The Innocent (5 page)

My copy shows I know what people go for. I only wish I could go for it myself.

I wish I could write a psychological mystery. It would give me something to do. Some money, too, maybe. I would like to write a good one.

I've been thinking about the good ones. It seems to me they all break down at the moment when the plausible character commits a crime. Once we feel the character, once we identify with him or her, we feel them incapable of doing the dark deed because we are incapable of it. That is why all these books, although really well written, although thick with atmosphere, fall down. It is because they are thick with atmosphere alone, and the hand that plunges the knife must not be made up of ectoplasm. There has to be a bony structure to the crime itself.

Marjorie saw a raised hand with a knife in it. The hand plunged the knife and Marjorie gasped; her own hand was pressing into her breast.

How can I get around this? How can I make the reader believe he or she would commit a murder? Only if I believe it. Perhaps only a murderer could write a perfect psychological murder story. Of course, one way to get around it is have the reader identify with a person who does not commit the murder and who isn't the victim, as in
Rebecca
. In this yarn the sweet, dowdy, appealing little heroine does not do the crime, so we believe in her. I never did believe in Max de Winter. Du Maurier? De Winter? I think
Rebecca
succeeds because we believe in Manderley. Take me back to Manderley.

Claire was good at that sort of remark, that “Take me back to Manderley” sort of thing. She could toss them off. The first time Claire met Charles at my place, she had come out with something like that, and Charles was no longer so interested in what I was saying but sat and waited for Claire's next.

Lesson for the day? If you write a psychological mystery, leave the criminal as cipherish as possible and confine all reality to furniture and other characters?

No. I don't call that cricket. No, not good enough. No can do.

No mad criminals, either.

This is just a kind of an essay on the technique of suspense stories. I don't have to read it. I can't imagine why that girl had to hide it in the closet, but it doesn't concern me. How do I know it doesn't concern me? Curiosity killed a cat. Lack of curiosity killed a cat. I better go on a bit further.

There was an article on best sellers in the Book Review Section of the
Times
yesterday. It said the one characteristic all best sellers share is sincerity. Therefore, if I don't sincerely believe that my murderer would murder, I will not be a best seller. But I do not believe in murder unless, under certain circumstances, I would commit one. So it comes down to, would I murder? Could I murder?

I don't think I could. I don't hate enough.

You used to look down on me because I would read dreadful things in the papers and cry over them. You made fun of me. You said, “Look at the tip of Margie's nose. It's white with fury again. Margie's off again!” If you didn't hate enough it was because you didn't feel enough.

After all, my dear girl, this is not autobiography. Take someone who can hate. Take one of the truly emotional ones. Wait a minute—remember Edna's face when she talks about lynchings.

“Oh,” said Marjorie,
“Edna!”

It is wonderful the way Edna's soft mild beauty becomes terrible when she speaks of what racial intolerance has done to her people. I wish I could be moved like that. Edna is lucky. I am bored. Bored. Bored.

You were thinking of writing a suspense story because you were bored, bored, bored.

Time out for book of reference. I have just consulted Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense Stories. There's a tale there by Margery Sharp which I wanted to reread. Now I know why. It is the story of a Chinese pair, father and son, who sell themselves into servitude for twenty years in order to kill their enemy. That murder carried weight and I wanted to analyze it and find out why. Here we believe that two people would willingly give up twenty years of their lives for revenge. Why? Because they are alien corn. That is, I would not believe John Smith would do such a thing, but I do believe it of Sun Yen. It is not only because Shakespeare was a great writer but because he very cleverly made Othello a Moor that we believe he would murder poor little Desdemona. We credit evil very easily to peoples we don't know. This is one good reason for the need of intercommunication of all peoples, all races. (Looka me!) From this I must conclude that my murderer should be an alien, an outlander. It will help make my story credible.

Edna just came into this room with the trash basket which she had emptied. Since she believed I was occupied with typing, she stood for a few minutes at the window and peered out fearfully. What is she afraid of out there?

