Hanno’s Doll (15 page)

He genuinely didn't know who the fellow was talking about. He said, “Who is this Kitten?”

“What? Oh, Katherine. We nicknamed her Kitten that first time she appeared in the office, Mr. Dietrich, a little thing. That was at the time of her father's remarriage. A regular kitten we thought. You know how kittens are when they get angry? Spitting fire, all tiny claws and fluffy … wanting to scratch her father's eyes out.”

“Wanting to scratch her father's eyes out?”

“He had just married against Kitten's wishes.” Mr. Clinton snickered. “Didn't have her blessing.”

He had closed his eyes, which made the words clearer in his ears, so he opened them. Mr. Justin Clinton was holding a cigarette box toward him, asking him whether he wanted a cigarette. “No.” Asking whether
he
might smoke. “Please,” he said.

“Mr. Dietrich, yes, perhaps we should have told you Kitten was married even if we did understand the relationship with you to be irregular. Perhaps we should have.” He took a cigarette from the case, rolled it between his fingers, put it back in the case and chose another one. “Candidly, if we had gone against her express wishes not to tell you until the divorce was final, we'd have lost the estate.…” He clicked his fingers. “Like that!”

A man-to-man expression, a between-us-two-men expression. A leering, brotherly expression. In what crime were the two of them involved?

“You know Kitten.”

Both involved in the crime of knowing Kitten.

“Not that one can blame her,” Clinton said, putting the cigarette down on the saucer on the lunch tray and pulling some papers from the brief case. “After all, she was spoiled from her first breath. Paid servants aren't going to discipline a child. It is much easier to give in and keep—keep the kitten purring. The mother was never around and the father, of course, was mush in her hands.”

“Mush?”

“Mush. We sound like Eskimos, don't we, Mr. Dietrich? ‘Mush'?” He cleared his throat.

“Puppchen's father was mush in her hands?”

“And aren't you?” Mr. Justin-Clinton was asking.

“The judge believed there was misuse of funds. Her father contended that the use was with his daughter's full knowledge, but, of course, a minor cannot give consent. I assure you, even at fifteen, Kitten's grasp of figures amazed us. She got that from her mother, of course. All the Suttons knew just what they had and just how to hang on to it. It's a talent in itself. All these real-estate fortunes come when you get these people who know what they have and how to hang on to it. Kitten sat there in the judge's chambers looking—well, you know what she looks like—and Judge Dentey threw the book at Kitten's father.”

“She wanted you to punish him?”

“Prosecute? No.”

“It was your doing. You brought the case.”

“No, I mean that Kitten wanted—‘Off with his head!' You know your
Alice
, don't you?” He saw Hanno's bewilderment. “You're not an English actor, of course. All of them know their
Alice
. The name for the crime her father had committed in Kitten's vocabulary was
lèse-majesté
. It was
lèse-majesté
to go against her wishes and marry.… ‘Off with his head!' Nothing less!” He said, “To hell with
Alice
. The truth of the matter is that we're specialists in realty law, realty management, and not in Kitten management, and that's for sure.”

The lawyer used the expression “and that's for sure” because he didn't like to say “we're only human”; that Clinton, Clinton and Prufrock might sound imposing, but are only three human beings, after all.

“But that,” Mr. Clinton said, “is water under the bridge now, isn't it?” He stubbed out his cigarette and tried again. “That isn't what I'm here for now, is it?”

Mr. Clinton was here to represent “Kitten,” and I, Hanno thought, am here for poisoning this boy. “I didn't poison the boy, Mr. Clinton, I hit him. I should be here for that For hitting.”

“If you didn't poison him, if it was, as I gather you contend, manslaughter—”

“Accident! Accident! Not poisoning. Not slaughter.”

“Poisoning generally means intent to kill, Mr. Dietrich. I was informed that you contended it was your pushing the boy that caused the … the manslaughter, that is, killing without intent. Are you going to contend that it was accidental poisoning also?”

