Wall of Eyes

Chapter 14

“... in co-operation with the police department, the makers of Crispcrunch, the ideal new breakfast food that is teeming with vitamins and good flavor, are broadcasting this description of a dangerous criminal. Wanted for murder: Antonio Murillo. Eyes, brown. Complexion, medium. Hair, curly black. Height, five foot eleven. Weight 160 pounds. Age 28. Watch for this man, all you good people who are breakfasting on Crispcrunch. He is a dangerous criminal, and perhaps he is a dangerous criminal because he hadn’t the advantage of a perfect diet with a balanced supply of minerals, vitamins and calories. And a perfect diet spells Crispcrunch! The time is fourteen and one-half minutes past eight o’clock, and your Crispcrunch announcer is Al Animal.”

“Turn it off, John,” Alice said irritably. “Your bacon is getting cold.”

The thin stream of sunlight from the window caught her face and pinched it into angles as sharp as her voice. It was as if Alice, having given herself away last night, had turned up a new path, and the controlled gentleness by which they had come to recognize her had vanished never to return.

“John,” she said, as a blare of music hit the room.

Johnny turned the knob and came back to the table. “Murillo,” he said. “That must be the one.”

“What one?” Philip asked, and then, “Oh. You didn’t tell Alice?”

“Tell me what?” Alice said.

Philip reached over and put his hand over hers. It was all she ever got from Philip, a pat on the hand, or a friendly arm around her shoulder. It was all she ever would get. She looked at him with dry cold eyes and said, “Why the affection? More bad news?”

He drew his hand away. “No. Good news, I suppose you’d call it. This man Murillo — Inspector Sands telephoned last night and said they had proof that Murillo killed — killed Kelsey.”

Her mouth opened in surprise. “Incredible!”

“Why incredible?” Johnny said.

She gestured with her fork. “I mean, how could a man, a man we’ve never even heard of, how could he change our whole lives like this? It’s fantastic.”

“Meaning it doesn’t fit in with your orderly philosophy,” Johnny said. “That can’t be helped. I wonder what this Crispcrunch tastes like. I don’t think I’m getting enough vitamins.” Though he spoke lightly, he was perfectly serious and Alice knew it.

She said coldly, “Don’t be moronic. What else did the Inspector say?”

“Just that,” Johnny said. “Maurice answered the phone. Phil and I were having a cigarette in my room and he saw the light under the door and came in and told us. What’s moronic about wanting more vitamins?”

“We have a whole cupboard full of vitamins,” Alice said, “that you’ve been persuaded to buy by radio announcers. Get rid of those first.”

Philip said wanly, “Let’s not have a fight about anything.”

“Who’s fighting?” Johnny said. “All I want is a balanced diet.”

Alice rang the little bell in front of her plate and Maurice came in with the coffee.

He set the coffee in front of Alice and gave her a small prissy smile and said, “Good morning.” Alice knew from the smile and the voice that Maurice had some kind of bad news and was determined to relay it. Usually the news was impersonal: he had heard on the kitchen radio or read in the morning paper of a bad fire or an accident or a murder or a robbery. If there was nothing like this on hand he would quote verbatim from a fireside chat or mention the name of some Russian village where so many Nazis had been captured or killed. It was necessary to Maurice to bring tidings, to have all eyes turned up at him, Maurice, the kingly messenger: “Yes, miss, burned right to the ground, two children burned to death.” “Fifty thousand corpses strewn on the ground.”

“Well?” Alice said sharply.

Maurice said, “Inspector Sands has arrived.”

Philip said, “But I thought — didn’t he say he had proof that...?”

“Yes, sir. Nevertheless.”

“Does he want me?” Alice said.

“No, Miss Alice.” Maurice, kingly messenger, would not be hurried. He arranged his face and his voice carefully, while all eyes turned up at him. “He’s talking to Ida.”

“Ida?” Alice repeated.

“I thought you’d like to know, miss.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

Maurice went out again. He had had his moment.

“Be kind of funny to meet this Murillo on the street,” Johnny said. “Mind if I see if any other station is featuring him?”

“I do mind, yes,” Alice said.

“That’s too damn bad.”

He got up and turned the radio on again. Alice had given herself away, she had lost her mystery, and with it her power. She had no hold over these two men, Johnny fumbling with the radio, Philip eating his bacon politely and without appetite.

