The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  “And nothing at all happened to you?” Arthur said, awestruck.

  “Well,” Charlie Prince admitted, “something had to happen, of course, especially after that last performance when my father boiled up like an old steam kettle about it. But it wasn’t too bad, really. It was just that I became a sort of local remittance man.”

  “A what?” said Arthur blankly.

  “A sort of local remittance man. You know how those old families in England would ship their black-sheep offspring off to Australia or somewhere just to keep them off the scene, then send them an allowance and tell them it would show up regularly as long as sonny stayed out of sight? Well, that’s what happened to me. At first the old man was just going to heave me out into the cold and darkness without even a penny, but the women in my family have soft hearts and he was convinced otherwise. I would get a monthly allowance—about half of what I needed to live on, as it turned out—but for the rest of my life I had to steer clear of my family and its whole circle. And I can tell you, it’s a mighty big circle.”

  “Then you’re not supposed to be in New York, are you?”

  “I said I was a local remittance man. Meaning I can be anywhere I please as long as I’m not heard or seen by any of my family or its three million acquaintances. In which case I merely drop a note to the family lawyer stating my address, and on the first of each month I receive my allowance.”

  “Well,” said Arthur, “considering everything, I’d say your father was being very decent about it.”

  Charlie Prince sighed. “Truth to tell, he’s not a bad old sort at all. But he’s cursed by a morbid yearning toward a certain kind of holy young prig which I am not. You know what I mean. The sort of young squirt who’s all bland exterior, blank interior, and not a spark anywhere. If I had turned out like that, everything would have been just dandy. But I didn’t. So here I am, a veritable Ishmael, two weeks before allowance comes due, locked out of his hotel room.”

  Arthur felt an inexplicable stirring of excitement. “Locked out?”

  “That’s what happens when you can’t pay your rent. It’s a law or a code or something. Anyhow, it’s damn thoughtless, whatever it is, and what I’m leading up to is to ask if, in return for the story of my life, such as it is, you might see your way clear to making a loan. Not too small a one, either; a sort of medium-sized loan. I’ll guarantee to pay you back the first of the month and with fair interest.”

  Charlie Prince’s voice now had an openly pleading note. “I’ll admit that I have my dishonest side, but I’ve never welshed on a debt in my whole life. Matter of fact,” he explained, “the only reason I got myself into trouble was because I was so anxious to pay my debts.”

  Arthur looked at Charlie Prince’s perfect clothes; he saw Charlie Prince’s easy poise; he heard Charlie Prince’s well modulated voice sounding pleasantly in his ears, and the stirring of excitement suddenly took meaning.

  “Look,” he said, “where do you live now?”

  “Nowhere, of course—not as long as I’m locked out. But I’ll meet you here the first of the month on the minute. I can swear you don’t have to worry about getting the money back. The way I’ve been talking about things ought to prove I’m on the dead level with you.”

  “I don’t mean that,” said Arthur. “I mean, would you want to share a room with me? If I lent you enough money to clear up your hotel bill and get your things out of there, would you move in with me? I’ve got a nice room; it’s in an old house but very well kept. Mrs. Marsh—that is, the landlady—is the talky kind and very fussy about things, but you can see she’s the sort to keep a place nice. And it’s very cheap; it would save you a lot of money.”

  He stopped short then, with the realization that this was turning into a vehement sales talk and that Charlie Prince was regarding him quizzically.

  “What is it?” said Charlie Prince. “Are you broke, too?”

  “No, it has nothing to do with money. I have the money to lend you, don’t I?”

  “Then why the fever to share the room? Especially with me, that is.”

  Arthur took his courage in both hands. “All right, I’ll tell you. You have something I want.”

  Charlie Prince blinked. “I do?”

  “Listen to me,” Arthur said. “I never had any of the things you had, and it shows. Somehow, it shows. I know it does, because you wouldn’t ever talk to any of those young men, the sort your father likes, the way you talk to me. But I don’t care about that. What I care about is finding out exactly what makes you like that, what makes them all like that. It’s some kind of polish that a good family and money can rub on you so that it never comes off. And that’s what I want.”

