The Exorcist

Chris turned away, looking down.

  “It’s a problem?” the psychiatrist asked her.

  She shook her head and said softly and morosely, “No, I just lost ‘Hope,’ that’s all.”

  “I didn’t get you.”

  “Long story.”

  The psychiatrist telephoned the Barringer Clinic. They agreed to take Regan the following day. The doctors left.

  Chris swallowed the ache of remembrance of Dennings; thought again about death and the worm and the void and the unspeakable loneliness, the stillness and the silence and the darkness that awaited beneath the sod: no, no movement; no breathing; nothing. Too much … too much. Chris lowered her head and briefly wept. And then put it away.

  Packing for the trip, Chris was standing in her bedroom selecting a camouflaging wig to wear in Dayton when Karl appeared at the open door. There was someone to see her, he told her.

  “Who?”

  “Detective.”

  “Detective? And he wants to see me?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  Karl entered and handed Chris a business card. WILLIAM F. KINDERMAN, it announced, LIEUTENANT OF DETECTIVES. The words were printed in an ornate, raised Tudor typeface that might have been selected by a dealer in antiques. Tucked in a corner like a poor relation were the smaller words Homicide Division.

  Chris looked up at Karl with a tight-eyed suspicion. “Has he got something with him that might be a script? You know, a big manila envelope or something?”

  There was no one in the world, Chris had come to discover, who didn’t have a novel or a script or a notion for one or both tucked away in a drawer or a mental sock. She seemed to attract them as strongly as priests attracted derelicts and drunks.

  Karl shook his head. “No, Madam.”

  Detective. Was it something to do with Burke?

  Chris found him sagging in the entry hall, the brim of his limp and crumpled hat clutched with short fat fingers whose nails had the shine of a recent manicure. Plumpish, in his early sixties, he had jowly cheeks that gleamed of soap. He wore rumpled trousers, cuffed and baggy, beneath an oversized gray tweed overcoat that hung long and loose and old-fashioned. As Chris approached him, the detective told her in a hoarsely emphysematous, whispery voice, “I’d know that face in any lineup, Miss MacNeil.”

  “Am I in one?” Chris asked.

  “Oh, my goodness! Oh, no, no! No, of course not! No, it’s strictly routine,” he assured her. “Look, you’re busy? Then tomorrow. Yes, I’ll come again tomorrow.”

  He was turning away as if to leave when Chris said anxiously, “What is it? Is it Burke? Burke Dennings?” The detective’s loose and careless ease had somehow tightened the springs of her tension. He turned and came back to her, dolefully staring with moist brown eyes that drooped at the corners and seemed perpetually staring at times gone by. “What a terrible shame,” he said. “A shame.”

  “Was he killed?” Chris asked him bluntly. “I mean, you’re a homicide cop. Is that why you’re here? Burke was killed?”

  “No, as I told you, it’s routine,” the detective repeated. “You know, a man so important, we just couldn’t pass it. We couldn’t,” he repeated with a helpless look and a shrug. “At least one or two questions. Did he fall? Was he pushed?” As he asked, he was listing from side to side with his head and an uplifted hand, palm outward. Then he shrugged and whispered huskily, “Who knows?”

  “Was he robbed?”

  “No, not robbed, Miss MacNeil, never robbed; but then who needs a motive in times like these?” The detective’s hands were constantly in motion, like flabby gloves informed by the fingers of a bored puppeteer. “Why, today, for a murderer, a motive is an encumbrance, maybe even a deterrent.” He shook his head. “These drugs,” he bemoaned. “All these drugs.” He tapped at his chest with the tips of his fingers. “Believe me, I’m a father, and when I see what’s going on, it breaks my heart. It does. You’ve got children?”

  “Yes, one.”

  “Son or daughter?”

  “A daughter.”

  “God bless her.”

  “Look, come on into the study,” Chris told him as she turned to lead the way, intensely anxious to hear what it was he had to say about Dennings.

  “Miss MacNeil, could I trouble you for something?”

