A Covenant with Death Read online

  That was the scene of the crime. It was a little society, complicated and unique, vibrating to overtones and undertones, and it was certainly no microcosm, no happily symbolic distillation of America the Beautiful. It was an unpleasant little town except to those of us who could deceive ourselves with amenities and conveniences. It suffered the climate of Timbuktu and probably enjoyed fewer books; even its boosters and service clubs tended to a sheepish reticence; it was in the process of superimposing a cheap, clanging, oily modernity upon a harsh and gritty past; and everyone in it, including young Judge Lewis, was vicious or inadequate or uncomprehending or indifferent in his own way. We did not even boast a green park.

  2

  Bryan Talbot telephoned the police at 10:34 on the night of May third. His voice was wild; he was sobbing. He had just returned, so he said, from Peter Justin’s Bar and Billiard Parlor, where the town’s politics took shape, and had found his wife dead, in a bathrobe, bruises on her throat; she was lying in the hallway between the living room and the master bedroom. He called Alfred Harmsworth, our chief of police. Alfred called Doctor Schilling, whom no one ever referred to as Doc, and ran to the Talbots’ house, towing a rookie named Tolliver who threw up when he saw the corpse. “That woman,” Tolliver said to me next day. His eyes went momentarily blank with horror. Alfred was in his forties, and had been a captain of infantry in France; he had seen it all, legs and heads lying loose, barbed wire festooned with American intestines, but this was worse. “Probably I never laid eyes on a finer figure,” he said. “I had to examine her; and I knew why Tolliver got sick. My stomach turned, and the world was kind of fuzzy for half an hour. She looked fine, except for the bruises on her throat. Beautiful. Long legs and that little waist and everything else exactly what a man would specify if he could get a woman from Sears, Roebuck; but she was dead. I would have paid twenty dollars for her in a bathrobe the night before, but now she was nothing. Wood, or marble maybe. Was that all it was, Ben? That she was dead? Was that what made her ugly and me sick?”

  “I imagine there was more to it than that,” I said. I knew about the Viennese revolution, so I pontificated for Alfred. “You wanted that woman, like everybody else in town—no, no,” (he had tried to protest) “I don’t mean that you’d have done anything about it even when she was alive, anyway not while anybody was watching, but way down deep all men want all women. Nothing much to do about it and nothing to be ashamed of. And whatever kind your own group decides is jazziest, you want that kind most. And there she was, all laid out on her back for you—but she wasn’t even a human being any more. She belonged to nature and not to you. And all the taboos we don’t even know we worry about hit you at one time, and below the belt. Spooks and the wrath of God. Evil spirits. Devils that would shrivel your equipment if you so much as let the thought of her cross your mind.”

  Alfred was nodding. “I felt that way, sure enough. I’ve watched Doctor Schilling handle all sorts of bodies, and this was the first time I wondered how he could stand it. But I’m the chief, so I couldn’t get sick like Tolliver. Tolliver’s only nineteen. If that was the first naked woman he ever saw he may be ruined for life.”

  “If that was the first naked woman he ever saw, times have changed,” I said.

  “Yeah. Anyway I had Talbot to worry about. And when I got over the willies I remembered that somebody must have killed the woman.”

  Talbot sat on a couch, pale as death himself, tears running quick and silent down his bruised face. Alfred noticed the bruise immediately, along the left cheek and temple, the skin barely broken and only a drop of drying blood. Talbot stank of whiskey. Every little while he ran the back of his hand across his upper lip and snuffled. Once he moaned. Doctor Schilling said Mrs. Talbot had been dead for only twenty minutes or half an hour, and then he covered her up and went to Talbot. “Lie down here,” he said, and Talbot broke out sobbing—long, strangled, airless sobs. He might have been thinking that if he’d stayed home it wouldn’t have happened; he might not have been thinking at all. Alfred was sweating now, and losing touch. The night was still and hot and the hallway was bright with lamplight; a painting of a waterfall hung six inches from his nose, and every indentation of the frame, every contour of the drawing, every change in color was sharp, glaring, painful; he turned away but it was the same in the living room: chairs, tables, knickknacks staring out at him like bright monsters in a nightmare. Then Tolliver stumbled back in and Alfred was all right again. He blinked a couple of times and ran a hand through his sandy hair and took a deep breath.