  Charlie Prince looked at him wonderingly. “And you think that if we share a room some of this mysterious polish, this whatever-it-is, will rub off on you?”

  “You let me worry about that,” said Arthur. He drew out his checkbook and a pen, and laid them on the table before him. “Well?” he said.

  Charlie Prince studied the checkbook thoughtfully. “I’ll admit I haven’t any idea of what I’m selling,” he said, “but it’s a sale.”

  * * *

  —

  As it turned out, they made excellent roommates. There is no greater compatibility than that between a good talker and a good listener, and since Charlie Prince liked nothing better than to pump amiably from a bottomless well of anecdote and reminiscence, and Arthur made an almost feverishly interested audience, life in the second-floor front at Mrs. Marsh’s rooming house was idyllic.

  There were some very small flies in the ointment, of course. At times, Charlie Prince might have had cause to reflect that he had found too good a listener in Arthur, considering Arthur’s insatiable appetite for detail. It can be quite disconcerting for a raconteur embarked on the story of a yachting experience to find that he must describe the dimensions of the yacht, its structure, its method of operation, and then enter into a lecture on the comparative merits of various small boats before he can get to the point of the story itself. Or to draw full value from the narrative of an intriguing little episode concerning a young woman met in a certain restaurant when one is also required to add footnotes on the subjects of what to say to a maitre d’, how to order, how to tip, how to dress for every occasion, and so on, ad infinitum.

  It might also have distressed Charlie Prince, who had commendable powers of observation, to note that Arthur was becoming subtly cast in his own image. The inflection of voice, the choice of words and their usage, the manner of sitting, walking, standing, the gestures of hands, the very shades of expression which Arthur came to adopt, all had the rather uncomfortable quality of showing Charlie Prince to himself in a living mirror.

  For Arthur’s part, the one thing that really shocked him in the relationship was the discovery of the childishness of Charlie Prince and his small world. From all he could gather, Arthur decided somberly, Charlie Prince and his like emerged from childhood into adolescence and stopped short there. Physically, they might grow still larger and more impressive, but mentally and emotionally, they were all they would ever be. They would learn adult catchwords and mannerisms, but underneath? Of course, it was nothing that Arthur ever chose to mention aloud.

  His feeling on the subject was heightened by the matter of Charlie Prince’s allowance. On the first of each month, Mrs. Marsh would smilingly enter the room bearing an envelope addressed to Charlie Prince. It was an expensive-looking envelope, and if one held it up to the light reflectively, as Charlie always did before opening it, it was possible to make out the outlines of an expensive-looking slip of paper. A check for five hundred dollars signed by James Llewellyn. “The family’s personal lawyer,” Charlie had once explained, and added with some bitterness, “It wasn’t hard enough having one father like mine, so old Llewellyn’s been playing second father since I was a kid.”

  To Charlie Princ
e, the amount was a pittance. To Arthur it was the key. The key to the enchanted garden just outside Arthur’s reach; the key to Bluebeard’s chamber which you were forbidden to use; the key to Ann Horton. It would not pay for what you wanted, but it would open the door.

  Even more tantalizing to Arthur was the fact that for a few hours each month it was all his. Charlie Prince would endorse it, and then Arthur would obligingly stop in at the bank where he had his own small account and cash it there. On his return, he would carefully deduct the amount of Charlie’s share of the rent, the amount that Charlie had borrowed from him the last week or two of the preceding month, and then turn the rest over to his roommate. It was at Charlie’s insistence that he did this. “If you want to make sure that I’m square with my rent and whatever I owe you,” he had explained, “this is the best way. Besides, you can cash it easily, and I seem to have a lot of trouble that way.”

