Sleeping Beauty

chapter 42

I parked on the road near Jack Lennox’s mailbox. Before I approached the house, I got the .38 out of the trunk of my car, loaded it, and put it in my pocket. I moved down the driveway cautiously, studying the lay of the land. It was the first I’d seen of it by daylight.

The house was low, built into the rim of the cliff and partly cantilevered over it. Extending from the house on the right was the patio with the wall over which Bagley had fallen to his death.

A dead grebe covered with oil lay on the patio. Beyond it was an empty field which had been plowed to keep the weeds down. Shore birds driven off the beaches were foraging in the dirt.

Workboats moved back and forth on the water, spraying the unshrinking edges of the oil slick with chemicals and straw. Smoke hung in the sky above them like a dark reflection of the oil on the sea. When I moved closer to the rim of the cliff, I could see the multiple sources of the smoke. Up and down the shoreline great fires were crackling, fed by oil-soaked straw which dozens of men were raking up from the black stony beach.

I envied the men on the boats and on the beaches. I envied anyone who didn’t have my errand to perform.

I knocked on the front door. Marian Lennox must have been watching me from inside the house. She spoke through the door:

“Go away. My husband told me not to let anyone in.”

“Your husband sent me here. You remember me, Mrs. Lennox. My name is Archer.”

“Why?” she said in a high thin voice. “Why did he send you here?”

“He wants me to look after Laurel.”

“I’m perfectly competent–” She caught herself. “Laurel isn’t here.”

“Your husband says she is. You might as well let me in, Mrs. Lennox. We have some things to discuss.”

Abruptly she opened the door. The morning light fell harshly on her face. Her hair was ragged and streaked with white, as if time had run his ashy fingers through it.

The gun with the telescopic sight was standing in the corner of the hallway. I moved past Mrs. Lennox and took possession of it. She didn’t try to stop me but simply stood and looked at me with eyes in which the long night still persisted. I disarmed the gun and set it back in the corner.

“Where’s Laurel?”

“In her room. I gave her some sleeping pills, and she went to sleep.”

“What happened to the sleeping pills she had? The Nembutals?”

“She flushed them down the toilet in the Somervilles’ garage. She told me she was on the point of taking all of them. But then she decided to live.” The woman’s eyes were bright and watchful. “It was a brave decision.”

“To go on living?”

“I think so. She has so much to face up to. Didn’t my husband tell you what she did?” Her long face lengthened. I thought she was going to cry, but only words came out of her downturned mouth: “She killed a man last night – no, the night before last. She pushed him off our patio and he fell down on the rocks. But you know that.”

“How do you happen to know it, Mrs. Lennox?”

“I saw her do it. She ran at him and pushed him with all her force. He went flying over the wall.”

She mimicked the action she was describing, pushing her hands out violently in front of her. But the expression on her face, widemouthed and horrified, seemed to be that of the man falling.

“Why did Laurel kill him?”

“I don’t know. There have been a lot of things I don’t understand.”

“Did she remember Bagley from the old days, when she was a little girl?”

“Yes, I believe she did.” She picked up the idea. “As a matter of fact, he murdered her baby-sitter when she was three. He shot and killed her.”

“And Laurel saw this happen?”

“Maybe she did. She was in the house at the time. She was supposed to be sleeping, and so was little Tom, but maybe she did.”

“How do you know these things, Mrs. Lennox?”

“I have my ways of knowing. People try to keep things from me, but I find out.”

“Were you in the Russo house the night Allie was shot?”

She nodded. “I went there to bring Laurel home. That was all I did. Jack was supposed to meet me at the club but he didn’t come and he didn’t come, so I went and brought Laurel home.”

“Was Allie dead when you went there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look in the bedroom. I didn’t know about her death until I saw it in the paper.”

“When was this?”

“Several days later. Little Tom was alone with her all that time. But I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it.”

“I believe you, Mrs. Lennox. Nobody but a ghoul would leave a child alone with his mother’s body.”

