The Doomsters

11

VOICES ROSE on the far side of the house, as if another door had opened there. Female and excited, they sounded like chickens after a hawk has swooped. I ran down the steps and around the end of the veranda. Mildred came across the lawn toward me, holding the little girl’s hand. Mrs. Hutchinson trailed behind them, her head turned at an angle toward the groves, her face as gray as her hair. The gate in the picket fence was open, but there was no one else in sight.

The child’s voice rose high and penetrating. “Why did Uncle Carl run away?”

Mildred turned and bent over her. “It doesn’t matter why. He likes to run.”

“Is he mad at you, Aunt Mildred?”

“Not really, darling. He’s just playing a game.”

Mildred looked up and saw me. She shook her head curtly: I wasn’t to say anything to frighten the child. Zinnie swept past me and lifted Martha in her arms. The deputy Carmichael was close behind her, unhitching his gun.

“What happened, Mrs. Hallman? Did you see him?”

She nodded, but waited to speak till Zinnie had carried the little girl out of hearing. Mildred’s forehead was bright with sweat, and she was breathing rapidly. I noticed that she had the ball in her hand.

The gray-haired woman elbowed her way into the group. “I saw him, sneaking under the trees. Martha saw him, too.”

Mildred turned on her. “He wasn’t sneaking, Mrs. Hutchinson. He picked up the ball and brought it to me. He came right up to me.” She displayed the ball, as if it was important evidence of her husband’s gentleness.

Mrs. Hutchinson said: “I was never so terrified in my born days. I couldn’t even open my mouth to let out a scream.”

The deputy was getting impatient. “Hold it, ladies. I want a straight story, and fast. Did he threaten you, Mrs. Hallman – attack you in any way?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything?”

“I did most of the talking. I tried to persuade Carl to come in and give himself up. When he wouldn’t, I put my arms around him, to try and hold him. He was too strong for me. He broke away, and I ran after him. He wouldn’t come back.”

“Did he show his gun?”

“No.” She looked down at Carmichael’s gun. “Please, don’t use your gun if you see my husband. I don’t believe he’s armed.”

“Maybe not,” Carmichael said noncommittally. “Where did all this happen?”

“I’ll show you.”

She turned and started toward the open gate, moving with a kind of dogged gallantry. It wasn’t quite enough to hold her up. Suddenly she went to her knees and crumpled sideways on the lawn, a small dark-suited figure with spilled brown hair. The ball rolled out of her hand. Carmichael knelt beside her, shouting as if mere loudness could make her answer: “Which way did he go?”

Mrs. Hutchinson waved her arm toward the groves. “Right through there, in the direction of town.”

The young deputy got up and ran through the gateway in the picket fence. I ran after him, with some idea of trying to head off violence. The ground under the trees was adobe, soft and moist with cultivation. I never had gone well on a heavy track. The deputy was out of sight. After a while he was out of hearing, too. I slowed down and stopped, cursing my obsolescent legs.

It was purely a personal matter between me and my legs, because running couldn’t accomplish anything, anyway. When I thought about it, I realized that a man who knew the country could hide for days on the great ranch. It would take hundreds of searchers to beat him out of the groves and canyons and creekbeds.

I went back the way I had come, following my own footmarks. Five of my walking steps, if I stretched my legs, equaled three of my running steps. I crossed other people’s tracks, but had no way to identify them. Tracking wasn’t my forte, except on asphalt.

After a long morning crowded with people under pressure, it was pleasant to be walking by myself in the green shade. Over my head, between the tops of the trees, a trickle of blue sky meandered. I let myself believe that there was no need to hurry, that trouble had been averted for the present. Carl had done no harm to anybody, after all.

Back-tracking on the morning, I walked slower and slower. Brockley would probably say that it was unconscious drag, that I didn’t want to get back to the house. There seemed to be some truth in Mildred’s idea that a house could make people hate each other. A house, or the money it stood for, or the cannibalistic family hungers it symbolized.

I’d run further than I’d realized, perhaps a third of a mile. Eventually the house loomed up through the trees. The yard was empty. Everything was remarkably still. One of the french doors was standing open. I went in. The dining-room had a curious atmosphere, unlived in and unlivable, like one of those three-walled rooms laid out in a museum behind silk rope: Provincial California Spanish, Pre-Atomic Era. The living-room, with its magazines and dirty glasses and Hollywood-Cubist furniture, had the same deserted quality.

I crossed the hallway and opened the door of a study lined with books and filing cabinets. The Venetian blinds were drawn. The room had a musty smell. A dark oil portrait of a bald old man hung on one wall. His eyes peered through the dimness at me, out of a lean rapacious face. Senator Hallman, I presumed. I closed the study door on him.

I went through the house from front to back, and finally found two human beings in the kitchen. Mrs. Hutchinson was sitting at the kitchen table, with Martha on her knee. The elderly woman started at my voice. Her face had sharpened in the quarter-hour since I’d seen her. Her eyes were bleak and accusing.

“What happened next?” Martha said.

“Well, the little girl went to the nice old lady’s house, and they had tea-cakes.” Mrs. Hutchinson’s eyes stayed on me, daring me to speak. “Tea-cakes and chocolate ice cream, and the old lady read the little girl a story.”

“What was the little girl’s name?”

“Martha, just like yours.”

“She couldn’t eat chocolate ice cream, ’cause of her algery.”

“They had vanilla. We’ll have vanilla, too, with strawberry jam on top.”

“Is Mummy coming?”

“Not right away. She’ll be coming later.”

“Is Daddy coming? I don’t want Daddy to come.”

