Текст книги "The Exorcist"

Автор книги: William Peter Blatty

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

    "Not a thing. All negative. I'm going to have to get her a shrink," Chris answered dully.

    After sandwiches and coffee, Sharon showed Chris how to give an injection.

    "The two main things," she explained, "are to make sure that there aren't any air bubbles, and then you make sure that you haven't hit a vein. See, you aspirate a little, like this"–she was demonstrating–"and see if there's blood in the syringe."

    For a time, Chris practiced the procedure on a grapefruit, and seemed to grow proficient. Then at 9: 28, the front doorbell rang. Willie answered. It was Karl. As he passed through the kitchen, en route to his room, he nodded a good evening and remarked he'd forgotten to take his key.

    "I can't believe it," Chris said to Sharon. "That's the first time he's ever admitted a mistake."

    They passed the evening watching television in the study.

    At 11: 46, Chris answered the phone. The young director of the second unit, He sounded grave.

    "Have you heard the news yet, Chris?"

    'No, what?"

    "Well, it's bad."

    "What is it?" she asked.

    "Burke's dead."

    He'd been drank. He had stumbled. He had fallen down the steep flight of steps beside the house, fallen far to the bottom, where a passing pedestrian on M Street watched as he tumbled into night without end. A broken neck. This bloody, crumpled scene, his last.

    As the telephone fell from Chris's fingers, she was silently weeping, standing unsteadily. Sharon ran and caught her, supported her, hung up the phone and led her to the sofa.

    "Burke's dead," Chris sobbed.

    "Oh, my God!" gasped Sharon. "What happened?"

    But Chris could not speak yet. She wept.

    Then, later, they talked. For hours. They talked. Chris drank. Reminisced about Dennings. Now laughed. Now cried. "Ah, my God," she kept sighing. "Poor Burke... poor Burke..."

    Her dream of death kept coming back to her.

    At a little past five in the morning, Chris was standing moodily behind the bar, her elbows propped, head lowered, eyes sad. She was waiting for Sharon to return from the kitchen with a tray of ice.

    She heard her coming.

    "I still can't believe it," Sharon was sighing as she entered the study.

    Chris looked up and froze.

    Gliding spiderlike, rapidly, close behind Sharon, her body arched backward in a bow with her head almost touching her feet, was Regan, her tongue flicking quickly in and out of her mouth while she hissed sibilantly like a serpent.

    "Sharon?" Chris said numbly, still staring at Regan.

    Sharon stopped. So did Regan. Sharon turned and saw nothing. And then screamed as she felt Regan's tongue snaking out at her ankle.

    Chris whitened. "Call that doctor and get him out of bed! Get him now!"

    Wherever Sharon moved, Regan would follow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Friday, April 29. While Chris waited in the hall outside the bedroom, Dr. Klein and a noted neuropsychiatrist were examining Regan.

    The doctors observed for half all hour. Flinging. Whirling. Tearing at the hair. She occasionally grimaced and pressed her hands against her ears as if blotting out sudden, deafening noise. She bellowed obscenities. Screamed in pain. Then at last she flung herself face downward onto the bed and tucked her legs up under her stomach. She moaned incoherently.

    The psychiatrist motioned Klein away from the bed.

    "Let's get her tranquilized," he whispered. "Maybe I can talk to her."

    The internist nodded and prepared an injection of fifty milligrams of Thorazine. When the doctors approached the bed, however, Regan seemed to sense them and quickly turned over, and as the neuropsychiatrist attempted to hold her, she began to shriek in malevolent fury. Bit him. Fought him. Held him off. It was only when Karl was called in to assist that they managed to keep her sufficiently rigid for Klein to administer the injection.

    The dosage proved inadequate. Another fifty milligrams was injected. They waited.

    Regan grew tractable. Then dreamy. Then stared at the doctors in sudden bewilderment. "Where's Mom? I want my Mom!" she wept.

    At a nod from the neuropsychiatrist, Klein left the room to go and get Chris.

