"Oh, dear God!"
"Right! My goose was cooked, so I thought, but I lay perfectly still and quiet, and into the library strolled a man and a woman. She spoke first and had a sweet-girlish voice.
"'John,' she said, 'I swear I'm not just hearin' things! I did hear noises comin' from this room.'
" 'You're always hearin' somethin',' complained a heavy, guttural voice. It was John, the butler with the bald head.
"And the bickering pair made a half-hearted search of the library, then the small bedroom beyond, and I held my breath, waiting for them to discover my flashlight, but for some reason they didn't. I suspect it was because John didn't want to look at anything but that woman. Just as I was about to get up and make my move to leave the library, they came back, and so help me God, they fell down on the very sofa I was hiding behind! I put my head down on my folded arms and prepared for a nap, guessing you'd be on edge up here, wondering why I didn't come back. But since you were locked in, I didn't fear you'd come looking for me. It's a good thing I didn't go to sleep."
"Why?"
"Let me tell it in my own way, Cathy, please. 'See,' said John, as they came back to the library and sat on the sofa, 'didn't I tell yuh nobody'd be in there or in here?' He sounded smug, pleased with himself. 'Really, Livvy,' he went on, 'you're so damned nervous all the time, it takes the pleasure out of this.'
"'But, John,' she said, 'I did hear something.'
"'Like I said before,' John answered, `yuh hear too much of what ain't there. Hell's bells, jus' this momin' you were speakin' of mice in the attic again, and how noisy they are.' John chuckled then, a soft and low chuckle, and he must have done some- thing to that pretty girl to send her into peals of silly giggles, and if she was protesting, she didn't do a good job of it.
"Then that John, he murmured, 'That old bitch is killin' all the little mice in the attic. She carries up to them food in a picnic basket. . . enough food to kill a whole German army of mice.'"
You know, I heard Chris say that, and I didn't think anything unusual, that's how dumb I was, how innocent and still trusting.
Chris cleared his throat before he continued. "I got a queer feeling in my stomach, and my heart began to make so much noise, I thought that couple on the sofa would sur
ely hear.
" 'Yeah,' said Livvy, 'she's a mean, hard old woman, and t' tell you the truth, I always took to the old man better--at least he knew how to smile. But her--she don't know how. Time and time ag'in, I come in this room to clean up, and I find her in his room . . . she's just standing there staring at his empty bed, and she's got this queer, little tight smile that I take for gloating because he's dead, and she's outlived him, and now she's free, and don't have nobody ridin' her back and tellin' her not to do this, and don't do that, and jump when I speak. God, sometimes I wonder how she stood him, and he stood her. But now that he's dead, she's got his money.'
" 'Yeah, sure, she's got some,' said John. 'She's got her own money that her family left her. But her daughter, she got all the millions old Malcolm Neal Foxworth left.'
" 'Well,' said Livvy, 'that old witch, she don't need no more. Don't blame the old man for leavin' his entire estate to his daughter. She put up with a lot of mess from him, makin' her wait on him hand and foot when he had nurses to hand him things. Still he treated her like some slave. But now she's free, too, and married to that handsome young husband, and she's still young and beautiful, and with loads of money. Wonder what it would feel like to be her? Some people, they get all the luck. Me . . . I never had any.'
" 'What about me, Livvy, honey? You got me--at least until the next pretty face comes along.'
"And there I was, behind the sofa, hearing all of this, and feeling numb with shock. I felt ready to throw up, but I lay very quiet and listened to that couple on the sofa talk on and on. I wanted to get up and run fast to you and Carrie, and take you out of this place before it was too late.
"But there I was, caught. If I moved they'd see me. And that John, he's related to our grandmother . . . third cousin, so Momma said . . . not that I think a third cousin matters one way or another, but apparently that John has our grandmother's
confidence, or else she wouldn't allow him so much freedom to use her cars. You've seen him, Cathy, the bald-headed man who wears livery."
Sure, I knew who he meant, but I could only lie there, feeling my own sort of numb shock that made me speechless.
"So," Chris went on in that deadly monotone that didn't show that he was concerned, frightened, surprised, "while I hid behind the sofa, and put my head down on my arms and closed my eyes and tried to make my heart stop beating so damned loud, John and the maid began to get really serious with each other. I heard their little movements as he began to take off her clothes, and she began to work on his clothes."
"They undressed each other?" I asked. "She actually helped him off with his clothes?"
"It sounded to me that way," he said flatly.
"She didn't scream or protest?"
"Heck, no. She was all for it! And by golly, it took them so everlastingly long! Oh, the noises they made, Cathy--you wouldn't believe it. She moaned and screamed and gasped and panted, and he grunted like a stuck pig, but I guess he must have been pretty good at it, for she shrieked at the end like someone gone crazy. Then, when it was over, they had to lie and smoke cigarettes and gossip about what goes on in this house--and believe me, there's little they don't know. And then they made love a second time."
"Twice in the same night?"
"It's possible to do."
"Chris, why do you sound so funny?"
He hesitated, pulled away a bit, and studied my face. "Cathy, weren't you listening? I went to a great deal of pains to tell you everything just as it happened. Didn't you hear?"