Wax Apple (21 page)

Was either of these the injurer? Manic-depressives and sex-hysterics tend to hurt no one but themselves, at least not physically, whatever the psychological damage they may do to the people around them.

But what about the two right here at my table? A kleptomaniac and a man with a persecution complex. George Bartholomew, the kleptomaniac, had always been as harmless as a rabbit and it was hard to see him any other way. Donald Walburn, the persecuted, had been violent in the past, but openly so and with a specific target. The scattergun effect of the injurer’s booby traps made it hard to fit any motive at all, including a Donald Walburn’s misguided attempts to get even with a nonexistent conspiracy.

My other two possibles were not in the room, and wouldn’t be. Rose Ackerson was obviously feeding both herself and Molly Schweitzler with those trays of food she kept coming down for. The one a lonely woman who had kidnapped a child in an attempt to have a child of her own again, the other a lonely woman who had reacted to real or imagined rejections by compulsive overeating. They had found one another, they obviously filled needs for one another, but from the amount of food going upstairs I thought they were filling those needs in an unhealthy way. Rose and Molly had not merely become mother and child, they had become indulgent mother and spoiled child, which wasn’t good for either of them.

But where in their self-contained universe would there be a need for causing pain and accidents to other people? Why would either of them have caused an accident to both the other one and to herself?

I didn’t like my list of six suspects, not at all. But it was the only list I had.

There was ice cream for dessert. Donald Walburn had rushed through his meal and gone, but George Bartholomew had taken his time, so that he and I started our dessert simultaneously. I saw him glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, and understood he had another question he wanted to ask me. There was nothing to do but brace myself and wait till he was ready.

He wasn’t ready till his ice cream was all finished and he’d started on his coffee. Then he said, “I’ve been thinking.”

I looked at him. “Oh?”

He met my look, his eyes level but troubled. “About Walter,” he said. “Do you suppose there’s any chance he didn’t do it?”

I weighed my answer, and finally said, “I don’t know. That would be up to the police to decide.”

He nodded somberly. “I suppose so,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem like Walter, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, and left it there, and went upstairs to rest up for the afternoon.

T
HE SESSION HAD BEEN
going on for twenty minutes when I walked in, and everyone was there who was supposed to be there. Donald Walburn was talking as I entered, and he promptly clapped his mouth shut and turned to give me a suspicious glare.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, ostensibly to Doctor Fredericks.

“That’s all right, Tobin,” he said. “Sit down.”

“Thank you,” I said, and as I sat down I met Fredericks’ eye again and shook my head slightly. I had not found the matching notepaper. My search, necessarily fast and superficial, had not turned up anything useful.

Fredericks pursed his lips slightly in irritation, then let the expression fade as he turned back to Walburn. “Nobody’s questioning the fact that the ladder was cut, Donald,” he said, “no more than anybody’s questioning the fact that Frank DeWitt is dead. But the person who arranged all these accidents wasn’t trying to hurt
you
in particular any more than he was trying to kill Frank DeWitt. Don’t you see that?”

“All I see,” Walburn said, his voice harsh and low, as though he was unused to using it, “is that I got a broken leg, and somebody did it on purpose. How do I know
all
them things weren’t aimed at hurting me?”

Marilyn Nazarro, across the table from me, said,

“Why, Mr. Walburn, that’s just the sort of thing you said you weren’t going to believe any more.”

“Well, maybe I was just right to begin with,” Walburn told her.

“We’ve gone through this before, Donald,” Fredericks said, and proceeded to go through it again. While he did, I looked around at the others sitting at the long oval table in the group therapy room. I was midway along the right side, with Beth Tracy to my right and Doctor Fredericks past her at the head of the table. To my left was George Bartholomew, and then an empty chair, and then Donald Walburn, sitting apart from the rest of us but not quite all the way around to the foot of the table.

Across the way, Bob Gale sat on Fredericks’ other side. Bob wasn’t a suspect, but in order not to raise any questions in the others’ minds he had to be present, since he’d been scheduled all along for the afternoon session.

