The Night Before Murder

by Steve Fisher

  "It'll all be over pretty soon," she said.

  "Yeah," he said. "Too bad it isn't Christmas. They could strip me and cut my throat and hang me on a Christmas tree. I bet I'd look pretty. I'd hang out my tongue and leave my eyes open. That'd be a sight, wouldn't it?"

  "Not unless they put a play in one of your hands and a torch in the other," Mike Wiggam said, coming into the room.

  Wiggam sat down and Dorothy left. She went upstairs, taking off her coat and hat and hanging them up, and then she went to the mirror to inspect her cosmetics, but she was too nervous and wrought to care. The tension seemed to increase with the passing seconds. It was as though the house suddenly were about to collapse. The loneliness of the room frightened her and she left it and moved into the hall.

  A man cried out agonizingly. It was from somewhere below.

  She rushed to the broken banister and looked down. She was in time to see Grant sinking to the floor. Blood was gushing down the back of his head. His arms were flung out as he hit, and lay still. She had seen no other person there in the foyer.

  She pressed the palms of her hands to her temples and screamed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Grant was not dead. There was a chance for him. He was bleeding too freely for them to move him out of the house. They had put him on the divan. A doctor was there. He had arrived in almost no time. He was there, on one knee, wrapping white bandages around Grant's head, and Johnny West was standing over him, hovering over the doctor, wringing his hands, and biting his lips, and asking: "Is he—is he okay?"

  "He may be all right," said the doctor.

  Betty stood at the head of the divan looking down at Grant, and Roy was at the door, fumbling with his; blue chauffeur's cap. Clifton was walking up and down, as though, with his disarrayed and curly black hair, he were a madman. Sam Tulley was standing beside West, saying: "The poor boy. The poor boy," and Mike Wiggam, the only calm one in the room, was slouched in a chair with his legs dangling over the side, nursing a highball, talking to the highball, and petting its icy sides. Mrs. O'Malley was in the hall sobbing from deep in her lungs, as though Grant had been her son, though Dorothy knew Mrs. O'Malley cried only because she was afraid for herself. The butler was running back and forth on errands for the doctor.

  "Another hour of this," Clifton roared, "and you can take us all away, and lock us up in straight jackets. If you're a cop, why in the hell don't you do something besides standing around looking like Charley Chan's son?"

  "It's a funny blow," the doctor said.

  "Funny?"

  "Yes. Almost as though—" he stopped.

  "Go on," said West, "almost as though what?"

  "Well, I'd rather not say at this time."

  "You've got to!"

  The doctor, finished now, rose and looked at Johnny West coldly. "I don't work for the police," he said. "Perhaps you'd better go to them for advice."

  West's jaw tightened. "Will he live?"

  "I think so."

  "You mean there's a chance he won't?"

  "There is. But the odds are with living." Johnny tossed his head backward. "All right. You can get out."

  "Yeah," said Mike Wiggam, "get out. This is our own private hell. Misery don't like company."

  The doctor opened and closed his mouth. He snapped shut his bag and hurried out of the room. A policeman came in and stood quietly at the door. Dorothy saw a plainclothesman moving back and forth in the hall. Johnny was tightening the vise. Things had reached a head. He kept looking down at Grant, and then he went out of the room. He came back at once, departed again.

  "He's playing games," said Wiggam.

  "Yeah," snorted Clifton, "imagine. The sap spends his life playing games like these!"

  "He's only doing his duty," said Tulley tritely. "Every officer is pledged—"

  Clifton whirled on him. "Shuddup, will you? I'm sick of listening to you and your stinking patter. I've wanted to tell you and tonight's as good a time as any. I think you're a bloated, yapping toad, fake all the way from your belly button to your thick skull."

  Tulley shrank away from the unexpected attack.

  "Leave him alone!" said Dorothy.

  Clifton turned toward her. "Who's talking? The gingham girl? Little Miss Muffett?"

  "Keep still, Clifton," said Dorothy, "or I'll slap your face. I'll slap it until you're black and blue.”

  He laughed bitterly.

  Roy moved into the room now. "Betty," he said,

  Betty Smyth had been stooping over Grant and now she looked up. Both Clifton and Tulley watched her. She rose until she was erect and she stood very stiffly. Grant was inert on the divan at her side. Roy sensed the change in her and stopped, halfway into the room. There was silence. Roy put on his cap, shoving it back on his head. His lips were thin.

