Murder with a Past

16

Tully went home.

He let himself into the silent house and sank limply into the big chair in the living room. His legs felt like old rubber and a great lassitude had sucked him dry. How long was it since he had come home from the capital — a day, two days, three? He could not remember.

Julian was right. He could do no more. Now it was in the hands of the police... now that they were looking for an innocent woman in danger of being murdered instead of for a murderer.

Funny how this thing, Tully thought, has kept testing my faith in Ruth. Down, up, down, up... He laid his head far back and stretched his legs gingerly.

Twilight was coming on and the room was sinking into shadow.

First he had destroyed her image. Then he had resurrected its fragments and put them back together. Now she was to be destroyed in the flesh... dead...

The shadows deepened into near-darkness. The thought of turning on the lights made him wince. Light meant seeing the things they had bought together, lived in, cherished. Light meant Ruth. Better the black gloom and the silence.

The silence.

The silence?

Noiselessly Tully shifted his position in the chair until he was sitting up, ears cocked, straining. There had been something in the silence that made it not quite silence. A sense of presence... With one leap he was out of the chair and across the room, his hand shooting out to the light switch.

He whirled.

Norma Hurst stood in the archway that separated the living room from the rear of the house. She must have been standing there, Tully thought, for a long time — perhaps since he had come home.

He felt the flesh of his forearms gather itself into little eruptions of dread.

This was a Norma Hurst he had never seen before. She had combed her drab hair with great care but the result was curiously fumbling. Her long thin face was grotesque with make-up, as if a small child had tried to imitate her mother’s toilet. And her eyes... her eyes were not Norma’s at all. They were overlarge and underbright; they looked blind.

“Norma,” Tully said; he tried to make his voice sound natural, but it came out in a croak. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?” She must have climbed through one of the bedroom windows.

Norma put her forefinger to her wildly rouged lips. “Not so loud,” she said. “She’ll hear me.”

Her voice was strange, too. It had a throb in it, a sort of excitement, that gave it an unpleasantly eerie timbre.

“Who’ll hear you, Norma?”

“Mother, of course.” He saw her shrink a little, as if she were afraid.

It took all his will-power to go to her, smiling, and take her hand. Her flesh was icy. She resisted his pull.

“You’re going to take me to her. She’s here, I know she’s here. I don’t want to see her.”

“There’s no one here but us, Norma.”

“You shouldn’t call me that.”

“What?” Tully said, bewildered. “Call you what?”

“That name. The name of that flat-chested horror.”

“You mean... Norma?”

“Please,” Norma said sharply. “You know perfectly well that my name is Kathleen.”

She had plunged over the edge.

Tully knew he must reach the telephone, call for help. Ollie? She must have slipped away from him. Ollie was undoubtedly hunting for her right now. The police? No... Dr. Suddreth!

Dr. Suddreth was the nearest thing the Tullys had ever had in the way of a family physician. Suddreth was no psychiatrist, but he would do in an emergency. At least control her, know whom to call...

Norma had drifted toward the middle of the living room. Her face was twisted with worry. “I can’t seem to remember where Ollie introduced us. Was it at the country club dance last week?”

“Why, yes,” Tully said, managing a smile. Oh! Would you excuse me a moment?”

“For what?” she said with sudden sharpness.

“I forgot. I have a call to make.”

“No!” she said. “No — phoning — mother.” Her lower lip stuck out resentfully.

“Mother?” he repeated mechanically. How was he to get to the phone?

“As if you don’t know! Don’t try to fool me. You know very well my mother is Mercedes Lavery.” She got into a crouch, looking around, whispering. “She’s here, isn’t she? You’re in this with her! And Ollie calls you his best friend! Where is she hiding?” Her glance kept darting about.

“Merce — your mother isn’t here,” Tully said in a reassuring tone. “And of course I’m Ollie’s best friend. Now why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable while—”

“You are, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Ollie’s best friend. Otherwise you wouldn’t let us meet here. Mother’s made it impossible for us to meet anywhere else.”

It was hard to follow the logic of her delusion. The damn phone, so near. But the delusion might be a temporary thing. I can’t risk pushing her toward the thin edge of total madness, Tully thought.

She was wandering about the living room now, humming a shapeless little tune. Suddenly she stopped before the bar.

“I want a drink,” she said.

“You, Norma—?” He stopped quickly. Surprise had made him forget. Norma didn’t drink.

She was looking at him with mean, hopeless resentment. “I ask you once more to stop calling me that name. Do you hear me? Do you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course, Kathleen. Sorry.”

“Kathleen. That’s my name.”

“Kathleen.”

He wondered if he dared try force. He might be able to wrap her in a blanket or something and tie her up until Dr. Suddreth arrived. No, he thought, she might tumble right over the edge. The safest thing was to humor her as best he could while he figured out a way to make the phone call without upsetting her.

