The Lethal Sex

by Christianna Brand

  “Is that you, Voss? Is something wrong? Why aren’t you at the office?” Myrtle’s sister sounded flurried. But then she always did.

  She always interrupted, too. He had barely begun to explain about his headache when she broke in. “But, Voss, what I called about—what’s happened to Myrtle? I thought she was going to get an early start. I’ve been expecting her for hours.”

  “You mean she’s not there yet?” He paused, just long enough. “But I don’t understand it. She left here before six—”

  “Before six! But it’s ten-thirty now, and it’s only a three-hour drive—at the very most!”

  “I know,” he said, aware that the slight edge of irritation in his voice was a convincing touch: worry often made people snappish. “She certainly should be there by now. I don’t understand it. I’d better—What had I better do? I can check with—’’

  “Now keep calm. There must be some simple explanation.”

  “I don’t know what,” he said bleakly. “Thank God you called me. I’ll get in touch with Frank Dallas right away. He’ll know what to do. In the meantime, if you hear anything—”

  “I will. Of course I’ll call you.” Her voice quavered.

  This was according to schedule. He had expected the call from Myrtle’s sister; the only change was that his next move—to report his problem to good old Frank—must now be delayed until Pepper was dead and at the bottom of the gorge.

  Pepper strolled in, pausing at the doorway to yawn luxuriously and stretch each leg in turn. The sight of him chilled Voss; he had a moment’s sharp, appalling view not only of his own peril but of his own irresponsibility in the face of it. How could he have let so much of the morning slip by in weak hesitation? What kind of tricks was his mind playing on him, that he could draw an easy breath with Pepper still here to blow his story to smithereens?

  It’s Pepper or me, he thought. Life or death. Dog eat dog.

  In a frenzy now that time was so short, he rushed to the sideboard in the dining room and snatched the carving knife from the drawer. Pepper capered at his heels, making little jumps toward his knee. How easy it would be to grab him by his muzzle, force his head back, and, quickly, with one stroke of the knife . . .

  Only not in here. In the kitchen. Tiles, instead of rush matting.

  But at that moment it came—the phone call that exploded what was left of his original carefully planned schedule. It was Frank, and his voice was even heartier than usual, in a transparent effort to hide his concern. “Look, Voss, I just had a long-distance call from Myrtle’s sister. Seems Myrtle hasn’t shown up yet...”

  Damn the woman, damn her! But damn himself, too, for not foreseeing that she would jump the gun and call Frank herself, instead of leaving it to him. He made a desperate snatch to salvage what little he could. “I know. I’ve been trying to get you, but your line was busy.”

  “Now don’t get in a sweat, Voss. Like I told her sister, there are any number of simple explanations. Pepper might have gotten carsick. He does sometimes, you know. I’ll get right on it and call you the minute we’ve found out.”

  Abandon the idea of getting Pepper and the traveling case out to the gorge. Scrap it—there was not time. There was just time, now, to kill him, hide his body and the case temporarily, and hope that his absence in the wreckage might at first be overlooked. Then later ...

  It came to him then—the best way, the obvious method that he should have thought of right away. He could put Pepper to sleep, the way a veterinary would. Giddy with relief, Voss hurried into the bathroom and flung open the door of the medicine chest. Both he and Myrtle had prescriptions for sleeping pills. A handful of these...

  There was one lonesome capsule rattling around in his own prescription bottle. Myrtle had evidently packed hers. They were nowhere to be found. It was hopeless, but he could not bring himself to stop searching. Not until the phone rang.

  This time Frank’s voice, drained of its usual heartiness, was all hushed gravity. “Voss, I’m afraid you’ve got to prepare yourself for some bad news... There’s been an accident, a bad one... I’ll be with you in ten minutes, old man.”

  Ten minutes, and Pepper still here to give the lie to the whole “accident” story. For his presence would surprise Frank. It would set him to wondering, set him to investigating what wouldn’t bear investigating. Pepper stood at Voss’s knee, the question, “What can I do for you, sir?” on the tip of his cordial pink tongue.

