I sat there and I felt as if the walls were tottering, ready to fall in on me. Everything out of proportion and coldness in me and him looking down.
"You're lying," I said, weakly, very weakly.
"Am I?"
And I couldn't convince myself that he was.
"All the facts can be found in newspaper files," he said, "if you don't believe me. I have some of the clippings here if you'd like to see them."
I thought, I'll throw him, I'll ask to see the clippings. Then I was afraid to try. The thought of holding them in my hands, reading them, sickened me. I kept seeing that angelic smile in my mind. That smile. Those eyes, those lustrous, frank eyes. The way she stroked my hair. Her soft lips on mine. The long, happy days together.
Murder?
"Don't you think it would be better if you left?" I heard him saying.
I want to see Peggy, I thought. I visualized it though.
A writer's curse. I heard myself asking, inanely it seemed, "Peggy, did you murder your husband?"
"I'll have Steig take you home," he said.
I looked up at him. His face was without expression. Certainly there was no sympathy there.
"I should see her," I said.
But without conviction. I didn't want to see her. I was afraid to see her. Afraid of seeing her lower her eyes and refuse to answer me. And all I could think of was Peggy lying to me.
I couldn't face it. I'm a coward, I guess, in lots of ways.
"I think it would be foolish to see her," Jim said.
I found myself standing. For moments at a time I forgot where I was, even who I was. Just plain standing there, overwhelmed with misery.
"Listen," I heard him say, "I know Peggy. For years I thought what you think of her now. That she was simple, uncomplicated." He shook his head. "She's not," he said, walking me to the door. I wanted to get away. I was sick.
"She's hopelessly erratic," he said. "If you spoke to her now about it, she might cry. She also might explode in your face and tell you it wasn't murder, really, and besides, it isn't any of your business. Her mind shifts from one emotion to another. You must have seen that yourself, David."
I don't know whether I did or not. But the words were in my brain, and, in the state of shock I was in, I took them straight.
"Peggy is a dangerous girl," he said.
David Newton, sheep. Led from the house. Luckily or unluckily, depending how you look at it, I didn't see Peggy. I think she was in the big room again, dancing with Dennis. Or looking for me. A me that was being led, dazed and shocked, to the big black Cadillac. Slumping back on the cold seat. Vaughan leaning in.
"If you don't believe what I've told you," he said crushing some more, "I want you to check. Don't take my word for it."
Then the door slammed and Steig pulled the black car around the pear-shaped drive and onto the road that led precipitously down to the highway.
I sat in the car staring at the floor. And listening to the wind whistle by the car as it roared along the ocean at eighty miles an hour. Under a cold moon.
***
I wrote sporadically. I went to the beach, way up the beach, far from the spot where we'd met. I went to the movies. I read. And, from all activities, absorbed nothing. I was still half anesthetized. I hadn't known her long, a few weeks. But she'd gotten to me.
I thought about her after the first few days of deliberately avoiding any thoughts at all about her.
I remembered taking her to the little bar downstairs in one of the hotels along Ocean Drive. I forget the name of it. I remember the soft lighting, the heavy wood paneling, circling the dance floor with Peggy in my arms, listening to the music of the three-piece combination. Sitting at the tables and having a couple of drinks together. Her eyes over the glass, looking at me. A soft look. Adoring and unquestioning.
I remembered the first time I'd told her how I felt about her.
I remembered other things. It had been such a short time really. Yet so long, it seemed. Years of walking through the silent streets of Santa Monica looking at the pretty houses, making unspoken plans. Walking together through Will Rogers State Park in the Santa Monica Hills. Finding fresh mountain lion tracks and running back to the parking place, breathlessly excited and laughing. And walking all the way back to Santa Monica. Walking everywhere, hand in hand, never needing to speak.
Murder?
I went to the library and looked through old papers. I didn't find anything. And when I thought some more, I remembered Linda and that look Jim had given me on graduation day.
I went back to my love. Days after. In sorrow and repentance. And found her on the back lawn, trying to read. But just staring at the same page.
