I Want to Go Home Read online

  That was tough on the Carrolls, Ray thought. They were going to be waked up. He pressed the button of the doorbell and heard the bell shrill, and then, after a little, a dog barked. It was a small, indignant dog, apparently. But nothing else happened, and Ray continued to press on the button of the doorbell. It continued to shrill, and the little dog became furious. Ray stopped pressing and the bell stopped, but the little dog continued, in a frenzy. The bell was unnecessary. The little dog would wake anyone. It became apparent that there was no one else to wake.

  Ray swore and went back to the little car. There was only one thing to do and he settled down to do it. There was no telling how long it would be. Eventually, almost always, people did come home—from bridge games, from late movies, from improving lectures by recognized authorities.

  Jane would be all right. He told himself that several times, until he almost believed it. Whatever the logic of this was, there was no logic which would require that anything further happen to Jane. She was “it.” She was the fall guy. Things didn’t happen to you when you were “it,” when you had been moved to the spot selected for you. Nobody then needed to do anything further. Anybody would be a fool to. The intelligent thing would be to let well enough alone.

  Only—people didn’t let well enough alone. That was, as nearly as Ray could understand it, the theory on which Captain Heimrich worked, and Ray did not think Heimrich was a fool. Heimrich was a man who relied on other people being fools, and who waited, with exemplary patience, for them to behave foolishly. It might suit Heimrich’s plans admirably if somebody tried to do something, further, about Jane. But it would hardly suit Heimrich’s plans to allow them to succeed. Since he could not be there himself, Ray decided he would have to trust Heimrich. It was not as good as being there himself. He hoped that Carroll would come home soon. He considered Carroll—Oliver Carroll, it was—with disfavor. He could only hope that Carroll, in addition to being out too late at nights, was a liar.

  If Carroll had lied, supporting an original lie told by John Lockwood, Ray thought he had something. Going away from the house, Lockwood had said Jane was. So—her back was to him, it was night, there was a moon but it was only part of a moon. Identification could not have been easy, always assuming there had been anyone to identify. Lockwood would hardly have ventured to make it, with emphasis, unless he was sure of one thing—that Jane could have been there. If he were honest, or even if he were cautious, he would not say he had seen Jane leaving the house until he had found out that Jane could not prove she was on the Twentieth Century Limited, several hundred miles away, at the time he gave. By the time he made the statement to the police, he could have found that out from Carroll, whom he had sent to meet the train. If he did not find it out from Carroll, then he already knew it, and if he already knew it, it was because he had arranged for Jane not to be on the Century.

  Even if Carroll admitted he had lied, the point would not be conclusive. Ray, lighting a new cigarette, looking vengefully at the dark Carroll house, admitted this to himself. It would give Lockwood something to explain, it would bear out Jane’s story. But it would not prove Jane’s story. It would not prove her innocence. Until her story was proved, it remained possible—to Heimrich, obviously—that she could have been at the house at two o’clock that morning, and any lies Lockwood might have told would merely muddle things, complicate them. Jane would still, presumably, be a major suspect. But there would be more suspicion to go around, and it would be spread thinner.

  “Damn you, Carroll,” Ray said, aloud, and lighted a new cigarette.

  A car came up the street, slowed—and swung into the driveway of the house next door to Carroll’s. Ray snapped his new cigarette out the open window of the rental car, watched its arc, almost at once lighted a new cigarette. He got out of the car and stood leaning against it, regarding the Carroll house with animus. It was almost half past eleven, then.

  It was ten minutes later when a couple came along the sidewalk, sauntering, unhurried. The man moved like a young man, the woman was slim and graceful, and held his arm. Ray watched them, ready to leap. They glanced at him and the car, seemed unperturbed, and turned in toward Carroll’s house.

  “Hey!” Ray said, and was startled by the volume of his voice, by the anxiety in it. “Hey! Are you Carroll?”

  The two stopped and faced him.

  “Why yes,” the man said. “Yes. You wanted to see me?”

