Death of an Angel (5 page)

You could not reasonably blame Toby. This was the first June he could remember (Mrs. Hemmins supposed) when the two of them had not had the run of the apartment, if they wanted it. Toby usually did; Mrs. Hemmins was somewhat past the age for running. She, except for going out and coming in, and the weekly light cleaning which is all a place needs when it is shut up, stayed for the most part in her own sitting room, or bedroom, and did such cooking as she needed to do in the kitchenette. Where Toby went, in his somewhat formalized search for (she presumed) mice, was Toby's concern, so long as he did not get out of the apartment entirely, and did show up for meals. The chairs wore dust covers, so he could sleep where he chose—leaving long, silky hair to mark the places of his choice. If the mister decided to spend a day or two in town, there was ample warning. Usually he didn't, from late in May until October. And then he was in and out only a little more frequently, before he went to Florida, or Europe, or wherever he thought was a good place to go. All the staff except Mrs. Hemmins went back to the country house.

Why he had kept the place at all since the old lady died was more than Mrs. Hemmins could figure out. (She looked behind the range, where there was just room for Toby, but where Toby was not.) Sixteen rooms on two floors was ridiculous—why, it was bigger than any house ought to be, and it was only an apartment. (There is an essential absurdity in an apartment's being bigger than a house.) Even when the old lady was alive, and before that when they were both alive, it had been too big for any real use, and they'd never used more than half of it—the family
and
the help. It was a white elephant now. No mistake about that.

But, until this happened, Mrs. Hemmins had had no reason to complain, and so had complained only moderately. She had a roof over her head, and a place to have friends into. She had wages; she had an air-conditioning unit in her bedroom and another in the sitting room. All she really had to do was
be
there. She was, in a sense, a light left burning, an almost symbolic occupancy. She was bothered by no one.

And now he'd met this girl. This actress. Pretty enough, if you liked them skinny, and it seemed to Mrs. Hemmins—from what she read in the newspapers, saw pictured in the magazines—that nowadays men did. Nothing to do with her, in any case. But it did keep him in town, since the girl was in this play. (Mrs. Hemmins had seen the play; she, for one, didn't see why everybody made such a fuss about it.) Even on Saturdays, and she didn't suppose he'd been in New York on a Saturday more than once or twice in his life, until this came up.

Apparently, Toby was not in the kitchen, or if in the kitchen had found a new hiding place. She wouldn't put it past him. Well, if he were in the kitchen he'd eventually be yelling to get out. The only thing that mattered was that he hadn't gone upstairs. Not that that mattered too much. It was certainly time Mr. Fitch waked up, if he was going to. Out till all hours, of course, but here it was almost eleven.

Mrs. Hemmins went to the foot of the service stairs which led to the second floor of Bradley Fitch's duplex on Park Avenue, and called up them. “Toby,” she called. “Come down here, Toby.” Nothing came down there.

But then she heard, distantly, the upstairs doorbell and, waiting, heard footsteps. There was enough interval between the two to lead Mrs. Hemmins to the assumption that the doorbell had waked him up. And that meant that, before long, he would ring to have her bring breakfast up. (Not that there wasn't a perfectly good serving pantry up there, and all anybody would need to make breakfast for himself. But, when you had as much money as he had, she supposed you'd never think of that. Unless somebody stayed the night with you and got the breakfast for you.)

But, as she grumbled her way to the servants' sitting room, where the bell indicator was, Mrs. Hemmins was without animus toward Bradley Fitch. Employer or not, rich young man or not, nuisance or not, you couldn't help liking Mr. Bradley. Nobody could, so far as she'd ever noticed.…

The bell had awakened Bradley Fitch, in his large, and air-conditioned, bedroom on the second floor. Fitch groaned. Then he opened his eyes. Sitting on him, looking at him fixedly, was that Toby. Awake, Fitch discovered Toby was a heavy cat. He had supposed he was mostly fur. Fitch closed his eyes and groaned again, and opened them, and there was Toby.

Fitch was a horse and dog man. He had no fixed objection to cats, who were all right in their place. Their place was not on the abdomen of a human with a hangover. “Scat,” Fitch said, and the effort amplified his headache. The word did not greatly interest Toby, since he considered it merely a word of greeting. (“Cat” was, of course, one of the several words Toby knew well. The slight hiss which this time preceded it could be ignored, and was.) The doorbell rang again.

