Again I say that was not the murder weapon, said the Brown Recluse.
I stared at him. He was not wearing the bilious brown tweed cape. That, I supposed, had gone to Empire Cleaners, with an admonition to return it to him in pristine, unstained state. Now he shivered in a shabby little Aquascutum trench coat quite a few sizes too small. He strutted some more, picked his gold tooth, and inspected a particle of food on the end of it He flicked it into the gold-dappled grass beside the bricks.
The blood on that brick was dry, he said. Already several hours old. For reasons known only to Holliday he picked the brick up—already clotted with the considerable flow from the deceased’s wounds a few feet away. The blood was dry, I say. Clearly Holliday arrived at the scene of the crime a full two hours after it took place. Now are you asking us to suppose that he committed the crime say around four in the morning and then stood there till six with the bloody brick in his hand and the victim’s purse in his coat—waiting until Gene yonder could chance upon him? I say that is sheer nonsense, gentlemen—Ellen.
O, he was so patronizing when he said my name. And yet I felt that wine of assurance warm in my veins. Somehow I should win. You see the key to the murder—to any murder—is the establishment of the strongest motive.
What was the motive, Charlie? asked Ory then. If it wasn’t greed.
Oh, it was greed all right, said the Brown Recluse. But it wasn’t the greed of a simple-minded drunkard for a purse containing forty—maybe fifty dollars and a few coins. It was a much greater greed.
Everyone waited. No one spoke.
The evidence of how great that greed is, he went on, is provided by the absence here this evening of one of our charter members.
I cocked my brow. What was happening here? My mind ransacked all possibilities. What was the repulsive creature getting at? O, I was more determined than ever that he should not possess my treasure. Yes, it had always been mine, I thought in that instant.
And everyone was looking around to see who was missing Gene Voitle was there. I was there. Gribble was there. Jake Bardall, the carpenter was there. Ory looked uncomfortable.
He cleared his throat.
Harry Hornbrook, he said. I know he’d be sorry to miss this meeting. I mean, a special meeting like this.
Where is Harry? Where is your real estate partner, Ory?
He went to Wheeling early this morning, Ory said. Took a plane to Pittsburgh. Planed out of there for Washington.
Tell us, Ory, said the Brown Recluse, strutting all the more, his pale, hairy wrists jutting out of the undersized trenchcoat like naked chicken bones. Tell us, he said, like some popinjay of a small-town prosecuting attorney, why Harry said he was going to Washington.
Why to fight Bow Chemicals mineral rights contract—they bought up hundreds of them last year—to take over his coal lands.
Tell me, Sheriff Voitle, said the Brown Recluse then, would you have any idea where the original deeds for those mineral rights might be?
No, Charlie, I don’t.
Perhaps I can inform you, said the Brown Recluse, like some shyster in a thirties movie, that until the murder in the early hours in this September morning, those original contracts—the sole arbitrating fulcrum for any claims in this case—these were in Jim Smitherman’s briefcase.
Charlie, that’s not so. I gave those contracts to Harry to take to Washington. You must know that.
You did not, said the Brown Recluse, and I knew when he was lying. (When a man lies to a woman in love she can forever spot a lie in that person’s mouth.) He was rigging this, the fiend. He was setting up Harry Hornbrook—just so he could claim the Persian Slipper.
You know Harry has those mineral right deeds, said Ory, red-faced and perplexed before this array of unreason. He had to have them to show to the government boys. To make his claim.
I remember sending Jim back to the bank for them, said the Brown Recluse. He was returning with them—through the foggy town—when Harry struck. Struck and took the deeds. And flew the coop.
Ory picked his nose and then flickered his fingers nervously.
By God, Charlie, he said, you’d do anything to win that damned old Arabian nights shoe. Even betray a friend.
Respect for law and order, said the Brown Recluse, goes deeper than friendship. The Master would agree, I think.
Nobody said anything. Nobody argued.
But I knew, I think we all knew that Charlie Gribble was not through.
Relentlessly, he went on, building his vicious and preposterous case against the poor real estate partner. I had earlier noticed the bulge in the tawdry, tight little trench coat Now his spidery fingers dove into this pocket and took out something round and perhaps four inches in diameter wrapped in a white, though blood-stained, handkerchief.
This, he announced pretentiously, is the murder weapon. I found it a few moments ago under those leaves and moss by the tree.
What is it, Charlie? asked the sheriff drawing near and scratching the back of his neck.
It is a glass paperweight, said the Brown Recluse. Affixed to the bottom of it so that it can be read easily is a printed advertisement for a Glory firm. It is a promotional give-away.
Which one, Charlie? the sheriff asked. Which company?
A real estate firm, it so happens, drawled the dreadful little spiderman. One quite prominent locally.
