“That’s a good boy.”
Charles Castle dismissed the chauffeur at the far side of the small park. He told Gustav—establishing a precedent—that he would walk through the park to his hotel.
He had nothing more to attend to physically. The scheme was set, purchases carefully made, timing checked. All it needed now was a little brooding over the details of his own behavior. He walked restlessly in the small rain, ignored the hotel, and turned into the first barbershop he saw.
It seemed that only one man in the shop knew how to trim a beard, and he was busy. It was becoming a lost art, the chubby little proprietor told him. The proprietor said to a barber at the last chair, “You think you can take care of this gentleman?”
Charles Castle climbed into the chair and relaxed. “Make me look pretty,” he said cheerfully. “Real pretty, for a lady.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tonight. At the concert. He would mention a headache to Mimi. Afterward, while Gustav was driving them back to her house, his headache would become “worse.” On arrival there he would be “in great pain.” Ask to be excused immediately. But set up in her mind the certainty that he would phone the moment he got to his suite. That meant she would be downstairs, waiting for his call—she disliked telephones because of her deafness and had no extension upstairs. Very good.
Next—if she offered, and she would—he would let Gustav drive him as far as the park. There he would use the headache again, tell Gustav he needed the air and would walk across the park to the hotel. Here he must watch the timing. It was his responsibility to see that it came out right. He would take care to impress the exact time on Gustav.
But he would not walk through the park to the hotel. He would get into the car already parked near where he intended to tell Gustav to let him out, and he would follow the chauffeur back to Mimi’s house. Take care to see the man safely up her driveway and into the garage where he slept, too.
She’d be downstairs at the window where the phone was, waiting for his call. All he would need to do was to attract her attention through the windowpane. She would open the door for him herself. Just let her see him. He had full confidence in his power to wrap all this in the strong flavor of romance. Stricken with remorse for his rudeness in leaving her so abruptly. Returned to beg her pardon. And one last kiss.
But he must maneuver Mrs. Coonley out of the midnight picture.
In his absorption he had not heard what the barber—a slim, dark-eyed, nervous man—had been saying. Some complaint. The sense of it lingered. Castle roused himself. His eye traveled. “What happened to your mirror?” Now he could see a piece of cloth draped half over it.
“It just broke,” the barber said, in a voice that grated. “What I’m telling you! I didn’t do it! I absolutely didn’t do it. He can’t say I did it!”
“Just broke, eh?”
“I walk up to the chair. I’m standing here. Cra-ack. How could I have broke it?”
“Funny,” said Castle genially. “Seven years’ bad luck for somebody, so they say.” He was not a superstitious man.
The scissors began to click in the barber’s hand. Castle closed his eyes and concentrated on the problem of Mrs. Coonley. Suppose he were to hint to Mimi, before they left for the concert, that when they returned there would be some smooching? He shuddered. But it was bound to work. Surely Mimi would then order Coonley not to wait up. Coonley would obey, and her room was far from the entrance hall. And of course there was no need to shudder, because the smooching would not be of the kind that Mimi expected.
He did not know why he hated her so. It infuriated him that she swallowed his outrageous flattery so easily. Sometimes, in fact, he felt as if he were being deliberately lured into overplaying his part. Again and again he dismissed that idea. No, no, she was too vain and stupid.
His gorge rose, thinking of the silly old crow. She thought he would marry such-as-her? Or, contrarily, she thought she was toying with such-as-him? Either way, she would pay for it. Tonight. His hands under the barber’s cloth were tight and eager. The diamonds hardly entered into his pleasure at all.
Yes, he thought, it was going to be very satisfying and very safe.
A perfect alibi, and apparently so much to lose. Oh, they would suspect him; quite automatically. But this would be quickly damped down by “the facts” . . .
That was when the feel of cold shears on his cheek made Castle sit up, roaring, in the chair.
“Oh, gentleman . . .” The barber stepped back, scissors clicking nervously. “I wasn’t thinking . . .”
“You crazy or something?” the proprietor came bellowing. “The gentleman said ‘Trim’!”