  Chris stopped and turned to face him with the dim and weary expectation that he wanted her autograph for his children. It was never for themselves. It was always for their children. “Yeah, sure,” she said amiably in an effort to mask her impatience.

  The detective gestured with a trace of a grimace. “My stomach,” he said. “Do you keep any Calso water, maybe? If it’s trouble, never mind.”

  “No, no trouble at all,” Chris answered with a faint, tight smile. “Grab a chair in the study.” Chris pointed, then turned and headed for the kitchen. “I think there’s a bottle in the fridge,” she said.

  “No, I’ll come to the kitchen,” the detective said, following with a gait that bordered on a waddle. “Yes, I hate to be a bother.”

  “It’s no bother.”

  “No, really, you’re busy, I’ll come. You’ve got children?” the detective asked as they walked. “No, that’s right,” he immediately corrected himself. “Yes, a daughter. You told me. That’s right. Just the one. And how old is she?”

  “She just turned twelve.”

  “Ah, then you don’t have to worry. No, not yet. Later on, though, watch out.” He was shaking his head. “When you see all the sickness day in and day out. Unbelievable! Incredible! Insane! You know, I looked at my wife just a couple of days ago—or maybe weeks, I forget—I said, Mary, the world—the entire world”—he had lifted his hands in a global gesture—“is having a massive nervous breakdown.”

  They had entered the kitchen, where Karl was cleaning and polishing the interior of an oven. He neither turned nor acknowledged their presence.

  “This is really so embarrassing,” the detective wheezed as Chris opened a refrigerator door; and yet his gaze was on Karl, brushing swiftly and questioningly over the back of the manservant’s head like a small, dark bird skimming low above a lake. “I meet a famous motion-picture star,” he continued, “and I ask for some Calso water. It’s a joke.”

  Chris had found the bottle and was looking for an opener.

  She said, “Ice?”

  “Oh, no, plain. Plain is fine.”

  Chris opened the bottle, found a glass, and poured bubbly Calso water into it.

  “You know that film you made called Angel?” the detective mentioned with a faint, fond look of reminiscence. “I saw that film six times,” he said.

  “If you were looking for the murderer, arrest the director.”

  “Oh, no, no, it was excellent—really—I loved it! Just one little—”

  “Come on, we can sit over here,” Chris interrupted. She was pointing to the windowed breakfast nook. It had a waxed pine table and seat cushions covered in a flower pattern.

  “Yes, of course,” the detective replied.

  They sat down, and Chris handed him the Calso water.

  “Oh, yes, thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it. You were saying?”

  “Oh, well, the film—it was lovely, really. So touching. But maybe just one little thing,” the detective ventured, “one tiny, almost minuscule flaw. And please believe me, in such matters I am only a layman. Okay? I’m just audience. What do I know? However, it seemed to me the musical score was getting in the way of certain scenes. It was too intrusive.” Chris tried not to fidget with impatience as the detective went on earnestly, caught up in the rising ardor of his argument. “It kept on reminding me that this was a movie. You know? Like so many of these fancy camera angles. So distracting. Incidentally, the score—the composer, did he steal it perhaps from Mendelssohn?”

  Chris had started drumming her fingertips lightly on the table but now abruptly she stopped. What kind of detective was this? she wondered; and why was he constantly glancing to K
arl?

  “We don’t call that stealing, we call it an homage,” said Chris, smiling faintly, “but I’m glad you liked the picture. Better drink that,” she added with a nod at the glass of Calso water. “It tends to get flat.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m so garrulous. Forgive me.”

  Lifting the glass as if in a toast, the portly detective drained its contents, his little finger arched up in the air demurely. “Ah, good, that’s good,” he exhaled. As he set down the glass his glance fell fondly on Regan’s sculpture of the bird. It was now the centerpiece of the table, its long beak floating mockingly above the salt and pepper shakers. “It’s so quaint,” he said smiling. “So cute.” He looked up at Chris. “And the artist?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Look, I hate to be—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. You’re very busy. Listen, one or two questions and we’re done. In fact, only one question, that’s all, and then I’ll be going.” He was glancing at his wristwatch as if he were anxious to get away to some important appointment. “Since poor Mr. Dennings,” he began, “had completed his filming in this area, we wondered if he might have been visiting someone on the night of the accident. Now other than yourself, of course, did he have any friends in this area?”