And she was cold at first because she'd been hurt. I didn't let it stop me. I was apologetic. I smiled at her and said again and again and again:
"I'm sorry, Peggy. I'm sorry."
***
"Murdered!" she said to me. "Is that what he told you?"
I nodded, grimly.
She shook her head. "How could he?" she said. And I felt some slight relish in seeing indications of the chinks in Jim Vaughan's self-forged armor.
"Why, though?" she said. "I didn't murder him."
"Where is your husband?" I asked.
"He's dead," she told me. "He died in San Francisco. A year ago."
We sat in the back yard, talking. And she kept shaking her head and saying she couldn't understand how Jim could say such a thing about her.
"It is strange," I said. "I never saw Jim involve himself in such an obvious lie before."
"I don't know," she said.
She looked away. "I didn't murder him," she said, softly.
"I know," I said.
"You didn't know it before," she said. "You believed what he said."
"It came as such a shock," I said. "Think of how you'd feel if, out of a clear blue sky, someone told you I'd murdered my mother or my wife."
"I'd check before I believed."
"What would you think if I told you I was divorced, made you think my wife was still alive?"
She didn't answer.
"Let's forget about it," I said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. "I have missed you," I said.
"But you stayed away."
I couldn't answer. I just felt rage. At Jim for lying so blatantly to me. At myself for believing him. Mostly the latter. For a guy who considers himself superior, I thought, I'd been awfully easy to delude.
It was around that time that I noticed Albert.
He was looking out of his window at Peggy. I forgot to mention it, but Peggy only had on shorts and a tight halter.
I called it to Peggy's attention. Her mouth grew hard again.
"Oh." She bit her lip. "I have to get out of here," she said. "Do you think I could find an apartment… or something?"
"Has he… tried anything?"
"No. Not with his wife around. But I'm afraid."
"We'd better get you out of here."
"And he pretends to be so pious," she said angrily, "just like all men. Pretending to be moral when all the time they're just pigs."
I didn't want to get started on that again. Besides, I thought, she was probably right in Albert's case.
Albert turned away from the window when I made it obvious from my look that I felt a severe desire to plant my foot in his pudgy face. His white, sickly face. Mushroom shade.
"You sure he hasn't tried anything?" I said.
"No," she answered, "but I know he'd… like to. The other day Mrs. Grady called me to the phone. I had on my shortie nightgown. I was too sleepy to think about putting on my robe. And Albert came out in the hall and saw me."
She shuddered.
"The way he looked at me made me sick," she said. "Like a… like an animal."
"I'd like to break his neck," I heard myself saying. Manly pose. I really couldn't break anybody's neck, I was sure. I get melancholy just dressing a chicken for Sunday dinner.
"I don't want any more trouble," Peggy said. "I'll just leave."
"Trouble?" I asked. And, sometimes, wished I'd cultivated a deceiving voice like Jim's. Too often, practically always, my voice is a mirror of my feelings.
She looked at me dispassionately.
"You're still thinking about it, aren't you?" she said.
"About what?" I pretended.
"You're thinking about what Jim told you."
I must have looked flustered.
"I'll tell you what I mean," she said. "Maybe you'll be sorry I told you."
Her sensitive face was cold, hurt.
"When I was eight years old," she told me, "I was attacked by a boy. He was seventeen. He dragged me in a closet and tore all my clothes off."
She swallowed and avoided my eyes.
"When my father found out," she said, "he tried to kill the boy."
I reached for her hand instinctively but she drew back.
"Was it…?" I started. "How far did… he go?"
Her voice was like an axe blow.
"All the way," she said. "I was unconscious."
Peggy, Peggy.
"I can't help the way I feel," she said, "about men. It's in my flesh. If you weren't… if you hadn't been so different, I'd have run from you too."
"And Jim…?"
"Jim took care of me," she said. "He was always good to me. And he never asked anything in return."
We sat there in silence awhile. Finally our eyes met. We looked at each other. I smiled. She tried to smile but it didn't work.
"Be nice to me, Davie," she said. "Don't be suspicious."
