The Iron Gates

Chapter 6

She felt safe again. Behind her there was an iron gate and a hundred doors that locked with a big key. One of the nurses kept the key in the palm of her hand all the time.

There were no steps, only inclines that you walked up with someone beside you talking pleasantly and impersonally, and then finally the last door, the last clink of a key and the enemy was shut out. The room had windows but no one could get in through them. On both sides there was steel mesh.

She went immediately to the windows and felt the mesh, knowing that the nurse was watching her and would report it to the superintendent. But she had to know the room was safe and the feel of the mesh under her fingers was reassuring.

“It’s strong, isn’t it?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” the nurse said cheerfully. She was young, with blonde curls and a pretty smile. She looked trim and efficient, but her eyes seemed to be laughing as though they lived a secret giddy life of their own. “I’m Miss Scott.”

“Miss, Scott,” Lucille repeated.

“We’ll just unpack your clothes now and put them away, Mrs. — Morrow.”

“Mrs. Morrow.”

“You’ll be sharing this room with Miss Cora Green. Miss Green is down in the library at the moment. I’m sure you’ll like her very much. We all do.”

She began to unpack Lucille’s clothes, keeping the key flat in the palm of her left hand. She did not turn her back to Lucille or take her eyes off her, but her vigilance was unobtrusive. She talked pleasantly and steadily. When Lucille finally noticed how closely she was being watched she did not resent it. Miss Scott was so smooth. She gave the impression that she was being merely careful, not suspicious, cautious but not in the least mistrustful.

“What a pretty blue dress,” Miss Scott said. “Almost matches your eyes, doesn’t it? I think we’ll save that one for the movie night.”

“I didn’t know I was to share a room.”

“We find it’s better to have two people in a room. It’s not so lonely. And you’ll love Miss Green. She makes us all laugh.”

“I wanted to be by myself.”

“Of course you may feel like that at first. Would you mind handing me another hanger, Mrs. Morrow?” Lucille moved automatically. The familiar act of hanging up one of her own dresses made her feel more at home. She picked up another hanger.

Miss Scott observed her. “Perhaps you’d like to finish up by yourself, Mrs. Morrow? Then you’ll know where everything is.”

“All right.”

“We let everyone help herself as much as possible. We like to feel that each suite is a little community...”

“I don’t want to see the others.” The others, the crazy ones. “I want to be by myself.”

“You’ll feel a little strange at first, but we find our system is the best.”

It was Lucille’s first contact with the dominant “we.” We, the nurses: we, the doctors, the brass keys, the steel mesh: we, the iron gate, the fence: we, the people, society: we, the world.

“There are four rooms to each suite,” Miss Scott said.

“Two to a room. We try to put people of similar background together.”

From somewhere outside the door a woman began to moan, “Give me more food and more clotherings.” The voice was weak but distinct.

“That’s Mrs. Hammond,” Miss Scott said briskly. “Don’t pay any attention to her, she has plenty to eat and to wear.”

“Give me more food and more clotherings.”

“That’s all she ever says,” Miss Scott added.

“Give me...”

Lucille bent over the suitcase, as if her body had flowed suddenly out of her dress and the dress itself was ready to fold itself up in the suitcase and go home.

“Do you feel ill, Mrs. Morrow?”

There was a blur in front of her eyes and beyond the blur words dangled and danced, and beyond the thickness that clothed her ears voices spoke, out of turn, out of time.

Give me more food. People of similar background. Mrs. Morrow, here is your husband. More clotherings. What a pretty blue dress. Do you feel ill, Mrs. Morrow? Do you feel ill? Ill? Ill?

“No,” she said.

“Just a little upset, eh?” Miss Scott said. “We expect that. Perhaps you’d like me to leave you alone for a minute or two until you get used to the room. I’ll go down to the library and get Miss Green. Here, you’ll find this blue chair very comfortable.”

“Are you going to lock my door? I want my door locked.”

“We never lock individual doors during the day.”

“I want my door...”

“Tonight, when you’re all tucked in, we’ll lock your door.”

Miss Scott reached the door without exactly walking backward but without turning her back to Lucille. She hooked the door open and stepped into the hall.

Mrs. Hammond was standing just outside, her arms folded across her flat chest. She was a handsome young woman with thick black hair and somber brown eyes, but her skin was yellowish and stretched taut over the bones of her face. She wore a black skirt and a heavy red sweater.

“Give me more food and more clotherings.”

“A little quieter, please, Mrs. Hammond,” Miss Scot| said. “We have a new guest today. Tell Miss Parsons to give you an apple.”

Miss Parsons herself appeared in the corridor. She was younger than Miss Scott and less sure of herself.

“Well, she’s already had two apples and a banana, Miss Scott.”

“Goodness,” Miss Scott said. “You don’t want to get a pain in your tummy, Mrs. Hammond.”

“Give me more food...”

“I could give her a milk shake,” Miss Parsons said nervously.

“There,” Miss Scott said cheerfully, “if you’re good and behave yourself Miss Parsons will give you a milk shake. You go back to your room, Mrs. Hammond. Rest period isn’t over yet.”

Majestically, Mrs. Hammond went down the corridor and disappeared into her room.

“Where does she put it?” Miss Parsons said in a worn voice. “Where does she put it?”

“Go down for Miss Cora. She’s in the library.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t think Mrs. Morrow is going to be any trouble at all, except that Dr. Goodrich wants everything she says put on her chart.”

Miss Parsons looked desperate. “Everything?”

“It’s all right. She doesn’t say much. Here’s the key to get Miss Cora.”

Miss Scott returned to her desk. It was in the center of the short corridor and from it she had a view of the open door of each room and the locked door that led to the incline.

She looked at her watch. Two-forty. That left her twenty minutes to introduce Miss Cora to her new roommate, get the ward ready for their walk and persuade Mrs. Morrow to leave her room, peacefully, and see Dr. Goodrich in his office.

She sighed, but it wasn’t from weariness. It was the contented sigh of someone who has a hundred things to do and knows she can do them well.

The incline door opened and Miss Parsons came in with Miss Cora Green.

Miss Green was a small sprightly woman in her sixties. Her black silk dress was immaculately clean and pressed and her white hair was combed in hundreds of tiny pin-curls with a pink velvet bow perched on top of them. She moved quickly and delicately as a bird.

“Is she here?” Miss Cora said.

“Is who here?” Miss Scott said, quite severely. She had to be severe with Miss Cora in order not to laugh. Miss Cora was so sharp, she knew almost as much about the patients as Dr. Goodrich, and she was continually trying to wheedle more information from the nurses.

“You always send me to the library when I’m getting someone new in my room,” Miss Cora said. “What’s the matter with her? What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Morrow,” Miss Scott said. “Come along and make a good impression.”

“Well, the least you could do is to tell me what’s the matter with her.”

Miss Parsons and Miss Scott exchanged faint smiles.

“I don’t know,” Miss Scott said.

“Well, the least you could do is tell me how bad she is. Is she as bad as Mrs. Hammond?”

“No.”

“Thank heaven! I find Mrs. Hammond a dull woman. If I were the superintendent I’d feed her and feed her and feed her, just to see what happens. I wonder how much she could really eat.”

Miss Scott, who had wondered the same thing herself, looked pleasantly blank. She took Miss Cora’s arm and they went together into the room.

“Here is Miss Green, Mrs. Morrow.”

“Miss Green?” Lucille looked up. The fear that had sprung into her eyes slid away slowly. “Miss Green?” A tiny old woman, no threat, no danger. “How do you do, Miss Green?”

“How do you do, Mrs. Morrow?” Miss Cora said. “What perfectly beautiful hair you have!” She glanced back at Miss Scott with a sly smile that said: that’s the kind of thing you say but you’re not fooling me.

Miss Scott pretended not to notice. “It is lovely, isn’t it? Such a pretty color. I’m sure you and Miss Green will get along splendidly, Mrs. Morrow. I’ll be right out in the corridor if you want me for anything. You remember my name?”

“Miss Scott,” Lucille said.

“That’s fine,” Miss Scott said, sounding very very pleased. She went out.

“She says a lot of silly things,” Miss Cora said. “They’re trained to say silly things.”

“Are they?” Lucille said.

“They underestimate our intelligence, especially mine.” She studied Lucille for a minute and added pensively, “Perhaps yours too. Is there anything special the matter with you?”

“I don’t know.” She had felt cold and detached before, but now she had a sudden wild desire to talk, to explain herself to Miss Green: there is nothing the matter with me. I am afraid, but it is a real fear, I didn’t imagine it. I am afraid I am going to be killed. I am going to be killed by one of them. Andrew, Polly, Martin, Edith, Giles, one of them.

She whispered, “I came here to be safe.”

“Are people after you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, dear, they all say that,” Miss Cora said, disappointed. “You mustn’t tell that to Dr. Goodrich, you’ll simply never get out of here. They have such suspicious minds around this place.”

Miss Scott stuck her head in the door. “Get your coat on, Cora. Time for a walk.”

“I am not going for a walk today,” Miss Cora stated firmly.

“Come on, that’s a good girl.”

“No, my neuritis is bothering me this afternoon.”

“You haven’t been outside for a week,” Miss Scott said. While it was impossible for Miss Cora to prove she had neuritis it was equally impossible for anyone to disprove it. Miss Cora’s neuritis was hard to pin down. It skipped agilely from limb to limb, it settled in the legs if a walk was necessary, in the arms if Miss Cora didn’t feel like doing occupational therapy, and in the head under any provocation.

“There is also,” Miss Cora pointed out, “my weak heart.”

“Nonsense,” Miss Scott said brusquely. “Gentle exercise is good for heart patients.”

“Not for me.”

Miss Scott retreated without further argument.

“The walks are very boring,” Miss Cora explained to Lucille. “They do very naive things like gather leaves. The level of sophistication in this place is very low.” Miss Scott appeared again, a navy-blue cape flung over her uniform. “Good-bye, Cora. You’ll be sorry you didn’t come. We’re going to build a lovely snow man.”

“Isn’t she absurd?” Miss Cora cried, shaking her head. “A lovely snow man. Really!”

Mrs. Hammond strode past the door muffled in an immense fur coat, with a woollen scarf tied around her head. Behind her came two stout middle-aged women who looked and were dressed exactly alike. They walked arm in arm, and in step.

“The Filsinger twins,” Miss Cora said, without bothering to lower her voice. “I can’t tell which is which any more. A while ago you could tell which was Mary because she was crazier. Now Betty’s as bad as she is.” Miss Cora waved her hand at them and the twins disappeared, scowling.

“Mary was in here first,” Miss Cora explained. “Betty used to come to see her, and was all right till a few months ago when she began to copy Mary’s symptoms. Now they’re both here. Mary looks after Betty, she even gives her baths.” Miss Cora sighed. “It’s all very Freudian. I have a sister myself but the mere thought of giving her a bath is abhorrent to me. She’s quite stout, and rather hairy.”

She paused, looking down at her own white delicate hands. Her movements were a little too brisk and her talking a little too fast for a woman of her age. But Lucille felt that here, of all the people she had known, was one who was entirely sane.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Cora said, “and of course you’re quite right. I am far too sensible to cope with a nonsensical world. I’d rather stay here.” She laughed. “I in my small corner and you in yours.” Somewhere in the building a gong began to ring. In a sudden panic Lucille started out of the chair but even before she was on her feet the gong had stopped again.

“That’s Mary Filsinger,” Cora said wryly. “Every time she goes out for a walk she runs to the fence and touches it to see if the escape alarm is still working. She never misses.”

“Why?” Lucille said.

“Why? No one ever asks why at Penwood, it’s too futile. Concentrate, instead, on the beautiful consistency and order of things — Mary Filsinger and the fence, Mrs. Hammond and her solitary sentence. There’s a pattern of divine illogic about it, and the pattern doesn’t change. It’s what I miss in the real world, some kind of pattern that doesn’t change.”

“The fence,” Lucille said. “If someone tried to get in here — the alarm would ring?”

“To get in?” Cora’s voice was sharp with disappointment. She had wanted to go on talking about patterns. She had felt that she had at last acquired a roommate capable of appreciating her, a woman, like herself, who could observe life but was utterly bewildered in the living of it. “Who on earth wants to get into Penwood? The more common desire is to get out.”

“I want to stay here,” Lucille whispered.

“Hush.” Cora jerked her head around toward the open door. “Miss Scott will be coming back in a minute. Don’t let her hear you. Why do you want to stay here?”

“I don’t know... I’m... afraid...” She felt the words pressing on her throat like bubbles ready to break. If I told someone, I could get help, someone might help me... Help me, Cora...

Then she saw Cora’s eyes, bright with a wild unreasonable excitement. She shrank back in the chair, pressing her fists against her breasts.

“Don’t say anything,” Cora said. “If you want to stay here don’t tell Dr. Goodrich anything. Don’t answer him at all, not a word. Even one word might give you away.”

“Give me — away?”

“You don’t belong here. But if you want to stay that’s your business. Don’t tell Dr. Goodrich anything.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Morrow.”

(Don’t answer him at all.)

“I hope you’re settled comfortably in your room. Sit down here, please. You may go, Miss Scott.”

(Silence. Eyes. Surely he had more than two eyes?)

“Please sit down, Mrs. Morrow.”

(Should I sit down? Would that be giving myself away?)

“That’s better, that’s fine. Perhaps you’d like a cigarette. I’m sorry we can’t allow smoking in the rooms, you can understand why.”

(Of course. We’re children, you can’t trust us with fire.)

“Can’t you?”

(What is he holding out to me? A cigarette? No, a pen. Why a pen?)

“I have a few routine questions to ask you. If you’ll take the pen and sign your name right here... What is your full name, please?... What date is this anyway?”

(December 9th, but I won’t tell you, you can’t catch me.)

“Your full name?”

(Can’t catch me.)

“What year were you born? Do you know where you are? Can you see this? Can you hear this? What color is your dress?”

The questions continued. Lucille said nothing. Dr. Goodrich was entirely unperturbed at her silence. He seemed intent on what he was writing and barely looked at her any more.

