books. Outside, two patrolmen were once again guarding the front and back doors. They had left the house this morning; now they were back.
Nora wondered whether she would die if she jumped from the roof. She thought not. The girl went back into her house and down to the kitchen. She picked through a deep bottom drawer and found one of Mrs Biggs s carving knives. She took it upstairs and placed it under her pillow.
What could she do? She couldn't tell anyone the truth, and she couldn't lie any longer. No one would believe her. No one did believe her.
Nora did not intend the kitchen knife for use on herself. She had no wish to die. She might, however, at least try to defend herself if he came again.
Part 5
Chapter Twenty-one
Littlemore worked the lock while I stood behind him. It must have been about two in the morning. My job was to keep a lookout, but I could see nothing in the blackness. Nor could I hear anything over the mechanical roar that drowned out all other sound. I found myself looking instead at the canopy of stars above us.
He had it open in less than a minute. The elevator car was unexpectedly large. Littlemore pulled the door to, and we were enclosed in the dimly lit cabin. Two gas flames threw enough light to allow Littlemore to work the operating lever. With a lurch, the detective and I began our slow descent to the caisson.
'You sure you're okay?' Littlemore asked me. One of the two blue flames was reflected in his eyes — and the other in mine, I suppose. Nothing else was visible. The booming engines above us kept up a deep steady beat, as if we were making our way down the aortic artery of a gigantic bloodstream. 'It's not too late. We could still turn back.'
'You're right,' I said. 'Let's go back.'
The elevator jerked to a halt. 'You mean it?' Littlemore asked.
'No. I was joking. Come on, take us down.'
'Thanks,' he said.
He reminded me of someone, Littlemore, but I couldn't think whom. Then I remembered: when I was a child, my parents took us to the country every summer — not Aunt Mamie's 'cottage' in Newport, but a real cottage of our own near Springfield, with no running water. I loved that little house. I had a best friend there, Tommy Nolan, who lived year-round on a nearby farm. Tommy and I used to walk for miles and miles along the wooden fences that separated the farms from one another. I hadn't thought of Tommy for a long time.
'What do you think the mayor will do to you when he finds out?' I asked.
'Fire me,' said Littlemore. 'You feel that in your ears? Pinch your nose and blow out. That's how you clear. My dad taught me.'
I had a different trick. Among the many useless skills I possess is the knack for controlling by will the inner ear muscles that open the eustachian tubes. The pace of the elevator was agonizingly slow. We were barely moving at all. 'How long to get down?' I asked.
'Five minutes, the guy told me,' said the detective. 'Dad could stay underwater better than two minutes.'
'Sounds like you got on with him.'
'My dad? Still do. Best man I know.'
'How about your mother?'
'Best woman,' said Littlemore. 'I'd do anything for her. Boy, I used to think if I could only find a girl like Mom, I'd marry her in a heartbeat.'
'Funny you should say that.'
'Until I met Betty,' Littlemore said. 'She was Miss Riverford's maid. First time I ever saw her was — what, three days ago? — and right away I'm crazy about her. Crazy crazy. She's nothing like Mom. Italian. Kind of hot- tempered, I guess. She gave me a whack last night I can still feel.'
'She hit you?'
'Yeah. Thought I was messing around,' said the detective. 'Three days, and already I can't mess around. Can you top that?'
'Maybe. Miss Acton hit me with a steaming teapot yesterday.'
'Ouch,' said Littlemore. 'I saw the saucer on her floor.'
A whistling noise commenced inside the car, as the elevator displaced air in the shaft. The booming of the engines on the surface was now more distant — a dull throbbing, more sensible than audible.
'I had a girl patient a long time ago,' I said. 'She told me — she told me — she wanted to have sex with her father.'
'What?'
'You heard me,' I said.
'That's disgusting.'
'Isn't it?'
'That's about the most disgusting thing I ever heard,' said the detective.
'Well, I — '
'Katie bar the door.'
'All right.' My voice came out much louder than I intended; the echo rang interminably in the elevator cabin. 'Sorry,' I said.
'No problem. It was my fault,' Littlemore replied, although it wasn't.
It would have been inconceivable for my father to snap like that. He never revealed what he felt. My father lived by a simple principle: never willingly show pain. For a long time I thought pain must have been the only thing he felt — because if there had been anything else, I reasoned, he could have expressed it without violating his principle. Only later did I understand. All feeling is painful, one way or another. The most exquisite joy is a sting to the heart, and love — love is a crisis of the soul. Therefore, given his principles, my father couldn't show any of his feelings. Not only couldn't he show what he felt, he couldn't show that he felt.
My mother hated his uncommunicative nature — she says it killed him in the end — but it was, oddly enough, the thing about him I admired most. On the night he took his own life, his comportment at dinner was no different from what it had ever been. I too dissemble, every day of my life, reenacting by half my father's principle, although I don't play the half of him half so well as he. Long ago I made up my mind: I would speak what I feel, but never in any other way display emotion. That's what I mean by half. Truth to tell, I don't really believe in expressing one's feelings other than through language. All other kinds of expression are forms of acting. They're all show. They are all seeming.
Hamlet says something similar. It's practically the first thing he says in the play. His mother has asked him why he still seems so downcast by his father's death. 'Seems, madam?' he replies. 'I know not 'seems.'' He then deprecates all outward expressions of grief: the 'inky cloak' and 'customary suits of solemn black,' the 'fruitful river in the eye.' These displays, he says, 'indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play — '
'My God!' I said in the dark. 'My God. I've got it.'
'Me too!' Littlemore exclaimed, just as eagerly. 'I know how he killed Elizabeth Riverford, even though he was out of town. Banwell, I mean. She was with him. Nobody else knew. The mayor didn't know. Banwell kills her wherever they were — okay? — then he brings her body back to her apartment, ties her up, and makes it look like the murder happened there. I can't believe I didn't get it before. Is that what you were thinking?'
'No.'
'No? What was yours, Doc?'
'Never mind,' I said. 'Just something I've been thinking about for a long time.'
'What was it?'
Inexplicably, I decided to try to tell him. 'You've heard of 'To be, or not to be'?'
'As in 'that is the question'?'
