The Listening Walls (21 page)

“Ah, that is my little secret.”

“You must tell me. I must know.”

“Very well. I found it.”

“Where?”

“A lady left it behind in the bar, on one of the seats.”

“What lady?”

“If I knew the lady I would return the box,” he said severely. “I am an honest man, I would never keep what belongs to another, never. But,” he added with a shrug, “since I do not know the lady's name, and since she looked very rich, with many gold bracelets, yes, even gold on her eyelids . . .”

The telephone rang in 404. Both the women jumped, as if they'd heard a shot. Then the one in the red silk suit crossed the room and picked up the telephone. “Yes?”

“She'll be back up soon,” Dodd said. “Leave the door partly open so she can get in. Is Mrs. Kellogg all right?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I'm nervous. I feel so grotesque in this getup, with all this paint on. I don't know if I can go through with it.”

“You have to, Pat.”

“But I'm not an actress. How can I fool her?”

“Because she's ready to be fooled. The others have done their part—Escamillo, Emilio. Now it's your turn. Kellogg will be there shortly. So will I. I'll be in the other room, so don't worry.”

“All right,” Miss Burton said. “All right.” She put down the telephone and looked across the room at the woman sitting on the edge of one of the twin beds. “She's coming up soon. We must be ready.”

“Oh God,” Amy whispered. “I'm not sure. Even now, I'm not
sure.”

“Everyone else is. All of us. We're sure.”

“How can you be, if I'm not?”

“Because we know you and your character. We know you couldn't possibly . . .”

“But I tell you, sometimes I remember, I remember quite clearly. I picked up the silver box, I was going to throw it over the balcony as Wilma had challenged me to do. She tried to grab the box from me, and we strug­gled, and then I hit . . .”

“You can't remember what didn't happen,” Miss Bur­ton said sturdily.

“. . . and a beautiful silk suit,” Emilio said, “the color of blood. My most favorite color. Your most favorite too, Consuela?”

She didn't hear the question. She was staring at the silver box as if it contained all the imps of hell. “The woman who left it, you said you'd never seen her before?”

“Wrong. I told you I did not know her name. Of course I have seen her before. She and her friend, one night in the bar they had a long talk with Joe, very gay, very merry, lots of
tequila.”

“No. I don't believe you. It's not possible.”

“Ask Joe,” Emilio said, “next time you see him.”

“I won't be—seeing him.”

“Ah, you might be surprised. One of these days you might open a door, expecting nothing, and there he'll be . . .”

“No, that is imposs—”

“There he'll be, the same as ever, as good as new.” Emilio was grinning nervously. “And he'll say, ‘Here I am, Consuela, I have come back to you and your warm bed and I will never leave you again. Always I will be at your side, you will never get rid of me.' “

“Quiet,” she screamed. “Pig. Liar.” She was holding the bottle of beer by the neck as if she intended to use it to silence him. The beer gurgled out on the wooden floor and through the cracks, leaving a trail of bubbles. “He will never come back.”

Emilio's grin had disappeared and a white line of fear circled his dry mouth. “Very well. He will never come back. I do not argue with a lady with so many muscles and a bad temper.”

“The box—the woman—it's all a trick.”

“How do you mean this, a trick? I do not play tricks.”

“Señor Kellogg gave you that box. And there is no such woman as you claim.”

Emilio looked genuinely puzzled. “I know no Senor Kellogg. As for the woman, well, I saw what I saw. My eyes are not liars. She and her little brown-haired friend came in about 5:30. I served them myself. I said, ‘Good afternoon, señoras, it is a great pleasure to see you once more. Have you been away?' And the señora in the blood- colored suit said, ‘Yes, I have been away on a long, long journey. I never thought I would get back, but here I am, here I am again.' “

“My beads,” she said, and the beer bottle dropped from her hand and rolled, unbroken, across the wooden floor. “I must find my beads. The closet—perhaps I left them in the closet. I must go and find them. My beads . . . Hail Mary, full of Grace...”

 

Rupert and Dodd waited in the bedroom.

“A devil on the one hand,” Rupert said, “and a delu­sion on the other. And I was trapped between them. I could do nothing but stall for time, keep Amy hidden away until she was able to think clearly again, to distin­guish between what had happened and what Consuela claimed had happened. I had to keep her hidden not only from the police but from her family or anyone else she might try to ‘confess' to. I couldn't afford the risk of some­body believing her confession. There were times I almost believed it myself, it was so sincere and so plausible. But I knew my wife, I knew her to be incapable of violence against another human being.

“Consuela's lies started the delusion, but it was aggra­vated by Amy's own feeling of worthlessness. All her life she had suffered from a nameless guilt. Now Consuela had given it a name, murder. And Amy accepted it, be­cause it is sometimes easier to accept one specific thing, no matter how bad, than to go on living with a lot of ob­scure and indefinite fears. But there were other reasons too for her acceptance. She was beginning to feel hostil­ity toward Wilma and to resent Wilma's domination. These feelings were later translated into guilt. Also, re­member that Amy was drunk, and consequently had no clear recollection of the facts to counteract Consuela's false version of them.”

“You claim it's false,” Dodd interrupted. “But are you sure?”

“If I weren't sure, would I have confided in you and put myself at your mercy? Would I have brought you and Amy down here, dragged Miss Burton into this, broken any number of laws? Believe me, Mr. Dodd, I'm sure. It's Amy who isn't. That's why we're here now. We can't let her spend the rest of her life thinking that she killed her best friend. She didn't. I know that, I knew it from the first.”

“Then why didn't you give Consuela a quick, firm brushoff?”