    "Your mother will be here in just a second, dear," the psychiatrist told Regan. He sat on the bed and stroked her head. "There, there, it's all right, dear, I'm a doctor."

    "I want Mom!" wept Regan.

    "She's coming. Do you hurt, dear?"

    She nodded, the tears streaming down.

    "Where?"

    "just every place!" sobbed Regan. "I feel all achy!"

    "Oh, my baby!"

    "Mom!"

    Chris ran to the bed and hugged her. Kissed her. Comforted and soothed. Then Chris herself began to weep. "Oh, Rags, you're back! It's really you!"

    "Oh, Mom, he hurt me!" Regan sniffled. "Make him stop hurting me! Please? Okay?"

    Chris looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced to the doctors with a pleading question in her eyes.

    "She's heavily sedated," the psychiatrist said gently.

    "You mean...?"

    He cut her off. "We'll see." Then he turned to Regan. "Can you tell me what's wrong, dear?"

    "I don't know," she answered. "I don't know why he does it to me." Tears rolled down from her eyes. "He was always my friend before!"

    "Who's that?"

    "Captain Howdy! And then it's like somebody else is inside me! Making me do things!"

    "Captain Howdy?"

    "I don't know!"

    "A person?"

    She nodded.

    "Who?"

    "I don't know!"

    "Well, all right, then; let's try something, Regan. A game." He was reaching in his pocket for a shining bauble attached to a silvery length of chain. "Have you ever seen movies where someone gets hypnotized?"

    She nodded.

    "Well, I'm a hypnotist. Oh, yes! I hypnotize people all the time. That's, of course, if they let me. Now I think if I hypnotize you, Regan, it will help you get well. Yes, that person inside you will come right out. Would you like to be hypnotized? See, your mother's right here, right beside you"

    Regan looked questioningly to Chris.

    "Go ahead, honey, do it," Chas urged her. "Try It."

    Regan turned, to the psychiatrist and nodded "Okay," she said softly. "But only a little."

    The psychiatrist smiled and glanced abruptly to the sound of pottery breaking behind him. A delicate vase had fallen to the floor from the top of a bureau where Dr. Klein was now resting his forearm. He looked at his arm and then down at the shards with an air of puzzlement; then stooped to pick them up.

    "Never mind, doc, Willie'll get it," Chris told him.

    "Would you close those shutters for me, Sam?" the psychiatrist asked him. "And pull the drapes?"

    When the room was dark, the psychiatrist gripped the chain in his fingertips and began to swing the bauble back and forth with an easy movement. He shone a penlight on it. It glowed. He began to intone the hypnotic ritual. "Now watch this, Regan, keep watching, and soon you'll feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier...."

    Within a very short time, she seemed to be in trance.

    "Extremely suggestible," the psychiatrist murmured.

    Then he spoke to the girl. "Are you comfortable, Regan?"

    "Yes." Her voice was soft and whispery.

    "How old are you, Regan?"

    "Twelve."

    "Is there someone inside you?"

    "Sometimes."

    "When?"

    "Different times."

    "It's a person?"

    "Yes."

    "Who is it?"

    "I don't know."

    "Captain Howdy?"

    "I don't know."

    "A man?"

    "I don't know."

    "But he's there."

    "Yes, sometimes."

    "Now?"

    "I don't know."

    "If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer?"

    "No!"

    "Why not?"

    "I'm afraid!"

    "Of what?"

    "I don't know!"

    "If he talks to me, Regan, I think he will leave you. Do you want him to leave you?"

    "Yes."

    "Let him speak, then. Will you let him speak?"

    A pause. Then, "Yes."

    "I am speaking to the person inside of Regan now," the psychiatrist said firmly. "If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions." For a moment he paused to allow the suggestion to enter her bloodstream. Then he repeated it: "If you are there, then you are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer, now: Are you there?"

    Silence. Then something curious happened: Regan's breath turned suddenly foul. It was thick, like a current. The psychiatrist smelled it from two feet away. He shone the penlight on Regan's face.

