Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 6. Whole No. 211, June 1961

Fletcher Flora The Spent Days

Cora Rogan came upon the girl at a curve in the walk where a white birch cast a pattern of light shade. She was sitting cross-legged on the grass under the birch, just at the edge of the walk, and shadows of leaves danced with the warm breeze in her hair and on her white dress.

She was playing jacks. She would lean forward and scatter the small metal pieces on the smooth concrete, and then she would toss a rubber ball into the air, letting it bounce once, and between the time it rose and fell and rose on the bounce, she would scoop up some of the jacks, whatever number was required at that particular stage of the game, and catch in the same hand the ball as it descended. She was wonderfully adept at it.

Cora stood and watched her do her twos and threes without a miss. If she was aware of Cora’s presence, she gave no sign.

“Hello,” Cora said, after a while.

The girl looked up and smiled, holding the jacks and rubber ball in her right hand. She had a small, heart-shaped face with large gray eyes. Although she was very pretty, it was not her prettiness that Cora was struck with, but the serenity in her eyes and smile that seemed to be of a piece with the way she held her hands and head and sat so quietly cross-legged on the grass.

“Hello,” she said.

“I was watching you play. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Why should I?”

“I don’t know. It might make you nervous and cause you to miss.”

“I never get nervous, and I hardly ever miss. Only once in a while, when I get to some of the more difficult things.”

“You’re quite good, all right. I could see that.”

“Would you care to play a game with me?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Oh, it’s very simple. I’ll show you as we go along.”

“All right, but you mustn’t expect me to be much competition.”

Cora sat down beside the girl in position to use the concrete walk to play on. She could hear someone whistling a tune behind a spirea bush farther along the walk, but no one was in sight.

“You must throw out the jacks,” the girl said, “and pick them up while the ball bounces. Then you must catch the ball in the same hand with the jacks. First you do one at a time, and then two at a time, until finally you must pick them all up together. After that, there are some more difficult things to do.”

“Perhaps you’d better explain the more difficult things when we come to them.”

“Yes. I thought that would be better. What you must remember is that it’s very important how you throw the jacks out. You must try to throw them so that it’s easy to pick them up in ones or twos or threes or whatever number.”

“I see.”

“If you touch a jack you aren’t supposed to pick up, or even make it move by pushing another jack against it, that means you miss and must give up your turn.”

“All right. I think I understand it up to the more difficult things.”

“Then you may have first turn.”

She handed Cora the ball and jacks, and Cora threw out the jacks and began to play. She went through the ones all right, and through the twos, but she missed on the threes.

“That was very good for a beginning,” the girl said.

“Do you think so? Thank you.”

“If you had thrown out the threes a little more carefully, you could have gone right on.”

“I threw them too hard, I think.”

“Yes, they were too scattered for threes. The ball bounced twice before you could pick them up. Did you understand that it’s a miss if the ball bounces twice?”

“Yes. I understood that.”

“I believe I neglected to tell you.”

“That’s all right. I knew it.”

“Then it’s my turn.”

She gathered up the jacks and threw them out and began to play and was soon through the game as far as she had explained it. Then she began to do the more difficult plays, explaining each one carefully and clearly before attempting it, so that Cora would know in advance exactly what was required of her.

Some of the plays demanded considerable dexterity, but she completed them all in order, after explanations, and then she laughed with pleasure in her skill, at the same time looking at Cora ruefully because of beating her so easily.

“You’re far too good for me,” Cora said.

“Well, it’s mostly a matter of practice. I shouldn’t be surprised if you became quite good after you’ve played a while.”

“I could never become as good as you.”

“Would you like to play on through, just to learn? Misses won’t count. I’ll explain things again as you go along.”

“Oh, no. That wouldn’t be any fun for you.”

“I don’t mind. We could play another game after you’ve practiced.”

“No, thank you. I know when I’m thoroughly beaten.” Cora laughed and stood up, looking down at the shadows of leaves in pale hair. “I’m on my way up to the house to see your mother. Is she there?”

“Yes. She’s on the back terrace, I think.”