“Daddy won’t–” Mrs. Hutchinson’s voice broke off. “That’s the end of the story, dear.”

“I want another story.”

“We don’t have time.” She set the child down. “Now run into the living-room and play.”

“I want to go into the greenhouse.” Martha ran to an inner door, and rattled the knob.

“No! Stay here! Come back here!”

Frightened by the woman’s tone, Martha returned, dragging her feet.

“What’s the matter?” I said, though I thought I knew. “Where is everybody?”

Mrs. Hutchinson gestured toward the door that Martha had tried to open. I heard a murmur of voices beyond it, like bees behind a wall. Mrs. Hutchinson rose heavily and beckoned me to her. Conscious of the child’s unwavering gaze, I leaned close to the woman’s mouth. She said: “Mr. Hallman was ess aitch oh tee. He’s dee ee ay dee.”

“Don’t spell! You mustn’t spell!”

In a miniature fury, the child flung herself between us and struck the old woman on the hip. Mrs. Hutchinson drew her close. The child stood still with her face in the flowered lap, her tiny white arms embracing the twin pillars of the woman’s legs.

I left them and went through the inner door. An unlit passageway lined with shelves ended in a flight of steps. I stumbled down them to a second door, which I opened.

The edge of the door struck softly against a pair of hind quarters. These happened to belong to Sheriff Ostervelt. He let out a little snort of angry surprise, and turned on me, his hand on his gun.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Coming in.”

“You’re not invited. This is an official investigation.”

I looked past him into the greenhouse. In the central aisle, between rows of massed cymbidiums, Mildred and Zinnie and Grantland were grouped around a body which lay face up. The face had been covered by a gray silk handkerchief, but I knew whose body it was. Jerry’s fuzzy tweeds, his rotundity, his helplessness, gave him the air of a defunct teddy bear.

Zinnie stood above him, incongruously robed in ruffled white nylon. Without makeup, her face was almost as colorless as the robe. Mildred stood near her, looking down at the dirt floor. A little apart, Dr. Grantland leaned on one of the planters, controlled and watchful.

Zinnie’s face worked stiffly: “Let him come in if he wants to, Ostie. We can probably use all the help we can get.”

Ostervelt did as she said. He was almost meek about it. Which reminded me of the simple fact that Zinnie had just fallen heir to the Hallman ranch and whatever power went with it. Grantland didn’t seem to need reminding. He leaned close to whisper in her ear, with something proprietary in the angle of his head.

She silenced him with a sidewise warning glance, and edged away from him. Acting on impulse – at least it looked like impulse from where I stood – Zinnie put her arm around Mildred and hugged her. Mildred made as if to pull away, then leaned on Zinnie and closed her eyes. Through the white-painted glass roof, daylight fell harsh and depthless on their faces, sistered by shock.

Ostervelt missed these things, which happened in a moment. He was fiddling with the lid of a steel box that stood on a workbench behind the door. Getting it open, he lifted out a piece of shingle to which a small gun was tied with twine.

“Okay, so you want to be a help. Take a look at this.”

It was a small, short-barreled revolver, of about .25 caliber, probably of European make. The butt was sheathed in mother-of-pearl, and ornamented with silver filigree work. A woman’s gun, not new: the silver was tarnished. I’d never seen it, or a gun like it, and I said so.

“Mrs. Hallman, Mrs. Carl Hallman, said you had some trouble with her husband this morning. He stole your car, is that right?”

“Yes, he took it.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“I was driving him back to the hospital. He came to my house early this morning, with some idea I might be able to help him. I figured the best thing I could do for him was talk him into going back in. It didn’t quite work.”

“What happened?”

“He took me by surprise – overpowered me.”

“What do you know?” Ostervelt smirked. “Did he pull this little gun on you?”

“No. He had no gun that I saw. I take it this is the gun that killed Hallman.”

“You take it correct, mister. This is also the gun the brother had, according to Yogan’s description of it. The doctor found it right beside the body. Two shells fired, two holes in the man’s back. The doctor said he died instantly, that right, Doctor?”

“Within a few seconds, I’d say.” Grantland was cool and professional. “There was no external bleeding. My guess is that one of the bullets pierced his heart. Of course it will take an autopsy to establish the exact cause of death.”

“Did you discover the body, Doctor?”

“I did, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m interested in matters of fact. What brought you out to the greenhouse?”

“The shots, of course.”

“You heard them?”

“Very clearly. I was taking Martha’s clothes out to the car.”

Zinnie said wearily: “We all heard them. I thought at first that Jerry–” She broke off.

“Jerry what?” Ostervelt said.

“Nothing. Ostie? Do we have to go through this again – all this palaver? I’m very anxious to get Martha out of the house. God knows what this is doing to her. And wouldn’t you accomplish more if you went out after Carl?”

“I got every free man in the department looking for him now. I can’t leave until the deputy coroner gets here.”

“Does that mean we have to wait?”

“Not right here, if it’s getting you down. I think you ought to stick around the house, though.”

“I’ve told you all I can,” Grantland said. “And I have patients waiting. In addition to which, Mrs. Hallman has asked me to drive her daughter and her housekeeper into Purissima.”

“All right. Go ahead, Doctor. Thanks for your help.”

Grantland went out the back door. The two women came down the funereal aisle between the rows of flowers, bronze and green and blood-red. They walked with their arms around each other, and passed through the door that led toward the kitchen. Before the door closed, one of them broke into a storm of weeping.

The noise of grief is impersonal, and I couldn’t be sure which one of them it was. But I thought it must have been Mildred. Her loss was the worst. It had been going on for a long time, and was continuing.