A Choice of Murders, page 15
After that, there was no room in his life for anything but Mabel Kent. He learned all about her habits, her foibles, how she spent each hour of the day. She rose late, never before two or three. Harris was always there, idling on the corner, lounging in a doorway, ready to pick up her trail. He never, never spoke to her, but he was never far away. Sometimes he took the table next to hers in a restaurant, the seat opposite on a bus. If she had ever smiled, nodded, even drawn away, his resolve might have been weakened. But she was oblivious to his presence.
She slept on the third-floor front, her bed not far from the dormer window. He could glimpse her sometimes when she got up, her blonde hair disheveled, her face a little pouchy without makeup. But by the time she hit the street, she’d look like a million dollars again. He’d feel a welling of pride inside himself. This was the babe he’d picked, the one to share the big adventure with him.
Most of her afternoons she spent by herself. She didn’t have any women friends. But the evenings were different. She never spent a night alone. There were plenty of men in her life. A different guy almost every night. But they all ran to type. Big, beefy studs with a lot of flash to them. Clothes made to order, fancy cars, free spenders.
He’d wander often to the block where Kent lived, haunting the place like a shadow, waiting for her to come home. He even rented a furnished room only a few blocks away, so he’d never be far from her. He was always there when she showed up. He’d watch while her friend of the evening helped her out of the car. Watch while they ascended the stone steps together. The next few minutes would be terrible ones. They’d be climbing the stairs and he couldn’t see them. When the lights clicked on in the third-floor front, he’d let out his breath, but he wouldn’t move away. Not for a long time.
The pictures which formed in his mind created an exquisite torture within him, a compound of hate, pain, pleasure, envy, excitation and frustration. Sometimes he’d want to rush up the stairs, kick down the door, confront Mabel Kent with her duplicity. Couldn’t she understand? She belonged to him, James Harris. Nobody else had a right to her.
He’d check the mad impulse. After all, all he had to do was wait. These lovers of hers were men of straw, shadows, unreal. They could never know, never experience the final intimate rapture that was to exist between himself and this woman. At times, he could almost bring himself to pity them.
After the first week or so there was no reason to wait. He could strike at any time and be sure of success. But that would bring the game to a close before he had fully tasted its savor. He thought up excuses to procrastinate, set imaginary obstacles in his own path.
Hanging around the block day after day was dangerous, but he couldn’t bring himself to make the final play. Not without a sign. Not without a word from her. But that afternoon the sign had come. He’d followed her downtown while she shopped, trailed her from one shop to another.
She’d been leaving Spicer’s when her high heel had slipped on the polished floor. She caught herself in time to prevent a fall, but some of her packages fell from her arm. One of them slithered to within a few inches of Harris’ feet. He picked it up and handed it to her.
She’d said, “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” smiling automatically as she would to any stranger. Her eyes had remained blank, unseeing. Then she had turned away limping a little, not even glancing back at him.
He wanted to rush after her, pull her around, make her look at him. He wanted to shout, “Can’t you see me? Don’t you know I’m alive?” But he held his tongue. There’d be time for that later. He stood still, hating her, yet wanting her too.
This was the day. He wouldn’t wait any longer. He and Mabel Kent would be joined together in a relationship more intimate, more enduring than any of her lovers had known.
He made no conscious effort to follow her, so it was almost with a sense of surprise that he found himself beside her on the subway platform. He entered the car behind her. There weren’t many seats left and she had taken one of them. He wanted to stand so that he could see her better, but his knees went weak and threatened to buckle under him. That was why he squeezed in between the fat man and the old woman with the newspaper.
Now that the game was drawing to a close, his hatred passed, and he felt an almost maudlin affection for Mabel Kent. He wanted to go to her, murmur words of endearment. She seemed to him a beloved child who had to be punished, yet who needed reassurance that the punishment would be quick.
Tears of self-pity burned his eyes. He’d miss her. Miss the long, lonely vigils in the doorway opposite her house.