    Chris stifled a gasp. Her daughter's features were contorting into a malevolent mask: lips pulling tautly into opposite directions, tumefied tongue lolling wolfish from her mouth.

    "Oh, my God!" breathed Chris.

    "Are you the person in Regan?" the psychiatrist asked.

    She nodded.

    "Who are you?"

    "Nowonmai," she answered gutturally.

    "That's your name?"

    She nodded.

    "You're a man?"

    She said, "Say."

    "Did you answer?"

    "Say"

    "If that's 'yes,' nod your head."

    She nodded.

    "Are you speaking in a foreign language?"

    "Say."

    "Where do you come from?"

    "Dog."

    "You say that you come from a dog?"

    "Dogmorfmocion," Regan replied.

    The psychiatrist thought for a moment, then attempted another approach. "When I ask you questions now, you will answer by moving your head: a nod for 'yes,' and a shake for 'no.' Do you understand that?"

    Regan nodded.

    "Did your answers have meaning?" he asked her.

    "Yes."

    "Are you someone whom Regan has known?" No.

    "That she knows of?" No.

    "Are you someone she's invented?" No.

    "You're real?" Yes.

    "Part of Regan?" No.

    "Were you ever a part of Regan?" No.

    "Do you like her?" No.

    "Dislike her?" Yes.

    "Do you hate her?" Yes.

    "Over something she's done?" Yes.

    "Do you blame her for her parents' divorce?" No.

    "Has it something to do with her parents?" No.

    "With a friend?" No.

    "But you hate her?" Yes.

    "Are you punishing Regan?" Yes.

    "You wish to harm her?" Yes.

    "To kill her?" Yes.

    "If she died; wouldn't you die too?" No.

    The answer seemed to disquiet him and he lowered his eyes in thought. The bed springs squeaked as he shifted his weight. In the smothering stillness, Regan's breathing rasped as from a rotted, putrid bellows. Here. Yet far. Distantly sinister.

    The psychiatrist lifted his glance again to that hideous, twisted face. His eyes gleamed sharply with speculation.

    "Is there something she can do that would make you leave her?" Yes.

    "Can you tell me what it is?"' Yes.

    "Will you tell me?" No.

    "But–"

    Abruptly the psychiatrist gasped is startled pain as he realized with horrified incredulity that Regan was squeezing his scrotum with a hand that had gripped him like an iron talon. Eyes wide-staring he struggled to free himself. He couldn't. "Sam! Sam, help me!" he croaked.

    Agony. Bedlam.

    Chris looking up and then leaping for the light switch.

    Klein running forward.

    Regan with her head back, cackling demonically, then howling like a wolf.

    Chris slapped at the light switch. Turned. Saw grainy, flickering film of a slow-motion nightmare: Regan and the doctors writhing on the bed in a tangle of shifting arms and legs, in a melee of grimaces, gasps and curses, and the howling and the yelping and the hideous laughter, with Regan oinking, Regan neighing, then the film racing faster and the bedstead shaking, violently quivering from side to side as Chris watched helplessly while her daughter's eyes rolled upward into their sockets and she wrenched up a keening shriek of terror torn raw and bloody from the base of her spine.

    Regan crumpled and fell unconscious. Something unspeakable left the room.

    For a breathless moment, no one moved. Then slowly and carefully, the doctors untangled themselves; stood up. They stared at Regan. After a time, the expressionless Klein took Regan's pulse. Satisfied, he slowly pulled up her blanket and nodded to the others. They left the room and went down to the study.

    For a time, no one spoke. Chris was on the sofa. Klein and the psychiatrist sat near her in facing chairs. The psychiatrist was pensive, pinching at his lip as he stared at the coffee table; then he sighed and looked up at Chris. She turned her burned-out gaze to his. "What the hell's going on?" she asked in a mournful, haggard whisper.

    "Did you recognize the language she was speaking?'

    ' he asked her.

    Chris shook her head.

