Into the Night

She couldn’t bear the thought of sitting down at a table and eating, after what she had just seen. She kept walking back and forth, walking endlessly back and forth, sometimes pinching her eyes together, sometimes holding the side of her jaw as if she had a toothache. She had one, a toothache in her conscience.

It was more than just the sight of a dead body — even a friend’s dead body — and she knew it. It came on slowly, but once it had started there was no stopping it.

I killed her. I killed her just as surely as if I was the one held her head under, instead of the man. He was only the instrument, I was the instigator. The blame for this death is on me.

So this is how I free myself from the burden of Starr’s death. By taking on another, a worse killing. One that really is a murder. This is what I’ve accomplished. This is what I’ve done for myself.

Around ten — she didn’t notice the actual time, but somewhere around ten — she took another drink. Then she resolutely put the bottle away and turned the glass upside down. It was bad for you, when you were undergoing an emotional crisis like this. It enlarged it, it blurred it, it kept you from thinking logically and plunged you into unrealistic melancholia. It was only good for physical shock, like after having seen Dell’s body, but not for mental and metaphysical distresses.

The second drink did no good, but at least she finally stopped walking around and sat down. She could tell she was building up into another guilt complex such as she had experienced following Starr’s death. Only this one promised to be far worse.

Dell was no good. The world won’t miss her, she told herself. But I had no right to kill her. It wasn’t for me to judge her, she answered herself.

This probably would have gone on all night, at increasing heat and at increasing pace, but a diversion suddenly occurred which stopped it short. Not only that, but eradicated it completely from her thoughts and from her system.

The buzzer at the door sounded, and when she went over and opened it, two men were standing out there.

“Miss Madeline Chalmers?” one said, and politely touched the edge of a finger to his hat brim.

One was average in height, the other a little better than average, and a good deal huskier in build as well. Both were the sort of people who, a moment after you had looked at them, you couldn’t have told what they looked like. Perhaps a sort of professional invisibility, you might say.

“Yes, I am,” she said tonelessly.

“We’d like to speak to you. May we come in?”

“Not now,” she said unwillingly, and turned her head aside. “I’m very tired, and I can’t see anyone right now.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to, Miss Chalmers,” he said, as polite as ever but with an added crispness. “This is police business.” And he showed credentials.

As soon as this! passed through her mind. Not more than three hours ago — and already!

But the worst part of it was the way she could feel her own face pale, as she stepped aside and let them pass. Its whitening was almost a physical sensation, like a pulling back, a drawing tight, of the skin.

They saw it too. They must have, and that wasn’t good.

She sat down on the middle section of the sofa. The larger one sat down at its end, facing her. The other one brought over a chair and sat down diagonally across from her. They formed an approximation of a small, intimate triangle. Only, she didn’t find it cozy.

It began at once. In casual fashion, but at once, without preamble and from then on without letup. Every question impeccably polite. More polite than the average ballroom or dinner-table conversation.

“Do you know an Adelaide Nelson?”

“Yes, I do.”

“How well do you know her?”

First hitch already, and only the second question.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint a thing like that,” she hedged.

“It shouldn’t be. Do you know her well or don’t you know her well?”

“I know her moderately well.”

Watch your step now, she kept warning herself. Watch your step. One wrong word and you’re in it up to your neck. These boys are experts.

“How long have you known her?”

“I first met her in September.”

“About two and a half months, would that be about right?”

“About two and a half months, that would be about right.”

“Have you ever been up in her apartment?”

“Yes, on a number of occasions.”

“Frequently, would you say, or seldom?”

The doorman used to see me coming and going all the time. I wonder if they’ve gotten to him yet. What if I say seldom, and he says the other way around?

“In the beginning, quite often. Afterward it tapered.” Which actually was the fact.

“Any particular reason why it should taper off? Did you grow cooler toward one another?”

“No-o,” she said with cautious consideration. “It wasn’t intentional. This just happens sometimes, in the course of human, human” — she couldn’t find the word for a moment — “associations.”

“How did you first come to meet Miss Nelson?”