The Albatross

The Gardners stopped driving at four-thirty that Saturday afternoon. They were tired, having come south some five hundred miles since very early morning. The motel was appealing, bright with new paint, set around a court of flowers and neat grass.

In the motel, Esther arranged the blinds to dim the daylight, and took off her dress, saying she thought she’d take a nap, since it was much too early for dinner. Tom said as for himself, he’d lie down or stand up but darned if he would sit. He stretched himself upon the other bed.

Esther rammed the pillow against the stiffness at the back of her neck and let herself relax. She was twenty-eight, perfectly healthy, with a good conscience. She could fall asleep even at this unlikely hour and awake refreshed. Tom, however, was no taker of naps. Esther could hear the rustle of paper in his hands. His waking presence made her feel delightfully secure in this strange place. Where were they? Santa Clara Valley. Some little town. Good to be home tomorrow … One more day … She dozed off.

Tom pored over the map. He was playing an old game, trying to discover (like the search for the Northwest Passage) an easy way to sneak into their particular suburb of Los Angeles on a Sunday. For such close work, he needed more detail. Esther’s breathing told him she was asleep, so he rose quietly and slipped out of the room, leaving the door a few inches ajar. The car was parked behind the structure and Tom went through the tunnel-like passage between two units to rummage in his glove compartment for his book of street maps.

Esther dreamed and the dream seemed to wake her. She opened her eyes in this dim place that did not smell of home, and she knew at once that there was no Tom on the bed beside hers. But there was a man in the room, and with her sharp intake of breath there came the odour of whisky. The man was just a shape swaying in the middle of the floor, but she could sense something irrational and loosened from control. As she pushed herself up upon her elbow, the drunken stranger took a couple of lurching steps towards her.

Esther screamed.

She heard pounding feet the other side of the wall. She heard Tom cry out her name. He came in with a rush: the air eddied. The stranger had bent to rest his hands upon the footboard of her bed. Tom hit him.

The man must have been most unsteady because he fell violently.

Tom yanked at the cords, the blinds rattled, the light increased. Esther crawled on her knees to peer over the foot of the bed. The stranger was unconscious.

What’s he doing in here? Tom barked.

I don’t know. I just woke up. Scared me. I think he’s drunk.

Fine thing!

By now, the woman who ran the place had arrived, breathless and fearing trouble.

The stranger lay breathing very hard for a few minutes. Then he came to himself and was sheepish. Tom helped him up, none too gently. I’m sorry, but you got into the wrong room, fella.

The stranger said he guessed he had. He admitted his condition. He was a pudgy, pale man, perhaps forty years old. If he had troubles of his own that he had drowned in whisky during the afternoon he did not explain them. He apologized. He was all right now, he thought. He was sorry he had scared the lady. He didn’t blame her for being scared. He didn’t blame Tom, either. He and Tom exchanged business cards. The atmosphere became amiable and mutually tolerant. The motel-keeper’s face relented from a righteous decision to throw this drunk out. Instead, she convoyed him to his own room somewhere farther along the row.

And that was that.

The card identified him as Courtney Caldwell, Real Estate, Arcadia, California.

The Gardners went to dinner, Tom still breathing a trace of fire and Esther, in some deep female way, very much pleased to have been defended.

The next day ran them home to North Hollywood.

The Gardners had no children. On Monday, Tom went back to business and Esther into her own routine, shaking the house alive, restocking the refrigerator.

The Tuesday morning newspaper had a small item at the top of an inside page.

Arcadia man mystery death. Courtney Caldwell, 41, Real Estate Broker of 311 Embassy Place, dropped dead in his kitchen yesterday morning. His wife, Mrs Audrey Caldwell, and her invalid sister, Miss Joan Pell, and Harry W. Parkes, a milkman, were in the kitchen when Caldwell, without warning, fell to the floor. Examination shows the cause of death to be a severe head injury. Mrs. Caldwell can offer no explanation as to when or how it was sustained.

A sound Esther had never heard in her life before came from Tom’s throat. He handed the paper to Esther. They looked at each other.

What do you think? Tom’s breath soughed in, like a sigh going backwards.

