"Bosh!" said Lavinia Nebbs.
"It'll be you alone on the path, listening to your shoes, not me. You all alone on the way back to your house. Lavinia, don't you get lonely living in that house?"
"Old maids love to live alone." Lavinia pointed at the hot shadowy path leading down into the dark. "Let's take the short cut."
"I'm afraid!"
"It's early. Lonely One won't be out till late." Lavinia took the other's arm and led her down and down the crooked path into the cricket warmth and frog sound and mosquito-delicate silence. They brushed through summer-scorched grass, burs prickling at their bare ankles.
"Let's run!" gasped Francine.
"No!"
They turned a curve in the path--and there it was.
In the singing deep night, in the shade of warm trees, as if she had laid herself out to enjoy the soft stars and the easy wind, her hands at either side of her like the oars of a delicate craft, lay Elizabeth Ramsell!
Francine screamed.
"Don't scream!" Lavinia put out her hands to hold onto Francine, who was whimpering and choking. "Don't! Don't!"
The woman lay as if she had floated there, her face moonlit, her eyes wide and like flint, her tongue sticking from her mouth.
"She's dead!" said Francine. "Oh, she's dead, dead! She's dead!"
Lavinia stood in the middle of a thousand warm shadows with the crickets screaming and the frogs loud.
"We'd better get the police," she said at last.
"Hold me, Lavinia, hold me, I'm cold, oh, I've never been so cold in all my life!"
Lavinia held Francine and the policemen were brushing through the crackling grass, flashlights ducked about, voices mingled, and the night grew toward eight-thirty.
"It's like December. I need a sweater," said Francine, eyes shut, against Lavinia.
The policeman said, "I guess you can go now, ladies. You might drop by the station tomorrow for a little more questioning."
Lavinia and Francine walked away from the police and the sheet over the delicate thing upon the ravine grass.
Lavinia felt her heart going loudly in her and she was cold, too, with a February cold; there were bits of sudden snow all over her flesh, and the moon washed her brittle fingers whiter, and she remembered doing all the talking while Francine just sobbed against her.
A voice called from far off, "You want an escort, ladies?"
"No, we'll make it," said Lavinia to nobody, and they walked on. They walked through the nuzzling, whispering ravine, the ravine of whispers and clicks, the little world of investigation growing small behind them with its lights and voices.
"I've never seen a dead person before," said Francine.
Lavinia examined her watch as if it was a thousand miles away on an arm and wrist grown impossibly distant. "It's only eight-thirty. We'll pick up Helen and get on to the show."
"The show!" Francine jerked.
"It's what we need. We've got to forget this. It's not good to remember. If we went home now we'd remember. We'll go to the show as if nothing happened."
"Lavinia, you don't mean it!"
"I never meant anything more in my life. We need to laugh now and forget."
"But Elizabeth's back there--your friend, my friend--"
"We can't help her; we can only help ourselves. Come on."
They started up the ravine side, on the stony path, in the dark. And suddenly there, barring their way, standing very still in one spot, not seeing them, but looking on down at the moving lights and the body and listening to the official voices, was Douglas Spaulding.
He stood there, white as a mushroom, with his hands at his sides, staring down into the ravine.
"Get home!" cried Francine.
He did not hear.
"You!" shrieked Francine. "Get home, get out of this place, you hear? Get home, get home, get home!"
Douglas jerked his head, stared at them as if they were not there. His mouth moved. He gave a bleating sound. Then, silently, he whirled about and ran. He ran silently up the distant hills into the warm darkness.
Francine sobbed and cried again and, doing this, walked on with Lavinia Nebbs.
"There you are! I thought you ladies'd never come!" Helen Greer stood tapping her foot atop her porch steps. "You're only an hour late, that's all. What happened?"
"We--" started Francine.
Lavinia clutched her arm tight. "There was a commotion. Somebody found Elizabeth Ramsell in the ravine."
"Dead? Was she--dead?"
Lavinia nodded. Helen gasped and put her hand to her throat. "Who found her?"