We’ve all changed, Alice thought, and this man, Murillo, whom we don’t know and never will know, has used the knife on us all. Kelsey is dead, and Philip is like a man who’s had a tumor removed and the pain is gone but the knife has left him weak. And Johnny — Johnny has simply had the years cut from him. He is the Johnny who came home for holidays and filled the house with noise and music and bulky sweaters and coon coats with human legs and heads which turned out to be other Johnnys.

And then one day he brought another young man who was not a Johnny and who had no coon coat, a serious, pale, hungry-looking young man whom Johnny had picked up in a movie, casually, the way he picked up girls or stray dogs and cats. The young man played the piano for his dinner while Johnny sat back beaming proudly at his discovery. Those were the days when Isobel still came down to dinner. When the young man had played Isobel said, “Good. Excellent,” in the firm way she had, though she knew nothing about music.

But it was good, perhaps even excellent. The young man was embarrassed and pleased and promised to come back. He didn’t come, though, for a long time. He tried everything in the meantime, then one evening he came to the door again. Johnny was out, so Alice and Kelsey and Mrs. Heath had him all to themselves. To Isobel he was everything that Johnny wasn’t, and to the two girls he was a new young man, not one of Johnny’s friends older than they and inclined to patronize the kid sisters. They sat on each side of him as he played and he couldn’t reach the keys properly. He was humiliated at his own failure and deeply embarrassed at the easy manners of the two girls who were used to Johnny’s friends. He wanted to go away and never come back, but the house was warm, the girls were friendly, and Mrs. Heath told him he had a remarkable talent. You could tell from Mrs. Heath’s face that she was rarely pleased with anything. You could also tell — he felt this even that second night — that she was planning something. Behind the graciousness of the smile her eyes were narrowed: “Would this work out? Would it be to any advantage? Would this boy influence Johnny or Johnny influence him?”

She asked him to stay.

“Criminal to waste such a talent... It would mean nothing to us financially, you understand... Lessons and set hours of practice... A friend for John too — John is so irresponsible...”

He didn’t want to stay. He had never wanted to. It wasn’t his life and the people who came to the house weren’t his people, and the drawing room was never really his to use. He had always to apologize for practising. Isobel hadn’t realized that you practiced scales and arpeggios and Pischna. She thought you practiced on Debussy and Bach and Mozart, simply by playing them over and over.

He stayed away a year the first time. But the movies weren’t using pianists any longer and he missed tea at four and clean bathrooms and good linen and servants.

When he came back he used his small store of money to rent a room to practice in. His life began to improve. He gave a concert in a church, he fell in love with Kelsey, he gave another concert in a larger church. He was away from the house a great deal and could appreciate it when he got back.

He had even done what Isobel had wanted him to do, influenced Johnny. Johnny had a job and he didn’t drink so much because Philip didn’t drink at all. There remained the question of Johnny’s women, but Isobel didn’t know such a question existed. She was pleased with herself, as patroness of the arts and guider of destinies, and gratified at the engagement between Kelsey and Philip.

She had arranged everything. In spite of the pain that twisted and writhed inside her like a snake, she had had enough control to arrange everything before she retired to her room. She never came down again. She died hard, fighting her pain, fighting even the morphine that numbed the pain. She was too tired to feel the full force of Kelsey’s accident and her blindness. She only realized vaguely that Kelsey was now a cripple and that cripples must have power as she, Isobel, had power.

To clear her mind she went without morphine for a day and the next afternoon her lawyer came. She made a new will.

She never thought of me, Alice thought bitterly. I was always to remain here, managing and controlling but never living. I was the older, I had more right to the money, more right to Philip.

“Excuse me,” she said and rose abruptly from the table and went out into the hall. She could feel Philip’s eyes following her, and she knew if she turned around that he would be looking puzzled but not really interested. She closed the door quickly so she wouldn’t look back.

Other women fell in love and were loved. They might lose their men to death, to other women, but they had had something more than this patient, puzzled stare, this hand patting, this brotherly touch of shoulders. I have all this love and no one to give it to, no one wants it. I’m a farm girl who’s come to market with baskets of produce and can’t sell it, can’t even give it away. Take it home to rot or give it to the pigs or dump it out on the road. Get rid of it some way, it’s beginning to smell.

