Puzzle for Pilgrims (8 page)

“Yes,” I said, feeling uneasy.

“Came up here a couple of hours ago. Left me stuck in a bar downtown. I figured a couple of hours was long enough for any two girls to jabber at each other.” He threw out his big hands. “Here I am.”

I said, “If Marietta was here, she’s gone. You must have passed her.”

“Yeah? And this Sally Haven?”

“She’s not here either.”

He grinned at me. “Just you and your wife, eh? Hope I’m not intruding.”

“Why should you be?”

He started to whistle. He got up, glanced down at the silver slipper, and kicked at it with his toe. His sharp blue eyes moved to the white, overturned tuberoses.

“Does she carry liquor, this dame? I’m dry as Arizona.”

Iris was sitting very pale and stiff in a chair. Jake moved past her, so close that his arm brushed her. He paused, looking down at her curiously.

“My, little lady, you look peaked. Maybe she’s got a bar on the terrace. Come on. I’ll rustle up a little of what ails you.”

He bent over her and, taking her arms, lifted her to her feet. I pushed him away from her. He grinned his grin with the blue eyes wide open. “Now don’t get sore, Peter. No offense intended.” He put his hand on Iris’s sleeve. “Just offering the little lady a little snort.”

He started toward the French windows to the terrace. Iris recoiled from him to me. He disappeared. Iris and I followed, for no particular reason unless we were trying to avoid being alone.

The terrace was wide and white and long. It stretched the length of the house with a precipitous view of Taxco over a white-painted wooden balustrade. The lights were on now. They twinkled down the hillside like silver chains connected to the major brightness of the Zocalo. Santa Prisca had been dressed up for the fiesta. Strings of lights were strewed across its massive façade, and high up, between the twin steeples, sparkled a great Star of Bethlehem.

Carrousel music drifted to us on the still night air. Jake was moving away from us down the terrace, peering for liquor. A small polished moon hung almost directly above us, adding its milk-blue radiance to the fiesta. Iris stood very close to me, taut, staring down the plunging view at the quivering beauty of the town.

The carrousel was wheezing out “La Barca de Oro”. From far down the terrace, Jake started to whistle the ever popular song along with the music. Suddenly his whistle stopped. For a second the terrace was quiet as an abandoned church. Then Jake’s voice came, strange, harsh.

“Hey, Peter, hey, you girl, come here.”

I started toward him. Iris hesitated and then, coming after me, slipped her cold hand into mine. We passed low, shadowy porch chairs and divans. Jake’s large figure loomed ahead. He was standing with his back to us, peering down over the balustrade. And, as we drew closer, I saw that there was no balustrade there. Part of it had broken off, leaving a gaping hole.

We reached him. Down in the Zocalo the steampipes of the carrousel were sobbing. The words of the song were so familiar to me that they jogged along with the music in my mind.

Voy a aumentar los mares con me llanto

Adiós, mujer…

Jake heard us coming. He turned sharply. In the moonlight his face was utterly changed. The blandness was gone. He looked grim and tough as a gun. He grabbed my arm. He pulled me toward the gap in the balustrade. Beyond it there was a sheer drop of over thirty feet into a dry, rocky stream bed.

“Get a load of that, Peter,” he said.

I saw it, of course. First I saw the strip of broken balustrade where it had fallen. Then I saw the hair—hair gleaming, metallic, almost white in the moonlight. I saw the hair and I saw the little white hands, flung up. I saw the tiny body sprawled there below on the jagged rocks—limp as a doll tossed away by a bored child.

The words of the song were still pounding in my ears, running with the carrousel music.

Adiós, mujer, adiós para siempre adiós.

The parallel between the mournful words and the thing below made me feel sick.

Jake said, “She’s as dead a dame as I’d care to see. Back’s broken, you can tell from the position. Who is it? Mrs. Haven?”

I became conscious of Iris then. She sagged against me, and her voice rose, shrill, jagged, over the lamenting music.

“She was lying there all the time. Sally was lying there and I didn’t know.”

At first that remark, wrenched out of her, seemed completely without sense to me. Why should she say she hadn’t known Sally was lying there? Of course she hadn’t known Sally was lying there.