Edna moves so elementally. Her bones are noble. Her ancestors could have been queens in Africa. Her head is so wonderfully placed on her long throat. Her eyes are so large and limpid. There isn't a suspicion of thickness in her nose or her mouth. Her mouth is beyond words.

“What about Charles' mouth?” Marjorie asked.

—Her lips often quiver while she is standing before me waiting for an order. Of course she is having trouble with that dreadful drunk of a husband. Andrew. “Aandy,” she calls him. “Aandy.”

Edna is everything Andy is not. Andy is everything Edna is not. Whyever did she marry him?

“Why did you marry Charles? Why did you have to take him away from me and marry him?”

Oh, Edna did tell me once. She was going to save Aandy. He fell in love with her beauty and she fell in love with his salvation. Edna intended through her love and care to uplift Andy, to educate him so that the two of them, together, would join the fight for Negro equality. Very touching. As was to be expected Andrew had done his best to pull her under with him. All drowning people do this. One must not blame Andrew.

During the war, when Edna worked for us that first time, she took a course in welding in the evenings and then left us for a good job in a factory. With Andrew's assistance, she promptly lost that job because he made her such scenes at the plant. Of course—the reason Edna was looking out of the window was to see whether Andrew was down there, drunk and weaving and ready to lift this week's salary before she can get it to the bank. She told me he had drunk the money she had saved to pay for tuition at night college. Edna is very ambitious.

Ruthlessly ambitious? Well, she is rather ruthless, but that is because she feels she must get ahead in order to help her people. She could not persevere if she were doing it for herself. It is an altruistic monomania. She is the most loving person I know, or she'd have left that bastard of a husband long ago.

If you love most, you can hate most. If Edna can sustain love, she can also sustain hate. Not like me. My fire is feeble, a flicker, a matchstick's worth of flame. Edna is alien and beautiful and sympathetic. Edna possesses the musts. Would Edna commit murder?

Marjorie whispered, “Murder?” She saw Claire. She saw Claire cool and proud and blond, weighing this out. She saw Claire using her mind the way she always did, without drawing on her emotions.

What is the whodunit jargon? Motive. Opportunity. Means. Even if this project comes to nothing, it will have kept the ennui from my door for three days. I have kept myself busy studying Edna. She is like a harp on which any wind can play. When she talks of something good, she appears angelic but—note this—when she speaks of what she hates, Edna can look diabolical. Contrasted with me, who can be expressed in five or six middle notes, Edna has a tremendous, almost operatic range.

Edna is not black or brown or gray skinned. Golden? No, that's trite description and not in the least accurate. Deep rose beige, I would say. Her body is slender but strong.

Marjorie stirred. Marjorie wriggled on her chair. There was something about Claire's description of another woman that made her skin itch.

Edna's body is strong but her soul is delicate. How could she murder anybody?

Could she, couldn't she? Would she, wouldn't she? Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. I know why I recalled that damned childhood doggerel now; because I was taught it with the word “nigger.” Catch a nigger by the toe. Edna knows I have no prejudices. She trusts me completely, and she wouldn't, if I had prejudices.

Edna trusted Claire completely. Claire knew what to do with people who trusted her completely. Marjorie had trusted Claire.

Charles just came in and said if I wanted him to he'd stay home this evening, but if I was going to be bending over a hot desk again, he'd go bowl with Tommy instead. Let him go bowl. Let him go bowl his hoop.

Claire would have said it airily, waving her hand, raising a perefectly indifferent face. “Go bowl your hoop.” Toward the end she repeatedly hurt Charles' feelings like that, showing him she didn't care. I think, Marjorie decided, that if Claire couldn't be on the spot to see Charles' effect on women, she didn't mind where he went because that's what Claire gloried in, having someone, something, other women wanted. Even now, with Claire dead, she became angry with her for this. Charles needed to know he was wanted. He
had
to know.

Charles went bowling. Edna stayed with me. She wasn't particularly anxious to go home. There was a public-library book she wanted to read, and Andrew sometimes ripped books apart. He would have done the traditional book-burning act, I suspect, except that they had no open fireplaces, no coal stove.