  Doctor Schilling had cleaned Talbot’s bruise and given him an injection. Alfred would have preferred Talbot awake and babbling but no one ever argued with Doctor Schilling. Talbot began to quiet down, and Alfred caught him before he drifted off: “When did you find her, Talbot?”

  Talbot answered slowly. “Just before I called.” A pause. “I tried to bring her to.” A pause. “Thought she’d fallen.” A pause. His eyes were closing. “Then I couldn’t … find a heartbeat. Thought she was—oh, God!”

  “What’d you do after you called?”

  “Rubbed her wrists. Water … put water on her forehead.” His eyes were shut and his breathing was quiet.

  Alfred couldn’t do much more then, but he tried a last jolt, hoping for a flash of truth from the drugged mind: “Who did it, Talbot?”

  Talbot shivered. “She won’t leave me.… That fellow Rollins.” (Or so Alfred heard it.) “Nobody.… Nobody.… My wife.”

  Alfred bent closer. “Talbot: did you do it?”

  Talbot was asleep.

  “Can you get somebody to stay with him?” the doctor asked.

  Alfred looked at Tolliver. Tolliver nodded. He was ashamed of himself. Alfred patted him on the shoulder. “Tolliver’ll stay. What about the body?”

  “I’ll call Parsons,” the doctor said. “Unless you want to examine her some more.”

  “No,” Alfred said quickly. “I’ll look around the house, but you can take her away.”

  The doctor went to the telephone and called our Protestant undertaker.

  Alfred looked around the house. It did him little good. He found what he’d have found in any respectable establishment: private correspondence, unincriminating; unpaid bills; clothes and food and cigarettes and a deck of cards; towels and sheets and pillowcases; a dressing table heaped with rouges and lipsticks and powders and pomades and perfumes; a supply of perfectly ordinary, unimaginative lady’s underthings; a few books, including Andrew Carnegie and a Bible—all the usual, none of the remarkable. Through the living-room window he saw the Donnelleys’ lights and shades and shrubbery; and then he craned slightly and saw people on the sidewalk. He went out to tell them what had happened.

  There were half a dozen of them, naturally including the Donnelleys. Again Alfred quitted this planet briefly; life and motion ceased, leaving only the ruthless lights and colors, the night sounds, the pale faces like blossoms clustered before him. “There weren’t even any expressions,” he said. “No eyes, no noses; it was like standing up in front of so many skulls. There was a street light about fifty feet off, and I got to feeling like the sun and moon had gone out for good, and soon that street light would go, and that would be the end of us all.” But it was hot, and the sweat tipped over his eyebrows and ran down his nose, which recalled him to life. Helen Donnelley was pale; Bruce was impassive, but his eyes roved for details. He was chewing on a toothpick. Alfred told them, briefly, and asked them to go on home. Helen Donnelley let out one stifled yell and fainted. Bruce’s expression never changed. He caught her as she fell, cradled her in his arms, and carried her home.

  By noon the next day Soledad City had high blood pressure. Manslaughter was common enough: we had our brawls and blood feuds and outraged husbands just like any other frontier town. What we did not have, or had not had until then, was inexplicable murder by an unknown hand. Death was no less natural to us than to another community, perhaps more natural because we were almost a desert tow
n, and our nut-brown tots, straying a mile, could amuse themselves with the traditional bleached bones: the remains of not only wild cattle and an occasional horse, but coyotes and dogs and cats, vertebrates of all kinds, among whom chance dictated that a few, now and then, would wander dying to the edge of the sandy sea. But this was a crime and a riddle; the crime was a shock, and the riddle was a pleasure. It was like one of the movies we all whistled and hooted at, but with a familiar cast, and with sound: voices, rumor, speculation. “I can’t believe it was Bryan,” Colonel Oates said gravely. “I cannot believe that a man dedicated to the pursuit of money would jeopardize his future by murder. Not to mention that this was the utterly useless murder of a magnificent helpmeet. Bryan wouldn’t even steal. Embezzlement, possibly: a careful, methodical felony. But not the single rash act. Not Bryan.”

  “He’s a gambler,” I pointed out.

  “Gamblers know the odds,” the Colonel said, “and will not make them steeper. What about the girl’s past? Before Bryan?”