  She lay in the warm water for a long time, turning more hot into the tub as the water cooled. Finally she soaped, slid back under the water, stepped to the rug to dry herself. She dried herself slowly, carefully, not letting anything awaken her from this new relaxation, not letting anything, any thought, any terror, come between her and the pleasure of the slightly rough towel on her skin, the kind of languor which had come with warmth, with the soft stroking of the heated water. When she was dry she looked down at the clothes on the floor and then, still not letting herself think what she was doing, ran warm water into the basin and washed underclothes, doing it slowly and carefully and hanging them, when she had finished, over the rod of the shower curtains. She looked at herself again in the door mirror, wanting to see if there was still fear in her eyes, but the mirror was steamed, now. She cleaned a place on it with the side of her hand, but almost at once it began to cloud again.

  She went out into the bedroom, then, and the air was cool on her skin and for a moment she shivered. But this time the shivering was really from the cold. Still she did not let herself think, still she moved with deliberate lassitude.

  There was a pair of pyjamas on the bed. They were blue, demure, something which might be worn by a young girl, and Jane realized they must be little Susan’s. She hesitated a moment and then thought that Grace Lockwood had seemed to intend kindness, and that this would be part of it, and put the pyjamas on. They were a little small, but only a little and only across her breasts. They were not made of silk, but of some soft cotton material which felt against her skin as cloth had not felt since she was much younger. She looked down at herself in the blue pyjamas and she felt that she was much younger. The room, too, became more familiar, so it was as if she had somehow moved back in time and become again, by some alchemy of physical sensation and of memory, a girl in her teens. She had had her hot bath, as she had been told to, and now she would drink her milk and go to bed, obedient, questing back for childhood. It became, oddly, a kind of game, and a kind of refuge. For so long as she was a little girl, obedient, demure, the rise of her breasts restrained, she would be safe. That was the game. She would not have to fear, to wonder if something had happened to her mind, to think that she was hiding guilt in the fantasy of nightmare. It was part of the game, also, to move very slowly, very carefully, toward the bed, so as not by sudden movement, by familiar freedom, to reawaken fear. She got into bed and smoothed the covers over her and lay on her back, her legs together, very quietly.

  Now I must drink my milk, she thought. I will be a good girl and drink my milk. But for a moment she did not see the milk. Then, turning her head to the side, slowly, she saw the thermos pitcher on a little table beside the bed. The thermos pitcher and a glass were on a round silver tray and she reached out and lifted the top from the pitcher. A tiny wisp of steam came out of the pitcher. She put the top back and withdrew her hand and lay very still. It was not time yet, she thought. I will lie here very quietly, in the quiet, for a little while. Then it will be time to drink my milk and go to sleep. I must not be greedy, for the milk or for sleep; I must be a good girl. That is part of the game, and if I am careful the game will become real, and I shall be a young girl without fear, or knowledge, and without guilt. And then when I sleep I will not dream any more, and perhaps that way I can find my way back, so that when I wake up again all the dreams will be over.

  She lay so for perhaps ten minutes. Then she thought, I will count to a hundred, at the cadence of my pulse beat, and then I will drink my hot milk and go to sleep. She began to count in her mind, one�
��two. She put her fingers under the pyjama jacket, against the place where she could feel her heart beating, and counted with its beat. Three, four, five, six—If she did not drink the milk until she had counted to a hundred, “they” could not get her. She would be safe from them. It was a rule of the game.

  Oliver Carroll looked a little frightened, and not very well. He said over again what he had just said.

  “How could I know that?” he said. “Be fair, Mr. Forrest. Look at it my way. Lockwood’s my boss. You’d have done the same.”

  “All right,” Ray Forrest said. “Skip it, Carroll. Sure I’d have done the same, I suppose. Work it out yourself.”

  “It was harmless,” Carroll said. “I thought it was harmless. That’s what he said. Said it would embarrass him.” Rather suddenly, Carroll got red. “All right,” he said. “He’s my boss. What the hell?”

  Ray Forrest was standing, moving toward the door. Carroll followed him, talking. Carroll’s wife sat in the living room, and she looked frightened, too.