Lavinia held Francine's wrist firmly. "We don't know."
The three young women stood in the summer night looking at each other. "I've got a notion to go in the house and lock the doors," said Helen at last.
But finally she went to get a sweater, for though it was still warm, she, too, complained of the sudden winter night. While she was gone Francine whispered frantically, "Why didn't you tell her?"
"Why upset her?" said Lavinia. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow's plenty of time."
The three women moved along the street under the black trees, past suddenly locked houses. How soon the news had spread outward from the ravine, from house to house, porch to porch, telephone to telephone. Now, passing, the three women felt eyes looking out at them from curtained windows as locks rattled into place. How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquito-lotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors. Strange the hot rooms with the sweating people pressed tightly back into them behind the bronze knobs and knockers. Baseball bats and balls lay upon the unfootprinted lawns. A half-drawn, white-chalk game of hopscotch lay on the broiled, steamed sidewalk. It was as if someone had predicted freezing weather a moment ago.
"We're crazy being out on a night like this," said Helen.
"Lonely One won't kill three ladies," said Lavinia. "There's safety in numbers. And besides, it's too soon. The killings always come a month separated."
A shadow fell across their terrified faces. A figure loomed behind a tree. As if someone had struck an organ a terrible blow with his fist, the three women gave off a scream, in three different shrill notes.
"Got you!" roared a voice. The man plunged at them. He came into the light, laughing. He leaned against a tree, pointing at the ladies weakly, laughing again.
"Hey! I'm the Lonely One!" said Frank Dillon.
"Frank Dillon!"
"Frank!"
"Frank," said Lavinia, "if you ever do a childish thing like that again, may someone riddle you with bullets!"
"What a thing to do!"
Francine began to cry hysterically.
Frank Dillon stopped smiling. "Say, I'm sorry."
"Go away!" said Lavinia. "Haven't you heard about Elizabeth Ramsell--found dead in the ravine? You running around scaring women! Don't speak to us again!"
"Aw, now--"
They moved. He moved to follow.
"Stay right there, Mr. Lonely One, and scare yourself. Go take a look at Elizabeth Ramsell's face and see if it's funny. Good night!" Lavinia took the other two on along the street of trees and stars, Francine holding a kerchief to her face.
"Francine, it was only a joke." Helen turned to Lavinia. "Why's she crying so hard?"
"We'll tell you when we get downtown. We're going to the show no matter what! Enough's enough. Come on now, get your money ready, we're almost there!"
The drugstore was a small pool of sluggish air which the great wooden fans stirred in tides of arnica and tonic and soda-smell out onto the brick streets.
"I need a nickel's worth of green peppermint chews," said Lavinia to the druggist. His face was set and pale, like all the faces they had seen on the half-empty streets. "For eating in the show," said Lavinia as the druggist weighed out a
nickel's worth of the green candy with a silver shovel.
"You sure look pretty tonight, ladies. You looked cool this afternoon, Miss Lavinia, when you was in for a chocolate soda. So cool and nice that someone asked after you."
"Oh? "
"Man sitting at the counter--watched you walk out. Said to me, 'Say, who's that?' Why, that's Lavinia Nebbs, prettiest maiden lady in town, I said. 'She's beautiful,' he said. 'Where does she live?'" Here the druggist paused uncomfortably.
"You didn't!" said Francine. "You didn't give him her address, I hope? You didn't!"
"I guess I didn't think. I said, 'Oh, over on Park Street, you know, near the ravine.' A casual remark. But now, tonight, them finding the body, I heard a minute ago, I thought, My God, what've I done!" He handed over the package, much too full.
"You fool!" cried Francine, and tears were in her eyes.
"I'm sorry. Course, maybe it was nothing."
Lavinia stood with the three people looking at her, staring at her. She felt nothing. Except, perhaps, the slightest prickle of excitement in her throat. She held out her money automatically.
"There's no charge on those peppermints," said the druggist, turning to shuffle some papers.