The barber looked half mad. “It was the mirror breaking. It wasn’t
me . . . Seven years’ bad luck. Bad luck,” he kept murmuring.
He had snipped one side of Castle’s beard down to an almost invisible stubble.
As the other half of his beard was vanishing under the skillful hands of the proprietor himself, Charles Castle did not listen to the stream of apology, of gratitude for his “decency,” of explanation. He was contemplating his personal disaster. He had got his rage under quick control. Don’t impress anyone in the barber shop with the idea that the beard had been important. Be forbearing. Be reasonable. Be “decent.” Be forgotten.
“Personally, there’s no such thing as luck, good or bad, I say,” the proprietor was babbling. “That’s not scientific.”
“That’s right,” Castle said absently.
When he hurried out of the shop into the afternoon rain, he tried to pull his naked face down into his jacket collar. What to do? He spotted a drug store, went in, and bought some of the covering paste that women use on blemishes. There was that intricate way to get up to his hotel room without being seen, and he used it.
At once, Castle tried to reach Johnson, who was staying in a cheap boarding house where the phone was a community affair, for emergencies only. A voice said that Mr. Johnson was not there. It seemed to the voice that Mr. Johnson had said something about going to the races. Something about he knew a horse that could run in the rain.
Castle gnashed and swore. He went into the bathroom and smeared the cosmetic over the blue birthmark which lay, shaped like Lake Champlain, along his jaw. The paste was concealing enough at a distance, and in a poor light. But . . .
Hell to pay! He had to go somewhere for a long time and lie very low. The pretty scheme, of course, was impossible now. No fooling around with the chauffeur, the headache, the timing—none of that driving back and forth. He would simply go into the house with her, and kill her, and run.
He dreaded the concert. Could he do it before they left the house? No, not with the servants awake and around. It had to be after the concert. But soon after. Quick attack, and flight. It was that and the diamonds. Or it was flight and nothing.
He tried the phone again with no better luck. He hoped angrily that Johnson was losing his shirt on the races. Finally he began to dress. The paste on his jaw was too conspicuous. He thought of a piece of adhesive tape. Then he thought not. The hell with it. Risk it. Do it.
His hands trembled. He tried the phone once more. Still no Johnson. Well, no matter. The old crow would die. He would run. Johnson would never see him—or any of the diamonds.
As she served the hors d’oeuvres, Mrs. Coonley’s eyes were as round as onions. Mimi Meade kept looking at her fiancé in the merciful candlelight as if he were a stranger. “Oh, Charles,” she screamed. “Why ever did you do that!”
“My darling, I did it to please you,” he said gallantly. “Was I wrong?”
“You have a strong face. A very strong face,” she shrieked. “But I did think your beard was distinguished-looking. I am sorry.”
“Did you love me for my beard alone?” he teased, impatient for midnight and her throat.
Mimi laughed so raucously that all her diamonds shook. But he saw Mrs. Coonley’s mouth make a pink button, and Castle received, intuitively, the
news that now he could not marry the $2,000,000 dollars even if he wanted to. Beardless, the old crow wouldn’t have him.
His rage turned hard as ice, and as cold.
After dinner, holding Mimi’s wrap, he whispered that there were things to discuss, intimate plans to be made, decisions to be taken. Could they be alone when they got back from the concert? He thought she stiffened at his word “decisions.” But she screeched to Mrs. Coonley, docilely enough, her injunction not to wait up.
He was satisfied. When they returned here, he would give the burly chauffeur a good quarter of an hour to lock the garage and be off to bed. If Mrs. Coonley disobeyed her employer and waited up, why, it would be easy enough to get rid of her, too. What was one more?
“Good night, sir and ma’am,” Mrs. Coonley said. “Enjoy the music.”
“Thank you,” Castle said. “Good night.” His cold eyes slipped over the housekeeper’s face and he smiled.
When they had gone, Mrs. Coonley sighed deeply. “Well,” she said aloud.
As she went about turning off lights, preparing to go to her room, the phone rang. “Aunt Lydia?”
“Oh, George.”