“Is your father there too?”

“My father’s dead. He died before I was born.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“My mother killed him. She shot him accidentally.”

“What a terrible mistake!”

“She told me about it herself when I was old enough to understand. She thought it would be better than having me hear it from someone else.”

"Your mother was wise to tell it to you in her own way.”

“What do you want to see my mother about?”

“I thought she might like to contribute to a charity I’m interested in.”

“Well, I don’t know. Mother’s very rich, of course, because of all the money Father left her, but she already has certain charities she supports.”

“In any case, it will do no harm to ask her, will it?”

“No. You can go right around the house to the terrace if you like."

“I don’t think I’d better do that. I’ll ring at the front door and ask permission to see her first.”

“Perhaps that would be better. Will you be back this way soon?”

“Probably. Pretty soon.”

“If I’m still here, I’ll say goodbye to you then.”

“That would be nice.”

“Thank you for playing jacks with me.”

“You’re quite welcome, I’m sure The pleasure was mine.”

Cora turned away and went on up the curving concrete walk past a small fountain showering water like shards of glittering glass into the sunlight. Beyond the fountain she ascended three wide steps and passed between tall columns onto the veranda of a Colonial-style house.

The house was white with dark green shutters at the windows, and it looked cool and gracious in the while, hot light of the afternoon. It was, in fact, much cooler on the veranda, out of the sun, and Cora waited for a few seconds with the most delicious sense of relief and pleasure before ringing the door-bell.

She was still thinking of the little girl under the white birch beside the walk, and it seemed to her a favorable omen that she had come across her on this particular day.

It takes Jacks or better to open, she thought, feeling with the thought the delightful, tremulous sensation of inner laughter.

She rang the doorbell and waited, listening to the sounds of diminishing chimes, and soon the door was opened by a woman in the uniform of a maid. Conditioned air, escaping, flowed outward.

“Yes?” the maid said.

“I would like to see Mrs. Morrow,” Cora said.

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Cora Rogan.”

“Will you state the nature of your visit, please?”

“It’s personal. If Mrs. Morrow will be so kind as to see me, I’ll take only a few minutes of her time."

“If you’ll step in and wait a minute, I’ll speak with Mrs. Morrow.”

Cora stepped into a wide hall which divided ahead of her, ascending spirally on the right to the second floor and running on the left through the house to the rear.

The maid closed the front door and walked down the hall past the staircase, turning and disappearing into a room on the right side, and Cora remained standing in the cool, conditioned air. Her reflection waited with her, trapped in glass on a wall beside her, and she exchanged long looks with the reflection and smiled a little and was, on the whole, rather pleased.

She was thirty-eight now, no longer young, but she was slender as a girl in a beige linen suit, and her flesh was still firm, with only the slightest deepening of lines around the eyes and mouth, and she could still pass in soft light for what she really no longer was. Nowadays she grew tired more often than she had used to, of course, and once in a while she became a little frightened when she thought of the years that had gone so swiftly and the years that had still, somehow, to come and go.

Turning away from the reflection of herself, she looked slowly around the hall, her eyes moving deliberately from one thing to another, and she thought as she looked that it was much the same as it used to be. There was a new runner on the stairs, and the telephone on the table against the wall was pale green instead of black, and the painting on the wall above the telephone was different from the one that had hung there before — but nothing of any significance had changed, not even the basic colors or the subtle sense of character that houses have.

She took a couple of steps toward the stairs, her thin heels tapping sharply on the gleaming hardwood floor, and at that moment the maid reappeared suddenly in the hall at the rear and came forward.

“If you will come this way, please,” she said, “Mrs. Morrow will see you.”

Cora followed her down the hall and off to the right into a large room with high, wide windows and a pair of glass doors opening onto a flagstone terrace. The maid stopped just inside the room and nodded toward the doors, through which Cora could see, sitting in a bright canvas chair beside a glass-topped table, a woman in a sheer flowered dress. On the table were an open book, lying face down, and a pitcher and matching glasses.

