Флетчер Флора - The Brass Bed

“I feel quite bad. It is exceedingly touching to see her.”

“Touching? Yes, I suppose you could say at least that it is touching.”

“What’s the matter with you, Felix? I must say that you are acting and speaking very strangely, and I am becoming rather disturbed about it.”

“Are you? I am also becoming disturbed, if you want the truth, and perhaps that is why I’m behaving strangely.”

She didn’t respond at once, and I could hear her breathing as I had heard her in the garage where Sid had died, the slow and regular drawing and release of her breath.

“I cannot understand why you should be disturbed,” she said.

“Can’t you? It may be unreasonable of me. If I ask you a question, will you answer it?”

“I’ll try to answer.”

“If you do, you must tell the truth.”

“You will have to judge for yourself whether it is the truth or not.”

“I doubt that I’m a very good judge of the truth. However, I’ll ask the question because it’s necessary. Did you kill Kirby and afterward Sid?”

“Why do you ask such a question?”

“I told you. Because it’s a question that needs asking and answering.”

“Is it your belief that I did?”

“Yes, it is. It’s a belief I don’t want and tried to avoid, but it is one that is reasonable under the circumstances. I believe that you drowned Kirby, though I don’t know how you managed it exactly, and I believe that you killed Sid because he saw you do it from among the trees on the bank. Mostly it’s thinking about Sid that disturbs me. How about you, Jolly? Does it disturb you also? Does it bother you at all to remember how you drove the car yourself into the garage and left him alone on the floor under the exhaust pipe and then went into the house and upstairs to bed? Did you sleep, Jolly? I keep wondering if you slept.”

“Why does it please you to abuse me?”

“It doesn’t please me to abuse you. I am only telling you what I believe, as you asked me to, and I will tell you that Jason believes it also. In some details, however, he is mistaken. He thinks that I may be an accessory, which is not true, and he thinks that Sid was killed because he tried to blackmail you for money, which is also not true. He was killed, as I am certain, because he tried through his knowledge of the drowning of Kirby to make a place for himself in your fine brass bed.”

“I can see now from the way you are talking to me that you do not love me after all.”

“On the contrary, I do love you after all, and it is enlightening and not pleasant to learn what one can love and continue to love in spite of everything.”

“In that case, it’s all right. If you continue to love me, it’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. It’s all wrong, and I would rather be as dead as Kirby and Sid than ever to assume the place in the brass bed that you intended me to have.”

“Are you deserting me, then?”

“If that is the way you care to put it.”

“If you desert me now, it will be the end of me.”

“Go away, Jolly. This time for good. Go get into the car with Fran and go away.”

“I refuse to do it. How would you get back to town?”

“That’s a minor problem.”

“Don’t you care what happens to me?”

“I care, but I can no longer do anything about it.”

“I love you, Felix.”

“I doubt it.”

“It’s true. I will love you all the rest of my life, but that will only be a short while because I will soon die without you.”

“I doubt that too.”

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do the things you say I did?”

“I don’t know.”

“You see? It is clear to me now that you have made up your mind, and nothing I could say would change it in the least, and so there is absolutely no use in my answering your question. Perhaps after a while, when I have died because of you, you’ll begin to wonder if you were wrong, and it will be something you’ll always have to wonder about.”

I started to walk then, and I intended to walk right away without looking back, but I couldn’t do it. I stopped and turned and looked back at her over the small white stones, and she stood without moving beside the tree in a pattern of sun and shade, slender and suffering and somehow betrayed, about her still the air of fragile dignity.

I went on up into the hills to the cabin on the Blue River. It was one of a group that was called the Blue River Camp, and I had been there about two weeks when I got the letter from Jolly. It was addressed to me in care of the camp, and the owner brought it out one evening from the postoffice in the town where he went for supplies. I took it down to the river and opened it and read it, and this is what it said:

Felix darling:

I am in my fine brass bed, which is what you called it, but you are not here with me and will never be, and the house is very quiet, and on the little table beside the bed is this bottle of bright green pills. There are quite a few of them, over a dozen, and when I have finished this letter and sent it by the maid to be posted on her way home, I will take them all. It is my understanding that you go to sleep and do not ever wake up if you take so many at once, and this seems to me a simple and satisfactory thing.

The truth is, now that you have deserted me and will not have me, I cannot seem to care about anything. Besides, I am frightened, and this is because that policeman Jason has been to see me twice since you left, and it is apparent that he does not believe anything I tell him and is determined to cause me trouble. I do not think that I would be frightened if you were here, and I would also still care about things, and I simply cannot understand why you felt compelled to spoil everything at the last moment, and I wish you hadn’t. As it is, there seems to me to be absolutely no sense in anything that has happened or can happen from now on.

Do you truly believe that I killed Kirby and Sid? Do you believe it beyond question? If you do, there is no point in my confessing it or denying it. If you don’t, I will not confess it or deny it either, and then you will always wonder and think about me and never forget me.

Goodbye, Felix. I hope the goliard goes well and earns you some money.

I didn’t think she’d go through with it, but she did — or at least she tried to, and she ended up being a good deal worse off than if she’d succeeded with the pills.

The maid — I’m told that personal maids are sometimes not to be trusted, particularly when personal mail is involved, and even more particularly when the mail is going from a female to a male, or vice-versa. Anyhow, Jolly’s maid was not one to let a letter get out of her hands before she’d conducted an investigation into its contents, and she did just that downstairs in the kitchen while Jolly was climbing into her brass bed with the bottle of green pills.

And so the maid saved Jolly’s life — for a time, anyway. The maid telephoned the police who in turn telephoned for an ambulance. The maid went back upstairs and fiddled around for ten minutes, thus preventing Jolly from commencing with the pills and at the same time plunging Jolly into something of a rage.

The newspapers had it right on page one, and they made quite a bit of it, partly because of its happening right after Kirby and Sid in such a peculiar way and partly because of the uproar which Jolly caused when the police arrived.

Jason bounded up the stairs, followed by assorted detectives and doctors, and the instant Jolly saw him she snatched a long nail file from the night table and screamed at him not to come any closer.

It must have been quite a fracas, because the newspaper photographers were outside the house by the time Jason was able to take Jolly away. The pictures were pretty grim, and judging by her torn clothing and the hysterical expression on her face, Jolly had put up a terrific fight.