The Venus Death: A Ralph Lindsay Mystery. Ben Benson

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СКАЧАТЬ truth. It isn’t only Ellen. I have an obligation to my family, too. That’s where it really starts.”

      “Now you’re bringing your family into it. Why don’t you admit your refusal starts with me and nobody else?”

      “No, it starts further back,” I said. “It starts in 1939 when a man was shot in the back. It seems crazy to go so far back, but that’s where it starts.”

      “You’re talking riddles,” she said. “I hate riddles.”

      “It’s no riddle,” I said. “I’m talking about my father. I’m talking about 1939 when he was a State Police corporal because that’s when it begins, that winter when he went out on a call to the town of Lincolnshire. A drunken laborer had been beating his wife and the local, part-time chief of police couldn’t handle him alone. My father came there with another trooper to bring the man in. My father took the front of the house. The other trooper went to the back to cut off the rear.

      “It was bitter-cold that day. My father came in, turned to calm the hysterical wife and throw the laborer a coat. The man did what was least expected. He reached up over the fireplace, grabbed a rifle there, and shot my father in the back.

      “The other trooper–his name was Ed Newpole–broke in through the rear door, his revolver in his hand. The laborer turned with his rifle. Newpole shot him through the nose and killed him instantly. But my father’s spine was broken and he became completely paralyzed from the waist down.”

      “I’m sorry,” Manette murmured. “I’m terribly sorry.”

      “Everybody was sorry,” I said. “But it didn’t help my father. Later, and through the years, the men would come to visit us in Cambridge. Sometimes they’d take my father out to Troop A Headquarters in Framingham, where he’d spend the day. He’d sit at the dinner table in his wheel chair, his pathetic eyes following the sturdy, healthy young men around him. He’d shake his head and say in his day the boys were tougher and had more bounce. Sometimes he’d bring me with him. He’d point to me and say, ‘Watch this kid of mine. Wait until he grows up. Then you’ll see a real trooper.’ And as I grew up, they came to see him less and less, they’d invite him hardly ever. It was not their fault. Some of his old friends were transferred far away, the others retired, and the new ones didn’t know him. But that was his life, his only life, his only interest. And he couldn’t live it himself. And I thought if he couldn’t, at least he could live it through me.”

      Her eyes were thoughtful as I finished. “So there it is,” I said. “I grew up and went into the troops. What else could I do? What would anybody else do? You think I could quit and go away, and leave him with nothing?”

      “No,” she said tonelessly. “And I understand now.”

      “I wish I could understand you,” I said. “You’ve held back, told me nothing. The more you hold back the worse it will get. Bring it out into the open. Now, Manette.”

      She rubbed her forehead so hard the skin turned red under her fingers. “You make it sound so glib and easy,” she said. “But there are so many things tangled up in this. Maybe my own life doesn’t matter. But there’s danger to your own career and your own life.”

      “Danger to my life?” I asked. I took her by the shoulders. I wanted to shake her because she was giving me half-answers again. “What danger? I’ve been in Danford only three months. I know hardly anybody.”

      “But people know you,” she said listlessly. “They can get to you.”

      “Now you’re the one who’s talking riddles,” I said angrily. “How can they get to me? And why? And how are you involved in it?”

      “They’re bad people,” she said. “I can betray them to you and you can arrest them and lock them up. But I’d have to betray myself, too. And then I’d never see you again.”

      “But if you turn state’s evidence and there are extenuating circumstances–”

      “Oh, I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ve made up my mind to it. I can’t run forever. But first I have to prepare myself. And nobody else can do it for me.” Her eyes looked up to mine. “You’re going home tonight, Ralph?”

      “Yes,” I said. “But–”

      “When you come back,” she said, in a subdued, tired tone, “phone me. I’ll be ready with the story then. It won’t be a pleasant one, Ralph.”

      I wanted to argue with her, but there was a stubborn finality in her voice and I knew it was useless to carry it further. “Sure,” I said. “As long as you promise.”

      “I promise. Cross my heart, Ralph. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

      And I knew she would. So I left her then. I got into my car and drove away. It was the last time I saw her alive.

      CHAPTER 4 _______________

      WHEN I arrived in Cambridge it was eight o’clock at night. Our house was an old white bungalow with a little white picket fence around it. The lawn was freshly mowed and the leaves had been raked. I knew my mother had been working around the yard. It made me ashamed of myself because I should have been home to do it last Sunday.

      I came up the walk to the front porch. The rolled evening paper was there, cast deftly by the bicycle-pedaling newsboy. I picked it up and opened the front door. I caught the savory fragrance of roast beef.

      My mother called, “Ralph?”

      “Yes, Ma,” I said.

      She came into the living room. I bent over and kissed her. She was a small, bustling woman, with bright, alert eyes. Her face and her gray hair were damp with the heat of the stove.

      “You’re almost an hour late,” she said.

      “I’m sorry, Ma. I was delayed.”

      “You can’t blame us for being worried,” she said. “You haven’t been home for ten days. I know it’s a long trip. But it means so much to your father.”

      “How is he?”

      “The same. He was in his room resting last I knew. He should be up by now.”

      “I’ll go in and help him.”

      “No. You know how he hates to have you help him into the wheel chair.” She stood back and measured me. “You look all famished and tuckered out. Have you lost weight?”

      “No. But I’m like a bird dog when I sniff that roast beef. Is it ready?”

      “It’s been ready for an hour,” she said. “Here’s your father coming.”

      He came into the living room in his chrome wheel chair, the one I had bought him with my first two weeks’ trooper pay. He was emaciated and gaunt, and his face had a pallor, and his hair seemed grayer than ever before. His hands were blue-veined and bony. He was wearing an open-throated sports shirt. There was my mother’s hand-knitted coverlet over his wasted legs. He put his hand out. I took it. I could feel the dry, fragile skin.

      “Let’s look СКАЧАТЬ