  "Coming with me? I think we can both pack now. We'll be able to go soon." That wasn't what he had intended to say to her. Obviously, it wasn't. He was making up words as he went along. He was watching her.

  Betty said: "I'm not going."

  Dorothy was standing almost beside him. She saw the flush creep into his cheeks.

  Betty moved forward. "I'm not going, do you hear? Nothing you can say will make me."

  "You are," said Roy, "you're just—"

  "I'm not going," Betty repeated again, then: "Did you do that to Grant? Did you hit him?"

  "You know I didn't!"

  She kept staring at Roy. "I hate you," she said. "You've made a fool of me. You've made me seem ridiculous. You've blinded me to the man I loved. You've lied to me. You forced your attentions on me in the beginning. You made me listen to you. You complained about the things that were hard on me. The little things. You worked into my sympathy. It was a campaign. I was crazy not to see it. Crazy, do you hear me, Roy. It took this—"

  "You're going," he said, "you're going with me."

  "I'm not, I—"

  "You didn't have to listen," he went on. "With a word you could have put me in my place as a chauffeur. But you wanted to listen. You were bored. You were looking for romance. You wanted to flirt. You wanted to play with emotion. But you didn't want to get burned. That's why you're backing down now. You think I made a fool out of you! That's a laugh. You take my heart out and show it to everybody in this house. You hold me up as a spectacle. Then at the last minute you want to run the other way. But you can't."

  She kept looking at him. "This is the end," she said.

  "Oh, no. This is the beginning. If you think you can go this far and—"

  "Then it's a settlement you want? It's cash you really want? That's it, isn't it?"

  Roy's fist was doubled, and he lunged out suddenly and hit Betty squarely across the face. She reeled backwards, fell into a chair, and crashed to the floor in a sitting-down position. Blood trickled from both her nose and mouth. Dorothy was biting her fist. The men in the room were stunned. Roy looked down at Dorothy, his hands unclenching. Clifton came to life then. He picked up a chair and threw it at Roy.

  Roy saw the chair and fended it off with his arms, grabbing it and smashing it to the floor. In crazy rage, Clifton rushed for him. He drove Roy back to the wall, held him with one hand, and hit him with the other. He kept hitting him. Roy didn't try to fight back. When Clifton stepped backward Roy's face was a pulp. His eyes were swelling, his lips were puffed, there were little streams of blood making jagged lines on his cheeks. He was still standing against the wall, but he was limp, like a dummy, his mouth gaped slightly.

  Johnny West appeared in the doorway just then.

  Clifton paid no attention to him. Dorothy was helping Betty into a chair and he turned toward her.

  "If this is a pay-off." he said, "let's make it a good one. Let's have a second act curtain that'll send them into the aisles screaming. Let's not pretend things that are phony and rotten any more. Let's drop the putrid lie of convention and hang our souls out on a line to dry. Let's call God God and love love. Let's quit being ashamed of the things we feel. I
'm talking to you, Dorothy. I love you. In front of all these people and that cheap, second-rate, small-town detective I love you and I'll be damned in hell before I see you dropped off in a town like this, like a milk can off the four o'clock freight!"

  She stared at him.

  "I played games with Sherry. Okay. So what? You were busy acting. But you were always there. You were always with me. Night after night on that rat eaten stage on Seventeenth Street. We rehearsed together. We planned together. We schemed together. We saw that light shining up there like a beacon to a sailor. We didn't call it love. We didn't call it anything. It was just a guy and a girl fighting their hearts out for something they both wanted. It took this. Damn near losing you, to make me see that I couldn't give you up, that I couldn't stop seeing you!

  "Say I'm a fake and a liar and an egotist," he went on, "say I'm selfish and out for fame at any price. But put it like this: it isn't a road I'm going to take alone. You fit into "Saturday' because I wrote it for you. You fit into everything else I do. I dream and eat and breathe you like the words I write. You're part of Clifton Dell and you can't stop being part of Clifton Dell. Not now or any time. This half-wit woman. This gigolo chauffeur. They had to show me what I've been thinking. What I've been feeling!"

  "Are you through, Clifton?"

