The Blunderer (15 page)

“Yes, Mr. Stackhouse.”

Dick Jensen, Ernestine McClintock and some of the other neighbors called him that morning. They were all sympathetic and offered their help, but Walter had nothing that he needed done. Then Jon called, and for the first time Walter broke down and wept. Jon offered to come and stay with him. Walter wouldn't accept it, even though it was Saturday and Jon was free. But he agreed for Jon to come out that evening at six to have dinner with him.

Just after two that afternoon Walter got a call from Lieutenant Corby in Philadelphia. Corby asked if Walter would be good enough to come to the Philadelphia Central Police Station that evening at seven.

“What's the matter?” Walter asked.

“I can't explain now. I'm sorry to bother you, but it would help us enormously if you'd come,” Corby's polite voice said.

“I'll be there,” Walter said.

He wondered if Corby had picked up a suspect, and found a man who had confessed. Walter found himself unable to imagine, really, almost unable to think. He had been jumpy yesterday, and today he felt everything he did was in slow motion.

Walter called Jon and told him that he had to go to Philadelphia, and wouldn't be able to see him until late. Jon offered to drive him there, or ride with him.

“Thanks,” Walter said gratefully. “Can I pick you up around five at your apartment?”

Jon agreed.

Jon drove Walter's car from New York onward. To Jon, Walter told the same story he had told Ellie. And Jon replied much the same as Ellie had, as Walter had known he would. But there was something more in Jon: an obvious relief, that showed under his seriousness as he talked to Walter in the car, that Clara was totally out of Walter's life—and by her own actions.

“Don't feel guilty!” Jon kept saying. “I understand this better than you can right now. You'll understand it, too, in another six months.”

20

J
on waited at the car, and Walter went into the building by himself. He asked a policeman at a desk where Lieutenant Corby was.

“Room one seventeen down the hall.”

Walter went to it and knocked.

“Good evening.” Lieutenant Corby greeted him with a nod and a smile.

“Good evening.” Walter saw a husky-looking man of about fifty, sitting on a straight chair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. Walter wondered if he was the man.

“Mr. Stackhouse, this is Mr. De Vries,” Corby said.

They nodded to each other.

“Have you ever seen Mr. De Vries before?”

He looked like a laborer, Walter thought. A brown leather jacket, brown and gray hair, a roundish, not very intelligent face, though there was a brightness in his eyes now of interest or amusement. “I don't think so,” Walter said.

Corby turned to the man in the chair. “What do you think?”

The grayish head between the hunched shoulders nodded.

Lieutenant Corby leaned comfortably against a desk. His boyish smile had grown wider, though there was something ungenerous about his small mouth and his small regular teeth. Walter didn't like the smile. “Mr. De Vries thinks you were the man who asked him how long the bus stop was in Harry's Rainbow Grill the night your wife was killed.”

Walter looked at De Vries again. It was the man. Walter remembered that round, nondescript face turning to him above the coffee cup. Walter wet his lips. He realized that Corby must have taken the trouble to describe him to De Vries because Corby suspected him.

“You see, this is all by the merest accident,” Corby said with a laugh of pleasure that actually made Walter jump. “Mr. De Vries is a truck driver for a Pittsburgh company. Occasionally he makes the run back to Pittsburgh by bus. We know him. I was only asking him if he remembered seeing any suspicious-looking characters around the bus stop that night.”

Walter wondered if that was how it had been. He remembered Corby yesterday: Did you reach the friend? Who was the friend? “Yes,” Walter said. “I was there. I followed the bus. I wanted to talk to my wife.”

“And did you?”

“No, I couldn't find her. I looked everywhere.” Walter swallowed. “Finally I asked this man how long the bus was stopping.”

“Don't you want to sit down, Mr. Stackhouse?”

“No.”

“Why didn't you tell us this?”

“I thought there was a possibility I'd followed the wrong bus.”

“Why didn't you tell us after you found out your wife was dead? Your story of driving around Long Island, then, is a lie,” Corby said in his polite tones.

