A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women

by Elizabeth George

  I swerved to escape his grasp and he cursed me. Maybe I pushed him. I’m not sure—not really.

  Anyway, he slipped and fell down and down and down, and then after all that falling he was absolutely still. The bottom step was beneath his head like a pillow and the rest of his body was spreadeagled on the brick walk.

  The almost like a pet that wants to follow its master, the silver box jumped from my hand and bounced down the steps to land beside the man’s left ear.

  My brain was numb. I felt paralyzed. Then I screamed.

  Tenants from that house and the houses next door and across the alley pushed windows open and flung doors open to see what the commotion was about, and then some of them began to run toward the back yard. The policeman who was the dead man’s partner—I guess you’d call him that—ordered them to keep away.

  After a while more police came and they took the dead man’s body and drove me to the station where I was locked up.

  From the very beginning I didn’t take to that young lawyer they assigned to me. There wasn’t anything exactly that I could put my finger on. I just felt uneasy with him. His last name was Stanton. He had a first name of course, but he didn’t tell me what it was; he said he wanted me to call him Bat like all his friends did.

  He was always smiling and reassuring me when there wasn’t anything to smile or be reassured about, and he ought to have known it all along instead of filling me with false hope.

  All I could think was that I was thankful Mama and Papa and Mr. Williams were dead and that my shame wouldn’t bring shame on them.

  “It’s going to be all right,” the lawyer kept saying right up to the end, and then he claimed to be indignant when I was found guilty of resisting arrest and of manslaughter and theft or robbery—there was the biggest hullabaloo as to whether I was guilty of theft or robbery. Not that I was guilty of either, at least in this particular instance, but no one would believe me.

  You would have thought it was the lawyer being sentenced instead of me, the way he carried on. He called it a terrible miscarriage of justice and said we might as well be back in the eighteenth century when they hanged children.

  Well, that was an exaggeration, if ever there was one; nobody was being hanged and nobody was a child. That policeman had died and I had had a part in it. Maybe I had pushed him. I couldn’t be sure. In my heart I really hadn’t meant him any harm. I was just scared. But he was dead all the same. And as far as stealing went, I hadn’t stolen the box but I had stolen other things more than once.

  And then it happened. It was a miracle. All my life I’d dreamed of a nice room of my own, a comfortable place to stay. And that’s exactly what I got.

  The room was on the small side but it had everything I needed in it, even a wash basin with hot and cold running water, and the walls were freshly painted, and they let me choose whether I wanted a wing chair with a chintz slipcover or a modern Danish armchair. I even got to decide what color bedspread I preferred. The window looked out on a beautiful lawn edged with shrubbery, and the matron said I’d be allowed to go to the greenhouse and select some pot plants to keep in my room. The next day I picked out a white gloxinia and some russet chrysanthemums.

  I didn’t mind the bars at the windows at all. Why, this day and age some of the finest mansions have barred windows to keep burglars out.

  The meals—I simply couldn’t believe there was such delicious food in the world. The woman who supervised their preparation had embezzled the funds of one of the largest catering companies in the state after working herself up from assistant cook to treasurer.

  The other inmates were very friendly and most of them had led the most interesting lives. Some of the ladies occasionally used words that you usually see written only on fences or printed on sidewalks before the cement dries, but when they were scolded they apologized. Every now and then somebody would get angry with someone and there would be a little scratching or hair pulling, but it never got too bad. There was a choir—I can’t sing but I love music—and they gave a concert every Tuesday morning at chapel, and Thursday night was movie night. There wasn’t any admission charge. All you did was go in and sit down anywhere you pleased.

  We all had a special job and I was assigned to the infirmary. The doctor and nurse both complimented me. The doctor said that I should have gone into professional nursing, that I gave confidence to the patients and helped them get well. I don’t know about that but I’ve had years of practice with sick people and I like to help anybody who feels bad.

  I was so happy that sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d get up and click on the light and look at the furniture and the

  walls. It was hard to believe I had such a pleasant place to stay. I’d remember supper that night, how I’d gone back to the steam table for a second helping of asparagus with lemon and herb sauce, and I compared my plenty with those terrible times when I had slunk into supermarkets and nibbled overripe fruit and raw vegetables to ease my hunger.

  Then one day here came that lawyer, not even at regular visiting hours, bouncing around congratulating me that my appeal had been upheld, or whatever the term was, and that I was as free as a bird to leave right that minute.

  He told the matron she could send my belongings later and he dragged me out front where TV cameras and newspaper reporters were waiting.

  As soon as the cameras began whirring and the photographers began to aim, the lawyer kissed me on the cheek and pinned a flower on me. He made a speech saying that a terrible miscarriage of justice had been rectified. He had located people who testified that Mrs. Crowe had given me the box—she had told the gardener and the cleaning woman. They hadn’t wanted to testify because they didn’t want to get mixed up with the police, but the lawyer had persuaded them in the cause of justice and humanity to come forward and make statements.

  The lawyer had also looked into the personnel record of the dead policeman and had learned that he had been judged emotionally unfit for his job, and the psychiatrist had warned the Chief of Police that something awful might happen either to the man himself or to a suspect unless he was relieved of his duties.

