Scott O’Hara

Mad About Murder

As she fell, she had reached out with her left hand and had grabbed the sleasy green mesh curtain. The bathroom was small. She lay on her back, her scuffed feet spread, almost under the sink. Her head was cocked at what he felt was a ridiculous angle, because the wall was in the way and she had doubtless struck it as she fell.

He stood in the doorway, his feet braced as though against the tipping of a world, and it was indeed his world which tipped and threatened to project him out into an unknown darkness.

The small bathroom had a fearsome clarity about it. Six inches from her right hand, the green plastic handle of a trick toothbrush with small tilted head gleamed against the cheap marble finish of the black linoleum. By some odd chance, the toothbrush had fallen parallel to the long line of her robed body and the head was slanted at the same abrupt angle as hers.

Small sounds intruded. The gurgle of the thin stream of water running down the sink drain, the metronome drip of the damp end of the shower curtain, a distant car squealing its way around too sharp a corner, a far-off and misty bellow of a tug in the harbor basin. Night sounds.

The room was hot and misty with the cooling steam of the shower she had taken, and thick with the scent of her, the personal fragrance running like a crimson thread through the headier fabric of perfume and creams and lotions. Mixed with other scents was the indefineable odor of death. Death was written in the blued contortion of face and the slit-tilt of eyes, feral, with dry glitter.

He wondered why he should feel nothing.

He had never thought of her as a big woman, though she had been firm in his arms. But a flaccid thickness of arm poked through the pulled-up sleeves, a greenish pallor of skin tones — and the magic was gone.

The magic had been tied to life and vitality. To see her walk away from him had twisted his emotions. He was poorly coordinated, a man who often stumbled — and her compact certainty of movement had made him feel as though they were of two different species.

It had started a year before. Each day he had eaten in the same restaurant at noon. And one day, paying his check, he had glanced at her. She was behind the cage, sitting on the tall stool. Their eyes had met. Always she had pushed buttons and his change had clattered down a metal chute. Then she began to take his change, reach through the grill and put the change in his hand.

There had been a satisfaction in the mild perfection of his life, Ellen, the suburban house, the clean, sweet, small-animal smell of the children. But a dark girl with a wide mouth and mockery in her eyes bad turned his home life to dusty unreality, to empty routine.

When courage was high he had asked to see her after work. Later, it had been adviseable to phone Ellen, to explain why it was necessary to stay late in town. Ellen had proved unexpectedly understanding about the extra work that the office was demanding without the offer of extra pay.

The times of staying in the city grew more frequent. Ellen and the office faded back into the same dusty limbo of unreality, while the dark girl became the only reality. The facts about her were simple. Her name was Bertha Lewis. She came from Scranton. Her voice was low-pitched and slightly hoarse, her conversation limited to banalities and clinches. Objectively, he knew that she was rather stupid. Yet he could not account for the aura around her, the heady sense of mystery, the eyes that mocked while she spoke of inconsequential things.

He knew that she found him mildly amusing and that he was of no particular consequence to her. His attempts to analyze her and himself and their feeling for each other only made her restless and irritable. Than she would say: “Give the big words a rest, Jack.”

Then there was a date and she did not appear. He waited for four hours in the dark doorway. The next noon he found a chance to go near her when no one was about and she said in a husky whisper:

“I decided you bore me, Jack, because you talk too much — so we break it off right here.”

Jack Forrester went meekly home. He tried to cure himself of her as though she had been a form of illness. But she was in the back of his mind with such clarity, such a remembrance of every move and gesture that it was like a melody which refuses to leave the mind. A symphonic sweep of music that he heard at all hours of the day and in the silent moments of the night while Ellen slept. He had to be with her again to speak to her, to see if merely by being with her he could make an end to his memory of her.

In the darkness he had waited. A man he did not know had at last left her, a stout man who had braced himself on the sidewalk where the streetlight made his shadow long, a man who had lit a cigarette with an authoritative snap of a silver lighter and who had walked down toward the taxi stand on the corner, his heels smacking against the sidewalk with firm confidence, the end of the cigarette making pink arcs as he swung a heavy arm.

