I should have stopped her then.
She whispered it to herself. But she hadn’t. She’d even smiled, watching her. She put her hand up to her frozen cheek and rubbed it violently, horror seizing her again. She could still feel the smile on her face, and the upward tilt of her brow as she stepped quietly through the open door of her father’s room and waited there, in the dark, until Janey came running out, clutching her bag in both hands. She could still feel herself standing there, and feel the satisfied smile that was on her face. She shivered suddenly. It was something evil, hideous, inside her. She’d known it was wrong then, but it hadn’t mattered. Everything was working out perfectly. With Janey out of the way, everything would be just as she wanted it. But out here alone in the dark, where she had to stop and sit and listen to the sharp, shrill voice of the conscience she didn’t often bother to listen to, it suddenly mattered. It mattered a great deal.
You can’t do it. You get what you want, but you don’t get it that way.
Not even her father would approve of that. John Maynard was ruthless and he was none too scrupulous. She knew that. But this was callousness—plain and horrible.
She thought of Janey, at home in the narrow brick house, the capsules in her hand. She wouldn’t take them right away. She’d resist them, the way she’d resisted the impulse to take them from the table drawer. Connie Maynard moved back to the car. She’d tell Gus, on the way home. She started to get in under the wheel. Somewhere behind the dark fringe of trees around the yard something slithered through the dry grass. A small animal squealed and was silent. There was no sound except the slithering movement in the grass. Across the darkness came the high pitch of the siren as the ambulance screamed through Newton’s Corner. Connie tried to swallow. Her throat was as dry as the hard, parched ground under her feet. Maybe she couldn’t wait till Gus came out and she drove him home. Maybe it was too late already—
She ran across the yard, catching her foot in a dry rut behind the green truck, stumbling forward, catching herself again and running on to the door. “Oh, Gus?” She pulled the door open. “Gus, you’ve got to go home!” As she stumbled into the kitchen and saw Chief Carlson and Gus Blake as they whirled around from the passage door, staring at her, she was conscious that no sound had come from her throat.
“Connie—for God’s sake!”
She clenched her fists to control herself.
“Gus—you’ve got to come home. I’m—I’m tired waiting.” She tried desperately to think what she could say. “I’m—I’m tired! Do you hear me? You’ve got to come home!”
She saw the alarm in Gus Blake’s face change as she stamped her foot on the floor. Anger flashed up in his eyes, his jaw tightened in white hard ridges. “Gus, please! I’m tired, Gus!”
Then she saw Carlson put his heavy hand on Gus’s arm.
“Go on, Gus. It’s late. I’m goin’, too.”
She turned, pushed the door open, and ran out again, across the dry ruts in the littered yard to the safe and cooling darkness of the car.
“Take it easy, son,” Swede Carlson said. “High blood pressure boils the brain. And find out why Miss Maynard’s so upset, all of a sudden. From what I hear, she don’t get tired till four or five in the mornin’, and not from just sittin’ in a car. Go on, Gus. Maybe we’d both like to know.”
The clock in the courthouse tower struck eleven as Janey reached the top of the narrow crooked stairs. She unlatched the folding gate that was there to keep little Jane from toppling down the steps, fastened it securely back again, and went along the passage to the front room where she and Gus slept. She switched on the light between the beds, went over to the dressing-table, and sat down, looking blindly into the mirror as she automatically pulled open the side drawer, put her velvet bag into it, closed it, and reached up and pulled the velvet bow off her hair. After a moment she got up and went back to little Jane’s room, picked up the warm sleeping child, took her to the bathroom, and brought her back, still half asleep. It was a nightly routine that ordinarily filled her with a warm glow of happiness. Tonight she went through it automatically, without feeling. She was too numbed to think or feel.
She put the pink wool panda back up straight in the corner at the foot of the crib, facing the lop-eared white rabbit in the other corner, saw that the picture book was on the chair where little Jane could reach it if she woke first in the morning, and opened the window a little. Out in the hall she reached up to turn off the light and remembered that Gus never remembered about the gate across the stairs when he came in late, always bumped into it, always swore. She left the light on, started back to her room and stopped. Little Jane had waked.
