The Innocent (13 page)

Because she would not go to sleep again, not until the last sleep. “Macbeth hath murdered sleep.”

And will I ever go to sleep again? Marjorie wondered. Because she knew now that Claire had been murdered by Charles. Oh, yes, she would sleep again; she would sleep as she had been sleeping the past eight months, a terrible sleep, full of terror, a sleep from which she pushed awake and woke trembling. Because she had suspected all along that something was wrong, that it was too good to be true, that she had been having her cake and eating it, too. The specific, the definite knowledge had been inside her smothered under generalities like too good to be true, like having her cake and eating it, too. The specific knowledge had been there but instead of digging toward it, she had buried it deeper. Let the dead past bury its dead. Let sleeping dogs lie. Least said soonest mended.

There was one advantage in digging up the truth at last. Now she could acknowledge the excuse which until then she had been unable to muster to Charles' support: he loved me. He loved me so much. He couldn't do without me. He did it for me.

Charles killed Claire because he loved me so.

A terrible, a wicked, triumph shot through her whole soft body; a terrible, a wicked gratitude filled her because all her life she had had to bow to the Claires and then Charles had proved how much more she really was worth. Marjorie did not know this; all she knew was that she still loved Charles, even if he was a murderer. She would protect him as she had always done. Even if he had killed.

She told herself that Claire was dead, anyhow.

She told herself that punishing Charles now would do Claire no good and would hurt three live things. It would hurt Charles, of course, and herself, but more than the two of them, it would injure little Pete. She told herself that for little Pete's sake, she had to protect Charles. She told herself it was wrong of Charles, terrible of Charles, but that for little Pete's sake it must be forgiven. She told herself that not only for little Pete's sake, but for her own love it must be forgiven. She told herself that just as Charles loved her enough to kill for her, so she loved him so much she would do anything for him, be his accessory in this crime. Mistress, wife, and accessory.

She told herself that this was why she had been so upset by the item in the paper that morning. It was wrong of that Italian mother to turn her son over to the police, no matter what he had done. She was glad now that she had disapproved of that unnatural mother before the deed had any application to herself. It just proved that she was right to defend Charles, or at least that according to her beliefs it was right. We have to live according to our own beliefs.

I know now, she thought. Now I know.

“Now,” trilled the telephone. “Now! Immediately.” It rang and rang, so long that it seemed to Marjorie, who had to come down the narrow stairs as carefully as if she were crippled, who had to put down each shaking leg with circumspection, clutching the stair rail with her wet and trembling hand, that the telephone would stop ringing before she could reach it. But the telephone was still alive with peremptory sound when she picked it up.

“Mrs. Carter? Mrs. Charles Carter? This is Dr. Gresham calling, Bellevue Psychopathic. Mrs. Carter, we just admitted a girl here, Smith, Edna Smith. Smith claims she worked for you. She is in a very disturbed condition, very disturbed, and has repeatedly mentioned your name in connection with some papers. I am not quite clear about the matter, Mrs. Carter.” There was an official crackle from his end. “I quote: ‘Mrs. Carter has the papers, et cetera, et cetera. The papers show I'm not crazy. It shows how I did kill him and I didn't, but I'm not crazy. I don't want you to lock me up with crazy ones, et cetera, et cetera.' Are you there, Mrs. Carter?”

“Yes,” said Marjorie very faintly.

“I can hardly hear you. Is there something wrong with your line? To continue, the girl, Smith, attempted suicide last night. We think pretty definitely it was because of this delusion of murder. We don't like to trouble you, Mrs. Carter, but in order to proceed with therapy properly it would help us a good deal if you could come down and tell us what you know of the matter. Help us separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter?” he repeated making a question of it, for she had not answered him.

“I'm here, Doctor.”

“About coming down?”

“I want to—but—it's not so easy, Doctor. I have a baby,” she said. “I have a very sickly infant and I can't leave him.”

