The Puzzled Heart Read online

  “What book?”

  “Just hold on.” And Kate heard the receiver being put down and Leslie’s footsteps. It seemed a good while till she returned. “Sorry,” she said. “I had trouble finding the book. It’s Little Women.”

  “Little Women!” Kate shouted.

  “Here it is,” Leslie said, ignoring this. “This is Marmee speaking. You remember Marmee—good as gold, patient as Griselda. She is speaking to Jo, of course. Who else would understand her? She says: ‘I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years or so.’ Kate, women like you and me have learned to express anger, not to turn it inward, to turn it into depression, but to let it out. Some would say too much, but that’s not the point here. If even Marmee could feel that angry, if Louisa May Alcott knew that much about anger, can you doubt what a woman’s anger can do in someone a lot less angelic than Marmee?”

  “How on earth did you remember that passage?” Kate asked.

  “It comforted me once, long years ago, when I was reading Little Women to my children.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Kate said. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. You’ve definitely made your point.”

  Eleven

  TONI continued to mend. The reports were encouraging: she had opened her eyes, responded to questions, assuring them that she knew her name. The doctors still felt certain she did not as yet remember anything of what had happened in the office the day she was attacked, and Reed’s reports on the progress of the police were hardly helpful. Reed had once told Kate that the hardest murder to solve would be one in which someone hit a stranger over the head and disappeared. Motive and connection to the victim were what, in the end—together of course with all the marvelous new technology—trapped most murderers or those who attempted murder.

  “How do we know whoever it was didn’t just want to put her out of commission for a while?” Kate had asked. “Is there any reason to suppose that the assailant intended Toni to die?”

  “Nothing I would want to demonstrate to a jury, at least at this point,” Reed said. “My guess is that murder was intended, but the person, whoever he or she was, did not know exactly how much force was needed, and probably panicked in the end, rushing out before making sure of Toni’s condition.”

  “Reasons?”

  “As I say, hardly convincing evidence. But if someone walks into an office, hits the occupant over the back of the head, probably with a baseball bat or something like it, and then rushes out, the supposition has to be what I guessed.”

  “How do you know he or she rushed out?”

  “The evidence is clear. Nothing else was touched except the doorknob. He or she wore gloves. The body wasn’t touched in any way, even superficially, to determine its condition. And Harriet came in quite soon after the assault—the doctors tell us that. I think the assailant fled as fast as possible, disturbing nothing in the office, and not waiting around. In fact, Harriet probably saved Toni’s life.”

  “They don’t still suspect Harriet, do they?”

  “They suspect everyone till they make an arrest, and sometimes even after that. I think you’d better face the fact, Kate, that there is quite a case to be made against Harriet.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I may not be, but the evidence is. Consider: she says she went out to get cash, and we know she did indeed do just that, since ATMs kindly record the time and the amount of every transaction. Now it is, as you will readily see, easy enough for someone else, with the card and knowledge of the password or identifying number, to get money and leave the same record, thus providing a spurious alibi. No, no, don’t interrupt. I’m not saying that’s what Harriet did, but my assurances or yours would hardly satisfy the police. The police did, however, persuade the bank—no easy matter, that—to give them the names of those who had made deposits or withdrawals at the time Harriet did. Interviewed, some of these people described Harriet sufficiently well to assure the police that she was indeed there. A substitute made up to look like her might have been possible, but happily that occurred to no one but me, inspired by you and your peculiar adventures. That sort of thing happens in your world, doesn’t it?”

  Kate glared at him. “Go on. If you’re trying to upset me, you’re succeeding.”

  “Sorry. Harriet says she stopped in the women’s room on the way back from the bank, not knowing that Toni was lying in the office, bleeding to death. She says there was another woman in there, and the police are canvassing the other offices on the floor to see if they can find the woman. But of course she could have been a client or a visitor. That’s still up in the air. The point is that if Harriet didn’t stop in the rest room, she had ample time to attack Toni, leave the office, and return to find her.”

  “And what are supposed to be Harriet’s motives in this odd drama?”

  “Who knows. Partners falling out, discoveries as yet unknown to us. Whenever there’s an attempted murder where burglary or sexual assault is not the purpose, the police are likely to suspect someone connected to the victim.”

  “It makes no sense,” Kate observed, trying to keep her voice from rising. “Harriet could have killed Toni in a million other ways on a million other occasions. Besides, if Harriet wanted to commit a murder she would be far cleverer about it. She loves intrigue—you know that.”

  “She could just have been clever enough to figure out that that’s what everyone would figure. As I’ve already mentioned, the murderer who hits and runs is the hardest to unearth. No”—he held up a hand as Kate looked alarmed—“I don’t think Harriet’s in serious trouble, unless, of course, she decides to try to solve this herself and gets in the way of the police or, worse, the would-be murderer. But my faith is based on what I know of her, and what you know of her. I think perhaps you had better let her know, in somewhat vague terms, that she’s something of a suspect.”

  “I’ll call her. If I know Harriet, she’s already figured this out, and will mention it to me, unless she’s in one of her protective moods. But I’ll insist on a face-to-face encounter. That’s harder to wiggle out of.”