  “You can die,” whispered Voss.

  Ten minutes left—probably only nine by now. Voss cast an agonized glance around the room, with its jumble of tawdry color and design, its clutter of Myrtle’s gimcracks.

  The paperweight was right there on the table beside him. Heavy; a solid, ugly chunk of onyx that fitted suggestively in his hand. One stunning blow aimed at the brown spot between Pepper’s ears, and the rest would be easy.

  Clasping the paperweight, Voss sat down and patted his lap invitingly. “Here, Peppy,” he said.

  Pepper leaped up at once; he was used to being held and petted. Snuggling the little dog’s head in the crook of his left arm, Voss slowly raised the paperweight, poised it, focusing eye, hand, and will for the one smashing blow.

  But he could not bring himself to do it. Now, at this untimely, this fatal, moment, he felt his withered heart stir and come to life—as it should have done for Enid.

  His arm sagged, the paperweight thudded to the floor. He grabbed Pepper’s warm, sturdy body between his two hands and glared down into the trustful eyes. He did not really like the foolish, friendly creature any more than he ever had. But it was as if he were holding here, in Pepper’s compact person, an engine of life. It set up in him a responsive current, melting away the numbness, throbbing all through him in a triumphant flood of warmth.

  Yes, triumphant—although he was lost and he knew it, although he could hear the sound of Frank’s car already turning into the driveway.

  His hands tightened convulsively on Pepper, who had heard too, and was struggling to free himself. Then Voss gave a helpless laugh—or maybe it was a sob—and let go.

  Bursting with his tidings of welcome, Pepper rushed out to the veranda. After a moment Voss followed him to the screen door and waited there—waited for Frank.

  To Be Found and Read

  MIRIAM ALLEN DEFORD

  I am a man who likes to plan ahead and know what I am going to do next. This was going to be a crowded day, and I had every minute of it mapped out. At eleven I had a legal errand to do for Ed Porter up in the country. By two I had to be back in the city for my own wedding. I had just time to get both dates in.

  The road I was traveling on will, I imagine, be just another suburb before very long; but right now there were still stretches of open country left in it—not farms, but woods and brooks, and maybe back out of sight somebody’s week-end shack.

  It was in one of those stretches that I saw the old man waiting at the edge of the road, holding on to a tree so as to stand up.

  He was a shocking sight. He could just about make it. His face was bloodless, his thin white hair tousled, his eyes staring. His jaw kept wobbling up and down as he tried to call out. Not many cars were passing, that time of day; there was nothing in sight before or behind me.

  I don’t pick up hitchhikers, and certainly not on a day like this. But this old man was different. Something had to be done about him. So I stopped.

  He tried to move toward me, and clutched the tree again to keep from falling down. I got out of the car and went to him.

  “Hospital,” he gasped.

  I wasn’t going near any hospital, and I had no time to detour. But I couldn’t just leave him there. I thought it over for a minute, and then I half carried him to the car and propped him up in the back seat.

  I thought fast. If I made all possible speed and there were no traffic blocks, I’d have time to deposit him with Ed Porter and yet get to the City Hall on time. Ed would know what to do with him. I looked back after we’d g
one three or four miles.

  Only a few cars had passed me going in the opposite direction; I’d overtaken none and none had overtaken me, going in my direction. We’d reached another stretch of open country, half a mile before the junction with the highway.

  “I’ll have to take you to the city,” I said. “I haven’t time to go anywhere off the road.”

  He didn’t answer; he was leaning back and his eyes were closed.

  Something told me I’d better draw up at the side of the road. There was a thick clump of trees there, with a low, sagging wire fence hemming them in. I got out, walked back, and opened the door.

  He was dead.

  I glanced up and down the road. I was lucky—at that moment no one was in sight. But I had to act quickly.

  I couldn’t drive up to the City Hall with a corpse in my car as a wedding present to Bonnie. I couldn’t take a chance with it on the highway, with occasional stop signals and some snoopy driver in the next lane—let alone stopping by at Ed Porter’s place as I’d intended and letting him handle it. He’d understand why I was dumping the old man on him alive, but I’d be in a spot trying to explain why I was handing him a dead body to dispose of.

