CHAPTER LIV.DelayI myself heard the sheriff say to Sam, late in the afternoon of the day we had found Canneziano, strangled in his bed, “I tell you what, Sam, this is a pretty dirty business—all of it. If you had anyone but Lynn MacDonald on the case, I reckon it would be up to us boys to step in and take a hand. But she has sure given us some pretty good dope—and we’re waiting. She’s got the rep. There’s that Dolingfetter movie murder. She put that through when all the police force and all the dicks in the country had failed for a year. And the Van Muiter case—and a dozen others. I know you’re square, Sam. All us guys around here know it. But I’m damn glad you’ve got Lynn MacDonald on the job to prove it to the country.”As I say, I heard that conversation with my own ears. And yet, in the week that followed, I had times of thinking that, anyway, Sam had likely made a mistake in keeping Miss MacDonald on, alone.I couldn’t begin to describe the horror of that week. It is, I suppose, what books call a paradox to say that the worst thing about the week was that nothing, just nothing, happened. To all outward appearances the Desert Moon Ranch was as peaceful as an empty grave: hollow peace, false peace, and all of us conniving at the falsity made it worse.One day, for instance, when we were all at dinner, Zinnia dropped the teakettle in the kitchen. We women all screamed. Sam whipped his six-gun from his back pocket. John rushed to the kitchen. He came back, wiping the sweat from his forehead.“Zinnia dropped the teakettle. It didn’t hurt her.”We all looked foolish, and began to be very busy, passing things, and pretending that our actions had all been the ordinary, conservative actions of people who had heard anything heavy dropped.Sam locked up the house early every evening. Then, trying to make it casual, one and another of us would go sauntering around to make sure that he hadn’t overlooked a door, or a window. People were constantly jumping, and starting, and looking behind them at nothing. None of us women ever went far from the house, except Mrs. Ricker to visit Martha’s grave. For one thing, Sam had increased the guard around the place, and I never felt sure, when I ran down to the dairy, that one of the cowpunchers wouldn’t think I was trying to escape and take a shot at me. For another thing, though both murders had been done in the house, there was a feeling of safety about four walls that I couldn’t get in the open air.As I have said, Mrs. Ricker went every day to visit Martha’s grave. She went alone. I would not have gone with her, not for any price. I was afraid of her. I was afraid of Hubert Hand. By Wednesday of that week I was afraid of everyone in the house except Miss MacDonald and Sam. Friday found me doubtful of Sam.Losing my mind? Of course I was, or it was losing itself in the black shadow of crime, by which the Desert Moon had been eclipsed. A mind can’t go straight, in darkness, any more than a body can. None of our minds went straight, those days. I am sure that the mind of each one of us on the place—always excepting Miss MacDonald’s—did as mine did. It went groping in the dark; it bumped into obstacles of doubt; it tripped over fear and fell into senseless stupidities; it lost its way, and wandered into wild suspicions. I tell you, there were times, during those frightful days, when I found myself seriously considering whether or not I had committed the two murders.On Thursday evening, of that week, Mrs. Ricker said to me, with no concern at all in her manner, “I wish I knew just how that lethal chamber that they use for executions in this state, felt. Whether it hurts to be executed that way, and how long it takes to die in it, and all about it.“Because,” she went on, still unconcernedly, “if it didn’t hurt too much, I’d much rather confess to the murders, and get it over, than to keep on living like this. I am going insane. I think that I can’t stand another week like this one. Every hour, now, is worse than a quick, painless death. Too, I’m afraid of what I might do, if I go clear mad, with all these horrors in my mind. Though, perhaps, I have already gone mad. Do I seem to you to be insane, right now, Mary?”I told her no. But it was a flat lie. At that moment I was certain that everyone on the place was more or less insane, especially Miss MacDonald. I think yet that I was right about the others. I know, now, that I was wrong about Miss MacDonald; but she had certainly given me plenty of reasons for thinking either that she had lost her senses entirely, or else that she had never had any to lose.Apparently, after Sam had agreed to keep her on the case, she had at once given up all interest in it. She had a short talk with me, and told me that she would no longer need my help, and expressly instructed me to stop watching Danny and the others.