She sounded as if she couldn’t quite place him for a moment, George thought. “I got Inspector Cameron to promise he’ll meet me after his poker game tonight. So where will this guy Castle be around midnight?”
“Oh. Oh, yes, let me see. Why, I suppose he’ll be getting back to his hotel about then. The Belmont.”
“Okay. We’ll be hanging around the lobby.”
“Good boy,” said his aunt absently. “But I think everything’s going to be all right anyway, George.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s going to break the engagement.”
“She is?”
“Oh, I’m positive she will. He’s shaved off his beard.” George’s Aunt Lydia gave a little giggle. “Mrs. Meade is all upset. Now he looks thirty years younger than she, instead of twenty. She’ll never marry him.”
“Then you mean,” said George in distress, “I’ve been hounding Inspector Cameron—?”
“I think he’s got something smeared on his face,” his aunt went on happily. “Looks as if he’s trying to hide a scar that was under the beard before. You better see if your friend knows his real name, Georgie. Now I’m positive he’s a criminal.”
“Well,” said George, sounding dubious, “okay then.”
The concert was a success. There were encores. Then the audience, dressed to the teeth, left the hall very slowly, bowing and preening its fine feathers. Mimi seemed annoyed that Charles, much less flamboyant and forceful than usual, did not clear her way, but let her be buffeted with the rest. They found Gustav and the car, and rode in silence.
It was not quite midnight when the car pulled up under Mrs. Meade’s porte cochère. She had been thinking of Samson. “Charles,” she said decisively, “you must come in. Shall we let Gustav go to bed? You can call a cab later. We must have a talk.”
“Yes,” Castle said. “Of course. By all means!”
Detective George Coonley leaned on the desk at the Belmont. Inspector Cameron, stolid beside him, was letting George do it. “Charles Castle hasn’t come in yet, has he?” George inquired.
“Yes, sir,” the man said promptly. “Just about five minutes ago. I saw him starting up the stairs. He always walks up—his room is only one flight up.”
George felt terrible. He squinted unhappily toward the stairway. (The great Cameron doing him this favor, and they were too late! George felt young and green and futile.) “Are you sure?” he demanded with a desperate ferocity. “Absolutely sure it was Castle you saw? That stairway is pretty far from the desk here.”
“Positive,” said the man. “He gave me the salute he always gives. Anyhow, I couldn’t miss that beard of his.”
George Coonley was young and green, but he was not stupid. Even as the great Cameron had already begun to turn away, George stiffened.
“What beard?” he asked.
Mimi Meade felt the cruel thumbs striking into her flesh. She saw, as her frantic old hands pushed and slipped on the grim jaw, the blue mark emerging. She lost the light . . .
Mrs. Coonley, on the stairs, didn’t scream. She ran down toward the hammering shadows assaulting the front door. Then George was inside, bending the killer’s left arm impossibly backward. Lydia Coonley caught Mrs. Meade’s falling, but breathing, body.
Inspector Cameron said, “Birthmark. Yep. This is Chic Hutt from Boston. Wanted for murder.”
“Now that we got him,” panted George, “how about calling the Belmont, sir—see if they got whoever was giving him the alibi with the beard?”
“You hardly ever see a beard nowadays,” croaked Mimi Meade, pulling at her necklace—some of the diamonds were embedded in her flesh. “My father used to wear a beard . . .”
“Hush,” said Lydia Coonley. “I’ve called the doctor. I’ll get you to bed.” (A fuss will be made, her manner promised fondly.) “George,” she beamed at her nephew, “I’m real proud of you.”
George shushed her. Inspector Cameron was on the phone.
“Got his alibi man,” he said to George in a moment. “Horse-happy con artist named Johnson. He didn’t know about the beard being gone. How come you cut it off?” the Inspector asked Chic Hutt. “Bad mistake, wasn’t it?”
“Bad luck,” growled Chic, alias Charles Castle.
Later, George, waiting beside Inspector Cameron at Headquarters, said, “Wasn’t it luck, though? Nothing but luck?”