"I won't," I promised. "Peggy, I won't."
Then I said, as cheerfully as possible, "Come on, let's find you an apartment."
I found a car that same day at a used-car lot, and afterwards we found a place for Peggy.
It was a small place. Two rooms, bath and kitchenette for $55 a month.
It wasn't going to be empty for about two days so we went back to her old place. I invited her out to dinner. Then to a show or maybe down to the amusement pier at Venice. She accepted happily.
"Let's start all over," she said impulsively during the afternoon. "Let's forget the past. It doesn't matter now, does it?"
I hugged her. "No, baby," I said, "of course it doesn't."
When we went in the house Albert and his wife were sitting there in the front room. That they'd been arguing was obvious from the forced way they broke off conversation. There were splashes of red up Albert's white cheeks.
They looked up at us. The old, sullen resentment in Albert's expression. The prissy, forced amiability in Mrs. Grady's face.
"Mrs. Grady," Peggy said, "I expect to be moving out in two days."
"Oh?" said Mrs. Grady. With that tone that can only be attained by landladies about to lose a tenant.
Albert looked at her. He looked down at her bust. I felt myself tighten in anger. The look on his face made me want to drive my fist against it.
"Is there something wrong here?" Mrs. Grady asked, a trifle peevishly. "Perhaps…"
"No, no," Peggy said, "it's fine. I just want an apartment, that's all."
"Well," said Mrs. Grady. "Well."
"I just happened to stumble across it today," Peggy said, "or else I would have given you more notice."
"I'm sure," Albert said, his fat lips pursed irritably.
More tightening in me. Peggy moved for her room.
"Excuse me," she said.
I followed without thinking.
"Gratitude," Albert said. And when I was going into her room he said something else. Something about little trash.
I felt myself lurching to a halt. I threw a glance over my shoulder. Then I felt Peggy's restraining hand on my arm.
In her room she looked at me.
"I guess you should have waited outside," she said.
"What's the difference?" I said, loud for all to hear. "Change your clothes and let's get out of here."
She put up a screen and went behind it. I saw her halter and shorts flutter over the top and I tried to avoid thinking of Peggy standing there tanned and nude. I tried to concentrate on my rage at Albert. But your mind is hardly your own when it's distracted by such merciless visions.
She came out in a little while. During which time I sat listening to the angry voices of Mr. and Mrs. Grady, lovable duo. And I heard the word "trash" used again. Albert wasn't hiding it.
"We'd better go," I said, "or I swear I'm liable to punch that slob in the nose."
Silence outside. I hoped they heard.
"I wish you could leave tonight," I said.
"I… so do I," she said. And in her voice I heard the mixture of revulsion and contempt and, yes, fear.
They were talking when we went out into the front room again. But they shut up. They looked up at Peggy, who wore a light blue cotton dress and had a blue ribbon in her hair.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to refund your money," said Mrs. Grady, revealing the depth of her soul.
"I…" Peggy started.
"She's got no claim to it, mother," Albert snapped bitterly, "no claim 'soever."
"I don't expect it back," Peggy said.
"I'm sure you don't." That was Albert.
"Shut your mouth, Albert," I said. Surprised at myself how easily it came.
"Uh!"
In unison. Mr. and Mrs. Grady were both outraged at my impertinence.
"Come on," I said and Peggy and I left. Hearing a muffled, "She'll be sorry for this," from Albert as we closed the front door behind us.
"You shouldn't have said that," Peggy said as we got into the car. Then she laughed and it was nice to hear her laugh again.
"Did you see the look on his face?" she said. "It was priceless."
We laughed for three blocks.
***
I parked the car on one of the streets that lead down to the Venice pier. And we walked down together, hand in hand.
Unaware that we were being followed.
We tried to hit a swinging gong at a shooting gallery. We nibbled on buttered popcorn and threw baseballs at stacked wooden bottles. We went down in the diving bell and watched tiger sharks circle the shell holding us, watched manta rays and heard the man say over and over, "They fly, ladies and gentlemen-they fly!" We rode the little scooter cars and bumped each other and Peggy laughed and her cheeks were bright with color.