“Daddy.” Janey could hear her voice calling sleepily. “Daddy—little Dane wants a drink of water.” At two and a half she could pronounce all her letters except the J of her name. Blue-eyed and yellow-haired, she looked very like what she called herself. Her father called her the little Dane. The little Dane and the big Swede. It flashed into Janey’s mind. That was what he called the Chief of the County Constabulary. Her hand trembled as she went back to the girl’s door.
“Daddy isn’t here yet,” she said. “He’ll get you a drink of water in the morning. Good night, sweet.”
She heard the sleepy, “Night,” and closed the door. Her knees were watery-weak again. She put her hand on the rail across the stair well and stood there. She shouldn’t have thought of Chief Carlson. Doc Wernitz’s house was out in the country. The chief of the county police would be in charge. He’d be out there with Gus now. He was a friend of Gus’s. If he found the checks— She closed her eyes, holding on to the railing. It was all back again, all the writhing agony and despair. A thousand dollars, she thought dully. All the money she’d saved since Gus had turned over the accounts to her because he could never save anything. She’d worked so hard, and so gaily, saving it, had such fun shopping and planning, standing in line at the markets, making her own clothes and little Jane’s, doing everything she knew how to do. Nest egg, backlog, call it anything, money in the bank; something she’d worked so happily to build up for them, to match the secure enchantment of the other part of her life with Gus— and then turned on, tearing it down and throwing it away, when Constance Maynard came and she saw all her dream world dissolving before her. Now, there was nothing left. The money was gone, the dream was gone. How she could explain it, she had no idea. She’d destroyed the only thing she’d ever been able to do for Gus. She wasn’t beautiful and brilliant, the way Constance Maynard was, but she had been practical. She’d made Gus comfortable at home, and managed, and saved his money so he could buy a new car and have a new suit and new overcoat, or make a down payment on a house—and then she’d turned on him and thrown it all away.
It was all such stupid, sickening folly. And Connie Maynard knew she was stupid. It was in her veiled, patronizing smile every time she saw Janey or had to speak to her. And she was right. Gus would be better off with Connie. That was the worst of all of it.
I’ve failed, him in the only thing I knew how to do for him.
She went back to their room, took off her dress, and got her pajamas and yellow wool robe. She put them on, turned down the covers on Gus’s bed and hers, and sat down, staring at his slippers on the floor. She was dumbly aware, somehow, that if she could get a moment’s release from the tension that was blinding her, there might be some way to get out of it. There was none now. She wasn’t even thinking straight in her own stupid way; if she had been, she would never have taken the sleeping-pills from Mrs. Maynard’s table drawer. As they came into her mind again she got up, went to the dressing-table, took her bag out of the drawer, and reached in it. She touched the gilded lucky piece first, pushed it aside, and felt for the folded tissue, to take the pills to the bathroom and flush them down. As they met her fingers, the telephone on the table between the beds jangled noisily.
She thrust the bag quickly into the drawer and shut it, almost as if the phone had eyes to see. As she picked it up, a cold hand closed sharply around her heart. Was it Gus now, calling from out there, to tell her he knew? She let herself sink down on the side of the bed. The phone rang again.
“Hello.”
A high-pitched voice, like an old man’s whispering, came over the wire. “Is Mr. Blake there?”
“No. He’s not in.”
“Where is he? Where can I get in touch with him? It’s important.”
“He’s out in the country.” She started to say, “on the Wernitz case,” and didn’t. “He’ll be here in the morning.”
She put the phone down. It was a disguised voice. She knew that without thinking about it particularly. A lot of times people called up in the middle of the night, disguising their voices, to tell the editor of the newspaper something they wouldn’t dare tell if there was any chance of their being recognized and held accountable. Usually slander, or— She swallowed a bitter doughy lump caught in the middle of her throat. Was this somebody calling to tell Gus— She stood up, took off her robe, and laid it across the foot of her bed.
“I’ve got to stop this,” she said softly. “I’ve got to stop being a fool.” She raised the window, got into bed and turned off the light. “I’ve got to quit even trying to think.”