    "Have you any religion?"

    "No."

    "Your daughter?"

    "No."

    And now the psychiatrist asked her a lengthy series of questions relating to Regan's psychological history. When at last he had finished, he seemed disturbed.

    "What is it?" Chris asked him, white-knuckled fingers clenching and unclenching on a balled-up handkerchief. "What has she got?"

    "Well, it's somewhat confusing," the psychiatrist evaded. "And frankly, it would be quite irresponsible of me to attempt a diagnosis after so brief an examination."

    "Well, you must have some idea," she insisted.

    The psychiatrist sighed, fingering his brow. "Well, I know you're quite anxious; so I will mention one or two tentative impressions."

    Chris leaned forward, nodding tensely, Fingers in her lap started fumbling with the handkerchief, telling the stitches in the hem as if they were wrinkled linen rosary beads.

    "To begin with," he told her, "it's highly improbable that she's faking."

    Klein was nodding in agreement. "We think so for a number of reasons," the psychiatrist continued. "For example, the abnormal and painful contortions, and most dramatically, I suppose, from the change in her features when we were talking to the so-called person she thinks is inside her. You see, a psychic effect like that is unlikely unless she believed in this person. Do you follow?"

    "I think I do," Chris answered, squirming her eyes in puzzlement. "But one thing I don't understand is where this person comes from. I mean, you keep hearing about 'split personality' but I've never really known any explanation."

    "Well, neither does anyone else, Mrs. MacNeil. We use concepts like 'consciousness'–'mind'–'personality,' but we don't really know yet what these things are." He was shaking his head. "Not really. Not at all. So when I start talking about something like multiple or split personality, all we have are some theories that raise more questions than they give answers. Freud thought that certain ideas and feelings are somehow repressed by the conscious mind, but remain alive in a person's subconscious; remain quite strong, in fact, and continue to seek expression through various psychiatric symptoms. Now when this repressed, or let's call it dissociated material–the word 'dissociation' implying a splitting off from the mainstream of consciousness–well, when this type of material is sufficiently strong, or where the subject's personality is disorganized and weak, the result can be schizophrenic psychosis. Now that isn't the same, he cautioned, "as dual personality. Schizophrenia means a shattering of personality. But where the dissociated material is strong enough to somehow come glued together, to somehow organize in the individual's subconscious–why, then it's bees known, at times, to function independently as a separate personality; to take over the bodily functions."

    He took a breath. Chris listened intently and he went on. "That's one theory. There are several others, some of them involving the notion of escape into unawareness; escape from some conflict or emotional problem. Getting back to Regan, she hasn't any history of schizophrenia and the EEG didn't show up the brainwave pattern that normally accompanies it. So I tend to reject schizophrenia. Which leaves us the general field of hysteria."

    "I gave last week," Chris murmured bleakly.

    The worried psychiatrist smiled thinly. "Hysteria," he continued, "is a form of neurosis in which emotional disturbances are converted into bodily disorders. Now, in certain of its forms, there's dissociation. In psychasthenia, for example, the individual loses consciousness of his actions, but he sees himself act and attributes his actions to someone else. His idea of the second personality is vague, however, and Regan's seems specific. So we come to what Freud used to call the 'conversion' form of hysteria. It grows from unconscious feelings of guilt and the need to be punished. Dissociation is the paramount feature here, overt multiple personality. And the syndrome might also include epileptoid-like convulsions; hallucinations; abnormal motor excitement."

    "Gee, that does sound a lot like Regan," Chris ventured moodily. "Don't you think? I mean, except for the guilt part. What would she have to feel guilty about?"

    "Well, a cliché answer," the psychiatrist responded, -"might be the divorce. Children often feel they are the ones rejected and assume the full responsibility for the departure of one of their parents. In the case of your daughter, there's reason to believe that that could be the case. Here I'm thinking of the brooding and the deep depression over the notion of people dying: thanatophobia. In children, you'll find it accompanied by guilt formation that's related to family stress, very often fear of the loss of a parent. It produces rage and intense frustration. In addition, the guilt in this type of hysteria needn't be known to the conscious mind. It could even be the guilt that we call "free-floating,' a general guilt that relates to nothing in particular," he concluded.

