“Do you know, Jennifer,” she said, “that in the Far East, if a Buddhist wants to comprehend the American psyche, he sets himself the task of saying a certain mantra over and over. And do you know what that mantra is? It consists of the words ‘thank you, please, excuse me.’ Over and over again, the Buddhist repeats that American catechism. And thus he enters the soul of America.
“That makes me the archetypal American, wouldn’t you say? I’ve been saying please and thank you all my goddamn life. And of course, I’m always saying excuse me in case I happen to offend the delicate sensibilities of the rich. You know the rules of charity, Jennifer—never say what you think, never say what you feel. Just smile and smile and say please and thank you and oh, I’m so very sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”
She smiled that terrible smile again.
“Excuse me, Miss Cain, but won’t you please get out of the car? Thank you so very much.”
She was full to sickness with the bitter taste of begging. It didn’t, somehow, seem the appropriate moment to point out to her that she had chosen her profession, that other more healthy personalities knew how to ask without begging, that for every donor who demanded eternal gratitude there were others who gave willingly from the heart, sometimes without even being, asked. Nor did I suggest that she stop to consider the lack of proven and workable alternatives to our social and economic systems.
Perceptive as I am, I sensed she was not in the mood.
She continued to issue her instructions only one step ahead at a time. It was unnerving, effective.
“We’ll walk to the staff entrance now.”
When we stood there, with her so close I could feel the gun in my spine, she said, “Ring the bell.”
“Why, Miss Cain!” the old guard exclaimed when he answered my summons. “Whatever brings you out to see us on such a night?” He glanced curiously at my companion.
“I’m Allison Parker,” she surprised me by saying, “the director of the Welcome Home for Girls.” I could hear in her voice the deceiving smile on her face. “Do you think we could come hi? It’s awfully cold out here.”
“Of course, of course.” He shuffled out of our way. As we followed him into the anteroom, he turned his back on us in order to open the inner door.
We followed him past that barrier. I automatically started to walk toward the log book where visitors always sign in. But that unthinking movement on my part separated me from Allison, who stood behind me, so that when the old man turned around he saw the gun.
She shot him.
Just like that. Bang, you’re dead.
He hadn’t even had time to change the expression on his face from startled to afraid. No wonder she hadn’t cared whether he knew her name. No wonder she’d marched so boldly into the museum. It was easy to get past a guard; all one had to do was kill him.
She got one of her wishes, too: My poise collapsed into a horrified, craven puddle of terror and shock. “No!” I screamed, and it was only the sight of the little gun pointed once more at me that shut my mouth on hysteria.
“Simon’s office,” she said.
Tie corridor was Mack. I made my way by memory and feel. It was childhood’s worst fears come to life—fumbling down blind hallways, scared of the bogeyman who will grab you in the dark.
The bogeyman walked behind me with her left hand on my shoulder and her gun in my spine again. I understood then how mesmerizing and controlling even the smallest barrel of a gun can be. I cursed myself for a fool, knowing that by safely driving us here I had probably squandered my only chances for escape.
In addition to all of which I had suddenly begun to take Allison Parker very seriously indeed. Excuse me if I have ever offended you, I wanted to beg of her, please don’t kill me, thank you very much.
A faint light shone around the edges of Simon’s closed office door on the north side of the building. How typical of him, I thought irrelevantly. Childishly, irresponsibly, he seldom remembered to turn off the lights when he left a room.
“Go in.”
I threw open the door.
Simon Church raised his head from where it had been lying on top of his crossed arms on top of his desk and sleepily rubbed his eyes.
“Jenny!” he said and yawned. “You’re late.”
Chapter 32
Just in case he had some innocent reason for being there and for expecting me, I acted quickly to prevent a repeat of the tragedy at the staff entrance.
“She has a gun!” I shouted at him. “She killed Max!” I was still standing right in front of her; she’d have to shoot through me to get Simon.