She felt secure in her silence, and suddenly triumphant. It was easy, after all, it was the easiest thing in the world to fool him. Almost boldly she glanced across the desk to see what he was writing. She saw with a shock that he wasn’t writing anything; he was drawing pictures, and he’d been waiting for her to find it out, deliberately.

In that instant he looked up and their eyes met. His were kindly but a little cynical. You’re not putting anything over on me, they said.

“All right, Mrs. Morrow,” he said pleasantly. “We don’t want to overdo things the first day. Miss Scott will show you back to your room.”

Through a haze she saw Miss Scott gliding across the room toward her. She put out her hands, blindly, to clutch at something safe.

Miss Scott caught her as she fell.

“She’s fainted,” Miss Scott said in a surprised voice.

“Put her on the couch and get a stretcher. Don’t send her to the dining room tonight for dinner unless she asks to go. And send Miss Green down here, please.”

Fifteen minutes later Cora arrived, flanked by a blushing Miss Parsons.

“Why on earth you have to have her bring me is more than I can say.” Cora said. “I know my way around this place better than she does. And it isn’t as if I’d try to escape.”

Miss Parsons made a hurried exit. Cora bounced across the room toward Dr. Goodrich.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Cora,” Goodrich said with a faint smile.

Cora sat down. She was breathing heavily and her lips had a bluish tinge that Goodrich noted with concern.

“How do you feel, Cora?”

“Fine.”

“You should learn to move more slowly.”

“I’ve never been cautious,” Cora said with a toss of her head. “It’s too late to learn now.”

“Tomorrow’s visitors’ day. Your sister is coming. I thought it would be a good idea for you to be all packed ready to go home with her.”

She stared at him. “Did you tell Janet?”

“She suggested it herself. You haven’t been home for quite a while.”

“I don’t want to go. I’m too old to be shunted back and forth like this all the time.”

“You may come back whenever you feel like it. You’re much better than you were.”

“You know that’s a lie, doctor,” Cora said. “Why do you want me to go home? Because I’m not going to last much longer, is that it?”

“Nonsense. Your sister thought you might like to come. It’s up to you. If you’d rather stay here, well, you know we like to have you.”

It was true. Miss Green was the favorite of the hospital. It was difficult to imagine this bright cheerful little woman getting wildly drunk whenever the opportunity presented itself. On these occasions her moral barriers were all swept away. Twice she had been arrested for stealing, and several times for disorderly conduct. Usually she remembered nothing of what she had done. After the second offense, her sister Janet had sent her to Penwood and from here she made periodic visits home. But they were not successful. Under the vigilant and worried eye of her sister, Cora felt far more irresponsible and restless than she did at Penwood. After a few days of this constant watching Cora felt impelled to escape from it. She had the subtle cunning of the superior drunkard, and Janet, an unimaginative and successful business woman, was no match for her. Cora always managed to get out, to get money, to get drunk. Her heart made these excursions increasingly dangerous.

“You know what would happen/’ Cora said. “You know very well I’m not cured.”

Goodrich, who knew it very well, said nothing.

“How many of us ever are?” she demanded.

“Not many.”

“I used to think that once I knew why I drank I could stop, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “But nothing is so simple as it seems. I know, and you know, why I drink.”

He let her talk, though he knew her history in every detail. She had been fifteen when both her parents died, leaving her with a five-year-old sister to look after. For twenty-five years she had done her job thoroughly and unselfishly. As Janet began to succeed in business Cora began to go downhill. Her memory often failed her and she became almost scatterbrained in dealing with situations and people. She was throwing off the weight of a responsibility that had been too heavy for her. Now, though the weight was gone, the mind remembered, guiltily, the feel and contours of it.

“The responsibility is still there,” Cora said. “It will be there until I die... Oh, Lord, I’m getting heavy, aren’t I? I don’t like heavy people.”

She rose, pulling herself up by clinging to the arms of the chair.

Goodrich noticed. “Better drop in on Dr. Laverne for a checkup tomorrow, Cora.”

“I don’t need a checkup. I feel fine.”

“I’ll arrange it.”

“All this silly fussing,” Cora said. “It would hardly be a tragedy for an old woman of sixty to die.”

“Don’t cheat, Cora. Sixty-six.”

She turned away, laughing. “All the less of a tragedy.” Cora Green died two days later.

During the week the Morrow family visited Lucille, a small boy called Maguire found a parcel washed up on the beach and took it home to his mother. And on the same day an inquest was held on the body of Eddy Greeley.

Chapter 7

Both in life and in death Mr. Greeley was a public nuisance. Alive, he had cost the province his board and room for several years, and by dying in an alley he was responsible for the cost of an inquest and the loss of the valuable time of the coroner, the jury and the police surgeon.

Edwin Edward Greeley, the police surgeon stated, was a morphine addict of long standing. The body was in an emaciated condition and both thighs had hundreds of hypodermic scars and several infected punctures. Examination of Mr. Greeley’s trousers (not on exhibit) showed that he was in the habit of injecting the morphine through his clothing with a home-made syringe (exhibited to the jury who eyed it with interest and disgust).

An autopsy proved the cause of death to be morphine poisoning.

The coroner went over the evidence,” implying strongly that he himself had no doubt that Greeley had miscalculated and given himself an overdose (and no loss to the world, his tone made clear); however, if the jury wanted to make fools of themselves they were perfectly welcome to do so and bring in a verdict of homicide or suicide.

The jury was out twenty minutes. Miss Alicia Schaefer summed up the opinions of the other jurors when she stated that anybody who would use a syringe like that instead of going out and buying a proper one, and using it through his clothes, imagine! instead of having it properly sterilized, well, anybody like that could make any kind of mistake.

Miss Schaefer’s compelling logic carried the day, and it became part of the court records that Edwin Edward Greeley had died by misadventure.

The bartender at the Allen Hotel read the news in the Evening Telegram. He called Inspector Sands’ office and left a message for him.

Shortly after seven o’clock on Thursday night Sands came in and sat in the back booth and ordered a beer.

“You wanted to see me?” he said to Bill.

“Yeah,” Bill said. “I see by the papers that Greeley got his.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Not so’s you’d notice. He was in here couple nights ago. Must have been the night he conked. Tuesday.”

“Well?”

“He had a tart from down the street with him. He ordered champagne and paid for it with a fifty.”

Sands didn’t look impressed, and Bill added anxiously, “I guess maybe that don’t sound like much, but I had a kind of idea he was onto something big. He shot off at the mouth about how from now on he’s got a steady income. I figured you’d like to know.”

“Thanks.”

“Jesus, he’s got a steady income now, all right. Laying gold bricks.”

“Who was the hooker?”

“Susie. She’s from Phyllis’s house down the street, a big redhead. Nice girl. I figure there’s nothing against her. Maybe she gets a case now and then but she ain’t mean.”

“Does she come in here often?”

“Now and then.”

“I’d like to talk to her. How would you like to dig her up for me?”

“Aw, now, Mr. Sands,” Bill said. “What the hell. I got a wife and family. I don’t whore, you know that. If my wife’d hear about it...”

“Use a phone.”

“Sure. I never thought of that. Why, sure, Mr. Sands.” He got up. “It’ll probably cost you some money. I figure I’ll say it’s a business appointment.”

“Good idea.”

“You got five bucks to waste?”

“Yes.”

Bill went into the office. After assuring the manager of the house that he meant business, five bucks’ worth, he was allowed to speak to Susie.

“Susie? This is Bill, up at the Allen.”

“Well, what do you want? Or is that too personal?”

“There’s a guy here. Five bucks.”

“I don’t want to come out on a stinking night like this for five bucks.”

“You see in the papers about Greeley? He got his wings. And I don’t mean the kind that lets you fly a plane.”

“Well, well,” Susie said thoughtfully and hung up. Fifteen minutes later she was at the Allen. She had dressed in a hurry and hadn’t combed her hair and her lipstick was blurred around her mouth.

Bill took her to the back booth and introduced her to Sands. She looked Sands up and down very slowly. “Who are you kidding?” she said.

“Jesus, you can’t talk to Mr. Sands like that,” Bill said. “Why, Mr. Sands...”

“Sit down, Susie,” Sands said. “You’re right, I’m harmless.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Susie said. “Holy God, I wouldn’t say a thing like that to any guy. I meant, you’re not the type.”

“How do you know?” Bill said, scowling. “Mr. Sands has a hell of a lot of muscle under those clothes, ain’t you, Mr. Sands?”

“Blow,” Sands said, without looking at him.

“Sure,” Bill said. “Sure. I’m on my way.”

When he had gone Susie sat down. “What’s the gag?”

“Questions. About Greeley.”

“I get it. Policeman?”

“Yes.”

Surprisingly, she leaned back and smiled. “That’s a relief. I’m kind of tired tonight. And I got nothing on my conscience you don’t know about.”

“Known Greeley long?”

“Not so long. Two months maybe, just in the line of business. He was a cheapskate. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he came in Tuesday night and paid ten bucks for the whole night and didn’t even stay. We came here and stayed for a couple of hours and guess what we drank.”

“Champagne,” Sands said.

“Yeah, can you beat it? Poor Eddy, it must have been too much for his system. Bill told me he died.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not personally.”

“He was a hophead. He gave himself a dose after we left the pier.”

“What time?”

“Twelve, or so.”

“And then?”

“Then he sent me home in a taxi,” Susie said dryly. “Believe it or not. He said he had to meet someone. He’d been talking big stuff all night. It made me laugh. The only thing Eddy was good for was rolling drunks, like he must have done to get that fifty.”

Sands gave her five dollars. She took it with a wry smile.

“Easy money. Wish to hell I could always get paid for talking. You couldn’t see me for mink.”

Sands got up and put on his hat. “Good night, and thanks.”

“Too bad you got to go.”

“Yes. I have an appointment.”

He didn’t mention that the appointment was at the morgue, with the mortal remains of Mr. Greeley. Nobody had claimed Greeley and he was due for a long cold wait before someone did.

The morgue attendant slid out the slab like a drawer out of a filing cabinet.

“You want me to stick around Inspector?”

“No,” Sands said. His face looked gray and when he reached out to take the sheet off Greeley his hands were shaking.

The morgue was intensely quiet. None of the street sounds penetrated the walls and the harsh white ceiling lights emphasized the silence. Light should have motion and sound to go with it, but there was no motion except the fall of the sheet and no sound but Sands’ own breathing.

Mercilessly the lights stared down at Greeley like cold impartial eyes, examining the protruding bones, the misshapen feet, the broken grimy toenails, the legs skinny and hairy and slightly bowed. Whoever had washed Greeley had done a poor job, and whoever had stuffed his chest with sawdust and sewed him up after the autopsy had been equally careless.

Greeley, a nuisance from first to last, and even yet a nuisance for nobody wanted to pay for his burial.

“Greeley,” Sands said.

It was the only epitaph Greeley got and he wouldn’t have liked it if he’d known it came from a policeman.

Sands bent over, forcing himself to touch the cold flesh.

Later he telephoned Dr. Sutton, one of the coroner’s assistants.

“I just had a look at Edwin Greeley,” he said. “Greeley? Oh yes. Accident case.”

“Did you notice a puncture on his left upper arm?”

“Can’t recall it. He was so full of punctures it’s a wonder he could walk.”

“This one’s on his arm, barely noticeable.”

“What of it? The inquest is over. The evidence was perfectly, clear. It was either accident or suicide and I can’t see that it makes much difference at this stage of the game. Are you thinking of murder?”

Sutton sounded incredulous and quite irritated. “You know me, Sands. I’m always on the lookout for homicide. There’s not a chance of it in this case. I knew Greeley, had to testify that he was an addict a couple of years ago. He was a damned suspicious man. If you think he’d stand around while somebody shot a lethal doze of morphine into him...”

“How would he know it was lethal?” Sands asked softly. “Here’s something else for you. I just found out that Greeley took a shot of morphine around twelve Tuesday night. He was found the next morning around six, and had been dead about three hours or so, is that right?”

“Right.”

“Well, think about it a minute. There’s no hurry, Greeley won’t run away.”

There was a long silence.

“Yeah,” Sutton said at last. “I catch it. The times are wrong. If the shot that killed him was the one he took at twelve, he didn’t die soon enough. So it wasn’t the twelve o’clock one.”

“And carrying the time element further,” Sands said, “why would Greeley take another dose some two hours later? Addicts don’t throw the stuff around. Greeley had an appointment some time after twelve. It looks as though he hopped himself up for it, and then someone gave him a little extra.”.

The case of Mr. Greeley was unofficially re-opened on Friday morning.

On Friday morning, too, Dr. Goodrich made his second report to Andrew by phone.

“It’s difficult for me to give you any definite statement at this stage,” Goodrich said. “As a gynecologist you’ve had plenty of experience with the mental disturbances of women during the menopause period. Usually the disturbances are fairly light — insomnia, bad dreams with a latent sexual content, periods of hysteria or depression...”

“You think that’s what’s the matter with her?” Andrew said.

“Frankly, I don’t. It’s intensified the situation, of course. But she seems to be suffering the after-effects of a very severe shock. She is dazed and badly frightened, so frightened that I get the impression that she wants to stay here because it is safe. That’s not uncommon we have quite a few patients here who refuse to leave, but they’re ones who’ve been here for a long time and who can’t bring themselves to give up their changeless routine and face a changing world again. But your wife is a newcomer; they usually fight to get out... Are you sure you’ve been entirely frank with me about the preceding events?”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Andrew said, listlessly. “She was alone in the house with the two maids and a man delivered a parcel. No one knows what was in it. She took it with her when she left.”

“There was no difficulty between the two of you? At Mrs. Morrow’s age, sometimes...”

“No difficulty at all. We’ve been married fifteen years and Lucille has been the best possible wife. And I... I don’t know what kind of husband I’ve been, but she seemed happy.” He paused and added quietly, “Very happy, I think.”

“This fear of hers,” Goodrich said. “It’s not the wild irrational type we find here so often. I was wondering if it might do any good to have you and the rest of your family come here this afternoon. Some frank talking might clear the air somewhat. On the other hand, you understand it might do some harm?”

“I understand. Will she... will she want to see us?”

“We might have a little trouble there, but so far she’s been co-operative about doing things and she can probably be persuaded.”

