Into The Night (20 page)

"Who is that?" Madeline asked, open-mouthed.

"Everyone who comes in here asks that," the girl smiled. Then she added, "Can't you guess? It took real love to create a piece of work like that, not just skill with a camera. It's his wife."

Are those the same eyes that closed against my heart? Madeline wondered. Is that the face I saw die out? The eyes, she thought now that she knew, seemed to have a knowledge of approaching death, seemed to be looking at it from a great distance, waiting, waiting...

"It could easily take a prize in any show," the girl was saying, "but he won't exhibit it. I've heard people offer to buy it, and he just gives them a look--"

"Is that what she was like?" asked Madeline. Meaning, in full life, before she was struck down.

"I never saw her," the girl said.

"Wasn't it made right here, at the studio?"

"He must have done it at home. Or somewhere else. He brought it in one day. They're separated now, you know."

"Oh," said Madeline.

"Or so I understand." Then she confided, with that typical feminine freemasonry that springs up whenever affairs of the heart are under discussion. "I came to work one morning and I found him asleep in the chair here. That one there, facing it. He'd never gone home all night. Thousands of cigarette butts. A small empty bottle. He had the shade of the lamp tilted so that it shone directly on it. All night long..."

She shook her head compassionately.

"I pretended I didn't notice anything. Which was a hard thing to do. He never did it again, though. Did it at home, I suppose."

Madeline looked down pensively.

The girl said, "He'll be ready for you any minute now. Would you like to freshen up before you go in? There's a little powder room behind that door there. You'll find everything you need in there, I think."

Madeline got up and went in.

There was a long dressing table, backed by a mirror of matching length. A number of bottles on it, hair glosses and the like.

She took off her watch and put it down on the table. Then she combed her hair over a little. Then she pulled two or three Kleenex tissues out of their slotted mirrored holder and put them down over the watch. She got up and went toward the door. She glanced back, and you could still partly see the watch. She went back and rearranged the tissues so that they hid it more fully, covered it completely over. Then she stepped out.

She had the last appointment of the day. No one else would be coming in here. Only the girl, to lock up and put out the lights. Madeline hoped she was honest. At any rate, she already had a watch of her own, Madeline had noticed it on her, so there was that much of a safeguard.

"You can go right in," the girl said. The door to the studio proper was standing open now.

Madeline stepped in past it, and there was a man in there standing looking at her.

For the first time they saw one another. For the first time their eyes met and looked at one another. For the first time in the world. The killer and the one to be killed.

She only received an overall impression, a summary of him, at first. Two-dimensional, without depth. There was no time for anything else, her senses were too preoccupied with the physical immediacy of the meeting to be able to stand aside and study him in detail. Comely of face, unhandsome but agreeable. Wellproportioned bone structure, no slackness of jaw or anything like that, but otherwise undistinguished. Hair a very light brown, but still not quite blond, with a crisp crinkle to it. Eyebrows a little darker, eyes darker still. Intelligence in them, also some sensitivity. About five-ten, not heavily built but symmetrical, on the spare side. And when he spoke, in another moment, a light voice, but not a high one, no localized dialect overtones, just basic well-bred eastern-seaboard United States.

To sum up: someone you could quite easily have taken to--if you didn't have to kill him.

"You're very pretty, Miss Chalmers," was his opening remark.

It was said with professional objectivity, not personal interest, that much she could tell.

"You probably know it already," he added, "so there's no sense in my telling you."

"One knows," she said quite simply. "If not, one's a fool. Or a liar."

He gave her a quick look, as though he liked that. Found it refreshing.

"Is that your wife out there?" she asked. "She's very beautiful too."

"The girl already told you who it was," he said quietly.

She accepted the dig unruffledly. "I wanted to make sure."

He answered her previous remark. "Yes, she is," he agreed. "Starr is very beautiful."