“Yes,” Walter said. “It was very stupid of me. I was frightened.”

Lieutenant Corby unbuttoned his jacket and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. A university key dangled from a chain across his narrow vest. “Mr. De Vries tells me that the driver waited several minutes because your wife was missing, and that he remembers you standing near the bus until it left.”

“Yes, I did,” Walter said.

“What did you think had happened to her?”

“I didn't know. I thought it was possible she'd got out in Newark—changed her mind about taking the bus. I'd tried to dissuade her about taking the bus.”

Corby was sitting on the corner of the desk, lifting and setting down various objects on it—the stapler, the ink bottle, a pen—with a possessive and satisfied air. A big name plate on the desk said
CAPT. J. P. MACGREGOR.

“I suppose you can go now, Mr. De Vries,” Lieutenant Corby said, smiling at him. “Thank you very much.”

De Vries stood up and gave Walter a final lively glance as he walked to the door. “Good night,” he said to both of them.

“Good night,” Corby replied. He folded his arms. “Now tell me exactly what happened. You followed the bus from New York?”

“Yes.” Walter shook his head at Corby's offer of a cigarette and reached for his own pack.

“What were you so eager to talk to your wife about?”

“I felt—I felt we hadn't concluded something we were talking about at the bus terminal, so I—”

“Were you arguing?”

“No, not arguing.” Walter looked straight at the young man. “We'd better take this step by step. I saw the bus pull into the space in front of the restaurant for a stop. I stopped my car on the highway and walked back—”

On the highway? Why didn't you pull up by the bus stop?”

All the questions were loaded. Walter answered slowly. “I shot past. I stopped as soon as I could and got out.” He waited, expecting to be challenged again. He wasn't. “I don't know how I could have missed her. I hurried up, but I didn't see her in the bus or in the restaurant.”

“It's several yards from the highway to the restaurant. Why didn't you back your car and drive up?”

“I don't know,” Walter said hollowly.

“If she went straight from the bus to the cliff she could have jumped off within thirty seconds.
Could
have,” Corby repeated.

“She knew the road,” Walter said. “She often made it by car. She may very well have known about the cliff.”

“Had the bus stopped yet when you were walking towards it?”

“Yes. People were getting off.”

“And you saw no sign of her?”

“No.” Walter watched him taking notes in the limp brown tablet. His bony hand moved quickly and with a heavy pressure. It was over in a few seconds, as if he used shorthand. Corby put the tablet away. “You found no suicide notes at home, I suppose?”

“No.”

“No,” Corby repeated. He looked up at a corner of the room, then at Walter. “May I ask what was your relationship to your wife?”

“My relationship?”

“Were you both happy?”

“No, we were getting a divorce, in fact. We would have been divorced in another few weeks.”

“Who wanted the divorce, both of you?”

“Yes,” Walter said matter of factly.

“May I ask why?”

“You may ask why. She was a very neurotic woman, hard to get along with. We clashed—everywhere. We simply didn't get along.”

“You both agreed on that?”

“Emphatically.”

Corby was watching him, his hands delicately poised on his hips as he sat on the desk. The little mustache made him look absurdly young instead of older. To Walter he looked like an obnoxious young fop playing at being Sherlock Holmes. “Do you think the prospect of the divorce depressed her?”

“I've no doubt it did.”

“Was that what you wanted to talk to your wife about, the divorce? Is that why you followed the bus?”

“No, the divorce was all settled,” Walter said tiredly.

“A New York divorce? Adultery?”

Walter frowned. “No. I was going to Reno. Today.” He took out his billfold. “There's my plane ticket,” he said, tossing it down on the desk.

Corby turned his head to look at it, but he did not pick it up. “You didn't cancel it?”

“No,” Walter said.

“Why Reno? Were you in such a hurry, or wasn't your wife willing?”

Walter had braced himself for that. “No,” he said easily, “she didn't want a divorce. I did. But she also knew there was nothing she could do to stop me from getting one—except kill herself.”