He had gone up, then. A thread of light had showed under her door and he had heard the muted roar of her shower. When it had ceased, he’d tapped and called to her. She had come close to the door and had said: “Forget something, Ed?”

“Bertha, it isn’t Ed.”

Disgust Weariness. “Oh! You.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Go away. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Please, Bertha.” Voice low because of those nearby who slept. Voice low because there was shame in pleading.

“Go away or I phone a cop.”

He had been silent then, had heard her go back to the bathroom. He had heard the tiny domestic sound as she begun to brush her teeth, the small rasp altering in pitch as she had cupped her mouth around the brush in various positions.

Fury had been acid in his throat. He had thrust himself at the door, barely conscious of the rasp as the lock tore out of the wood, as the knob swung around and thudded against the plaster…

The music of her had been a high symphonic chorus, but now she was dead and the music had turned to a sordid rhythm beat of an off-key piano playing an unimaginative blues, and then had faded away until there was no music at all.

Suddenly, there was a faint sound from her and he felt sweat on his body. Then he realized that some compression of gases within her had forced a passage through her closed throat.

The sound of the running water annoyed him. He reached over to turn it off, pausing as his fingers reached the faucet, drawing his hand back suddenly. She had wiped the mist from the mirror with one swipe of a towel, and the space she had cleared was partially misted over.

He turned and went into the other room, sitting for a long time on the bed with his face in his hands. When he looked up he could see her right arm and hand, her dark hair and the blue-white of her temple. The sound of the running water was a distant whisper.

Then he moved slowly and with great weariness. It was difficult to force his mind back onto a logical basis. The investigation would be alarmingly simple: Yeah, there was a thin fella who hung around. Eats here every noon, or used to. Works upstairs somewhere in the building. Sure, I heard ’em spatting a while back, then he stopped eating here. Sure, I could identify him.

You say, Mrs. Forrester that your husband phoned and said he’d stay in town. Where?

Forrester, give us an account of your movements on the night of the murder.

He inspected the door. The little metal box into which the bolt fitted had been torn free. Using knife blade as a screwdriver, breaking off wooden matches in the torn holes, he replaced the metal part. She had not used the ordinary lock because any skeleton key would fit it.

He gently closed the door, not touching the knob. Stepping quietly, as though afraid he would disturb her, he went to the bathroom, turned off the water by pressing against the handle with his thumbnail. He did not look down at her.

Using a bit of tissue, he turned off the light. Retreating through the apartment he turned off the bedroom lights, the small lamp just inside the apartment door. He turned the knob by grasping the shank of it with the same bit of tissue, closed it gently, went down the stairs and out onto the street, keeping well in the shadows.

The risk of talking to cab drivers was too great He angled across the street. When he reached the corner, he saw that the stand was deserted. It was twenty after three. The sleeping city surrounded him. The wide sidewalks were empty.

A cruising prowl car turned onto the same street two blocks away. He turned, too quickly, and began to walk away from it. He heard it slow as it came up to him. It would be too indicative not to turn and look at it. He turned, hoping the hat brim would shade his face from the street light overhead. The car speeded up then, and he saw for a fleeting instant the glint of light on a thick jaw.

He walked fifteen blocks to the railroad station, sat for a time in the waiting room. He dozed off, awakened with a start. At six-thirty he bought a razor, blades, toothbrush, toothpaste, went to the men’s room and shut himself in a cubicle. He had breakfast and arrived early at the office.

During the weary morning he did not permit himself to think of how slim his single chance was, how incredibly slim. He was banking on a certain bravado in the stance of the man who had come from Bertha’s apartment, a certain air of being willing to take a calculated risk.

At ten of twelve, he took the elevator down to the lobby and went into the restaurant. He selected a table from which he could observe both entrances. It might even be that the man had met her in some other way, in some other place. There was a new girl behind the grill. A sallow, blonde girl with a petulant mouth and a soiled pink shoulderstrap showing.