The train jolted to a stop and she got off. There was no reason for him to follow her. There was no place she could go but home. So he might as well stop at the florist shop for the box of roses he needed for his plan.
He couldn’t bring himself to leave her, however. There was so little time left. He wanted to spend every minute of it close to her. He trailed her to the door, stood on the sidewalk watching the supple movement o£ her body, the flick of her legs as she disappeared up the stairway. Only then did he walk back toward Broadway.
He chose the roses with care, heavy blood-red blossoms, almost black at their throats. This would be his gift to her.
With the roses in his arm, he returned to the block, shambling along slowly like a stranger, pretending to peer at the numbers. He let himself into the foyer, thumbed the bell, and listened to the burr of the automatic release.
When he was halfway up the stairs, he heard her door click open and the tap of her heels in the hall. She was peering down at him over the railing, but she wouldn’t be surprised when she saw the box of flowers. She got them all the time.
She was in her room before he hit the landing, but she hadn’t bothered to close the door. She’d taken off her dress and put on a loose-fitting housecoat. She was standing before her dresser, fumbling with her purse, taking out a coin. A tip.
He almost laughed, then his anger came flooding back. But it wasn’t a blinding anger, he could see her more clearly than ever before, that what he had to do was right.
He entered the room quietly and heeled the door shut behind him. She looked up at the soft slam of the door and a frown creased her forehead. He approached her, almost apologetically, and held the box out to her. He said, “The man who sent them, he wanted you to look at them, to see if they’re okay.”
She hesitated, then lifted the lid. The blood-red roses were in front of her. She gave a little gasp of pleasure and her fingers explored for a card. She said wonderingly, “They’re gorgeous. But who sent them?”
Harris spoke very softly to her. “I did.”
Her glance lifted to his face, but her expression was one of confusion rather than alarm.
He fought to keep his manner calm, not to frighten her too soon. “Don’t you remember me?”
“No,” she answered. Then her breath sucked in and fear came to her eyes.
He stayed still. She was looking at him now, he thought, really seeing him for the first time. Her eyes widened in panic. She started to back away from him. He followed her.
She dropped the roses and they spilled across the floor between them. She said, “You’re the man from this afternoon…” Her voice trailed off and he could see she was getting ready to scream. He couldn’t permit that.
He threw himself upon her and his hands circled her throat just in time. The scream was cut off almost before it started. It came out as a gurgling murmur.
He bent her backward, his fingers biting deeper and deeper into the soft column of her flesh. She tried to struggle, lashing out at him with her feet, raking at his wrists with her long nails. But her strength was no match for his.
He flung her down on the bed and knelt beside her, the pressure of his fingers growing stronger. She lay still, but still he dared not release his grip. He still had not had satisfaction. He squeezed harder, harder, to produce the burst of emotion that he wanted, and when he could squeeze no more, he suddenly wanted to scream.
It wasn’t the way he’d expected it to be!
There was no exultation. Nothing. Only the blindness of despair and the wish to cling to her forever and ever. He lost all sense of time as he crouched beside her. His fingers grew numb and his wrists hurt, but still he could not let her go. Finally he fell across her. His face rested on the pillow close to hers, and he shut his eyes.
He had no idea of how long he remained beside her but when he looked up, the room was dark and the windows in the houses across the street showed squares of yellow light. Panic twisted at him, sent him scuttling across the room. He stumbled, grasped a chair and sent it crashing to the floor.
The noise sobered him, brought him back to his senses. He felt along the wall for the switch, flicked it on, and stood trembling in the unexpected brilliance. The roses were a trampled mass at his feet. Automatically he picked one up.
He was acting crazy, he thought. He had to get out fast. He straightened up and forced himself to remain still for a moment. He mustn’t flip. He had to relax, play it cool.
He let himself out into the dim hall. He walked rapidly but without stealth, as he’d trained himself to do. The stairs were carpeted. They made no sound beneath his feet. He reached the next landing safely and started along the corridor.