“Oh, God,” Fitch said, and started to get up. This Toby could not ignore. He protested, in a word, and got up himself. He was both quicker and more graceful than the man at getting up. “Who the hell?” Fitch said, dully, and found a robe, and went from his air-conditioned bedroom into an air-conditioned room, pleasantly furnished, which was called a “study” for want of a more appropriate word. The doorbell rang once more as, having crossed the study, Fitch went into the small foyer. Fitch opened the door. He blinked. He said, “Hello, cousin.”

“Hope I'm not too early,” his visitor said. “You said around eleven. It's a little after that.”

“I said?” Fitch repeated. “Said what?”

“To come around,” his visitor said. “Talk it over.”

“I did?”

He was asked not to say he had forgotten. He was told that it had, after all, been his idea. “You said you'd been thinking it over, and there might be a way to work things out. Don't you remember?”

“No,” Fitch said. “I'm sorry, cousin.” He pressed his hands against his temples. “Seems to be a lot I don't remember,” he said. “But—come on in.”

The visitor came in.

“Fact is,” Fitch said, “I seem to have tied one on. I've got the granddaddy of all hangovers.”

The visitor was sympathetic.

“Tell you what, Brad,” the visitor said. “I know a thing will fix you up.”

“Coffee,” Fitch said. “I'll have Rosie fix us up—”

“Better than coffee,” his visitor said. “Tomato juice and—oh, several things. Tabasco. First you think you're on fire and then—like that—you're all right.”

“God,” Fitch said. “Sounds repellent, doesn't it?”

He was told to sit right there; just to sit right there and relax. He was told that his visitor knew where everything was—ought to, by now.

“All right,” Fitch said, and sat in a deep chair. He leaned forward in it, his head in his hands. (At least, he supposed it was still his head.)

He tried to remember, and did not. Apparently, he had invited this. Got carried away, probably; got to feeling friends with the world. Said something he hadn't meant to say, the way people do. Tried to make everybody happy, the way he sometimes did when he'd had a few more than usual. Well, he hadn't committed himself to anything, and nobody was going to make him believe he had. He—

“Here, Brad,” his visitor said. “Drink this. Don't taste it. Just drink it.” A tray with a glass on it was held within Fitch's uncertain vision. “Be a new man when you get that down,” his visitor promised.

Fitch reached out a hand which trembled slightly and took the glass. He raised it, hesitantly, toward his lips.

“Drink up,” his visitor told him. “That's the only way.”

Fitch took a deep breath and let it out. He put the glass to his lips, and put his head back, and swallowed until there was nothing more to swallow. He almost choked over the last swallow.

“Think you're on fire is—” Fitch began. He did not finish. Surely, nothing could burn like this! If it was all tabasco—if it was—
it can't burn like this. It can't be meant to
—

“Afraid I—” he managed to say. But he leaned forward in the chair. He vomited on the floor.…

The black cat looked at Fitch. The cat's whiskers flattened along his jaw, and the sensitive nostrils quivered. The cat laid back his rounded ears, and the cat's lips drew back so that sharp white teeth glinted into sight. But there was no one to see the cat.…

It was funny the mister didn't ring. Half an hour, now, since she'd heard him walking up there, after the doorbell rang. Usually he couldn't get his coffee fast enough. Probably whoever it was—and pretty early whoever it was—was holding things up. Maybe—maybe he'd gone out to breakfast with whoever it was. If that was what it was, he might have told her. It wasn't like him to—

She heard the downstairs doorbell. Now what?

She had been in the kitchen. She had to walk through two large rooms to reach the entrance foyer. At the stairs she paused momentarily, since Toby was coming down them. Toby's tail was large. “You,” she said. “You've been up to something, haven't you?”

It was apparent that Toby had. He completed his descent hurriedly, making himself small. On the floor, he ran, a cat hugging the surface—obviously, Mrs. Hemmins thought, a guilty cat. Or perhaps a frightened one. You might have thought that Mr. Bradley, finding him unwanted, had been harsh with him. Except that Mr. Bradley was not ever harsh with anyone. Better for him, probably, if he sometimes were. Then—

She went on through the room in which there had been dancing, in which Bradley Fitch, a little boyish in manner, had announced his plans for marriage. She went through the larger room, where so many had waited the entrance of Naomi Shaw, and through the foyer. She wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door to a slight man in a dark suit, a man with a long, sad face; a man who said, “Is Mr. Fitch in?”