I don't remember everything. I just remember the walking, hand in hand, the warm happiness of knowing she was with me. Remember her screams of mock fear as the roller coaster plummeted us down through the night and then up again, straight at the stars.
I remember Funland.
It's a strange concession. One of those things. Nothing really but a big black maze. You wander through it, down inclines, turning corners, searching for an exit-all in a blackness that's complete and abysmal. This sounds pointless, I guess. Until you take a girl. A lot of loafers hang around there. They wait for unescorted girls to go in.
I don't know what it was that made me nervous from the start. Maybe it was Peggy. She seemed to be driving herself, daring herself not to be afraid. Her laughter was forced and her hand in mine shook and was wet with perspiration. She kept tugging.
"Come on, Davie, let's find our way out."
"What did we come in for?"
"To find our way out."
"Progress," I said.
The place was like a coal mine. I couldn't see a thing. It had a dank, rotting odor too, that place. The smell of uncleaned spaces and water-logged wood and the vague, left-over smell of thousands of phantom bodies who had come in to get out.
And there were sounds. Giggles. Little shrieks of deliberate fright. Or were they deliberate? Peggy's breath was fast, erratic. Her laughter was too breathless.
"Babe, what did we come in here for?" I said.
"Come on, it's fun, it's fun."
"Some fun."
She kept pulling me, and I held on tight, moving through the blackness that was filled with clumping and shuffling of feet. And more shrieks and giggles. And the sound of our breathing. Unnaturally loud.
"This is scary," Peggy said, "isn't it?"
We touched walls, bumped down inclines, pressed together in the dark.
"Excuse me," I said. It sounded inane.
"All right," came the phantom reply. In a voice that had more fright than elation in it now.
"How do you get out of here?" I said, trying to get rid of the rising uneasiness in me.
"You just wander and finally you come out," she said.
Silence. Except for feet shuffling and her breathing and my breathing. Shuffling along in the dark. With the rising sense that we weren't alone. I don't mean the other people in the black maze. I mean somebody with us.
The next thing I remember, the last thing for a while, was a sudden blinding beam of light behind us. A rushing sound behind me. And me whirling around into the eye-closing light. Then feeling two big hands grab my throat, strong arms spinning me, now in blackness again. A heavy knee driving into my back, and something hard crashing down on my skull.
And though it was dark, for me it got darker. I felt myself hit the floor and start falling into night.
But not before, on my knees and almost gone, I heard Peggy scream out in mortal terror.
***
Somebody was slapping my face.
I twisted my head away and groaned. Sounds trickled back into my brain. I opened my eyes.
I was still on the pier, half-stretched out on the walk, propped up against a wooden fence. A crowd was watching me with that alien and heartless curiosity that crowds have for stretched-out victims of any kind. I heard a voice saying, "It's nothing folks, he just fainted. Don't congregate, please. Don't get the police on me, thank you kindly, I appreciate it. Nothing at all folks, just fainted that's all, he just fainted."
"Peggy!"
I struggled up, suddenly remembering her. The pain in my skull almost put me out again. I fell back on one elbow.
"Take it easy, boy," said the man with the cigar in his mouth, the loud sport shirt. "Just fainted, folks. Don't congregate, please don't congregate."
He looked at me. "How's the head?" he asked.
"Where is she?" I asked. I grabbed his arm, fighting off the dizziness. "She's not still in there, is she?"
"Now, now," he said, "take it easy."
"Is she!"
"No, no, no, no, nobody's in there now. It's cleared out. Stop yelling please. You want the police to come down?"
"Did you see her leave?" I asked.
"I didn't," said the man, still looking around. "Somebody said they did."
"Alone, was she alone?" I slumped against the fence, dizzily.
"I don't know, I'm not sure. Please, folks, don't congregate like this. Be a good egg, folks. Give me a break and don't congregate like this."
I pushed up then and started through the crowd, holding myself tight to keep the pain from knocking me on my face again.