Now at last, she told herself exultantly, and clenched her fist in mental imagery and brought it down. Now at long, long final last. No more mistakes, no more false alarms. No more noisy baseball fans, no more pathetic war derelicts. The right one at last. The man that Starr had married, here before her.

"I think I'd like to have you sit here," he said, shifting a shellbacked chair. "I'm just going to take the face and throat."

He moved around her, shifting and adjusting various screens and reflectors, every move a sure one, knowing just what he wanted to do.

"Just relax. You can cross your legs if you want to. I want to make a few preliminary tests with the lights first."

"It's my hands that I don't know what to do with," she admitted.

"Do anything you want with them. They won't be in the picture. Here. Here's something that I sometimes use." He thrust a common ordinary lead pencil into her hand. "Do anything with it. Fiddle with it. Just so long as it keeps your hands from becoming clenched and tight. That can have an effect on the shoulder line and even the neck, sometimes."

He turned on something, and the reflectors threw a dazzling light all over her, bright as magnesium.

"Try not to blink. You'll get used to it in a moment."

He toned it down a little.

He knows his job, inside and out, she thought.

"I'm glad to see you don't wear jewelry," he said. "Jewelry distracts, takes the eye away from the face, which should be the focus of the picture."

She thought of the watch. She hoped the girl didn't go into the powder room too soon, before she managed to get out of the studio.

"Turn a little bit this way. Do you see that seam running up and down between the two walls over there? Keep your eyes on that. No, that's too blank. Think of something a little puzzling. Can you? A little baffling, mystifying."

"Puzzling?"

"I can get a very nice eyebrow line, a certain little lift to the brows, that way, that I can't get in any other way. I had a sitter in here one day who told me she was very poor at arithmetic. I had her do the higher multiplication tables, you know, times-thirteen, times-fourteen, and I got the most beautiful quirk into her eyebrows. It made her whole face. Most brows are too straight."

She thought: It's hard to kill a man whom you don't hate. Just hate by proxy.

"That was a remarkable expression!" he exclaimed with satisfaction. "One of the most remarkable I've ever seen!"

"When are you going to take me?" she asked.

"I just did," he said blandly. "That expression was too good to pass up. You're going to have quite a photograph on your hands."

He took her several times more, with various changes of angle, and then it was over.

"Thank you," she said. She held out her hand, more to test his grip than anything else.

His grip was sincere and warm and firm.

The grip of an honest, straightforward man.

The first phone call practically raced her back to the hotel. It was sounding as she keyed the door open. She made no move to go over and answer it; instead she carefully reclosed the door, took off her hat, settled herself comfortably in a corner of the sofa, all as obliviously as though she were stone-deaf and didn't hear it. It finally rang itself out.

It rang again about a quarter hour later. They must have waited that long to give her additional time to get home. Again she didn't go near it. She wanted him out of the studio before she answered. Again it dwindled down, like a spent alarm clock.

The third time it rang sooner, inside of about ten minutes. This time she went over to it and answered. It was now close to six. He couldn't possibly still be at the studio this late, watch or no watch.

"Miss Chalmers?" It was his voice, not the girl's.

"Yes?" she said as guilelessly as though she didn't know who it was.

"This is Mr. Herrick, the photographer. Are you by any chance missing a watch?"

"Yes, I am," she lied superbly. "I only just now noticed it was gone as I came in the door. I thought I might have lost it in the taxi--"

"We found one in the dressing room," he said. "No offense, but could I ask you to describe it, please?"

"It's platinum, round, with a circle of diamonds around the dial. It's a Patek Philippe. It's mounted on a twisted black cord instead of the usual strap or band."

"That's the one," he said. "I have it. Miss Stevens found it right after you'd left."

"Oh, bless your heart!" she exclaimed fervently. "What a relief. I don't know how to thank you. My father gave it to me as a birthday gift." Which latter part was true, anyway.

"I have it with me right now," he said. Then explained, "I'm downstairs in the hotel. Shall I turn it over to the desk?"