The Inspector said kindly, “You don’t want to get confused, son—there’s more than one kind of luck. ‘Bad luck,’ he said. But he forgot a couple of things. First, he didn’t have to go ahead and try to murder the old lady. Second, any innocent man could have got his beard taken off by mistake, and no harm done to anyone. And what definitely wasn’t luck at all, my boy, was that you were awful quick to see that bit about the beard.”
A case of mistaken identity is always disconcerting, especially if one has been out of town for a while, especially if one questions whether there has really been a mistake. In order to strike a balance, the young playwright protagonist must think fast to protect his own credibility and figure out why an event from the past has reemerged before him. This L.A. story appeared in EQMM in 1960.
ST. PATRICK’S DAY IN THE MORNING
Very carefully, in a state of fearful pleasure, he put all the pieces of paper in order. One copy of the manuscript he put into an envelope and addressed it. The other copies he put into an empty suitcase. Then he called an airline and was lucky. A seat for New York in the morning. Morning? What morning? St. Patrick’s Day in the morning.
He had been out of this world. But now he stretched, breathed, blinked, and put out feelers for what is known as reality.
See now. He was Mitchel Brown, playwright (God willing), and he had finished the job of revision he had come home to Los Angeles to do. Wowee! Finished!
The hour was a quarter after one in the morning and therefore already the 17th of March. The place was his ground-floor apartment, and it was a mess: smoky, dirty, disorderly. . . . Oh, well, first things had come first. His back was aching, his eyes were burning, his head was light. He would have to clean up, eat, sleep, bathe, shave, dress, pack. But first . . .
He slammed a row of airmail stamps on the envelope and went out. The street was dark and deserted. A few cars sat lumpishly along the curbs. The manuscript thumped down into the mailbox—safe in the bosom of the Postal Service. Now, even if he, the plane, and the other copies perished . . .
Mitch laughed at himself and turned the corner, feeling suddenly let down, depressed, and forlorn.
The Parakeet Bar and Grill, he noted gratefully, was still open. He walked the one block and went in. The Bar ran all the way along one wall and the Grill, consisting of eight booths, ran all the way along the other. The narrow room was dim and felt empty. Mitch groped for a stool.
“Hi, Toby. Business
slow?”
“Hi, Mr. Brown,” The bartender seemed glad to see him. He was a small man with a crest of dark hair, a blue chin, and a blue tinge to the whites of his eyes. “This late on a week night, I’m never crowded.”
“The kitchen’s gone home, eh?” Mitch said. The kitchen was not the heart of this establishment.
“That’s right, Mr. Brown. You want any food, you better go elsewhere.”
“A drink will do me,” said Mitch with a sigh. “I can go home and scramble yet another egg.”
Toby turned to his bottles. When he turned back with Mitch’s usual, he said in an anxious whine, “Fact is, I got to close up pretty soon and I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean, what to do?”
“Look at her.” Toby’s gaze passed over Mitch’s left shoulder.
Mitch glanced behind him and was startled to see there was a woman sitting in one of the booths. Or perhaps one could say lying, since her fair hatless head was down on the red-checked tablecloth. Mitch turned again and wagged inquiring eyebrows.
“Out like a light,” said Toby in a hoarse whisper. “Listen, I don’t want to call the cops. Thing like that, not so good for the place. But I got a kid sick and my wife is all wore out and I wanted to get home.”
“You try black coffee?”
“Sure, I tried.” Toby’s shoulders despaired.
“How’d she get this way?”
“Not here,” said Toby quickly. “Don’t see how. So help me, a coupla drinks hit her like that. Trouble is, she’s not a bum. You can see that. So what should I do?”
“Put her in a taxi,” said Mitch blithely. “Just ship her where she belongs. Why not? She’ll have something on her for identity.”
“I don’t want to mess around with her pocketbook,” Toby said fearfully.
“Hm. Well, let’s see . . .” Mitch got off the stool. His drink had gone down and bounced lightly and he was feeling cheerful and friendly toward all the world. Furthermore, he felt very intelligent and he understood that he had been born to understand everybody.
Toby came, too, and they lifted the woman’s torso.
Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense Page 18