To Bob’s right sat Marilyn Nazarro, looking at Donald Walburn with friendly concern. Past her was an empty space, not quite wide enough for someone else to sit there, and then Rose Ackerson, watching each speaker in turn with a guarded expression on her face. Beyond Rose, and in a sense hidden by her, shielded by her, was Molly Schweitzler, and when I got my first look at her I blinked in astonishment. Was it possible for a person to noticeably gain weight overnight? Or was that apparent new heaviness simply a new laxity in the way Molly held her head and her body? She
looked
fatter, and as I watched her hand came up from her lap and put something in her mouth. She was looking at no one in particular, she seemed absorbed in idle daydreamy interior thoughts of her own, and she slowly chewed and swallowed what she’d put in her mouth. Then her hand came up again, and fed her some more.

What did she have in her lap? A bag of candy, maybe, or a piece of cake. Something that she could just keep nibbling at throughout the session, the taste in her mouth distracting her from all outside pressures, from all thought.

Sometimes there’s a fascination in repugnant things, and that was true at that moment of Molly Schweitzler. I watched her until I felt Rose Ackerson glaring at me, and then I reluctantly turned my eyes and my attention away and tried to concentrate on what I was here for.

Walburn was still talking, arguing with whomever would answer back. His point remained the same; that the accident that had broken his leg had been specifically aimed at him, and that all the others had probably been aimed at him. He spoke with a gloomy sort of satisfaction, as though having finally learned to live with the worst, he thought he could maybe go on from here. I looked past George Bartholomew at Walburn’s pinched face, and I found it impossible to believe he was acting. He really did suspect himself to be the intended victim of a scattergun plot with who knew how many plotters. And if that were true, how could he have been the one to set the traps?

In any case, I wanted to hear from some of the others, not exclusively from Walburn, so the next time there was a pause in his low-pitched polemic I said, “I don’t know about all that. I got caught too, you know. I got this arm out of it. But I don’t believe it was being aimed at me any more than I believe the weakened fire escape was aimed at Dewey. I don’t believe any of it was aimed at anybody. You never made a habit of going out on that fire escape, did you?” I didn’t want an answer to that, and rushed on, covering the couple of words he started to say in response. “The same with what happened to Bartholomew here,” I said. “In the first place, you wouldn’t have been the one to go down and open that closet door, he would. And in the second place, I bet
he
doesn’t think this whole thing was aimed at
him.
” I looked at Bartholomew. “Do you?”

“I think it was just to hurt everybody,” Bartholomew said. “Not even to kill anybody, not that fellow Dewey or DeWitt or whatever his name was, not anybody. Just to hurt people. And whoever did it, I don’t think he cared
who
he hurt, just so he was hurting
somebody.
”

Fredericks, happily, picked up the ball from there, saying, “You say, ‘Whoever did it,’ George. But didn’t Walter Stoddard do it?”

Bartholomew hadn’t expected to be the center of attention, and his kleptomaniac’s heart was troubled by all the eyes focused on him. That made him even more rabbity and hesitant than usual, but at last he said, “I’m really not satisfied in my mind that he did, no.”

“But he confessed,” Fredericks said.

“I don’t know why he did that,” Bartholomew said slowly, “but I just don’t believe he went around arranging for people to have accidents. That just wouldn’t be like Walter.”

I wished Fredericks would ask, at that point, who Bartholomew
could
see in that role, but Fredericks decided to take another tack, and at least for the moment I thought it best to lie back and be simply a part of the herd, rather than do any overt questioning of my own.

The tack Fredericks took was to throw the question open to general discussion, saying, “Does anybody else agree with George? Anybody else think Walter Stoddard isn’t really guilty?”

“Of course he’s guilty,” Rose Ackerson said irritably. “He
said
he was guilty, didn’t he?”

Molly Schweitzler made a small sound in her throat and suddenly looked very panicky, probably because of the harshness in Rose’s voice, but Rose turned and patted her arm, murmuring at her to reassure her, and Molly settled down again, chewing, her expression vacant. I remembered how tough she’d been at the therapy session two days ago, and it was hard to think of this as the same woman.

Marilyn Nazarro called me back from contemplation of Molly again, saying, “But he must be guilty, mustn’t he? Why would anybody say they were guilty if they weren’t?”