  I took one more look around, then lifted the old man out. He was light and easy to carry. No blood anywhere—if he’d been bleeding, it was inside of him.

  I stepped over the wire fence and went back ten feet or so inside the clump of trees. I put him down where he wouldn’t show, got back to my car, and beat it away from there.

  Not a car had passed, and I had just time now to make it to where Bonnie was waiting for me.

  But I had plenty of time for thinking on the way.

  Sometimes, to make it fancy, I told myself that there were two of me—two Dale Hardens. One was the guy who had come up the hard way, had made it somehow through college and law school, had done my army service without a blot on my record or a scratch on my skin, had a respectable office in a downtown building, and was going to marry Bonnie at last.

  The other was Ed Porter’s Man Friday.

  There had never been anybody for me but Bonnie, since our high school days. Bonnie was all I wanted, and Bonnie was the kind of person I wanted to be—maybe the kind I’d been meant to be. One thing was sure—she was never going to find out my connection with Ed Porter if I could possibly help it.

  I met Porter in the army. That’s all I’m going to say about how we got together. I got into it gradually, and by the time I realized what it was all about I was in too deep to get out. I was his lawyer, and then again I wasn’t. If he ever got into trouble, which was unlikely with his know-how and his luck, I wouldn’t be his attorney of record; he was the first one to say that, and I was glad to agree. I wouldn’t have been good enough to begin with.

  I’d never fooled myself. I’m no big brain. I just squeezed through law school and my name was next to last on the passing list in the bar examinations. My practice consisted mostly of minor damage suits and uncontested divorce cases—just about enough to keep a part-time secretary busy. Where the real money came from—the money to own a decent car, to rent and furnish the apartment in a good neighborhood for Bonnie and me to live in, to be able now to provide for Bonnie properly—all that came from Ed Porter. And where his money came from I knew very well, but I’d rather not think about it.

  What it amounted to by now was that I was Ed Porter’s combination errand boy, pay-off man, thinker-upper of smart legal twists, alibi-concocter, and front man when he didn’t want to appear himself. He depended on me to keep him out of jams, and I got my share of the loot.

  That was why I had to pick up the old man and take him with me. It was incredible that he should be there instead of where he was supposed to be. But if he could be standing by the side of the road half an hour after I’d got Gleason’s report, then anything might have happened. He might have been able to talk—he was always one to run off at the mouth, that’s why he was where he was. I couldn’t let another driver pick him up; it was sheer Porter luck that nobody had seen him before I passed by.

  Up to now I’d never done anything technically illegal, unless you count being a minor accessory. I never knew the details of any of Ed’s operations before this one, and I didn’t want to know—though naturally I had a pretty good idea of the general set-up. His associates didn’t even know me by sight, though I’d had a look at all of them.

  But now I had crossed the line, and on my own. I’m not even a good enough lawyer to know just what the charge or the penalty is for illegal disposal of a dead body, if you get caught at it. It might be only a misdemeanor, for all I know. But the investigation would turn up a few other things that would ruin me and disbar me, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it would wreck me with Bonnie.

  If I’d had time to think, I might have handled the situation differently. But I was horrified and incredulous, besides being in a tearing hurry. And this whole affair had given me a terrific jolt already. It was the first time in my tie-up with Porter that I’d been involved knowingly in murder.

  But they were not going to pin the old man’s body on me. There was no way to find out who had left him in that clump of trees—I’d made sure there was nobody in sight. Nobody but Porter and Gleason knew I was in that neighborhood at all that morning, and they wouldn’t tell. I had probably run a lot closer risks in the past and got away with them. It was only my own guilty conscience that gave me that hollow feeling in my stomach.

  I made it to the City Hall on time. I got there three minutes after Bonnie.

  We couldn’t have much of a honeymoon; I had to stay close by and in touch. I’d made reservations for two weeks at a quiet, well-run place I knew about, a hundred miles down the coast. Only Ed Porter knew where I was; he had to know, of course.