"Well, I know what I'm going to do right now!" Helen stalked out of the drugshop. "I'm calling a taxi to take us all home. I'll be no part of a hunting party for you, Lavinia. That man was up to no good. Asking about you. You want to be dead in the ravine next?"
"It was just a man," said Lavinia, turning in a slow circle to look at the town.
"So is Frank Dillon a man, but maybe he's the Lonely One."
Francine hadn't come out with them, they noticed, and turning, they found her arriving. "I made him give me a description--the druggist. I made him tell what the man looked like. A stranger," she said, "in a dark suit. Sort of pale and thin."
"We're all overwrought," said Lavinia. "I simply won't take a taxi if you get one. If I'm the next victim, let me be the next. There's all too little excitement in life, especially for a maiden lady thirty-three years old, so don't you mind if I enjoy it. Anyway it's silly; I'm not beautiful."
"Oh, but you are, Lavinia; you're the loveliest lady in town, now that Elizabeth is--" Francine stopped. "You keep men off at a distance. If you'd only relax, you'd been married years ago!"
"Stop sniveling, Francine! Here's the theater box office, I'm paying forty-one cents to see Charlie Chaplin. If you two want a taxi, go on. I'll sit alone and go home alone."
"Lavinia, you're crazy; we can't let you do that--"
They entered the theater.
The first showing was over, intermission was on, and the dim auditorium was sparsely populated. The three ladies sat halfway down front, in the smell of ancient brass polish, and watched the manager step through the worn red velvet curtains to make an announcement.
"The police have asked us to close early tonight so everyone can be out at a decent hour. Therefore we are cutting our short subjects and running our feature again immediately. The show will be over at eleven. Everyone is advised to go straight home. Don't linger on the streets."
"That means us, Lavinia!" whispered Francine.
The lights went out. The screen leaped to life.
"Lavinia," whispered Helen.
"What?"
"As we came in, a man in a dark suit, across the street, crossed over. He just walked down the aisle and is sitting in the row behind us."
"Oh, Helen!"
"Right behind us?"
One by one the three women turned to look.
They saw a white face there, flickering with unholy light from the silver screen. It seemed to be all men's faces hovering there in the dark.
"I'm going to get the manager!" Helen was gone up the aisle. "Stop the film! Lights!"
"Helen, come back!" cried Lavinia, rising.
They tapped their empty soda glasses down, each with a vanilla mustache on their upper lip, which they found with their tongues, laughing.
"You see how silly?" said Lavinia. "All that riot for nothing. How embarrassing."
"I'm sorry," said Helen faintly.
The clock said eleven-thirty now. They had come out of the dark theater, away from the fluttering rush of men and women hurrying everywhere, nowhere, on the street while laughing at Helen. Helen was trying to laugh at herself.
"Helen, when you ran up that aisle crying, 'Lights!' I thought I'd die! That poor man!"
"The theater manager's brother from Racine!"
"I apologized," said Helen, looking up at the great fan still whirling, whirling the warm late night air, stirring, restirring the smells of vanilla, raspberry, peppermint and Lysol.
"We shouldn't have stopped for these sodas. The police warned--"
"Oh, bosh the police," laughed Lavinia. "I'm not afraid of anything. The Lonely One is a million miles away now. He won't be back for weeks and the police'll get him then, just wait. Wasn't the film wonderful?"
"Closing up, ladies." The druggist switched off the lights in the cool white-tiled silence.
Outside, the streets were swept clean and empty of cars or trucks or people. Bright lights still burned in the small store windows where the warm wax dummies lifted pink wax hands fired with blue-white diamond rings, or flourished orange wax legs to reveal hosiery. The hot blue-glass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.
"Do you suppose if we screamed they'd do anything?"
"Who?"
"The dummies, the window people."
"Oh, Francine."
"Well ..."
There were a thousand people in the windows, stiff and silent, and three people on the street, the echoes following like gunshots from store fronts across the way when they tapped their heels on the baked pavement.
A red neon sign flickered dimly, buzzed like a dying insect, as they passed.