  All the time the lawyer was talking into the microphones he had latched onto me like I was a three-year-old that might run away, and I just stood and stared. Then when he had finished his speech about me the reporters told him that like his grandfather and his uncle he was sure to end up as governor but at a much earlier age.

  At that the lawyer gave a big grin in front of the camera and waved good-bye and pushed me into his car.

  I was terrified. The nice place I’d found to stay in wasn’t mine any longer. My old nightmare was back—wondering how I could manage to eat and how much stealing I’d have to do to live from one day to the next.

  The cameras and reporters had followed us.

  A photographer asked me to turn down the car window beside me, and I overheard two men way in the back of the crowd talking. My ears are sharp. Papa always said I could hear thunder three states away. Above the congratulations and bubbly talk around me I heard one of those men in back say, “This is a bit too much, don’t you think? Our Bat is showing himself the champion of the Senior Citizen now. He’s already copped the teenyboppers and the under thirties using methods that ought to have disbarred him. He should have made the gardener and cleaning woman testify at the beginning, and from the first he should have checked into the policeman’s history. There ought never to have been a case at all, much less a conviction. But Bat wouldn’t have got any publicity that way. He had to do it in his own devious, spectacular fashion.” The other man just kept nodding and saying after every sentence, “You’re damned right.”

  Then we drove off and I didn’t dare look behind me because I was so heartbroken over what I was leaving.

  The lawyer took me to his office. He said he hoped I wouldn’t mind a little excitement for the next few days. He had mapped out some public appearances for me. The next morning I was to be on an early television show. There
was nothing to be worried about. He would be right beside me to help me just as he had helped me throughout my trouble. All that I had to say on the TV program was that I owed my freedom to him.

  I guess I looked startled or bewildered because he hurried on to say that I hadn’t been able to pay him a fee but that now I was able to pay him back—not in money but in letting the public know about how he was the champion of the underdog.

  I said I had been told that the court furnished lawyers free of charge to people who couldn’t pay, and he said that was right,

  but his point was that I could repay him now by telling people all that he had done for me. Then he said the main thing was to talk over our next appearance on TV. He wanted to coach me in what I was going to say, but first he would go into his partner’s office and tell him to take all the incoming calls and handle the rest of his appointments.

  When the door closed after him I thought that he was right. I did owe my freedom to him. He was to blame for it. The smart alec. The upstart. Who asked him to butt in and snatch me out of my pretty room and the work I loved and all that delicious food?

  It was the first time in my life I knew what it meant to despise someone.

  I hated him.

  Before, when I was convicted of manslaughter, there was a lot of talk about malice aforethought and premeditated crime.

  There wouldn’t be any argument this time.

  I hadn’t wanted any harm to come to that policeman. But I did mean harm to come to this lawyer.

  I grabbed up a letter opener from his desk and ran my finger along the blade and felt how sharp it was. I waited behind the door and when he walked through I gathered all my strength and stabbed him. Again and again and again.

  Now I’m back where I want to be—in a nice place to stay.

  Clever and Quick

  CHRISTIANNA BRAND

  Many aficionados of pure, fair-play detection would echo the great critic Anthony Boucher in nominating the trio of John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and Agatha Christie as their big three. But there were other writers who, if not quite as prolific, could equal those three in their devotion to and talent for devious puzzle plotting. One of these was the creator of Inspector Cockrill, Christianna Brand (1907-88). Born Mary Christianna Milne of British parents in Malaya, Brand lived in India during her childhood. Like many writers, she held a variety of jobs in her early life, including governess, model, and dancer. Her experience working as a salesperson in a fashion house inspired her first novel, Death in High Heels (1941). Brand showed she could construct puzzles with the best of them in novels like Green for Danger (1944), memorably filmed with Alistair Sim, and Tour de Force (1955). By her own account, she was equally scrupulous about polishing her style and deploying her clues, seeking to bamboozle the reader while observing absolute fair play. At various times in her career, she departed from pure detection to produce a speculation on the Marie Celeste mystery (The Honey Harlot [1978]), children’s books (Danger Unlimited [1948] and a three-book series beginning with Nurse Matilda [1964]), a fact-crime account (Heaven Knows Who [1960]), and pseudonymous mainstream novels, but crime fiction remained her main interest.

  A beloved figure at mystery conventions late in her life, she is remembered in the field for her personality as much as for her writing. In introducing her short-story collection Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (1983), Robert E. Briney recalls her speaking

  style: “The topics and anecdotes varied, though some of them had to be reprised by popular demand. (The story of Dorothy L. Sayers and the blood in the stairwell has become a word-of-mouth classic.) But the audience reaction was always the same. Listeners were delighted by the sharp verbal portraits; they listened intently whenever a serious note was introduced; they anticipated exactly as much of a story’s trend as they were intended to, and responded with appreciative chagrin when the punchline turned out to be other than what they had been induced to expect. In fact, they reacted much as readers of Christianna Brand’s fiction have been doing for some forty years.”