“Poor, poor Edna,” I said.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: “Poor Andy,” she countered and meant it. “Poor Andy, he's no good to anybody.”

Motive?

Motive? Claire must have rolled that thought over in her mind. Claire would wonder coldly whether a woman would kill a man because he was no good to anybody. Marjorie saw Claire conceding that it wasn't sufficient motive. No soap.

Charles returned rather early from bowling. He had already showered when he came in to see me, wearing blue pajamas and a navy blue robe and looked very young and beautiful with his wet hair plastered smoothly and smelling of my Guerlain Carnation soap. I made the mistake of telling him so. Charles brightened up as he always does when you compliment him.

“You didn't understand him. It wasn't vanity. People have made him feel his looks are all that counts, so if you show you appreciate his looks, he feels safe with you. You didn't understand how pathetic it is!”

Charles looked as if he'd just been through something, as if he had something to spill and would do so if I threw my loving arms around him and let him sob it out. I knew I was turning Charles off when I didn't. I can't help it. I'll bet Marjorie would have had it out of Charles in a minute. She would have tickled the back of his throat with her sympathy and then held his head while he upchucked all the nasty stuff that was giving him the naughty ache in his tum-tum.

“Oh,” Marjorie said. But Claire's opinion of her wasn't news.

Well, if Charles can't do without that sort of thing he should have married Marjorie, although I don't know how long even she could have kept it up. After all, a woman has other uses for her shoulder than perpetually giving it to a man to weep on, particularly a man like Charles. He expects the impossible, that you give him one shoulder while you put the other to the wheel for him. But he did look magnificent sulking against the new drapes. I was right about that green; it is a little off. That decorator is just stubborn. This place is going to be swell when it is finished. Of course it is inconvenient right now, but I'm glad we moved. I will be glad, that is, when they finally get a telephone installed. That will be a great help.

Edna came in this morning with a black eye. Mr. Andrew, I presume. I said, “That's quite a shiner you've got there, Edna.” The word made her blush. I know why. A slang word for Negroes is “shine.” Edna is ashamed for Negroes. She feels a black eye is a disgrace to her whole race.

The girl is transparent, I tell you. Edna would be perfect, perfect for me to put under my microscope, should she be working up to murder dear Andrew, but she isn't. I asked her why she didn't leave him since he was so brutal to her and her wonderful face became dull and hopeless. She covered the shiner with one hand and said, “What would I have then, Mrs. Carter? Just a empty room nights and a guilty conscience.”

But if she could have more? If she could have what she wanted by getting rid of Andrew? Suppose I give Edna good solid motive? What then?

“You wouldn't!” Marjorie whispered. Now she didn't wriggle on her seat. Now she didn't itch. She felt cold now. She asked, “Would you, Claire?”

Many times she had asked Claire that. “Would you, Claire? Oh, you wouldn't, Claire!”

“Wouldn't I?” Claire always answered.

Marjorie heard her answering that way now. She heard Claire's throaty laugh.

No matter how much Edna had, how much money, that is, she could never be more wonderful than in her blue morning uniforms with the white collars and cuffs.

It is there in that closet. I touched it.

Most thin girls are flat, but Edna is thin-round, round waist, round hips, round high breasts. Edna, carrying my breakfast tray steps lightly; it is only her uniform that rustles. She moves like somebody. She must know it. She must want to be somebody. How much would she do to be somebody?

Marjorie saw the girl bending over Claire's bed with a tray and Claire watching her, Claire wondering just how far Edna would go. Claire was really up to something; soon she would start the ball rolling. It was like being part of an audience and watching someone walk into danger. You wanted to scream, to shout, “Can't you see what's going to happen?”

I said, “I didn't sleep well, Edna. I spent most of last night thinking about taking a trip. I would like to go to France. My mother took me there one summer, just before she became ill. I loved it. You would love France too, Edna. There is no discrimination against Negroes there, did you know that?”