“As far as it is humanly possible,” she said, “I want you to go about the business of living as if nothing at all unpleasant, even, had happened. I don’t want this to be an appearance. I want it to be a fact.”Then, as if she knew I couldn’t follow those fool instructions, and as if she were bound to have them followed at any cost, she began to follow them herself. She got sort of childish about it.On Tuesday evening she produced a bunch of paper and some pencils. When we had all thought that something important was going to happen, she suggested that we play that old, silly game of “Consequences.” And when we one and all had other things to do, she was none too pleasant about it. Said that she was tired of reading, every evening, and that the radio made her nervous. She fussed about, until Danny, feeling as she did, got John and Hubert Hand to make up the four to play Bridge.All week I could see Sam watching her and growing more and more impatient. On Thursday he said to me that she was too busy flirting with John to have time for anything else. That was not fair. She didn’t flirt with John—she wasn’t the sort who would flirt with anyone. But she surely did begin to notice him, and his attentions to her. It was not that she treated him too well, in any way. It was, only, that she did not treat him quite according to our standards for the way unengaged girls should treat engaged or married men. Not once did she encourage him to neglect Danny; but, after John had neglected her, Miss MacDonald seemed to be, usually, right on the spot, ready, waiting and willing, to be pleasant and friendly to him.I tried to make excuses for John. Poor little Danny wasn’t, I had to admit, much like the girl he had fallen in love with. She had lost practically all of her prettiness, and she looked, all the time, too white and wan and generally dragged out to seem quite wholesome. Like the rest of us, the strain of fear and suspicion was too much for her; but she was frailer than any of us, so the strain told harder on her.She had explained to John about the reference to her and to her doll in the code letter. He had taken it all right, and had been, as she said to me, “sweet” about it, and about never doubting her word at all. Still, I sort of thought that a grain of suspicion might still be bothering him. And I knew that he had not been quite able to forgive her, not for telling of her suspicions concerning Sam, but for suspecting Sam in the first place.Yes, I could make some excuses for John. But the process of trying not to blame him, personally, resulted in my opinions of men in general being forced down several degrees. As I may have suggested, that took them just about to where the thermometer stops registering.On Friday morning, when Sam came zigzagging into my kitchen, ordered Zinnia out of it, his voice all thick and husky, and fell down into a chair, I did not doubt for a minute that he was dead drunk. I knew that he had not touched a drop of liquor for forty years; but what men could do, men might do, and worse.“Mary,” he said, “we’ve got the report from the ’Frisco chemists.”
I myself heard the sheriff say to Sam, late in the afternoon of the day we had found Canneziano, strangled in his bed, “I tell you what, Sam, this is a pretty dirty business—all of it. If you had anyone but Lynn MacDonald on the case, I reckon it would be up to us boys to step in and take a hand. But she has sure given us some pretty good dope—and we’re waiting. She’s got the rep. There’s that Dolingfetter movie murder. She put that through when all the police force and all the dicks in the country had failed for a year. And the Van Muiter case—and a dozen others. I know you’re square, Sam. All us guys around here know it. But I’m damn glad you’ve got Lynn MacDonald on the job to prove it to the country.”
As I say, I heard that conversation with my own ears. And yet, in the week that followed, I had times of thinking that, anyway, Sam had likely made a mistake in keeping Miss MacDonald on, alone.
I couldn’t begin to describe the horror of that week. It is, I suppose, what books call a paradox to say that the worst thing about the week was that nothing, just nothing, happened. To all outward appearances the Desert Moon Ranch was as peaceful as an empty grave: hollow peace, false peace, and all of us conniving at the falsity made it worse.
One day, for instance, when we were all at dinner, Zinnia dropped the teakettle in the kitchen. We women all screamed. Sam whipped his six-gun from his back pocket. John rushed to the kitchen. He came back, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“Zinnia dropped the teakettle. It didn’t hurt her.”
We all looked foolish, and began to be very busy, passing things, and pretending that our actions had all been the ordinary, conservative actions of people who had heard anything heavy dropped.
Sam locked up the house early every evening. Then, trying to make it casual, one and another of us would go sauntering around to make sure that he hadn’t overlooked a door, or a window. People were constantly jumping, and starting, and looking behind them at nothing. None of us women ever went far from the house, except Mrs. Ricker to visit Martha’s grave. For one thing, Sam had increased the guard around the place, and I never felt sure, when I ran down to the dairy, that one of the cowpunchers wouldn’t think I was trying to escape and take a shot at me. For another thing, though both murders had been done in the house, there was a feeling of safety about four walls that I couldn’t get in the open air.