    Chris gave her head a shape. "I'm confused," she murmured. "I mean, where does this new personality come in?"

    "Well, again, it's a guess," he replied, "just a guess–but assuming that it is conversion hysteria stemming from guilt, then the second personality is simply the agent who handles the punishing. If Regan herself were to do it, you see, that would mean she would recognize her guilt. But she wants to escape that recognition. Therefore; a second personality."

    "And that's what you think she's got?"

    "As I said, I don't know," replied the psychiatrist, still evasive. He seemed to be choosing his words as he would moss-covered stones to cross a stream. "It's extremely unusual for a child of Regan's age, to be able to pull together and organize the components of a new personality. And certain–well, other things are puzzling. Her performance with the Ouija board, for example, would indicate extreme suggestibility; and yet apparently I never really hypnotized her." He shrugged. "Well, perhaps she resisted. But the really striking thing," he noted, "is the new personality's apparent precocity. It isn't a twelve-year-old at all. It's much, much older. And then there's the language she was speaking...." He stated at the rug in front of the fireplace, thoughtfully tugging at his lower lip. "There's a similar state, of course, but we don't know much about it: a form of somnambulism where the subject suddenly manifests knowledge or skills that he's never learned–and where the intention of the second personality is the destruction of the first. However..." The word trailed away. Abruptly the psychiatrist looked up at Chris. "Well, it's terribly complicated," he told her, "and I've oversimplified outrageously."

    "So what's the bottom line?" Chris aspect.

    "At the moment," he told her, "a blank. She need an intensive examination by a team of experts; two or three weeks of really concentrated study in a clinical atmosphere; say, the Barringer Clinic in Dayton."

    Chris looked away.

    "It's a problem?"

    "No. No problem." She sighed. "I just lost Hope, that's all."

    "Didn't get you."

    "It's an inside tragedy."

    The psychiatrist telephoned the Barringer Clinic from Chris's study. They agreed to take Regan the following day.

    The doctors left.

    Chris swallowed pain with remembrance of Dennings, with remembrance of death and the worm and the void and unspeakable loneliness and stillness, darkness, underneath the sod, with nothing moving, no, no motion.... Briefly, she wept. Too much... too much... Then she put it away and began to pack.

She was standing in her bedroom selecting a camouflaging wig to wear in Dayton when Karl appeared. There was someone to see her, he told her.

    "Who?"

    "Detective."

    "And he wants to see me?"

    He nodded. Then he handed her a business card. She looked it over blankly. WILLIAM F. KINDERMAN, it announced, LIEUTENANT OF DETECTIVES; and tucked in the lower-left-hand corner like a poor relation: Homicide Division. It was printed in an ornate, raised Tudor typeface that might have been selected by a dealer in antiques.

    She looked up from the card with a sniffing suspicion. "Has he got something with him that might be a script? Like a big manila envelope or something?"

    There was no one in the world, Chris had come to discover, who didn't have a novel or a script or a notion for one or both tucked away in a drawer or a mental sock. She seemed to attract them as priests did drunks.

    But Karl shook his head. Chris immediately grew curious and walked down the stairs. Burke? Was it something to do with Burke?

    He was sagging in the entry hall, the brim of his limp and crumpled hat clutched tight with short fat fingers freshly manicured. Plump. In his middle fifties. Jowly cheeks that gleamed of soap. Yet rumpled trousers, cuffed and baggy, mocked the sedulous care that he gave his body. A gray tweed coat hung loose and old-fashioned, and his moist brown eyes, which dropped at the corners, seemed to be staring at times gone by. He wheezed asthmatically as he waited.

    Chris approached. The detective extended his hand with a weary and somewhat fatherly manner, and spoke in a hoarse, emphysematous whisper. "I'd know that face in any lineup, Miss MacNeil."