Slowly Jake turned to her. His eyes were bright in the moonlight.

“You didn’t know it, eh?”

“I didn’t,” said Iris. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”

The hysteria of that repetition was bad enough. But suddenly I felt as if Sally’s terrace was dissolving beneath my feet.

Iris was my wife. I had loved her for five years. I knew every in and out of her mind, every inflection of her voice.

And I knew then that her voice was false. She was lying. She had known Sally was there.

All the time she had been with me, in the living room, she had known that Sally was lying there—dead.

I led Iris to one of the porch chairs. I made her sit. I said, “Jake and I’ve got to go down to Sally.”

I didn’t know if she was listening. She had folded her hands and was looking at a ring on her finger. It was a new ring. From Martin? In the darkness her face was white as the tuberoses scattered behind her. I was scared of what she might say or do. I leaned down and whispered like a conspirator, “Be careful. For God’s sake, be careful.”

Jake had swung himself down through the gap in the balustrade. I hurried after him. Jake with his gun, his swaggering impudence, his possible connection with Sally, was an unknown quantity. He was bright, I knew. He was also potentially hostile. I couldn’t afford to have him discover whatever there might be to discover without my being there.

When I formulated that thought, I didn’t let myself admit what it implied.

The drop to the dry stream bed was almost sheer. I started clambering after Jake, clinging to jutting stones and crevices. He had reached the stream bed and was bending over Sally. I joined him. The edge of the broken segment of balustrade was lying over her legs. Jake pushed it aside. I noticed at once that one of the little feet was bare. On the other, a silver slipper gleamed.

The moonlight was strong, blue like the moonlight in Swan Lake. The slight body seemed to have no substance. The metal hair poured over a rock. Her eyes were open. They stared up at nothing. Her lips were parted too. I could see the white teeth. There was no blood. But the position of the body told the story. A body couldn’t be hunched backward that way unless the spine was shattered.

I took her thin, cold wrist with its sagging silver bracelets.

There was no pulse.

Jake was squatting at my side. His thigh brushed against mine, solid and warm and in violent contrast to the chill of that dead wrist.

“Well,” he said.

As we crouched there, Sally’s voice, light and pretty with its suppressed giggle, seemed to weave in my mind with the music from the Zocalo.
Peter, I like you.
I shivered.
Maybe I’ll never go to the police—if you come.
She’d said that. She’d changed her mind. Marietta might have been saved from jail. Martin might have got his divorce. Iris might have got Martin.

Everything might have been all right—without this.

My hand moved from her wrist up her arm. Jake pushed it roughly away.

“Don’t touch. Mexican law’s death on touching.” He paused. “Back broken, eh?”

“Yes.”

He got up, flexing the muscles of his legs. His steady eyes considered the gaping hole in the balustrade above us.

“Must have leaned against it and it gave way.”

“Yes.”

As I said that, a thought splashed through my mind like acid. The broken strip of balustrade had been lying across Sally’s legs. If she’d leaned against the balustrade and it had given way, it would have reached the ground before her. It could never have landed on her legs.

It couldn’t have happened that way.

I thought of Iris above us, hunched in the porch chair, and I felt a kind of despair. Sooner or later Jake would realize about the balustrade. He’d remember when he looked back, because he was the one who had pulled the broken wood off Sally.

We stood there, over the little body, both big men, watching each other.

“Yeah,” he said almost casually. “She was alone on the terrace; she leaned against the balustrade, maybe admiring the view—and the balustrade gave way.”

“I guess so,” I said, hardly believing he could be that unobservant.

“Sure. That’s the way it was.” He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Well, guess there’s nothing more we can do down here. Better call the police, eh?”

“Yes.”

He started swinging himself up toward the terrace. I followed. His legs dangled in my face. I looked back once, and the metal hair still gleamed down there in the moonlight.

On the balcony, Iris was standing, the coat on her shoulders, gazing down at the sparkle of Taxco below. She was smoking a cigarette. The carnival sounds trailed up, the moan of the pipe organ and the dry whirring of the revolving carrousel.

When she turned, I knew she had got a grip on herself.

She asked quickly, “Is she dead?”