“Of course we’ll come. We want to do everything possible to help her.”

“Her difficulty seems to have started with that parcel. I’d like to know what was in it. I haven’t asked her, naturally, since she has refused to answer even my ordinary questions. But my own idea is that it was some token from the past, and that, coming when it did, it’s caused some exaggerated guilt complex.”

“We’ll do everything we can,” Andrew said. “We... feel it very keenly. My daughter was to have been married this afternoon.”

“What a pity,” Goodrich said. “Three o’clock would be the best time. I’ll see you then.”

The taxi came up the driveway and Giles leaned over and picked up his suitcase.

“Well, good-bye, Giles,” Polly said. “Nice to have known you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He let the suitcase fall again. It sent up a little cloud of snow as it landed. “Are we going into it right from the beginning again?”

“I don’t like people who run out on things.”

“I’m not running very far. To the Ford Hotel, in strict fact. I can’t stay here any longer, I’m in the way and you know it.”

“You’ve changed quite a bit in the last few days.” She scuffed the snow with the toe of her shoe, scowling at it. “You didn’t used to be rude all of the time.”

“I can’t stay here,” he repeated. “I feel like the worst kind of fool. The expectant bridegroom out on a limb and the fire department out to lunch.” He looked down at her, helplessly. “Damn it, you shouldn’t stand out here without a coat.”

The taxi driver honked the horn.

“You’d better hurry,” Polly said flatly.

“Polly, I’ll phone you when I get there.”

She looked at him coldly. “What for?”

He leaned down to kiss her but she turned her head away. He put his hands on her shoulders and swung her around again.

“Look,” he said. “You’ve made a mistake about me. I’m not a man like your father.”

“Leave my father out of this. He’s a better man than you’ll ever be.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” he told her quietly. “He’s big enough not to resent being bossed around by the women in his family. But I can’t take it like that. If I could I’d make my peace and agree to stay here and take whatever comes. You can’t have it all your own way, Polly.”

“Can’t I?”

He picked up his suitcase again. “You know where I am if you want me.”

“Certainly.”

She turned and walked toward the house without looking back. With a savage bewildered, “Damn,” he strode to the taxi and opened the door.

Slowly Polly went into the living room and stared for a minute, her eyes hot with rage, at the small photograph of Lucille on the mantle. “She did it,” she said through clenched teeth. “She did it, it’s her fault. She’s always spoiled everything for me.”

The occupational-therapy department consisted of two large cheerful rooms with wide windows through which the sun was pouring. There were two nurses in the room as well as the teacher, but they wore bright-colored smocks over their uniforms and the place had the atmosphere of a friendly informal workshop.

In one corner fibers of willow-wood were soaking in a tub of water and standing beside the tub was Mrs. Hammond weaving the wood on an upright frame. She paid little attention to detail but seemed to enjoy flipping the strands violently around.

“Come, come, Mrs. Hammond,” the teacher said. “Let’s take it a little more slowly.” She turned to Lucille. “Mrs. Hammond is making a lampstand. Isn’t she doing well?”

“Yes,” Lucille said.

Mrs. Hammond went on flipping.

“If you see anything you’d especially care to work at, Mrs. Morrow...”

“No. No — anything... anything at all.”

“Come, Cora,” the teacher called across the room. “Let’s get to work now. Show Mrs. Morrow your lovely picture. Perhaps she’d like to do one like it.”

“I’m sure she would,” Cora said primly.

Cora had a small niche of her own occupied by a wooden frame with a piece of burlap stretched across it. On a table Reside it lay little bowls of macaroni, barley, rice and similar foods.

“We glue these to the burlap,” the teacher said to Lucille. “And when the whole thing is done, it is painted. Some of the work is really amazing, though Cora, I’m afraid, is not very diligent.”

“It isn’t diligence that counts,” Cora said with a wink. “It’s the artistic impulse, and scope.”

“It certainly has a great deal of scope,” the teacher said and glanced at the odd pieces of rice and barley scattered haphazard over the frame. “I’m still not quite sure what it’s going to be.”

“It’s a pictorial representation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. I believe I told you that before. The medium is perfect for the work.”

The teacher hesitated. “Well, in that case... Would you care to do something along this line, Mrs. Morrow?”

“She could work on this with me,” Cora said.

“Let Mrs. Morrow answer for herself, Cora. We must be polite.”

“All right,” Lucille said. “I don’t care.”

Mrs. Hammond had stopped work and was staring at the bowls of food with somber eyes. Unobtrusively, one of the nurses moved across the room and stood beside her.

“Give me more food and more clotherings,” Mrs. Hammond intoned. “Give me...”

“Now, Mrs. Hammond, you’ve just had your breakfast. We’ll give you a little lunch later on. What a really good job you’re...”

“...more food and more clotherings.”

The nurse picked up a strand of willow and handed it to her. Mrs. Hammond flung it down again. It whistled through the air and struck the nurse’s leg.

“Give me more food and more clotherings.”

“All right. Come along.”

The two went out, the nurse’s arm tucked inside Mrs. Hammond’s in a firm friendly way.

“She’s always worse on visitors’ day,” Cora explained. “Her husband comes to see her. Here, pretend you’re working and the teacher won’t interrupt us talking.”

Lucille selected a piece of macaroni from the bowl. She held it up between her fingers and gazed at it dully. It seemed to expand before her eyes, to become the symbol of her future life.

All of my life, she thought, all of my life, while Cora’s voice tinkled on: “Mrs. Hammond came from a very wealthy Jewish family. Then she married this man, a clerk of some kind, and her family cut her off because he wasn’t Jewish. They were very poor, and then she lost her baby at birth. Since they told her she’s never said a word but that one sentence. On visitors’ day her husband comes and talks to her, but I don’t think she hears anything. She’s been here for a long time.”

A long time? Lucille thought. So will I.

“You aren’t listening,” Cora said.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, then, Mrs. Hammond must feel that her husband starved her and killed the baby. And at the same time she must blame herself too, for renouncing her religion.”

The Filsinger twins came in with Miss Scott. Mary identified herself immediately.

“I have told the superintendent a thousand times that when Betty doesn’t feel well she shouldn’t have to come down here.” She threw back her head and shouted, “Superintendent. Super — in — ten — dent!”

“Hush, Mary,” Miss Scott said, and turned to Betty. “How do you feel, Betty?”

“I feel fine,” Betty said vacantly.

“She’s putting on a brave front!” Mary cried. “She doesn’t look well — oh, any simpleton could see how pale she is.”

She stroked her sister’s rosy cheek.

The teacher appeared from the other room.

“Mary, Miss Sims is going to have her washrag finished before you if you don’t hurry. She’s tatting the edge right this minute.”

Mary snorted. “Come on, Betty, come on, Betty. Watch you don’t fall. Oh, you shouldn’t be allowed to come down here in your condition. Don’t fall, Betty.”

“I feel fine,” Betty said.

“Oh, you’re so brave, dear. If it wasn’t for Miss Sims beating me, I’d go right to the superintendent this minute. Oh, dear. Oh, Miss Scott, am I doing right?”

“Perfectly right,” Miss Scott said.

The morning went on. Except for Mary Filsinger’s occasional cries for the superintendent, there were no disturbances. Lucille and Cora were skillfully separated by the teacher and Lucille found herself becoming genuinely interested in Mrs. Hammond’s abandoned lampstand. She liked the feel of the willow fibers, smooth and pliant, and for the first time in years she felt the satisfaction of actually constructing something with her hands. When the luncheon bell sounded she had almost forgotten where she was and that she was to stay there the rest of her life.

“I won’t go down.” Lucille stood by the window in her room, her hands clenched against her sides. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

“Oh, come now,” Miss Scott said. “We all have visitors today, even the twins. You’ll be all alone up here. And after your family sent you those lovely roses...”

“I don’t want the roses. Give them to someone else.”

She had never dreamt that the family would come to see her, openly and casually like this. She had imagined one of them sneaking in, in the dead of night, to find her, to make her suffer. Yet they were here now, all of them, waiting downstairs to see her as if nothing had happened, sending her roses, and pretending this was an ordinary hospital and she herself was merely a little ill.

“We know it’s always hard to see your family for the first time,” Miss Scott said, “but if you could make the effort we feel it will do you worlds of good.”

“Like Mrs. Hammond,” Lucille said.

Miss Scott looked almost cross for a moment. “Cora does a great deal too much talking. You want to see your husband, don’t you?”

Lucille pressed her hands to her heart. I want to see Andrew, to go home with him, to live with him all of my life, never even bothering to see anyone else.

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“Very well, I’ll tell Dr. Goodrich. You may stay up here.”

When she had gone Lucille sat down on the edge of the bed. She was barely conscious. Though her body was upright and her eyes open, it was as if she was almost asleep and her mind in labor and heaving with dreams, little faces, willow fingers, roses of blood, clotherings and a pellet of rice, did you count the spoons, nurse? hard dead flesh of macaroni, doing as well as can be expected, are these roses for me, for me, for me?

Willow drowned in a tub. Soft dead willow floating hair and headache in a tub.

Superintendent!

How smooth, how dear, how dead. Come Cora Cora, come Cora.

Super — in — ten — dent!

Grape eyes mashed, rotten nose splashed on a wall, I’m sure you’ll love the soup today, it floats the willow, nursie, nursie...

Suddenly she leaned over and began to retch.

Miss Scott came running. “Mrs. Morrow! Here. Head down. Head down, please.”

She pressed Lucille’s head down against her knees and held it. “Breathe deeply, that’s right, that’s better. We’ll be fine again in a minute. It must have been something you ate.”

Miss Scott took her hands away, and slowly Lucille raised her head. She knew Miss Scott was there, she could see her and hear her, but Miss Scott wasn’t really there, she was a cloud of white smoke, you could wave her away with your hands, blow her away, she didn’t matter, she couldn’t do anything, she wasn’t there.

“Would you like a glass of water, Mrs. Morrow? Here, let me wipe your mouth, you’ve bitten your lip. There now do we feel better?”

(Didums bitums ittle ip?)

“There, drink this. I’m sure you’re upset because you didn’t go down to see your family. They’re awfully worried about you, you know. You wouldn’t want to upset them, would you now?”

Miss Scott expected no answer. She went to the dresser and picked up a comb and began to comb Lucille’s hair. Then she brushed off Lucille’s dress and straightened the belt. Passive, indifferent, Lucille allowed herself to be guided through the door.

“We felt it was better for you to meet your family in Dr. Goodrich’s office, not in the common room. Here we are. Would you like to go in alone?”

Lucille shook her head. She meant to shake it just once, but she couldn’t seem to stop, she felt her head shaking and shaking. Briskly, Miss Scott reached up and steadied it.

The door opened and Dr. Goodrich came out into the corridor. Miss Scott frowned at him and tipped her head almost imperceptibly toward Lucille.

“I see,” he said. “Come in, Mrs. Morrow. Here is your family.”

Andrew came over to her and kissed her cheek. The others sat stiffly on the leather couch, as if they didn’t know what was expected of them.

Then Edith, too, rose and came toward her.

“Lucille, dear,” she said, and their cheeks touched for an instant in the old familiar gesture.

Lucille stood, rubbing and rubbing her cheek.

(Here is your family. At least they said it was your family, and there was some faint resemblance to Andrew in the tall man. But the girl, who was she? And the young man? And the scraggly hag who’d kissed her? Ho, ho, ho, ho. What a joke! But she knew.)

“Hello, Lucille.”

“It’s nice to see you again, Lucille.”

“Hello, Lucille. I like your hair-do.”

“Will you sit down, Mrs. Morrow?”

“We’ve been so worried about you, Lucille, not letting us know or anything...”

(That was the hag who wasn’t Edith. Her voice was Edith’s, high, piercing, thin as a wire, but Edith had never looked like this, a dried and shriveled mummy with sick-yellow skin. Yet... yet...)

“Edith?” she said, her face wrinkling in pain and bewilderment. “Is that you, Edith?” She looked slowly around the room. “And you, Andrew? And you, Polly — Martin...? This is a surprise. I didn’t know you were coming.”

(There was something wrong about that, but it wasn’t important, she would figure it out later.)

“This is a surprise. I feel so confused.”

Andrew brought her a chair, and when she sat down he stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder, strong and steady.

“If you have any troubles, Lucille,” he said gently, “share them with us. That’s what a family is for.”

“So confused — and tired.”

“You can trust us, darling. Whatever is bothering you, it’s probably not nearly as bad as you think it is.” He looked over at Polly and Martin. “Tell her, tell her, Polly, Martin, tell her we’re all behind her, whatever...”

“Of course,” Polly said stiffly. “Of course. Lucille knows that.”

“Sure,” Martin said, but he didn’t look across the room at her.

“If you’d tell us what happened,” Edith said shrilly. “There’s been so much mystery. I’m worried half to death. What did the man...?”

“I’m so tired,” Lucille said. “I’m sure you’ll excuse me.”

She moved slightly.

“Please!” Andrew said and tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Please!”

With a sudden cry she wrenched herself out of his grasp and ran to the door. An instant later Dr. Goodrich was in the corridor beside her.

Edith clung to Andrew. Her body was shaking with silent sobs and her hands clawed desperately at his coat sleeve. “Take me home, Andrew, please take me home, I’m frightened! She is — she really is crazy! I’ll be like that some day, I know it, she’s just my age...”

“Behave yourself,” Andrew said, and looked down at her with an ugly smile. “People with as little sense as you have rarely lost it. Law of compensation, Edith.”

Martin was lighting a cigarette. He seemed absorbed in the flare of the match, as if by watching it he could learn something vital.

“I hate to be wise after the fact,” he said, “but I think we’ve underestimated Lucille. We shouldn’t have come. She knows that Polly and I have never been friendly to her. It’s not anybody’s fault, it just happened like that. If she ran away from the lot of us on Monday what reason had we for thinking she was going to break down and confess all on Friday?”

He glanced over at Polly who was staring sulkily down at the floor. “Certainly the sight of Polly’s sunny little face isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

“Take a look at your own,” Polly said.

“I have. I grant it doesn’t measure up. Still, I try. A for effort.”

