Death Has a Small Voice

by Frances Lockridge

  And she was alive. She had to be. And—a few hours before, she almost certainly had been, unless Lyster was lying, unless—

  She was alive because she had to be. Had to be. She was alive because the story on the record still existed; existed in a voice, or more than one voice, and in the grooves of a plastic disc.

  It had started at the office; Pam’s part in it had started there. At the office he would find—

  “Yes,” Bill said. “I realized he would be. I’m very sorry. It is important, Mrs. Osman.”

  “I don’t know,” the woman—a young woman by her voice’s sound—said. “I really don’t know, Mr.—”

  “Weigand,” Bill said, for the third time. “Captain Weigand. Of the Homicide Squad. In New York. Please tell your husband—”

  “All right,” a man’s voice said. “All right, Amy. I’ll—”

  “He says he’s the police,” the woman said. “Something about Homicide.”

  It had taken time to get an answer from the residence of J. Bradley Osman, on Mercer Street, in Princeton, New Jersey. Mr. and Mrs. Osman had played bridge late that night; they slept soundly. It was taking more time to wake them up.

  “All right, Amy,” Osman said. “All right.” It was evident that he had come in on an extension. “I’ll—”

  There was a disturbance on the line, “—trying to get—” an operator said. “Hello,” Osman said. “You still there? What’s this about homicide?”

  “You’re Miss Hilda Godwin’s agent?” Bill asked.

  “Sure,” Osman said. “Don’t tell me she’s got mixed up in homicide. Just when—”

  “Miss Godwin’s been killed,” Bill said, and waited until Osman swore, in incredulity, in apparent shock. He listened further; he said he was trying to find out.

  “I need help,” he said. “You were handling a novel she’d written. Something she called, ‘Come Up Smiling’?”

  “Yes,” Osman said. “What’s that got—”

  “Have you got a copy of it?” Bill asked. “A copy of the manuscript?”

  Osman said he didn’t get it. Bill was patient. He explained briefly. The book might give them a lead. They had been unable to find a copy.

  “The Hudson Press has one,” Osman said.

  The Hudson Press hadn’t. Bill explained again.

  “Lost it?” Osman said. His voice was even more shocked, it seemed to Bill Weigand, than it had been when the agent learned of his client’s death. “Lost the manuscript?” Osman seemed incredulous, as well as shocked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Bill said, still patient “Have you got a copy? I suppose you have.”

  “No,” Osman said. “She only sent one. I sent it along to the publisher. She’s going—” He stopped. He swore, more briefly. “She was going to send me another copy. Wanted me to try the magazines, although I don’t know whether—” He stopped. “Why don’t you look around and find one of hers?” Osman asked. “I’d think that would be simpler—”

  “We have,” Bill said. “Through her house in town. Her house in the country. We haven’t found a copy.”

  They hadn’t looked, Osman said. That was the trouble, they hadn’t looked. They didn’t know authors.

  “Never knew an author to throw anything away,” he said. “Anything they’d written, I mean. First draft, revision, second draft, third draft. Three, maybe four, copies from a typist. They keep ’em all. Keep piles of them. Never knew one who didn’t. There’s something sacred about a manuscript, you’d think. You’ll find half a dozen.”

  “We haven’t,” Bill said. “I assure you, Mr. Osman. You really mean half a dozen?”

  Osman hesitated a moment.

  “Probably,” he said. “She’s been—” He corrected the tense again. “She’d worked on this thing for a couple of years. Told me she’d done two drafts and settled for the second. Two complete drafts, I mean. Part of it she typed herself; recently she’s been trying this gadget Dictating machine thing, you know.”

  “Yes,” Bill Weigand said. “I know.”

  “So she’d have a ribbon copy of each version,” Osman said. “And a carbon, probably. Then she’d have—well, she ought to have left anyway two carbons of the final draft. After she’d had it copied, I mean. It had been copied. Nice clean script. So that makes—” He paused to count. “Six anyway,” he said. “Not counting the one you say the publisher’s lost. Must say that doesn’t happen often. Kick ’em around, fuss around with them, take months. Yes. Lose them. No.”

