Phantom lady (4 page)

"Thirty-two."

"Her age?"

"Twenty-nine."

"How long were you married?"

"Five years."

"Your occupation?"

"I'm in the brokerage business."

"About what time did you leave here tonight, Mr. Henderson?"

"Between five-thirty and six,"

"Can you come a little closer than that?"

"I can narrow it for you, yes. I can't give you the exact minute the door closed after me. Say. somewhere between quarter of and five of six. I remember I heard six o'clock striking when I'd gotten down as far as the corner, from the little chapel over in the next block."

"I see. You'd already had your dinner?"

"No." A split second went by. "No—I hadn't."

"You had your dinner out, in that case."

"'I had my dinner out."

"Did you have your dinner alone?"

"I had my dinner out, without my wife."

The one by the table had come to the end of the magazine. The one by the window had come to the end of the interest the view held for him. The one in the chair said with tactful overemphasis, as if afraid of giving offense, "Well, er, it wasn't your usual custom, though, to dine out without your wife, was it?"

"No, it wasn't."

"Well, as long as you say that, how is it you did tonight?" The detective didn't look at him, looked at the cone of ash he was knocking off his cigarette into a receptacle beside him.

"We'd arranged to take dinner out together tonight. Then at the last minute she complained of not feeling well, of having a headache, and—I went alone."

"Have words, anything like that?" This time the question was inaudible, it was so minor keyed.

Henderson said, in an equally minor key, "We had a word or two, yes. You know how it is."

"Sure." The detective seemed to understand perfectly how little domestic misunderstandings like that went. "But nothing serious, that right?"

"Nothing that would make her do anything like this, if that's what you're driving at." He stopped, asked a question in turn, with a momentarv stepping-up of alertness. "What was it. anyway? You men haven't even told me yet. What caused—?"

The outside door had opened and he broke off short. He watched uith a sort of hypnotic fascination, until the bedroom door had closed. Then he made a half start to his feet. "What do they want? Who are they? What are they going to do in there?"

The one in the chair had come over and put his hand to

his shoulder so that he sat down again; without, however, any undue pressure being exerted. It was more like a gesture of condolence.

The one who had been by the window, looked over, mentioned. "A little nervous, aren't you, Mr. Henderson?"

A sort of instinctive, natural dignity, to be found in all human beings, came to Henderson's aid. "How should I be—at ease, self-possessed?" he answered with rebuking bitterness. "I've just come home and found my wife dead in the house."

He'd made that point. The interlocutor by the window noticeably had nothing further to say on that score.

The bedroom door had opened again. There was awkward, commingled motion in it. Henderson's eyes dilated, then slowly coursed the short distance from door to arched opening leading out into the foyer. This time he gained his feet fully in a spasmodic jolt. "No, not like that! Look what they're doing! Like a sack of potatoes— And all her lovely hair along the floor—she was so careful of it—!"

Hands riveted to him, holding him there. The outer door closed muffledly. A little sachet came drifting out of the empt\' bedroom, seeming to whisper. "Remember? Remember when I was your love? Remember?"

This time he sank down suddenly, buried his face within his two gouging, kneading hands. You could hear his breath. The tempo was all shot to pieces. He said to them in helpless surprise, after his hands had dropped again, "I thought guvs didn't cry—and now I just have."

The one who had been in the chair before passed him a cigarette, and even lit it for him. His eyes looked bright, Henderson's, in the shine of the match.

Whether it was that that had interrupted it. or it had died out of its own accord for lack of anything further to feed on. the questioning didn't resume. When they resumed talking again, it was pointless, inane, almost as though they were talking just to kill time, for the sake of having something to say.

"You're a very neat dresser, Mr. Henderson." the one in the chair observed at random.

Henderson gave him a half-disgusted look, didn't answer.

"It's great the way everything you've got on goes together."

"That's an art in itself," the former magazine reader chimed in.

"Socks, and shirt, and pocket handkerchief—"

"All but the tie," the one by the window objected.