  “Oh, he was here that night,” Chris told him.

  “Oh, really?” The detective’s eyebrows sickled upward. “Near the time of the accident?” he asked.

  “When did it happen?”

  “At seven-oh-five P.M.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, that settles it, then.” The detective nodded, twisting in his chair as if preparatory to rising. “He was drunk, he was leaving, he fell down the steps. Yes, that settles it. Definitely. Listen, though, just for the sake of the record, can you tell me approximately what time he left the house?”

  With a tilt of her head to the side Chris appraised him with mild wonder. He was pawing at truth like a weary bachelor pinching vegetables and fruit at a market. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I didn’t see him.”

  The detective looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, he came and left while I was out. I was over at a doctor’s office in Rosslyn.”

  The detective nodded. “Ah, I see. Yes, of course. But then how do you know he was here?”

  “Oh, well, Sharon said—”

  “Sharon?” he interrupted.

  “Sharon Spencer. She’s my secretary.”

  “Oh.”

  “She was here when Burke dropped by. She—”

  “He came to see her?”

  “No, he came to see me.”

  “Yes, go on, please. Forgive me for interrupting.”

  “My daughter was sick and Sharon left him here while she went to pick up some prescriptions and by the time I got home, Burke was gone.”

  “And what time was that, please? You remember?”

  Chris shrugged and puckered her lips. “Maybe seven-fifteen or so; seven-thirty.”

  “And what time had you left the house?”

  “Six-fifteenish.”

  “And what time had Miss Spencer left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Between the time Miss Spencer left and the time you returned, who was here in the house with Mr. Dennings besides your daughter?”

  “No one.”

  “No one? He left alone a sick child?”

  Chris nodded, her expression blank.

  “No servants?”

  “No, Willie and Karl were—”

  “Who are they?”

  Chris abruptly felt the earth shifting under her feet as the nuzzling interview, she realized, was suddenly a steely interrogation. “Well, Karl’s right there.” Chris motioned with her head, her glance fixed dully on the manservant’s back as he continued to clean and polish the oven. “And Willie’s his wife,” Chris said. “They’re my housekeepers.” Polishing. Polishing. Why? The oven had been thoroughly cleaned and polished the night before. “They’d taken the afternoon off,” Chris continued, “and when I got home they weren’t back yet. But then Willie…” Chris paused, her eyes still fixed on Karl’s back.

  “Willie what?” the detective prodded.

  Chris turned to him and shrugged. “Oh, well, nothing” she said. She reached for a cigarette. Kinderman lit it. “So then only your daughter would know,” he asked, “when Burke Dennings left the house?”

  “It was really an accident?”

  “Oh, of course. It’s routine, Miss MacNeil. Absolutely. Your friend Dennings wasn’t robbed and so what would be the motive?”

  “Burke could tick people off,” Chris said somberly. “Maybe someone at the top of the steps just hauled off and whacked him.”

  “It’s got a name, this kind of bird? I can’t think of it. Something.” The detective was fingering Regan’s sculpture. Noticing Chris’s steady stare, he took away his hand, looking vaguely embarrassed. “Forgive me, you’re busy. Well, a minute and we’re done. Now your daughter—she would know when Mr. Dennings left?”

  “No, she wouldn’t. She was heavily sedated.”

  “Ah, a shame, such a shame.” The detective’s eyelids drooped with concern. “It’s serious?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

  “May I ask…?” He had raised his hand in a delicate gesture.

  “We still don’t know.”

  “Watch out for drafts,” the detective said solemnly. “A draft in the winter when a house is hot is a magic carpet for bacteria. My mother used to say that. Maybe it’s folk myth. Maybe. I don’t know. But plainly speaking, to me a myth is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: it’s glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn’t otherwise swallow, like maybe the lima beans they’re constantly giving you whenever you go out and order hamburger steak.”

