The Case of the Weird Sisters (7 page)

Then Susan Innes came panting in. She was an old lady, and she'd climbed the hill too fast. Her face was pinker than ever. She was all hot and upset. She was an old darling, AHoe thought, poor lamb, all hot and bothered. So Alice found herself saying soothing words and helping her upstairs. As the old lady's weight fell on her arm, Alice felt cool and strong. Well, I'm young, she thought, damn it.

They mounted into what seemed like a crowd, through which the doctor came directly to Susan. "He's going to be aU right. Nothing to worry about. He's very nervous, of course. I'll soon strap him up and hell have a little phenobarbital and go off to sleep. Be feeling much better by tomorrow. Now, Susan . . ."

Susan said, "Where is he, doctor?''

She went with him to her son.

Alice found herself facing the Whitlock girls, who stood almost in a line. There was Isabel, fumbling at the neck of her dress with her sharp-nailed left hand. There was Gertrude, stiff and tall, locked in her colorless world of sound. There was Maud, fat ankles wide apart, her mad garment hanging every which way, her eyes shifting busily from Alice to her sisters. She looked as if thought were running

in her head like a squirrel in its cage. Alice tossed her own head and marched mto the bedroom. She crossed toward the big bed. Susan was bending there. Her voice murmured like a lullaby.

The doctor said, "My bag?"

"Oh, gosh," said AUce. "I forgot. YU. get it."

The house was confused. Alice was confused. Her mind seemed unable to seize upon and foUow out a thread of action. Susan's coming had made her forget the bag. Now, as she went out of the room again, she forgot the sisters. They were gone. They had melted away like a chorus whose turn was over. But Alice forgot them.

She paused to try to pull herself together. I might as well, she thought, for all the notice I get. Be cool. Be strong. Perhaps it was a question of doing one thing at a time. First, get the doctor's bag. Then ask what more she could do. Stop floating around like a fool. Stop being batted this way and that. Take stock. What happens next? She put one foot in front of the other, deliberately taking thought to do so. She started for the head of the stairs.

It was just at that moment that she heard the soimd. The house was full of sound, of course. Behind her, in the sickroom, she could hear the doctor's voice and Susan's. From somewhere came the soimd of running water. There was movement on the floor below, faint sounds of walking. Yet this one new sound seemed to echo alone in the isolated quiet of the hall in which she stood. It came from below, she thought.

An odd soimd. A queer little chuckle in the throat. A little caw of excitement. It was a sound no one would make on purpose. She felt that it came directly from thought. Spontaneous. Unconscious. There was voice behind it, even though it was less a voice than a stirring in the throat. It was queer.

Alice came to the head of the stairs and started down. She found nobody there, in the downstairs hall. She picked up the doctor's bag and took it back with her. One thing at a time.

Innes was talking. He must be in pain. Ifis ribs hurt him. He had come out of the dazed state, and he was talking in a high-pitched, frantic voice. Alice closed the door

with enough violence to make a noise, and the doctor and Susan looked around at her.

Innes said, "I mean it, doctor. I'm afraid. Alice, is that Alice? Come here, dear. Don't leave me. Where's Fred?"

"I don't know," she said. "How do you feel now?"

"It's not so bad," he said. His face was wet, though. "I don't want to stay here. Tell him to let us go. Alice, tell him."

"Go!" Alice said, astonished. "Why, Innes, you can't go driving around the country with your ribs broken."

"I can't stay here. I'm afraid to. Don't you see?"

"But why?"

"Because I'm afraid," he said with shrill stubbornness. "All right, it's silly zmd they're women and I know all that. But I'm afraid and I don't care. I can't help it." His voice cracked and he looked at Alice desperately.

Susan said, "Could he be moved down to my house, doctor?"

"Oh, yes," said Alice. "Why didn't we think . . ."

"You haven't room," Innes said despairingly. "Don't be silly, mother. You know you haven't room."

"I could make room," Susan said stoutly. "You might have my bed, and my paying guest would just have to go somewhere else. I think he would, Innes. Then Alice could come too, after tomorrow."

The plan hung in the air and fell through. Alice knew, all of a sudden, that it wouldn't happen. How explain it? How could she stay here in this house one night, and Innes elsewhere? What about Fred? It seemed unreasonable to move Innes now. It was unreasonable. There was no reason for it, just a feeling. A feeling wasn't enough for such a reshuffling of people.

