The Blunderer

  Walter walked quickly towards the people standing around the bus. Clara was not there. He stood on tiptoe and looked into the bus. It was about a third full. Could it be the wrong bus? But there was the NEW YORK-PITTSBURGH sign on the front. Would there be two buses on the same schedule?

  Walter’s fingers worked in the pockets of his jacket. He had shredded a book of matches, and he flung the frazzled mess out of his pocket onto the ground. He waited, circling the bus slowly. The fifteen minutes should be about up. He turned and collided with someone.

  “Sorry!”

  “Sorry!” the woman’s parrot-like voice said, and she went on.

  Walter felt sweat break out suddenly all over his body. Now he saw the bus driver coming out of the restaurant. The bus was nearly full. Walter strained to see into the darkness of the highway at both sides of the crescent. But it wasn’t like Clara to take a walk. He looked back at the lighted doorway of the restaurant. It was empty. Above it the script-written Harry’s Rainbow Grill flashed lavender, then red.

  The bus started its motor. Walter watched the driver walk down the aisle, his hand moving as he counted passengers. Then the driver went to the front again and stopped, looking out of the door.

  “We’re waiting for a passenger,” Walter heard the driver say.

  Walter was sure it was Clara. He clenched his hands in his pockets. He saw the driver walk into the restaurant, yell something he couldn’t hear, then come out again.

  The driver helped a small plump woman up the steps of the bus. “Do you know if anybody else’s still in the ladies’ room?” the driver asked her.

  “Didn’t see anybody,” the woman said.

  Walter stood where he could see the dark edges of the highway, the restaurant door, and the bus door. The motor of the bus roared louder, shaking the ground under Walter. Then it rolled backward, forward, and curved towards the highway. Walter set his teeth to keep from yelling. He went into the restaurant, walked to the door of the ladies’ room, and started to yank it open and shout her name. But he didn’t. He walked out of the restaurant again, frowning.

  The only explanation he could think of was that she had got out in Newark at one of the red lights. But she wouldn’t have been able to get her suitcase off at a red light. And hadn’t the bus driver been looking for her just now? Who else could have been missing but Clara? On the highway, Walter looked in both directions and saw no one. Then he ran down the highway towards his car. It felt good to run, though he skidded on gravel and fell when he tried to stop. It scratched his palm, but he did not think it had torn his trousers. He still looked for her, insanely, on the highway as he drove back. Then he stopped looking and he began to drive fast.

  15

  Walter got home a little after eleven. The house had no light. He went upstairs and found the bedroom empty. He went downstairs, still half expecting to see Clara’s suitcase, or some sign of her in the living-room. He lighted a cigarette and forced himself to stay seated on the sofa for a few moments, while he waited for the telephone call that would explain where she was. The telephone was silent.

  He dialed Ellie’s number. There was no answer.

  Walter got into his car and headed for Lennert. He should have a brandy, he thought. He felt jumpy, on guard, against what he didn’t know. He felt guilty, as if he had killed her, and his tired mind traced back to the moments of waiting around the bus. He saw himself walking with Clara by some thick trees at the side of the road. Walter moved his head from side to side, involuntarily, as if he were dodging something. It hadn’t happened. He was positive. But just then the road began to wobble before his eyes, and he gripped the wheel hard. Lights skidded and blurred on the black road. Then he realized that it was raining.

  Ellie’s windows were dark. He did not see her car in the street or in the vacant lot by her building. He rang the bell hopefully. No answer.

  Walter drove to a bar a few streets away and ordered a Martell. He spent as much time as he could drinking it, then he went back to Ellie’s house. It was still dark, and still the bell did not answer. He went back to the bar.

  “What’s the matter?” the barman asked him. “Got somebody in the hospital?”

  “What?”

  “Thought you might have somebody in the hospital.” The barman grabbed a glass and began polishing it. “You know—hospital down the street here.”