“I’m not a ghoul.” She was appalled by the name. “Anyway, he wasn’t my child. He belonged to that filthy woman.”

“Why do you call her that?”

“Because she was. She was no better than a prostitute. But Jack chose to spend his last night ashore with her. He went to drop off Laurel at her house and never came back. I went there and found him lying drunk in her–”

She clapped a hand to her face. It incompletely masked her widened eyes and mouth.

“Did you shoot her, Mrs. Lennox?”

She spoke after a silence. “If I did, I had good reason.”

“Did you, though?”

“I’m not going to answer that,” she said behind her hand. “I have a right not to answer. Besides, we know that Nelson Bagley shot her.”

“How do you know that?”

“It came out in the News. The neighbors saw him sneaking around the house that night, and they gave his description to the police.”

“All this was printed in the News?”

“It certainly was. I still have the clipping somewhere if you want to see it.”

“Did you have more than one copy of the clipping?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. I thought it was important.”

“What did you do with the other copies?”

“I sent them to certain people who would be interested.”

“Like your husband and your brother-in-law?”

“Yes. I wanted them to know.”

“You wanted them to know what you had done, but not that you had done it.”

She breathed profoundly, as if she had been holding her breath all night. The walls of the hallway seemed to be closing in. Once again, it reminded me of a cell where prisoners were held without hope of release.

She said, “Why should I be the only one to suffer? You men have all the fun. And then you leave the women alone to suffer.”

“Is that what your husband did to you?”

“Again and again,” she said. “I told you, he even spent his last night ashore with her.”

“So you shot her.”

“I’m not admitting anything.”

“You admitted that you sent your husband the clipping from the News.”

“That was no crime. They can’t do anything to me for sending him a clipping. It seemed to me he had a right to know about her death.” She spoke with a kind of remembered grief, but her grief had long since turned malign. “I used to imagine the look on his face when he opened that envelope with the clipping in it and found out she was dead.”

“Why did you send one to Somerville?”

“She was his girl first. He passed her on to Jack.” She looked at me with loathing. “You men are dirty creatures, all of you. I’m glad all this has come out. I’ve been sick of this filthy pretense of a marriage for years.”

“Why did you push Nelson Bagley over the cliff?”

“He remembered me. He saw me at the woman’s house that night. He was the one who phoned me and told me my husband was with her.”

“And you went there and shot her?”

“I’m not admitting anything,” she said.

But she looked at me with the realization that there was hardly anything left to admit.

“Did Laurel see you push him over the cliff?”

“Yes. She ran away. But she came back last night.”

“Did she speak to you about it?”

“Yes, she did. She said I ought to call the police and make a full confession.”

“Are you willing to do that?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid. What will they do to me? I’ve killed three people.” Her face opened as if she was falling again.

“I can understand why you killed Allie Russo,” I said, “and Nelson Bagley. But why did Tony Lashman have to die?”

“He knew that Nelson Bagley had come here to the house. He tried to get money from me. He wanted a hundred dollars a day for life.”

Her voice was cold and resentful. She had suffered so much that she was immune to anyone else’s suffering. I was growing weary of her, and I asked her to take me to Laurel.

We went to a bedroom at the front of the house. The wall that faced the sea was made of glass, but it was heavily draped against the morning. At one end, a glass door opened onto a railed balcony.

Laurel lay asleep on the bed, a pillow under her dark head and an afghan over her. There was a telephone on the bedside table. Before I used it, I bent over Laurel and touched her warm forehead with my mouth. I could hardly believe that she was alive.

Behind me, the door to the balcony opened and closed. Marian Lennox was climbing awkwardly over the railing.

I moved toward her. “Marian, come back.”

She paid no attention to me. She stepped off into air and fell in silence until the black boulders stopped her. Smoke swirled over her body like the smoke from funeral pyres.

I went back to Laurel. She stirred and half awakened, as if my concern for her had reached down palpably into her sleeping mind. She was alive.

I picked up the phone and started to make the necessary calls.