It’s my mind. I’m worse than Ida. I don’t want physical love, I want simply to know I am loved.

She passed a mirror and stopped to smile wryly at herself.

“Passionate by post,” she said in the cold reasonable voice she used even to herself. “That’s my limit. My idea of a bedroom scene is lots and lots of lovely conversation.”

Perhaps if I were to be loved I’d become different, I’d learn all the tricks, I’d be seductive.

The Idas, and the girls that Johnny knew, were brought up to have all the tricks, they knew these things instinctively and had never been thwarted. They lived in homes where the man was master, the man breadwinner and boss, having to be coaxed, cajoled and flattered. The man, the important figure.

If you had a father who was important in the home, Alice thought, perhaps all males were important to you all of your life.

Mr. Heath had been never more than a guest in his house, and his wife and children were never more than polite to him. He had no part in their lives, made no plans or decisions, or contributions to their income. If he was kind his kindness was unnoticed and unnecessary. If he cut any figure at all it was a comic one, a huge helpless ghost moving around the house.

Perhaps my parents aren’t to blame, Alice thought.

A brief picture of Dr. Loring flashed into her mind. He was wearing his white coat and was smiling in his half-gentle, half-exasperated way.

Ahead of her the door to the kitchen was closed, but Ida’s tearful whine crept through the cracks.

“A good girl I am! The nerve of... A good girl!”

Smiling dryly to herself, Alice moved quietly up the stairs.

“Take it easy,” Sands said. “Have you a handkerchief?”

It appeared that when you wore an apron a handkerchief was excess baggage. Ida snuffled into starched broadcloth.

“Wait’ll I tell my mother,” Ida said. “I’ll tell her what you...”

“I’m asking you once more about the doors. Once more. Maurice tells me the self-lock is kept on all the time. When Maurice and the nurse came in that night after twelve the self-lock was on. So was the light in your room. The nurse saw it.”

“Her!” Ida said. “And my light was on because I had a toothache!”

“Some time later in the night the lock was slipped back. We know that because when Mr. Heath came into the house the door was unlocked.”

“Why didn’t he lock it then?” Ida said sulkily.

“He did, but it was too late. The man was already inside.”

“Man! Always this man! You don’t have to go looking around for someone to throw it on, not if you got eyes in your head. They all wanted her dead excepting me. Her own sister making calf-eyes at...”

“There was a man,” Sands said, “and the door was left open for him by someone in this house.”

“Well, why don’t you pick on the rest of them? Old high-and-mighty pussyfoot could have done it the same as me. The old goat sniffing around that nurse!”

Sands smiled, pleased with this picture of Maurice with a cloven hoof.

Ida did not return the smile. To Ida smiles and jokes were always personal. If you and somebody else smiled, that was all right, the joke was on a third person. But if someone smiled at you...

Her mouth shook with rage. “Ask them all! Ask them about money! Ask them why my only friend in this house tried to kill herself!”

“With your help,” Sands said quietly.

She stared at him with her mouth open. Then she bounded toward the door and hurled herself against it “Wait,” Sands said. “No one is going to bring any action against you.”

“I didn’t know!” Ida screamed. “I didn’t know what she was asking me to do! She said a box on the top of the bathroom cupboard. She said to make her sleep. She said, sit there, Ida, with me, while I go to sleep. I’m tired, she said, and I’m scared, alone here in the dark. So I sat there and told her things, about my mother who is a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and the sparks fly from her in the dark and she talks with people not of this world. And pretty soon she is quiet and I think, she is dead. I think, I’ll ask my mother to get in touch with her spirit.”

“And why did she want to die?”

“She was scared. There was these eyes on her watching her. She said, someone is waiting for me to die; someone is watching me and waiting, someone hates me.”

“And you didn’t think it might be her imagination?”

“You can feel hate,” Ida said simply. “It’s like she said, it’s like eyes on you. And when you got no eyes yourself and people are wishing you dead and you’re scared of what comes after you’re dead... Me, I’m not scared because I know if I’m a good girl...”

“You’ll go to heaven. All right,” Sands said. Ida, enchanted angel, purged of sin and acne and provided with a handkerchief. Ida, ectoplasmic wraith, writing on slates and rapping on tables: this is Ida, I am well and happy here. Green pastures and streets of gold, smelling faintly of sweat and cabbage, hair and Ben Hur perfume. This is Ida, come to heaven. Hello, momma.