Got a summer cold, Mrs. Hemmins thought, and said, “Expecting you, Mister—?”

“Wyatt. No. I can't say he is. But—”

“Not even sure he's up,” Mrs. Hemmins said. “Hasn't had his breakfast, anyway.”

Sam Wyatt snapped fingers on his right hand.

“Didn't think,” he said. “Well, I can—”

“Matter of fact,” Mrs. Hemmins said, “he's awake, anyway. Somebody came earlier than you. Upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” Wyatt said.

“Best way,” Mrs. Hemmins said. “Takes in two floors. Another door up there.” She indicated with a thumb. “He lives up there, mostly. But come on Mister—what did you say?”

Wyatt said it again. He hesitated, and went in.

“Call and see,” Mrs. Hemmins said, and went to a telephone and peered at it, and chose a button from among several, and pressed it. She pressed it again, and lifted the receiver.

“Don't answer,” she said. “Guess he went out after all. Only—”

She put the receiver back and stood, looking at the telephone as if she expected an explanation from it. Of course, Toby might merely have done something he shouldn't. He often did, and—if apprehended—showed guilt. But the more she thought about it, the more she thought that Toby had acted as if—well, as if someone had frightened him. But if Mr. Bradley wasn't upstairs, nobody was upstairs and—what had Toby been afraid of?

“It's rather important.” Wyatt said. “I could try later. But—”

“I'll tell you,” Mrs. Hemmins said. “Chance is he's taking a shower. In that glass thing. In there he can't hear goodness, I don't know what he
could
hear. If it's important—
Gesundheit
—I can take you up and show you where—” She hesitated; made up her mind. “Come on,” she said. “We may as well find out.” She led toward the stairway, and Wyatt went after her.

The door to the second-floor study opened off a hallway, and stood ajar. Mrs. Hemmins rapped on it and said, “Mr. Fitch? Mr. Fitch, sir?” in much the same voice she had used earlier in calling the missing Toby. Behind her, Sam Wyatt sneezed. He's really got a bad one, Mrs. Hemmins thought, and pushed the door open and looked into the study. And screamed.

Bradley Fitch had got out of the chair, but he had not got far—not more than halfway across the room. He had fallen, then. Lying face down on the floor he had vomited again, and then, clutching himself, he had rolled to his side. He had died so.

Everybody leaves New York City over summer weekends. Everybody goes to the beach, or to Long Island or Westchester or near-by Connecticut, or to the New Jersey hills or shore. Subway trains run infrequently; buses hurry along uncrowded avenues; taxi drivers, in considerable numbers, may be found not in the city, but driving on country roads, uneasy to find so much space around them. Except in the theater district, and even there on Sundays, it is often possible to find a place to park a car. (On Sundays, it is less possible to find a place to eat, since the best restaurants do not open.) In the offices of afternoon newspapers a few sit sleepily on Saturdays, or play bridge or poker, since there is no news on summer weekends.

It is true that a few millions remain, for one reason or another. It is true also that some thousands come into town, and may be seen walking dreamily along Fifth Avenue and elsewhere, the men usually in sports shirts and equipped with cameras. There are always some people in New York, even when everybody has left.

It is not usual for Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North to be among them. The Norths have, and for years have had, a weekend place where grass grows—and where Jerry, in adventuresome moments, has sought to make vegetables grow, and Pam flowers. This weekend, however, they were in town, because Jerry had no choice and where Jerry stays Pam, in the ordinary run of things, stays also. Their confinement was due to a man named Braithwaite, who wrote books, who was leaving in a week for Europe, who had got his newest manuscript to North Books, Inc., a month late and who pointed out that if anybody was going to ask for changes—not that he supposed anybody would be so foolish—they had better ask fast. So Jerry, who found he was going to ask for a good many changes, turned typed pages with reasonable steadiness—and wished, rubbing tired eyes, that Braithwaite's typist would remember to change her ribbon occasionally. Pamela read and talked to cats—in low tones, so as not to disturb Jerry. The cats, who hate to be taken to the country in boxes, were evidently gratified by this turn of events.