Behind me, she took the steam out of my drama by laughing—possibly as much at my bravado as at the bewildered look on Simon’s face. She said contemptuously, “I’m not going to shoot him, Jennifer. You can go in.” With a sharp nudge of the gun on the back side of my ribs, she suggested I get a move on.
Finally he saw who she was and what she held.
“Allison Parker?” He was all incredulous disbelief, just as I had been, and it looked as real as mine. But he didn’t look nearly so sleepy now. “Is this a joke, Allison? No, it can’t be a joke. You don’t have a sense of humor.”
“She killed them,” I said shrilly, panicky. My knees gave way and dropped me into the only other chair. “Arnie, Moshe, Mrs. Hatch …”
His eyes filled with comprehension and astonishment.
“I’ll be damned,” he breathed, “so you’re the one. Oh, that’s wicked, Allison, you are a nasty, wicked bitch.”
She grinned as if she were quite enjoying herself. And I—I was filled with remorse for ever having suspected my friend Simon. Because that’s exactly who I had suspected after my search of his office and it was Simon’s name that I had presented to Geof on an incriminatory platter. What had I done to Simon’s good name and reputation? How could I have been so stupid as to add two and two and come up with five?
He never took his eyes off her as he said, “I got a call from your office, Jenny, about four-thirty. I thought it was Faye with a cold. She said you had something important to tell me about Arnie Culverson’s death and you wanted to meet me here at eight. I don’t suppose you know anything about that call?”
“No,” I said angrily, “but you might be interested to know that I got a similar call, supposedly from the hospital. My mother was dying, they said; would I come at once, they said.”
His eyes flicked to me and then back to her.
“Pull the wings off flies, do you, Allison? I suppose you drown puppies and kitties, too?”
“Self-righteous, aren’t we?” she purred. Then, viciously; “You want to compare sins, Simon? Then we’ll see who gets to throw the first stone!”
This was too much for me.
“For God’s sake, don’t pretend you’re no worse than anyone else, Allison!” I was thoroughly sickened by her murderous, self-deceiving egotism. “You—you’ve killed three people and you tried to kill Minnie…”
Silence grew large and heavy in the small room. She didn’t respond to my outburst—I might as well not have been there and certainly I wished I weren’t—but only smirked infuriatingly at Simon.
“You wanted the bequest from the will,” he said accusingly, petulantly.
“Of course,” she said. “She strung us along for years with hints of all the money she’d leave us if we were good little Christian girls. I did everything but get down on my knees and beg for that money. I curtseyed, I wagged my tail, I debased myself to that stupid woman.” Allison’s face darkened, suffused by the ugly red hate that ran through her like thick blood. “One week she’d say she would leave it all to us; the next week, she’d get mad about some slight and she’d threaten to cut us off…”
I could well imagine it. As I’d told Geof, Florence Hatch was a wonderful woman, but…
“So when she finally, actually wrote a will,” Simon said slowly, obviously thinking out loud, “you didn’t want to miss your chance at last.”
“She could have changed her mind,” Allison said defensively. “And she would have, again and again!”
“And,” Simon drawled, “you couldn’t take the chance that she might die during one of those weeks when she’d decided to cut you off without the proverbial cent.” He seemed almost to empathize with her while also loathing her.
“Well, you know how it is with philanthropists,’ Simon,” she smirked. “We live for the day they die, don’t we!”
A look of sheer disgust crossed his face.
“But the others!” I burst out against all known better judgment. “Why did you have to kill the others? And why me, why my parents’ house?”
The loaded, threatening silence descended for a heartbeat. I thought I’d pushed her too far.
“But Jenny,” she said finally. Quietly. Horribly sweet and unctuous. “I didn’t…”
Simon seized the opportunity of her looking away from him to lunge violently across his desk. She stopped him with a single bullet that creased the back of his chair and missed his neck by millimeters.
“Down,” she said as to a dog.