“I want a drink,” Norma Hurst said in exactly the same way as before. As if their interchange betweenwhiles had not taken place at all.

“What would you like... Kathleen?”

It pleased her. “Now you remember,” she said gayly. “Why, Scotch on the rocks. Make it a double.”

Norma asking for a double Scotch!

But then a thought struck Tully.

“Sit down, Kathleen. I’ve got to get some ice from the kitchen for your drink—” He could phone for help from the kitchen extension.

But Norma said, “No ice, thank you.”

“You said on the rocks,” he said desperately.

“No ice,” she repeated.

He poured a huge slug of Scotch into a highball glass and handed it to her, hope returning. Norma didn’t drink because she couldn’t; hard liquor either made her sick or sleepy. In either event...

“Thank you,” she said, and held the glass without attempting to drink from it.

“Drink up, Kathleen,” Tully said heartily. “You asked for a double.”

“Oh, yes,” she said in a vague way; and she raised the glass and barely wet her lips. Tully turned and poured himself a drink almost as copious.

“Let’s go into my den, Kathleen,” he said, forcing another smile. “It’s comfier there.”

Rather to his surprise, she said, “All right,” and ambled along in his wake.

He sat her down in his oversized leather chair and hovered over the telephone without seeming to do so. If only someone would call!

“I suppose you’ve wondered,” Norma said brightly — she was sitting in a stiff position that made him wince — “what I can possibly see in a man like Oliver Hurst.”

“Well... yes.”

“I know everybody does. What people don’t realize is that the beautiful Kathleen Lavery — they call me that, don’t they? — with all this money and position, is way down deep the unhappiest girl in town. The beautiful Mercedes — they call mother that, too, don’t they? — doesn’t understand that I need to be needed for myself, for what I am inside, not for what I look like and have. Ollie Hurst needs me as a person — the only man I’ve ever known who does. What do I care what Ollie looks like? Or that he hasn’t a dime? He’s mad about me. And he always will be.”

Under other circumstances Tully would have been fascinated. This is how it must have been, he thought, seen through Norma Hurst’s eyes.

“You aren’t listening,” Norma said. She was still sitting rigid on the edge of the chair, still holding the glassful of untouched Scotch.

“Oh, but I am — Kathleen,” he said hastily. “Please go on.”

“There! You remembered again.” She smiled, a painful surface adjustment of muscle tissue. “Why did you keep calling me that other name? You know, that was cruel of you. Poor Norma can’t help being what she is.”

“I’m sorry,” Tully said. Idly he removed the handset from its cradle. “I mean I’m sorry for—”

“Will you stop playing with that phone?” Norma said shrilly. “It makes me nervous.” He replaced the handset. “What was I saying? Oh, about Norma. She’s so sensitive and high-strung, you know. And so unattractive. Of course, she’s hopelessly in love with Ollie. The only way she could possibly get him would be to catch him on the rebound while I’m out of the picture. Poor Norma.”

So that was it. His skin crawled.

“It may happen, too,” Norma said, staring into space over her glass. “That horrible mother of mine! She’s offered me a ‘compromise.’ She’s taking me abroad for three months, during which I’m not to see or communicate with Ollie. If I still want him when we get back, mother says, she’ll give us our blessing.”

“I see,” Tully said.

“But I know her, the way her mind works. She’s figuring on tricking me, the way she always does. Divine Mercedes! If people only knew her... She’ll pretend to be sick, or she’ll find some other excuse to keep us in Europe indefinitely. And that will be Norma’s chance.”

Tully could not help asking, “Then why are you leaving?”

“I have no choice. I’m under age. It’s going to be a battle. Because I’m going to fight just as hard to talk mother into keeping her word.”

“How does Ollie feel about this?”

“Oh, he doesn’t know yet. About my going away, I mean. I’ll have to tell him soon. The whole story— Where are you going?”

Tully had edged over to the doorway, his mind made up. “To see a man about a dog.” It was a phrase, he recalled, popular in Kathleen’s day. “Why don’t you drink your drink, Kathleen? You’ve hardly touched it.”

She glanced down at the glass with the same vague smile. Tully slipped out of the den. He went quickly into the master bedroom, shut the door without noise, snapped on the light and was over at the night table diving for the telephone book under the bedroom extension in one scrambling leap. Just as he found the S’s he heard a car turn into his driveway.

By the time Tully managed to leave the bedroom without alarming Norma Hurst and make his way through the rear service door around to the driveway, Ollie Hurst had his ignition and headlights turned off and was coming around the front of his car.

“Ollie.”

“Dave, is that you?”

“Yes—”

“Dave, it’s happened again—”

“I know.”