“Sarcasm don’t hurt me,” Ida said. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”

“Irrelevant, surely,” Sands murmured, but he moved to let her out of the door. He had reached the saturation point with Ida and he was convinced that she had not unlocked the door for Murillo. His conviction came from nothing she said, but the impression she gave to him and would have given to Murillo. He felt strongly that Murillo would never have bothered with her under any circumstances. Murillo, vain and dapper in black fedora, mauve silk shirt and pointed shoes, would never have stooped to Ida.

Joe Lee would have the clothes by now, would be finding out from the hat what color Murillo’s hair was now and how much there was of it and if he had dandruff. The coat would give the weight, the shoes the height. Joe had Mamie’s black kid gloves. The case would soon be closed. They’d have Murillo within a week or two and the loose ends would be caught up or snipped off. Yet Sands felt uneasy.

He phoned the hospital and talked to Pearson, Stevie Jordan’s doctor. Pearson inclined to the dark view: Mr. Jordan was still unconscious and would probably remain unconscious for a long time, if not forever. The bullet had been removed and sent to the police lab.

“I beg pardon, sir.”

Sands swung around and said, “Don’t sneak up on me, Maurice.”

“No, sir. I didn’t intend to, sir. I merely wondered if you were through with the kitchen. I am going to prepare Mr. Heath’s breakfast. Mr. Heath doesn’t come down to breakfast.”

“Why not?”

Maurice coughed. “Well, sir, he’s not what you might call a... a sociable man.”

“I found him sociable.”

“You did, sir?”

“I found him delightful, as a matter of fact.”

Maurice swallowed hard and turned away.

“He’s hardly old enough to be senile, is he? Let’s see. About your age, Maurice?”

“Yes, sir,” Maurice said tightly.

“Fond of him?”

“I have been with him for nineteen years.”

“It doesn’t follow, Maurice. Suppose you are fond of him, why not quit treating him like an imbecile? Get him down to meals, get him talking.”

Maurice flushed a deep red. “One would think to hear you that the family was mistreating him.”

“Perhaps they are,” Sands said, wishing he had never started the conversation. “From ignorance, not malice. Perhaps this family doesn’t understand human values. When the girl Kelsey was dying and afraid to die alone, she asked a kitchenmaid to sit with her.”

Maurice said stiffly, “She suffered from delusions, sir.”

“What, another one?”

“There is such a thing as heredity. Miss Kelsey imagined the eyes upon her and because Ida had come to the house after she first imagined the eyes she trusted Ida. It’s very simple. I must make Mr. Heath’s breakfast now.”

“Go ahead. I’ll watch.”

“I prefer...” Maurice began, but Sands was already arranging himself at the kitchen table.

“Why doesn’t the cook make Mr. Heath’s breakfast?”

“She has a migraine.” Maurice placed two slices of bread in a toaster with such careful attention to detail that the act seemed very difficult, one to be attempted only by an expert like Maurice.

“All sorts of nervous disorders in this house,” Sands said, “from delusions of persecution through senility to neurosis. Or has the cook an allergy?”

“I don’t know,” Maurice said grimly.

“The toast is burning.”

“The toaster is automatic and can’t burn the bread.”

“You think,” Sands said, watching a plume of smoke rise to the ceiling. “Maybe the toaster has a complex.”

Maurice folded his lips and removed the charred bread and flung it on the table. One of the pieces slid across to Sands. He caught it neatly.

“Good for retreads,” he said. “I’ll keep it.”

“Why are you here annoying me?” Maurice said savagely.

“I don’t know,” Sands said, and he didn’t know. He was aware only that he wanted to annoy someone because he was tired and uneasy and the refined stupidities of the Heath family irritated him.

Yet the reason was more basic than this. He was a reformer who despaired of reform. He wanted to sting them all into awareness, and change; but he had merely the sting of a bee, not the fangs of a snake. He couldn’t change any of these people. Let Maurice keep his prissy ceremonials, let Alice freeze over and Mr. Heath sink deeper into his bog and Ida wiggle her way to heaven.

He pushed back his chair and there was the high wail of wood on wax.

“Go to hell,” he said, and left Maurice brooding over the toaster like an alchemist over a crucible, intense and important.

“Watch it, Maurice, you never know what might come out of a toaster, might even be toast.”