The Puzzled Heart (23 page)

“So the dog was part of the plot too,” she said.

“Of course.”

Kate looked at the woman, who if not recognizable as Muriel—for Kate could hardly recognize someone met only once after almost thirty years—still clearly
was
Muriel, though Kate hardly knew the reason for her certainty. Keeping them both in view, Banny lay down between the women as they stood there.

“So you’ve hated me all these years,” Kate said, when it was clear no invitation to enter the house would be forthcoming. “I was twenty-two, Muriel—Marjorie—and behaved like a fool, I admit it. It wasn’t my business to think up plots for my brother. He should have been left to manage his own life. But I would like to point out that you didn’t have to reject him the moment he seemed not so rich. You could have waited and watched, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. You’ve always been rich. You never saw my mother working night and day, worn out, or my father proud of his honest poverty. Honest poverty! He drank after work, and her work never stopped. I wasn’t going to live that life.”

“What did it take to stay angry for nearly three decades?”

“You exaggerate your influence. I hardly thought of you until recently. But you lurked in the back of
my mind. And the hatred I felt three decades ago returned to me full blast. When I hate, I discovered, I hate forever.”

It occurred to Kate to say that they would not now be facing each other in this preposterous way if when Marjorie had loved she had loved forever. But Kate was beginning to realize that the woman facing her was hardly in a reasonable frame of mind. The barely concealed rage was making itself evident. Besides, Muriel’s love for William had hardly been comparable to this moment’s hatred.

“Marjorie,” Kate said, taking a step forward. Banny raised her head. “Could we sit down and talk about this, perhaps have some tea? I know what I did then was wrong. I can even understand your passion for revenge, and the form it took—kidnapping Reed, I mean, and the rest of it. But how could you have murdered Toni, or attacked her so that she died of injuries to her brain?”

“I didn’t attack her,” Marjorie said. “You’re still a fool. Well, I’m not a fool. I’ve no desire to spend the rest of my life in prison for murder, either of Toni or of you.” And she slightly shifted the gun.

“Then who?” Kate began. But was there any point in asking? At least she was not to be shot, or not at any rate murdered. It came over Kate with dreadful conviction that Marjorie/Muriel was indeed mad, in the sense of insane. Would the promise of not murdering Kate allow Kate to turn her back, get into her
car, and depart? Somehow, Kate doubted it but was nonetheless near to deciding to try it.

“Toni was a fool,” Marjorie said. “She didn’t stick to the rules, or to her promises, or to the job she had undertaken.”

“She worked for you?” Kate asked. Understanding was dawning upon Kate, slowly but surely. She had already figured out—this was largely why she had come to see Marjorie—that Toni had been a double agent. But Kate had assumed that Mama and perhaps Dorothy Hedge had hired her. Had Harriet known or suspected? Kate dismissed that fleeting question. “She worked for you?” Kate asked again.

“For me and the others. We were working to restore sanity to our country and to your university. Only when I realized that you worked at the university did the chance to avenge myself on you dawn upon me. I’m not very quick, which as you so rightly pointed out was evidenced by my not hanging around after your dirty trick years ago and working to mollify your brother.”

“You are an admirer of Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson?” Kate asked, hoping to swing the conversation to a political shouting match which might attract someone’s attention—Judith’s, or perhaps that of someone else about the place, another visitor or prospective purchaser viewing the kennels.

“Of course I admire them, and all the others you liberal bleeding hearts despise. We’ve let so-called
kindness eat away at this country’s guts. It’s disgusting what’s taught in college these days, and I hear that you’re one of the worst offenders with this feminist, multiracial shit. That was how your name came up. I must say when I heard it, it was like a revelation, like a religious conversion with light everywhere. I persuaded them to change their tactics a little. They didn’t care. You were as good a target as any—and you were too proud to take your husband’s name. Typical. If you had, I’d never have realized who you were. I only saw William one other time, and you weren’t married then. Hearing the name Kate Fansler, I nearly peed in my pants with delight.”

A thousand questions flooded Kate’s mind, and like the little Dutch boy, he of the finger in the dike, she struggled to keep back the deluge. Getting out of here seemed the wisdom of the moment. Kate took a step away from Marjorie, but Marjorie waved her back.

“Sit, Banny,” Marjorie said. The dog stood and then dropped its rear end to a sitting position. Banny looked at Marjorie for further orders, or some indication of what was happening. Marjorie raised her gun, did something Kate could hear to ready it, and pointed it at the sitting dog. Kate gasped, horror flooding in upon her.

Marjorie turned her eyes from the dog to Kate, but as the dog started to lie down again, Marjorie said: “Sit, Banny.” Banny sat up. “No,” Marjorie went on, “I wouldn’t murder you and rot in jail. My other little
plot didn’t exactly work out, did it? Dorothy tells me you’re fond of this creature. Good. Then watch me blow her to bits with this shotgun. And don’t move. I don’t really mind if I have to shoot you in the leg, although shotguns are notoriously inexact. You need rifles for that.”

Marjorie knelt, the better to steady the gun, and took careful aim, and at that moment Kate raced across the space between them and threw herself on Marjorie. The gun went off, clearly missing Banny, whose bark could be heard. Kate tried to wrench the gun from the other woman, whose grip was amazingly powerful. Kate was taller, and had had surprise on her side, but now Marjorie began to fight, tossing aside the gun and throwing her weight onto Kate; she was by far the stronger, and Kate, despite her struggles, was soon pinned to the ground. Kate tried to push against the other woman, but seemed unable even to move her own limbs. Marjorie’s hands went around Kate’s neck and Kate felt the hands tighten. Struggling seemed only to increase the pressure of the other woman’s grip.