  “I didn’t know,” Walter said. “No, nobody in the hospital.” He felt his teeth were about to start chattering, despite the soothing brandies.

  Walter tried Ellie’s doorbell again at 12:30. Just as he was walking away, her car turned into the street and his heart jumped high in his chest. Ellie was not driving. Walter saw Pete Slotnikoff behind the wheel.

  “Hello, Mr. Stackhouse!” Peter said with a happy smile.

  “Hello!” Walter called back.

  “We’ve just come from Gordon’s,” Ellie said as she got out. “We were expecting you all evening.”

  Walter remembered: Gordon had called a few days ago and invited him and Clara to a cocktail party. “I couldn’t make it.”

  “I’d better take off, Ellie. I’ve only got about seven minutes,” Peter said. “I’ll put the car right at the right of the news kiosk.”

  “Right,” Ellie said. “It was nice seeing you, Pete.” She gave his hand a pat on the windowsill of the car, a nice platonic pat, Walter thought. “Good night.”

  Peter drove off.

  Walter wondered suddenly if Pete suspected he was having an affair with Ellie, if that was why he had driven off so soon, or if he really did have a train to catch? Walter and Ellie looked at each other. He had not seen her in nearly two weeks.

  “Anything the matter?” she asked.

  “I just wanted to see you before I leave. Can we go upstairs?”

  Her eyes were smiling, but he could feel the distance she kept from him. “All right.” She turned and went directly to the door with her key.

  They climbed the stairs quietly, and went into her apartment.

  “A pity you didn’t come to Gordon’s,” Ellie said. “Jon was there, too.”

  “I really forgot all about it.”

  “Don’t you want to sit down?”

  Walter sat down uneasily. “Clara left for Harrisburg tonight to see her mother. Her mother’s very ill. I think she may die.”

  “Oh. That’s bad news,” Ellie said.

  “It doesn’t change my plans, of course. I’ll still be leaving Saturday.”

  Ellie sat down in the armchair. “You’re worried about Clara?”

  “No. Actually she isn’t upset about her mother at all. She’s not very close to her mother.” Walter rubbed his ankle between his hands. “Could I have a drink, Ellie?”

  “Of course!” She got up to make it. “Water or soda?”

  “A little water, please, and no ice.” He got up and picked up her violin from the long end-table at the foot of the sofa. It felt absolutely weightless in his hand. He held it to the light and read, written inside below the strings: Raffaele Gagliano, Napoli 1821. He put the violin down and went into the kitchen, corked the Scotch bottle that was standing on the drainboard. Ellie turned to him with his drink. He took it and caught her to him with his other arm, and kissed her, a long desperate kiss, but it did not make him feel what he had felt before with her. Even with her arms tight about his neck. He thought suddenly: suppose he was not in love with her and never could be? Suppose in another month he would be as repelled by the forthrightness, the shiny nose, the terry cloth as he had been attracted by them a month ago? But Ellie wasn’t the main reason for the divorce, he reminded himself. If he had to tell Ellie that he would never marry her, he would only feel asinine because he had said he would. He released her and turned into the living-room with his drink. He felt that Ellie was thinking he could spend the night. He felt she expected him to ask to.

  “Is something the matter?” Ellie asked. “What’s worrying you?”

  He had thought, waiting for
Ellie tonight, that he might tell her about following the bus. Now he felt afraid to. “Nothing really.”

  “Is everything all right at the office? They don’t mind you going away for six weeks?”

  “They mind, but I don’t care. Dick Jensen and I might be out by the middle of December. Dick and I are planning to start an office of our own. A small claims office. So if the office decides to fire me, I wouldn’t mind at all. As it is, they’ve just given me leave without pay.”

  “What kind of a small claims office?”

  “Just for individuals. No corporation law at all. Drunken driving, dispossessed tenants and all that.” It surprised Walter that he hadn’t told her about it before this.

  “That’s a big change,” Ellie said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got to make a phone call before it gets any later.”