Cora crossed to the glass doors and let herself out onto the terrace, and the woman, Julia Morrow, stood up beside the table and greeted her with an expression in which there was the slightest suggestion of curiosity.

“Good afternoon, Miss Rogan,” she said. “Will you sit down?”

“Thank you,” Cora said. “It’s kind of you to see me.”

It was clear, she thought, that her name meant nothing to Julia Morrow, for there was no evidence of recognition in the tone of her voice, nor even the careful kind of control one might exercise to exclude such evidence.

Moving across the flagstones to the glass-topped table, Cora sat down in a bright chair, and Julia Morrow resumed the one from which she had just risen. The chairs were not placed directly opposite each other across the table, only a small are of the circumference separating the two women. Their relative positions seemed to indicate a condition of intimacy, as if they had drawn together to exchange confidences.

“May I offer you some iced tea?” Julia Morrow said.

"No, thank you.”

“Then what can I do for you?”

“To tell the truth, it’s rather difficult to begin. I see that you don’t recognize my name.”

“You name? Cora Rogan? I’m sorry. Should I recognize it?”

“Perhaps not. I was our husband’s first wife.”

Now the expression of curiosity, wholly confined to Julia Morrow’s eyes, gave way for an instant to a flare of surprise. It was gone, however, almost before it was discernible, and afterward there was no expression except courteous reserve.

“I see. I knew that my husband’s first wife was named Cora, of course, but I had forgotten the rest of it. I understood that you had remarried.”

“So I had, but it pleases me to use my maiden name. I lived with my second husband in Europe. He’s dead now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was no great loss. We lived well, one way and another, but he left next to nothing. It’s apparent that you have done much better.”

“I have all that I need. Have you come to see me simply because we shared, at different times, the same man?”

"It occurred to me that I didn't offer my sympathy at the time of his death. I thought I should come and do so.”

“After all this time? It was eight years ago — nearly nine.”

“So long as that? Time goes, doesn’t it? Or is it we? Someone wrote a poem about that once. About its being we who go instead of time. Was it Ronsard?”

“I don’t know. I read very little poetry.”

“It must have been terrible for you. To kill your own husband by mistake, I mean.”

“Yes. It was terrible.”

“As I recall, you thought he was a prowler. You shot him with a shotgun, I believe, as he was coming up the stairs. The light on the stairs, I remember, had gone out for some reason.”

“There was a prowler scare in the neighborhood. James had left the shotgun, loaded, in our room. I wasn’t expecting him home that night, and I was terrified. The recollection is painful, however, and I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Forgive me. The inquest, of course, was quite brief. Hardly more than a formality. You had, it seemed, absolutely no motive for killing your husband intentionally. Besides, your condition at the time solicited a great deal of sympathy.”

“I was expecting a child, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes. Your daughter. A charming little girl. I met her beside the walk as I came up to the house. We played a game of jacks.”

“She’s rather casual with strangers. Ii disturbs me sometimes."

“I envy you. I have no child of my own, even after two marriages. I remember how astonished I was when I first learned that you were going to have one.”

“Really? I wonder why.”

“I was, as I said, your husband’s first wife.” Cora smiled gently and looked away for a few moments with an air of abstraction, as if the remembrance were pleasant, although a little sad. “It was quite impossible for him to have children.”

Julia Morrow was also suddenly withdrawn. Only a faint expression of fastidious distaste indicated that she had heard the words and understood their implication.

"That’s absurd,” she said. “Are you suggesting that James was mutilated like that foolish character in the Hemingway novel?”

“Nothing so romantic.” Cora laughed softly and returned her gaze to the woman across the arc of glass. “To use your own term, it was really rather absurd. A kind of bad joke. Orchitis is the name for it. A complication of mumps.” She laughed again, softly, with a note of genuine amusement. “It was terribly humiliating to a man as vain as poor James. You don’t object to my calling him James, do you? It made him a comic character in his own eyes, and he wouldn’t have dreamed of confiding in anyone about his misfortune. At the time of his death, his doctor having died before him, I rather imagine no one alive was aware of it except three people. You and me, Mrs. Morrow, and James himself. I wonder, if it had been generally known, how it would have affected the inquest — in the matter of motive, I mean. It’s an interesting speculation, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly.” Julia Morrow’s voice, under perfect control, was the vocal equivalent of her fastidious expression. “I find it boring, as well as absurd. However, allowing the motive, I should think it would have worked in reverse. The wrong person was killed.”