The doctor said quietly, "You had better stay right in that bed, Whitlock. I wouldn't advise anything else. You're nervous and no wonder. Here, get these down."

He made Innes swallow two pills and handed the small white pillbox to Alice. "Keep lUm warm. He may have a chill. And give him two of these . . . oh . . . every three hours. Can you attend to that. Miss Brennan?"

"Of course," Alice said. "Do you mean in the night, too?"

"No, no; not if he sleeps. If he's awake and restless."

"ru attend to it," she said.

Susan said "Now, Innes, if you'd like me to stay here, I will I can make myself comfortable right in that chair."

"No, thank you, mother.''

Alice felt the slap as it went to Susan.

But Susan said cheerfully, "Well, I'm glad you're no worse I'll get along them." She patted his hand and turned toward the door with the doctor.

Alice sat down in a straight chair beside the bed. She couldn t understand Innes and his mother when they were together. There was something sad and wrong about them.

"You won't leave me, Alice?" 

He looked ridiculously boyish in his pajamas, like a little old boy with a mustache. He looked weak and scared. Thoroughly scared. He twitched with it.

"What is it, Innes? What makes you afraid?"

Innes swallowed. "It's Gertrude "

"Gertrude?"

"You don't know. And people forget. But she never forgot. Alice, it was my fault she went blind." 

"Oh, no! What do you mean?"

"I was only about seven years old, and they told me to hold the horse. Well, I didn't. I was only a child. I didn't realize. Besides how could any one know what was going to happen? The horse ran with her in the buggy. Threw her. She was sick for a long time. After that, she was blind. She always blamed me. I knew that. Everybody did. Father tned to be kind, but he blamed me, too. I always felt that. Mother didn't. She thought I was too young to be blamed for anything, but, of course, she didn't count" 

Why not? thought Alice.

"They all blamed me. Gertrude blames me to this day. Naturally her life was ruined. I suppose if I'd done what I was told It wouldn't have happened. I don't know. But I've always known she'd like to hurt me, Alice. I know that."

Alice felt his forehead. Surely he was feverish.

"Try to go to sleep," she said. "Is there anything you want?"

"No, no, the doctor isn't through with me. How can I sleep? I want Fred. Alice, you'll stay by me, won't you? You and Fred?"

"Of course," said Alice. "Don't worry about it, Innes. Well be here."

"Don't let Gertrude come in," he whispered, and subsided into a silent drowsy state.

Alice sat still. She tried to think of Gertrude, the pale woman, as a young girl with eyes. But she couldn't. A long past, locked in Innes's memory. A long past she'd never imderstand, though now guilt, sown into Innes as a boy, had pushed forth from the old roots, bearing fear for its fruit.

When the doctor came back, Fred was with him, carrying things. The doctor preferred to manage alone, so they went to stand outside the door.

Alice said, "He wants you and me to stick around. He's scared."

"That so?" Fred lounged against the wall.

"You don't seem surprised."

"That's because I'm not," Fred said.

"Well, of course he's had the darnedest luck . . ."

"Yeah? Doc Follett told me he went over the pit road tonight just after dark. And the detom: sign was in the right place then."

"It probably was," Alice said. "What about it?"

"Well, it's funny, don't you think? Also, what made that lamp fall? I don't know. Do you?"

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Alice.

A door opened at the end of the short branch of the hall. Isabel came out of her room and smiled her half-hoop of tight-lipped smile when she saw them. "Let me just show you where you are to sleep," she said. "Someone has to think of these things. Fred, you must put up with a cot here in the lumber room. Alice, my dear, the little guest room, of course. It's terrible, isn't it? Poor Innes. Poor boy."

Alice's flesh crawled.

"But so lucky," Isabel said. "So lucky you weren't all killed."

''Sure was, Miss Isabel," Fred said. "Dumb luck, that's all"

"I do hope you'll be comfortable," Isabel said with her odd way of running off the subject "This is all so unexpected."

When Dr. Follett left his patient at last and was passing through the hall downstairs on his way home, Maud stopped him. She summoned him mto the sitting room and spoke for some time. She hadn't finished when he came out, pale, with his lips compressed, and made for his car as if the furies pursued him.

