Fritz Leiber - Horrible Imaginings

He winced but nodded. “Yes, during the last couple of years before I lit out on my own. God, it all seemed to me then so adult-dumb, so infantile and boring, adult garbage you wanted to get shut of.”

Terri continued, ‘Tilly said that after you left, Cassius and Helen made up for a while, but then their battling got still more bitter and more depressing. Twice Helen took too many sleeping pills, or Cassius thought she did, and rushed her the morning after to the hospital to have her stomach pumped out, though Helen didn’t recall overdosing those two times, just that she blacked out. But then there came this Sunday morning when Cassius called up Tilly about ten or so, sounding very small and frightened, but rational-seeming, and begging her to come over, because he thought that Helen was dead, but he wasn’t absolutely sure, and—get this!—he didn’t know either whether he had killed her, or not! Helen’s doctor was coming, he’d already called him, but would Tilly come over?

“She did, of course, and of course got there before the doctor—Sunday mornings!—and found Helen lying peacefully in bed, cold to the touch, and the bedroom a minor mess with unfinished drinks and snacks set around and a couple of empty sleeping pill bottles with their contents, or some of their contents, scattered over the bed and floor, a snowfall of red-and-blue Tuinal capsules. And there was Cassius in bathrobe and slippers softly jittering around like an anxious ghost, keeping himself tranquilized with swallows of beer, and he was telling her over and over this story about how everything had been fine the night before and he’d taken two or three pills, enough with the drinks to knock him out, and then just as he was going under Helen had started this harangue while flourishing a bottle of sleeping pills, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember whether she’d been threatening to commit suicide or just bawling him out, maybe for having taken the pills himself so as not to have to listen to her, and he’d tried to get up and argue with her, stop her from taking the pills if that was what she intended, but the pills he’d taken were too much for him and he simply blacked out.

“Next he remembered, or thought he remembered, waking in the dark in bed and talking and then sleeping with, and then arguing with Helen and shaking her by the shoulders (or maybe strangling her! he wasn’t sure which) and then passing out again. But he wasn’t too sure about any of that, and if there had been talk between them, he couldn’t recall a word of it.

“When he next woke up it was fully light and he felt very tranquil and secure, altogether different. Helen seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and so he slipped out of bed and made himself some coffee and began to tidy up the rest of the house, returning at intervals to check if Helen had woke up yet and wanted coffee. The second time it struck him that she was sleeping too peacefully, he couldn’t see her breathing, she didn’t wake up to being called or shaken, and he tried the mirror and feather tests and they didn’t work, so he’d called her doctor and then Tilly.

“Tilly was sick about Helen and coldly enraged with Cassius, his pussyfooting around so coolly especially infuriated her, but on the other hand she couldn’t see any bruises or signs of strangulation on Helen, or other form of violent death, and there were no signs of a struggle or any particular kind of commotion except for the scattered pills (she picked up some of those and stashed them in her bag with the thought that she might be needing them herself), and after a bit she found herself sympathizing with Cassius while still furious with him—he was being such a dumb ox!—and behaving toward him as she would have to her own husband Pat in a similar fix.

“For instance, she said to him, ‘For God’s sake don’t talk about strangling Helen when the doctor comes unless you’re really sure you did it! Don’t tell him anything you’re not sure of!’ But she couldn’t tell how much of this was really registering on him; he still seemed to be nursing a faint crazy hope that the doctor might be able to revive Helen, and muttering something about stories by Poe and Conan Doyle.”

“‘Premature Burial’ and The Resident Patient,’“ Wolf said absently. “About catalepsy.”

“About then Helen’s doctor came, a very cautious-acting young man (‘My God, another pussyfooter,’ Tilly said to herself) but he pronounced Helen dead quickly enough, and soon after the doctor a couple of policemen arrived, from San Rafael, she thought, whom the doctor had called before starting out.

“Maybe the appearance of the cops threw a scare into Cassius, Tilly said, or at least convinced him of the seriousness of the situation, for there wasn’t any mention of strangling in what he told the three of them, nothing at all about maybe waking in the dark, it all sounded to Tilly more cut and dried, more under control. And when he mentioned the two previous times that Helen had overdosed, the doctor casually confirmed that.

“The doctor had another look at Helen and they all poked around a bit. What seemed to bother the doctor most were the scattered sleeping pills, they seemed to offend his sense of propriety, though he didn’t pick them up. And the two cops were quite respectful—your father does have quite a presence, as Tilly says—although the younger one kept being startled by things, as though the like had never happened before, first by Cassius not realizing at once when he got up that Helen was dead, then by Tilly just being there (he gave her a very funny look that made her wonder if that was what being a murder suspect was like), things like that.

“About then the ambulance the doctor had called arrived to take off Helen’s body and he and the cops drove off right afterwards.”

She paused at last. Wolf said earnestly, “Cassius never told me any of that—nothing about his suspicions of himself, I mean, nor about the doctor calling in the police at first. Nor did Tilly tell me—but of course you know that.”

Terri nodded. “She said she didn’t want to rake up things long past just when you were getting reconciled to your father and after he’d managed to quit drinking.”

“But what happened?” Wolf demanded. “I mean at the time? As I think you know, Cassius didn’t write me about my mother’s death until after the funeral, and then only the barest facts.”

“Exactly nothing happened,” Terri said. ‘That’s what made it seem so strange, at least at the time, Tilly told me—as if that weird and frantic morning of Helen’s death had never happened. The autopsy revealed a fatal dose of barbiturate without even figuring in the alcohol, Cassius did call and tell her that much. And she saw him briefly at the funeral. They weren’t in touch again after that for almost a year, by which time he’d been six months sober. Their new friendship was on the basis of ‘Forget the past.’ They never spoke of the morning of Helen’s death again, and in fact not often of Helen. Tilly told me she’d almost forgotten Helen in a sort of way and seldom thought of her, until about six months ago when Cassius brought Esteban’s painting of Helen down from the attic and hung and lighted it—”

“He could have been anticipating our visit,” Wolf said thoughtfully.

Terri nodded and continued, “—and a couple of times since when Tilly came calling and noticed he’d hung a towel over it, as if he didn’t want it watching him, at least for a while—”

At that instant there was a great flash of white light that flooded the room through the window curtains and simultaneously a ripping craaackl of thunder that catapulted Terri across the bed into Wolfs arms. As their hearing returned, it was assaulted by the frying sound of thick rain.