“She’s here?” the lawyer cried.

“Not so loud.” He grabbed Ollie’s arm. “She’s inside. I was just going to call Dr. Suddreth.”

“How is she, Dave?”

“Not good.”

Oliver Hurst slumped against his car. In the light coming from the bedroom window he looked as if he were going to collapse.

“How far gone is she?”

“She thinks she’s Kathleen Lavery.”

Ollie was struck dumb. With his head thrust forward and his mouth open and his bald head he looked something like a carp. Then he said, “Kathleen Lavery. Why in God’s name...?”

“From what she’s been saying, Ollie, I think this goes back a long, long way. Back to her wedding day.”

“That was the happiest day of her life!”

“Only on the surface.” It was hard for Tully to look at the lawyer. “She’s cracked up twice now. Once when little Emmie was killed. Now when Ruth — the best friend Norma ever had — when Ruth’s been accused of murder. I’m no expert, Lord knows, but it seems to me this particular gambit began when she married you — when unconsciously she felt that Kathleen’s death made her marriage possible. She’s carried the load of that guilt around ever since.”

“I don’t understand,” Ollie muttered.

“You’d better start trying,” Tully said, more harshly than he intended. “Don’t you see how fiercely glad Norma must have felt when Kathleen drowned? But at another level she was shocked at those feelings. I suppose a psychiatrist might say the resulting guilt made it possible for Norma to keep functioning. I don’t know — I’m sure it all goes back even further than that. Whatever it is, wherever the hell it stems from, you’d better get her to your psychiatrist fast.” Ollie nodded and they hurried toward the service entrance. “Where were you, Ollie?”

“I could see she was working up to something. But I thought she’d be all right if I went for some groceries she mentioned we needed. When I got back from the shopping plaza she was gone. I kept calling around, and hunting for her, till it occurred to me she might have come here. Thinking maybe Ruth was back, or something.”

They found Norma in the living room. She was standing at the bar, pouring more Scotch into her glass. It kept slopping over.

She turned and saw her husband and her whole long, taut face screwed up as if she were trying to see through a dense fog.

“Ollie...?”

Hurst’s cheeks, gray and slick, twitched as he moved toward her. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said nervously. “I’ll take you home now, Norma.”

She hurled the glass at his head. It sailed past him and smashed against the opposite wall, drenching both men.

“Don’t call me that name!” Norma screamed. Everything in her face was contorted except her eyes; they remained dull and remote. “It’s my mother, isn’t it?” she panted. “So she finally got to you, too. She’s turned you against me, Ollie. You’re all against me!”

“Stop her, Ollie!” Tully shouted.

Hurst was nearer, but her violence had paralyzed him. And Tully was too late. Norma burst through the French doors and disappeared in the darkness of the patio. Tully dashed out after her.

“Ollie, switch on the patio lights!”

The lawyer stumbled to the wall and snapped on the switch. The patio and the grounds beyond lit up like a stage set.

Norma Hurst was crouched under the aluminum awning above the Tullys’ fieldstone barbecue pit. The long barbecue knife was in her clutch. Bubbles made a froth at the corner of her mouth.

“My God,” Ollie Hurst whispered.

“Save your self-pity for some other time,” Tully snapped. “We’ve got to get that knife away from her. You circle to her right. But slow.”

He drifted toward the left. “Kathleen,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. No one’s going to hurt you. We’re here to help you.” He kept up the pleasant-toned reassurances, trying to get all her attention. “Why don’t you put that thing down? I’d like to talk to you, Kathleen. Kathleen... Kathleen...”

Ollie Hurst had it almost made. Two steps more... He chose that moment to stumble over something in the grass.

As Norma began to whirl, Tully rushed her, grabbed the knife close to the handle, and twisted. To his amazement, the knife refused to come away. Then he felt her other hand clawing at his face and he was fighting for his life.

“Ollie—!” he choked. “Pin her arms!”

Her husband got behind her mechanically, threw his arms about her. She was making blubbering sounds now, like an animal, her teeth glittering in the strong lights. Tully got both hands on the haft of the knife and wrenched. He staggered back as she suddenly released it, lost his balance and fell heavily to the grass. Instead of struggling aimlessly she doubled over and brought her right heel up in a vicious backward kick. Ollie Hurst let out a whooshing oomph! and then a yelp and sat down.

She was free.

Gasping, she began to scramble up the slope of hillside beyond the perimeter of the lights. Tully flung the knife as far as he could in the opposite direction and dashed after her, launching himself in a flying tackle. They both fell, face down.

“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you,” Norma Hurst shrieked. She slithered about in his clutch like a fish, everything going at once, arms, hands, fingernails, legs, feet, teeth.

There was only one thing to do, and Tully did it. He got his right hand free and punched her in the jaw.