  “This one they did, apparently,” Bill told him. “And, as I said, we can’t find any other copies.”

  “Got to,” Osman said. He was awake enough now. “Somebody’s got to. My God. A great book. A great book. Could be Book of the Month. My God, man, we’ve got to find it.”

  Bill hoped they would. Meanwhile—could Mr. Osman tell him something about the book?

  “A great book,” Osman said. “Could be—”

  “I’ve gathered it was autobiographical,” Bill said. “To some extent, at any rate. Did you think that? You’ve read it, evidently.”

  “Well,” Osman said. He sounded wary. “Not what they usually mean when they say that, Captain. A lot more than that. Good story, beautiful style. Moving and funny too, sometimes. I wouldn’t want to say it was autobiographical. Not in the usual sense.”

  “Mr. Osman,” Bill Weigand said. Now the patience was very evident in his voice. “Listen, Mr. Osman. I’m not a publisher. Not a critic. I’m just a policeman. Say it’s the greatest book anybody ever—”

  “Now,” Osman said, “I didn’t say that.”

  “What I want to know,” Bill said, “is—did she get most of the material from her own life? Is it, basically, about herself? About people she’s met? Maybe been in love with? You know what I mean.”

  “Well,” Osman said. “Yes, I suppose so. Most novels are, you know. First novels particularly. Where else does a writer go for the stuff he uses? Make up plots, sure. Make up people—not entirely. How can they? Sometimes they take a little piece of somebody here and another little piece of somebody there. Come up with Mr. Jones. Mrs.—Zilch.”

  “Sometimes,” Bill said, “don’t they more or less take characters whole? Disguise them a little; give them different professions, describe them differently? Particularly when the book’s partly autobiographical.”

  “Well,” Osman said, “yes. I suppose so.”

  “And—Miss Godwin did that? In ‘Come Up Smiling’?”

  “Well,” Osman said, “maybe.”

  He was told that he must see what Weigand was getting at. A writer is killed. Simultaneously, all the copies of a novel she had just finished disappear. The novel was, to some extent, autobiographical. It described people who might be alive. Perhaps—

  “Well,” Osman said, “I do see what you mean. Knew a woman once—perfectly nice gal, far’s I could see—that happened to. Married a writer, had a quarrel with him. His next book—whew! Ran into him at a restaurant, somewhere, this gal did and spit in his face. Actually. Give you my word. Can’t say I blame her much, either. Of course—spitting. Still—all her life, probably, people’ll be saying ‘Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is? Oh—weren’t you the one who—?’ Then they’ll stop and look embarrassed and—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “That’s what I mean. I’ve been told the book was innocuous but—”

  “Innocuous hell,” Osman said. “It’s a great book. I keep telling you that. What damn fool—”

  “From this point of view,” Weigand said. “It wasn’t meant as a reflection on the book. Or, I don’t think it was. A man named Wilson—Bernard Wilson.”

  “Oh,” Osman said. “Well—”

  “You know Wilson?”

  “Who he is,’ sure,” Osman said. “Maybe met him once or twice. I meet a lot of people. He like the book? Read it for the Hudson Press?”

  “He seemed to, very much,” Bill said. “He did read it for the publishers.”

  “Swell,” Osman sai
d. “Good man, Wilson.”

  “You’d agree it’s innocuous, then?” Bill asked him. “From this point of view, I mean.”

  Now Osman hesitated; very evidently hesitated. Then he said, “I’m thinking.” Then he said, “To be honest, I wouldn’t say there weren’t some barbs in it. One man, particularly. Seems the heroine had been in love with this chap and he—well, say he turned out to be a heel. I asked her about that. Told her, I hope this character of hers wouldn’t be recognized by a lot of people. By himself, particularly. People can sue about things like that, you know. Don’t very often, but still—” Bill Weigand could see a man shrugging in Princeton.

  “Well,” Osman then said, “she said he was a composite, of course. They always say that. I said, better put a disclaimer of reference in it. You know, one of those resemblance-is-purely-coincidental things. They’ve been known to help. Shows you mean well, I guess, or are ready to pretend—”

  “You didn’t recognize this character?” Bill asked him. “Remind you of anybody you know? Or know of?”