  “Nobody knows much. She’s from Dallas. Married five or six years to Bryan. Bryan’s from Tulsa. She had an ordinary childhood. Through high school. Considered a bit fast, free and easy, but no scandal. No ghosts out of the past. Alfred’s spoken to her parents. So has Bryan. Her father’s a ticket agent on the railroad.”

  “Poor people,” the Colonel commiserated. “What a blow. Any scandal here in town?”

  I scowled. I enjoy scandal, but being a judge I despise rumor. I don’t like to pass it along. Still—“Bound to be. There isn’t a man in town who hasn’t lusted after her in his heart. Even Cathcart was noticeably gallant at the dinner last year.” We were still celebrating—annually and alcoholically—the privilege of admission to the mother republic. Cathcart, Milton D., was our mayor. Nobody loved or hated him. A short, round, bald man in steel-rimmed spectacles, efficient rather than friendly, he was a good mayor. Since he had been in office, which meant nine years, nothing of note had happened in Soledad City. We liked it that way. There had been a war, and electricity, and the streetcar line, and the Prohibition we ignored, and women voting, but all that was maintenance rather than news.

  “Yes,” the Colonel said. “You should wear a hat.”

  “What? I have a nice Stetson.”

  “You should wear it. I know the heat doesn’t bother you much, but when a man wears a hat he can tip it to the ladies. I used to tip mine to Mrs. Talbot, and my reward was a smile and a soft word.”

  “I never thought of that.” Used to, he had said. We accept it, assimilate it, so quickly.

  “I heard Bruce Donnelley used to look at her now and then.” The shaggy white brows arched.

  I knew Donnelley, as people know one another when they are required to attend civic functions together. He liked those functions; I despised them; so his attendance was honest and mine was hypocritical. He had never to my knowledge made a joke, but he had come close once, at a luncheon, when he turned ponderously to me and said, “I wonder just when they mashed these potatoes.” I allowed a smile to grace the comment, but it was not answered; he merely stared, grave, stern, as though cardboard potatoes were a visitation of the Lord upon us poor sinners.

  “Of course he did,” I said to the Colonel. “But not seriously. Not the elder. And so what?”

  “Well, he lived next door, after all.”

  “What does that mean?” I was annoyed. “Assignations by the garbage can?”

  “It means proximity,” the Colonel said loftily. “It means temptation. It means the bedroom light at night, the undrawn shade.”

  “It means the Donnelleys’ chickens in the Talbots’ petunias. Somehow I can’t see two hundred and twenty pounds of Bruce Donnelley lurking in a flower bed for a glimpse of raspberry nipple.” The Colonel winced. I kept my tone dry. “And if he did? From Peeping Tom to Bluebeard is a long jump.”

  “I suppose it is,” he said grudgingly. “But who would want to hurt that dear lady, and why?”

  “Ask Alfred.”

  “Ah, no.” He smiled. “I am going to ask Eulalia. I admire Alfred, but I adore Eulalia.”

  “You old goat,” I said. He was delighted.

  Eulalia was my mother, Mrs. Eulalia Morales Lewis, Mexican, handsome in her early fifties, boasting a good mind and innumerable cousins, among them Ignacio, who had a daughter Rafaela, who—no. Later. My mother had been a good wife from 1892 to 1921 to Graeme Lewis, known as Bulldog, who was a good father, the best, long ago a ranger and then county sheriff, a man of great heart who had killed when necessary. My mother was intensely proud of my being a judge, but I was not supposed to know that; our conversations consisted largely of raillery. They were also bawdy; she was a well-read woman of shrewd good humor, and enjoyed quoting my father. Now and then I would remember one of her more salacious (and salubrious) observations while I was on the bench—in state, sweating under the obligatory robe, straining to freeze an expression of mature dignity on a twenty-nine-year-old face—and would be appalled by the masks we human beings wear when we transact our most earnest business. Needing most to be ourselves, relaxed, mortal, receptive to good sense and to the nuances of truth and falsehood, available to the urgent supplications of wisdom and mercy—precisely then we deck ourselves in cold anonymity, that heads may better roll. If judges were required to sit stark naked we would have more justice.

