All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [258]
“Some idea–maybe,” I said. “But what I came for was to ask you a question.”
“I thought you came because you were so damned fond of me.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I am. We’ve been around a long time together and we always got along. But that’s not–”
“Yeah,” she interrupted, and again thrust herself up on one arm, “everything and everybody just got alone fine. Oh, Jesus, just fine.”
I waited while she sank back and turned her eyes from me across the lawn below toward the bayou. A crow was making its way across the clear air above the tattered cypress tops beyond the bayou. Then the crow was gone, and I said, “Adam Stanton killed the Boss, but he never got that idea by himself. Somebody primed him to do it. Somebody who knew the kind of man Adam was and knew the inside of how he took the job at the medical center and knew–”
She didn’t seem to be listening to me. She was watching the clear air above the tattered cypresses where the crow had gone. I hesitated, and then, watching her face, went on. “–and knew about the Boss and Anne Stanton.”
I waited again and watched her face as I handed those names to her, but it didn’t show a thing. It simply looked tired, tired and not giving a damn.
“I found out one thing,” I continued. “A man called Adam that afternoon and told him about the Boss and his sister. And some more stuff. You can guess what stuff. So he went wild. He went to see his sister and jumped her and she didn’t deny it. She isn’t the kind of person who could deny it. I guess she was sick of having a secret and she was almost glad not to have it any longer and–”
“Yeah,” Sadie said, not turning to me, “tell me how noble and high-tone Anne Stanton is.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and felt the blood flushing my face. “I guess I did get off the point.”
“I guess you did, all right.”
I waited. Then, “That man who called up Adam, do you have any notion who it was?”
She seemed to be turning that question over in her mind. If she had heard it, for I couldn’t be sure.
“Do you?” I asked.
“I don’t have any notion,” she said.
“No?”
“No,” she said, still not looking at me, “and I don’t have to have any. Because, you see, I know.”
“Who?” I demanded. “Who?” And came up out of my chair.
“Duffy,” she said.
“I knew it!” I exclaimed, “I ought to have known it! It had to be.”
“If you knew it,” she said, “what the hell you come messing around me for?”
“I had to be sure. I had to know. Really know. I–” I stopped and stood there at the foot of the chaise longue and looked down at her averted face, which the sunlight lay across. “You say you know it was Duffy. How do you know?”
“God damn you, Jack Burden, God damn you,” she said in a tired voice, and turned her head to look up at me. Then looking at me, she thrust herself up to a sitting position, and burst out in a voice which all at once wasn’t tired any more but angry and violent, “God damn you, Jack Burden, what made you come here? What always makes you mess in things? Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you? Why?”
I stared down into her eyes, which in the pain-contorted face were burning now and wild.
“How do you know?” I demanded softly.
“God damn you, Jack Burden, God damn you,” she said like a litany.
“How do you know?” I demanded, more softly than before–I was almost whispering–and leaned down toward her.
“God damn you, Jack Burden,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because–” she began, hesitated, and tossed her head in a desperate tired way like a fevered child on a pillow.
“Because?” I demanded.
“Because,” she said, and let herself fall back on the cushions of the chaise longue, “I told him. I told him to do it.”
That was it. That was it, and I hadn’t guessed it. My knees gave slowly down, like a pneumatic jack letting down the weight of a car to the floor, and I was back in my chair. There I was and there Sadie Burke was, and I was looking at her as though I had never seen her before.
After a minute, she said, “Stop looking at me.” But there wasn’t any heat in what she said.
I must have continued to look, for she said, as before, “Stop