Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

13

Good old Willett happened to be in the shower when the call came through. At first he tried to ignore Ethel’s vigorous pounding on the bathroom door, but Ethel was so persistent that he finally decided it must be something urgent like the house being on fire. He turned off the water and reached hastily for the largest towel on the rack.

“Hurry up and get dry, Willett. Jack’s on the phone.”

“Jack? Jack who?”

“Your brother.”

“Tell him I’m in the shower.”

“It’s long distance,” Ethel said in the reverent tone she always applied to long-distance calls, as if they were in some way connected with God. Nobody ever called long distance when Ethel was a girl back in Wisconsin, unless it was a case of death, imminent or established. “I think someone died.”

“What?”

“I said, do you know anyone who might have died?”

“Who died?”

“Well, that’s just what I was asking you, dear. I wish you’d hurry up. I hope it wasn’t Uncle Harry, he’s such a sweet old thing. But then he is old, isn’t he? Wasn’t he?”

Willett stepped out of the bathroom wearing a terry cloth robe and a bilious expression. “Who wasn’t old?”

“Uncle Harry, only I said he was old. You don’t even listen to me anymore.”

“I happened to be drying my ears.” Willett walked down the hall with ponderous dignity.

The upstairs phone was in Ethel’s bedroom. It was pink to match the ruffled curtains and the skirt on the vanity.

Willett cleared his throat before he spoke. He didn’t like talking on a telephone, especially a pink one, and more especially since he was morally certain that Murphy was listening in on the plain black one in the kitchen.

“Hello,” Willett said, keeping his voice very soft in the hope that neither Jack nor Murphy would be able to hear him, and everybody would forget the whole thing.

“Hello, Willett, old boy. This is Jack. How are you, fellow?”

“I am well.”

“Great. Great. How’s Mother?”

“She’s holding her own.”

“Fine. Shirley’s right here beside me. She sends her best. She... I— The fact is, Willett, I’m thinking of taking a trip.”

“They say Alaska is very nice at this time of year.”

“I wasn’t planning on Alaska. I was thinking of sauntering down in your direction.”

“You mean here? You’re coming here?”

“What’s the matter, are you quarantined or something?”

Willett had a wild notion to say yes and then arrange for Murphy to catch chicken pox or, preferably, scarlet fever. “No, we’re not quarantined, but... well, we’re not settled yet. We’re most unsettled.”

A long pause, and then Shirley’s voice, crisp and quite audible though she was talking to Jack and not into the telephone: “For heaven’s sake tell him the truth and quit shillyshallying like this.”

“Jack,” Willett said. “Are you there, Jack?”

“Yes.”

“What’s Shirley talking about?”

“The fact is, I’ve got to get out of town in a hurry and I’m oof.”

“What?”

“Oof — don’t you remember?”

Willett remembered. In the days when they were boys at school, Jack had been nicknamed Oof for out of funds, and Willett had been If.

“I thought,” Jack went on, “that if I could pick up a couple of thousand from you, I’d go on down to Mexico City.”

“Why?”

“I told you, I’m in a spot of trouble. Nothing serious yet, but it might develop if I don’t leave town. I’ve got a couple of detectives on my trail. One’s parked around the corner right now. Willett, for God’s sake, I need—”

There were sounds of a slight scuffle over the wire and muffled talking. Then, finally, Shirley’s voice:

“Willett? This is Shirley. I’ve sent Jack out of the room. I realize you don’t take him very seriously and neither do I. But this time we have to. He’s threatened to sell his stock in the factory.”

“He can’t.”

“He can, and if he gets desperate enough, he will. I thought if he went to La Mesa and saw Mother, she’d straighten him out — about selling the stock, I mean.”

“Mother’s not well. She can’t be bothered by things like that.”

“She’ll be bothered, all right,” Shirley said grimly. “And it won’t kill her either. I don’t think she’s quite as delicate as you imagine.”

You know everything, Willett thought. You always know everything. He said aloud, “Don’t send Jack here. Listen, Shirley, we’re in a bit of a mess ourselves, about this woman being found dead.”

“Why should you be?”

“I don’t know, but there’s a man in town trying to make trouble for us. He’s one of her ex-husbands.”

“How can he make trouble for you?”

“Scandal. You know Mother can’t stand any scandal.”

“She adores scandal.”

“Not this kind.”

“What kind is it?”

“This fellow Dalloway is going around — well, he seems to think that I... we—”

“Hurry up and say it, Willett. This is long distance and I’m paying the bill.”

“He seems to think that this woman was murdered... by... by one of us.”

“Oh, you’re imagining things, Willett.”

“No, no, I’m not.”

“Good heavens, all anyone has to do is look at you to realize you could never murder anyone.”

Willett swallowed hard, twice. “I... that’s nice of you to say so.”

“I didn’t particularly mean it to be nice,” Shirley said brusquely. “Let’s face the facts, Willett. Unless you lend Jack some money, he’s going to sell his stock.”

“All right, all right. I’ll send him a check, only keep him away from here.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

Willett didn’t answer.

“Willett, I asked you what was the matter.”

“He’s a nuisance, I just don’t want him around pestering me.”

“By a strange coincidence, neither do I. Wait a minute. Here’s Jack now, he just came in.” A pause, and then Shirley speaking again in quite a different tone: “You can talk to Willett now if you like, Jack. He says he’d be delighted for you to drop in and pick up your money.”

“Good old Willett,” Jack said with feeling.

Willett hung up, propped his head in his hands and groaned. He stayed that way for a long time, unable to move or even to think clearly. He wished that he could go to sleep for a year, and wake up to find that all the people who annoyed him were dead, the Republicans were in office, and the Goodfield Doll Corporation had tripled its orders and built a new addition.

He was roused finally by the sound of voices floating up through the warm, still air from someplace in the backyard. He dragged himself over to the window seat and gazed down, expecting to see Ethel and Murphy chatting in the patio, making up a grocery list perhaps, or discussing men in general, and him, Willett, in particular. He was well aware that they discussed him frequently, and he often wished he had the nerve to eavesdrop.

There was no one in the patio. It was a windless day; the lily pool was as tranquil as a mirror and the pointed leaves of the oleander, which swayed with the slightest breeze, were still. Yet the glider, where Ethel usually sat with her knitting, was moving slightly. Willett parted the pink ruffled curtains to make sure he was right. Yes, it was certainly moving, as if someone had recently been sitting there or had brushed against it in passing.

The voices were barely audible now, no louder than the buzzing of insects and with the same persistent and threatening defiance.

He was on the point of calling Ethel, whose eyesight was better than his own, when his attention suddenly focused on the lathhouse, a yard or so beyond the wall of the garage. The lathhouse was in direct sunlight and in the spaces between the laths Willett could see two men standing facing each other. One of them was Ortega, the gardener. The other, half a head taller and looking even at that distance completely in command of the situation, was Dalloway.