  “No,” Osman said.

  “It could be important,” Bill told him.

  Osman said he realized that. He said he had not recognized the “heel” of Hilda Godwin’s book.

  “No,” Osman said. “Nobody I knew. Off hand, anyway.” He paused. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “this guy was hell with women, chiefly, I gathered. One of the points was that men didn’t tumble to him. Know what I mean? General idea, men were too stupid to see that he was really—well, a man who was all front and no inside. Somewhere in the book this gal—the gal the book’s about, I mean—calls him a ‘façade man.’ One of the ‘façade men.’”

  “No other occupation?” Bill said.

  No occupation, Osman said. The man—assuming he had ever existed—might be anything.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Publisher. Art dealer. Professor. Another writer.”

  “Could be,” Osman agreed. He was thanked.

  “For God’s sake,” Osman said, “find a copy of that book. It’s a great book. Could be Book of—”

  “We’ll try,” Bill said. “Thanks again, Mr. Osman.”

  The clock on the dash told her it was ten minutes of six. It was still dark. Clouds which, miles away, had been lace, wind-tossed across a moon, were dark over New York. She drove the station wagon down the ramp, swung it, in Fortieth Street, toward the east. She drove slowly through the almost empty streets. She waited for a light at Madison, turned south for a few blocks, turned east again and stopped at the right hand curb. This block was empty; the buildings along it were blank-faced, their eyes closed against the reluctantly beginning day. Pam switched off the lights of the station wagon, switched off the ignition.

  She slid across the seat and opened the door of the car. She felt mentally and physically numb, yet beneath the numbness, was conscious of it, perceived the dullness of her mind and of her movements. She sat for a moment before she stepped from the car and, for that moment, could hardly remember where she was or why she had come there. But then she thought, I’ve got to get it, and slid from the seat to the sidewalk. She crossed to the building’s double doors, and put a finger on the night bell.

  She could hear the bell ringing, but it was unanswered. She continued to press the bell for some time before she tried the doors and found them unlocked. Vaguely, she thought the building must open earlier than she had supposed. She went across the small, deserted lobby to the elevators and waited. She rang and waited. When nothing happened she turned away and walked to the stairs. She passed the empty table at which Sven Helder sat of evenings. A light was burning over it. She went up the stairs, slowly and heavily—a small, toiling figure, bright hair streaked and face grimed, in a woolen dress dirtier than either face or hair; with stockings shredded on legs laced with scratches. One of the scratches started to bleed anew as Pam climbed the stairs, but she did not feel the sting. I’ve got to get it, she said to herself. I’ve got to find it.

  She reached the fourth floor and went along the corridor to the office doors. “North Books, Inc.,” was painted black on a ground glass panel. She hesitated. Beyond the panel she could see no light. She tried the door and it opened, and this should have surprised her but did not. (She had not thought the door might be locked; did not feel now that it should be.) She stepped into the darkness of the offices and reached for the light switch at the side of the door. But then she stopped her hand. Light had always been friendly in Pam North’s life; now darkness seemed a shelter. She did not attempt to think this out. She stood inside the door for a moment and her eyes adjusted themselves to the light. It was not wholly dark in the office; the windows at the far end, facing on the street, were faintly luminous.

  Pam moved among the ordered desks, careful to make no sound. After she had taken a few steps, she stood by a desk, steadied herself against it—but still swayed a little from her utter weariness—and toed off her shoes. She left them where they lay and went on, more quietly.

  Her goal was the desk at the far end of the long room. More precisely, her goal was a low shelf behind the desk. On the shelf, as she finished transcribing from them, Miss Corning put records which had served their purposes, spoken their pieces. Monday night the shelf had been almost full; Pam did not know how many records her hurrying fingers had found there, but there had been many.

  A book is well hidden in a library; a record in a shelf of records. Pam, in the few moments allowed her Monday night, had slipped the record which told of murder in the middle of the second of three neat piles of records on the shelf. Within a segment of, at most, five of the thin discs her fingers would find it. For assurance, she would take as many from the center of the pile as she could grasp between thumb and fingers.