"No, no," she cried, in such alarm that he must have taken it to be an excess of gratitude. "Please come up, if only for a moment. You must let me thank you personally."

"Fine." He hung up.

She had him on her own territory now. The gambit had worked beautifully, without a hitch, from beginning to end.

It was still light outside the windows, but she turned on a certain lamp, so that if he sat within its radius as she proposed to arrange that he do, the light would fall on his face and she could watch his expression more closely. He was not the only expert in lighting effects, she said to herself arrogantly. Only, his were created for appeal, hers for espionage.

He knocked, she opened the door, and he came in.

He handed her the watch, and she did a thorough acting job over it, uttering little cries, even holding it pressed for a moment to her heart. Then she put it back on her wrist.

"I don't know how I came to do that."

"We don't have a safe at the studio, don't keep anything of too much value down there, and I didn't want to just leave it in a desk drawer overnight. I decided to take it home with me and call you in the morning, but I knew you might worry about it all night, so I took a chance and had the taxi stop off here first on the way home."

"Sit down and visit." She guided him with just a shadow of a gesture to exactly where she had wanted to have him sit. "Let me buy you a drink, to show my appreciation."

"Please don't trouble," he demurred.

But she was already at the phone. "Don't deny me that privilege, I'll feel hurt. What would you like to have?"

"Scotch and plain water."

"What Scotch?"

"Chivas Regal."

"Room service," she said. And then concluded with, "A double and a single."

"I have a customer who lives in this building," he remarked when she'd rejoined him.

"I know her," she said.

They both laughed a little in common understanding, but good-naturedly, not unkindly, without having to say anything further.

"I'm not keeping you from anything, am I?" she asked. "Your wife isn't expecting you, is she?"

"We're not together anymore," he said expressionlessly.

"I'm sorry."

"That makes two of us," he said wryly.

It wasn't news to her, of course, but now that she'd worked it so that he'd seemed to tell her himself, they could go on from there without any further hindrance.

Nothing memorable was said, but then it was too early in the game for that, anyway.

She learned little things about him, tiny facets, nothing more. He drank slowly, and he left an inch of liquor in the glass. That meant he didn't qualify as a heavy drinker nor even as a moderate one, he qualified as a light sociability drinker. He was not a nervous nor a restless type of person. At one point what must have been an oversized truck backfired with a thunderous detonation immediately outside the window somewhere. She jarred an inch above her seat in recoil. He never moved at all, just gave her a humorously rueful smile. Also, soon after he sat down, she noticed that he crossed his legs, the left one over the right. At the very end, when they were both ready to get up and go, they were still that way, the left one over the right. He was placid, restful to have around.

She watched the play of his hands a great deal. They were sensitive, dexterous hands, good for the work he did. The nails were cut square across the top. A home job, obviously; he wasn't one of these male popinjays that go in for manicures. But they were faultlessly clean. She could detect no cruelty or meanness in his hands. And yet could one be sure? They were only hands, no matter what was said, and not the mind that ruled them. She wondered if they'd ever clenched and struck a blow in anger and in hate at Starr.

He still wore Starr's gold wedding ring, one of the pair they must have exchanged.

Somehow she knew then, though she could not have told why, that no, he'd never struck a blow in anger or in hate at Starr.

He seemed to feel comfortable with her, made no drastic attempt to get up and go. She purposely procrastinated, prolonged the interlude until all the light outside had faded away and it was almost too late for him to go anywhere else for his dinner.

Then craftily she went inside to the phone and asked for two menus to be sent up, without letting him near her.

"What're you doing?" he said to her, when the waiter showed up at the door.

"I'm ordering dinner for us," she said sleekly.

He half rose to his feet in protest, but she could see that he was flattered. "I can't let you do that--!" And then, "Well, only if you'll let me buy it--"

"I live here," she said firmly. "The next one will be your buy."

In the end they compromised, went downstairs and sat at the corner table she usually occupied, and she signed the tab and he paid the tip.