“Can't you get someone to take care of the infant? We won't keep you too long.”

“I can't leave him with just someone. No, I can't. I can't.”

“See here, Mrs. Carter. Get this, please, we are asking you because—perhaps you don't understand. I will try to explain it to you. This girl seems like a fine girl to us. She tried to commit suicide last night. We know she is suffering from guilt feelings. We would like to straighten her out as quickly as possible.”

“I'm sorry for her,” Marjorie said.

“So are we, that's just it. We have hearts here, Mrs. Carter, believe it or not. Now I'm not running Bellevue down; we do the best we can, but we're a city hospital, a poor, overcrowded city institution without the money or space for the nursing and attendant staff we should have. It would be a blessing to other patients if we didn't have to detail special nursing to the Smith girl. Do you get me, Mrs. Carter? I mean, we're fairly shorthanded here. We can't neglect five other patients to watch one girl day and night. We want to save Smith, if we can, and if you know anything about her—and she insists that you do—it would give us a leg up if you came down and told us what you knew. That is all we're asking you to do. Is it too much? If you can assure us that these papers are completely imaginary, well, we're pretty much used to imaginary objects around here and we'll know what to do. But if they're not imaginary, we want to know that. It will assist us a great deal to know what is true and what is fantasy. You can understand that, can't you? Now will you help us?”

If she said the papers were imaginary, they would know what to do. They would be sure Edna was insane. If she said that the papers were not imaginary at all, they would certainly ask to see them. If they asked to see them—if they read the papers—“I will see what I can do, Doctor.”

“You get someone to leave your baby with, how about that? You root around and see if you can hunt up someone and then come right on down to G3. Ask for me, Dr. Gresham. I'm the resident physician on G3.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Huddled over the telephone, Marjorie wept herself into a throbbing headache. Because Edna, unlike Claire, wasn't dead. Yes. Because it was one thing to protect Charles by keeping quiet about a dead woman and quite another to keep quiet and kill an innocent girl. Because that was what the doctor had hinted, talking about the overcrowding at Bellevue, the lack of nursing care, of supervision. They say if they try suicide once, they'll try it again. Marjorie had heard that, and it was what the doctor had hinted at. He was telling her that Edna would try it again, and they couldn't watch her as carefully as she should be watched. He was telling her that if she could give him facts which would show him how to stop Edna from having guilt feelings, he could keep her from trying it again.

Marjorie walked up and down the foyer with her hands pressed to her head. She had admitted that Charles was a murderer. She had accepted the burden of being the accessory before that fact, but now there was a new fact to accept.

Could she accept it? Could she sit back and let Edna kill herself? And if Edna killed herself and they called it suicide, could she accept it as suicide? Wouldn't it be murder? Could she go down to the hospital? Could she tell them about the papers?

I can't. No, no, I can't.

Then let her die? Do nothing and let her die?

I can do something, she thought. I can get Edna out of there, out of that crowded place. I can see that she is put in the best private institution. I can make certain that she is watched day and night. I can write out that check, after all.

She ran into the living room and took out the checkbook again. Then she sat, biting the end of her pen, telling herself that she mustn't do her usual trick, just go off half-cocked; she must think it out first, telling herself that she must plan first what she would say, how she would explain. This time Marjorie did not see a judge and a policeman, only a doctor in a long white coat. She would say to him, “Dr. Gresham, this is Marjorie Carter. You telephoned me about that girl. I expect you thought I was terribly hardhearted and insensitive because I wouldn't rush down to see you, but I'm not. I assure you I haven't been able to put her out of my mind since you telephoned me. Here is three hundred dollars. It happens to be all we have at the time.”

No, don't tell him that. He will become suspicious if you announce that you turned over every penny to a strange Negro, no matter how pathetic her case. No. “Here is three hundred dollars, Dr. Gresham. Will you please use it to place the girl in the best possible private sanitarium and see that she has twenty-four-hour supervision, so she won't do anything terrible to herself? I know that three hundred dollars won't last more than a couple of weeks, but I'll see you get more when you need it.”

