He had severed away much of it in some minutes before he slowly looked up at their solemn, critical faces, like puddings with agate eyes, and after staring at them a moment, as if discovered with a naked woman instead of a naked-limbed partridge, he lifted the knife and cried hoa.r.s.ely, "Why in G.o.d"s name can"t you, any of you, ever smile? I"ll make you smile!"
He raised the knife a number of times like a magician"s wand.
And, in a short interval-behold! they were all of them smiling!
He broke that memory in half, crumpled it, balled it, tossed it down. Rising briskly, he went to the hall, down the hall to the kitchen, and from there down the dim stairs into the cellar where he opened the furnace door and built the fire steadily and expertly into wonderful flame.
Walking upstairs again he looked about him. He would have cleaners come and clean the empty house, redecorators slide down the dull drapes and hoist new shimmery banners up. New thick Oriental rugs purchased for the floors would subtly insure the silence he desired and would need at least for the next month, if not for the entire year.
He put his hands to his face. What if Alice Jane made noise moving about the house? Some noise, some how, some place!
And then he laughed. It was quite a joke. That problem was already solved. Yes, it was solved. He need fear no noise from Alice Jane. It was all absurdly simple. He would have all the pleasure of Alice Jane and none of the dream-destroying distractions and discomforts.
There was one other addition needed to the quality of silence. Upon the tops of the doors that the wind sucked shut with a bang at frequent intervals he would install air-compression brakes, those kind they have on library doors that hiss gently as their levers seal.
He pa.s.sed through the dining room. The figures had not moved from their tableau. Their hands remained affixed in familiar positions, and their indifference to him was not impoliteness.
He climbed the hall stairs to change his clothing, preparatory to the task of moving the family. Taking the links from his fine cuffs, he swung his head to one side. Music. At first he paid it no mind. Then, slowly, his face swinging to the ceiling, the color drained out of his cheeks.
At the very apex of the house the music began, note by note, one note following another, and it terrified him.
Each note came like a plucking of one single harp thread. In the complete silence the small sound of it was made larger until it grew all out of proportion to itself, gone mad with all this soundlessness to stretch about in.
The door opened in an explosion from his hands, the next thing his feet were trying the stairs to the third level of the house, the banister twisted in a long polished snake under his tightening, relaxing, reaching-up, pulling-hands! The steps went under to be replaced by longer, higher, darker steps. He had started the game at the bottom with a slow stumbling, now he was running with full impetus and if a wall had suddenly confronted him he would not have stopped for it until he saw blood on it and fingernail scratches where he tried to pa.s.s through.
He felt like a mouse running in a great clear s.p.a.ce of a bell. And high in the bell sphere the one harp thread hummed. It drew him on, caught him up with an unbilical of sound, gave his fear sustenance and life, mothered him. Fears pa.s.sed between mother and groping child. He sought to shear the connection with his hands, could not. He felt as if someone had given a heave on the cord, wriggling.
Another clear threaded tone. And another.
"No, keep quiet," he shouted. "There can"t be noise in my house. Not since two weeks ago. I said there would be no more noise. So it can"t be-it"s impossible! Keep quiet!"
He burst upward into the attic.
Relief can be hysteria.
Teardrops fell from a vent in the roof and struck, shattering upon a tall neck of Swedish cut-gla.s.s flowerware with resonant tone.
He shattered the vase with one swift move of his triumphant foot!
Picking out and putting on an old shirt and old pair of pants in his room, he chuckled. The music was gone, the vent plugged, the silence again insured. There are silences and silences. Each with its own ident.i.ty. There were summer night silences, which weren"t silences at all, but layer on layer of insect chorals and the sound of electric arc lamps swaying in lonely small orbits on lonely country roads, casting out feeble rings of illumination upon which the night fed-summer night silence which, to be a silence, demanded an indolence and a neglect and an indifference upon the part of the listener. Not a silence at all! And there was a winter silence, but it was an incoffined silence, ready to burst out at the first touch of spring, things had a compression, a not-for-long feel, the silence made a sound unto itself, the freezing was so complete it made chimes of everything or detonations of a single breath or word you spoke at midnight in the diamond air. No, it was not a silence worthy of the name. A silence between two lovers, when there need be no words. Color came in his cheeks, he shut his eyes. It was a most pleasant silence, a perfect silence with Alice Jane. He had seen to that. Everything was perfect.
Whispering.
He hoped the neighbors hadn"t heard him shrieking like a fool.
A faint whispering.
Now, about silences. The best silence was one conceived in every aspect by an individual, himself, so that there could be no bursting of crystal bonds, or electric-insect hummings, the human mind could cope with each sound, each emergency, until such a complete silence was achieved that one could hear ones cells adjust in ones hand.
A whispering.