  “It’s O.K. now,” Ray said. “Quit worrying. As long as you come through, boss or no boss.” He stopped and faced Carroll. “You’ll have to do that, you know,” he said.

  “Yes,” Carroll said. “Of course. Believe me, Mr. Forrest, I—”

  “O.K.,” Ray said. “I get it. I’ve got to get back.”

  “Any time,” Carroll said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Sure,” Ray said. “That’s up to the cops. I’ll tell them.” Ray opened the door. He said “good night” and did not listen to anything more Carroll said. Carroll had said enough.

  The motor of the rented car sputtered, died, sputtered again. Ray swore at it. It caught and he raced it, so that it made an angry sound in the night.

  It had taken too long, a lot too long. Carroll had denied it, had said he’d told all he knew to the police, had insisted he had met the Century, would have known Jane. (“I know all the family; I knew her as a kid.” He had been proud of that.) She had not been on the train. Lockwood had telephoned him and he had reported. That was how Lockwood knew.

  “Come off it,” Ray said. “This is murder, Carroll. You’re covering up. Covering up for the boss. This is murder.”

  It was that which had broken Carroll, finally. “This is murder, Carroll. You can’t cover up when it’s murder. You’re a lawyer. You know that. This is murder, for God’s sake. This is murder.” It had taken time; too much time. There had been a few minutes when Ray had begun to doubt, had begun to fear that what he didn’t want to hear was nevertheless the truth. And then Carroll had broken.

  He had not met the Century. He had not been told to meet the Century. Around ten o’clock, perhaps a little before, Lockwood had telephoned him.

  “He said, ‘Listen, Ollie,’” Oliver Carroll said. “He called me Ollie when he was amiable, wanted me to feel pleased. He said, ‘Listen, Ollie. I want you to do something for me. I want you to say you met the Century this morning, that I told you to meet Jane Phillips, who was expected on it. You remember Jane.’”

  Carroll had said he remembered Jane.

  “‘Good,’” Lockwood had said. “‘You met the Century, looked for Jane, and she wasn’t on it. Understand?’”

  Carroll had said he guessed so.

  “The fact is,” Lockwood had said—or had said something like that—“I promised the family to have the train met and I was going to ask you to meet it. Slipped my mind. Embarrassing to have to admit it, you see? I’d like to have you say you did meet it. All right?”

  “I said, ‘Look, Mr. Lockwood. Do I just say I missed her? Or what?’ and he said, ‘No, Ollie, just say she wasn’t on the train. Say you couldn’t have missed her if she had been,’ and I started, ‘But, Mr. Lockwood—’ and he cut in. ‘Don’t worry about that, Ollie,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t on the train. You can take my word for that.’”

  “He didn’t say how he knew?” Ray had asked and Oliver Carroll had shaken his head.

  “I suppose he got word somehow,” he said. “Didn’t he?”

  “Oh yes,” Ray said. “I think he got word, all right. Somehow.” He paused. “You may have to swear to this,” he had said. Oliver Carroll didn’t like that, but after a time he saw it. It did not make him happy, it was then he began to look a little unwell, but he saw it.

  The little rental car jumped when the clutch went in. It did its best, under a heavy, driving foot. But it was some time after midnight when it finished climbing the hill outside White Plains and it was well after one o’clock when it stopped, with a final shudder, in the turnaround in front of the Meredith garage. There was still a light in the library, and a trooper was still awake to open the door to the house.

  Eleven

  She was a little girl, swinging under the great tree, kicking the ground with her feet, up and back, up and back again. But then she began to feel uneasy, uncertain. She had forgotten something; it was time to do something and she had not done it. She had forgotten to go in to supper, that was it, and it was wrong to forget to go in to supper when it was time. Aunt Susan would be cross with her. She scuffed her feet on the ground to stop the swing and pushed herself away from the seat and jumped and then started to run toward the house. But then she was already in the house, in bed in her room (because she had forgotten to go in to supper?) and it was still light. She was sitting up in bed and it was light because she had forgotten to turn off the lamp by the bed. But perhaps Aunt Susan was coming to turn it off by the wall switch at the door. After she had drunk her milk, that was it. Aunt Susan would come—no, something had happened to Aunt Susan. Someone would come to see that she had drunk her milk and then to turn off the light. Grace would come.

