A Kiss Before Dying (16 page)

‘What you want from
me
?’ Chief of Police Eldon Chesser asked blandly. He lay supine, his long legs supported beneath the ankles by an arm of the chintz-covered sofa, his hands laced loosely across the front of his red flannel shirt, his large brown eyes vaguely contemplating the ceiling.

‘Get after the car. That’s what I want,’ Gordon Gant said, glaring at him from the middle of the living room.

‘Ha,’ said Chesser. ‘Ha ha. A dark car is all the man next door knows; after he called about the shot he saw a man and a woman go down the block and get into a dark car. A dark car with a man and a woman. You know how many dark cars there are driving around town with a man and woman in them? We didn’t even have a description of the girl until you come shooting in. By that time they could’ve been halfway to Cedar Rapids. Or parked in some garage two blocks from here, for all we know.’

Gant paced malevolently. ‘So what are we supposed to do?’

‘Wait, is all. I notified the highway boys, didn’t I? Maybe this is bank night. Why don’t you sit down?’

‘Sure, sit down,’ Gant snapped. ‘She’s liable to be murdered!’ Chesser was silent. ‘Last year her sister – now her.’

‘Here we go again,’ Chesser said. The brown eyes closed in weariness. ‘Her sister committed suicide,’ he articulated slowly. ‘I saw the note with my own two eyes. A handwriting expert—’ Gant made a noise. ‘And who killed her?’ Chesser demanded. ‘You said Powell was supposed to be the one, only now it couldn’t’ve been him ’cause the girl left a message for you that he was all right, and you found this paper here from New York U that makes it look like he wasn’t even in these parts last spring. So if the only suspect didn’t do it, who did? Answer: nobody.’

His voice tight with the exasperation of repetition, Gant said, ‘Her message said that Powell had an idea who it was. The murderer must have known that Powell—’

‘There
was
no murderer, until tonight,’ Chesser said flatly. ‘The sister committed suicide.’ His eyes blinked open and regarded the ceiling.

Gant glared at him and resumed his bitter pacing.

After a few minutes Chesser said, ‘Well, I guess I got it all reconstructed now.’

‘Yeah?’ Gant said.

‘Yeah. You didn’t think I was laying here just to be lazy, did you? This is the way to think, with your feet higher’n your head. Blood goes to the brain.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The guy breaks in about a quarter to ten – man next door heard the glass break but didn’t think anything of it. No sign of any of the other rooms having been gone through, so Powell’s must have been the first one he hit. A couple of minutes later Powell and the girl come in. The guy is stuck upstairs. He hides in Powell’s closet – the clothes are all pushed to the side. Powell and the girl go into the kitchen. She starts making coffee, turns on the radio. Powell goes upstairs to hang up his coat, or maybe he heard a noise. The guy comes out. He’s already tried to open the suitcase – we found glove smudges on it. He makes Powell unlock it and goes through it. Stuff all over the floor. Maybe he finds something, some money. Anyway, Powell jumps him. The guy shoots Powell. Probably panics, probably didn’t intend to shoot him – they never do; they only carry the guns to scare people. Always wind up shooting ’em. Forty-five shell. Most likely an army Colt. Million of ’em floating around.

‘Next thing the girl comes running upstairs – same prints on the door frame up there as on the cups and stuff in the kitchen. The guy is panicky, no time to think – he forces her to leave with him.’

‘Why? Why wouldn’t he have left her here – the way he left Powell?’

‘Don’t ask me. Maybe he didn’t have the nerve. Or maybe he got ideas. Sometimes they get ideas when they’re holding a gun and there’s a pretty girl on the other end of it.’

‘Thanks,’ Gant said. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better. Thanks a lot.’

Chesser sighed. ‘You might as well sit down,’ he said. ‘There ain’t a damn thing we can do but wait.’

Gant sat down. He began rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand.

Chesser finally turned his face from the ceiling. He watched Gant sitting across the room. ‘What is she? Your girlfriend?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Gant said. He remembered the letter he had read in Ellen’s room. ‘No, there’s some guy in Wisconsin.’

Behind the racing island of the headlights’ reach, the car arrowed over the tight line of highway, tarred seams in concrete creating a regular rhythm under the tyres. The speedometer’s luminous green needle split the figure fifty. The foot on the accelerator was steady as the foot of a statue.

He drove with his left hand, occasionally giving the steering wheel an inappreciable right or left movement to relieve the hypnotic monotony of the highway. Ellen was huddled all the way over against the door, her body knotted tight, her eyes staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap. On the seat between them, snake-like, lay his gloved right hand with the gun in it, the muzzle riveted against her hip.

She had cried; long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.