  For the first time in four years I forgot everything in the world except Bonnie.

  I had two days. Then the wire came:

  THE CAT HAS HAD NINE KITTENS.

  LOVE, EDNA.

  Edna was Ed. And if that cat had had kittens, I couldn’t waste any time. I’d taken the telegram to the john to read, so I could flush it down.

  “Oh, Dale, bad news?” Bonnie cried at sight of my face.

  “Just business. I thought I had everything arranged to leave us free for two weeks, but they’ve called up a case of mine unexpectedly. I’ll have to go up right away.”

  “Never mind, the apartment’s ready and we’ll just move in earlier. I’ll go and pack.”

  “No, no, darling, nothing like that. I’ll be back by tomorrow. I just hate to leave you here one night by yourself.”

  Bonnie’s bright face clouded. “But I want to be with you, Dale. I’ll ride up with you and we can stay at a hotel tonight. We can keep our room here.”

  I knew this sort of thing was going to come up sooner or later, only I’d hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. No telling what I was going to find; I wanted Bonnie safe and sound arid away from it. I had a hard time persuading her I’d be too busy with my client to know when we could be together for even a minute up there. If Bonnie had been the jealous type I couldn’t have managed it. But then she wouldn’t have been Bonnie.

  I won out, and I kissed her good-bye—oh, God, I thought, if it only is till tomorrow! I’d left her enough money, anyway, if anything went wrong—all this in about ten minutes after I’d got Ed’s wire.

  He never came to my office, of course. I met him where I always did.

  “The thing’s impossible!” he burst out as soon as I came in. “How could it have happened? And what do you know about it?”

  “Tell me,” I said. “I haven’t seen a paper or looked at a TV set for two days.”

  “I forgot,” he smirked. “I guess you’ve had other things on your mind. Congratulations.”

  “Never mind my private life. What’s the trouble?”

  “Here it is, then, and we’ve got to do something quick, or we’re in the soup. You know the set-up—Gleason was to do his job and contact y
ou at eleven. He did, didn’t he—or you’d have let me know.”

  “Of course he did. I paid him and saw him off to the airport.”

  “Well, if he told you he did the job, he did it. I’ve hired him before—never mind about that, it was nothing you knew about—and he knows his business. Tom Nary was due to be found in his shack with the gun in his hand and his own prints on it—no note, but an obvious suicide. You worked that out yourself.”

  I couldn’t keep him from seeing my shudder.

  “If Frank was right and old Tom was going to spill—” I began.

  “Cut the excuses. I never saw a man as squeamish as you are. If it hadn’t been necessary it wouldn’t have been done. Only—Nary wasn’t found in his shack with the gun in his hand. He was found about four miles from it, under some trees—and no gun. How the hell he got there I’ll never know!”

  I knew, but it was no time to explain.

  “Some kids hunting squirrels found him. Worst of all, it was over the county line. They’ve got a tough sheriff in that county. That wouldn’t matter if he’d escaped some way from Gleason and for some crazy reason wandered down there and dropped dead of heart failure. But when they autopsied him they found a bullet hole in his heart.”

  “That’s impossible!” I exclaimed. “If you shoot a man through the heart he’s dead.”

  “Sure. I’d have thought so too. But I’ve been checking with a doc. It’s something I don’t understand, about clogging something and then having it come loose. Seems that people have lived for hours after being hit dead-center—one or two have even recovered. What I figure, when Gleason drilled him he collapsed, and naturally Gleason thought he was dead. He ought to’ve made sure, but who could imagine anything else? He probably just put the gun in Nary’s hand and beat it before anybody heard the shot—not that there was likely to be anybody within hearing distance.” Ed snorted. “Then the old man must have come to and managed somehow to get himself off the floor and out of the house. But how he got four miles down the road is beyond me. He couldn’t have walked that far, not in his shape, and if anybody picked him up he’d have died in the car. It was moving around that must have dislodged the bullet, the doc said, and then he died of internal hemorrhage.”