  Thus, for a few hours each month, Arthur was another man. Charlie Prince was generous about lending his wardrobe, and Arthur made it a point, on check-cashing day especially, to wear one of those wondrously cut and textured suits which looked as if it had been tailored for him. And in the breast pocket of that suit was a wallet containing five hundred dollars in crisp new bills. It was no wonder that it happened to be one of those days on which he made the impression he had dreamed of making.

  * * *

  —

  He entered his employer’s office, and Ann Horton was seated on a corner of the desk there, talking to her father. She glanced at Arthur as he stood there, and then stopped short in what she was saying to look him up and down with open admiration.

  “Well,” she said to her father, “I’ve seen this young man here and there in the office several times. Don’t you think it’s about time you had the manners to introduce us?”

  Her manner of address startled Arthur, who had somehow always visualized Mr. Horton as a forbidding figure poised on a mountaintop fingering a thunderbolt. But it was even more startling when Mr. Horton, after what seemed to be a moment of uncertain recognition, made the introduction in terms that sounded like music to Arthur’s ears. Arthur, he said warmly, was a fine young man. It would be a pleasure to introduce him.

  That was Arthur’s golden opportunity—and he flubbed it. Flubbed it miserably. What he said was pointless; the way he said it made it sound even more mawkish and clumsy than seemed possible. And even while he was watching the glow fade from Ann Horton’s face he knew what the trouble was, and cursed himself and the whole world for it.

  The money wasn’t his, that was the thing. If it were, he could be seeing her that evening, and the next, and the one after that. But it wasn’t. It was a meaningless bulge in his wallet that could take him this far, and no farther. And that knowledge made everything else meaningless: the clothes, the manner, everything he had made himself into. Without the money, it was all nonsense. With it—

  With it! He had been looking merely ill at ease; now he looked physically ill under the impact of the thought that struck him. An instant concern showed in Ann Horton’s lovely eyes. Apparently she was a girl with strong maternal instinct.

  “You’re not well,” she said.

  The idea, the glorious realization, was a flame roaring through him now. He rose from it like a phoenix.

  “No, I don’t feel very well,” he answered, and could hardly recognize his own voice as he spoke, “but it’s nothing serious. Really, it isn’t.”

  “Well, you ought to go home right now,” she said firmly. “I have the car downstairs, and it won’t be any trouble at all.”

  Arthur mentally struck himself on the forehead with his fist. He had thrown away one opportunity—did he have to throw this one away as well? Yet Mrs. Marsh’s rooming house had never appeared as wretched as it did just then; it was impossible to have her drive him there.

  Inspiration put the words into his mouth, the proper words to impress father and daughter. “There’s so much work to be done,” said Arthur, wistfully courageous, “that I can’t possibly leave it.” And then he added with as much ease as if he had practiced the lines for hours, “But I do want to see you again. Do you think if I called tomorrow evening—?”

  * * *

  —

  After that, he told himself grimly whenever the fire inside him threatened to flicker uncertainly, he had no choice. And Charlie Prince, of course, was not even offered a choice. At exactly seven minutes before midnight, after considerable choked protest and thrashing around, Charlie Prince lay dead on his bed. Entirely dead, although Arthur’s fingers remained clasped around his throat for another long minute just to make sure.

  It has been remarked that the man with the likeliest chance of getting away with murder is the man who faces his victim in a crowd, fires a bullet into him, and then walks off—which is a way of saying that it is the devious and overly ingenious method of murder that will hang the murderer. To that extent, Arthur had committed his murder wisely, although not out of any wisdom.

  The fact is that from the moment he had left Ann Horton to the moment he finally released his fingers from Charlie Prince’s throat he had lived in a sort of blind fever of knowing what had to be done without a thought of how it was to be done. And when at last he stood looking down at the body before him, with the full horror of what had happened bursting in his mind, he was at a complete loss. The soul had departed, no question about that. But the body remained, and what in the Lord’s name was one to do with it?

  He could bundle it into the closet, get it out of sight at least, but what would be the point of that? Mrs. Marsh came in every morning to make up the room and empty the wastebaskets. Since there was no lock on the closet door, there was no way of keeping her out of it.

