she certainly never dreamed that I would confront her like that. Wasnât I her accomplice?
I finally got her to talk. She said she hadnât taken the syringe. Goodness, sheâs a lousy actress. Guilt was all over that face of hers. Her voice shook when she made her denial. She couldnât have looked me in the eye to save her life.
âEdna, donât be an idiot.â I was still calm, very patient. âGive me that syringe. Do you think Iâll let you leave this place with it in your possession? Donât be so silly.â
The odd thing was that my accusation seemed to calm her down. She threw up her head and gave me one of those Queen of Africa looks. She acted as if what I had said didnât matter, as if the whole business was out of my hands now, and nothing I could do would change things in the least. She didnât quiver when I told her that there was one piece of information which I had withheld from her. This was a spur of the moment improvisation, rather inexpensive and gaudily melodramatic, but it seemed to make sense at the time. It made no sense with Edna. She kept her head high. Aloof as hell.
I said, âEdna, if you take that syringe home with you and inject Andrew and he dies, you will hang.â
That got to her, for she put her hand up to her throat and I saw her trying to swallow, but no syringe was forthcoming.
âYou will fry in the hot seat,â I said. âDonât be an idiot. Give that syringe back to me and forget about it. If you wonât think of yourself, then think about your people. Youâll be a real disgrace to your people. How do you think they will like having a sensational murder trial with you as the defendant?â
Edna burst into tears and ran out of the room.
I will have to do what I donât want to do. I will have to ruin Ednaâs good opinion of me. I will have to be cruel, thatâs all. There is nothing left to do but admit the whole business was a kind of game with me. I will have to say that I had no intention of doing anything I had promised her, that it was all malarky. I just wanted to see how far she would go and, I shall say, with that syringe gone, it has gone quite far enough.
What will Edna do then? How will she take this?
I have been sitting here with my eyes closed, trying to visualize Ednaâs response, before calling her in. I am not at all sure. I suppose it is because I am accustomed to writing copy in which I depend on a rather automatic response to certain given stimuli that not knowing Ednaâs response frightens me. I definitely am frightened.
Stupid.
Thank the Lord for a Sense of Humor Department: Make note that people in a hypersensitive state burp. I have been burping steadily. This should provide my comic relief, my Hamletâs gravediggers. This should end my nervousness.
It doesnât.
I cannot laugh myself out of this one. I feel as if I had opened Pandoraâs box and let the horors out. I feel them all around me, rather like bats in the room.
Bats in the belfry is more like it.
Telling Edna that our trip to Utopia-France is all malarky will not finish the episode. It is not malarky that that syringe is gone. I have opened and shut that drawer fifteen times in fifteen minutes to make sure.
Besides that, my good woman, it is also a fact that the insulin in the syringe does kill in twenty minutes. I had this direct from a doctor once. He said the victim, the injectee, would become terrifically excited, would go into a fair imitation of d.t.s, and hence straight to heaven. That wasnât malarky.
One more fact, since we appear to be in the market for them: At present writing I am even more helpless against a sudden attack from Edna than her precious drunken Andrew. I am scared stiff.
I would say that the above was the evidence of a mind gone bad through being shut up by itself too long. What do they call it? Stir-crazy. Am I stir-cray? I am in danger; my body tells me so.
I finally got her to talk. She said she hadnât taken the syringe. Goodness, sheâs a lousy actress. Guilt was all over that face of hers. Her voice shook when she made her denial. She couldnât have looked me in the eye to save her life.
âEdna, donât be an idiot.â I was still calm, very patient. âGive me that syringe. Do you think Iâll let you leave this place with it in your possession? Donât be so silly.â
The odd thing was that my accusation seemed to calm her down. She threw up her head and gave me one of those Queen of Africa looks. She acted as if what I had said didnât matter, as if the whole business was out of my hands now, and nothing I could do would change things in the least. She didnât quiver when I told her that there was one piece of information which I had withheld from her. This was a spur of the moment improvisation, rather inexpensive and gaudily melodramatic, but it seemed to make sense at the time. It made no sense with Edna. She kept her head high. Aloof as hell.
I said, âEdna, if you take that syringe home with you and inject Andrew and he dies, you will hang.â
That got to her, for she put her hand up to her throat and I saw her trying to swallow, but no syringe was forthcoming.
âYou will fry in the hot seat,â I said. âDonât be an idiot. Give that syringe back to me and forget about it. If you wonât think of yourself, then think about your people. Youâll be a real disgrace to your people. How do you think they will like having a sensational murder trial with you as the defendant?â
Edna burst into tears and ran out of the room.
I will have to do what I donât want to do. I will have to ruin Ednaâs good opinion of me. I will have to be cruel, thatâs all. There is nothing left to do but admit the whole business was a kind of game with me. I will have to say that I had no intention of doing anything I had promised her, that it was all malarky. I just wanted to see how far she would go and, I shall say, with that syringe gone, it has gone quite far enough.
What will Edna do then? How will she take this?
I have been sitting here with my eyes closed, trying to visualize Ednaâs response, before calling her in. I am not at all sure. I suppose it is because I am accustomed to writing copy in which I depend on a rather automatic response to certain given stimuli that not knowing Ednaâs response frightens me. I definitely am frightened.
Stupid.
Thank the Lord for a Sense of Humor Department: Make note that people in a hypersensitive state burp. I have been burping steadily. This should provide my comic relief, my Hamletâs gravediggers. This should end my nervousness.
It doesnât.
I cannot laugh myself out of this one. I feel as if I had opened Pandoraâs box and let the horors out. I feel them all around me, rather like bats in the room.
Bats in the belfry is more like it.
Telling Edna that our trip to Utopia-France is all malarky will not finish the episode. It is not malarky that that syringe is gone. I have opened and shut that drawer fifteen times in fifteen minutes to make sure.
Besides that, my good woman, it is also a fact that the insulin in the syringe does kill in twenty minutes. I had this direct from a doctor once. He said the victim, the injectee, would become terrifically excited, would go into a fair imitation of d.t.s, and hence straight to heaven. That wasnât malarky.
One more fact, since we appear to be in the market for them: At present writing I am even more helpless against a sudden attack from Edna than her precious drunken Andrew. I am scared stiff.
I would say that the above was the evidence of a mind gone bad through being shut up by itself too long. What do they call it? Stir-crazy. Am I stir-cray? I am in danger; my body tells me so.
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