Killing Cousins

Eleven

The pills, as it turned out, were effective. Nine hours after taking them, she was wakened by the first-floor activity of Mrs. Tweedy, who had returned to duty after a two-day leave. Mrs. Tweedy, an ample woman of Irish extraction, did not so much approach her work as attack it, and it always astonished Willie a little to see order and cleanliness restored under her hands, for it seemed from the accompanying clatter and thumping that she was, on the contrary, tearing the place apart. This excessive noise was generally annoying, especially early in the morning, but this particular morning it had an exactly opposite effect, and it was, in fact, as comforting to Willie as music or a warm bath. It seemed to signify the resumption of normalcy in a reasonable world where one could expect to survive comfortably, with a little luck and ingenuity, in spite of unexpected and unfortunate episodes that might disrupt events temporarily.

She climbed out of bed immediately and bathed and dressed and went downstairs briskly. Mrs. Tweedy was in the sunny dining room, and she received Willie with a moist eye and a determined cheeriness that informed Willie at once that the Tweedy ears had intercepted already the report of Howard’s defection. Well, there was no doubt where Mrs. Tweedy’s sympathy lay. She had been herself deserted by two husbands, one who had thoughtlessly died and another who had thoughtfully caught a freight going west, and even if she had known the true disposition of Howard, it is doubtful that she would have felt that he had received any worse than he deserved.

“Good morning, dearie,” Mrs. Tweedy said warmly.

“Good morning, Mrs. Tweedy. I believe I’ll have a simply enormous breakfast, if you don’t mind. Scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and jelly and coffee and a large glass of orange juice to begin with.”

Mrs. Tweedy was clearly nonplused by this ravenous lightheartedness. She had been prepared to find Willie in distress, if not collapse, and she didn’t now know what to say or what attitude to assume with this unexpected person who came downstairs demanding scrambled eggs and appeared to have been relieved of a burden rather than to have suffered a loss. For a moment, truth to tell, Mrs. Tweedy resented Willie’s unwarranted behavior, which deprived her of the chance to play the faithful servant in a tight little domestic drama, but then she began to understand, of course, that Willie was only hiding her shame and hurt beneath a precarious pretension, the gutty little thing, and it was enough to break your heart to see it. So much courage to find, Mrs. Tweedy thought, in one so slight — hardly bigger than a pound of soap. Quickly adjusted and still moist of eye, Mrs. Tweedy retreated to the kitchen and returned with orange juice. Willie accepted it and began to sip it, sitting alone at table in the morning sunlight. What, she thought, while Mrs. Tweedy cracked an egg in the kitchen, shall I do today?

One thing I must do, she thought, is see Quincy as soon as possible and assure myself that everything went well with him on the trip to Dallas. This can be arranged easily enough, for all I have to do is go into the bank and cash a check at his cage, which will be a natural way to see him that will excite no suspicion, and fortunately I can still cash a check as an excuse for going, for Howard at least left the money in our joint checking account, the deceptive bastard, although he wiped out the savings account and cashed the bonds. The bank will open at nine o’clock, and it is now past eight, so I will drive down there in the station wagon after I have finished my breakfast. I do hope everything has been completed satisfactorily with regard to the Buick and the letter, and I really have no doubt that everything has, for Quincy is exceedingly competent when he tries to be, and I have great confidence in him.

Mrs. Tweedy, after a while, returned with the rest of breakfast — golden eggs and crisp toast and coffee. Watching Willie devour these good things with apparently keen appetite, she admired more than ever the quality of Willie’s pretension. You would never know to watch her, poor little thing, that she had suffered a great blow to her pride, if nothing else, and was holding herself together only with the greatest effort. Mrs. Tweedy did wish, however, that there was a way to refer to Howard’s defection in a natural manner that might elicit some discussion of the matter and afford her an opportunity to express her opinion, which was a decided one.

“Do you wish to speak with me about something, Mrs. Tweedy?” Willie said.

“I was just wondering if you might have some special instructions this morning,” Mrs. Tweedy said.

“No, I can’t think of anything special.”

“About the cleaning, I mean.”

“There’s not a great deal of cleaning to be done. Just the routine things.”

“What I mean is, should I clean Mr. Hogan’s room?”

Willie was silent for a few moments, staring into the bright sunlight. Mrs. Tweedy thought that she looked very young and sad, like an unhappy child, and it was apparent that the mentioning of Mr. Hogan’s name, which wasn’t, in Mrs. Tweedy’s opinion, even the beginning of what he ought to be called, had upset her so greatly that she now must wait to regain control of her emotions before answering. This was Mrs. Tweedy’s interpretation of the silence, but it was not quite a true one. The truth was, Willie was trying carefully to remember if anything incriminating or suspicious might be left in Howard’s room that Mrs. Tweedy shouldn’t see, but she couldn’t think of anything of that kind that had ever been there at all, except the gun and Howard himself, both of which had been removed. After the few moments of silence, she nodded her head and said to Mrs. Tweedy that she should, of course, clean Howard’s room as usual.

“You’re a brave, sweet girl, dearie,” Mrs. Tweedy said.

After this oblique reference, Mrs. Tweedy went back to her work, wishing for Howard a fate almost as unfortunate as the one he had in fact suffered, and Willie finished her eggs and bacon and toast and poured a second cup of coffee from the pot on the table. She sipped the coffee and saw, looking out the window onto the side lawn, that Marv Festerwauld’s dachshund, named Lester, had slipped through the hedge again and had treed the red squirrel that lived in a maple outside the kitchen door. It was plain from the ridiculous way in which he kept jumping into the air and opening and closing his mouth that Lester was barking at the squirrel, which was, no doubt, although he could not be seen by Willie, sitting on a branch above and chattering back at Lester. All of this absurd activity took place in perfect silence, because of the windows being closed for air conditioning, and this was what made it amusing and worth watching.