She heard the courthouse clock strike the half hour, three quarters, twelve o’clock. Quietly lying there, her mind seemed to clear a little. The thousand dollars was gone. She had to face it, and everything else. There was only one thing to do. That was to tell Gus. She must stay awake, to tell him when he came in. It was all perfectly clear now. She got up, closed the window, and opened the hall door. She had to hear him when he came in, and get up and go down and see him downstairs, not up here, where he could fly into a rage and maybe shout at her and wake little Jane. He’d never flown into a rage and never shouted, but he’d never had any reason to before. She shivered a little, not knowing what he’d do, and got Into bed again. The quarter hour struck as she lay there staring up at the ceiling.
Then she heard him. Or did she think she’d heard him? She hadn’t heard a car drive up. But she wouldn’t; he’d drive home with Connie, and leave her and walk home. He wouldn’t let her drop him and drive home alone. Though she hadn’t heard his step on the walk, and he usually ran the last few feet and up the steps onto the porch.
She sat up and turned on the light, listening. Maybe she’d made a mistake. Or she could have heard a rat. Sometimes rats that had been abroad for the summer came back to the old grocery store, not knowing people lived there now. Then she heard his footsteps. He was being very quiet. He usually wasn’t. He usually ran into a chair and swore under his breath, the narrow stair well tunneling it all plainly up to her on the third floor. Janey wondered a little, now. He must be out in the kitchen, she thought. Always before she’d left coffee for him in the Thermos bottle in the pantry, but she had not tonight. Still, there was the coffee cake her mother had made. He could have coffee cake and a glass of milk. She reached for her robe and put her feet in her slippers. She’d go down and see him, and tell him. Now she’d made up her mind, she knew the quicker she did it the better, for everybody and everything. She went out into the hall. Her hands were icy-cold, her throat dry, and her legs not very steady as she took hold of the rail and leaned over to look down and tell him to wait there.
The light was on in the hall, but he was still out in the kitchen. She remembered she’d left both lights on when she came up. She took a step forward and stopped abruptly, looking over the rail down into the hall again, bewildered suddenly. A door was opening, the door to the basement. She knew its special hinge that whined in spite of all the oil she’d put on it. He was going, very quietly still, down into the basement. But he never went down there. He never looked at the furnace, or replaced a blown fuse, or did any of the things her father did in their basement at home. She wondered for an instant if he was sick. But that was silly. If he was sick he’d head for the washroom on the second floor.
She pulled her robe around her, went along to the head of the stairs and bent down to unlatch little Jane’s folding gate. She took hold of the latch, looking down into the lighted hall. Suddenly there was no light. She was staring down into pitch and total blackness. The lights had gone off. There was nothing but darkness thick as a blanket thrown over her head. She could hear the soft pad of footsteps coming very quietly back up the basement steps.
The soft pad of footsteps
was coming back up the basement stairs. Janey swallowed down the great lump swelling in her throat. She moistened her lips and swallowed again. The hinge whined softly and she heard the muted click of the catch as the door closed. Her legs were frozen, gripped in an awful paralysis as the blackness crept tighter and closer around her, suffocating her in its relentless cold invisibility. She drew herself sharply up and clenched her fists. “No! I’m crazy! There’s no one there. I’m just hearing things. The power’s gone off. All over town. The power’s gone off!”
She jerked her head around toward her room and stiffened rigidly again. The power was not off. She could see the faint greenish glow change to red, sifting from the street through the closed slats of the Venetian blind at the front window. Her mouth and throat turned dry again as she turned quickly back, her eyes straining down into the inky blackness of the stair well. Perhaps it was just their power that had gone off—
Then she heard the loose board in the pantry in front of the dining-room door. Something heavy had touched it— something heavier than she was and lighter than Gus. There wasn’t a board or step in the house that creaked or a door that opened that she didn’t know and couldn’t recognize. It was part of the enchanted game she’d played, when Gus had been out at night and she was happily curled up in bed warm and waiting, clocking his progress into the house and through it until he got to the top of the steps and suddenly remembered and started tiptoeing until he got into their darkened room, invariably hitting the foot of his bed, swearing softly until she broke into a laugh.