  In the short-story form, Brand specialized less in pure detection than in the twist-upon-twist double-or-triple-cross crime story of which “Clever and Quick” is a prime example.

  You had to keep up appearances; so the apartment was very showy, everything phony right down to the massive brass fender in front of the electric fire. But keeping up appearances was one thing and keeping up the payments was another; and with the theater as it was these days, both of them had been “resting” for a long, long time. So the fact was that they really ought to let Trudi go. Trudi was the au pair girl and for different reasons neither one wanted her to go. They were having a row about it now, standing in front of the fireplace. They had a row on an average of once an hour these days—nag, nag, bloody nag. Colette was driving Raymond out of his mind. And now this thing about Trudi. If he secretly (somehow) made up Trudi’s pay? He suggested, “Try offering her a bit less for the work.” “You try offering her a bit less—for the pleasure,” said Colette. It touched him as ever on the raw. “Are you suggesting—?” “Raymond, that girl thinks of nothing but money and you know it.” Yes, he knew it, and with the knowledge his heart grew chill. If a time came when he could no longer give Trudi presents—He was mad about her—a little sharp-eyed, shrew-faced mittelEuropean—and yet here he was, caught, crazy for her, helpless in the grip of her greedy little claws. He, Raymond Gray, who all his life had been, on stage and off, irresistible to women, now caught in the toils of a woman himself. If I were slipping a bit, he said to himself, if my profile were going, if my hair and my teeth weren’t so perfect as once they were—but he was wearing marvelously well. Why, even that drooling old monster in the opposite apartment—

  She was not a monster, though she was a big woman and, having once been something of an athlete, now found all the fine muscle running to flabby white fat. But drooling? She was disgusting, she thought, out of her mind—a fat, ugly, aging widow, sitting here drooling over a has-been matinee idol not much more than half my age.

  But, as he was caught and helpless, so was she—caught and helpless, sitting there like a silly schoolgirl, yearning only to pop out to her balcony and see if, through his window, she could catch a glimpse of him. From her room she could not see into his; the apartments were not in fact opposite each other but across a corner, at the same level.

  But she dared not venture forth. The plane trees in the street just below were in full pollination and if she so much as poked out her nose, her allergy would blow up sky high. And even just passing in the corridor, going up and down the elevator, he mustn’t see her with streaming red eyes and nose.

  She spent a good deal of time in the corridors and the elevator. “Oh, Raymond,” she would cry, “fancy running into you again!” She had long ago scraped up an acquaintance and it was Raymond, Colette, and Rosa between them now. They were not unwilling—her place was rich in champagne cocktails and dry martinis, with lots of caviar on little triangles of toast. She was loaded.

  Colette said so now “Can’t you wangle something out of the old bitch over there? She’s loaded, and if you’d so much as kiss her hand she’d chop it off and give it to you, diamond rings and all.”

  Her hand was like a frog’s back, all speckled with the greenybrown patches of aging skin. “All the same, I’ll tell you something,” he said. “If you were out of the way, damn nagging so-and-so that you are, she’d make me a ruddy millionaire, I swear she would.”

  “Yes and where would your precious Trudi be then? Because,” said Colette nastily, “I don’t think dear Rosa would put up with very much of that little load of fancy tripe.”

  “Don’t you call Trudi names!” he shouted.

  “I’ll call her what she is. I’m entitled to that much, surely?”

  She had a vile mind, a vile mind and a foul mouth to express what was in it. It flashed across him in a moment of hazy light, red-streaked, that once he had loved her—never dreaming that behind the façade lay this creature o
f venom and dirt, never dreaming that one day he would stand here with upraised hand, would lunge forward and strike out at her, would have it in his mind to silence her forever.

  But his hand did not touch her. She stepped back and away from him, tripped over the rug on the polished floor before the fireplace, fell heavily, almost violently throwing herself back and out of his reach. A brief shriek, arms flailing, a sickening scrunch as the base of her skull hit the rounded knob of the heavy brass fender. And suddenly—stillness.

  He knew she was dead.

  Trudi stood in the doorway, then moved forward to him slowly. She said, “Is all right. I saw. You did not touch her.” And she fumbled for the English word. “Was—accident?” She came close beside him, staring down. “But she is dead,” she said.

  She was dead. He had not touched her, it had been an accident. But she was dead—and he was free.

  It took him a little while to accept that Trudi was not going to tie up her life with an out-of-work, has-been actor, free or not free. “But, darrleeng, you know that your money is all gone, soon I must anyway leave. Mrs. Gray she has told me so.” And since Mrs. Gray was lying there dead on the floor and could not contradict, she improvised a hurried tally of the debts already owing to her. “And this I must have, Raymond, soon I go home if I have no more a job here.”

  To be free—to be free to marry her and now to lose her! He pleaded, “Don’t you love me at all?”

  “But of course! Only how can we marry, darrleeng, if you have no money to live? So this money I must have, to go home.”

  “You can’t go yet, anyway. You’ll have to stand by me about—her.” He had almost forgotten the poor dead thing lying there, ungainly, at their feet. “You’ll have to give evidence for me.”