The pimpled waiter came over to his table. After he ordered, he forced himself to say:

“Where’s the other girl, the cashier?”

“Bertha?” The waiter leered and made a clicking sound with his teeth. “She quit us ten days ago. Said she had prospects.”

He forced a wide grin. “Wealthy boy friend?”

“I wouldn’t know. She’s a smart dish but too rough for me.”

The world seemed full of stocky men who carried themselves confidently. Forrester watched them come in twos and threes, florid, assured, demanding service, talking shop. He knew then that he had failed, that he had not seen enough of the man who had come out of the apartment. There was too little to go on. The chances were too slim.

He finished his lunch, ordered more coffee. The waiter, anxious to get rid of him so that the table could be filled again, glared at him. Forrester put two dollars on the table and said: “I’m waiting for somebody.”

The waiter picked up the money. “Certainly, sir. Take your time.”

A man who sat alone finished his meal, went up and paid. Like so many others he was stocky, heavy, confident. He kidded the girl behind the grill, was rewarded with a weak smile. He picked up his change, dropped it into his pocket.

Then he put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, clicked the silver lighter loudly, walked off with a heavy thump of heels on the tile floor, the cigarette in his right hand swinging in short arcs.

When Forrester reached the sidewalk, the man was forty feet ahead of him. The noon crowd was so thick that Forrester could risk getting within ten feet of the man. He went two blocks south, turned and went into an office building. Forrester stood next to him in the elevator. The man had a squarish face, a crisp graying mustache, a tweed topcoat and a youthful snap-brim felt hat. He had weather wrinkles at the corners of small, shrewd eyes.

The elevator was jammed and several people got off with the stout man at the eleventh floor. Forrester got off too, walked over to the floor directory, saw the man go down the wide hall, turn into an open door.

Forrester followed slowly. When he was opposite the doorway, he could see that the carefully lettered sign on the opaque glass of the door said, “Kimberly and Hannon.” In the lower right corner, in smaller letters, it said: “Laboratory Equipment.”

The walnut desk of the receptionist faced the door. She was a thin, dark girl, wearing harlequin glasses and typing on an electric typewriter.

As he came in, she glanced up, swept off the heavy glasses and, squinting faintly said: “Good afternoon?”

He smiled. “I happened to be in the building and I saw the man who just came in here. I wondered if it was an old friend of mine from years back. Henry Jorgenson.”

“We have no one by that name in the offices. Mr. E. Mills Hannon just came back from lunch.”

“Heavy man? Gray hair?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Would he be Ed Hannon?”

She frowned at the impertinence. “I believe his first name is Edward.”

Forrester caught the faint movement out of the comer of his eye. Edward Hannon stood in the doorway of an expensive looking office. He frowned and said: “You wanted to see me, young man?”

“Ah… no, sir. I just thought you were someone else and I was asking the young lady if…”

“You just rode up beside me in the elevator. I believe I noticed you at lunch. I have a feeling you followed me here. Please explain yourself.” The voice was crisp, businesslike and faintly indignant.

“Can I see you alone for a few minutes, Mr. Hannon?”

Hannon stared at him without expression. The girl put her pixie glasses back on and stopped squinting. Hannon turned on his heel, said abruptly: “Come in.”

As Forrester entered, Hannon closed the office door, crossed over to his desk, perched on one corner, pulled the lighter out of his pocket and began clicking the lid open and shut.

“What is it? Get on with it,” Hannon said.

Forrester walked over and sat in a chair near the opposite corner of the desk. It had moved faster than he had anticipated.

“It’s about Bertha Lewis,” Forrester said.

The man did not change expression. He stopped clicking the lighter and he ceased to swing his leg. For a moment he was very still. Then the two motions began again.

“Kindly tell me who you are. What is your capacity?”

“I’m… I’m just a friend of hers.”

“I’m rather afraid I don’t know the young lady.”

“Then how would you know she was young?”

Hannon flushed. “What sort of nonsense it this? You’re young. You’re a friend of hers. It’s an obvious conclusion.”

“You seemed to know her last night, Mr. Hannon.”