  He stared at her. He dropped his hands. "Yes, I'm through," he said. He turned.

  Johnny West was still at the door. He was shaking. Grant stirred on the divan. Betty leaped from her chair and went to him. She knelt by his side.

  Johnny said: "Primarily concerned with murder. Not emotion. I've never seen a whackier bunch of people in all my life. You brawl. You rave. I've never been in a legitimate theater and I'll never go into one now. Dorothy's staying here with me. Your idiot's shriek is as futile as your whole miserable, violent life. But it's murder now. For the present it's my show. I don't want any more of this—this—"

  He sucked breath into his lungs. "Grant was slugged—if he was slugged—for a reason."

  Wiggam still sat in his chair cuddling the highball. "Why do you say 'if,' Mr. Tracy—ah, I mean, Mr. West?"

  Johnny put a cigarette between his lips. He didn't answer.

  Dorothy glanced at Grant. Something had suddenly struck home. If Grant was slugged—and she doubted that he had indicted the blow on himself to point suspicion elsewhere—he had been knocked out, or murder had been attempted, to keep quiet something vital he knew that would point out the killer. This suddenly meant something to her. But she could not for the life of her remember what it was. She went over everything in her mind, slowly, methodically. First, the first time she had seen Johnny, the very first questioning: Grant had been missing. Betty had said Grant was upstairs "with a man seeing about some of Mother's effects"; next, the time they had gathered at Mrs. Davis' bedside, the loose talk, something Grant had said. Was it Wiggam who had said: "Summer is for beer?" Beer. That statement. It was tying something together. Her lips moved half in a whisper although she was scarcely conscious of it.

  "Summer is made for beer."

  She repeated it, to herself, nodding. Everyone else in the room was occupied. Johnny West was saying: "Someone has just come in. In the other room. This is the payoff." Mike Wiggam was sipping at the highball, Clifton was standing with his back turned. Mrs. O'Malley was still in the hall. Roy was still against the wall, bloody, limp. Betty was kneeling beside Grant. Sam Tulley was in one corner in a large easy chair. Summer, Dorothy thought, is made for beer... Grant slugged... Summer is made for…

  She was aware suddenly of two eyes directed on her. Two livid, narrowed eyes. They drew her attention. They were magnets. Her lips stopped moving. She realized! somebody had heard the whisper. She was paralyzed with fear. She didn't see the eyes yet, but they chilled her. They were the eyes of death. They burned her like acid. They watched her with a power of hypnotism. Her head lifted. She looked into those eyes. She saw the face that lifted out from them. The pale skin. The flabby cheeks. The thick lips. Sam Tulley. Sam Tulley sitting there, staring at her; and now she saw the gun he held just under his coat. She saw the black muzzle of it pointing directly at her. She saw the muscles in his face tighten. He put one fat finger in the direction of his lips. Silence, said the finger. Silence, said the eyes. Silence, said the gun.

  Beer. Grant and I stood at the corner bar Monday drinking it until we thought we'd bust, didn't we, old man?

  Monday… Monday... Monday. The words; pounded with a crushing effect at her brain.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  No one saw. No one noticed. No one cared. Dorothy, could not move. Her hands were like ice. Those eyes kept watching her. No one wanted to pay any attention to Sam Tulley. He was dull. He was flat. He was yesterday's joke. He was 1925 slang. He was death. His gum didn't waver. Its little black muzzle didn't once leave Dorothy. There was sweat on her neck. Her tongue was dry. Sand was choked in her throat. She just sat there. Betty was nursing Grant. Roy was standing. Clifton was— But Johnny West was talking. He talked slowly. His voice droned. He would never get to the point. He was easy, soft-spoken. There was a cigarette in his mouth. His eyes were dark. His hair was wavy. His face was white. He was talking... talking, he was saying:

  "So this is the wind-up, the finis, and as I said at the start, I'm sorry for any discomfort I've had to cause any of you. It's just that a cop is a heel with a job to do." He reached back and took out his handcuffs, and suddenly he was looking at Sam Tulley, though he could not see the gun under Tulley's coat. He was not expecting that. He wasn't depending on it. This whole build-up was a surprise. The spring-it-on-them method that shook out their yellow hearts and loosened their fumbling tongues. He was pouncing, with words he was pouncing, he was pulling the rabbit from the hat, he said: "If you'll put these on—these handcuffs—Mr. Tulley, I'll go on. Because it's you I'm arresting. You're the killer, Tulley. You're the guy, and you're already sitting in the electric chair with that little electrode on your head. Am I making myself clear, Tulley?"