“It might seem so, superficially. However, you must admit that we are in the position of knowing who was killed and who was not.” Cora was silent for a few seconds, seeming to consider what she had said, and then she spoke again casually. “Tell me, Mrs. Morrow, why did you kill him? Was he going to divorce you? But of course he was. He was so vain, poor dear, that he could never have tolerated infidelity in his wife, even at the price of publicizing his own indequacy. Under the circumstances, it would have been a disaster, wouldn’t it? You would have received nothing, of course. As it is, you now have all that you need, haven’t you?”

“You twist my words against me.” Julia spoke and then was still. If she was shocked or greatly concerned, she didn’t show it. After a while she sighed. “What do you want, Cora Rogan? Surely you realize that it would be extremely difficult to establish anything against me after so long a time.”

“It’s hard to tell.” Cora reflected and shrugged. “Who knows what would happen if it were all to be revived? At the worst, ruin. At the best, a great deal of unpleasantness. Especially, it seems to me, for the charming little girl I met on my way to the house. Did I tell you that we played a game of jacks?”

Julia Morrow rose abruptly and moved a few steps away. She stood for a minute staring across the sunlit yard to a row of Russian olive trees at the rear, silvery-green in the light, and then she turned and came back to the table; but did not sit down again.

Cora smiled secretively.

“Why have you waited so long?” Julia Morrow said.

“I am not an avaricious person,” Cora said. “Until recently I lived well and had no need. Now I’m in need.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“What do I want?” Cora spoke dreamily, like a child with an impossible wish. “I think, more than anything else, I should like to return to Europe and live the rest of my life there. I know of a small villa in the south of France where I could live quite cheaply. For one who is clever in making the best of things, fifty thousand dollars should be quite sufficient for me — for a long, long time.”

“For the rest of one’s life, I should think.”

“Yes. For the rest of one’s life.”

Julia Morrow sat down. She closed her eyes, apparently tired, but her face was composed.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you some tea before you go?” she said.

“Quite sure.” It was Cora Rogan’s time to stand. “I’ve intruded long enough.”

“Are you staying nearby?”

“At the hotel in town.”

“How uncomfortable for you. The accommodations are deplorable, I understand, but of course there are very few guests in such a small place. You probably won’t want to stay long.”

“I hope to leave tomorrow afternoon. I’m expecting a small package before then.”

“I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

“You’re very kind and thank you again for seeing me.”

Cora left without looking back; but she did not go, as she had come, through the house. She walked around the outside along a walk bordering beds of bright flowers, and so past the fountain and around the concrete curve to the white birch and the little girl.

“Did you see Mother?”

“Yes. We had a nice talk.”

“Did she give you something for your charity?”

“She’s thinking about it. I’m sure she will.”

“I’m glad. Would you like to play another game of jacks?”

“No, thank you. I really must go”

“All right. I guess I had better go back to the house now, anyway. Goodbye.”

Cora watched her go up the walk alone. For a few yards she walked sedately, and then she broke suddenly into the gait that seems peculiar to small girls — something between a trot and a skip, or perhaps a little of both by turns.

Standing under the white birch and staring after her, Cora had suddenly so intense and terrible a sense of loss and loneliness that she cried softly aloud, unaware, in anguish. In that instant the small villa in the south of France was a far and empty place of exile, and she envied the vulnerable woman she had just left on the terrace — the woman who had saved something, as Cora had not, from the sterile years.

The girl had gone away and left her jacks in a little pile on the grass beside the walk. Bending down, Cora picked up the small metal pieces and dropped them into a pocket of her linen jacket.

She would keep them, she thought, as a memento of this day — and all the spent days before.