I kept seeing her in there. In pitch blackness. With her fear of men. And someone attacking her in blackness. It would drive her out of her mind.
Then another thought.
Jim.
Steig trailing us. Jumping me. Taking Peggy away. It seemed terribly logical to me then.
I started running up the pier for the car and planning to drive to Jim's place to find her. Strange there seemed no doubt in me that she actually was there. Only in a white rage could I be so certain.
I rushed past endless gaudy concessions, the barker voices shrouding me with blatancy, calling me to break balloons, and throw pennies and pitch hoops around knife handles and telling me what they were going to do if only I'd stop. I got a stitch in my side but kept running, gasping for breath.
Then, suddenly, I thought, I'll phone him. He would more than likely deny it but then again he might not. He might flaunt it. It was worth the try.
In the airless booth my head started throbbing. I gritted my teeth, panting. I looked up Jim's number, sweat rolling down my face. I called the operator and had the call put through.
His voice, assured, dripping with aplomb.
"This is David," I said. "Is…"
"David who?"
"Newton!" I said angrily. "Is Peggy there?"
"Peggy? Why do you ask?"
"Is she there?"
"You sound hysterical," he said.
"Did you have me attacked tonight?" I asked furiously, not thinking at all. "Did you have Steig take Peggy?"
"What are you talking about?"
I suddenly felt my insides falling. If it weren't Steig, then who was it?
"Speak up, David. What are you talking about? What's happened to Peggy?"
I hung up. I pushed out of the booth. I walked a few feet. Then I broke into a weaving run again. I felt a wild fear in me. What had happened to her? Where was she? Oh good God, where was she?!
I moved off the pier and wove up the dark street past bars with tinkling pianos and a mission with a tinkling piano and tone deaf converts singing for their supper.
"Peggy," I gasped.
And found her in my car.
She was sitting slumped over on the right hand side. The first impression I got was one of stark shock. She was shaking violently and continuously. Just staring blankly at the windshield and shaking. She had her right arm pressed over her breasts. The fingers of her left hand in her lap were bent and rigid.
"Peggy!"
I slid in beside her and she snapped her head over. Her stare at me was wild with fear. I put my arm around her shaking shoulders.
"What happened, Peggy?"
No answer. She shook. She looked at me, then at the windshield again. Her pupils were black planets swimming in a milky universe. I'd never seen eyes so big. Or so terror-stricken.
"Baby, it's me. Davie."
She started to bite her lower lip. I could almost feel the rising emotion in her. She literally shook it out of herself.
It suddenly tore from her lips. She threw her hands over her face. Then she drew them away just as suddenly and held them before her eyes in tight claws of blood-drained flesh. She clicked her teeth, clenched them together and tried to hold back the moaning.
But her breath caught. And a body-wracking sob burst from her throat. She dragged her hands across her breasts. And I saw that the front of her dress had been ripped open and one of her brassiere straps had been snapped.
"I'm dirty," she said, "dirty!"
I had to grab her hands to keep her from ripping open her own flesh. I was amazed at the strength in her arms and wrists. Impelled by savage shock, she was almost as strong as a man, it seemed.
"Stop it! Peggy, stop it!"
Sitting there in Venice, California, in a black Ford coupe trying to calm the hysterics of a young woman afraid of sex who had been attacked.
Some people stopped and watched with callous curiosity while Peggy shook and groaned and gnashed her teeth and tried to claw away the flesh that had been touched by some vicious attacker.
"Peggy, please, please…"
I wanted to start the car and get away from those staring people. But I couldn't let her tear at her own flesh.
A long shuddering breath filled her. And she started to cry. Heartbroken crying, without strength or hope. I held her against me and stroked her hair.
"All right, baby," I said, "cry, cry."
"Dirty," she moaned, "I'm dirty."
"No," I said. "No, you're not."
"I'm dirty," she said, "dirty."
As soon as I could, I started the car and drove away from the curious people. I drove along the ocean for a while and then stopped at a drive-in. By that time she'd stopped crying and was sitting quietly, way on the other end of the seat, staring at her hands.