“I couldn't. By the time I reached Amy at the hospital, the damage had already been done. Amy was convinced she was guilty and Consuela stuck to her story. If it had been a simple matter of dealing with the girl alone, there would have been no problem. But there was Amy too. And on my side, I had no evidence at all, only my knowledge of my wife's character. Bear in mind, also, that we were in a foreign country. I was completely ignorant of police procedure, of what the authorities might do to Amy if they believed her confession.”

When Rupert paused for breath, Dodd could hear the two women in the adjoining room talking, Amy softly, nervously, Miss Burton with brisk assurance, as if by put­ting on Wilma's clothes and make-up she had assumed some of Wilma's mannerisms. The stage was set but the leading character had yet to appear.
The silver box should do it,
he thought.
She's got to come back up to check Emilio's story about the two Americans.

“I had no choice,” Rupert continued, “but to yield to Consuela's demands and to stall for time. I talked it over with Amy and she agreed to do what I suggested, stay out of sight for a while. We got off the plane at L.A. and I checked her into a rest home under a different name, without even her own clothes to identify her.”

“That's why you let the luggage go through to San Francisco?”

“The luggage and Consuela,” he added grimly. “She was sitting across the aisle from us. I was able to get offi­cial papers for her by pretending I was hiring her as a nurse-companion for my wife.”

“Didn't Mrs. Kellogg object to the idea of entering a rest home?”

“No, she was quite docile about it. She trusted me and knew I was trying to help her. I felt reasonably certain that in a rest home, no matter what story she told, no one would believe her. As it turned out, she kept her se­cret to herself. And she obeyed my orders, gave me her power of attorney before we left Mexico City, wrote the letters I dictated in order to forestall any suspicions on the part of her brother Gill. I arranged with a business associate to have one of the letters postmarked New York but Gill wasn't taken in. I didn't realize how strong his suspicions would be or the extent of his dislike for me.

“As soon as I did realize, thanks to Helene, I began to get rattled and make mistakes. Big mistakes, like leaving Mack's leash in the kitchen and giving Gerda Lundquist a chance to catch me in that fake telephone call. It seemed that with each mistake I made, the next one be­came easier. I could no longer think clearly, I was so worried about my wife. I had relied heavily on the the­ory that the passage of time would bring Amy to her senses. I was too optimistic. Time alone couldn't do the trick; something more positive was needed. But I could do nothing positive, not even go down to Los Angeles to see her, to reason with her. I was trapped in San Fran­cisco, with you and Gill Brandon on my tail. It was, iron­ically, Consuela herself who forced me to do something positive.”

They'd met, by prearrangement, in the back row of loges of a movie theater on Market Street. Rupert ar­rived first and waited for her. When she finally arrived, she had doused herself so extravagantly with perfume that before he saw or heard her approach he could smell her as she walked up the carpeted steps.

It was not the time or place for amenities, even if she'd known or cared about them. She said bluntly, “I need more money.”

“I haven't any.”

“Get some.”

“How much were you thinking of?”

“Oh, a lot. There are two of us now.”

“Two?”

“Joe and I, we got married yesterday. I have always wanted to get married.”

“For God's sake,” Rupert said. “Why did you have to drag O'Donnell into this?”

“I dragged no one. I simply wrote him a letter because I was lonesome. You do not understand how it is, be­ing without friends, seeing only people who hate you and wish you dead. So I wrote Joe a letter, telling him how well I was doing, and about my pretty clothes and jewelry and my new hair, more blond than his even. I think it made him jealous. Anyway he borrowed some money and came up here by bus. Seeing him again, I thought, well, now that he's here we might as well get married and regain the blessing of the Church. So now there are two of us.”

“To be supported by me.”

“Not you. Your wife. You have done nothing to be ashamed of. Why should you pay? It is Mrs. Kellogg who must pay.”

“This is blackmail.”

“I do not concern myself with words, only money.”

“You've told O'Donnell everything, I suppose?”

“We are man and wife,” she said virtuously. “A wife must confide in her husband completely.”

“You're a damned fool.”

He felt her stiffen in the seat beside him. “Not such a fool as you might think.”

“Do you realize the penalty for blackmail?”

“I realize that you cannot go to the police and complain against me. If you do, they will have to question Mrs. Kellogg and she will admit her guilt.”

“That's where you're wrong,” he said quickly. “My wife no longer believes your story about Mrs. Wyatt's death. She remembers the truth.”

“What a bad liar you are. I can always tell a bad liar, I being such a good one.”

“Yes, I know that well.”

“Only I do not lie about vital matters, like Mrs. Wyatt's death.”

“Don't you?”

“Must I keep telling you? I was in the broom closet, sleeping, and I woke up when I heard someone screaming in 404. I rushed in. The two women were struggling over the silver box—they'd been arguing about it when I was in the room before. As I approached, Mrs. Kellogg got hold of the box and struck Mrs. Wyatt on the head. The balcony doors were open. Under the force of the blow, Mrs. Wyatt stumbled backwards out on to the balcony and fell over the railing. My mind is very quick. I thought immediately, what a terrible thing if the police accuse Mrs. Kellogg of murder. So I picked up the box and threw it over the railing. Mrs. Kellogg had fainted from shock. I poured some whiskey down her throat from the bottle on the bureau, and when she came to a little, I said to her, ‘Don't worry. I am your friend. I will help you.'”

Friend. Help. Rupert stared in silence at the over­sized movie screen where a man was stalking a woman, intent on killing her. He had a brief, childish wish that he were the man and Consuela the woman. If Consuela died, naturally, or by accident, or by design. . .

No, he thought. It would solve nothing. I must try to save Amy, not to punish Consuela. With Consuela dead I would have no chance of proving to Amy that she is suffering from a delusion. I must keep the devil alive because without her I cannot kill the delusion.