  We had been informed of the murder by telephone, at breakfast. We had been quarreling amiably in her large, airy, buff-and-white kitchen. The eggs were fresh, the bacon was lean, the coffee hot and strong; the day was beginning well. She had sat back with a deep grunt of pleasure, her brown eyes clear and at peace, and had lit a thin, black, four-inch stogy. “A good day,” she said. “Cooler. Have you asked Rosemary down for the weekend?”

  “No. I may. Do you want me to?”

  A shrug. “She’s all right. A little shy for my taste.”

  “Your taste is not paramount. Anyway you’re a lusty Latin. A dirty Spic lady.”

  “Like Rafaela. And Rosemary’s a nice clean Swede.”

  “And a schoolteacher,” I said. “She has a pretty face and a fine bottom. She’ll make some man a wonderful wife.”

  “You?”

  “Maybe.”

  She blew a smoke ring. “How could I face Ignacio?”

  “More coffee, please. You’re trying to tell me something.” I was jumpy, not knowing what she had guessed.

  “No, no, no,” she poured coffee.

  “Rafaela,” I said. “So you can dominate her. You’re afraid if I marry Rosemary you’ll have to sleep in the garage—”

  “We don’t have a garage. And it’s my house.”

  “—but if it was Rafaela you could be a nosy old bawd. You think you’d scare her half to death.”

  “She’s already scared,” my mother said with great good nature. “She told me. She’s scared you like boys.”

  I was shaking my head in gloomy disgust when the phone rang. She went off to answer it, and talked awhile, and came back looking sad.

  “Louise Talbot was murdered last night,” she said.

  I chased down to my office, which consisted of one-half the second story of a two-story building. Across the hall from me was a ladies’ hairdresser. The arrangement was undignified but interesting; I never knew whom I would meet on my way to the men’s room, or what vision of factitious delight would grace my exit from same. The ground floor was a drugstore, with soda fountain, notions, newspapers, magazines, bottled liquor with hair-tonic labels, toys and games, and occasionally an all-night poker game in the back room, including me. It was run by a folksy, rubicund gentleman named Geronimo Goldman who described himself as the last Jewish Apache. He was around sixty, and specialized in forgetting to send out bills, weeping openly at hard-luck stories, and giving away free medicine. Also removing cinders and bandaging cuts. “I make it up on the newspapers,” he said. He had told me once that his real name was Bernard, that he was from Newark, New Jersey, and that he had moved west
just before the war for his health and because he was fascinated by Indians. “Is that why you have that lilt to your voice? Almost an accent. Is that New Jersey?”

  “What, New Jersey,” he said. “That’s what’s left of a Yiddish childhood. Plus, plus,” the admonitory finger, the toothy smile, “plus my Apache heritage. But the Apaches have no word for herring. Salt fish, they say. You go in and ask for a salt fish, you’re liable to get anything.”

  “Funny,” I said, “I don’t know that I ever talked to a Jewish fellow. I mean not as a Jewish fellow.”

  “You don’t have to say ‘Jewish fellow,’” he explained gently. “Just ‘Jew.’ An all-right word. Being a Jew is honorable work.”

  “Jew,” I said obediently. “Jew.” It sounded odd.

  “Very good,” he said. The rumor was that he supported himself playing poker, and I am in a position to confirm that, but I have indicated my aversion to rumor. The building itself had been put up in the 1880s, and its various occupants worked with a constant sense of impending catastrophe, heightened by the groaning and crepitation of exhausted lumber.

  I had two rooms. One was an anteroom where my part-time clerk could read the Police Gazette, and where people could sit when I wanted to impress them by making them wait. The clerk, a bright young ex-Zuñi of twenty-two, had little to do, but he had been graduated from a state law school and a clerkship was traditionally the next step. His name was John Digby, which was his idea of the emancipated form of Jumping Deer, the name given him at birth. He was all right: smart, cheerful, ambitious, you might even say one hundred per cent American. I considered him with an odd mixture of respect, melancholy, and expectation. The respect because he did his work well; the melancholy because he had chopped away his own roots—he had chosen a kind of anonymity; and the expectation because I never fully believed that he wanted to be like the go-getters around him, and I kept hoping that he would show up in war paint, naked and greased, with a bleeding goat’s-scrotum, full, hanging around his neck. He wore blue suits, black shoes, white shirts, and red neckties. In the year following these events the government of the United States condescended to grant him and his brothers American citizenship.