As I have said, Mrs. Ricker went every day to visit Martha’s grave. She went alone. I would not have gone with her, not for any price. I was afraid of her. I was afraid of Hubert Hand. By Wednesday of that week I was afraid of everyone in the house except Miss MacDonald and Sam. Friday found me doubtful of Sam.
Losing my mind? Of course I was, or it was losing itself in the black shadow of crime, by which the Desert Moon had been eclipsed. A mind can’t go straight, in darkness, any more than a body can. None of our minds went straight, those days. I am sure that the mind of each one of us on the place—always excepting Miss MacDonald’s—did as mine did. It went groping in the dark; it bumped into obstacles of doubt; it tripped over fear and fell into senseless stupidities; it lost its way, and wandered into wild suspicions. I tell you, there were times, during those frightful days, when I found myself seriously considering whether or not I had committed the two murders.
On Thursday evening, of that week, Mrs. Ricker said to me, with no concern at all in her manner, “I wish I knew just how that lethal chamber that they use for executions in this state, felt. Whether it hurts to be executed that way, and how long it takes to die in it, and all about it.
“Because,” she went on, still unconcernedly, “if it didn’t hurt too much, I’d much rather confess to the murders, and get it over, than to keep on living like this. I am going insane. I think that I can’t stand another week like this one. Every hour, now, is worse than a quick, painless death. Too, I’m afraid of what I might do, if I go clear mad, with all these horrors in my mind. Though, perhaps, I have already gone mad. Do I seem to you to be insane, right now, Mary?”
I told her no. But it was a flat lie. At that moment I was certain that everyone on the place was more or less insane, especially Miss MacDonald. I think yet that I was right about the others. I know, now, that I was wrong about Miss MacDonald; but she had certainly given me plenty of reasons for thinking either that she had lost her senses entirely, or else that she had never had any to lose.
Apparently, after Sam had agreed to keep her on the case, she had at once given up all interest in it. She had a short talk with me, and told me that she would no longer need my help, and expressly instructed me to stop watching Danny and the others.
“As far as it is humanly possible,” she said, “I want you to go about the business of living as if nothing at all unpleasant, even, had happened. I don’t want this to be an appearance. I want it to be a fact.”
Then, as if she knew I couldn’t follow those fool instructions, and as if she were bound to have them followed at any cost, she began to follow them herself. She got sort of childish about it.
On Tuesday evening she produced a bunch of paper and some pencils. When we had all thought that something important was going to happen, she suggested that we play that old, silly game of “Consequences.” And when we one and all had other things to do, she was none too pleasant about it. Said that she was tired of reading, every evening, and that the radio made her nervous. She fussed about, until Danny, feeling as she did, got John and Hubert Hand to make up the four to play Bridge.
All week I could see Sam watching her and growing more and more impatient. On Thursday he said to me that she was too busy flirting with John to have time for anything else. That was not fair. She didn’t flirt with John—she wasn’t the sort who would flirt with anyone. But she surely did begin to notice him, and his attentions to her. It was not that she treated him too well, in any way. It was, only, that she did not treat him quite according to our standards for the way unengaged girls should treat engaged or married men. Not once did she encourage him to neglect Danny; but, after John had neglected her, Miss MacDonald seemed to be, usually, right on the spot, ready, waiting and willing, to be pleasant and friendly to him.
I tried to make excuses for John. Poor little Danny wasn’t, I had to admit, much like the girl he had fallen in love with. She had lost practically all of her prettiness, and she looked, all the time, too white and wan and generally dragged out to seem quite wholesome. Like the rest of us, the strain of fear and suspicion was too much for her; but she was frailer than any of us, so the strain told harder on her.
She had explained to John about the reference to her and to her doll in the code letter. He had taken it all right, and had been, as she said to me, “sweet” about it, and about never doubting her word at all. Still, I sort of thought that a grain of suspicion might still be bothering him. And I knew that he had not been quite able to forgive her, not for telling of her suspicions concerning Sam, but for suspecting Sam in the first place.
Yes, I could make some excuses for John. But the process of trying not to blame him, personally, resulted in my opinions of men in general being forced down several degrees. As I may have suggested, that took them just about to where the thermometer stops registering.
On Friday morning, when Sam came zigzagging into my kitchen, ordered Zinnia out of it, his voice all thick and husky, and fell down into a chair, I did not doubt for a minute that he was dead drunk. I knew that he had not touched a drop of liquor for forty years; but what men could do, men might do, and worse.
“Mary,” he said, “we’ve got the report from the ’Frisco chemists.”