  Kate did, in fact, call Harriet, but was able only to leave a message. The message was urgent, while revealing nothing of the trouble on Kate’s mind. There was nothing more she could do, at the moment.

  “Meanwhile,” she told Reed as he was leaving, “I’ll labor here at the task you and Leslie have given me. I know everyone in the world is writing a memoir at this very moment, but it does seem unfair that I, the only person with no interest in the past, have to dig it up this way.”

  Reed adopted the look of one who is determined to discuss a certain subject no more—a look, Kate sometimes thought, peculiar to husbands.

  Leslie was, if not less insistent, more helpful. She turned up at Kate’s as Reed was leaving, having offered her assistance in getting Kate started on her unwelcome task. She insisted on getting right to work, waved Kate to her desk, sat down in Kate’s lounge chair, and started suggesting categories.

  “College,” she said.

  “Impossible,” Kate responded promptly.

  “Never mind impossible. Did you have any close friends there, or even constant companions? Roommates? People you sat next to in class?”

  “Leslie, for heaven’s sakes, this was thirty years ago, and I haven’t given it a thought since.”

  “You must have kept up with someone.”

  “I had three good friends in college. The closest was a pediatrician here in New York. She died of breast cancer a few years ago. Surely you remember. I miss her still, and would gladly suspect her of murdering someone if it would bring her back.”

  “Of course I remember. What about the other two?”

  “One is a therapist in Minneapolis, and is far too busy to be popping in and out of New York. She’s very good at what she does and is old-fashioned like me. That is to say, we write letters and talk on the phone.
Lately, we’ve taken up e-mail. Any more details necessary?”

  “Go on.”

  “The third is an Episcopal priest in Pennsylvania, and I talk to her a lot too. If she murdered anyone, it wouldn’t be Toni; it would be someone in the Episcopal hierarchy. As to the other ‘companions’ from college, I can’t see any of them carrying resentments. True, I don’t go to reunions, but surely that isn’t a sufficient motive for kidnapping and murder?”

  “We’re not looking for a ‘sufficient’ motive, you idiot. That’s just the point. We’re looking for something that’s seethed and seethed and grown into an obsession that hasn’t anything to do with reason. So stop looking for logic here. Did you go right on to graduate school after college?”

  “No. I took a year off and worked on Wall Street. Not exactly on Wall Street. Metaphorically speaking.”

  “Were you out of your metaphoric mind?”

  “Probably. When I became twenty-one, I had to face the fact that I had an income that would have supported at least half of all the families in America. I decided that I had to understand how it was earned.”

  “Rather like Lord Peter Wimsey watching a hanging, since that’s where all the people he captured ended up. Unless, of course, they shot themselves like proper gentlemen in the library of their club. What did you learn, if anything?”

  “I worked in a brokerage house, temporary secretary. One of my brothers got me the job. He thought it might make me into more of a Republican, I guess. It didn’t. But it did make a lot of things clear. Do we really want to go into this now, or ever? I met no one there who didn’t either pity me or ignore me. They pitied me because they knew my brothers. There were very few women above the rank of secretary then, and I don’t think there’s one of them who retains the slightest memory of me that year.”

  “On to graduate school. Let’s tread a little more slowly. No dismissive remarks or waves of the hand. I have a strong suspicion that this may be where you met her. And of course she may not have been there for long.”

  “You’re still convinced it’s a woman?”

  “For now. I just don’t see it as a male scheme, not in those circles. It might be Rush Limbaugh’s idea of a great joke, as the boys and girls thought it a good joke, but … why don’t we just assume for now that it’s a woman. Let’s start with a list of every woman who was in graduate school with you.”

  “You must be mad.”

  “Trust me. Have you collected your transcripts according to directions from your bullying friend Leslie?” Kate waved them at her. “Okay, give them to me. Let’s go class by class, lecture by lecture, seminar by seminar. I’ll read out the class, you write down every woman who was in it whom you can remember—never mind whether you can come up with her name or not. She may have changed it five times since, anyway.”

  “Leslie—” Kate began, groaning.

  “Leslie me no Leslies. Survey of English poetry.”

  “That was a lecture with hundreds of people in it and section men, as we called them then. They were all men, a condition about which I never thought I would say thank God.”

  “Whom did you sit next to?”

  “Different people every time. Leslie, if someone is going berserk and trying to murder Toni because I one day happened to mention that I didn’t care for Milton, we might as well give up this minute.”

  “All right, other classes. Start making lists.”

  Kate stared at the transcripts, startled to discover the courses she had taken, and how little she remembered of them. The seminars, limited in number, long and intensive meetings once a week, were more memorable. “There weren’t that many women in them,” she said as she reconstructed the class lists. “Isn’t it odd, I can remember the rooms where we met, where we sat around the tables, often in the same place, who talked a lot, who talked little or not at all, and the papers each of us wrote and all of us read. I can actually connect the people with the papers, even if I can’t come up with their full names. Memory is odd, indeed.”