Oh, no, Tom. He didn’t fall that hard.

Yes, he did. I hit him hard. He fell hard. I’ve heard of such a delayed kind of … Did I kill a man? He was looking at his right hand. Tom was big and strong, still a part-time athlete. His voice inquired now, crisply, for the fact. But his big clean hand was trembling.

If it’s—if it’s—the same man … Esther couldn’t control this jerkiness, then he couldn’t have said—his wife doesn’t seem—nobody knows.…

He wouldn’t tell her, said Tom. Who is going to tell his wife he got drunk and wandered into a strange woman’s bedroom and got himself knocked down by the irate husband? Naturally, he wouldn’t tell.

Tom was trying to be reasonable and realistic, but he was feeling anguish, Esther knew. She got herself together and spoke rapidly. If it did happen then, it was purely an accident. His head must have struck. Some way that we couldn’t guess. He didn’t guess, either. Maybe it didn’t happen then. You can’t be sure. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Don’t.

Tom wasn’t responding.

What will you have to do? she asked in a different voice.

I’ll have to be sure, Tom said

So Esther drew her mind back from temptation. No, of course they could not just let this go, just keep quiet and say nothing and forget about it. Tom would never forget about it as long as he lived. Nor would she. No, the only thing to do was to go tell, and find out. Tom was a man of conscience and integrity. He would do right.

Esther wished the morning paper to perdition, burned, unseen. But she knew she must be very proud of him.

So they drove together to Arcadia, which lies to the east, in the cluster of communities around Los Angeles, and not knowing where else to begin, they came to the address given in the newspaper.

It was a small apartment house, a triplex. Caldwell’s name was on the door of the first floor unit nearest the street. A house of mourning, this would be, with a funeral hanging over it, and here they came to explain that they had caused the grief and the loss. Esther held Tom’s free hand fiercely as he rang the bell.

A woman opened the door. She was about Esther’s age, small, slender, with a long graceful neck, a lined brow above quite extraordinary purplish eyes. Her complexion was pale and she wore no lipstick on her full mouth. Her dress was grey.

Mrs. Caldwell?

She answered in a low voice, very calm, very sweet. I am Audrey Caldwell. Yes?

Tom’s left hand got away from Esther’s and came to rest on her shoulder-blade. She felt the tremor to her breastbone. But his voice was steady.

My name is Tom Gardner and this is my wife, Esther. May we come in, please, Mrs. Caldwell? We have something to tell you.

The woman seemed to freeze for just a second. Esther expected her to say that they couldn’t come in, not now. But she bent her head in a small welcoming gesture like a bow and said gravely, Why, yes. Of course.

In the small living-room to which the door opened directly there sat another woman in a wheel-chair. This one was stouter, in a misshapen way. Her waist was too thick, her legs, especially the thighs, too thin. She had the same tawny-blonde hair as her sister, and the same general cast of face. But Joan Pell’s eyes were a slate blue and the fullness of her mouth was exaggerated into a sulky heaviness.

There was a framed photograph standing on a small desk top, and Esther’s eyes flew to it. Her flicker of hope went out. There would be no magic, no being let off, no waking up from the nightmare. The shaven smiling face in the photograph was a face she had seen before—slack and stupefied and bewildered … but the same.

Then she saw that there was a living man here, standing as if he had just risen from a green-grey velvet chair. Mrs. Caldwell introduced him. Detective-Sergeant Mueller of the Police Department. Tom turned to him with relief.

What I have to say I would rather say to you, sir.

Go ahead, said Mueller. He had a square face and eyes that were at once shrewd, sleepy, and unshockable.

It might be better if I could tell you privately.

Okay. Want to come out in the car?

The men left. Mrs. Gardner was asked politely if she would not sit down. Esther was five feet eight—a substantial, strong-boned girl. She loved sports and being out of doors and she was suntanned and healthy. Sitting here, in a small armless chair, she began to feel gross and huge. A little woman can sometimes make a good-sized woman feel undainty. Audrey Caldwell was a little woman and a dainty one. She had a way of moving that was slow, graceful, and elegantly controlled. Her whole manner seemed to reproach haste, reproach vigour, reproach heartiness.