He had told her everything, in a bitter voice, glancing frequently at her green-touched face in the darkness. There were moments of awkward hesitancy in his narration, as an on-leave soldier telling how he won his medals hesitates before describing to the gentle townsfolk how his bayonet ripped open an enemy’s stomach, then goes on and describes it because they asked how he won his medals, didn’t they? – describes it with irritation and mild contempt for the gentle townsfolk who never had had to rip open anyone’s stomach. So he told Ellen about the pills and the roof and why it had been necessary to kill Dorothy, and why it had then been the most logical course to transfer to Caldwell and go after
her
, Ellen, knowing her likes and dislikes from conversations with Dorothy, knowing how to make himself the man she was waiting for – not only the most logical and inevitable course, going after the girl with whom he had such an advantage, but also the course most ironically satisfying, the course most compensatory for past bad luck (the course most law-defying, back-slapping, ego-preening): he told her these things with irritation and contempt; this girl with her hands over her mouth in horror had had everything given her on a silver platter; she didn’t know what it was to live on a swaying catwalk over the chasm of failure, stealing perilously inch by inch towards the solid ground of success so many miles away.

She listened with the muzzle of his gun jabbing painfully into her hip; painfully only at first, then numbingly, as though that part of her were already dead, as though death came from the gun not in a swift bullet but in slow radiation from the point of contact. She listened and then she cried, because she was so sickened and beaten and shocked that there was nothing else she could do to express it all. Her cries were long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.

And then she sat staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap.

‘I
told
you not to come,’ he said querulously. ‘I
begged
you to stay in Caldwell, didn’t I?’ He glanced at her as though expecting an affirmation. ‘But
no.
No, you had to be the girl detective! Well this is what happens to girl detectives.’ His eyes returned to the highway. ‘If you only
knew
what I’ve gone through since Monday,’ he clenched, remembering how the world had dropped out from under him Monday morning when Ellen had phoned – ‘Dorothy didn’t commit suicide! I’m leaving for Blue River!’ – running down to the station, barely catching her, futilely desperately trying to keep her from leaving but she stepped on to the train – ‘I’ll write you this minute! I’ll explain the whole thing!’ – leaving him standing there, watching her glide away, sweating, terrified. It made him sick just thinking about it.

Ellen said something faintly.

‘What?’

‘They’ll catch you—’

After a moment’s silence he said, ‘You know how many don’t get caught? More than fifty per cent, that’s how many. Maybe a
lot
more.’ After another moment he said, ‘How are they going to catch me? Fingerprints? – none. Witnesses? – none. Motive? – none that they know about. They won’t even think of me. The gun? I have to go over the Mississippi to get back to Caldwell; goodbye gun. This car? – two or three in the morning I leave it a couple of blocks from where I took it; they think it was some crazy high school kids. Juvenile delinquents.’ He smiled. ‘I did it last night too. I was sitting two rows behind you and Powell in the theatre and I was right around a bend in the hall when he kissed you goodnight.’ He glanced at her to see her reaction; none was visible. His gaze returned to the road and his face clouded again. ‘That letter of yours – how I sweated till it came! When I first started to read it I thought I was safe; you were looking for someone she’d met in her English class in the fall; I didn’t meet her till January, and it was in Philosophy. But then I realized who that guy you were looking for actually was – Old Argyle-Socks, my predecessor. We’d had Math together, and he’d seen me with Dorrie. I thought he might know my name. I knew that if he ever convinced you he didn’t have anything to do with Dorrie’s murder – if he ever mentioned my name to you—’

Suddenly he jammed down on the brake pedal and the car screeched to a halt. Reaching left-handed around the steering column, he shifted gears. When he stepped on the gas again, the car rolled slowly backwards. On their right the dark form of a house slid into view, low-crouching behind a broad expanse of empty parking lot. The headlights of the retreating car caught a large upright sign at the highway’s edge:
Lillie and Doane’s – The Steak Supreme
. A smaller sign hung swaying from the gallows of the larger one:
Reopening April 15th.

He shifted back into first, spun the wheel to the right, and stepped on the gas. He drove across the parking lot and pulled up at the side of the low building, leaving the motor running. He pressed the horn ring; a loud blast banged through the night. He waited a minute, then sounded the horn again. Nothing happened. No window was raised, no light went on. ‘Looks like nobody’s home,’ he said, turning off the headlights.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘please—’

In the darkness the car rolled forward, turned to the left, moved behind the house where the asphalt of the parking lot flowed into a smaller paved area. The car swung around in a wide curve, almost going off the edge of the asphalt into the dirt of a field that swept off to meet the blackness of the sky. It swung all the way around until it was facing the direction from which it had come.

He set the emergency brake and left the motor running. ‘Please—’ she said.

He looked at her. ‘You think I want to do this? You think I like the idea? We were almost engaged!’ He opened the door on his left. ‘You had to be smart—’ He stepped out on to the asphalt, keeping the gun aimed at her huddled figure. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Come out on this side.’

‘Please—’

‘Well what am I supposed to do, Ellen? I can’t let you go, can I? I asked you to go back to Caldwell without saying anything, didn’t I?’ The gun made an irritated gesture. ‘Come out.’

She pulled herself across the seat, clutching her purse. She stepped out on to the asphalt.

The gun directed her in a semicircular path until she stood with the field at her back, the gun between her and the car.