Wisely, he obeyed.
Her glance at me was briefer this time. She wouldn’t make that mistake again; if we wanted to distract her, we’d have to do a smarter job of it.
“As I was saying,” she continued smoothly, “I killed dear generous Mrs. Charles Withers Hatch, yes. And I killed Moshe Cohen, by dropping the drug in his wine at the cocktail party before the premiere. It was so easy! And there was such a crowd, nobody saw me slip the verse in his pocket.”
“But he might not have died,” I said. “What if the medicine hadn’t worked the way you thought it would? What if he hadn’t died, or he hadn’t died at the theater?”
“That wasn’t important,” she surprised me by saying. “If he died, fine. If not, at least it would look as if somebody had tried to kill him. And when the cop found the verse I hid in the bed where Arnie Culverson’s body was found, they’d think somebody killed him, too.”
Simon looked suddenly as if he might be sick. I felt like gagging myself.
“And all that was only prelude to the murder of Mrs. Hatch?” I tried to keep my voice calm and nonjudgmental as if we were only discussing some clever thing she’d done. I was trying to fit all the pieces together. I was also trying to figure out some plan of attack and escape. And I wasn’t yet succeeding at either effort.
“She had to die,” Allison agreed as if it were the most reasonable conclusion in the world. “And quickly, before she changed her stupid mind again.”
“How?” Simon sounded strangled.
“How did I do it?” The smirk was back, that insufferable, maddening, terrifying smirk. She was so proud of herself. “I’m certainly glad you asked that question.” She giggled. “See? You’re wrong, Simon, I do have a sense of-humor.”
She told us—with great pleasure—how she and the house parents had taken the girls to their regular Sunday night movie. Allison made sure they arrived late at a popular show so they’d have to split up their group and take separate seats in different parts of the theater. No one noticed as she sat down on the aisle in the rear. When the lights went off, she walked out. She knew Mrs. Hatch was attending a meeting that night, so she called and got her patron summoned to the phone. They must talk immediately, Allison said, about an urgent and confidential crisis at the home. She convinced the older woman to let Allison pick her up, promising to get her back to her meeting as soon as possible. Allison drove her to a secluded street where nobody would notice or remember the car, and fed her lies and doped coffee until Mrs. Hatch fell heavily asleep. Then Allison drove back to the theater, left Mrs. Hatch lying on the front seat under a blanket, and returned to her seat in time to leave with the others. The usher thought she’d only been to the restroom, if in fact he noticed little Allison at all. The girls all rode back in the van—as she knew they’d want to do—while Allison followed behind with her doomed cargo.
Later that same night she crept out of the home, woke Mrs. Hatch sufficiently to get the poor woman to stumble to the abandoned refrigerator, opened its door, sat Mrs. Hatch down, shoved the rest of her in and closed the door. Sleep turned to suffocation and then to death.
“She’d been in my car dozens of times,” Allison said, “so I didn’t care if she left strands of hair or fabric behind her.”
So easy, neat and horrible.
“That explains Florence Hatch and Moshe Cohen,” I said hoarsely. “But what about Arnie Culverson ... and Minnie Mimbs… and me?”
“Good question,” she said softly. “Maybe one of you would like to make a dying man’s confession. Jenny? Or Simon, how about you?”
He laughed at her, but not convincingly. His normal ruddy complexion had paled beneath the black, late-night stubble on his cheeks, neck and chin.
“Am I a dying man?” he said.
“Oh yes,” she murmured, “yes, of course you are.”
“Are you going to shoot me?”
“Heavens no, Simon.”
“How then?” he insisted.
“Well,” she drawled, “let’s just say it will be different from the way I’ll kill Jenny.”
My heart lurched out of control.
“And how will you do that, Allison?” Simon’s voice and eyes were watchful now, alert for another opportunity to disarm her.