“Why would I poison him? Why would I want to kill him? Use your head, man! Because he would tell Puppchen I was the father of Miss Mildred's child? Miss Mildred was alive, then. All I had to do was have Miss Mildred tell Puppchen the truth. So why, why, why?” He saw now that he had succeeded in being thrown out of the fraternity. Now Mr. Clinton was not his brother.

“Mr. Dietrich, what's the point of all these—heroics?”

“Heroics?”

“Act, then. What's the point of the act, then?” Setting the brief case on the floor, he went to the door and listened, then pulled the chair closer to the bed. “There is no sense to this. I saw the photographs of the deceased.”

“You saw the photographs of the deceased?” Clinton had seen the photographs of the dead boy. The lawyer's voice had become so portentous, the chair now pulled up closer to the bed, so telling, that he had to listen.

“The police photographs. Oh, unofficially, thank heavens, unofficially. I was in the sheriff's office just before I came here, and I happened to see them lying there on the desk and casually glanced at them.”

Clinton was waiting? What was he waiting for? He had seen photographs. So? Yes?

“And that's why I came right over. Kitten must leave tonight.”

“Tonight.”

“She must be at the airport in time to catch the Air France plane.”

“Not tonight. Not so soon.”

Mr. Clinton shrugged. “Once the identification is made, and that won't be long after the photographs are on the wires, believe me … Once they know what we know, Mr. Dietrich, I wouldn't stand a dog's chance of getting her out, no matter how many strings I can pull. As it was, I managed with the help of Dr. Green from the sanatorium. When he told them about the suicide attempt and gave his expert opinion that her appearance at the trial might subject her to a strain she couldn't take … Oh, they didn't want to play around with that.… They never do. And it's only by definition that she's a material witness. Anyhow, they didn't want a chance of trouble, and Kitten's free to go tonight, and believe me, it won't be any too soon.”

He had a sense of giant bats flapping the air like fans. “You say you recognized the photograph. You recognized him.”

“You wouldn't know that. I see that. You wouldn't have known that I could recognize him. Well, he came to the office a couple of days before they were to be married. Rather pathetic, really. Came on his own, he said, without Kitten's knowledge. Wanted to assure Kitten's lawyers that it was her he wanted, wanted no part of the estate, that is.”

Now they were brothers again. Mr. Clinton smiled like a brother.

“Some chance he had,” Mr. Clinton said. “Like a snowball in hell! Kitten's mother may have been careless about marrying, but as you well know, she saw the money was sewed up tight. Anyhow, that was how I recognized the photograph.”

The giant bat swooped between him and the lawyer's face. The air was black with it.

“I got out of the sheriff's office fast and I'm getting Kitten out of Bradley by eight tonight.” He looked at his watch and then at Hanno.

“Mr. Clinton, Mr. Clinton … you're saying that the dead boy is the
husband
? And I am supposed to have known that he was Puppchen's husband? Mr. Clinton—before God—I didn't know Puppchen had married this boy until this afternoon when Ernest told me. Mr. Clinton, I didn't know this was the dead boy until now. Now! It was
you
who told me!” The lawyer stood up and nipped agilely behind the chair. “Before God! Before God!”

Standing behind the chair as though he were going to lift it and hold it between them, as if the lawyer believed he was in a cage with a wild animal, the lawyer looked both longingly and apprehensively at the door. He looked longingly because he was afraid to be in the cage. He was also frightened that the K.K.K. outside the door would hear what they were saying.

“Mr. Clinton, what are you saying?”

“I didn't say …” He stepped back toward the door. “Mr. Dietrich, don't tell me. You tell Jim McCormick all this when he comes tomorrow. You had no previous knowledge of the bigamy until this boy informed you of it. You tell Jim that the boy threatened to expose it, intended to do so. You tell him that it was what would happen to Kitten—whom you thought of as your wife—what would happen to Kitten when he carried out his threat, which—”

“My God, you're coaching me! You're trying to coach me.”

“No, indeed. I am only reconstructing what I believe must have happened from your own statements.”

“A rehearsal.”