"Why do you have to discuss anything like that at a time like this?" Henderson protested wearily.

"It should be blue, shouldn't it? Everything else is blue. It knocks your whole get-up silly. I'm not a fashion plate, but y'know just looking at it does something to me—" And then he went on innocently, "How'd you happen to slip up on an item as important as the tie, when you went to all the trouble of matching everything else up? Haven't you got a blue tie?"

Henderson protested almost pleadingly. "What're you trying to do to me? Can't you see I can't talk about trifles like—"

He asked the question again, as tonelessly as before. "Haven't you got a blue tie, Mr. Henderson?"

Henderson ran his hand up through his hair. "Are you trying to drive me out of my mind?" He said it very quietly, as though this small talk was almost unendurable. "Yes, I have a blue tie. Inside, on my tie rack, I think."

"Then how'd you come to skip it when you were putting on an outfit like this? It cries out for it." The detective gestured disarmingly. "Unless, of course, you did have it on to begin with, changed your mind at the last minute, whipped it off", and put on the one you're wearing instead." • Henderson said, "What's the difference? Why do you keep this up?" His voice went up a note. "My wife is dead. I'm all cracked up inside. What's the difference what color tie I did or didn't put on?"

It went on, as relentlessly as drops of water falling one by one upon the head. "Are you sure you didn't have it on originally, then change your mind—?"

His voice was smothered. "Yes, I'm sure. It's hanging from my tie rack in there."

The detective said guilelessly, "No, it isn't hanging from your tie rack. That's why I'm asking. You know those little vertical notches running down your tie rack, like a fish's backbone? We found the one it belongs on, the one you usually kept it strung through, because that was the only vacant one on the whole gadget. And that was the lowest one of all, in other words all the ties on the upper ones overlapped it as they hung down straight. So you see. it was removed from under all the other ties, which means you must have gone there and selected it originally, not just pulled it off at random from the top. Now what bothers me is why, if you went to all the trouble of lifting up all your other ties and selecting that one from underneath, and withdrawing it from the rack, you then changed your mind and went back to the one you'd already been wearing all dav at business, and which didn't go with your after dark outfit."

Henderson hit himself smartly at the ridge of the forehead with the heel of one hand. He sprang up. '"I can't stand this!" he muttered. "I can't stand any more of it. I tell you! Come out with what you're doing it for, or else stop it! If it's not on the tie rack, then where is it? I haven't got it on! Where is it? You tell me, if you know! Whats the difference where it is, anyway?"

"A great deal of difference, Mr. Henderson."

There was a long wait after that; so long that he started to get pale even before it had come to an end.

"It was knotted tight around your wife's neck. So tight it killed her. So tight it will have to be cut loose with a knife to get it off."

The Hundred and Forty-Ninth Day Before the Execution

DAYBREAK

A thousand questions later, the early light of day peering in the windows made the room look different, somehow, although everything in it was the same, including the people. It looked like a room in which an all-night party had taken place. Cigarette ends spilling over in every possible container, and many that weren't intended as such. The cobalt blue lamp was still there, looking strange in the dawn with its halo of faded electric light. The photographs were still there: hers a He now, a picture of someone that no longer existed.

They all looked and acted like men suffering from a hangover. They had their coats and vests off, and their shirt collars open. One of them was in the bathroom, freshening up at the cold water tap. You could hear him snorting through the open door. The other two kept smoking and moving restlessly around. Only Henderson was sitting quiet. He was still sitting on the same sofa he'd been on all night. He felt as though he'd spent all his life on it, had never known what it was to be anywhere but in this one room.

The one in the bathroom, his name was Burgess, came to the door. He was pressing drops of excess water out of his hair, as though he'd ducked his whole head in the wash basin. "Where're all your towels?" he asked Henderson, with odd sounding commonplaceness.

"I was never able to find one on the rack myself," the latter admitted ruefully. "She— I'd always be given one

when I asked for it, but I don't know to this day just where they're kept."

