. “How long do you think you’ll be in Harrisburg?” he asked when she came back.

  “Oh, I should be back Saturday. Or tomorrow evening.” She looked up at him. Her face was animated and smiling, but there was a shine of tears in her eyes that startled Walter.

  “And if she dies?” Walter asked. “Aren’t you going to stay for the funeral?”

  “No.” Clara bent over, balancing herself on one small high-heeled shoe, and removed a tiny piece of paper that had stuck to the bottom of the other heel. She put out her hand automatically for Walter to support her, and he took it.

  A strange sensation ran through him at the touch of her fingers, a start of pleasure, of hatred, of a kind of hopeless tenderness that Walter crushed as soon as his mind recognized it. He had a sudden desire to embrace her hard at this last minute, then to fling her away from him.

  “And this,” she said, handing him a folded piece of paper from her jacket pocket. “Two people I’m supposed to call tomorrow. Just call Mrs. Philpott and tell her the numbers. She’ll know what to do.” She looked down as she drew one of her black kid gloves on, and Walter saw a tear drop on the glove.

  He watched her anxiously, wondering if she were really upset about her mother, or if it were something else. “Call me when you get there. Call me any time.”

  “Aren’t you looking forward to an extra forty-eight hours without me? What are you gritting your teeth about? Why don’t you take Ellie with you to Reno?” She looked at him sharply, with the evil, forced smile, as if her witch’s mind had it all planned, as if she knew he would never be with Ellie, that there would never be happiness for him on earth.

  Walter followed her with her suitcase as she walked away towards the buses. He squeezed the handle of the suitcase and wished he had the nerve to crash it over her head. He set the suitcase down beside the other luggage that was going aboard the New York-Pittsburgh bus.

  “You don’t look at all happy,” she told him brightly.

  Walter looked down at her with a faint smile on his lips, letting it seep into him. If he hated her enough, he thought—” Where does your bus stop?” he asked suddenly.

  “Stop? I don’t know. Probably only at Allentown.” She glanced around her, still with the crazy, fixed smile. “I think I can get on now.”

  She climbed the steps of the bus. Walter watched her move down the aisle, looking for her seat, and take a seat towards the back that was not beside a window. She looked out, smiling, and waved to him. Walter lifted his hand a little. He looked at his watch. Five minutes yet before the bus was to leave. He turned abruptly and walked back into the waiting-room. He suddenly wanted a drink, but he kept on going past the bar and out.

  He had put his car in a parking lot a couple of blocks west of the terminal. He drove out and turned east. The street was jammed with cars. A bus turned into the avenue, going south. He could not see if it was Clara’s bus or not. Calmly he inched forward in the heavy traffic, got stuck again, and lighted a cigarette. The New York-Pittsburgh bus turned into Tenth Avenue right in front of him, and he even saw Clara for an instant.

  When the light changed Walter turned right and followed the bus. He kept going downtown, towards the Holland Tunnel. Then he followed it through the tunnel.

  I’ll stop in Newark and drive around and come back, he thought. He thought of Melchior Kimmel in Newark. Perhaps he would drive once past the store. It might still be open. His book might have arrived.

  But he kept on following the loaf-shaped gray body of the bus through Newark. He was frantic once when he was caught by a red light and the bus disappeared for a few moments round a corner.

  I’ll light a cigarette, and when it’s finished I’ll turn around, Walter thought.

  Finally, the bus took one of the long commercial streets out of the town, and Walter stayed behind it.

  What was Clara thinking about, he wondered. Money? She was going to inherit about fifty thousand dollars, after taxes, if her mother died. That should put her in a better humor. Himself and Ellie? Was Clara possibly weeping? Or was she reading the World-Telegram and thinking of none of these things? He imagined her putting her newspaper down, leaning her head back as she sometimes did for a minute to rest her eyes. He imagined his hands closing around her small throat.

  What kind of courage did it take to commit a murder? What degree of hatred? Did he have enough? Not simply hatred, he knew, but a particular tangle of forces of which hatred was only one. And a kind of madness. He thought he was entirely too rational. At least at this moment. If it had been a moment like some, when he had wanted to strike her. But he had never struck her. He was always too rational. Even now, when he was following her on a bus, and the conditions were ideal. It was like the dream he had had.