    "Am I in one?" Chris asked him earnestly as she took his hand.

    "Oh, my goodness, oh, no," he said, brushing at the notion with his hand as if swatting at a fly. He'd closed his eyes and inclined his head; the other hood rested lightly on his paunch. Chris was expecting a God forbid! "No, it's strictly routine," he assured her, "routine. Look, you're busy? Tomorrow. I'll come again tomorrow."

    He was turning away as if to leave, but Chris said anxiously, "What is it? Burke? Burke Dennings?"

    The detective's drooping, careless ease had somehow tightened the springs of her tension.

    "A shame. What a shame," the detective breathed, with lowered eyes and a shake of the head.

    "Was he killed?" Chris asked with a look of shock. "I mean, is that why you're here? He was killed? Is that it?"

    "No, no, no, it's routine." he repeated, "routine. You know, a man so important, we just couldn't pass it. We couldn't," he pleaded with a helpless look. "At least one or two questions. Did he fall? Was he pushed?" As he asked, he was listing from side to side with his head and his hand. Then he shrugged and huskily whispered, "Who knows?"

    "Was he robbed?"

    "No, not robbed, Miss MacNeil, never robbed, but then who needs a motive in times like these?" His hands were constantly in motion, like a flabby glove informed by the fingers of a yawning puppeteer. "Why, today, for a murderer, Miss MacNeil, a motive is only an encumbrance; in fact, a deterrent." He shook his head. "These drugs, these drugs," he bemoaned. "These drugs. This LSD."

    He load at Chris as he tapped his chest with the tips of his fingers. "Believe me, I'm a father, and when I see what's going on, it breaks my heart. You've got children?"

    "Yes, one."

    "A son?"

    "A daughter."

    "Well..."

    "Listen, come on in the study," Chris interrupted anxiously, turning about to lead the way. She was losing all patience.

    "Miss MacNeil, could I trouble you for something?"

    She turned with the dim and weary expectation that he wanted her autograph for his children. It was never for themselves. It was always for their children. "Yeah, sure," she said.

    "My stomach." He gestured with a trace of a grimace. "Do you keep any Calso water, maybe? If it's trouble, never mind; I don't want to be trouble."

    "No, no trouble at all," she sighed. "Grab a chair in the study." She pointed, then turned and headed for the kitchen. "I think there's a bottle in the fridge."

    "No, I'll come to the kitchen," he told her, following. "I hate to be a bother."

    "No bother."

    "No, really, you're busy, I'll come. You've got children?" he asked as they walked. "No, that's right; Yes, a daughter;. you told me; that's right. Just the one."

    "And how old?"

    "She just turned twelve."

    "Then you don't have to worry," he breathed. "No, not yet. Later on, though, watch, out." He was shaking his head. Chris noticed that his walk was a modified waddle. "When you see all the sickness day in and day out," he continued. "Unbelievable. Incredible. Crazy. You know, I looked at my wife just a couple of days ago–or weeks ago–I forget. I said, Mary, the world–the entire world–is having a massive nervous breakdown. All. The whole world." He gestured globally.

    They had entered the kitchen, where Karl was polishing the interior of the oven. He neither turned nor acknowledged their presence.

    "This is really so embarrassing," the detective wheezed hoarsely as Chris was opening the refrigerator door. Yet his gaze was on Karl brushing swiftly and questioningly over his back, and his arms and his neck like a small, dark bird skimming over a lake. "I meet a famous motion-picture star," he continued, "and I ask for some Calso water. Ah, boy."

    Chris had found the bottle aced now was looking for an opener. "Ice?" she asked.

    "No, plain; plain is fine."

    She was opening the bottle.

    "You know that film you made called Angel?" he said. "I saw that film six times."

    "If you were looking for the killer," she murmured as she poured out the bubbling Calso, "arrest the producer and the cutter."

    "Oh, no, no, it was excellent–really–I loved it!"

    "Sit down" She was nodding at the table.