He shook his head. There was no whispering. There could be none in his house. Sweat began to seep down his body, he began to shake in small, imperceptible shakings, his jaw loosened, his eyes were turned free in their sockets.
Whispering. Low rumors of talk.
"I tell you I"m getting married," he said, weakly, loosely.
"You"re lying," said the whispers.
His head fell forward on its neck as if hung, chin on chest.
"Her name is Alice Jane Ballard-" he mouthed it between soft, wet lips and the words were formless. One of his eyes began to jitter its lid up and down as if blinking out a message to some unseen guest. "You can"t stop me from loving her, I love her-"
Whispering.
He took a blind step forward.
The cuff of his pants leg quivered as he reached the floor grille of the ventilator. A hot rise of air followed his cuffs. Whispering.
The furnace.
He was on his way downstairs when someone knocked on the front door. He leaned against it. "Who is it?"
"Mr. Greppin?"
Greppin drew in his breath. "Yes?"
"Will you let us in, please?"
"Well, who is it?"
"The police," said the man outside.
"What do you want, I"m just sitting down to supper!"
"Just want a talk with you. The neighbors phoned. Said they hadn"t seen your aunt and uncle for two weeks. Heard a noise awhile ago-"
"I a.s.sure you everything is all right." He forced a laugh.
"Well, then," continued the voice outside, "we can talk it over in friendly style if you"ll only open the door."
"I"m sorry," insisted Greppin. "I"m tired and hungry, come back tomorrow. I"ll talk to you then, if you want me to."
"I"ll have to insist, Mr. Greppin."
They began to beat against the door.
Greppin turned automatically, stiffly, walked down the hall past the old clock, into the dining room, without a word. He seated himself without looking at any one in particular and then he began to talk, slowly at first, then more rapidly.
"Some pests at the door. You"ll talk to them, won"t you, Aunt Rose? You"ll tell them to go away, won"t you, we"re eating dinner? Everyone else go on eating and look pleasant and they"ll go away, if they do come in. Aunt Rose you will talk to them, won"t you? And now that things are happening I have something to tell you." A few hot tears fell for no reason. He looked at them as they soaked and spread in the white linen, vanishing. "I don"t know anyone named Alice Jane Ballard. I never knew anyone named Alice Jane Ballard. It was all-all-I don"t know. I said I loved her and wanted to marry her to get around somehow to make you smile. Yes, I said it because I planned to make you smile, that was the only reason. I"m never going to have a woman, I always knew for years I never would have. Will you please pa.s.s the potatoes, Aunt Rose?"
The front door splintered and fell. A heavy softened rushing filled the hall. Men broke into the dining room.
A hesitation.
The police inspector hastily removed his hat.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I didn"t mean to intrude upon your supper, I-"
The sudden halting of the police was such that their movement shook the room. The movement catapulted the bodies of Aunt Rose and Uncle Dimity straight away to the carpet, where they lay, their throats severed in a half moon from ear to ear-which caused them, like the children seated at the table, to have what was the horrid illusion of a smile under their chins, ragged smiles that welcomed in the late arrivals and told them everything with a simple grimace. . . .
THE FRUIT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOWL.
WILLIAM ACTON ROSE TO HIS FEET. The clock on the mantel ticked midnight.
He looked at his fingers and he looked at the large room around him and he looked at the man lying on the floor. William Acton, whose fingers had stroked typewriter keys and made love and fried ham and eggs for early breakfasts, had now accomplished a murder with those same ten whorled fingers.
He had never thought of himself as a sculptor and yet, in this moment, looking down between his hands at the body upon the polished hardwood floor, he realized that by some sculptural clenching and remodeling and twisting of human clay he had taken hold of this man named Donald Huxley and changed his physiognomy, the very frame of his body.
With a twist of his fingers he had wiped away the exacting glitter of Huxley"s eyes; replaced it with a blind dullness of eye cold in socket. The lips, always pink and sensuous, were gaped to show the equine teeth, the yellow incisors, the nicotined canines, the gold-inlaid molars. The nose, pink also, was now mottled, pale, discolored, as were the ears. Huxley"s hands, upon the floor, were open, pleading for the first time in their lives, instead of demanding.
Yes, it was an artistic conception. On the whole, the change had done Huxley a share of good. Death made him a handsomer man to deal with. You could talk to him now and he"d have to listen.
William Acton looked at his own fingers.
It was done. He could not change it back. Had anyone heard? He listened. Outside, the normal late sounds of street traffic continued. There was no banging of the house door, no shoulder wrecking the portal into kindling, no voices demanding entrance. The murder, the sculpturing of clay from warmth to coldness was done, and n.o.body knew.
Now what? The clock ticked midnight. His every impulse exploded him in a hysteria toward the door. Rush, get away, run, never come back, board a train, hail a taxi, get, go, run, walk, saunter, but get the blazes out of here!