“Oh, it’s so terrible!” Edith cried. “There they are wrangling again as if — as if they didn’t care where they were — and poor Lucille — she doesn’t matter to them!”

“She matters a great deal,” Polly said with a dry little smile. “Or haven’t you noticed? She matters so much that I wasn’t married today, that my fiancé couldn’t even stay in the same house with me... She’s managed to mess things up very nicely for me.”

“Don’t be mawkish,” Martin said. “Giles was polite enough to leave until things were settled.”

“Sure.” Polly shrugged. “Very polite of him.”

“You sound like the deserted bride.”

“How should I sound? He might have stood by me for a while until...”

Martin’s voice sliced her sentence. “Since when are you the type that asks to be stood by? Or even wants it?”

“Stop it!” Edith said. “Stop your wrangling. It’s indecent.”

Dr. Goodrich returned to the room.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought it was advisable for Mrs. Morrow to go to her room. She seems far more irrational this afternoon than she did this morning.” He glanced, with sympathy, at Andrew. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out better. But there is a good deal of trial and error in these cases, it’s the only way we learn. In its present stage psychiatry has many classifications and rules, but far more exceptions. What I am trying to tell you is not to expect results too soon.”

“I see,” Andrew said slowly.

“And for the present I think your wife should have no visitors.”

“I’m not to come again?”

“I’ll let you know when I think it’s advisable. Meanwhile it would be a good idea to send her gifts, flowers and fruit and little things. She must be given the feeling that her family care for her and are thinking of her.”

“We are,” Polly said. “We think of very little else.” Odd girl, Dr. Goodrich thought fleetingly. He shook hands with Andrew. “By the way, Dr. Morrow, if you’re driving back to town, perhaps you’d give a lift to someone here.”

“Certainly.”

“He’s had a bad time. His — one of his relatives is here and became disturbed. His face is scratched. I’d like to feel he’ll get home all right.”

“We’ll be glad to take him.”

In the corridor a nurse was standing talking to a thin shabby man. The man had his hands in his pockets, and his head was bent over as if he was too tired to hold it up any longer.

“Mr. Hammond,” Dr. Goodrich said. “Dr. Morrow is going into town and will be glad to give you a lift.” Hammond raised his head. His face was very pale, the only color in it was in the red-rimmed eyes and the three long scratches down his cheek.

“Thanks,” he said huskily. “Very nice of you.”

He didn’t look at anyone. When he walked down the corridor he moved as if his whole body was in pain.

Chapter 8

There’s a man and woman and kid down here,” the desk sergeant told Sands on the phone. “They’ve got the damnedest story I ever heard. I don’t know exactly where to send them.”

“You have every intention of sending them up here,” Sands said.

“Seems up your alley, Inspector, but I don’t know.”

“Send them up.”

The Maguire family was escorted into Sands’ office. The boy was about ten, and looked intelligent and thoroughly awed by his surroundings. He had to be prodded into the office by his mother’s large competent thumb.

The Maguires looked respectable lower-middle-class, and uncertain, and the combination, Sands knew, would merge into belligerence unless he could restore their self-assurance.

“I’m sure I don’t know whether I’m doing right or not,” Mrs. Maguire said loudly. “I told John, I said, maybe we should just phone, or maybe we should come right down.”

“Personal interviews are so much more satisfactory,” Sands said. “Few people are intelligent enough to do as you’ve done.”

It was broad, but so was Mrs. Maguire. She relaxed far enough to sit down, although giving the impression that she considered all chairs booby-traps.

“It’s like this. Tommy was out playing this morning; it’s Saturday and no school, and sometimes, he goes down to the lake. I don’t know, he just seems crazy about water, he can swim like a fish, and his father and me don’t take to the water at all.”

“Let me tell it,” Tommy said. “Let me tell it.”

“That’s a fine way to behave in front of a policeman! You hold your tongue.” Mrs. Maguire opened her purse and brought out a parcel wrapped in newspaper. She laid it on the desk, as if she was reluctant to touch it. “I put the newspaper around it myself. After I saw what was in the box I couldn’t hardly bear to wrap it up again.”

“You’re telling it wrong,” the boy said.

“Show some respect to your mother,” Mr. Maguire said.

“I found it on the beach,” the boy said, ignoring both his parents. “I often find things there, once fifty cents. So when I found this box I thought there’d be something in it, so I took it home.”

“First, I could hardly believe my eyes,” Mrs. Maguire said in an agitated voice. “I didn’t even recognize what it was. It was sort of swollen, being soaked in the water and all.”

Sands removed the newspaper and revealed a water-soaked cardboard box which almost fell apart under his hands. Mrs. Maguire turned her head away, but the boy watched, fascinated.

A few minutes later Sands was in Dr. Sutton’s office. “Take a look at that.”

Sutton looked. “Been robbing graves?”

“What is it?”

“A finger. To be exact, a forefinger, probably male, and sliced off by an expert. The bones are badly crushed, probably had to be amputated.” He grimaced. “Hell-of-a-looking thing. Take it away. The joke’s over.”

“It’s just beginning,” Sands said.

“Where did you get the thing?”

“A boy found it on the beach. I think someone flung it into the lake last Monday, but the waves washed it up. It couldn’t have been in the water long, the box would have fallen apart.”

“Got a corpse to fit it?”

“Not yet,” Sands said. “Possibly it doesn’t belong to a corpse.”

“Maybe not,” Sutton said. “Maybe the guy that owns it is going around looking for it.”

“Your humor is nauseous stuff, Sutton.”

“Can’t be helped. Leave the thing here and I’ll examine it in the lab.”

“Don’t die laughing about it, will you?” Sands said and went out of the room. He felt unjustly irritated with Sutton who was, he knew, a kind and simple young man. Perhaps too simple. To Sutton the finger was merely a finger, bones and skin, gristle and ganglia. To Sands it was part of a man, once warmed and fed by flowing blood, articulated and responsive to a living brain, knowing the feel of wind and grass, the touch of a woman.

He went back to his office and put on his hat and coat, slowly, because he dreaded the job he had to do.

Ten miles west of Toronto stand the iron gates of Penwood, protecting its inmates against the world and the world against its inmates. At the ornamental apertures in the gates society could press a cold peering eye, but inside, the little colony carried on, undisturbed and uncaring. It grew most of its own food, ran a diary farm, handled its own laundry, and sold samples of needlework, watercolors, and wicker baskets to a curious public. (“Made by a crazy person, imagine! Why it’s just as good as I could do!”)

The colony was fathered by its superintendent, Dr. Nathan, a psychoanalyst turned business executive, and mothered by its host of nurses, chosen for their quality of efficient and cheerful callousness. No nurse who confessed to daydreaming, or sentimentalism, or an interest in art, was accepted on the staff. A surplus of imagination could be more dangerous than stupidity, and a weakness for emotionalism could destroy the peace of a whole ward.

Miss Scott had none of these undesirable qualities. In addition to her vital lacks she had a sense of responsibility and a detached fondness for all of her charges. Miss Scott listened and observed and because she had a poor memory she committed her observations to paper, thus doubling her value. She pitied her patients (while impersonally noting that there were lots of people worse off than they were) but when she went off duty at night she was able to forget the day entirely and devote herself to her succession of boy friends.

Incapable of a grand passion, she was the kind of woman who would one day make an advantageous marriage, stick to it, and produce curly-headed and conveniently spaced offspring.

Though he didn’t admire the type, Sands liked Miss Scott at once.

“I’m Miss Scott,” she said in her warm bright voice. “Dr. Goodrich is doing his rounds right now. I understand you wanted to see Mrs. Morrow.”

“I do,” Sands said. “My name is Sands, Inspector Sands.”

Miss Scott gave him a well-what-do-you-inspect? glance.

“I’m a detective. Homicide. I’m afraid I have to see Mrs. Morrow.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think Dr. Goodrich will allow it,” Miss Scott said. “She was quite disturbed last night. She’s still N.Y.D., I mean not yet diagnosed, and Dr. Goodrich...”

“If I could possibly get out of seeing Mrs. Morrow, I’d be glad to do it. I rarely pinch children or attack the sick, but sometimes it’s necessary.”

What a queer man, Miss Scott thought, and was dumbfounded into temporary silence.

“In this case it is,” Sands said. “What I have to say to Mrs. Morrow may, remotely, help her. More probably it will disturb her further. I wanted this to be clear before I see her.”

“Under those conditions, I’m sure Dr. Goodrich will refuse to let you see her.”

“Perhaps not.” He turned his head and seemed to be contemplating the brown-leather furniture of the waiting room. But perhaps he will refuse, Sands thought, and in that case I’ll have to tell him what I know. But what to tell?

The picture wasn’t clear, the only real figure in it was Lucille herself haunted by dreams and driven by the devils locked up in her own heart. The rest of the picture was in shadow, blurred stealthy shapes merging into darkness, a face (Greeley’s?), a finger, a hump in the snow (Mildred?).

“Well, Dr. Goodrich will be here any minute,” Miss Scott said and moved toward the door, glad to return to the world of unreason where everything was, in the long run, much simpler.

She stopped at the parcel desk to pick up the gifts for her suite. Everything, even the flowers, had been opened, inspected, and done up again.

Chocolates for Cora. Flowers and a basket of fruit and a bed-jacket for Mrs. Morrow, the morning newspaper, no longer a newspaper but merely selected items clipped and pasted on a piece of cardboard. Mrs. Hammond’s daily box of food from her family. The Yiddish delicacies looked very tempting and Miss Scott had often wanted to taste some but Mrs. Hammond always grabbed the box and disappeared with it into the bathroom.

It was an unwritten rule that Cora should get the newspaper first and complain of it.

“Why I can’t have a decent ordinary paper is more than I can say,” Cora said.

“Now, Cora,” Miss Scott said, “look at the goodies you got.”

“I loathe chocolates. Will Janet never learn?”

“We’re a little cross this morning, aren’t we?”

“Oh, really!” Cora said, half-laughing in exasperation. “What are the other parcels?”

“For Mrs. Morrow. Here you are, Mrs. Morrow.”

“Thank you,” Lucille said in a frozen polite voice. “Thank you very much.”

She didn’t put out her hand to take the parcels, so Miss Scott herself opened them, making happy noises as she worked.

“Hm! A bed-jacket. Look, Mrs. Morrow. It matches your eyes almost exactly. We’re going to look lovely in it.”

“Certainly,” Cora said. “You in one sleeve and Lucille in the other.”

“Now, Cora,” Miss Scott said in reproof.

“If I were running this place I would insist on some form of intelligent communication.”

Quite unruffled, Miss Scott unwrapped the flowers, and the basket of Malaga grapes. “Shall I read the cards to you? Well, the bed-jacket is from Edith. ‘Lucille dear, I know this is your favorite...”

“Don’t bother,” Lucille said.

“ ‘...color and how it becomes you. Love from Edith.’ The grapes are from Polly, with love. And your husband sent the flowers. ‘Remember we are all behind you. Andrew.’ Aren’t they sweet little mums?”

“Yes,” Lucille said. Sweet little mums, little secret faces with shaggy hair drooping over them, sweet flowers, a rosebud of cancer on a breast, a blue bloated grape, drowned woman, bile-green leaves, cold, doomed, grow no more.

“Yes,” Lucille said. “Thank you very much.”

But Miss Scott was gone, and so was Cora. How had they gotten out without her seeing them go? She was watching and listening, wasn’t she? How long ago was it? How long had she been alone?

Her eyes fell on the flowers. The flowers, yes. She didn’t like them looking at her. She may have missed Cora and Miss Scott leaving the room, but she was perfectly rational about this. The roses had squeezed-up sly little faces. You couldn’t see the eyes but of course they were there. Weren’t they? Look into one. Take it apart and you will find the eyes.

The torn petals fell softly as snowflakes.

“Why, Mrs. Morrow, you’re not going to tear up your lovely flowers,” Miss Scott said. “My goodness, I should say not.”

Had she been gone and come back again? Or had she never left at all? No, she must have left, I’m quite rational; it’s perfectly sensible to look for eyes if you think they’re there.

Miss Scott was moving the flowers, taking away the rosebuds and the shaggy-haired chrysanthemum children. Miss Scott was talking. Was she saying “We mustn’t tear our lovely children”? What silly things she said sometimes/As if anyone would tear a child.

“Come along, Mrs. Morrow. Miss Parsons will take you down to Dr. Goodrich’s office. That’s right, dear, come along.”

Docile, a bruised petal still between her fingers, Lucille moved out into the hall.

Cora looked coldly across the room at Miss Scott.

“Is it possible to talk sense to you?”

“Oh, come off it, Cora,” Miss Scott said. “None of that.”

“I wondered.”

“Talk if you want to.”

“I shall,” Cora said. “In the meager hope that something will get across. Mrs. Morrow is deathly afraid.”

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Miss Scott said thoughtfully.

“She’s afraid of her family. She told me last night. One of them is trying to kill her.”

“Oh, come, Cora. I thought you had too much sense to believe...”

“I believe her,” Cora said.

“Don’t worry your pretty head about it. She’s in good hands, she’s safe here, even if it’s true. Come, cheer up. The superintendent will be around in a few minutes and you wouldn’t want him to see you down in the dumps like this.”

“Have you ever been afraid, really afraid?”

“I don’t remember. Besides, why would anyone want to kill Mrs. Morrow?”

“I’ve been afraid,” Cora said. “For Janet’s sake. When the epidemic of flu was on after the last war...”

“Get your hair combed, dear. You look a sight. Dr. Nathan will be disappointed in you.”

Lucille knew that Sands’ face was one of the thousands of little faces that pursued her with silent shrieks through dreams and half-dreams. But she could not remember where he fitted in, and even when he told her his name she merely felt, vaguely, that he was a part of fear and death. Yet it didn’t frighten her. She knew that he was on her side — more than Dr. Goodrich, or the nurses — he looked at her evenly, without embarrassment, and his face seemed to be saying: I know fear and I respect its power, but I am not afraid.