    "Oh, thank you." He sat. "No, the film was just lovely," he insisted. "So touching. But just one thing," he ventured, "One little tiny, minuscule point. Oh, thank you."

    She'd set down the glass of Calso and sat on the other side of the table, hands clasped before her.

    "One minor flaw," he resumed apologetically. "Only minor. And please believe me, I'm only a layman. You know? I'm just audience. What do I know? How-ever, it seemed to me–to a layman–that the musical score was getting in the way of certain scenes. It was too intrusive." He was earnest now; caught up. "It kept on reminding me that this was a movie. You know? Like so many of these fancy camera angles lately. So distracting. Incidentally, the score, Miss MacNeil–did he steal that perhaps from Mendelssohn?"

    Chris drummed her fingertips lightly on the table. Strange detective. And why was he constantly glancing to Karl?

    "I wouldn't know," she said, "but I'm glad you liked the picture. Better drink that," she told him, nodding to the Calso. "It tends to get flat."

    "Yes, of course. I'm so garrulous. You're busy. Forgive me." He lifted the glass as if in toast and drained its contents, his little finger arching demurely away from the others. "Ah, good, that's good," he exhaled, contented, as he put aside the glass, his eye falling lightly on Regan's sculpture of the bird. It was now the centerpiece of the table, its beak floating mockingly and at length above the salt and pepper shakers. "Quaint." He smiled. "Nice." He looked up. "The artist?"

    "My daughter," Chris told him.

    "Very nice."

    "Look, I hate to be–"

    "Yes, yes, I know, I'm a nuisance. Well, look, just a question or two and we're done. In fact, only one question and then I'll be going." He was glancing at his wristwatch as if he were anxious to get away to some appointment. "Since poor Mr. Dennings," he labored breathily; "had completed his filming in this area, we wondered if he might have been visiting someone on the night of the accident. Now other than yourself, Of course, did he have any friends in this area?"

    "Oh, he was here that night," Chris told him.

    "Oh?" His eyebrows sickled upward. "Near the time of the accident?"

    "When did it happen?" she asked him.

    "Seven-o-five," he told her.

    "Yes, I think so."

    "Well, that settles it, then." He nodded, turning in his chair as if preparatory to rising. "He was drunk, he was leaving, he fell down the steps. Yes, that settles it. Definitely. Listen, though, just for the sake of the record, can you tell me approximately what time he left the house?"

    He was pawing at truth like a weary bachelor pinching vegetables at market. How did he ever make lieutenant? Chris wondered. "I don't know," she replied. "I didn't see him."

    "I don't understand."

    "Well, he came and left while I was out I was over at a doctor's office in Rosslyn."

    "Ah, I see." He nodded. "Of course, But the how do you know he was here?"

    'Oh, well, Sharon said–"

    "Sharon?"' he interrupted.

    "Sharon Spencer. She's my secretary. She was here when Burke dropped by. She–"

    "He came to see her?" he asked.

    "No, me."

    'Yes, of course. Yes, forgive me for interrupting."

    "My daughter was sick and Sharon left him here while she went to pick up some prescriptions. By the time I got home, though, Burke was gone."

    "And what time was that, please?"

    "Seven-fifteen or so, seven-thirty."

    "And what time had you left?"

    "Maybe six-fifteenish."

    "What time had Miss Spencer left?"

    "I don't know."

    "And between the time Miss Spencer left and the time you returned, who was here in the house with Mr. Dennings besides your daughter?"

    "No one."

    "No one? He left her alone?"

    She nodded.

    "No servants?"

    "No, Willie and Karl were–"

    'Who are they?"

    Chris abruptly felt the earth shift under her feet. The nuzzling interview, she realized, was suddenly steely interrogation. "Well, Karl's right there." She motioned with her head, her glance fixed dully on the servant's back. Still polishing the oven... "And Willie's his wife," she resumed. "They're my housekeepers." Polishing... "They'd taken the afternoon off and when I got home, they weren't back yet. Willie..." Chris paused.