  Walter listened to her talking to the woman named Virginia, a woman who also taught at the school, Walter remembered. Ellie arranged a time for Virginia to pick her up tomorrow morning, because her car was parked at the railroad station.

  “Do you see Pete very often?” Walter asked when she was through talking.

  “No, I don’t. He can’t come out so easily without a car.” Ellie sat down again and looked at him. “I don’t think he has any serious interest in me at all, if you’re thinking of that.”

  Walter smiled at her honesty. She was sitting half turned in the chair, her arm along its back, and her figure looked long and graceful and full of repose. He remembered he had loved her repose and her silences that were so different from Clara. Now he felt uneasy. He went to her and knelt down, and circled her body with his arm. He kissed her skin in the V of her dress, her throat, then her lips. He felt her body relax under his arm.

  “Do you want to stay tonight?” she asked.

  He stood up slowly, touched her forehead with his palm, and the crisp brown hair above it. “I’d rather wait.”

  She looked up at him, but she did not look disappointed or annoyed, he thought.

  “I may not see you again until I get back, Ellie. Clara might be back tomorrow night, just might.”

  She stood up, too. “All right. And now you’re off?”

  “Yes.” He went to the door, but he turned and embraced her again and kissed her hard on the lips.

  “I love you, Walter.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  16

  “I sure hope it isn’t one of them agony deaths,” Claudia said. “Whether you likes your mother or not, it isn’t nice to see anybody in agony, and whatever Mrs. Stackhouse acts like, she’s not prepared to watch something like that.”

  “No, she’s not.” Walter watched Claudia’s slim brown hands clearing away his breakfast dishes. “I’m going to call her this morning,” he said. He got up from the table. He wanted to call Harrisburg now, but he didn’t want to talk in front of Claudia.

  “May I ask if you’re in for dinner tonight, Mr. Stackhouse?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a chance Mrs. Stackhouse may be back. But it’s not worth your coming. Take the evening off again.” He picked up his jacket from a chair. Claudia was looking at him. He knew she was about to say something about his not eating if she weren’t here to cook. He hurried to the front door. “See you in the morning, Claudia. I’m here until eleven tomorrow morning.”

  Walter put in a call to Harrisburg as soon as he got to the office. A woman answered and said she was Mrs. Haveman’s nurse.

  “Is Mrs. Stackhouse there?” Walter asked.

  “No, she’s not. We expected her last night. Who is this?”

  “This is Walter Stackhouse.”

  “Where’s Clara?”

  “I don’t know,” Walter said desperately. “I put her on the bus yesterday at five-thirty. She should have got there last night. You haven’t heard a word?”

  “No, we haven’t, and the doctor doesn’t think Mrs. Haveman is going to live more than a few hours.”

  “Will you take my number? Montague five seven nine three eight. Have Mrs. Stackhouse call me as soon as she arrives, will you?”

  Walter called up the Knightsbridge Brokerage. He spoke to Mrs. Philpott and asked if she had had any messages from Clara since the day before, at 5:30.

  “No. I wasn’t expecting any. Have you heard how her mother is?”

  “I don’t know where Clara is,” Walter said. “I’ve called Harrisburg and she hasn’t arrived yet. She should have been there around eleven last night.”

  “Good gracious! Do you suppose the bus had an accident?”

  “I’d have been notified by now’’

  “Well, if you don’t hear anything this morning, I’d suggest you tell the police.”

  Mrs. Philpott’s thin but very wise voice had a calming effect. “I think I will. Thanks, Mrs. Philpott.”

  Walter had a conference at ten, and it was twelve when the conference adjourned. He went directly to his office to telephone the police, but Joan called to him from her office next door and said that the Philadelphia Police Department had telephoned fifteen minutes ago. They had left a number for him to call.

  “Call it now,” Walter said. He felt suddenly that Clara was dead, that her body had been picked up, bruised and knifed in some woods.