She looked into his eyes and quite suddenly he began to recede, to get smaller and smaller until he was no bigger than a doll. She remembered this happening to her as a child, when she was looking at something she especially loved or feared. The experience had always filled her with terror. (“I am awake, I am truly awake, it can’t be happening, I haven’t moved, nothing has changed.” “It was only a dream, dear.” “I am really awake.” “Only a dream.”)

Sands. Ugly little old doll. How wonderfully he was made. Almost human, the way he moved.

“I am not feeling very well,” she said in a strong clear voice.

“Did you hear me, Mrs. Morrow?”

“Oh, yes... Oh, yes.”

“We’ve found the parcel you threw into the lake.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you throw it away, or did Greeley?”

He came back, life-size.

“Greeley?” Lucille said.

“He may not have used that name. Will you look at this, please, Mrs. Morrow? Is this the man?”

He held out a picture and she looked at it, blinking slowly, trying to control the expression of her face. Her mind seemed to be working with extraordinary clarity. (I could pretend not to recognize the picture. But perhaps they can prove I knew him. I’ll admit I know him, but nothing else, nothing else...)

“This is Greeley,” Sands said. “He was the man who waited for you across the street from the hairdressing shop. He is dead.”

“Dead?”

She had a sudden wild surge of hope. If this man was dead she had a chance. She would get out of here, she would fight.

“He was murdered,” Sands said.

The hope drained out of her body like blood from a wound. Her hands were icy, and her face had a stupid dazed expression.

“I am not trying to harry you, Mrs. Morrow, but to protect you. Someone has taken the trouble to kill Greeley on your account. Greeley was in the way — of something. Greeley was between you — and someone.” His voice pressed, relentless, on her ears. “Who wants you dead?”

To frighten her, Sands thought, enough, but not too much...

“If I knew,” Lucille said. “If I knew...”

“You know why.”

“No.”

“You gave Greeley fifty dollars?”

(“Here, take this, it’s all I’ve got.” The little man grinning as if the bitter wind had swept up the comers of his mouth. “I figured on more, I figure it’s worth it.”

“I’ll get it for you.” The wind piercing her thin coat. “Now wait a minute, I ain’t been standing around here for my health. I know what was in that box. I looked.”

“Who gave it to you? Who told you to bring it to me?”

“Offhand like this I can’t remember.” The grin again, though he looked cold and sick and ready to drop in his tracks. “I’ll get more for you.”)

“No,” she said.

“One of your maids has already identified Greeley as the man who brought the box to your house. If I am to help you, Mrs. Morrow, I must know what was behind this thing. It is too crude and grotesque for a joke. And too dangerous to lie about.”

She shivered. She could still feel the wind. It seemed to be blowing at her back, pushing her along toward the water, into the water. She felt an icy wave roll against her leg, and her forehead was bathed in sweat. Her head lolled and her mouth opened, sucking in the rush of water.

There was a movement in the room, a hand touching her lightly on the shoulder, Dr. Goodrich’s voice saying, “That will be all, I think, for today,” and Miss Parsons wiping off her forehead with a cloth.

At the door Lucille turned around. Sands was still watching her.

“Good-bye,” she said clearly.

She gave him an intelligent, almost apologetic glance, as if she felt even yet the strange alliance between them. You and I — we both have secrets — there isn’t time to tell them.

“Good-bye,” Sands said.

She moved, heavily, out into the corridor. Beside her Miss Parsons chattered, trying to imitate Miss Scott and doing it badly.

Up the incline, past an old man bundled in a wheelchair who peered at her suspiciously over his blankets. A door. A girl sweeping the corridor, moving the broom in perfect unfaltering rhythm over the same spot of floor.

“Come, Doris,” Miss Parsons said. “Let’s do this corner now.”

But Miss Parsons lacked Miss Scott’s assurance. The girl Doris didn’t look up or pause a second in her sweeping.

Miss Parsons hesitated and walked on. I’ll go crazy if I have to stay here, she thought, I’ll go crazy.

She locked the last door behind her and led Lucille into her room. Breathing hard, she came out again and handed the big key over to Miss Scott.

“Everything all right?” Miss Scott said.

“Fine.”

“What’s the matter with you? You look done in.”

“Jitters,” Miss Parsons said. “Creeps. Whatever you want to call them.”

“Cheer up. We all get them.”

“When I think how many nurses actually end up here...”

“Well, for that matter,” Miss Scott said practically, “look at how many of everything end up here, doctors, teachers, lawyers...”

“But more nurses.”

“Oh, nuts,” said Miss Scott.” Count your blessings. This is the nicest ward in the hospital to work in. Should be, at the prices they pay and with me iii charge.”

“Even so.”

“Oh, cheer up, Parsons.” She smiled kindly, and instantly became businesslike again. “I’ll get the word down to O.T. Mrs. Hammond stays up here. Dr. Nathan says she may have to be put in the continuous bath. Next week they’re going to try metrazol on her.”

Miss Parsons bit her lip. “Gosh, I hope — I hope I don’t have to assist. Last year I saw a woman break both her legs in a treatment — the noise...”

“That’s all changed now,” Miss Scott said. “They use a curare injection to relax the muscles. It’s quite marv—” She turned her head suddenly. Her alert ears had picked up a sound from Mrs. Morrow’s room, like a retch or a low grunt.

Pushing Miss Parsons out of her way she ran noiselessly down the corridor. Mrs. Morrow might be sick again, as she was yesterday...

But Lucille was not sick. She was standing just inside the door, saying over and over again in a blank voice, “Cora? Cora? Cora?”

Cora Green was lying on the floor. She had fallen forward on her face with her hands outstretched, and spilled around her were blue grapes like broken beads.

“Why, Cora,” said Miss Scott.

She knelt down.

Why, Cora, you’re dead.

Chapter 9

Quietly and quickly Miss Scott walked back to Lucille, thrust her out into the hall and locked the door.

“Come along, Mrs. Morrow. Let’s find another room, shall we?”

(A door opened in Lucille’s mind, and out popped Cora, giggling, “Really! Isn’t she absurd?”)

“Cora’s not feeling well.” There was a lilt in Miss Scott’s voice, but the pressure of her fingers was businesslike. “She’s had these attacks before. They always pass off.”

(Absurd, absurd, screamed the little Cora, hilariously. Really, oh, really, really.)

“Oh, Miss Parsons, would you mind calling Dr. Laverne? Miss Green is ill.”

In fact, said Miss Scott’s wriggling eyebrow, Miss Green is deader than a doornail but let’s keep it from the children.

“Oh,” said Miss Parsons, paling. “Of course. Right away.”

She fumbled for the telephone.

“Now, let me see, Mrs. Morrow,” Miss Scott said. “It’s just about time for O.T., isn’t it? Are we all ready to go down?”

(The little Cora doubled up with mirth, her hands at her throat, choking with laughter. Choking... “Cora! Cora, you’re poisoned — Cora.” Cora went right on choking.)

“She was poisoned. In the grapes. They killed her,” Lucille said. The words were clear cut in her brain, but they had lost their outlines in traveling to her tongue, and came out as a muffled jumble of syllables.

Miss Scott bent her head attentively, and looked as if she quite understood everything.

“You didn’t hear me,” Lucille said.

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t hear me. She was killed. The grapes were for me.”

“Now, now, nobody’s going to take your nice grapes away from you. Don’t you worry your pretty head about the grapes.”

Lucille drew in her breath. If she spoke very very slowly and tried to control her tongue they would understand her. “Cora... Cora... was...”

Miss Scott smiled blankly. “Why, of course, Cora will be all right.”

Lucille turned her anguished eyes to Miss Parsons, pleading. Miss Parsons tried to smile at her, like Miss Scott. Her lips drew back from her teeth but her eyes were stirred with panic. You’re crazy, why, you’re crazy as a bedbug, I’m afraid of you.

Dr. Laverne came in the door. He walked softly on his rubber-soled shoes but he had a big booming voice.

Lucille saw him lock the door behind him. He was carrying his instrument bag in one hand and he didn’t palm the key as the nurses did, but put it in his coat pocket. It was so large that one end of it stuck out at the top of the pocket.

Lucille couldn’t take her eyes off it. The key that would unlock everything. Escape from the hounds, set up a new trail. They have holed you up here, but if you can get the key...

Carefully she looked away. She must be very canny, not let them suspect anything. She knew that Cora had been poisoned but no one would ever believe her. They thought she was insane because she couldn’t say the right words.

They didn’t realize how clever she was. One more look at the key, to make sure it was there. Then she would pretend to be sick, or to faint, that was better. And when the doctor bent over her she would take the key. Through the doors and down the slopes and past the iron gate.

Clever, clever, she thought, and fell back against Miss Scott’s arm, and heard the doctor padding softly toward her.

“Watch your key, doctor,” Miss Scott said pleasantly.

She didn’t actually faint then, but she felt too tired to get up. She sagged against Miss Scott’s knees. They were talking about her, but she was too tired to listen. They were urging her to do something, to move her legs, go through a door, behave yourself, lie down, room of your own. We feel that, we know that, we want you to, we are convinced, we, angels of mercy stepping delicately around the blood, so tenderly bathing the dead unfeeling flesh.

Time for lunch, time for rest, time to take a walk, time for Dr. Nathan, time for Dr. Goodrich, time for dinner.

Music, therapy, color movies, church, a dance, bridge.

So much time and never any of it your own, so many people and such shadows they all were. Only sometimes did a scene or a person seem real to her — the Filsinger twins, pressed close together, dancing dreamily in a Viennese waltz, Mrs. Hammond carefully dealing out a bridge hand and as carefully strewing the cards on the floor, Dr. Goodrich talking.

“The report on the autopsy is perfectly clear, Mrs. Morrow. Miss Green died of heart failure.”

No, no, no.

“Do you understand me, Mrs. Morrow? Miss Green has had a heart condition for some time. Her death was not a surprise to us. The autopsy was performed by a police surgeon and there was not the faintest evidence of poison.”

“The grapes.”

“The grapes were all tested, Mrs. Morrow.”

Liar.

“Miss Green, Cora’s sister, is perfectly satisfied with the report. Cora was apparently eating some of the grapes and a bit of skin got caught in her throat. She became panicky. You must have come into the room just then, and perhaps the sudden entrance, and the blockage in her throat...”

“Filthy sonofabitch lying cur,” Lucille said distinctly. “Filthy stinking whoremaster...”

He waited patiently until she had finished, a little surprised, as always, by the secret vocabulary of women.

“There was no trace of any poison,” he repeated. “I arranged for Cora’s sister to come and see you. She’s in the waiting room now.”

Miss Janet Green had been reluctant to come to Penwood. She had been there so often, always to see Cora, always with a little bit of hope in her heart that this time Cora would be better, would actually want to come home. But three days ago Cora had died, and her death had had the same enigmatic quality as her life. Everything was perfectly clear on the surface but there were strange undercurrents.

Janet Green had attended the inquest, a little puzzled, a little bovine.

Quite incredible that Cora should panic over a bit of grape-skin. Her heart was bad, of course, and there was no evidence of anything else, but still...

After the inquest Dr. Goodrich had come over and spoken to her and told her about a woman called Mrs. Morrow who thought Cora had been poisoned.

“What nonsense!” Janet said, dabbing at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. “Poor Cora, everyone loved her.”

“It is, of course, pure imagination on Mrs. Morrow’s part, but that doesn’t make it any easier for her. I want you to come to Penwood and talk to her.”

“I? There’s nothing I can do.”

“It’s possible that you can convince her you’re perfectly satisfied with the inquest. Cora told her a great deal about you. I think she’ll look upon you as being on her side. That is, you are Cora’s sister and would be most interested in the fact of Cora’s death.”

“As indeed I am,” Janet said dryly. “I’m not quite satisfied. Are you?”

“Perhaps not. The only person who knows the facts is Mrs. Morrow.”

“I see. So I’m to see her for two reasons, to talk, and to listen?”

“I have no right to ask you to do this, of course.”

“That’s all right,” Janet said brusquely. “I’ll do what I can.”

She was a good-hearted woman. She liked to help people, and since Cora was dead and in no need of anything, she would help Mrs. Morrow.

She went at it firmly, telling Lucille in a calm kind voice that she was Cora’s sister, that Cora had died of heart failure, she herself had attended the inquest. She was used to the hospital and not at all nervous, but there was something in Lucille’s expression that made her uncomfortable. Lucille’s mouth was twisted as if she was tasting Janet’s words and finding them bitter.

And those eyes, Janet thought. Really quite hopeless.

She went on, however, and out of pity even invented a lie, though inventions of the sort were foreign to her nature and very difficult for her.

“Cora was always afraid of choking, even when she was a child.”

“She was ten years older than you,” Lucille said. Her tongue felt thick but the words were audible.

Janet flushed. “I can remember hearing her tell about it.”

“You mustn’t treat me as if I’m stupid. Cora wasn’t stupid. She knew right away that she’d been poisoned.”

“I’m certain you’re wrong. No one would want to harm Cora.”

“Not Cora. Me. They were meant for me. She ate some when I was out of the room. When I came back she was sitting on her bed eating them.”

“Slower, please, Mrs. Morrow. I can’t understand you.”

“I ran to her and told her the grapes were poisoned and tried to get them away from her, but it was too late. She was dead, instead of me.”

The picture became suddenly clear to Janet. Cora had been sitting on the bed, eating the grapes, when Mrs. Morrow came in. Cora had looked up, smiling impishly, apologetically, because they weren’t her grapes, after all... The smile fading as Mrs. Morrow lunged across the room to grab the grapes away from her... “They’re poisoned!”

Cora had been frightened to death.

It was all clear. It even accounted for so many of the grapes being spilled around the room. It was one of the things that had worried her — why Cora should have plucked so many of the grapes off the stem, if she had just been sitting there eating them in the ordinary way. But it was perfectly clear now. Everything was settled.

She explained it all to Dr. Goodrich, who seemed relieved, and then set out for home.

Off and on throughout the following week she thought of Lucille Morrow. She was sorry that she had not been able to do more for her, but also a little resentful because if it hadn’t been for Lucille, Cora might still be living.

On Friday morning, the day after Cora’s funeral, Janet returned to the office. She was head buyer for the French Salon at Hampton’s, a department store, and she had a good deal of work to do before she went to New York for the spring clothes preview. But she didn’t get as much work done as she’d hoped to, for about eleven o’clock a policeman came to see her.