  She reached Miss Corning’s desk, steadied herself for a moment, went around it and reach down to the shelf. As she bent forward she almost lost her balance; carefully, then, she crouched in front of the shelf, between it and the desk. She felt for the center pile.

  Her fingers found nothing.

  She used both hands; her hands, like those of a blinded person, flickered over the shelf. It was empty.

  Pam, sitting on her heels, held fast to the shelf. She tried, now, to steady her mind as well as her body.

  Had she forgotten where she put the record? Were the three neat stacks of records something which, in the long time of her flight, in the confusion of her flight, she had imagined there? For a moment, in her exhaustion, now in this incomprehensible defeat, Pam lost confidence in her own mind. She regained it slowly, holding to the shelf for balance which had become precarious.

  She had put the record there, with the others. It was not there now, nor were the others. But she had put it there.

  She stood up slowly. She turned to the desk. The top of the desk was bare. She pulled at the drawers, and found them locked.

  As she stood now, she faced the door to Jerry’s private office. The door was closed. But now, behind it, through the panel of translucent glass, she saw a dim light. She did not think it had been there when she entered, but she could not be sure. It was faint through the glass; puzzlingly faint.

  Pam left the support of the desk. She moved, very slowly, very cautiously, toward the lighted door. She breathed lightly, as soundlessly as she could.

  She did not open the door. She got as close to it as she could, and listened with all the intentness she could summon.

  She heard it, then. Faint as the light had been, she heard a voice. It was the voice of only one person; it was without emphasis and very soft. She could not make out the words.

  But this voice she knew without question; knew as she knew no other voice.

  Jerry was there! His voice spoke—softly, with little pauses, in words she could not distinguish. Jerry’s voice!

  Pam North reached for the knob of the door, then. It was as if a light had been turned on in her mind.

  IX

  Wednesday, 6:08 A.M. to 7:20 A.M.

  Bill Weig
and cradled the telephone and sat and looked at it. Then he looked across the room. He smiled faintly. Sergeant Aloysius Mullins was sitting upright in a straight chair, his posture that of a policeman alert. Nevertheless, Sergeant Mullins was sound asleep.

  Bill Weigand’s smile faded and he drummed lightly on the desk in front of him.

  A “façade man” had been maligned by Hilda Godwin in a book called “Come Up Smiling.” Perhaps “maligned” was not the word, since there was nothing now available to show whether the description of the “façade man” had been accurate or unjust. Say merely he had been put in a pillory, fairly or in malice. He had been caught and put on view; he had been jeered at, made ridiculous.

  Weigand checked himself. He was building much on little; Osman had said only that the man “turned out to be a heel.” Semantics entered in; what did Osman mean by “heel”? How excoriating, actually, had been the portrait of this “façade man”? What kind of man, however flayed in words, would turn to murder? Would any man?

  Bill drummed the table. When you came to that, you couldn’t tell. Not most, he supposed. But there was no certainty about the human mind. Take a man who thought well of himself; thought extravagantly well of himself—as intellect; as superior man. Very well, as accomplished lover. Take this man and let him read, and know that given time many will read, that he is a—well, “heel” hardly did it. A worm, say—a small, insignificant, crawling object; a thing from which people turned away or, worse, at which they laughed. Say the woman who fashioned this debasing portrait was one such a man had loved, preened himself before, relied upon for admiration.

  You still, Bill thought, required a man of a certain type. A woman Osman knew had, Osman said, behaved—well, say, unpleasantly—under somewhat similar provocation. There is nevertheless a gap between unpleasant behavior and murder—a considerable gap. You needed, in this instance, something close to megalomania; something close enough, probably, to be so diagnosed.

  Bill looked at Mullins, hardly seeing him. Mullins slowly inclined to the right—very gradually subsided to the right. He reached a certain point and reverted, quickly, to his erect position. This did not waken him. It would be agreeable, Bill found himself thinking, to close his eyes for a few moments; even to put his arms on the desk and his head on them. Only for a few moments.