  “Mr. Stackhouse?” said a drawling voice. “This is Captain Millard, Twelfth Precinct, Philadelphia. The body of a woman tentatively identified as Clara Stackhouse was found this morning at the bottom of a cliff near Allentown. We’d like you to come to the Allentown morgue as soon as possible to confirm the identity.”

  17

  There was no doubt in the world. Walter had only to see the left foot in the tattered stocking to know. The officer pulled the sheet back as far as her hips. The torn skirt was half black with blood.

  “Can you tell?”

  “Let me see the rest.”

  The officer pulled the sheet all the way back.

  Walter shut his eyes at the sight of her crushed head, opened his eyes and looked at the arm that lay across her body in a semblance of naturalness but which looked shattered and limp.

  “Her suitcase is in here,” the officer said. “It was found aboard the bus. Will you come in here? We’d like you to answer some questions.”

  Walter took a grip on the door jamb as he went through and held to it a minute. He had seen dead bodies before, bombed bodies in the Pacific, and they had made him vomit. This was worse. Dimly, he saw the dark figure of the police officer rounding his desk, solid as a bull. Walter plunged his head down to keep him from fainting. There was a nauseating smell of disinfectant. He raised up again, rather than be sick. He saw the officer motion to a chair, and Walter walked obediently to it and sat down.

  “Her full name, please?” the man at the desk asked.

  “Clara Haveman Stackhouse.” Walter spelled the names.

  “Age?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Birthplace?”

  “Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

  “Any children?”

  “No.”

  “Nearest relative?”

  Walter gave her mother’s name and address in Harrisburg. He watched the man calmly putting checks here and there on a form as if he did this every day. “Have you got the man?” Walter asked.

  “The man?” The officer looked up.

  “The man who did it,” Walter said.

  The officer rubbed his nose. “The cause of the death is presumed suicide, Mr. Stackhouse, unless otherwise proven. Her body was found at the bottom of a cliff.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Walter. He didn’t believe it. “How do you know she wasn’t pushed off?”

  “That isn’t the concern of this department. There’ll be an official autopsy, of course.”

  Walter stood up. “I think somebody ought to show some interest in whether she jumped off or was pushed. I want to know!”

  “All right, you can talk to him,” the man replied, nodding at the corner behind Walter.

&
nbsp; Walter looked around and saw a man he had not noticed before, a young man in civilian clothes who pulled himself up from a chair and came towards Walter with a faint smile on his face.

  “How do you do?” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Lawrence Corby of the Philadelphia Homicide Squad.”

  “How do you do?” Walter murmured.

  “When did you see you wife last, Mr. Stackhouse?”

  “Yesterday. Five-thirty at the bus terminal in New York.”

  “Did you have any reason to think your wife would commit suicide?”

  “No, she—” Walter stopped. He remembered her tears at the bus terminal. “It might be possible,” he said quickly. “Barely, I suppose. She was upset.”

  “I saw the cliff today,” the young man said. “It’s not likely that she fell off. The cliff isn’t easy to get at and it slopes at the top for about thirty feet, and then drops.” He illustrated with a movement of his hand. “Nobody’s going to keep walking down there by accident. The cliff’s by a roadhouse restaurant, and nothing very violent could have gone on there without somebody hearing it.”

  Walter hadn’t thought until now that the cliff had been right there. Now he remembered the high land the restaurant had sat on, the blackness all round that suggested a steep drop beyond it. He tried to imagine Clara rushing straight from the bus around the side of the restaurant, plunging down. He really couldn’t. And when could she have done it? “But I doubt very much if she’d have taken this method of killing herself. It isn’t like her. But she did try to kill herself with sleeping pills about a month ago. I think suicide was on her mind.” He realized he was talking in circles. He looked at the stranger in front of him. The incongruity of the faint, polite-looking smile on his face held Walter’s eye. “But I’m not at all sure of suicide,” Walter said. “I hope somebody’s going to make some investigations.”