“Marjorie?” Kate heard the voice of the kennel girl—or was it someone else? She heard Banny barking, and then she heard nothing at all.

Sometime later, when consciousness returned to Kate, she took up the struggle once again, thrashing about. She was still being held down.

“Kate, Kate, stop fighting. It’s me; it’s Reed. You’re in the hospital. You’re all right, Kate.”

“Banny?”

“Banny’s all right too. Everyone’s all right. But my God, you might have been killed. Do you never stop to think of the trouble you are to me? Does it never occur to you to tell a person where you’re going? I’ve had a ghastly time.”

“ ‘ “I weep for you,” the Walrus said: “I deeply sympathise.” ’ ” Kate managed a smile, but even that small motion, and her speaking, made her throat ache and she winced.

“You’ve also got a black eye and a nasty head wound. I hope you’re satisfied. And don’t quote anything else to me. Just rest. Let me do the talking, if any.”

“Did you save me?” Kate whispered.

“I only wish. No, my dear, you were saved by a wonderful young woman named Judith who works for Marjorie and apparently took the scene in without standing around asking questions, as would no doubt have been your response. As far as I can gather, she picked up the shotgun by the muzzle end and swung it for all she was worth. It caught Marjorie in the head, and she’s got a beauty of a concussion. It seems the kennel girl plays golf in her spare time.”

“Marj—” Kate croaked.

“Try not to talk. I know that’s like asking a seal not to swim, but make an effort. Having taken a golf swing, the promptly acting Judith called an ambulance
and here the two of you are, in the same small town hospital but in widely separated rooms. You will be asked, upon recovery, if you want to press charges. Marjorie, of course, may decide to accuse you of assault and attempted robbery of a Saint Bernard, but fortunately we have a witness in dear, never-to-be-sufficiently-appreciated Judith. Who is, by the way, staying on to tend to the dogs until Marjorie regains her health.”

“Not dies like Toni?”

“No. No fear. It wasn’t, oddly enough, nearly that serious a blow. It all depends, apparently, on where you hit someone and with what strength. Toni was smashed more directly and harder than Marjorie. Our golf champion succeeded in getting her off you, but not in seriously endangering her life. I gather she didn’t even knock her out.”

“Sorry.”

“I should jolly well think so. Now, listen. Leslie and Harriet are outside and want to see you and say a brief hello. They will be allowed in only if you promise not to move or utter a word. Agreed? And don’t shake your head, you fool, that only makes the pain worse. Raise one finger for yes, two fingers for no.”

Kate raised a finger and Reed opened the door to two very anxious women.

“You look like hell,” Harriet said. “I thought I was the one who was being a private eye. Don’t answer, you’re not supposed to talk.”

“I’m glad they kidnapped Reed and not you,” Leslie said. “You’d probably have forced them to kill you in the first hour you were with them. Imagine your getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight. And one thinks one knows one’s dearest friends!”

Sixteen

A
week later Reed drove Kate home from the hospital. Kate still had the feeling that her neck didn’t turn quite as it ought to and that a headache might start at any moment, but she was planning to return to teaching, having missed only a few classes.

After leaving the hospital they had stopped off at Marjorie’s kennels. Marjorie was not there, or if there, had chosen not to appear. But Judith was, and greeted them pleasantly. After waving from alongside the kennels, she had emerged with Banny beside her. Banny was not yet as large as she would become, but she was a big dog now, with a big dog’s dignity. Since she was also a Saint Bernard, she walked unhurriedly, with what one might in another connection
have called measured steps, her great tail waving slowly like a plume.

“Want to get in, Banny?” Reed had said, holding open the back door of the car. Banny, seeming to have grasped without major effort both that these two were now her people, and that she was too big a dog to ride with them in front, settled herself on the backseat, her tail still waving gently.

“Goodbye, Banny my love,” Judith called. “You come see me when you’re a mama, hear?”

Kate turned her neck so sharply toward Reed as he backed up the car that she winced, whether at the pain or at the thought of Banny’s motherhood was hard even for her to distinguish.

“Anything more you didn’t tell me?” Kate asked. “We’re going to have puppies?”

“Not immediately. The negotiations were a bit complicated, and seemed, apart from the astronomical price, to rest on an agreement to let Banny breed. It seems she’s a rare specimen who, mated with another rare specimen, is a natural to bring forth future champions. I had to agree. We can’t keep any of the puppies, which I had to agree to if her price was to be lowered into a sphere of financial sanity, but I didn’t think you’d want them anyway. As to Banny, I was told on good authority that a mother dog can’t wait to see the end of puppies once they’re weaned, and wouldn’t know them if they came up to her with their pedigrees around their necks. Banny will not
feel like a regretful woman who had to give her baby up for adoption. So that seemed acceptable.”

Kate was aware of an enormous tiredness, not fatigue exactly, which one felt after great exertions, but the tiredness of too much worry and of not having had sufficient rest for too long a time. “I suppose you’ve settled all sorts of matters without me,” she said with a petulance she knew to be entirely unjustified. She couldn’t seem to prevent herself from complaint. Reed said it was the aftershock, and not to worry.