Then the door beside him opened.
A woman stood in the doorway, peering out nearsightedly. She was a short stocky woman with hennaed hair. She wore a dowdy purple dress and her eyes were bright behind the lenses of her glasses. Harris knew her type, a busybody.
He wanted to plunge headlong down the last flight of stairs. But he was paralyzed with terror. The woman stepped into the hall, gave him one swift incurious look, and then passed by him to the railing and peered upward.
Her blank gaze had told him all he needed to know. Why did he have to remind himself after all these years of the lesson he’d learned in the drugstore? He pulled himself together and kept on walking. At the bend of the stairs, he heard the woman’s querulous voice. “Something’s going on up there in that Kent woman’s apartment.”
His head jerked around, but she wasn’t talking to him. She was speaking over her shoulder to someone in the doorway. She’d forgotten him already. The nagging fury smoldered inside him. He’d like to sink his fingers into the old witch’s scrawny neck, make her look at him, the way Kent looked before she died.
Mabel Kent—at least the memory of her staring eyes sent a pleasant tingling sensation through him, even if the strangling hadn’t. There was one dame who’d seen him for what he really was; not a nonentity but a killer, a big shot, a guy who’d soon be a legend in crime.
Outside on the street he stopped to light a cigarette. He sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. He felt almost the way he had the time he’d tried a reefer, big, powerful, strong.
But it was only a beginning, and he had to strike again soon—for several reasons. One was to get the feeling of exultation that had eluded him. The other was to make sure people would know.
Maybe the press wouldn’t catch on quick that this was a juicy story, just the first of a series of murders. Next time he’d have to leave a trademark of some kind. His fingers touched the crushed rose in his pocket. It brought a smile to his lips. After this, he’d always honor the woman of his choice by bringing a gift of roses.
Excitement plucked at him and he scurried along the street so fast that several times he almost bumped into people. It didn’t really matter. After a quick glance of irritation they never gave him a second look.
A nightclub loomed up ahead. A woman stepped out of a cab and under the lights. She was lush-figured and her hair glowed like silver in the artificial glare. She was a celebrity of some sort because a little knot of people had already formed about her. Harris could hear her laughter and the bright chatter of her voice.
He slid his way into the crowd until he was close beside her. He forgot all about Mabel Kent.
This was the woman, the one for whom he’d really been searching.
* * *
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: I was visiting some friends one afternoon and we fell into a discussion of John Reginald Halliday Christie, London’s multiple murderer of women. My friends said that such eerie murders could only happen in the atmosphere of London, a contention which I disputed… On the way home, I looked around the crowded New York subway and thought what a strange background it would make for “Mr. Nobody.”
The Glass Bridge
Robert Arthur
We were discussing unsolved murders, the Baron de Hirsch, Lieutenant Oliver Baynes of the State Police, and I. At least, de Hirsch was discussing them. Baynes and I were allowed only to listen while the tall, hawk-nosed Hungarian, with scintillating deduction and impeccable logic solved half a dozen famous cases which remain in the files of various police departments, still marked “Open.”
De Hirsch can be a very irritating companion. His self-assurance is colossal, and his appreciation of his own cleverness is unconcealed. I am always tempted to ask him why, if he’s so smart, his shoes always need repairing and his clothes mending. But I never do.
I could see Oliver Baynes getting restless. Baynes is short and dumpy, red-faced, slow-spoken and unimpressive. But he’s a good cop—one of the best.
He drained his glass of beer—it was a hot August afternoon—and as he reached for another can, looked across at me. “Get your friend to solve the case of the blonde blackmailer for us,” he said, the sarcasm in the remark hidden behind a completely blank countenance.
De Hirsch paused. His deep-set black eyes glinted; his large, beaked nose flared.
“The case of the blonde blackmailer?” he asked, softly, politely.
