The loose sleeve of his pyjama coat revealed a muscular and well-nourished arm, and when Amos came in reply to the summons he carried a night tray with a substantial supper and a siphon and bottle.
Jim scowled when he saw it.
“You can leave that, and I want you to drive Miss Bell home, Amos.
She walked over.”
“Yes, sir.”
I had a flash then of the strange relationship between the two of them, shut in there together; of suspicion and anger on Jim’s part, and on the negro’s of fear and something else.
Not hostility.
Uneasiness, perhaps.
“Can I shake up your pillows, sir?”
“No. Don’t bother.”
I felt baffled as I went down the stairs.
I daresay it is always difficult to face civilized human beings and to try to realize that they have joined the lost brotherhood of those who have willfully taken human lives.
There appears to be no gulf; they breathe, eat, talk, even on occasion laugh.
There is no mark on their foreheads.
But the gulf is there, never to be bridged; less broad perhaps for those who have killed in passion, but wider than eternity itself for those who have planned, plotted, schemed, that a living being shall cease to live.
All hope that Jim Blake would clear himself, at least in my eyes, was gone.
And at the foot of the stairs Amos was waiting, enigmatic, the perfect servant, to help me into my wrap.
“I’ll bring the car around at once, ma’am.”
“I’ll go back with you, Amos.
It will save time.”
“The yard’s pretty dark, Miss Bell.”
“Haven’t you a flashlight?”
He produced one at once from a drawer of the hall table, and I followed him, through his neat pantry and kitchen and out into the yard.
Here in mild weather Jim sometimes served coffee after dinner, and he had planted it rather prettily.
I remember the scent of the spring night as I followed Amos, and seeing the faint outlines of Jim’s garden furniture, a bench, a few chairs, a table.
“I see you have your things out already, Amos.”
“Yes’m. I painted them a few days ago.
We’ll be having warm weather soon.”
I took the light while he unlocked the small door and backed the car into the alley beyond.
It occurred to me that the watcher out front would hear the noise and come to investigate, but the alley was lined with garages. One car more or less would make little difference.
I have wondered about that surveillance since.
Clearly it would always have been possible for Jim to come and go by the alley way if he so desired.
Probably the intention was not that, but rather to see what visitors he received, and for all I know there may have been some arrangement with Amos, to warn the watcher if Jim left his bed and dressed for any purpose.
However that may be, we were not molested, and I still carried the flashlight when I got into the rear of the car.
I knew the car well. I had sold it to Jim a year or so ago when I had bought a new one.
It was a dark blue limousine, the driving seat covered with leather, the interior upholstered in a pale gray.
“Car doing all right, Amos?”
“Very well, ma’am.”
Idly I switched on the flashlight and surveyed the interior.
Undoubtedly the car had begun to show wear. There were scars on the seat cushions from cigarette burns, and one or two on the carpet.
I think now that these movements of mine were a sort of automatism, or perhaps the instinct of the uneasy mind to seek refuge in the trivial.
The car was of no importance to me.
Let them burn it, these people who shared the “usual life of a bachelor,” these men for whom Amos painted the garden furniture, these women who must be protected, not dragged in.
And then I saw something.
There was a ring-shaped stain on the carpet near my feet, well defined, dark.
It was perhaps seven inches across, and I lowered the flashlight and inspected it.
It looked like oil, and woman-fashion I ran my finger over it and then sniffed the finger.
It was oil. It was kerosene oil.
I put out the flashlight and sat back.
There were a dozen possible explanations for that stain, but only one occurred to me.