I'd put my jacket over her to cover the torn dress and slip. I ordered coffee and made her drink it. She coughed on it but she drank it.
It seemed to calm her a little. I stayed away from her. She wanted it that way, I knew. She almost pushed against the other door, crouching as if prepared to leap out should I make the remotest suggestion of an advance.
"Tell me what happened, Peggy?"
She shook her head.
"It'll help you if you can tell me."
Finally she did. And the visualization of what she said made me shiver.
"Someone grabbed me," she said. "I screamed for you but… but you didn't answer."
"I was unconscious, Peggy."
For the first time she looked at me with something besides fear.
"You were hit?" she asked.
I bent over and told her to touch the dried blood on my head.
"Oh," she said in momentary concern, "Davie…"
Then she drew back.
"Go on," I said.
"Some… some man put his hands on me. He clawed at me. He tore at my dress. I scratched him. I think I must have scratched his eyes out. Oh, God I hope I did. I hope he's blind!"
"Peggy, stop."
I saw the look of revulsion on her face. Because she had suddenly picked up her hands to look at them.
She made a gagging sound. Then she started rubbing her fingers over her skirt. I saw what it was.
Skin under her nails. The skin of the man who had tried to rape her.
I got a pen knife from the glove compartment and cleaned her nails while she kept her head turned away, her eyes tightly shut. Her hands trembled in mine.
"I think I'm… going to be sick," she said.
I felt sick myself, flicking those particles of someone's skin on the floor. Someone who had terrorized the girl I loved. It was almost as if he were present with us. I thought vaguely of taking those particles to the police but then I just let them fall. I couldn't stand putting them in an envelope.
"Peggy," I said, "do you think it was Steig?"
She couldn't speak for a moment. Then she said she didn't know.
"If I'd had a gun," she said, "a knife, a razor, anything. Oh God I'd have…"
I felt the muscles of my stomach tighten. Until I told myself that she'd been driven half-mad with fear. And I pushed away the thought I was trying so hard to avoid. And came up with another one that had preyed on me since I was conscious again.
"Peggy."
"What?"
"Did he…?"
She closed her eyes.
"If he had," she said, "you wouldn't have found me here. I'd be in the ocean."
My stomach kept throbbing as I drove up Wilshire. The thought of her being alone after this experience distressed me terribly. Worse than alone, alone with Albert. What if he made an advance this night?
And then I thought, what if it were Albert who had attacked her in the first place?
I didn't know how to put the thought to her. I didn't want to alarm her needlessly. She seemed set on going back to her room. If I made the idea horrible, and she went anyway…
Thoughts. No end to them. And no resolution.
As I turned up 26th I saw Albert's Dodge in front of the house. And another car too. Jim's Cadillac.
I pulled up to the curb. Jim got out of his car and came quickly over to mine. He opened the door on Peggy's side.
"What is it, Peggy?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Come here," he said.
By the time I got out of the car, he'd led her to his Cadillac and tried to make her get in it.
"I don't want to go!" I heard her say, her voice edging on hysteria again.
"Stop it, Peggy," Jim said. "I just want to talk to you."
Then she was in. And I came up to the car. I looked in and saw their dark forms. I heard Jim's muffled voice.
Steig got out of the car and walked around to where I stood.
"This is private," he said. Guttural. Thick German accent.
"Miss Lister is…" I started to say and found that one of his beefy hands had clamped on my arm. The strength of his grip pressed pain into the flesh.
"Let go of me," I said, gasping.
"You go," he said.
He started to lead me to my car. I couldn't do a thing. He was too big, too strong.
"God damn you!" I said, suddenly raging. "Get your fat hand off me!"
I wanted to call for Peggy but I didn't. She was in no state to come to my aid. Besides, I felt like a fool being led around like a baby this way. Struggling with teeth-gritting frustration. I was shoved against my car.
Steig stood by the door he had just slammed shut.
"You get out of here," he said.
"Listen, you ignorant Kraut," I said, more angry than sensible.
