Маргарет Миллар - The Listening Walls

“How is this not possible?”

“She would never, in such an emergency, stop to pick up the, silver box.” Mercado sighed. “No. She killed herself, poor lady. It is a sad thing to think of her wandering around in hell, is it not?”

Dawn was breaking through a gray drizzle.

“It rains,” Santana said.

“Good. It will wash off the sidewalk and drive the people home.”

“There are no more people. It is all over.”

“Amen,” Mercado said. “Still I wonder, along with Señor Escamillo, why did she jump from this particular spot with all the American places to choose from.”

“The Empire State Building.”

“Of course. And the Grand Canyon.”

“The Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Niagara Falls.”

“And others.”

“Many others.” Mercado closed the balcony doors and locked them. “Well, one must not argue with the will of God.”

“Amen.”

Rupert Kellogg’s office was on the second floor of a new concrete building that stood just on the edge of Montgomery Street’s ancient prestige. Here he ran a small accounting business with the aid of his secretary, Pat Burton, a spinster addicted to changing the color of her hair, and an apprentice, a young man named Borowitz who was working his way through San Francisco State College.

Rupert was forty, a tall, bland-faced, soft-talking man who’d been in the accounting business for nearly twenty years. He was moderately efficient, and moderately successful, in his work, but he didn’t enjoy it. He would have preferred to do something more interesting and amusing, to own a pet shop, for instance. He had a profound love for animals and an intuitive understanding of them. The hours he spent at Fleishhacker Zoo seemed to him to be full of the fundamental meanings of life, but he never told this to anyone, not even his wife Amy; and the only time he’d suggested the possibility of opening a pet shop there’d been such a rumpus among his in-laws that he’d given up the idea. At least he’d given up mentioning it. It was still in the back of his mind, hidden away like a deformed child from the disapproving gaze of his brother-in-law.

On Monday morning he arrived late at the office, a habit that was growing on him, especially since Amy had left. Miss Burton, pumpkin-haired for the beginning of the autumn season, was on the telephone looking distraught. This she did easily and with so little provocation that Rupert paid no attention. He found Miss Burton’s anxiety states more tolerable if he stayed beyond their boundaries as much as possible.

“Hold on, operator. He’s just this minute coming in the door.” Miss Burton pressed the telephone dramatically to her chest. “Thank God you’ve come! A Mr. Johnson in Mexico City wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t know any Mr. Johnson in Mexico City.”

“He’s from the American Embassy. It must be terribly important. You don’t suppose something awful has...”

“Isn’t this the wrong time to suppose, Miss Burton? I’ll take the call in my office.” He closed the door behind him and picked up the phone. “Rupert Kellogg speaking.”

“One moment, please, Mr. Kellogg. All right, go ahead. Here’s your party, Mr. Johnson.”

“Mr. Kellogg? This is the American Embassy in Mexico City, Johnson speaking. I have bad news to report so I might as well give it to you now and straight.”

“My wife...”

“Your wife’s going to be all right. It’s her companion, Mrs. Wyatt. She’s dead. To be quite blunt about it, she went on a drinking spree and killed herself.”

Rupert was silent.

“Mr. Kellogg, are you still there? Operator, I’ve been cut off. Operator! Telefonista! For the love of the Lord, couldn’t I make just one phone call without interruption? Telefonista! ”

“You haven’t been cut off,” Rupert said. “I was — this is a — shock. I–I have known Mrs. Wyatt for many years. How did it happen?”

Johnson told him what details he knew, in a sharp, disapproving voice, as if he considered Wilma’s death a breach of international etiquette.

“And my wife?”

“She’s suffering from shock, naturally. They’ve taken her to the American-British-Corday hospital. Do you want that address?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Mariano Escobedo, 628. The telephone number is 11-49-00.”

“Will she be able to talk to me if I call?”

“Oh no. She’s under sedation. She has a head injury incurred when she fainted, nothing serious as far as I know.”

“How long will she be in the hospital?”

“It’s impossible to tell,” Johnson said. “Do you have any friends here who could look after her?”

“No. I’d better come down myself.”

“That’s a good idea. Shall I call the Windsor Hotel where she was staying and ask them to hold the suite for you?”

“Please,” Rupert said. “I’d also appreciate it if you left a message at the hospital for her: I’ll be down there tonight.”

“What if you can’t make it tonight?”

“I’ll make it. There’s a flight leaving in two hours. My wife took it last week.”

“Do you have a tourist card? They won’t let you on the plane without one.”

“I’ll get one.”

“Very well. I’ll leave the message for her. One more thing, Mr. Kellogg. The police were unable to find any next of kin to Mrs. Wyatt. Has she any relatives?”

“A sister in San Diego.”

“Name?”

“Ruth Sullivan.”

“Address?”

“I don’t know where she’s living, but her husband is a lieutenant commander attached to the Eleventh Naval District. It shouldn’t be hard to find out his home address. Earl Sullivan.”

“Thanks, Mr. Kellogg. And if there’s anything the Embassy can do for you while you’re down here, let me know. The number is 39-95-00.”

“Thank you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Miss Burton appeared in the doorway, slump-shouldered and spaniel-eyed, as befitted the gravity of the situation. “I couldn’t help overhearing, people talk so loud over long distance.”

“Do they?”

“That’s a terrible thing about Mrs. Wyatt, dying in a foreign country like that. All I can say is, God rest her soul.” It seemed enough. Miss Burton straightened her shoulders, put on her spectacles and said briskly, “I’ll call Western Air Lines right away.”

“Yes.”

“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Kellogg?”

“I — certainly. Certainly.”

“I’ve got some aspirin.”

“Take them yourself.”

Miss Burton knew better than to argue. She merely dropped two aspirins on his desk and went out to the reception room to phone the air lines. Rupert stared at the aspirins for a long time. Then he got up and went over to the water cooler and swallowed them both at once.

Miss Burton sailed in on a note of elation. “Success. You leave on flight 611. But goodness, the arguing I had to do. Some snip of a clerk kept saying that the people leaving on 611 were already checking in at the airport. And I said, listen, this is an emergency. I spelled it right out for him, e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y... Oh, I see you took the pills. Good. How are you fixed for money?”

“I’ll need some.”

“O.K., Borowitz can run over to the bank. Now, here’s your schedule. Depart International at 11:50. Lunch on plane. Stopover in L.A. for about an hour. Leave L.A. at 2:30. Dinner on plane. Arrive Mexico City at 10:10, Central Standard Time.”

Miss Burton might go to pieces over smaller crises, but when the larger ones came along she expanded to meet them. She arranged for money, tourist card, toothbrush, clean socks and pajamas, care of the Scottie, Mack, and message to Amy’s brother, Gill Brandon. When she finally got Rupert on the plane and he waved good-bye to her from the window, she was moist-eyed but relieved, like a mother sending her son off to school for the first time.