Baked and white, the long avenues lay ahead. Blowing and tall in a wind that touched only their leafy summits, the trees stood on either side of the three small women. Seen from the courthouse peak, they appeared like three thistles far away.
"First, we'll walk you home, Francine."
"No, I'll walk you home."
"Don't be silly. You live way out at Electric Park. If you walked me home you'd have to come back across the ravine alone, yourself. And if so much as a leaf fell on you, you'd drop dead."
Francine said, "I can stay the night at your house. You're the pretty one!"
And so they walked, they drifted like three prim clothes forms over a moonlit sea of lawn and concrete, Lavinia watching the black trees flit by each side of her, listening to the voices of her friends murmuring, trying to laugh; and the night seemed to quicken, they seemed to run while walking slowly, everything seemed fast and the color of hot snow.
"Let's sing," said Lavinia.
They sang, "Shine On, Shine On, Harvest Moon ..."
They sang sweetly and quietly, arm in arm, not looking back. They felt the hot sidewalk cooling underfoot, moving, moving.
"Listen!" said Lavinia.
They listened to the summer night. The summer-night crickets and the far-off tone of the courthouse clock making it eleven forty-five.
"Listen!"
Lavinia listened. A porch swing creaked in the dark and there was Mr. Terle, not saying anything to anybody, alone on his swing, having a last cigar. They saw the pink ash swinging gently to and fro.
Now the lights were going, going, gone. The little house lights and big house lights and yellow lights and green hurricane lights, the candles and oil lamps and porch lights, and everything felt locked up in brass and iron and steel, everything, thought Lavinia, is boxed and locked and wrapped and shaded. She imagined the people in their moonlit beds. And their breathing in the summer-night rooms, safe and together. And here we are, thought Lavinia, our footsteps on along the baked summer evening sidewalk. And above us the lonel
y street lights shining down, making a drunken shadow.
"Here's your house, Francine. Good night."
"Lavinia, Helen, stay here tonight. It's late, almost midnight now. You can sleep in the parlor. I'll make hot chocolate--it'll be such fun!" Francine was holding them both now, close to her.
"No, thanks," said Lavinia.
And Francine began to cry.
"Oh, not again, Francine," said Lavinia.
"I don't want you dead," sobbed Francine, the tears running straight down her cheeks. "You're so fine and nice, I want you alive. Please, oh, please!"
"Francine, I didn't know how much this has done to you. I promise I'll phone when I get home."
"Oh, will you?"
"And tell you I'm safe, yes. And tomorrow we'll have a picnic lunch at Electric Park. With ham sandwiches I'll make myself, how's that? You'll see, I'll live forever!"
"You'll phone, then?"
"I promised, didn't I? "
"Good night, good night!" Rushing upstairs, Francine whisked behind a door, which slammed to be snap-bolted tight on the instant.
"Now," said Lavinia to Helen, "I'll walk you home."
The courthouse clock struck the hour. The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded.
"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve," counted Lavinia, with Helen on her arm.
"Don't you feel funny?" asked Helen.
"How do you mean?"
"When you think of us being out here on the sidewalks, under the trees, and all those people safe behind locked doors, lying in their beds. We're practically the only walking people out in the open in a thousand miles, I bet."
The sound of the deep warm dark ravine came near.
In a minute they stood before Helen's house, looking at each other for a long time. The wind blew the odor of cut grass between them. The moon was sinking in a sky that was beginning to cloud. "I don't suppose it's any use asking you to stay, Lavinia?"
"I'll be going on."
"Sometimes--"
"Sometimes what?"
"Sometimes I think people want to die. You've acted odd all evening."
"I'm just not afraid," said Lavinia. "And I'm curious, I suppose. And I'm using my head. Logically, the Lonely One can't be around. The police and all."
"The police are home with their covers up over their ears."
"Let's just say I'm enjoying myself, precariously, but safely. If there was any real chance of anything happening to me, I'd stay here with you, you can be sure of that."