His face hardened, the pig eyes blazed at me. "You get out of here before I break your little neck with my hands."
He glanced at the Cadillac. Then, under his breath, he said something that covered my flesh with ice water. "If you did not know Mr. Vaughan," he said, "you would be dead. For snooping."
I gaped at him, my hands shaking. I saw his brute white face in the light of a street lamp. And I was afraid. No one had ever threatened my life personally. And it comes as a shock to a man to suddenly learn that another individual wants to kill him.
"Get out," Steig said.
My fingers shook as I slid the ignition key in. They shook on the gear shift. My legs trembled on the clutch and the accelerator. My heart pounded violently as I pulled up the street, afraid to look back.
I got out.
***
I jolted up on the bed with a gasp.
There was a dark figure standing over the bed.
My heart lurched. "No!" I gasped, throwing one arm up to ward off the expected blow.
"Davie, what is it?"
I fell back on the pillow, panting. My throat clicked. I lay there heaving with breaths.
"Davie?"
"You s-scared me," I said. "I'm… I was dreaming."
"Oh. I'm… sorry. It's Albert," she said quietly.
"What…?"
Then the light was on. She was over at the sink, back. She pressed a wet cloth on my skull. To my surprise I saw her wearing a different outfit. She had a dark pair of slacks on and a tight black turtleneck sweater. She'd taken a shower too. I could tell from the fresh smell of her, from the dampness on the lower part of her hair where it had come out of the shower cap. Her only makeup was a little lipstick.
She looked very calm.
"What about him?" I said.
"When I went in the house tonight," she said.
"Yes?"
"I… I went to brush my teeth and I met Albert in the hall."
She paused.
"Well…?" I asked.
"His face was all scraped off," she said.
"Albert," I said.
She turned the cloth over with her gentle, unshaking fingers.
"What did you do?" I asked. I wanted to tell her what Steig had said to me but I couldn't get to it. Things were happening that fast.
She stroked my hair gently. "I left," she said.
"You took a shower first?"
"No," she said, "I took that before. It was after the shower that I met Albert in the hall."
"You came right here?"
"I stopped to call Jim."
"He didn't stay with you?" I asked, inanely.
She looked slightly surprised. "Of course he didn't," she said, "he just wanted to find out what had happened tonight. He said you called him."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I thought maybe you were at his house. I thought maybe it was Steig who had…"
***
We drove back to her place in the morning.
"Well, I'll just tell Jim," she was saying. "He'll get rid of Steig if I tell him."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course, Davie," she said, "you're his friend, aren't you?"
"I doubt it."
"Davie."
Then I said, "I still think you should move out today. Stay with me one more night. But, my God, don't spend another night there with Albert."
"I won't," she said.
She shook her head then. And her throat moved nervously.
"We'll just pick up your things," I said, "You don't even have to go in the house."
As we drove up to the house and I parked behind the Dodge, Peggy's face got suddenly pale.
"Baby, it's all right," I said.
I got out. She got out too.
"Baby, stay here," I said. "You don't have to go in."
"No," she said, "I'll come in."
"Well… all right."
We went up the walk together. I felt in myself that if Albert were there and he said a word to me, I'd knock him down and step on his face. The victimizing by Steig the night before had given me a tight, vicious temper.
The front door was open. We went into the living room.
"Is Mrs. Grady home?" I whispered.
"I guess so," she said.
We went into the hall. She went into her room and I followed. Then as she turned to close the door I heard her voice sink to a whisper.
"Davie…"
I looked in the direction she was looking. Down at where Albert's room was. My heart jumped.
There was a body sprawled on the floor.
I broke into a run and pushed open the half-open door. I heard Peggy behind me.
Mrs. Grady was crumpled on the floor. Her white face was pointed at the ceiling. In her right hand she clutched something. I couldn't see what it was but the tip was red…
Then my eyes moved suddenly to the bed.
Albert was there. He was staring at us, his eyes were wide open.
Albert was no more. And that was when I recognized the instrument in Mrs. Grady's hand.
An icepick.
It had been driven into Albert's brain.
