think your job is solid. You think. Here, I better talk to Gifford direct. Get him on the line. His valet just brought in his tea. If he can’t talk we’ll send over somebody that can.
Now what did I write that for? What was I trying not to think about? Telephone. Better telephone now. Getting very bad, very, very . . .
That was all. I folded the sheets up small and pushed them down into my inside breast pocket behind the note case. I went over to the french windows and opened them wide and stepped out onto the terrace. The moonlight was a little spoiled. But it was summer in Idle Valley and summer is never quite spoiled. I stood there looking at the motionless colorless lake and thought and wondered. Then I heard a shot.
29
On the balcony two lighted doors were open now—Eileen’s and his. Her room was empty. There was a sound of struggling from his and I came through the door in a jump to find her bending over the bed wrestling with him. The black gleam of a gun shot up into the air, two hands, a large male hand and a woman’s small hand were both holding it, neither by the butt. Roger was sitting up in bed and leaning forward pushing. She was in a pale blue housecoat, one of those quilted things, her hair was all over her face and now she had both hands on the gun and with a quick jerk she got it away from him. I was surprised that she had the strength, even dopey as he was. He fell back glaring and panting and she stepped away and bumped into me.
She stood there leaning against me, holding the gun with both hands pressed hard against her body. She was racked with panting sobs. I reached around her body and put my hand on the gun.
She spun around as if it took that to make her realize I was there. Her eyes widened and her body sagged against me. She let go of the gun. It was a heavy clumsy weapon, a Webley double-action hammerless. The barrel was warm. I held her with one arm, dropped the gun in my pocket, and looked past her head at him. Nobody said anything.
Then he opened his eyes and that weary smile played on his lips. “Nobody hurt,” he muttered. “Just a wild shot into the ceiling.”
I felt her go stiff. Then she pulled away. Her eyes were focused and clear. I let her go.
“Roger,” she said in a voice not much more than a sick whisper, “did it have to be that?”
He stared owlishly, licked his lip and said nothing. She went and leaned against the dressing table. Her hand moved mechanically and threw the hair back from her face. She shuddered once from head to foot, shaking her head from side to side. “Roger,” she whispered again. “Poor Roger. Poor miserable Roger.”
He was staring straight up at the ceiling now. “I had a nightmare,” he said slowly. “Somebody with a knife was leaning over the bed. I don’t know who. Looked a little like Candy. Couldn’t of been Candy.”
“Of course not, darling,” she said softly. She left the dressing table and sat down on the side of the bed. She put her hand out and began to stroke his forehead. “Candy has gone to bed long ago. And why would Candy have a knife?”
“He’s a Mex. They all have knives,” Roger said in the same remote impersonal voice. “They like knives. And he doesn’t like me.”
“Nobody likes you,” I said brutally.
She turned her head swiftly. “Please—please don’t talk like that. He didn’t knew. He had a dream—”
“Where was the gun?” I growled, watching her, not paying any attention to him.
“Night table. In the drawer.” He turned his head and met my stare. There hadn’t been any gun in the drawer, and he knew I knew it. The pills had been in there and some odds and ends, but no gun.
“Or under the pillow,” he added. “I’m vague about it. I shot once—” he lifted a heavy hand and pointed—”up there.”
I looked up. There seemed to be a hole in the ceiling plaster all right. I went where I could look up at it. Yes. The kind of hole a bullet might make. From that gun it would go on through, into the attic. I went back close to the bed and stood looking down at him, giving him the hard eye.
“Nuts. You meant to kill yourself. You didn’t have any nightmare. You were swimming in a sea of self-pity. You didn’t have any gun in the drawer or under your pillow either. You got up and got the gun and got back into bed and there you were all ready to wipe out the whole messy business. But I don’t think you had the nerve. You fired a shot not meant to hit anything. And your wife came running—that’s what you wanted. Just pity and sympathy, pal. Nothing else. Even the struggle was mostly fake. She couldn’t take a gun away from you if you didn’t want her to.”
“I’m sick,” he said. “But you could be right. Does it matter?”
“It matters like this. They’d put you in the psycho ward, and believe me, the people who run that place are about as sympathetic as Georgia chain-gang guards.”
Eileen stood up suddenly. “That’s enough,” she said sharply. “He is sick, and you know it.”
“He wants to be sick. I’m just reminding him of what it would cost him.”
“This is not the time to tell him.”
“Go on back to your room.”
Her blue eyes flashed. “How dare you—”
“Go on back to your room. Unless you want me to call the police. These things are supposed to be reported.”
He almost grinned. “Yeah, call the police,” he said, “like you did on Terry Lennox.”
I didn’t pay any attention to that. I was still watching her. She looked exhausted now, and frail, and very beautiful. The moment of flashing anger was gone. I put a hand out and touched her arm. “It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t do it again. Go back to bed.”
She gave him a long look and went out of the room. When the open door was empty of her I sat down on the side of the bed where she had been sitting.