  Or take Charlie Prince’s trunk standing there in the corner. He could deposit the body in it and ship it somewhere. Ship it where? He put his mind to the question desperately, but was finally forced to the conclusion that there was no place in the world to which you could ship a trunk with a body in it and rest assured that murder wouldn’t out.

  But he was on the right track with that trunk, and when the solution came at last he recognized it instantly and eagerly. The storage room in Mrs. Marsh’s was a dank cavern in the depths of the house, barred by a heavy door, which, though never locked, made it a desolate and chilly place no matter what the season. Since there was no traffic in that room, a body could molder there for years without anyone being the wiser. Eventually, it could be disposed of with no difficulty. The object now was to get it into the trunk and down to the storage room.

  To Arthur’s annoyance, he discovered that even though the trunk was a large one it made a tight fit, and it was a messy business getting everything arranged neatly. But at last he had it bolted tightly and out into the hallway. It was when he was midway down the stairs that the accident happened. He felt the trunk slipping down his back, gave it a violent heave to right it, and the next instant saw it go sliding over his head to crash down the rest of the distance to the floor with a thunder that shook the house. He was after it in an instant, saw that it remained firmly bolted, and then realized that he was standing eye to eye with Mrs. Marsh.

  She was poised there like a frightened apparition, clad in a white flannel nightgown that fell to her ankles, her fingers to her lips, her eyes wide.

  “Dear me,” she said, “dear me, you should be more careful!”

  Arthur flung himself in front of the trunk as if she had vision that could penetrate its walls. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to make any noise, but somehow it slipped.”

  She shook her head with gentle severity. “You might have scratched the walls. Or hurt yourself.”

  “No,” he assured her hastily, “there’s no damage done. None.”

  She peered around him at the trunk. “Why, that’s that nice Mr. Prince’s trunk, isn’t it? Wherever can
you be taking it at this hour?”

  Arthur felt the perspiration start on his forehead. “Nowhere,” he said hoarsely, and then when she knit her brows in wonder at this he quickly added, “That is, to the storage room. You see, Charlie—Mr. Prince—was supposed to give me a hand with it, but when he didn’t show up I decided to try it myself.”

  “But it must be so heavy.”

  Her warmly sympathetic tone served nicely to steady his nerves. His thoughts started to move now with the smooth precision of the second hand on a good watch. “I suppose it is,” he said, and laughed deprecatingly, “but it seemed better to do it myself than keep waiting for Mr. Prince to help. He’s very unreliable, you know. Just takes off when he wants to, and you never know how long he’ll be gone.”

  “I think it’s a shame,” said Mrs. Marsh firmly.

  “No, no, he’s a bit eccentric, but really very nice when you get to know him.” Arthur took a grip on the trunk. “I’ll get it down the rest of the way easily enough,” he said.

  A thought struck Mrs. Marsh. “Oh, dear me,” she chirped, “perhaps everything did happen for the best. I mean, your making a noise and bringing me out and all. You see, there’s a lock on the storage room now and you’d never have got in. I’ll just slip on a robe and take care of that.”

  She went ahead of him down the creaking cellar steps and waited in the storage room until he trundled the trunk into it. A dim light burned there, and, as he had remembered, dust lay thick over everything in sight. Mrs. Marsh shook her head over it.

  “It’s dreadful,” she said, “but there’s really no point in trying to do anything about it. Why, I don’t believe anyone uses this room from one year to the next! The only reason I put the lock on the door was because the insurance company wanted it there.”

  Arthur shifted from one foot to the other. His mission completed, he was willing—in fact, anxious—to leave, but Mrs. Marsh seemed oblivious to this. “I don’t encourage transients,” she said. “What I like is a nice steady gentleman boarder who’s no fuss and bother. Now, take that trunk there—” she pointed a bony forefinger at what appeared to be a mound of ashes, but which proved on a second look to be a trunk buried under years of dust—“when that gentleman moved in—”