He would conclude that she had a soft heart, that was all. He would assume that he had touched her tender social conscience with this story of the tormented young Negro. The doctor must have heard about wealthy people giving money like that; there was nothing suspicious in the gesture at all. He would say, “Now, that's very generous of you, Mrs. Carter.”

That is what he will think. But I don't think I'm generous. I know that the most I will be doing is providing the money to give Edna a living death. I will be keeping her from killing herself, but at the same time I am keeping her from living. No, Doctor, I don't think well of myself at all.

She began to weep again but made herself stop, telling herself that there would be plenty of time to cry later. (All the rest of my life, she thought.) But now she must calm down and be plausible, must calm herself into a decent, deceptive semblance of a sympathetic woman touched by a sad story. Otherwise Dr. Gresham might suspect. She must get herself into shape to telephone the doctor.

Marjorie blew her nose. She washed her face with cold water, folding a wet washcloth and holding it to her forehead so that the terrible throbbing would be soothed. She lighted a cigarette to give herself poise. She sat down on the telephone-table chair.

Marjorie had just dialed C-A- when she heard the key in the lock. It was Charles, of course. She put the receiver back in its cradle. Tell Charles? Shouldn't she tell Charles? Tell him about Edna and what they had to do for her, the least they could do for her? Assure Charles that it didn't put him in any danger? Say to Charles that she would protect his interests with her life, but she couldn't live if they didn't do this much?

Marjorie did not understand why she decided so quickly not to tell Charles, but between the time she heard his key in the lock and the time he came into the foyer, looking exactly the same, melting her with his beauty, she knew she wouldn't tell him anything. No, Marjorie was not going to tell Charles. His mother wouldn't have told him; his aunt wouldn't have told him. All three of them hated to punish Charles. All three of them knew that you had to punish your child once you admitted he had done wrong, therefore you did not admit it. If she told Charles that she knew he had killed and intended to accept this fact, she would lose the power to make him behave because she would be setting him a bad example. She would put the papers back in the closet where she had found them. This must be done as soon as possible so that if Charles checked up on them, he would find them undisturbed. He probably checked up on them from time to time. He had not dared destroy them because he felt vaguely that they might be valuable as blackmail, should Edna make trouble. He had chosen Edna's closet so that if they were found it would be assumed, as Marjorie had assumed, that Edna herself had put them there.

She turned from the telephone toward Charles almost as if she had been starting to dial the butcher, or the laundry, almost but not quite. She greeted him in almost her usual manner, but the slight deviation in Marjorie was enough to upset Charles. Although this was not the case with anyone else, Charles was sensitive to her because he needed her so much, because in every way his safety depended on her.

He put his hat down on the telephone table. “Is anything wrong, Margie?”

He glanced at the telephone as if it frightened him, at the foyer as if it frightened him; his glance leaped from the portion of the couch visible in the living room to the living room drapes. Marjorie saw that when she became unsure, he did, too. She was his North Star, his lodestar. She gave a peculiar sobbing laugh and ran to him, throwing her arms around him.

Charles let her hold him for a moment while, as it always did, the strength of her love gave him strength; then he moved away. Charles pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his forehead, which had become damp.

“Oh, look at your handkerchief,” Marjorie said. “It's messy. You didn't take a fresh one this morning.”

“You didn't put one out.”

“So you didn't take one! Oh, Charles, Charles!” He needs me. He can't do without me. She took the handkerchief from him and started toward their bedroom to get a fresh one; then she saw the clock. “What are you doing here anyway, Charles?”

He showed her his wristwatch, tapping the face. “One forty-five, time for lunch. I came home for lunch. You know,” he explained, “lunch, when you make with the teeth.”

He had the most perfect teeth. Even now Marjorie spent a moment admiring them before she remembered that on weekdays Charles didn't have time for lunch at home.