  Jane was still half asleep, still half a dreaming little girl. She reached out toward the thermos of milk. Then the light went out. And she heard the bedroom door close, although she had not heard it open. With one hand extended toward the thermos, she turned her head toward the door. There was nothing there but darkness.

  Then, blindingly, there was light again. It leaped at her, poured at her. It was a second before she realized that some one, standing halfway across the room between door and bed, was holding a flashlight so that its beam was dashed into her eyes. She put up a hand to shield her eyes.

  “Don’t!” she said. “Grace, don’t!”

  It was not Grace who answered, but the voice was familiar. Even subdued, as it was now, it was clear and musical. But that’s wrong, Jane thought. It isn’t. Not now. She thought even before she understood the words.

  “You didn’t drink it,” the voice said. “That’s too bad, Jane.”

  “The milk?” she said. “What do you mean. What are you—”

  “The milk,” the familiar voice, which was nevertheless the wrong voice, said. There was impatience in the tone. “Of course, the milk.”

  “I don’t want it,” she said. “I never wanted it.”

  “It’s the best way. The easiest way. You must drink it, Jane.”

  “Must?” she said. “Why?”

  “Now,” the other said. “So you’ll—sleep. It’s a very easy way. Easier than—any other.”

  “For Susan?” she said. The words came suddenly, falling over each other.

  “Yes, for Susan too. It was very easy. Very quick. There was no pain. Almost no pain.”

  “But why?” Jane said, and her voice was suddenly high, breaking and the other voice said, “Don’t scream! I’ll have to shoot you if you scream!”

  “Why?” she said again. “What good will it do? You’re—you’re crazy.”

  “Shut up!” the man with the flashlight said. “Shut up, you fool!”

  “You’re mad,” she said. “Insane. It won’t do you any good—get you anywhere.”

  “You killed her,” the man said, more reasonably. “You realized you were going to be caught. You killed yourself.”

  “Nobody will think that.”

  The man laughed, shortly, softly.

  “Drink it,
” he said. “You have to. Or it will be uglier, hurt more. It might even—last a long time. It could be very ugly. In the face.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “Then everybody will know. Then—”

  “Drink it!” the man said. “Just drink it!”

  “You’re stupid,” Jane said. “My God, you’re stupid! You—”

  The words were clear. She was saying the words. Even her voice was not very strange. But she was talking in madness, to a madman.

  “Drink it!” the voice said. It went high, suddenly. It almost broke. And the man moved closer; the eye of the flashlight glared closer. She could not see behind it, beyond it. It burned into her eyes; it seemed to go through her eyes into her brain, glaring there hideously. And slowly she reached out her hand, again, toward the thermos pitcher.

  Heimrich’s eyes were open, this time, as he listened. He seemed to absorb the story.

  “So he knew,” Ray said, leaning forward. “Before he could have known—unless he arranged it. You see that?”

  “I see your point, Mr. Forrest. Unless she wired. Or telephoned.”

  “She didn’t,” Ray said. “You know that.”

  “Not here,” Heimrich said. “Not to anyone here. That’s true. I don’t know about his office. She could have wired there.”

  “Hell,” Ray said. “You know she didn’t!” Heimrich shook his head.

  “I think she didn’t,” he corrected. He smiled, now, his eyes still open. “I think you’ve done a good job, Mr. Forrest,” he said. “Better than we did. But we talked to Carroll before we heard Mrs. Phillips’ story. You realize that?”

  “What difference does it make?” Ray said. “We know now.”

  Heimrich unexpectedly pursed his lips. He shook his head again. But he kept his eyes open.

  “What, Mr. Forrest?” he said. “What do we know?”

  “That Jane was—kept from coming here,” Ray said. “That her story’s true.”