  He moved across the room.

  Tulley was looking up, at Johnny. He jerked the gun out from under his coat. He held it level. Johnny stopped. Tulley was chewing his lips. He was watching Johnny, holding the gun. He was surprised. He was that, all right, he was bowled over. He was knocked cold. He was out like cured ham. He was dizzy. He was punch drunk. But he had the gun. He'd had the gun holding it on Dorothy. He had it to pull out from under his coat. The gun took the place of his expression which could not bluff. The gun was the barrier that saved him in that minute while his mind roamed in confusion. His gun gave him time to get his second wind. Gave him time to adjust himself to this: to exposal. But it was a shock. His whole face showed that. He didn't know that Johnny West was aware of his guilt. He had thought only Dorothy knew. He licked his lips. He got tough. Second wind was coming. He became desperate. He was the rat up against the wall, fighting every last inch. Second and third wind now. His face was changing. Johnny was still staring at the gun. Let Johnny be surprised.

  "Stay where you are," said Tulley, he was finding voice, there was strength in the sound of his own voice. Dorothy could see that. Sam Tulley's voice intoxicated Sam Tul ley. He was big. He had a gun. He was trapped, but he could get out. There was no power he didn't have.

  "Stay where you are," he said again, "if you move one inch closer I'll kill you."

  Dorothy was surprised when Johnny spoke. She was surprised because she had forgotten he was a cop. She had forgotten he was all cop, top to bottom. There was no weakness in his voice. No fright. He said: "This is a confession of your guilt then?"

  "I didn't say that!" Tulley roared. It was a word duel. It was bluff against a gun. Tulley hadn't expected that. He had expected logical action, a trite shrinking in aghast of the weapon of death. He hadn't expected this cop to turn his threat around into a confession when as yet nothing had actually been proven.

  "Innocent men don't pull guns," Johnny said.

  Tulley was getting out of his chair
now, still holding the gun on Johnny. A window was behind him. He could break it. He could escape.

  "You've nothing on me," said Tulley. "Only you're not going to railroad me. I'm going to get out of this." There, that was smart, admit nothing. But it was a mistake. He saw that when Johnny spoke next.

  "You're already dead," Johnny said. "You're already in the prison morgue, dead and cold, ready for your grave." Johnny West still held the handcuffs in front of him. His face was sleek with sweat. "I'll tell you why before I put these on you," he continued softly. "You seem to think that after all your blunders we still have nothing on you, so I'll tell you how you accomplished everything, and the reason for it, then I'm going to lock these around your wrists and take you away. That gun isn't going to do you any good. Your hands are putty. The trigger is too hard for you. It's made of steel.

  "You came here Thursday," Johnny went on. "You admitted that. You came out on the train. You brought the Journal with you. The fact that Grant also bought one that day is immaterial. You had the Journal and from that you had your idea. Because on Thursday you signed certain papers with Mrs. Davis which would put you in charge of a large trust fund for beginning actors. It would make you producer of the plays in a theater—called the Rhea Davis theater—where each year you were to try out new talent for so long as the money lasted. That was to begin only after her death. Whatever profits the plays made were yours. The money she left was only for the actual productions. But it was worded so that you had complete charge of the money and could direct it into the channels where you saw fit. It was a wonderful thing, a great charity. It made you a rich man if you desired to pull a few underhanded strings. It lifted you out of the gutter and put you in the back seat of a Rolls Royce.

  "So you meant to see that she died before she changed her mind about the disposal of the money and switched the will perhaps to some other glib producer who could convince her he could do better with the Rhea Davis theater fund than you. That's why you ripped the heel from one of her shoes while she was at her nap. So the heel would break and she would send the shoes to the cobbler. She did this. Saturday you paid a small boy to go to the cobbler and ask for Rhea Davis' shoes. You gave the boy a dollar for doing this. When you had obtained the shoes you took them with you back to Stamford where you were spending the week-end. In Stamford you applied the poison chromium fluoride and had another cobbler sew the linings neatly back in the shoes."