Hannon put the lighter back in his pocket. He stood up and Forrester saw that his fists were balled.

Forrester said softly: “At a quarter of three you came out of her apartment. You lit a cigarette and walked off toward the taxi stand.”

Hannon lost most of his autocratic air in a matter of seconds. He went behind his desk, sat on the green leather chair. He smiled. He said: “It was just instinct that made me deny knowing her. The desire to protect her — her good name, you understand. She’s a charming young lady. Very charming.”

“But she was making herself too expensive, wasn’t she, Mr. Hannon? What did she have on you?”

Hannon said, in a husky tone: “I’m afraid I don’t follow you. She didn’t have anything on me, young man.”

“You use the past tense very naturally, Mr. Hannon.”

Hannon open his mouth to speak, closed it, swallowed, and said stubbornly: “I don’t understand.”

“We’ll have to go to the police, Mr. Hannon. Right now. We’ll have to tell them, you know. Your story and mine.”

Hannon looked shocked. “Police? Has something happened to Bertha?”

“Oh, come now!” Forrester said.

Hannon narrowed his eyes. “If you killed her, young man, don’t bring me into it.”

“We’ll both go and tell our stories, Mr. Hannon. When she fell she dragged most of the stuff off the shelf over the sink. There was a lipstick there. As she died, she wrote on the floor with it. She wrote your name. That’s how I found you.”

Hannon’s firm face crumpled. He looked beyond Forrester. He said softly, “No. No. Too quick.”

“People have different tolerances, Hannon,” Forrester said.

The desk drawer rattled and the gun came out. Hannon’s mouth trembled but the round eye of the automatic didn’t waver. There was a discreet tapping at the door. Forrester saw the thick finger whiten where it touched the trigger.

“Come in,” Forrester called. He held his belly muscles rigid. He closed his eyes.

He heard the door swing open, and the sound of the small automatic was like the breaking of a very brittle stick. Yet there was no hot smash of lead at him.

The girl in the harlequin glasses screamed. Not loud.

Forrester opened his eyes. Hannon still sat erect, but his face was curiously bloated. Like an idiot child he sucked loosely on the blued barrel, the smoke curling from one comer of his mouth. He sagged slowly forward and laid his head almost gently on the desk.

The girl screamed again.

She sagged against the door frame. As Forrester reached her, she sprawled limply across the sill. Forrester stepped over her and went to the phone on her desk.

John Forrester sat in his comfortable living room and read the paper. It wasn’t until he had actually finished the account that he realized that the police to whom he had talked had made good on their promise. There was no mention of him.

The account merely said that Mr. E. Mills Hannon was being blackmailed by a Miss Bertha Lewis and that E. Mills Hannon, through his business contacts, had been able to obtain some crystals of potassium cyanide. He had inserted these crystals in the toothpaste used by Miss Lewis. She had met instantaneous death when she had used the toothpaste.

Though there was actually very little evidence to connect Mr. Hannon with the murder, he had somehow become convinced that the police had proof and had committed suicide in his office.

The police had said they could shut up the girl in the office by telling her that Forrester was from the police…

He put the paper aside and listened to the busy sounds of Ellen in the kitchen. The days of nightmare were over, and by some chance he had been unharmed. He knew that his guilt was great and that he did not deserve to come out unscathed. When he tried to remember Bertha’s face, he could see only the bluish distortion, the foam on purpled lips. He shuddered.

Ellen herded the children toward the bathroom to wash up for dinner. She came to him, sat on the hassock and held his hand in both of hers. She looked at him for long moments. He was shocked to hear her say:

“Whatever it was, it’s over, isn’t it, darling?”

He fought back the temptation to deny that anything had existed. “All over,” he murmured.

For a moment her eyes betrayed the deepness of her hurt. “Don’t ever tell me about it, darling,” she whispered. “Ever.” She walked quietly out of the room.

And John Forrester knew that he was not unscathed, that he had lost a portion of something that was very precious, and of great rarity.

Content

Scott O’Hara
Mad About Murder