John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Mmm,” Clumly said. He glanced at Kozlowski. He was standing with his back to them, looking out at the lawn, where three sparrows were standing on the rim of the birdbath, drinking.

Nervously, Clumly said, “I wonder, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble—” He cleared his throat. “Could you show me the study, where he died?”

“You need both of us?” she said.

He bit his lips. A stupid question, and she knew it.

She got the Professor to understand that she needed the wheelchair. He brought it over from the corner where it sat waiting, glossy in the sun, and before Clumly knew it would happen she pushed away the covers, shockingly indifferent to Clumly’s eyes on her sagging, braised skin. He caught only a glimpse before the Professor bent over her to lift her, as if tenderly, into the chair. When he had her in place he covered her again and moved slowly around to the back. “This way,” he said. They moved toward the study.

Clumly said, squinting, covering his chin with his hand, “All those bruises … excuse me … what the devil—?”

She turned her head, but not far enough to see him. “Love,” she said. Her laugh made his back run with chills, and the same instant he saw, vividly, that same word painted across Oak Street, official and absurd.

“Shocking,” he whispered.

“Yes.” A hiss.

The Professor said nothing; perhaps he had not heard.

Give Paxton’s study told Clumly nothing he had not known already — or at any rate, nothing important. He too saw in the full morning sunlight the deadness of the place, the grim actuality of every line and tone, the effect she’d mentioned at the cemetery. A vision of death, she’d said. The room did not need his corpse to make it that; the living dead would do — the Professor, the widow, Fred Clumly himself, for that matter, ten minutes late for an investigation of his incompetence! He could have laughed. He said, “He was sitting over there?”

She nodded.

But he did not look at the chair. He tried the lock on the rolltop desk, then the lock on the bookcase. “These were locked when you came in?”

“The bookcase, not the desk. I locked that later. He always liked everything locked. He was bitter, afraid of everything. Well he might be.”

Clumly nodded, cutting her off. “But the window was open.”

“No. That was locked too, I think.”

“You said it was open.”

“When?”

“At the cemetery. You told me you thought you would faint, that morning, but the breeze coming in from the window revived you. You said that. You said you were kneeling by the window.”

She thought about it. “That’s true. How clever you are!”

“Then you went over and closed his eyes.”

She nodded.

“Then what?”

“I made a telephone call.” She hesitated. “Is this important?”

He nodded.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m a sick old woman.”

The Professor put his hand on her shoulder.

Clumly turned his back, angry for no reason. “You called your daughter, is that right? But she wasn’t there. So then you made more calls, right? To Phoenix, for instance — to your former son-in-law? But he was gone too.”

She said nothing for a long time. At last: “I won’t tell you a thing. You don’t know what you’re doing. There’s no reason!” It was a whisper.

He turned back to her, all his muscles limp. Slowly, he drew two of the little white stones from his pocket. “What are these? You seen them before?”

“Never,” she whispered. But her eyes remained fixed on them, and her chest heaved. Her hands closed like claws on the arms of the wheelchair, and the Professor, startled, bent down closer to her. It took Clumly longer than it should have to see what was happening. Kozlowski was in front of him all at once, lifting her feet up and shouting something — far away it sounded, a voice in a dream—“Call the hospital! Jesus! Help me get her to the car!”

But the next instant she was breathing again. She opened then closed her eyes.

“You’d better go,” the Professor said softly.

Clumly frowned, absent-minded.

“Let’s go,” Kozlowski said. He took Clumly’s arm.

Halfway back to town, Kozlowski said, “You damn near killed her.”

Clumly nodded.

“I guess you figure it was murder. That it? The old man, I mean. Paxton.”

He nodded again.

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But he knew.

“The old woman and the Professor?”

“Could be that.”

“But you don’t think so.”

Clumly said, “How much did you hear last night? — that talk we had in the cemetery, me and the Sunlight Man.”

“None of it. Just a rumble, sort of, through the wall.”

“You be interested to hear?”

Kozlowski glanced at him.

“I have a tape-recording,” Clumly said. He thought about it. “After you get off this afternoon, come by my house. I’d like you to hear it. Tell me what you think.”

Kozlowski watched the road and said nothing. For two minutes neither of them spoke.

Then Kozlowski looked at him, frowning. “You notice something?”

It came to Clumly now. The radio was dead. He picked up the microphone and flicked the switch off and on. There was nothing. Kozlowski took it from him, and still there was nothing.

“I’ll be damned,” Kozlowski said. He hung the mike on its hook.

“It gives you the sweats, don’t it,” Clumly said.

Kozlowski said nothing.

They went over the Oak Street bridge and turned left onto Main. At the firehouse, the raid was on. He could see them lined up, hands against the wall, policemen frisking them. Clumly smiled. “Drop me off at City Hall,” he said.

Kozlowski nodded.

Clumly adjusted his cap, looking hard at the lifeless mike. “Stay in the car,” he said. He sighed. “Keep an eye out.”

Kozlowski pulled up to the curb and Chief Clumly got out They saluted, careful now of forms.

2

“Sorry to be late,” Clumly said. He took his cap off and held it over his belly.

The Mayor scowled. “Well, not serious,” he said. But it was serious. “Mr. Uphill just got here himself.” He backed out of the way, giving Clumly a view of the three men, the photographs on the far wall, the dead flowers in the window, the scummy Silex. “Come on in,” he said. “You gentlemen have met, I take it?”

They all nodded. Uphill’s face was dark red.

They sat waiting, solemn as cobras at a funeral. Two were members of the City Council. Mr. Peeper was bald and heavy, a pharmacist Known for endless talk, an uneasy smile. Hater of unpleasantness; but he would be the one who wrote up the formal charges, when it came to that, and the dismissal. The second one was Mr. Moss, lean, unhealthy brown; he had a bad liver. He saw very little good in the world but rarely said so, merely asked questions, turned over stones and observed, unsurprised, the grubs. As for Uphill, he had a red face, silver hair. A dedicated man, an idealist. He’d been an Army Major once.

“Good,” Mayor Mullen said. “Fine and dandy. Well, since it’s late we might’s well get right down to business.” He went around behind his desk. “Sit down, gentlemen.”

Only Clumly was standing. “Wittaker, bring the Chief of Police a chair.” He looked sternly out the window while he waited. Wittaker came in with a chair, and Clumly sat down between Peeper and Uphill in the semicircle around Mayor Mullen’s desk. Moss was to Clumly’s far right. “Excuse me,” Clumly said. The three men nodded in unison, formally, again like cobras, as Clumly saw it. The Mayor dusted his hands. “That’s better,” he said. He opened the manilla folder on his desk.

“As you know, gentlemen,” he said, “this is not a formal hearing, it’s just an investigation.”