  He’d go no further than the first rest stop, he thought. He would go up to Clara and say what he had said in the dream. What Melchior Kimmel might have said. Clara, I have to talk to you. Come with me. Then he would only walk with her a few yards, and the bitter words spoken at the bus terminal would repeat themselves; she would make a taunt about Ellie, call him a fool for driving all this distance out of his way, and he would walk back to the bus with her, with his nerves at cracking point. Walter’s foot kicked out involuntarily, and the car shot forward. He pressed the gas pedal down to the floor, and eased up only when he came very close to a car in front of him.

  He tried to imagine what would happen if he did do it. First, he would have no alibi. And there was the danger that he would be seen by somebody at the bus stop, that Clara’s “Walter!” would be heard the instant she saw him, that people would remember both of them, walking off on the highway.

  And Ellie would despise him.

  He kept on, speeding after the fleeing bus.

  He thought of the first day he had met Clara, the day of the lunch in San Francisco with his old college friend, Hal Schepps. Hal had brought Clara along. By accident, Hal had said later, and it was true, but Walter hadn’t known it then. Walter could still remember the lift in his chest the instant he had seen Clara. Like love at first sight. Later Clara had said the same thing about herself. Walter could still remember his anxiety when he had called up Hal that afternoon. He had been afraid that Clara and Hal were engaged, or in love. Hal had assured him they weren’t. But be careful, Hal had said, she’s got a mind of her own. She’s a Jonah—for loving and leaving. But Walter remembered how pleasant she had been, how irresistible those first weeks. She had told Walter about two men who had been in love with her before. She had had an affair with each of them for about a year, and they had wanted to marry her, but she had refused. Walter was sure, from what Clara had told him, that both men had been on the weak side. Clara liked weak men, she told him, but she didn’t want to marry them. Walter suspected that Clara considered him the weakest of all, and that was why she had married him. It was not a pleasant suspicion.

  Railroad tracks hit the bottom of his car like a series of explosions, and Walter’s head bobbed as the car leveled off. The bus was fast. His watch said twenty of six. Walter put it to his ear. It had stopped. He gripped the wheel with his left hand and set the watch at his best guess, 7:05, and wound it. There should be a rest stop in about ha
lf an hour, he thought.

  The road climbed and curved. Walter had to slow down as the bus shifted gears for the hill. Far away on the left Walter saw the lights of a town. He did not know where he was.

  Then the bus slowed on the crest of a hill, and Walter slowed. He saw the bus turn abruptly left, and Walter tensed anxiously because the bus looked as if it were going to keep on rolling and go off a cliff. The long body of the bus disappeared behind a thick blackness.

  Walter drove on up the hill. He saw that the blackness was a clump of trees, and that the bus had pulled into a crescent-shaped area in front of a roadhouse. Walter drove several yards past the roadhouse, and pulled over at the edge of the highway and cut out his lights. He got out and started walking back towards the roadhouse. The crescent area was lighted by a neon sign over the restaurant that flashed alternately red and lavender. He looked for Clara’s small quick figure among the people who straggled from the bus. He didn’t see her. He looked into the bus as he walked closer. She was already off it.

  Walter opened the glass door of the restaurant and went in, glancing around at the counter and the tables. He didn’t see her anywhere. He had the feeling that he was playing a part on a stage, and playing it convincingly—an anxious husband, searching for his wife whom he had been following in order to murder her. His hands would close around her throat in a few minutes, but he would not kill her because it was only a play. He’d pretend. A mock murder.

  Walter reached the door of the ladies’ room. He only took his eyes from it in order to look at the glass door where a few people were coming in. Walter looked down the long counter again and then over the tables, more carefully.

  He went out and circled the bus, then came back and stood near the end of the counter, only a couple of yards from the ladies’ room. By the clock over the door, he set his watch at 7:29. He had not been far off.

  “How much time have we at this stop?” Walter asked a man sitting at the counter.

  “Fifteen minutes,” the man said.

  Walter walked a few tense steps towards the door, then turned back. He estimated that about seven minutes had passed. The ladies’ room was the most likely place. On the other hand, Clara didn’t use public toilets unless she absolutely had to. She hated them. Walter turned abruptly and looked straight into the face of the man whom he had questioned before. The man looked away before Walter did. Walter kept going slowly towards the front door. There was a mirror along one entire wall, but Walter did not dare look at himself. He only relaxed deliberately the frown that he knew put a heavy crease between his eyebrows, the frown that often made strangers stare at him.