“By giving you your fondest wish, Simon,” she said sweetly. “Of course the shame of it is that you won’t be here to enjoy its’ fulfillment.”
I had a hideous feeling I knew what she meant.
“I’m going to give you a new museum, Simon,” she said. “I know how desperately you want one, everybody knows that, so I’m going to do you a favor and burn this old place down …”
“No!” Simon and I were on our feet at once, together.
“Sit down, children.”
We fell back into our chairs.
“When they find what remains of you,” she continued, “they’ll say you tried to start a little fire, Simon, just a little arson that would damage this place just enough so there’d be no choice but to build a new museum. Unfortunately, the fire got away from you and—well, it’s a pity, they’ll say.”
“My paintings!” His anguish was painful to hear. I felt its echo deep in my own soul. “My sculpture! You’ll destroy centuries of art—no!”
“How will they account for my body?” I said.
“Oh, easily.” Her smile was sugared ice. “You see, they’ll guess that Simon lured you over here and then killed you, leaving your body in the fire where he could later claim you died accidentally.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Allison,” I objected. “Why would anyone think that Simon would want to kill me?”
She gazed almost kindly upon him.
And he—that great, handsome, Infuriating, childish, brilliant bear of a man—began to cry. Violently. Appallingly. Revealingly.
Chapter 33
When he finally spoke, it was in the dull dead monotone of the defeated. His body, even the flesh of his heavy face, slumped.
“How did you know?” he begged piteously, though there was no pity in that room. “How’d you know I killed Arnie?”
I bent over and buried my face in my hands.
“I didn’t at first,” she told him. “The newspapers said it was suicide and the police said so too. But then I began to hear people gossip about how strange it was that he, of all people, would do that. At the time, it just sort of passed through my mind that maybe he’d been murdered.
“But I didn’t give it another thought—until dear Mrs. Hatch told me she’d finally written her will. I knew I’d have to kill her if I wanted to be sure of getting that money, but I’d need a good cover. That’s when I really began to think about Arnie Culverson’s death and how easily it could be made to look like murder.”
“You still didn’t know?” he said in horrified disbelief. “You mean you just decided to make it look like murder?”
“Bad luck for you, Simon,” she laughed. “I decided that what I had to do was plant an obvious clue—like a note—to point toward murder. Then, I thought, what if a second philanthropist were to die in a similar way … same drug, a note. And then I could kill Florence Hatch and it would just look like one of a series of related murders of philanthropists.”
“The hypertension pills,” Simon said dully.
“My aunt takes them,” Allison smirked. “I used hers.”
“And the notes,” he moaned, “those goddamn stupid poems.”
“In the best classic tradition, wouldn’t you say?” She was highly amused. “Well, I had to think of some obvious gimmick, didn’t I?”
“You planted that note in the testered bed where I left Arnie.” Simon was barely audible.
“I wish I could have seen your face when that janitor brought it in to you! Oh my that’s so funny! If I’d only known what I was doing to you! And you had to call the police, didn’t you, because the janitor had seen that poem.”
“They didn’t know!” he suddenly cried out, wringing his hands in futile anguish. “They’d never have proved it was murder if it hadn’t been for you!”
“And I still didn’t know you’d really killed him,” she said wonderingly. “Don’t you think that’s funny, Simon? Even then, I didn’t know you’d killed him.”
It was very hot in that awful room and suddenly I grew aware of the fact that I’d never removed my coat. Moving slowly so as not to alarm Allison, I unwound the scarf at my neck and then shrugged out of my coat and jacket. She supervised my every move as if she suspected I might have a submachine gun hidden in a pocket.
“Comfy now?” she cooed.
I looked uneasily from murderer number one to murderer number two; all it needed was a third and we’d have set the scene for Macbeth.
“Arnie Culverson, Moshe Cohen, Florence Hatch,” I murmured. “Three of the Big Five ...”
“Well, yes,” she said modestly, “it had occurred to me that would make a lovely pattern.”
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