“If it didn't happen that way.… Perhaps I have been misled because I believe you to be a certain kind of man.
Hanno Dietrich
. I have tried to put myself in your place. (The duty of every decent person, that is all.) I know how I myself would feel if this boy turned up out of the blue and threatened to put Kitten in jail. I have asked myself what I would do to save her from a prison sentence.”

“You believe that? You believe such crap?”

“Is it ‘crap'?” Mr. Clinton adjusted his tie. He smoothed back his gray hair. He shrugged the set of his sleeves.

It was to show that he was Mr. Justin Clinton again and in no way Hanno Dietrich.

“I believe what you call ‘crap' in preference to believing that you killed this boy so you wouldn't lose Kitten or the possibility of sharing Kitten's holdings, yes.”

There was a paper removed from the imposing brief case, a pen taken from his pocket, both extended.

“Now here's the paper I want you to sign, if you don't mind. Will you sign, please, Mr. Dietrich? I really must be on my way now.”

Automatically he took the pen, then—for it was his only weapon—he handed it back. “I want to see her.”

Alarm. “You understand, Mr. Dietrich, that Kitten doesn't know yet? She doesn't know the identity of the deceased, I mean. She hasn't seen him since he left her. They wanted her to identify the boy, but, fortunately, she had hysterics at the idea of going to the undertaker's. With Dr. Green's warning in mind, they didn't press it, since it was simply a routine request. So she doesn't know who it was yet. I don't think she should know, do you?”

“I must see her.”

Mr. Clinton studied the gold point of his pen. “It might slip out. Don't you think it might be better if you didn't see her?”

“I must see her. I must see her.” It was the one clear thought in the maelstrom.

“You won't tell her who it was? It would be a bad mistake. She shouldn't know. I am talking legally now, you understand.”

His head was shaking from side to side, a maddened-bull shake. He could not stop it. A maddened bull could not stop it, either. The air felt hot in his nostrils as he breathed it in. “I want to see her. No,” he said, “I won't tell her. I will tell her nothing, but I must see her.”

“I'll telephone her then. In the meantime, I'll leave the paper with you to sign. Dr. Leopold said you had agreed to sign it. It states that to the best of your knowledge Kitten has not been a party to any guilty knowledge.… I am referring to the body in the bomb shelter, Mr. Dietrich. You do understand that if Katherine knew, she should have informed the authorities herself. We don't want her an accessory, do we?”

“No.”

“We won't produce this unless she is subpoenaed.”

He said, “Call. Go call.”

His head had stopped shaking. The giant bat had stopped flapping. The air was clear. His head was still. He was Hanno Dietrich. As a director he knew when a scene was right, the actors right, the set right, costumes in key, lines and phrasing right. When it was right he knew it, and now for the first time, it was right. It
played
now. This made it play. This made the scene work.

Miss Claremot came in and took the tray.

She tidied the bed.

She took his temperature.

She gave him two capsules.

He saw the set again, spotlighted because before he had gone up to take his shower, he had put out all the lights except the one above Puppchen's left shoulder as she sat knitting.

He saw Puppchen knitting in that light, her lips moving as she counted the stitches in the pattern. Right.

He heard the boy tap on the window and saw Puppchen glance at the window. (She could not see who was outside.)

He saw her look toward the balcony, heard her hear his shower going. She shrugged.

He saw her lay her knitting down and walk lightly, beautifully, to the front door.

It played. It played.

She said, “What are you doing here?”

He said, “That's a long story, Puppchen.” (No, he hadn't called her Puppchen, perhaps Kitten. If he had seen her as the lawyer had …
a regular kitten
—
Spitting fire … all tiny claws and fluffy
…
wanting to scratch her father's eyes out
… If he had wanted her to go on tour with him when she had preferred that he stay at home with her …
lèse-majesté to go against her wishes
…
‘off with his head';
he might have called her Kitten.)

So he had said, “That's a long story, Kitten.” The summer visit to the summer-stock theatre where Miss Mildred had been an apprentice, affair with Miss Mildred, Miss Mildred's letter to him in which she had written about Hanno Dietrich and Mrs. Hanno Dietrich, Katherine Farrar Dietrich. “So you ‘married' Hanno Dietrich, Kitten?”