  Chris felt herself loosening up. The odd, homey digression had relaxed her. The fuddled-looking, harmless St. Bernard dog had returned.

  “That’s hers, Miss MacNeil? Your daughter’s bedroom?” The detective was pointing up at the ceiling. “The one with that big bay window looking out on those steps?”

  Chris nodded. “Yeah, that’s Regan’s.”

  “Keep the window closed and she’ll get better.”

  Tense the moment before, Chris now had to struggle to keep from laughing. “Yes, I will,” she said; “in fact, it’s always closed and shuttered.”

  “Yes, ‘an ounce of prevention,’ ” the detective quoted sententiously. He was dipping a pudgy hand into the inside pocket of his coat when his gaze fell on Chris’s fingertips lightly drumming on the table again. “Ah, yes, you’re busy,” he said. “Well, we’re finished. Just a note for the record—routine—we’re all done.” From the pocket of his coat he’d extracted a crumpled mimeographed program of a high-school production of Cyrano de Bergerac and now he was groping in an outer pocket, retrieving a short yellow stub of a number 2 pencil whose point had the look of having been sharpened with either a knife or the blade of a pair of scissors; then, pressing the play program flat on the table and tamping out the wrinkles, he held the pencil stub over it and wheezed, “Just a name or two, nothing more. Now that’s Spencer with a c?”

  “Yes, a c.”

  “A c,” the detective repeated, writing the name in a margin of the program. “And the housekeepers? Joseph and Willie…?”

  “No, it’s Karl and Willie Engstrom.”

  “Karl. Yes, that’s right; Karl Engstrom.” He scribbled the names in a dark, thick script. “Now the times I remember,” he breathed out huskily while rotating the program in search of white space. “Oh, no, wait! I forgot! Yes, the housekeepers. You said they got home at what time?”

  “I didn’t say. Karl, what time did you get in last night?” Chris called out to him. The Swiss turned his head, inscrutable. “I am home at exactly nine-thirty.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’d forgotten your key.” She turned her ga
ze back to the detective. “I remember I looked at the clock in the kitchen when I heard him ring the doorbell.”

  “You saw a good film?” the detective asked Karl. “I never go by reviews,” he said to Chris in a quiet aside. “It’s what the people think, the audience.”

  “Paul Scofield in Lear,” Karl informed the detective.

  “Ah, I saw that! It was excellent!”

  “I see it at Gemini Theater,” Karl continued. “The six-o’clock showing. Then immediately after I take bus from in front of the theater and—”

  “Please, that’s really not necessary,” the detective protested as he held up a hand, palm outward. “No, no, please!”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I get off at Wisconsin Avenue and M Street. Nine-twenty, I think. And then I walk to house.”

  “Look, you didn’t have to tell me,” the detective told him, “but anyway, thank you, it was very considerate. By the way, you liked the film?”

  “It was good.”

  “Yes, I thought so too. Exceptional. Well, now…” He turned back to Chris and to scribbling on the program. “I’ve wasted your time, but I have a job. That’s the sad yin and yang of it. The whole deal. Oh, well a moment and we’re finished,” he said reassuringly, then “Tragic … tragic…,” he added as he jotted down fragments in margins. “Such a talent, Burke Dennings. And a man who knew people, I’m sure: how to handle them. With so many who could make him look good or maybe make him look bad—like the cameraman, the sound man, the composer, not to mention, forgive me, the actors. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me nowadays a director of importance has also to be almost a psychologist with the cast. Am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re not because we’re all insecure.”

  “Even you?”

  “Mostly me. But Burke was good at that, at keeping up your morale.” Chris shrugged diffidently. “But then of course he had one sweetheart of a temper.”

  The detective repositioned the program. “Ah, well, maybe so with the big shots. People his size.” Once again he was scribbling. “But the key is the little people, the people who handle the minor details that if they didn’t handle right would be major details. Don’t you think?”