Her secretary brought her his card, and Janet turned it over in her hand, frowning. Detective Inspector Sands. Never heard of him. Probably something about parking or driving through a red light. Still, an inspector. Perhaps my car’s been stolen.

“Send him in.” She leaned back in the big chair, filling it comfortably. She looked quite” calm. It wasn’t the first time she’d been visited by a policeman. Cora’s misdemeanors had made her acquainted with a number of them.

But surely, she thought, even Cora couldn’t be raising hell in hell. One corner of her mouth turned up in a regretful little smile.

“Miss Green? I’m Inspector Sands.”

“Oh, yes. Sit down, will you?”

“I’ve come about your sister’s death.”

“Well.” Janet raised her thick black eyebrows. “I thought that was settled at the inquest.”

“The physical end of it, yes... There is no doubt at all that your sister’s death was accidental. It’s Mrs. Morrow’s connection with your sister that I’d like to know more about.”

He sat down, holding his hat in his hands. Janet looked at him maternally/He seemed very frail for a policeman. Probably they had to take just anybody on the force nowadays, with so many able-bodied men drafted. Probably he doesn’t get proper meals and rest, and certainly somebody should do something about his clothes.

Sands recognized her expression. He had, seen it before, and it always caused him trouble.

Tomorrow I enroll with Charles Atlas, he thought.

“Dr. Goodrich and I talked it over,” Janet said. “It wasn’t the poor woman’s fault that she killed Cora. Dr. Goodrich said she was actually very fond of Cora, and in telling her the grapes were poisoned she was trying to save Cora’s life.”

“That’s why I’m here. On Saturday Miss Green died. On Friday you’d been to visit her. Did she say anything about Mrs. Morrow to you then?”

“Oh, she said a few things, I guess. Cora was such a chatterbox sometimes I didn’t pay much attention. She did say that she liked her new roommate and felt sorry for her.”

“Tell me, how many years was your sister at Penwood?”

“Off and on, for nearly ten years. She really liked it there. She was quite sane, you know, and very interested in the psychology of the patients.”

“And not at all nervous about being with them?”

“Not at all.”

“Isn’t it odd, then, that she should have actually believed Mrs. Morrow when Mrs. Morrow told her the grapes were poisoned? She was accustomed to the fancies and vagaries of the other patients. Why did she take Mrs. Morrow seriously?”

“I never thought of that,” Janet said with a frown. “Of course you’re right. Cora would have said, ‘Oh, nonsense,’ or something like that. Unless... well, unless the grapes were really poisoned?”

“They weren’t.”

“I’m very confused. I thought everything was settled, and now — well, now, I don’t know what happened.”

“What happened is clear enough. Your sister died of shock. And why? Because I think she believed Mrs. Morrow, she was convinced that Mrs. Morrow was not insane, that someone was really trying to kill her.”

“You sound,” Janet said, “you sound as if you believe that too.”

“Oh, yes. I do, indeed.”

Janet looked skeptical. “Some of the patients at Penwood can be very convincing, you know.”

“Yes. But your sister isn’t the first of Mrs. Morrow’s associates to die. She’s the third.”

“The — third?”

“Miss Green’s death is the third. I believe it was accidental. The other two were deliberate murders. They remain unsolved.”

He waited while Janet registered first shock at the murders, and then indignation that they were still unsolved. In his mind’s eye he could see the three who had died: Mildred Morrow, young and plump and pretty; ” Eddy Greeley, a diseased and useless derelict; Cora Green, a. harmless little old woman.

Each so dissimilar from the others, all having only one thing in common — Lucille Morrow.

“Well, I don’t know what I can do to help,” Janet said. “I’m sorry I can’t remember more of what Cora said about Mrs. Morrow.”

Sands rose. “That’s all right. It was a slim chance, anyway.”

“Well, I really am sorry,” Janet said, and rose, too, and offered him her hand. “Good-bye. If there’s anything more I can do...”

“No, thanks. Good-bye.”

They shook hands and he went out, into the subdued whispering atmosphere of the French Salon. As he passed through the store the air became warmer, the people noisier, the counters garish with Christmas. Perfume, gloves, specialty aisles, slightly soiled and marked-down underwear, clerks in felt Dutch bonnets, “The Newest Rage,” “Anything on this table 29¢,” “Give her — Hose!”

Throngs of housewives and college girls, harassed males and bewildered children, prams and elbows and tired feet and suffocating air.

He paused beside a tie counter to get his breath. That’s what you see with your eyes open, he thought. The tired feet and shoulder-sag, the faces lined by pain or by poverty, the endless hurry not to get to some place, but to get out of some place.

But you Could stand back and almost close your eyes and see only the happy bustling throng, joyous with Christmas spirit, happy, happy people in a happy, happy world.

Happy. Silly word. Rhymes with sappy and pappy.

The clerk came up. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, thanks,” Sands said. “Everything’s been done for me.”

He fought his way to the door, aware that he was being childish and neurotic, that his own failure condemned him to see at the moment only the failure of others.

He passed through the revolving door on to Yonge Street and drew the cold air into his lungs. He felt better almost immediately, and thought, tomorrow I enroll with Charles Atlas and William Saroyan.

The street crowd was more purposeful in its bustling than the store crowd. The stenographers, bank clerks, truss-builders, typesetters, lawyers arid elevator operators were all in search of food. The elevator operators picked up a hamburger and a cup of coffee at a White Spot. The stenographers ate chicken à la king jammed knee to knee in a Honey Dew, and the lawyers, with less drive and perhaps a more careful use of the privilege of pushing, headed for the Savarin on Bay Street.

On the corner a newsboy about seventy was urging everyone to read all about it in the Globe and Mail. About two o’clock he would be equally vociferous about the Star and Tely and around midnight he would appear again, this time with the Globe and Mail for the following day.

Heraclitus’ state of flux, Sands thought. Not a flowing river, but a merry-go-round, highly mechanized/ with the occasional brass ring for a free ride.

He bought a paper, and with it folded under his arm he walked to the parking lot to get his car.

While he was waiting for the attendant he opened the newspaper and read the want ads. Later he would read the whole thing, but the want ads were the most fascinating part to him. He could, offhand, tell anyone how much it cost to have facial hair permanently removed, how many cocker spaniels were lost and mechanics were needed, the telephone number of a practical nurse and what you did, supposing you owned a horse and the horse died.

Bird’s-eye view of a city.

The attendant returned. Folding the paper again, Sands tipped him and climbed into his car. He forgot about lunch and drove back to his office instead.

The first person he saw when he opened the door was Sergeant D’arcy.

“Good afternoon, sir,” D’arcy said.

When he talked, his prim little mouth moved as little as possible.

“Oh,” Sands said. “What do you want?”

“Well, sir, as a matter of fact I’m not happy in Inspector Bascombe’s department.”

“That’s too damn bad.”

D’arcy flushed. “Well, I mean it, really. Mr. Bascombe is a truly intelligent man, but he is uncouth. He doesn’t understand me. He keeps picking on me.”

“And?”

“I told the Commissioner that my qualifications, educational and otherwise, were of more specific use in your department.” The Commissioner was D’arcy’s uncle by marriage. “I told him I’d be much happier working with you because you don’t pick on me.”

“Then it’s about time I started,” Sands said.

D’arcy took it as a joke and began to giggle. When he giggled the air whistled through his adenoids and the general effect was so unlovely that Sands’ contempt turned momentarily into pity.

“Why you want to be a policeman, I don’t know,” he said.

“I feel that my qualifications, educational and... Stop quoting yourself. Why doesn’t uncle set you up in an interior-decorating business or something? You’d look all right lugging around bolts of velvet.”

“That’s the kind of remark that Mr. Bascombe makes,” D’arcy said stiffly. “My uncle wouldn’t like it if he heard you say that.”

“Your uncle isn’t going to hear,” Sands said pleasantly. “Because if I ever catch you sniveling and tale-telling while you’re in this office...”

“Then I’m really in?” D’arcy said. “This is very good of you, sir. I’m just terribly pleased.”

“Get to work,” Sands said, and went into his private office and slammed the door.

He picked up the inter-office phone and called Bascombe.

“Bascombe? D’arcy’s changing hands again.”

“What a shame,” Bascombe said with a spurt of laughter. “I’ll certainly miss him when I go to the can. Had your lunch?”

“No.”

“I’ll stand you to a blueplate special.”

“What’s behind this?”

“Nothing. I had a letter from Ellen yesterday.”

“Oh.”

“She’s still in Hull but she’s sick of the electrician, she wants to come home.”

“I see. Yeah. You buy me a lunch to pay for my advice which you won’t take?”

“What the hell, I don’t need advice,” Bascombe said. “I wired her the money to come home.”

“That’s swell,” Sands said. “That’s dandy. Pardon me if I’m not hungry.”

“She swears that this time she’s learned her lesson.”

“She’s working her way nicely through grade school. They say the work is tough, but no doubt she likes it.”

“What the hell, what else could I do, but send her the money? She’s my wife.”

“That’s a technicality,” Sands said and quietly put down the phone.

Things were normal again. D’arcy was back, Ellen was back. Ellen had caught the brass ring. Some day someone would put it through her nose, but in the meantime she was seeing the world and a hell of a lot of different kinds of bedroom wallpaper.

The phone rang. It was Bascombe, sounding more uncertain now.

“All right,” he said. “So what do you think I should do, smarty pants?”

“Lock the apartment and disappear. See a lawyer, make some arrangements to give her an allowance if your conscience bothers you. The essential fact is not that Ellen is a tramp, but that she wouldn’t be one if she gave a damn about you or ever had. It’s not a physical thing, she’s not insatiable. She’s just one of these low-grade morons who wants love as it is in the movies. Romance, soft lights and sweet music. All of the trimmings and none of the repercussions. Can be done, but not by Ellen. She’s not bright enough.”

There was a silence. Then Bascombe said, “The blueplate offer still holds.”

“All right. I’ll pick you up on my way down.”

During lunch they didn’t mention Ellen. They talked about the Morrow case. Bascombe’s department had had nothing to do with it since Lucille Morrow had been found. But he had a professional interest in the case, and he listened intently to the story of Cora Green’s death.

“Three of them,” he said when Sands had finished. “Damn odd.”

“Miss Green’s death was, of course, an accident. It wasn’t planned or even imagined by the person responsible for the other two. But the hellish part of it is, her death is serving a purpose. It’s driving Mrs. Morrow past the borderline of sanity. And that, I believe, is the ultimate motive — to get Mrs. Morrow. The driving power behind it is hate. Mrs. Morrow must be made to suffer, perhaps eventually she must be killed. But the present setup may stand. Someone is getting an exquisite pleasure in seeing Mrs. Morrow trying to cling to the wreck of her mind.”

“Jes — us,” Bascombe said. “Damn funny the mere sight of an amputated finger would send her crazy, though.”

“It didn’t. It wasn’t the finger itself, but her own state of mind at the time and the implications of the finger. A dead finger meant to her a dead woman — Mildred, the first wife; and a death warning to her, the second wife. Who can tell, if she doesn’t? Perhaps to her it was a sexual symbol, a token of her marriage.” He looked at Bascombe and added softly, “And perhaps it meant more, much more than that.

“Of course it’s a member of her family. No one else could hate her so thoroughly, or know enough of her weaknesses to attempt such a refined sport as driving her insane. Greeley did his share in helping. To a woman who has lived a cultured, quiet, comfortable life the mere contact with a man like Greeley must have been a shock. And the sending of the finger was a piece of mental sadism that I’ve rarely seen equaled.”

“Who in hell would even think of sending a finger? And where did it come from?”

“The Morrow family can offer no suggestions. They are united on one thing — that the police have no right to bother them, that they are having enough trouble as it is. I questioned them at their house. When I was leaving, Dr. Morrow took me aside and asked me everything about the finger. He looked frightened, as if he knew quite a lot that he wasn’t telling.”

“The Morrow women,” Bascombe said dryly, “have bad luck.”

“But the method is getting more genteel. From axes to suggestion. I’ve gone through all the police files and press clippings on Mildred Morrow. The first person to check in a wife-murder is, of course, the husband. Dr. Morrow not only had a complete alibi but the news of his wife’s death put him in a hospital with brain fever. There’s nothing phony there. The hospital records and charts stand, and the woman whose baby he was delivering at the time Mildred was killed is still living and remembers the night very well. All this, and the fact that he had no possible motive, puts Dr. Morrow in the clear.”

“Morrow seems to have bad luck too.” Bascombe finished a piece of pie and pushed the plate away. “Don’t we all?”

“You picked yours.”

“Don’t labor the point. Coming?”

Sands said he was not going back to the office. He had an appointment at the Ford Hotel.

Fifteen minutes later he was facing Lieutenant Frome across a small writing desk at the Ford.

Frome was very stiff and very military. In clipped tones he told Sands that he had recently finished his Transport Officer’s course at the Canadian Driving and Maintenance School at Woodworth. He was now waiting to be transferred overseas. It was his last furlough and he had intended to spend it getting married. How he actually was spending it was sitting around this dreary hotel waiting for Polly Morrow to make up her mind.

As he talked Frome became less a soldier and more an ordinary man with a grievance.

“I can’t understand it,” he told Sands. “She’s got some idea in her head that I’ve walked out on her. What I did was come down here. The rest of the family didn’t want me there. Why should they? I’m a stranger to them.” He forgot that Sands was a policeman on official business. Sands let him talk uninterrupted. He liked listening to people’s problems, it was a little more personal than the want ads.

“Martin’s been O.K.,” Frome said. “He says Polly likes to boss people around until there’s an emergency and then she has to be bossed. I don’t understand women. I’m from the West, Alberta. Women don’t act like this out there.”

“Don’t they,” Sands murmured.

“In fact, the whole thing has been a mess from the time I met her family. Practically before we said hello we had to run into a train wreck.”

“Oh? Who was with you?”

“Polly and her father and Martin. I was so damn nervous anyway about meeting her family — I’d only known her for three weeks. And then running into that mess and ending up by picking up bodies...” He looked bitterly at Sands, as if Sands had engineered the whole thing. “All right. What did you want to ask me?”