Corby's mouth went up at one corner, mirthlessly. “Wasn't that pretty inconvenient for you, six weeks in Reno?”

“No,” he said in the same tone, “my office had given me a six weeks' leave.”

“What was your wife going to do afterwards?”

“Afterwards? I presume keep the house, which is hers, and keep her job.” Walter waited. Corby was waiting. “It's a peculiar situation, I suppose, from your view, both of us living there together until the last minute. I was afraid to leave my wife alone, afraid of just this—suicide or something violent.” Walter had a sudden optimistic feeling that his story was beginning to make sense. But Corby was still looking at him with widened eyes, as if the circumstances of the divorce had opened a new path for his suspicions.

“Did you have any specific reason for wanting a divorce just now? Are you in love with somebody else?”

“No,” Walter answered firmly.

“I ask that, because the kind of situation you describe between you and your wife is the kind that can go on a long time without anybody doing anything about it.” Corby smiled. “Probably,” he added.

“That's very true. We've been married four years and it's—the last year that we began to talk about a divorce.”

“You can't remember what you wanted to finish talking about Thursday night?”

“I honestly can't.”

“Then you must have been angry.”

“I was not. I simply felt it hadn't been concluded, whatever it was.” He felt violendy bored and annoyed suddenly, the way he had felt in the Navy a couple of times when he had had to wait too long, naked, for a doctor to come and make a routine examination. He also felt tired, so tired that it seemed even his nerves were spent and no longer kept him twitching, and he might have dropped on the floor and slept, except that he wanted to get out of the building.

“Another question,” the lieutenant said. “I'd like to ask if
you
saw any odd-looking characters while you were looking for your wife?”

Walter was sick of the young man's smile. “I think my wife was a suicide. No, I did not see any odd-looking characters.”

“You were not so sure yesterday that your wife was a suicide.”

Walter said nothing.

Lieutenant Corby got off the desk. “You're unusual. Most people are never convinced their wives or husbands or relatives are suicides. They always demand that the police search for a murderer.”

“So would I, under different circumstances,” Walter said. “I don't suppose cases like this can ever be really proven suicides, can they?”

“No. But we can eliminate the other possibilities.” Corby smiled and walked towards the door as if the interview were at an end, but he stopped short of the door and turned to Walter.

Walter wanted to ask him if the fact that he had been at the bus stop was going to be put into the papers. But he didn't want Corby to think he was afraid of it. “Is this the last of these interviews?” Walter asked.

“I hope so. Just one thing more.” Corby strolled back across the room. “Did you happen to hear of another death like this a few months ago? A woman who was found dead, beaten, and knifed to death near her bus stop at Tarrytown?”

Walter was sure his face did not change. “No. I didn't.”

“A woman by the name of Kimmel? Helen Kimmel?”

“No,” Walter said.

“The murderer hasn't been found yet.
She
was very definitely murdered,” he added with a pleasant smile. “But the similarity of the two cases struck me—that interval at the bus stop.”

Walter said nothing. He looked straight into Corby's blue eyes. Corby was smiling at him, in the friendliest way his anemic-looking, overbright schoolboyish face was able to smile, Walter supposed. It was not at all friendly. “Is that why,” Walter asked, “you take such an interest in this case?”

Corby opened his hands. “Oh, I don't take such an interest in this case.” He looked self-conscious suddenly. “This one happened in my state. I remembered the other case because it hasn't been solved. It's pretty recent, too. August.” Corby swung the door open. “Thank you very much for coming in.”

Walter waited. “Have you come to a conclusion? Are you convinced my wife was a suicide?”

“It's not for me to come to a conclusion!” Corby said with another laugh. “I don't know if we've got all the facts yet.”

“I see.”

“Good night,” Corby said with a deep nod.

“Good night,” Walter said.

It was going to be in the papers, anyway, Walter thought. He had the feeling Corby was going to put it in all the papers. Walter told Jon what had happened. The only thing he lied about was his reason for following the bus: Walter said he had wanted to finish something he and Clara had been talking about.