Dolores Claiborne(64)

'Ma deepest sympathies, Mrs St George,' McAuliffe says in that thick Scots accent of his. He was a little man, but compact n well put together for all that. He had a neat little mustache, as white's the hair on his head, he was wearin a three-piece wool suit, n he didn't look no more like home folks than he sounded like em. Those blue eyes went drillin away at my forehead, and I seen he didn't have a bit of sympathy for me, no matter what he was sayin. Prob'ly not for nobody else, either. . . includin him-self. 'I'm verra, verra sorry for your grief and misfortune.'

Sure, and if I believe that, you'll tell me one more, I thought. The last time you was really sorry, doc, was the last time you needed to use the pay toilet and the string on your pet dime broke. But I made up my mind right then that I wasn't goin to show him how scared I was. Maybe he had me n maybe he didn't. You've got to remember that, for all I knew, he was gonna tell me that when they laid Joe on the table there in the basement of County Hospital n opened his hands, a little piece of white nylon fell outta one; a scrid of a lady's slip. That could be, all right, but I still wasn't gonna give him the satisfaction of squirmin under his eyes. And he was used to havin people squirm when he looked at em; he'd come to take it as his due, and he liked it.

'Thank you very much,' I said.

'Will ye sit doon, madam?' he asks, like it was his office instead of poor old confused Garrett's.

I sat down and he ast me if I'd kindly give him permission to smoke. I told him the lamp was lit as far's I was concerned. He chuckled like I'd made a funny... but his eyes didn't chuckle. He took a big old black pipe out of his coat pocket, a briar, and stoked it up. His eyes never left me while he was doin it, either. Even after he had it clamped between his teeth and the smoke was risin outta the bowl, he never took his eyes off me. They gave me the willies, peerin at me through the smoke like they did, and made me think of Battiscan Light again - they say that one shines out almost two mile even on a night when the fog's thick enough to carve with your hands.

I started to squirm under that look of his in spite of all my good intentions, and then I thought of Vera Donovan sayin 'Nonsense - husbands die every day, Dolores.' It occurred to me that McAuliffe could stare at Vera until his eyes fell out n never get her to so much as cross her legs the other way. Thinkin of that eased me a little, and I grew quiet again; just folded my hands on top of my handbag n waited him out.

At last, when he seen I wasn't just gonna fall outta my chair onto the floor n confess to murderin my husband - through a rain of tears is how he would've liked it, I imagine - he took the pipe out of his mouth n said, 'You told the constable 'twas your husband who put those bruises on your neck, Mrs St George.'

'Ayuh,' I says.

'That you and he had sat down on the porch to watch the eclipse, and there commenced an argument.'

'Ayuh.'

'And what, may I ask, was the argument about?'

'Money on top,' I says, 'booze underneath.'

'But you yourself bought him the liquor he got drunk on that day, Mrs St George! Isna that right?'

'Ayuh,' I says. I could feel myself wantin to say somethin more, to explain myself, but I didn't, even though I could. That's what McAuliffe wanted, you see - for me to go on rushin ahead. To explain myself right into a jail-cell someplace.

At last he give up waitin. He twiddled his fingers like he was annoyed, then fixed those lighthouse eyes of his on me again. 'After the choking incident, you left your husband; you went up to Russian Meadow, on the way to East Head, to watch the eclipse by yourself.'

'Ayuh.'

He leaned forward all of a sudden, his little hands on his little knees, and says, 'Mrs St George, do you know what direction the wind was from that day?'

It was like the day in November of '62, when I almost found the old well by fallin into it - I seemed to hear the same crackin noise, and I thought, 'You be careful, Dolores Claiborne; you be oh so careful. There's wells everywhere today, and this man knows where every goddam one of em is.'

'No,' I says, 'I don't. And when I don't know where the wind's quarterin from, that usually means the day's calm.'

'Actually wasn't much more than a breeze - Garrett started to say, but McAuliffe raised his hand n cut him off like a knife-blade.

'It was out of the west,' he said. 'A west wind, a west breeze, if you so prefer, seven to nine miles an hour, with gusts up to fifteen. It seems strange to me, Mrs St George, that that wind didna bring your husband's cries to you as you stood in Russian Meadow, not half a mile away.'

I didn't say anything for at least three seconds. I'd made up my mind that I'd count to three inside my head before I answered any of his questions. Doin that might keep me from movin too quick and payin for it by fallin into one of the pits he'd dug for me. But McAuliffe musta thought he had me confused from the word go, because he leaned forward in his chair, and I'll declare and vow that for one or two seconds there, his eyes went from blue-hot to white-hot.

'It don't surprise me,' I says. 'For one thing, seven miles an hour ain't much more'n a puff of air on a muggy day. For another, there were about a thousand boats out on the reach, all tootin to each other. And how do you know he called out at all? You sure as hell didn't hear him.'

He sat back, lookin a little disappointed. 'It's a reasonable deduction to make,' he says. 'We know the fall itself didna kill him, and the forensic evidence strongly suggests that he had at least one extended period of consciousness. Mrs St George, if you fell into a disused well and found yourself with a broken shin, a broken ankle, four broken ribs, and a sprained wrist, wouldn't you call for aid and succor?'