Sands smiled. “Nothing. Not a thing. Just dropped in to see how you were.”

Still smiling, he walked across the lobby, pausing at the door to wave his hand cheerfully.

“Everybody’s crazy,” Lieutenant Frome told the bartender some time later. “Everyone’s crazy but me.”

“Sure,” the bartender said. “Sure.”

Chapter 10

On the day of Cora’s death Lucille was transferred to a room of her own and put in the charge of a special nurse.

Miss Eustace had a highly specialized and difficult job. She called herself a free-lance psychiatric nurse. She worked in institutions and private homes, taking over twenty-four-hour-a-day care of violent or depressed patients to prevent them from doing harm to themselves or to others.

Her reputation and her wages were high, and she was regarded with awe by the other nurses, who felt the strain of even eight-hour duty on a disturbed ward. Over forty now, Miss Eustace considered herself a dull woman and was always surprised when she was praised for her skill and endurance and patience. In addition to these qualities Miss Eustace had a firm belief in God, a working knowledge of judo, and the ability to sleep and awaken as quickly as a dog. Only once had she been injured on a case, and that had been with one of her own knitting needles. She subsequently gave up knitting, and for amusement she played solitaire and wrote letters or simply talked.

Lucille refused food for nearly a week and on the fourth day Miss Eustace force-fed her by tube.

When it was over Miss Eustace said calmly, “It’s very undignified, isn’t it? Especially for a pretty woman like you.”

Almost unconsciously Lucille turned her head toward the mesh-covered mirror. Pretty? Me? Where is my hair?

“Tonight we’ll have a bit of soup together,” Miss Eustace continued. “You can’t possibly starve yourself to death, you know. It takes too long.”

Miss Scott, trained in a different tradition, would have been horrified to hear Miss Eustace speaking of “death” or “starving” to a patient. On the level of pure theory Miss Scott may have been right, but Miss Eustace got results. For supper Lucille had a bowl of soup and a custard, and some faint trace of color returned to her pallid drawn face.

But she was losing weight rapidly. Her clothes sagged on her body, and there were hollows beneath her cheekbones and a little sac of flesh under her chin. She never bothered to comb her hair and had to be told when to wash her hands. Though she seemed to listen quite attentively when Miss Eustace was talking, she rarely answered, and what talking she did was at night after she had been given a sedative. At these times she was like a person who, after a certain number of drinks, feels he is thinking and talking very clearly and brilliantly, with no consciousness of his blurred speech.

Miss Eustace went on playing solitaire and marking down her score. Out of one hundred and forty-nine games she had only won eleven. (But then it was, she wrote to her mother, a very difficult type of solitaire.)

“All of it is Mildred’s fault,” Lucille muttered into the shadows. “Mildred...”

(“My case is just popping off to sleep,” Miss Eustace wrote, steadily. “So please excuse the writing as just the floor light is on and it isn’t very bright in here.”)

“Miss Eustace!”

“Here I am,” Miss Eustace said pleasantly. “Would you like a drink?”

“I keep thinking about Mildred.”

“Turn over and think about something else.”

“What have they done with my hair?”

(“She wants to know what they’ve done with her hair,” Miss Eustace wrote. “They do think of quite the oddest things to say sometimes.”)

Lucille turned over in the bed. Think about something else. Not about Mildred. But look, see Mildred’s hair. How coarse it looked, each hair as thick as a tube, moving, writhing like snakes, oh, Miss Eustace, oh, please God.

(“I really feel sorriest of all for the family. After all, they’re still sane. My case’s family came today, visitors’ day, but they couldn’t see her, Dr. Goodrich’s orders.”) The snakes writhed and bled in spurts, covering Mildred’s face with their blood — go away, go away — I won’t look at you...

“Bloody, bloody,” she said, softly.

(“The language some of them use! I declare, for a Christian woman, I do know some of the awfullest words. I’d blush to repeat them. It even disturbs me when someone refers to our darling Lassie as a ‘bitch.’ I just can’t get used to it. Give Lassie a bone for me and tell her I’ll be coming home soon.”)

“I can’t sleep,” Lucille said.

“You’re trying too hard. Just close your eyes and think of something nice and soothing, like rain or grass waving or trees.”

Grass. I am thinking of grass and trees. The park, late at night, black, but moving, astir with shapes and shadows — be careful, look over your shoulder, there is something there — careful! Ah. It’s only Martin, don’t be afraid. Martin? Is it Martin, or Edith? It’s too dark, I don’t know. But it’s a friend, I can tell. Such a nice face, so wide and frank and candid.

Suddenly it closed up like a fist. Where the eyes and mouth had been there were only folds of skin, and two holes for a nose and little buds of ears.

“I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!”

“What can’t you stand? You just tell me and we’ll fix it in a jiffy.”

“I see — things...”

“How about some nice warm milk? I find warm milk puts me off just like that.”

“No... no...”

The warm milk was sent for, but when it arrived Lucille couldn’t drink it.

“It smells bad.”

“Why, it smells perfectly all right to me. Look, I’ll take a sip first, how would that be?”

“It’s bad.”

Miss Eustace took a number of sips to encourage her and pretty soon the milk was gone. Refreshed, Miss Eustace returned to her letter.

The smell of the milk lingered in the room, very faint and subtle, like the smell of blood or fresh snow.

(“The poor woman really thinks someone is trying to poison her.” Miss Eustace’s pen moved in slow rhythm across the page. “I have found the best thing to do is to take a taste of everything before she does. It reassures her. Perhaps it’s not very sanitary, but!”)

The scratching of the pen was barely audible but Lucille’s ears magnified the sound. The sedative was wearing off, leaving her nerves raw and her senses too acute. Though she hadn’t drunk the milk, the taste lingered on her tongue, a furry gray-white sickness. The giant claws of the pen dug deep into the paper, and Miss Eustace’s quiet breathing was loud as a wind.

She turned over again. The blankets were heavy on top of her, painful and suffocating. She flung them off, and cool air struck her bare legs, and she began to shiver.

Silently Miss Eustace crossed the room and lowered the window.

“Do you want me to rub your back?”

“No.”

“It might help. Can’t have any more sedatives tonight, you know.”

In a sudden fury Lucille told her what she could do with all sedatives.

Miss Eustace remained calm. “Now, now.”

“You drank all my milk. I wanted it!”

“We’ll get you some more.”

“I wanted that milk.”

Miss Eustace walked briskly into the bathroom and came back with a box of talcum powder.

“Roll over. We’ll try a back rub.”

“No!” Like a child she kept saying “No!” even while she was complying.

Miss Eustace turned back her sleeves, revealing the highly developed forearm muscles that mark an experienced nurse.

Up and down. Across and around. As she worked Miss Eustace talked in a monotone about her mother, her dog Lassie, her pretty sister who had just been married.

At first the pain of her hands was unbearable to Lucille, but gradually she relaxed, and flung herself on the mercy of her dreams.

Miss Eustace opened the window and sat down on the edge of her cot to take off her slippers. The last thing she did before she went to bed was to cover Lucille.

Lucille tossed and turned in her sleep under the light blankets that seemed to bind her legs and waist. Her sleeping mind was alive and sentient in her fingers, her nipples, her hips, her thighs, the sensitive palms of her feet; but it seemed to lie caught in a net of words. Miss Eustace my father and my murther flusitering in the aviary tower in vanity all inanity ah night my sweethurt take me out of the dunjuan through the griefclanging door to the godpeace of sir night. She struggled in the web of words, the blankets fell to the floor, and the web parted.

Her dreaming mind moved in images across the unforgotten fields of the unconscious, seen forever for the first time. Across the footstippled snow she moved like a gull, like a ghoul, leaving no track, casting no shadow. The iron gate stood ajar behind her, the sky curved over her head, poised and ponderous like an unclosed trap. Along the highway which ran like a ruler to the house where she must go, a line of cars went by, their wheels mourning on the road. Their drivers were faceless with grief and doubt and malice: Polly, Martin, Andrew, Edith, faceless things passing to nothingness on the straight and narrow assembly-line of doom.

A man in gray clothes whose facelessness looked four ways stopped his car by the gate, and the line of cars extending to the horizon stopped. He stretched out a gray aspen-quaking hand to assist her and the door of the car closed behind her softly like a mouth. The gray car moved on the gray road and the line of cars began to hurry hurry. The driver scanned the road ahead, and the woman in the back seat, and the bloody snow in the ditch, with omniscient eyelessness.

The car dissolved around her like a mist and the funeral procession went on forever over other hills, white rising hills pimpled with blood. She was alone among the pine’s, walking in a tunnel of dark-dripping pines which led to the house which led to the house the house. She could see its white portico like a grinning mouth with long teeth, grinning in pain or menace. Behind the smiling pillars the doors and windows blazed with light, but she knew there was nobody home.

As she approached, the lights faded slowly like recognition in dying eyes, and the portico grinned alone like a jawbone bared by worms. Passing a pillar she touched it with her hand and felt the rotting plaster. Within the house a faint stench of mold hung in the air like a souring regret. Moving in the earthy darkness she knew it was a tomb she had entered. It was terrible to step into a tomb, but she must find what she had come to get. The book of life which was the book of death.

Suddenly the house was as friendly and multiform as a large family spawned suddenly like mushrooms. As she climbed the hunched stairs the walls nudged her with obscene expectancy, the treads creaked like the malicious cackle of children, the curtains on the landing curved outward and divided like fingers to pinch her buttocks and stroke her thighs. She took a knife from her bosom and cut them away, and the severed fingers fell down and danced like babies at her feet.

I must find, the book, her fear said, and she went to her room and opened the bureau drawer. The Sangraal radiance of the book lit the room, and she saw it as she remembered it and knew she was remembering it, knew she was dreaming. Thank God, she said or dreamed, with the diary in her hands. Thank God, no one has taken it. She opened the book, the cover came off like the lid of a box, and the finger wriggled and squirmed inside like a mangled worm.

Out of the grinning tomb the gravestench house she ran with her hair coiling on her head like snakes like long dead nervous hands. The gray car came up to the door and the gray man led her into the little room behind the gathered curtains, where the dead slept on rollers under gravestench flowers. The long gray-curtained car moved away on rollers through the maze of streets cast over the city like a concrete net, along the gelid lake, the hill-flanked forests, beyond the triune towers, the many-nippled mountains into space which expanded utterly as they moved into bright anguished light beyond through the hard and alien blaze to the extreme edge. The bleak and brilliant sword-edge of death.

The lights at Penwood are never out. At night they are dimmed to give the illusion that darkness and sleep come naturally here as they do in the other world, but even at midnight and from a distance you can see the glow of Penwood.

There were always night noises. Someone screamed, someone wanted to go to the bathroom; or someone died, and the stretcher rolled softly up and down the inclines.

In the morning the roosters crowed, the cows made their sad sounds, the night nurses washed their patients and went off duty, and another day began. Breakfast, doctors’ rounds, occupational therapy, lunch, rest, walk outside or in gym, private talks in doctors’ offices, dinner, music and card games, bed.

The routine was subject to sudden changes. Wet packs or continual baths had to be given, or Miss Sims might obey her hidden voice and defile herself with food at the table, or Miss Filsinger might get out of the dining room with a forbidden spoon.

Miss Eustace woke early, and was immediately alert. Lucille was stirring but she hadn’t opened her eyes, so Miss Eustace used the bathroom first. She washed her face and hands, cleaned her teeth thoroughly, and put on a fresh uniform.

Returning, she found Lucille awake.

“Good morning. Have a nice sleep?”

“Is it morning?” Lucille said.

“Oh my, yes. But it doesn’t seem like it, does it? That’s the one thing I don’t like about winter, getting up before the sun.”

While she talked she glanced with a professional eye at Lucille. She seemed rested and quite calm. Though Miss Eustace knew the calmness wouldn’t last, she always considered it a good idea to take advantage of even a momentary improvement.

“Let’s go down to breakfast this morning,” she said cheerfully. “Some new faces would be good for you. Certainly you must be pretty tired of mine.”

Lucille looked a little surprised. She hadn’t, until this moment, been conscious that Miss Eustace had a face. Miss Eustace was uniform and authority, a starched white impersonalized symbol of “we.”

“Let’s wear the red dress. There’s something so cheery about red on a winter morning, I find.”

Lucille had no answer to this. None was possible. Miss Eustace had made up her mind that she, Lucille, in a red dress on a winter morning, should go down to breakfast.

“It’s like a nursery school,” she said.

“What is?”

“This place.”

Miss Eustace laughed. “I suppose it is. Here’s your toothbrush.”

While Lucille was dressing, Miss Eustace made the two beds, timing herself by her watch. Two minutes for Lucille’s bed, one minute, thirty-seven seconds for her own. With pride she marked the times down on her solitaire score pad.

Before she left she opened two windows wide to give the room a good airing, hung up Lucille’s nightgown in the closet, and put her own wrinkled uniform in a laundry bag. Then, with a clear conscience and a good appetite, she went down to breakfast.

The dining room was quiet and orderly. The patients ate at small round tables in groups of three or four.

Automatically Lucille walked to the table where she had sat before with Cora and the Filsinger twins.

Miss Eustace said “Good morning,” to the twins, and then seated Lucille and herself.

“We personally don’t want you here,” Mary Filsinger said. “We like a table to ourselves. I’ve told the superintendent so a dozen times, haven’t I, Betty?”

“I don’t know,” Betty said, with her mouth full. “Don’t stuff your mouth so. It’s disgusting. Chew one hundred times.”

“I can swallow everything whole,” Betty explained proudly to Miss Eustace.

“Don’t talk to her,” Mary said. “She’s a spy.”

Smiling and calm Miss Eustace began to talk about her house in the country and what she had for breakfast there and how her tulip tree first blossomed in the spring and when the blossoms fell off the leaves appeared.

“What color blossoms?” Mary asked, suspiciously. “Pale pink, almost white, really.”

“That’s very funny about the leaves. I don’t believe it for a minute.”

“It’s true,” Lucille said suddenly. “I had a tulip tree, too.”

