Эд Макбейн: Lady, Lady, I Did It!

“Where are they?”

“The children are... in school.”

“And your wife?”

“She works.”

“How about you, Mr. Halsted? Don’t you work?”

“I’m... I’m temporarily unemployed.”

“How long have you been ‘temporarily unemployed’?” There was a biting edge to Kling’s words. He spit them out like razorsharp stilettos.

“Since... since last summer.”

“When?”

“August.”

“What did you do in September, Mr. Halsted?”

“I—”

“Besides raping Eileen Glennon?”

“Wh... what?” Halsted’s voice caught in his throat. His face went white. He took a step backward, but Kling took a step closer.

“Put on a shirt. You’re coming with me.”

“I... I... I didn’t do anything. You’re mistaken.”

“You didn’t do anything, huh?” Kling shouted. “You son of a bitch, you didn’t do anything! You went downstairs and raped a sixteen-year-old girl! You didn’t do anything? You didn’t do anything?”

“Shhh, shhh, my neighbors,” Halsted said.

“Your neighbors?” Kling shouted. “You’ve got the gall to...”

Halsted backed away into the kitchen, his hands trembling. Kling followed him. “I... I... I... it was her idea,” Halsted said quickly. “She... she... she wanted to. I... I didn’t. It was—”

“You’re a filthy lying bastard,” Kling said, and he slapped Halsted openhanded across the face.

Halsted made a frightened little sound, a moan that trembled onto his lips. He covered his face with his hands and mumbled, “Don’t hit me.”

“Did you rape her?” Kling said.

Halsted nodded, his face still buried in his hands.

“Why?”

“I... I don’t know. Her... her mother was in the hospital, you see. Mrs. Glennon. She’s... she’s a very good friend of my wife, Mrs. Glennon. They go to church together, they belong to the same... They made novenas together... they...”

Kling waited. His hands had bunched into fists. He was waiting to ask the big question. Then he was going to beat Halsted to a pulp on the kitchen floor.

“When... when she went to the hospital, my wife would... would prepare food for the children. For Terry and... and Eileen. And...”

“Go ahead!”

“I would bring it down to them whenever... whenever my wife was working.”

Slowly Halsted took his hands from his face. He did not raise his eyes to meet Kling’s. He stared at the worn and soiled linoleum on the kitchen floor. He was still trembling, a thin frightened man in a sleeveless undershirt, staring at the floor, staring at what he had done.

“It was Saturday,” he said. “I had seen Terry leaving the house. From the window. I had seen him. My wife had gone to work — she does crochet beading; she’s a very skilled worker. It was Saturday. I remember it was very hot here in the apartment. Do you remember how hot it was in September?”

Kling said nothing in reply, but Halsted had not expected an answer. He seemed unaware of Kling’s presence. There was total communication between him and the worn linoleum. He did not raise his eyes from the floor.

“I remember. It was very hot. My wife had left sandwiches for me to take down to the children. But I knew Terry was gone, you see. I would have taken down the sandwiches anyway, you see, but I knew Terry was gone. I can’t say I didn’t know he was gone.”

He stared at the floor for a long time, silently.

“I knocked when I got downstairs. There was no answer. I... I tried the door, and it was open, so I... I went in. She... Eileen was still in bed, asleep. It was twelve o’clock, but she... she was asleep. The cover... the sheet had... had got... had moved down from... I could see her. She was asleep and I could see her. I don’t know what I did next. I think I put down the tray with the sandwiches, and I got into bed with her, and when she tried to scream I covered her mouth with my hands and I... I did it.”

He covered his face again.

“I did it,” he said. “I did it, I did it.”

“You’re a nice guy, Mr. Halsted,” Kling said in a tight whisper.

“It... it just happened.”

“The way the baby just happened.”

“What? What baby?”

“Didn’t you know Eileen was pregnant?”

“Preg... what are you saying? Who? What do you...? Eileen. No one said... why didn’t someone...?”

“You didn’t know she was pregnant?”

“No. I swear it! I didn’t know!”

“How do you think she died, Mr. Halsted?”

“Her mother said... Mrs. Glennon said an accident! She even told my wife that — her best friend! She wouldn’t lie to my wife.”

“Wouldn’t she?”

“An automobile accident! In Majesta. She... she was visiting her aunt. That’s what Mrs. Glennon told us.”

“That’s what she told your wife maybe. That’s the story you both invented to save your miserable hide.”

“No, I swear!” Tears had welled up into Halsted’s eyes. He reached forward eagerly now, pleadingly, grasping for Kling’s arm, straining for support. “What do you mean?” he said, sobbing. “What do you mean? Please, oh, please God, no...”

“She died getting rid of your baby,” Kling said.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Oh, God, I swear I didn’t—”

“You’re a lying bastard!” Kling said.

“Ask Mrs. Glennon! I swear to God, I knew nothing about—”

“You knew, and you went after somebody else who knew!”

“What?”

“You followed Claire Townsend to—”

“Who? I don’t know any—”

“—to that bookshop and killed her, you son of a bitch! Where are the guns? What’d you do with them? Tell me before I—”

“I swear, I swear—”

“Where were you Friday night from five o’clock on?”

“In the building! I swear! We went upstairs to the Lessers’! The fifth floor! We had supper with them, and then we played cards. I swear.”

Kling studied him silently. “You didn’t know Eileen was pregnant?” he said at last.

“No.”

“You didn’t know she was going for an abortion?”

“No.”

Kling kept staring at him. Then he said, “Two stops, Mr. Halsted. First Mrs. Glennon, and then the Lessers on the fifth floor. Maybe you’re a very lucky man.”

Arnold Halsted was a very lucky man.

He had been “temporarily unemployed” since August, but he had a wife who was an expert crochet beader and willing to assume the burden of family support while he sat around in his undershirt and watched the street from the bedroom window. He had raped a sixteen-year-old girl, but neither Eileen nor her mother had reported the incident to the police because, to begin with, Louise Halsted was a very close friend, and — more important — the Glennons knew that Terry would kill Arnold it he ever learned of the attack.

Mr. Halsted was a very lucky man.

This was a neighborhood full of private trouble. Mrs. Glennon had been born into this neighborhood, and she knew she would die in it, and she knew that trouble would always be a part of her life, an indisputable factor. She had seen no reason to bring trouble to Louise Halsted as well — her friend — perhaps her only friend in a world so hostile. Now, with her daughter dead and her son being held for assault, she listened to Bert Kling’s questions and, instead of incriminating Halsted in murder, she told the truth.

She said that he had known nothing whatever of the pregnancy or the abortion.

Arnold Halsted was a very lucky man.

Mrs. Lesser, on the fifth floor, said that Louise and Arnold had come upstairs at 4:45 on Friday afternoon. They had stayed for dinner and for cards afterward. He couldn’t possibly have been anywhere near the bookstore where the killings had taken place.