‘Please,’ she said, holding up the purse in a futile shielding gesture, ‘please—’

From the Blue River
Clarion-Ledger
; Thursday, 15 March 1951:   

An Editorial from the
Clarion-Ledger
; Thursday, April 19th, 1951:   

At the end of the school year he returned to Menasset and sat around the house in sombre depression. His mother tried to combat his sullenness and then began to reflect it. They argued, like hot coals boosting each other into flame. To get out of the house and out of himself, he reclaimed his old job at the haberdashery shop. From nine to five-thirty he stood behind a glass display counter not looking at the binding-strips of gleaming burnished copper.

One day in July he took the small grey strongbox from his closet. Unlocking it on his desk, he took out the newspaper clippings about Dorothy’s murder. He tore them into small pieces and dropped them into the waste-basket. He did the same with the clippings on Ellen and Powell. Then he took out the Kingship Copper pamphlets; he had written away for them a second time when he started to go with Ellen. As his hands gripped them, ready to tear, he smiled ruefully. Dorothy, Ellen …

It was like thinking ‘Faith, Hope …’

‘Charity’ pops into the mind to fulfil the sequence.

Dorothy, Ellen – Marion.

He smiled at himself and gripped the pamphlets again.

But he found that he couldn’t tear them. Slowly he put them down on the desk, mechanically smoothing the creases his hands had made.

He pushed the strongbox and the pamphlets to the back of the desk and sat down. He headed a sheet of paper
Marion
and divided it into two columns with a vertical line. He headed one column
Pro
; the other
Con.

There were so many things to list under
Pro
: months of conversations with Dorothy, months of conversations with Ellen; all studded with passing references to Marion; her likes, her dislikes, her opinions, her past. He knew her like a book without even having met her; lonely, bitter, living alone … A perfect set-up.

Emotion was on the
Pro
side too. Another chance. Hit a home run and the two strikes that preceded it are washed away. And three was the lucky number – third time lucky – all the childhood fairy tales with the third try and the third wish and the third suitor …

He couldn’t think of a thing to list under
Con.

That night he tore up the
Pro
and
Con
list and began another one, of Marion Kingship’s characteristics, opinions, likes, and dislikes. He made several notations and, in the weeks that followed, added regularly to the list. In every spare moment he pushed his mind back to conversations with Dorothy and Ellen; conversations in luncheonettes, between classes, while walking, while dancing; dredging words, phrases, and sentences up from the pool of his memory. Sometimes he spent entire evenings flat on his back, remembering, a small part of his mind probing the larger, less conscious part like a Geiger counter that clicked on
Marion.

As the list grew, his spirits swelled. Sometimes he would take the paper from the strongbox even when he had nothing to add – just to admire it; the keenness, the planning, the potence displayed. It was almost as good as having the clippings on Dorothy and Ellen.

‘You’re crazy,’ he told himself aloud one day, looking at the list. ‘You’re a crazy nut,’ he said affectionately. He didn’t really think that; he thought he was daring, audacious, brilliant, intrepid, and bold.

‘I’m not going back to school,’ he told his mother one day in August.

‘What?’ She stood small and thin in the doorway of his room, one hand frozen in mid-passage over her straggly grey hair.

‘I’m going to New York in a few weeks.’

‘You got to finish
school
,’ she said plaintively. He was silent. ‘What is it, you got a job in New York?’

‘I don’t but I’m going to get one. I’ve got an idea I want to work on. A – a project, sort of.’

‘But you got to finish school, Bud,’ she said hesitantly.

‘I don’t “got to” do anything!’ he snapped. There was silence. ‘If this idea flops, which I don’t think it will, I can always finish school next year.’

Her hands wiped the front of her housedress nervously. ‘Bud, you’re past twenty-five. You got to – have to finish school and get yourself started some place. You can’t keep—’

‘Look, will you just let me live my own life?’

She stared at him. ‘That’s what your father used to give me,’ she said quietly, and went away.

He stood by his desk for a few moments, hearing the angry clanking of cutlery in the kitchen sink. He picked up a magazine and looked at it, pretending he didn’t care.

A few minutes later he went into the kitchen. His mother was at the sink, her back towards him. ‘Mom,’ he said pleadingly, ‘you know I’m as anxious as you are to see myself get some place.’ She didn’t turn around. ‘You know I wouldn’t quit school if this idea wasn’t something important.’ He went over and sat down at the table, facing her back. ‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll finish school next year. I
promise
I will, Mom.’

Reluctantly, she turned. ‘What kind of idea is it?’ she asked slowly. ‘An invention?’

‘No. I can’t tell you,’ he said regretfully. ‘It’s only in the – the planning stage. I’m sorry—’

She sighed and wiped her hands on a towel. ‘Can’t it wait till next year? When you’d be through with school?’

‘Next year might be too late, Mom.’

She put down the towel. ‘Well I wish you could tell me what it is.’

‘I’m sorry, Mom. I wish I could too. But it’s one of those things that you just can’t explain.’

She went around behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders. She stood there for a moment, looking down at his anxiously upturned face. ‘Well,’ she said, pressing his shoulders, ‘I guess it must be a
good
idea.’

He smiled up at her happily.