“I wish I had one,” Betty said.

Her sister touched her hand. “I’ll buy you one.”

“You always say that and you never do.”

“Ungrateful liar.”

“HI swallow something whole if you call me that.”

“Oh, Betty, don’t! Darling, please don’t!”

A maid arrived with orange juice, oatmeal cooked with raisins and a covered dish of eggs on toast.

Lover-like, the twins quarreled, while Miss Eustace talked about dogs. Collies were nice, and so were cocker spaniels, but she preferred Airedales, really. They were very faithful.

“Cats are best,” said Mary, unable to resist Miss Eustace’s dangling bait. “We like cats best of all.”

“Well, cats are nice too,” Miss Eustace agreed. “What do you like best, Mrs. Morrow?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lucille said. “Dogs, I guess.”

“Dogs are vicious,” Mary said, and closed her mouth decisively on a piece of toast.

“Some of them are, of course,” Miss Eustace went on. “It depends mostly on the training and to a certain extent on heredity. I personally have never been able to quite trust a chow, for instance.”

“I’d rather have a tulip tree,” Betty said.

Mary leaned over and muttered something in her ear but Betty tossed her head and looked scornful.

Miss Eustace watched Lucille out of the corner of her eye to see if the scene interested her or upset her. She noted with approval that Lucille had eaten half of her oatmeal, and, though she didn’t talk voluntarily herself, except for the remark about her tulip tree, she seemed to be following the conversation.

We should have quite a good day, Miss Eustace thought, and felt pleased with herself.

The twins were fighting again, in low voices but with a great many flashing glances and passionate gestures. Finally Mary retreated into cold silence, and it was then that Miss Eustace saw her pick up her spoon and tuck it carefully into the bun of hair at the back of her head.

With a furtive glance around the room Mary rose and made for the door. Miss Eustace rose too.

“We’re not supposed to take spoons out of the dining-room,” she said kindly. “Put it back please.”

“Spoon?” Mary cried in great surprise. “What spoon?”

“Put it back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The nurse in charge of the dining room was making her way toward them between the tables. She had the spoon out of Mary’s hair before Mary was aware it was missing.

“Now, Mary,” she said. “You know better than to do that. This is the second time this week.”

“I’m running away,” Mary cried. “I’m leaving her flat. She can’t treat me like that and get away with it! I’m running away so she’ll know what it’s like to be left with no one to look after her!”

“I’ll swallow something,” Betty said calmly, and before anyone could stop her she had removed her ring from her finger and popped it in her mouth. Gulping and gasping she was dragged out of the room and pounded vigorously on the back by the nurse. But it was too late, the ring had already joined the collection of other articles in Betty’s stomach.

The twins departed in disgrace with Miss Scott.

“Her insides must be a regular museum,” the dining-room nurse said to Miss Eustace. “I’m going to catch it for this.”

“It wasn’t your fault at all,” Miss Eustace said and returned to the table to finish her breakfast.

The episode had apparently made no impression on Lucille. She was intent on her toast, breaking it up into small pieces and arranging them symmetrically around the plate.

She’s being very co-operative, Miss Eustace thought, she’s really trying to eat.

Aloud she said, “Sugar for your coffee?”

“Yes, thanks.”

The fat pink sugar bowl was passed. Lucille would not touch it, its flesh was too pink, too perfect. Not real flesh at all, she thought, but she knew it was because she could see it breathing.

Miss Eustace’s spoon clanged against the grains of sugar. “One or two?”

“One”

“There. Stir it up before you drink it. No, dear, stir it up first.”

She picked up her spoon, dreading the feel of it. Everything was alive, everything hurt. She was hurting the spoon, and though it looked stupid and inert it was hurting her in return, digging into her fingers.

“Not so hard, Mrs. Morrow.”

Round the cup the spoon dashed in fury and pain, stirring up the hot muddy waves and all the little alive things. She swallowed them, in triumph because she had won, and in despair, because, swallowed and out of sight, they would take vengeance on her.

Everything was alive. The floor that hurt your shoes that hurt your feet. The napkin that touched your dress that pressed against your thighs. Pain everywhere.

No privacy. You could never be alone. You always had to touch things and have them touch you. You had to swallow and be swallowed, have things inside you — alive things...

Her shoulders began to twitch.

She’s impatient to leave, Miss Eustace thought. A good sign. Usually she just wants to stay where I’ve put her.

Miss Eustace rose. Callously her feet struck the floor, roughly she folded the napkins.

“Come along and we’ll get the mail.”

She put out her hand as if to help Lucille up. Lucille stared at the hand, and a shriek began to rise up inside her, making her throat raw and thick.

Miss Eustace saw the screaming eyes and began to talk fast and at the same time to coax her with gentle fingers out into the corridor.

The mail — push — what did she suppose she’d get this morning? — push — you never could tell with mail — parcels were the best, though...

Arm in arm, close, intimate, they strolled down the corridor.

They stopped at the mail desk. Andrew’s daily box of flowers had arrived, but the incoming mail had not come yet and the girl behind the wicket was looking over the patients’ outgoing mail. She picked up an envelope labeled in red crayon. “Wother.”

“Look at this,” she said, and passed the letter through the wicket to Miss Eustace. “He writes dozens of them every day.”

“Wother? What’s that?”

“He inverts his M’s. He means his mother. I can’t let his letters go out, I have to take them in to Dr. Nathan. They upset his mother terribly because all the boy does is complain.”

“Hush,” said Miss Eustace with a frown toward Lucille.

But Lucille hadn’t heard anything. She was standing with her arms tight around the box of flowers. Brutally, the box hugged her breasts, and she embraced the pain.

“Though I just hate to suppress any letters,” the girl said. “It’s against my principles.”

“Dear Wother,” Miss Eustace read. “I can’t stand it any longer the inflationary bargains of the state of the world, wother they are cruel to we they hate we and hardly any consequence could eventuate under the status quo of”

It was not signed but there was a row of X’s at the bottom.

“Such a pity,” said Miss Eustace, sighing. “I always say, it’s the family that suffers most.” She raised her voice. “Mrs. Morrow, you’re crushing the box. Shall we go back up now or do you want to wait for the mail?”

“I don’t know,” Lucille said.

“Then I suppose we might as well wait. Shall we open the flowers?”

Lucille’s grasp on the box tightened for an instant and then quite suddenly her fingers relaxed and the box fell on the floor. The lid came off and there was a spill of violets.

“Oh, the darlings,” said Miss Eustace, picking them up. “Aren’t they grand? Such an earthy smell, somehow.” She nuzzled them while Lucille watched, suffering in silence for the violets, the long-limbed delicate children, too delicate to breathe and so, dead, and blue in the face, giving off the smell of earth, earth-buried coffins.

The live floor quivered under her feet, the air touched her cheeks and arms, its caress a warning and a threat, and the violets returned to life. They had only been holding their breath like Cora, and their little bruised faces puckered in pain! Oh, I hurt, I hurt, and what have I done? Oh, what have I done?

So tight and sad did the little faces become that they turned into eyes, damp blue eyes dragging their limp and single legs behind them into the box.

“Here you are,” Miss Eustace said, passing the box to her. “Why, they’re just the color of your eyes.”

Lucille felt the sharp corner of the box touch her arm. The pain was so intense and unbearable that she had to reach out and grab the box and thrust the corner of it into her breast like a knife.

I have died. I am dead.

She smiled, and clutching the symbol of death, she moved silently and swiftly down the corridor.

“Mrs. Morrow, wait for me!” Miss Eustace caught up with her, panting. “Well, I declare, I didn’t know you were in that much of a hurry. Were you going somewhere?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“I want some fresh air.”

“Oh, you do?” Miss Eustace said, half-pleased, half-suspicious.

“I want some fresh air.”

“Well, let’s wait a bit until the sun gets stronger, then we’ll go out on the roof garden, there’s such a pretty view from there. Wait here a minute and I’ll go back for the mail.”

Miss Eustace returned to the wicket, moving in a kind of sideways fashion so that she could keep Lucille in sight. Lucille made no attempt to get away from her. She stood, straight and alert, as if she was standing guard over something precious to her.

Miss Eustace came back. “Here’s a letter for you, dear. Now aren’t you glad we waited?”

Lucille wouldn’t take the letter so Miss Eustace put it in the pocket of her uniform. So unnatural not to be interested in mail, she thought, and tried again when they reached the room.

“Here’s your letter. You can read it while I’m doing the chart. Sit down right there. I’ll put the flowers in water.”

She settled Lucille in a chair and placed the letter on her lap. Then, humming softly, she went into the bathroom and filled a Monel vase with water. She was always excited by mail, other people’s as well as her own. Even the most commonplace observations on the weather were glamorous when sealed and postmarked, with privacy protected by His Majesty, King George VI.

I wonder who it’s from, she thought, and returned to the room. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

“I don’t care.”

Miss Eustace, thrilled, slit the envelope with an efficient thumbnail.

“It’s signed ‘Edith.’ I always peek at the end of a letter just to see who it’s from. Well, here goes. ‘Dear Lucille: I hope you received the chocolates and pillow rest I sent day before yesterday.’ Well, of course, we did, didn’t we? Those back rests are very comfy. ‘It is very difficult to get chocolates these days, one has to stand in line.’ Wasn’t it silly of you to destroy them when she went to so much trouble to buy them?”

Lucille turned her head and looked deliberately out of the window. It is very difficult to get poisoned chocolates these days, one has to stand in line.

“ ‘We all miss you a great deal, though I feel so hopeless saying it because I know you won’t believe it.’ ”

I feel so hopeless.

“ ‘Everything is such a mess. The policeman Sands was here again, talking about the train wreck. You remember that afternoon? I don’t know what he was getting at, but whoever did anything to you, Lucille, it wasn’t me, Lucille, it was not me! I don’t know, I can’t figure anything out any more. I have this sick headache nearly all the time and Martin is driving me crazy.’ ”

“She isn’t very cheerful, is she?” said Miss Eustace in disapproval. “Shall I go on?”

“Go on.”

“Very well. ‘They have always seemed like my own children to me, the two of them, and now, I don’t know, I look at them and they’re like strangers. Meals are the worst time. We watch each other. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s terrible — we watch each other.’ ” Silly woman, thought Miss Eustace, and turned the page.

“ ‘I know Andrew Wouldn’t like me to be writing a letter like this. But, Lucille, you’re the only one I can talk to now. I feel I’d rather be there with you, I’ve always liked and trusted you.’ ”

I’ve always loathed and been jealous of you. We watched each other.

“ ‘Everything is so mixed up. Do you remember the night Giles came and I said, God help me, that we were a happy family? I feel this is a judgment on me for my smugness and wickedness. I don’t know how it will all end.’ ”

This is a judgment on me for my wickedness. It will all end.

“That’s all,” said Miss Eustace.

That is all. It will all end and that is all.

Miss Eustace returned the letter to its envelope, her movements brisk because she was annoyed. People shouldn’t write problem letters. Letters should be nice and homey and rather dull.

“Let’s bundle all up and get some nice fresh air, shall we?”

Lucille didn’t move. She sat, heavy and inert, while Miss Eustace lifted her arms into her coat and tied a scarf around her head and put on her gloves.

The roof garden glittered in the sun. Snow clung to the high fence, and where the strands of barbed wire ran around the top, there were globules of snow caught on the barbs.

Slowly Lucille walked over to the fence and put her hand on it. Snow sifted down on her upturned face, touching her eyelids lightly and coldly. She looked down through the fence and saw little people walking, their tracks behind them in the snow the only sign that they were real. So tiny and futile they seemed from a distance, like the skiers in the park.

Futile, futile, she thought and pressed her forehead hard against the fence, branding her flesh with a diamond.

“Goodness, I just can’t look down from high places,” Miss Eustace said. “It makes me quite dizzy.”

She looked down anyway, shivering with cold and dread delight. Then she stepped back, and squinted her eyes against the sun. She breathed deeply because she didn’t get much fresh air in her job and she had to get as much of it as she could when the chance came.

In — hold — out — hold — in — hold...

Miss Eustace felt glad to be alive.

Lucille remained pressed against the fence. She did not feel the cold, the pain, the heat of the sun. She was not aware of Miss Eustace behind her. She looked down, her eyes strained. The snow burst into orange flame, the sharp black shadows pointed at her, the smoke curled up at her, the windows stared at her, the wind went past whispering, it will all end.

In and out Miss Eustace breathed. She was beginning to wheeze a little but when she spoke she sounded triumphant.

“One hundred. Phew! I didn’t realize just breathing was such hard work. Still, I always say there’s practically nothing the matter with anybody that one hundred deep breaths won’t cure. Shall we walk a bit now?”

Lucille didn’t answer, but Miss Eustace was feeling too invigorated to care. She strode away, planting her feet firmly, making nice clear tracks in the snow.

Twenty strides north, twenty strides south, in the rising wind.

It will all end.

“If you don’t move around a bit, Mrs. Morrow, you’ll be cold.”

I will be burned in the snow they are waiting for me it will all end.

“No, really, you mustn’t take your gloves off, dear, your hands will freeze.”

She could feel Miss Eustace coming up behind her, but she didn’t hurry with the second glove, she didn’t even look to see what she was doing. She was filled with a great power because for the first time in weeks she knew now what she must do. Miss Eustace, no one, could stop her.

Her hands clung to the fence like eagle’s claws, and she began to climb. Slowly. There was no hurry. She braced herself by catching the heels of her shoes in the fence holes, and up she climbed, bent double, her coat flapping around her.

Miss Eustace screamed “Stop!” and caught hold of one of her ankles and pulled. The heel of the other shoe came down viciously on the bridge of her nose and there was a crunch of bone and a spurt of blood. Miss Eustace lurched back screaming and wiping the blood out of her eyes.

“Come back! Come back!”

No — no — this is a judgment on me for my wickedness...

The barbed wire tore her hands and her face, but she felt nothing, made no sound. At the top she hoisted herself over, clumsily, but with great strength. Her coat caught on a barb and for a second she hung suspended in the air, a grotesque thing, bleeding and flapping.

Then the threads of the coat broke and she fell. Her big black shadow slid quietly down the wall of the building.