His hands hovered before his eyes, floating, turning.
He twisted them in slow deliberation; they felt airy and feather-light. Why was he staring at them this way? he inquired of himself. Was there something in them of immense interest that he should pause now, after a successful throttling, and examine them whorl by whorl?
They were ordinary hands. Not thick, not thin, not long, not short, not hairy, not naked, not manicured and yet not dirty, not soft and yet not callused, not wrinkled and yet not smooth; not murdering hands at all-and yet not innocent. He seemed to find them miracles to look upon.
It was not the hands as hands he was interested in, nor the fingers as fingers. In the numb timelessness after an accomplished violence he found interest only in the tips of his fingers.
The clock ticked upon the mantel.
He knelt by Huxley"s body, took a handkerchief from Huxley"s pocket, and began methodically to swab Huxley"s throat with it. He brushed and ma.s.saged the throat and wiped the face and the back of the neck with fierce energy. Then he stood up.
He looked at the throat. He looked at the polished floor. He bent slowly and gave the floor a few dabs with the handkerchief, then he scowled and swabbed the floor; first, near the head of the corpse; secondly, near the arms. Then he polished the floor all around the body. He polished the floor one yard from the body on all sides. Then he polished the floor two yards from the body on all sides. The he polished the floor three yards from the body in all directions. Then he- He stopped.
There was a moment when he saw the entire house, the mirrored halls, the carved doors, the splendid furniture; and, as clearly as if it were being repeated word for word, he heard Huxley talking and himself just the way they had talked only an hour ago.
Finger on Huxley"s doorbell. Huxley"s door opening.
"Oh!" Huxley shocked. "It"s you, Acton."
"Where"s my wife, Huxley?"
"Do you think I"d tell you, really? Don"t stand out there, you idiot. If you want to talk business, come in. Through that door. There. Into the library."
Acton had touched the library door.
"Drink?"
"I need one. I can"t believe Lily is gone, that she-"
"There"s a bottle of burgundy, Acton. Mind fetching it from that cabinet?"
Yes, fetch it. Handle it. Touch it. He did.
"Some interesting first editions there, Acton. Feel this binding. Feel of it."
"I didn"t come to see books, I-"
He had touched the books and the library table and touched the burgundy bottle and burgundy gla.s.ses.
Now, squatting on the floor beside Huxley"s cold body with the polishing handkerchief in his fingers, motionless, he stared at the house, the walls, the furniture about him, his eyes widening, his mouth dropping, stunned by what he realized and what he saw. He shut his eyes, dropped his head, crushed the handkerchief between his hands, wadding it, biting his lips with his teeth, pulling in on himself.
The fingerprints were everywhere, everywhere!
"Mind getting the burgundy, Acton, eh? The burgundy bottle, eh? With your fingers, eh? I"m terribly tired. You understand?"
A pair of gloves.
Before he did one more thing, before he polished another area, he must have a pair of gloves, or he might unintentionally, after cleaning a surface, redistribute his ident.i.ty.
He put his hands in his pockets. He walked through the house to the hall umbrella stand, the hatrack. Huxley"s overcoat. He pulled out the overcoat pockets.
No gloves.
His hands in his pockets again, he walked upstairs, moving with a controlled swiftness, allowing himself nothing frantic, nothing wild. He had made the initial error of not wearing gloves (but, after all, he hadn"t planned a murder, and his subconscious, which may have known of the crime before its commitment, had not even hinted he might need gloves before the night was finished), so now he had to sweat for his sin of omission. Somewhere in the house there must be at least one pair of gloves. He would have to hurry; there was every chance that someone might visit Huxley, even at this hour. Rich friends drinking themselves in and out the door, laughing, shouting, coming and going without so much as h.e.l.logood-bye. He would have until six in the morning, at the outside, when Huxley"s friends were to pick Huxley up for the trip to the airport and Mexico City. . . .
Acton hurried about upstairs opening drawers, using the handkerchief as blotter. He untidied seventy or eighty drawers in six rooms, left them with their tongues, so to speak, hanging out, ran on to new ones. He felt naked, unable to do anything until he found gloves. He might scour the entire house with the handkerchief, buffing every possible surface where fingerprints might lie, then accidentally b.u.mp a wall here or there, thus sealing his own fate with one microscopic, whorling symbol! It would be putting his stamp of approval on the murder, that"s what it would be! Like those waxen seals in the old days when they rattled papyrus, flourished ink, dusted all with sand to dry the ink, and pressed their signet rings in hot crimson tallow at the bottom. So it would be if he left one, mind you, one fingerprint upon the scene! His approval of the murder did not extend as far as affixing said seal.
More drawers! Be quiet, be curious, be careful, he told himself.
At the bottom of the eighty-fifth drawer he found gloves.