“Her name was Marianne Montrose.” Baynes used the can opener and got foam on his sleeve. “Last February 13th, between three and four in the afternoon, she walked up twenty-three snow covered steps to a house on a hilltop about thirty miles from here. She went into that house and never came out again.”
Baynes poured the beer, slurped the head off his glass.
“Later, we searched the house and she wasn’t there. There was snow two feet deep all around the house. There wasn’t a mark in it to show she had been taken away in any manner. Besides, the owner and only resident is a man with a heart condition, who could be killed by any exertion. So he didn’t carry her away or dig a hole and bury her or anything like that. But she wasn’t there, and she was seen to enter, and her footsteps went up in the snow on the steps. Went up and never came down again. You tell us what happened to her.”
De Hirsch’s eyes held steady on Baynes. “Give me the facts,” he said, “and I will.”
He didn’t say he’d try, he said he would.
“I’ll get my dope sheets,” I told him, nettled. “It’ll be nice to know the truth. Besides, I’ll get another article out of it.”
Baynes sipped his beer and said nothing, merely looked sleepy. De Hirsch poured himself another generous helping of brandy—my brandy, for we had gathered at my summer cottage.
I went to my files and brought back the folder on Marianne Montrose. It was pretty complete. As a true-crime writer for the popular magazines, I kept detailed notes on every case I use. I had already written this one up, giving it the Big Question Mark or “What Happened to Lovely Marianne?” treatment.
“Where do you want to start?” I asked. “Here’s the statement of young Danny Gresham, the last person who spoke to Marianne before she went into the house and vanished.”
De Hirsch waved away the typescript.
“Read it to me,” he said, his manner gracious.
Oliver Baynes made a noise through his nose. He might have been laughing. I glared at him and began to read:
Morgan’s Gap, Feb. 3.
From statement by Daniel Gresham, 19.
“I was in the office of the Morgan’s Gap Weekly Sentinel, reading proof. It was half past three. The temperature outside was about eight above zero, I guess, maybe six. It was a nice brisk day. I was thinking of calling up my girl, Dolly Hansome, and making a date to go skiing. The snow was nice and deep, with a good crust on it, and some fresh snow on top. While I was thinking about Dolly, a snappy blue coupe pulled to a stop outside.
There was a girl driving. She looked like Dolly Hansome, but taller and better developed—more womanly, that is. She had blonde hair, long, and curly under a red cap and was wearing a red ski suit. She got out and stood looking across the valley and up the slope toward Mr. Mark Hillyer the mystery writer’s house. The Eyrie, Mr. Hillyer calls it, that means nest. It’s a very good name for it, the way it perches all by itself on top of the ridge.
You might think it was a funny place for a man with a bad heart to live all by himself. In the summer you can drive right around and up to the back of the house where the terrace is, but in the winter the town only cleans the road up to the steps out in front.
That means that Mr. Hillyer never leaves the house after the first big snow, but he doesn’t seem to care. In the fall he puts in three thousand gallons of fuel oil and a big stock of canned goods and he’s all set. Every day Mrs. Hoff goes up to cook and clean. She doesn’t mind the steps and neither does her brother-in-law, Sam. He keeps the steps swept, and clears off the north terrace.
Mr. Hillyer likes to be alone. He doesn’t care for people. He’s a tall, thin man with a long, disappointed face and a sharp way of saying things. He’s written twelve mystery books and has a lot of clippings and reviews. He’s especially proud of the ones that mention how clever his plots are. He hasn’t written any new books for five years, though. I guess he’s discouraged because the ones he did before never sold very well.
Oh, sure, about the girl.
She stood looking up at the house, then turned and came in the office. I jumped up to help her. She smiled and said hello. Her voice was low and husky and sort of gave you a tingly feeling, if you know what I mean. She asked if I was the editor. I said I was the assistant. Then she asked if she could use the phone. I said sure, of course, certainly, and handed it to her. She asked for Mark Hillyer’s number. I couldn’t help hearing what she said. Sure I remember the words, just about.