8

By eleven o'clock the house was quiet. Innes slept. Alice came quietly away and closed his door. She sat down beside Fred on the top step of the backstairs that ran down just beyond the door to Papa's room, between that room and the one bathroom on that floor. He was just sitting there. Alice was very tired, spent, in fact. But not sleepy. She didn't relish the thought of sleep. The old house was uneasy, and she uneasy m it. It seemed very natural to drop down there beside him. He gave her a cigarette. They talked in whispers, keeping their heads turned, to listen down the hall.

"Gone bye-bye?"

"At last," Alice sighed.

"I wonder what goes on."

Alice moved her head closer. "I started to tell you. He says he's afraid of Gertrude. He says it's his fault she's bhnd. And she'd like to hurt him. That's what he said. It's crazy, isn't it?"

"Gertrude's a queer bird," he said, "and I wouldn't put anything past any of them. They've been holed up here too long."

Alice shivered. The old house was rotten. All around her she felt the atmosphere of decay. Not so much decay of Uie walls or the ceilings, which still held and would hold. But decay in the air, accumulated rubbish in the minds, imaired, unsunned, unclean.

"You don't think he's right to be scared?"

'Tm scared," said Fred.

Alice felt warm gratitude. "Well, thank God you're human." They laughed and she shoved her shoulder

closer. "What are we so scared of?" she asked him.

Fred said slowly, "Innes has got a million bucks.''

"Yes?''

"Well, the girls could use it.''

"But for heaven's sake . . ."

"It's you,'' Fred said.

"Me!''

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Oh, I see what you're thinking," Alice said slowly. "You think I'm a blow, is that it? Because if I marry Innes, then they won't get so much if he should die."

"Sure,'' said Fred. "And I betcha." He squashed his cigarette on the step with his heel. "How'd they take it? The news, I mean."

Alice looked back in time. "They asked me when."

"Uh huh. See?"

"Yes, but how do they know they'll ever get anything? Why should Innes die? He's younger than they are.''

"Maybe they're going to fix that," Fred said carelessly.

"So that's what we're afraid of?" Alice smiled.

"Must be, I guess."

Alice looked at his face m the dim light. "You think they want him to die quick, before I get hold of the money?"

''They wouldn't mind."

"Maybe they wouldn't mind, but look, Fred, it's sUly, because they haven't done anything. Innes is nervous. Well, he's had a tough time. But what makes you think they did anything at all? God knows I don't like them, I can't stand them, but you're talking about murder."

"Yeah, I guess so. The thing is, I been having a litde chat with Josephine," he said easily. "In the first place, they know damn well he can't eat veal. They know that. Tliey must. Say, even I know it, and I'm only the hired help. Also, they must have known there was veal in that meat loaf. That's right, isn't it?"

"I should thmk so."

"Well, let me tell you it's right, because Josephine knew it and she even told them."

"Oh?''

"She called it to their attention, see?"

"What did they say?"

"They kinda brushed the whole thing off. Except Maud. Of course, she didn't hear what Josephine said. Now, it looks to me as if they wanted Innes to get sick. Why would they want that?"

"I don't know. He wouldn't die from eating veal."

"No, but he'd have to stick around this house, maybe. Where they could get at him."

"Oh, lord . . . Fred!"

"They wanted him to stay, didn't they?"

"Well, of course, but . . ."

"I was just trying to figure . . . Another thing, Josephine was down the road tonight. She went down into town, right after dinner, a few minutes before eight, she says. She went around by the pit road. Where we were, you know?"

"When?"

"Must have been close to eight o'clock. Well, I asked her if she saw anybody monkeying around that sawhorse. She says no, she couldn't see, wasn't specially looking, anyhow. But she heard something. She heard somebody cough. She couldn't describe it very well. Kind of a cough, she said. It made her nervous. Said she ran."

"Ran?"

"Yeah. When the doc went by about seven forty-five, the thing was O.K. Just where it ought to be. Josephine heard that. . . sound down there. By the time we got there, about nine fifteen, it had been moved."

"Sound," said Alice. "Kind of a cough? I wonder . . ."

"Yeah, so do I."

"Because I heard something, Fred."