I could trace the artificiality of her voice, but it was steady—steady enough, I hoped, to fool a stranger.

“I’m afraid so, Iris.”

Jake laid a hand on her shoulder.

“What d’you know? We come calling on a dame and she has to fall off of a balcony. And with no liquor in the house. What sort of hospitality is that?”

The facetiousness grated, but I supposed that was his idea of easing the tension.

Iris asked, “The police?”

“Yeah. We’re going to call them now.”

“I hope someone speaks English,” I said.

“Spanish not so good, Peter?” Jake shrugged. “Don’t you worry. No, sir. These spick lingoes don’t bother me. Just relax. Uncle Jake takes over from now on.”

He started through the French windows into the lighted living room. For a couple of bleak moments Iris and I stayed together on the terrace. I was half hoping, half dreading she would confide in me. But she didn’t. We went on into the living room. We found Jake looking down at the spilled vase of tuberoses on the yellow carpet. With a little cluck, he bent and replaced the vase on its table. He wiped the wet patch on the carpet with his handkerchief.

“Sloppy dame,” he murmured.

He moved into the center of the room. His eyes darted about. They fell on the silver slipper sprawled near the couch. He began to whistle hissingly through his teeth, no particular tune.

“Leaving her slippers all over the place. Anyone’d think she was tight.” His bright eyes fixed my face with a glance that was strangely intimate. “Know what these Mexican cops’ll think when they see that slipper?”

Iris, close to me, was trembling. I knew what I was thinking.
Why should Sally have kicked one slipper off in the living room before she—accidentally—fell off the balcony?

I had a sudden gnawing vision of Sally and Iris struggling in that elegant pastel living room, a vision of Sally’s slipper being kicked off, of the vase of tuberoses being overturned, a vision of the struggle moving out onto the balcony, of Sally’s little body being pushed back against the balustrade. I felt sweat breaking out on my forehead. I glanced at Iris. Her face was expressionless as an idol’s except for the eyes. They were eyes looking at a guillotine.

Jake’s question still seemed to hang in the air.

Trying to sound dumb, I asked, “What’ll they think, Jake?”

He didn’t answer at once. It was almost as if he knew he was keeping me in suspense and enjoying it. Then he grinned suddenly.

“They’ll think she was plastered. That’s what they’ll think.” He bent and picked up the slipper, letting it dangle. “You know Jake. Always chivalrous. Least we can do is to protect the little lady’s reputation.”

While I watched incredulously, he moved back onto the balcony. He strolled its length and tossed the slipper down through the broken gap in the balustrade. He came back, rubbing his hands together.

“It’d have been a shame,” he said, “letting these Mexicans think something so indelicate.” The grin moved to Iris’s white face. “Don’t look so scared, baby. No one’s going to eat you. Now, for the cops.”

He went toward the telephone. To reach it, he had to pass the desk where the portable typewriter stood with the sheet of paper in it. He had started to whistle again. As he came to the table, he looked at the typewriter, stopped whistling, pulled the paper out of the roller, and folded it into his pocket. Then he resumed the monotonous whistle and picked up the telephone.

It was that final act of slipping the paper into his pocket which made me realize what he had been doing from the start. It had been Jake who had removed the broken balustrade from its damaging position on top of Sally’s legs. It had been Jake who had returned the vase of tuberoses to the table. It had been Jake who had tossed the silver slipper down beside Sally’s body. And now it was Jake who had pulled the paper—I didn’t know what paper—from the typewriter.

He knew as well as Iris and I that Sally had not died by accident. And yet, for some reason, he was not an enemy. He was systematically and efficiently removing all questionable evidence before he called the police.

He was still holding the telephone, but he had not picked up the receiver. His leisurely gaze was moving around the room. At length it settled on me.

“Uncle Jake’s been thinking,” he said. “You don’t know Mexicans. Suspicious race. Can be pretty devious, jumping at conclusions, twisting things. Now Iris came here alone. Peter came here alone. I came here alone. That’s kind of complicated, isn’t it? Something that might give a wrong impression.”

I took Iris’s arm to steady her. “And what do you suggest?”

The white teeth flashed. “A little simplification. That’s what I like. Simple things. No one saw me coming up that dark alley. And you?”