The detective looked around helplessly, dripping all over the doorsill. "D'you mind if I use the edge of the shower curtain?" he asked.

"I don't mind," Henderson said with a sort of touching wistfulness.

It began again. It always began again just when it seemed to have finally stopped for good.

"It wasn't just about two theater tickets. Why do you keep trying to make us believe it was that?"

He looked up at the wrong one first. He was still used to the parliamentary system of being looked at when spoken to. It had come from the one who wasn't looking at him.

"Because it was that. What should I say it was about, if that's all it was about? Didn't you ever hear of two people having words about a pair of theater tickets? It can happen, you know."

The other one said, "Come on, Henderson, quit stalling. Who is she?"

"Who is who?"

"Oh, don't start that again," his questioner said disgustedly. "That takes us back an hour and a half or two hours, to where we were about four this morning. Who is she?"

Henderson dug wearied fingers through his hair, let his head droop over in futility.

Burgess came out of the bathroom, tucking his shirt in. He took his wristwatch out of his pocket, strapped it on. He scanned it idly, then he drifted aimlessly out into the foyer. He must have picked up the house phone. His voice came back. "All right now, Tierney." Nobody paid any attention, least of all Henderson. He was half asleep there with his eyes open, staring down at the carpet.

Burgess sauntered in again, moved around after that as if he didn't know what to do with himself. Finally he ended up at the window. He adjusted the shade a little, to get more light in. There was a bird on the sill outside. It quirked

its head at him knowingly. He said, "C'mere a minute, Henderson. What kind of a bird is this, anyway?" And then when Henderson didn't move the first time, "C'mere. Hurry up, before he goes away." As though that were the most important thing in the world.

Henderson got up, and went over and stood beside him, and thus his back was to the room. "Sparrow," he said briefly. He gave him a look as if to say: That wasn't what you wanted to know.

"That's what I figured it was," Burgess said. And then, to keep him looking forward, "Pretty decent view you got from here."

"You can have it, bird and all," Henderson said bitterly.

There was a noticeable lull. All questioning had stopped.

Henderson turned away, then stopped where he was. There was a girl sitting there on the sofa, in the exact place where he'd just been himself until now. There hadn't been a sound to mark her arrival. Not the creak of a door hinge, not the rustle of a garment.

The way the eyes of the three men dug into his face, all the skin should have peeled off it. He got a grip on it from the inside, held it steady. It felt a little stiff, like cardboard, but he saw to it that it didn't move.

She looked at him, and he at her. She was pretty. She was the Anglo-Saxon type, more so even than the Anglo-Saxons themselves are any more. Blue-eyed, and with her taffy colored hair uncurled and brushed straight across her forehead in a clean looking sweep. The part was as distinct as a man's. She had a tan camel's hair coat drawn over her shoulders, with the sleeves left empty. She was hatless, but was clutching a handbag. She was young, at that stage when they still believe in love and men. Or maybe she always would, was of an idealistic temperament. You could read it in the way she looked at him. There was practically incense burning in her eyes.

He moistened his lips slightly, nodded barely perceptibly, as to a distant acquaintance whose name he could not re-

call, nor where they had met, but whom he didn't want to slight.

He seemed to have no further interest in her after that.

Burgess must have made some esoteric sign in the background. All of a sudden they were alone together, there was no one else in the room with them any more.

He tried to motion with his hand, but it was too late. The camel's hair coat was already propped up empty in the corner of the sofa, without her inside it. Then it slowly wavered and collapsed into a huddle. She had flung herself against him like some sort of a projectile.

He tried to get out of the way, side-step. "Don't. Be careful. That's just what they want. They're probably listening to every word—"

*T have nothing to be afraid of." She took him by the arms and shook him slightly. "Have you? Have you? You've got to answer me!"

"For six hours I've been fencing to keep your name out of it. How did they come to drag you into it? How did they hear of you?" He smacked himself heavily on the shoulder. "Damn it, I would have given my right arm up to here to keep you out!"