It made Willie think of the old question about whether a falling tree would actually make any sound if there were no one around to hear it. She had herself never cared for intellectual problems and discussions of that kind, not being the intellectual type, but it was something that would probably interest someone like Quincy, who was always thinking about difficult things that didn’t seem to matter much one way or another, and it was time, she thought, now that Quincy had come into her mind in connection with Lester and the squirrel and the hypothetical falling tree, to go down to the bank and see if Quincy was all right and if everything had gone well with him.

She went out into the hall and called upstairs to Mrs. Tweedy that she was leaving, and then she went on to the garage and backed out the station wagon and drove downtown. The large revolving clock attached to the bank building reported that it was nine fifty-three when she passed through the door below it, and the thermometer on the back side of the clock indicated eighty-six degrees. The instant she stepped into the cooled interior air, she had the most terrible and debilitating feeling that Quincy was not there in his cage where he was supposed to be, and that something disastrous had happened after all to spoil his plans and ruin everything. The feeling was so strong and her conviction of disaster so certain that she felt quite faint and could not force herself to look in the direction of Quincy’s cage. Instead, she sat down on a wooden bench along the wall and stared at the floor until she was feeling normal again, except for the dreadful conviction of disaster, and finally, all at once in order to get it over with instantly, she looked up in the direction of the cage, and there was Quincy safe and sound in spite of her sudden foolish fear to the contrary.

She was seized by a wild compulsion to giggle aloud in sheer relief, but she buried the incipient giggle under a deep breath and stood up. It was just as well, as it turned out, that she had delayed on the bench, for Quincy was just finishing with a patron while the other tellers had been idle, which would have made it appear odd, to say the least, if she had waited for Quincy when there was no necessity. It just showed you, she thought, how even a bad experience could turn out for the best and be of service in the end.

She walked over to Quincy’s cage and began to write a check to herself for fifty dollars, which she did not need, and Quincy smiled and nodded in a casual kind of way that was absolutely admirable, the cool and clever little devil. You couldn’t possibly have told from observing him that they were any more than amiable cousins by marriage, or that either of them had been up to anything the least secretive or out of the ordinary.

“Good morning, Cousin,” Quincy said.

“Good morning,” she said. “I’d like fifty dollars, if you please.”

She pushed the check through the little aperture, and Quincy asked her if she wanted it any particular way, meaning in particular denominations, and she said No, and he counted out a twenty and two tens and a five and five ones.

“Did you have a good weekend?” he said.

“It was pretty quiet,” she said. “Nothing much happened.”

“Same here.”

“It’s going to be a hot day. I noticed by the thermometer when I came in that it’s already close to ninety. I’ll probably go swimming at the Club later. About five.”

“Maybe I’ll see you out there.”

Which meant that he would, and that was about all they could say — only casual remarks because of the chance of being overheard. But Quincy kept looking at her and smiling in that cool way of his, and just as she was turning to leave he slowly winked his offside eye in relation to the teller in the next cage, and she knew that everything had indeed gone well, as she had hoped and Quincy had promised.

Slipping the fifty dollars into her purse, smiling and nodding casually as one cousin-by-marriage to another, she turned and walked out of the bank, and her feeling of relief had grown into a kind of quiet elation and sense of well-being. It was too early for lunch, especially after such a hearty breakfast, and so she decided to spend some time shopping. She did this leisurely for about two hours, moving from shop to shop and leaving her purchases to be delivered or picked up later, for there was none among them that she really needed and very few, if any, that she would even want after she received them. Shortly after noon she went to the Hotel Quivera and had lunch in the coffee shop. She wished she could have a Martini before and after, but the bar was not open yet. Lacking a Martini to linger over, she lingered instead over a glass of iced coffee, and she managed, altogether, to kill another hour pleasantly, after which, on a kind of impulse, she went to a movie. Sitting in the movie, she remembered that she had failed to call Mrs. Tweedy and give notice that she wouldn’t be home for lunch, and this was a dereliction for which Mrs. Tweedy had practically no tolerance, and she would have to be pacified later.

The movie was exceedingly dull. The male lead was played by a young man whose hair was too long, and it was, in fact, longer than the hair of the young woman who played the female lead, which was too short. In spite of being bored, Willie continued to sit in the cool, dark theater until her eyes happened to wander to the clock under a small light to the right of the screen, and she saw that it was half-past two. The time reminded her that the mail had surely been delivered on Ouichita Road, and that she might have a letter from Dallas.

Although there was no hurry to go and get the letter and read it, she nevertheless felt compelled to do so. She left the movie and drove home in the station wagon, and there, still in the box, was the letter. It had come by air mail. She carried it into the house and read it in the living room, and in spite of expecting it and knowing all about it, she felt a strange and unpleasant little shock while reading it, as if it had actually been written by Howard himself, even though he was dead and buried among the brambles beside the creek on the farm of Quincy’s maternal uncle.

As she stood there with the letter in her hand, feeling at first the shock and then a vague uneasiness, the bell at the front door began to ring, and she went out into the hall and opened the door, not waiting for Mrs. Tweedy, who was upstairs. A man was standing there with his hat in his hand. Willie didn’t know him and couldn’t remember having seen him before, but she had an immediate conviction that he was a policeman, and that was, in fact, what he was.