  “Any women who hated your guts because you didn’t approve of their views on Jane Eyre, or loathed you for any reason whatever? Or pretended to like you and then turned mean?”

  “What you don’t seem to recognize, Leslie, is that if they did hate me I didn’t know it or don’t remember it.”

  “You don’t remember anyone of the female persuasion in graduate school who didn’t like you?”

  “Not especially. Somehow all these likes and dislikes didn’t come into it, or if they did, I don’t recall them. Graduate students get up much more steam over their professors than their fellow students. If you don’t like a fellow student, you just shrug. At least, that’s how I remember it, and that’s my impression from graduate students today. Of course, gay students hate the homophobes, and I suppose vice versa, but I don’t belong in either category and never did.”

  “You’re not exactly being helpful, Kate, as I hope you realize. You’ve told me stories of women who misjudged you, or blamed you unfairly, or whatever. If I can remember them, surely you can. There was one woman who wanted you to push her anthology for a doctorate, and bad-mouthed you when you didn’t, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Then there’s the woman who didn’t get a job, and the men told her it was because of you.”

  “Yes, that turned out to be a common trick, along with telling men you couldn’t hire them because you had to hire a woman. Sometimes it was true, but very rarely. I know the cases you’re talking about, but I can’t see either of them—”

  “Kate. Look at me. Try to get this through your thick head and stubborn resistance: somebody, probably some woman, hates you, and for personal, not political reasons, though she’s willing enough to support political views loathsome to you. I thought I’d be able to help you, but I see I was wrong. All you’re doing is using me to argue against. I’m leaving now. I’d like to stay and have a drink and talk about other things, God knows I would, but you’ve got to get your mind working on this problem. Call me when you’ve got one or more possibilities.”

  “Blackmail, pure and simple. I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Leslie.”

  “Call it what you want. Once you have even the sniff of a trail, I’ll come and help. Try to remember: you came as close to collapsing when they snatched Reed as I’ve ever seen you; they’ve tried to murder a detective you hired and damn near succeeded. So put your memory to work. I know it isn’t easy to come to terms with the fact that someone hated you enough to do all this, but that’s where we are. All right?”

  “I still think it’s blackmail,” Kate said, but Leslie had already left Kate’s study and closed the door behind her.

  Kate was still searching for excuses to do something else when the phone rang. It was Harriet. She said that she was on her way to see Toni, now allowed brief visits, and would come by to see Kate afterward. Kate was filled with a sudden impulse to warn Harriet about Toni (and Toni about Harriet), but contained herself. “I’ll see you soon, then,” she said.

  Stretching herself out on the couch, Kate reflected that she was, in fact, less worried about Harriet than she might be. Not, Kate realized with some shock, because she was confident Harriet could not have killed Toni. Harriet, Kate believed, was able and likely to do whatever she considered necessary for whatever profound reason struck her with sufficient force. What Harriet was not capable of, Kate knew, was pretending to the fear on Toni’s behalf she had exhibited at the hospital and in the telephone call summoning Kate and Reed. Harriet would be likelier, if she wanted to murder someone, to do so and then turn herself over to the authorities, or at least disappear. She would not stay around to pretend worry and concern with the skill of an accomplished actor.

  There was, of course, always the worry that Kate, knowing this, might not be able to convince the police of it; she knew all too well, from Reed and others, how eager the police were to find a culprit and do what was necessary—not all of it always ethical—to get a conviction. But worry accomplished nothing. Harriet w
ould arrive in an hour more. Kate might as well, in the interim, be trying to imagine when and how she had inspired sufficient hatred to lead to Reed’s kidnapping and the demands upon her which followed it.

  She thought of Banny, who might, had she still been here, have jumped up on the couch and shared it with Kate. Kate picked up a pillow and held it to her chest, as though it were Banny. She gave up the struggle to remember, or even to imagine, some woman who hated her enough to have engineered the whole stupid plot, and let her thoughts wander where they might.

  It was not often that Kate half dozed, half dreamed in this fashion, but her body and mind recognized a different kind of exhaustion, the result of Reed’s kidnapping and all that anxiety. With her arms around the pillow, and her eyes closing, she wondered if age, which she had not thought of very much in recent years, was catching up with her. Had her resiliency been depleted? Had new terrors been evoked?

  Well, if she thought of it, she had never before had someone she loved and had lived with threatened. Her life had held, it seemed to her, fewer turmoils than most. What had threatened her, if indeed she had ever felt truly threatened, had been not violent emotions, but from time to time a sense of the purposelessness of existence, of the lack of reason for so much that occurred. It was a sin of the spirit, she knew; a failure of faith in the rightness of the universe—of God, in short. Yet she doubted that acedia was limited to agnostics or to those who had lost their faith. Indeed, she knew it was not. This sense of the pointlessness of life was far likelier suddenly to assault those whose lives were, on the whole, satisfactory, but who felt the lack of something beyond these much-to-be-envied satisfactions. It was what someone she used to know called divine discontent.

  Who? It was Moon, all that long while ago. “Be mellow,” he used to say, “or use the trouble to move on to something worthwhile or to better thoughts.”