Beth Tracy, the sexual-hysteric, said, “Maybe he wants to be punished for something else he did. There’s a lot of that around, you know.” As though she were talking of the flu.

Fredericks jumped again. “That’s interesting, Beth. Is that what you think happened? Do you think Walter’s innocent, too?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I really haven’t thought about it at all. But I guess he must have done it, mustn’t he?”

Bob Gale jumped aboard, saying, “Why? You just said maybe he confessed because he wants to be punished for something else, and now you say you think he’s guilty.”

“Well,
I
don’t know,” she said irritably. “The police believe him, don’t they?” She turned to me, bringing the whole thing unfortunately full circle. “What do you think, Mr. Tobin?”

I hesitated, but there was nothing to be gained by lying, and maybe something to be gained by telling the truth, so I said, “I think he’s innocent.”

That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. Since I was sitting right beside her she had to half-turn in her seat to get a really good look at me, which she did. She said, “Why do you say that?”

I could only watch one person at a time, and now the obvious one for me to watch was Beth Tracy. I hoped Fredericks and Bob Gale were watching some of the others. I said, “Because the guilty person left me a note saying so.”

She gaped at me. I made a fast—trying for the appearance of casualness—turn of the head, to see everybody but Molly Schweitzler looking at me, the same look of astonishment on every face. George Bartholomew, next to me on the other side, said, “Did you show it to the police?”

“Not yet,” I told him.

Marilyn Nazarro, across the table, said, “Why not? If you have proof that Walter Stoddard is innocent, shouldn’t you give it to the police?”

I turned to her and said, “I know Stoddard didn’t do it, and I can prove it. I also know who did do it, but I can’t prove it. I’m hoping that person—”

Beth Tracy exclaimed, “You
know
who it is?”

I didn’t, but it seemed like a worthwhile bluff to try. I told Beth, “It’s one of the people in this room. But I can’t prove which one, so if I go to the police they’ll have to come back and question everybody, search everybody’s room, maybe be tough with people again the way they were before. There’s only one guilty person in this room, but if I can’t prove what I know to the police they’ll have to treat all seven people here as though they might be guilty.”

“You’re making all that up,” Rose Ackerson snapped. “It doesn’t make any sense, and you know it.”

I turned around again, to meet Rose’s angry glare. “What do you mean, it doesn’t make sense?”

“If you know so much,” she said, “why
not
go to the police? Tell them, ‘I know it’s this person or that person, but I can’t prove it.’ But if you know it why can’t you prove it?”

“Knowing and proving aren’t always the same thing,” I said. “I was hoping I could convince the guilty person to go to the police”—I was stuck for a second, not knowing whether to say ‘himself’ or ‘herself,’ and paused lamely, then went on—“and make a full confession without having to be forced into it.”

Rose gave me a look of angry scorn. “Now, why would anybody do that?”

“Because the only thing that will happen to the guilty party,” I said, “is that he or she,” solving it that way, “will get sent back to the place he just got out of. The guilty party won’t go to jail or the electric chair or anything like that.”

“Just back to the asylum,” Rose said savagely. “Oh, that isn’t bad at all, is it?”

“It’s better than being dead,” I told her. “Like Dewey.” And had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes slip from mine for just a second.

But then she was back, as strong as ever. “Oh, this is just talk,” she said. “If you know all there is to know, just say to the police, ‘
That
one’s guilty, put the pressure on
her
first. Or on
him
first. Let everybody else go until you’re done with this one.’ Why couldn’t you do it that way?”

“I could,” I said. “I’d rather not, that’s all.”

“I think you’re just full of hot air,” she insisted, still pushing me. “I don’t believe you got any note, I don’t believe you know anything. You’re just fishing, that’s all, talking mysterious and hoping somebody will fall over and say, ‘Oh, I did it! Oh, you got me!’ But it isn’t going to happen, because Walter Stoddard is guilty and that’s all there is to it.”

She’d been getting louder and louder toward the end of that speech, and unnoticed beside her Molly Schweitzler’s face had developed deepening alarm, until all at once she whimpered, a small but terrible sound, unnerving, not entirely human. It shocked all of us, and Rose forgot me at once, turning around to console Molly again, to pat her arms and murmur to her, and Molly’s face gradually relaxed again.