He cleared his throat in the manner of a bad actor.
The firm of Hornbrook and Gallagher, he said then.
Again all was still save for the wind and the rustle of the dear old tree. I was fascinated, as though watching the filming of something prerecorded and all stacked up by whatever Fates there be. I felt a little giddy.
This paperweight was the weapon that killed Jim, said the Brown Recluse then. There is blood on it. And even a few hairs. And—
Oh, how dare you perpetrate this unbelievable folly! I blurted. You with your widely known shares in every chemical plant between Weirton and Nitro. You—a millionaire in chemical plants. Bow, I am sure, among them. You want that land for Bow, damn you, you—you Brown Recluse!
Ellen, control yourself, he stammered in a faint, scared voice. You shan’t snatch this moment of glory from me now.
I shall—damn you. And I shall snatch with the fingers of Truth!
But Harry Hornbrook’s fingerprints are on this paperweight, dear lady. Can that be controverted?
Ory Gallagher was standing tensed, half crouching.
Every one of those paperweights has Harry’s prints on them, for God’s sake, Charlie. He distributed them. Mailed them out personally.
But the blood. The blood, my dear fellow, snapped the Brown Recluse, and I swear his voice had assumed a kind of fake Englishness. As the Master would say in this case, Elementary, my dear Gallagher.
Oh, this was unspeakable. Absolutely detestable.
He had trumped the whole thing up, this greed-head, in the hopes of causing Harry to lose his deed claim with the powerful chemical combine. And to win, as a kind of laniape, the lovely Persian Slipper.
I think, I said, that it is time that the woman’s voice be heard, gentlemen.
I hobbled forward and stood swaying amid lovely beams of a sun which burned all the more fiercely as it declined behind a stripped-out hill. The wind blew and stirred my curls across my cheek.
My soul made choices in that instant.
In the manner of the Master, I announced with a modest lilt to my voice, I shall now demonstrate the true manner in which this crime was perpetrated.
I stared across the grass where the Brown Recluse stood, and I stared into the space six inches above his head, putting him forever beneath my regard.
In the first place, I said, we all know that he yonder wants those mineral rights for Bow Chemical. He is therefore prejudiced. He is also stupid—for the blood and hair on the paperweight will probably, under examination, prove to be the blood of one of his own Rhode Island red stewing hens. Establishing that, I shall continue.
Harry Hornbrook is a small man, I said. The deceased was a large man. I do not believe that Harry Hornbrook could have reached high enough to get a proper swing to deliver the fatal blow.
I hobbled around the dear old tree and stared at the empty case of a locust. Blessed creature, you have escaped and flown away into the moon. I plucked it loose and watched it fall to the moss at the base of the tree. I smiled.
How could you, Charlie Gribble—how could you, Sheriff Voitle—be so blind as to have missed this?
They all gathered round.
This footprint, I said. In the sweet, thick moss which grows here. It is so clear. It is unmistakable.
The sheriff stooped and stared. Presently he nodded.
It is like the print of a child, he whispered. A child—maybe ten, eleven. Such a tiny shoe.
Oh, yes, I breathed. Do observe how small. In fact—I smiled over their heads. The sun still clung—a bright, striving crumb of fire upon the mine tipple across the already fog-wisping river—I think if you measure the print, sheriff, you will find it was made by a size five and a half quadruple A.
That’s amazingly narrow, amazingly small, said Jake Bardall, who sold shoes on a commission mail-order business.
Oh, thank you—thank you, I said.
The thought seemed to strike everyone at once for at least three of them asked it.
Where is the other print? they chorused.
The wind blew so sweetly. O, I felt as if I could dance-dance—if only something soft and green, jade green, with sequins and paste gems were only clasping my dear little foot.
There was none, I said. The murder was committed by a one-legged person—quite strong in the shoulder and arm of the good side, as most such lame people are—and this one-legged person, to judge from the impression of the shoe in the moss, was probably a woman. Surely, no man would wear so small—so delicate—so petite a shoe.
Drawn by the sundown scents of frying steak in river-front pantries, a small brown dog came trotting past along the bricks and disappeared across Twelfth.
The murder weapon was metal, of considerable more weight than the piece of glass that the Brown—that Charlie Gribble has offered as exhibit A. No, this weapon—I leaned against the great, comforting tree and waved my crutch at them—this weapon, I said, was metal and tubular and of great weight. In fact, I went on, I believe this crutch of mine will, upon examination, prove to exactly fit the wound.
The dog barked at the screen door. Steaks and homefries and wilted-lettuce and gravy haunted the river wind.
No one spoke. I broke the silence.
Gentlemen, I said, I have given you your murderer. I have not confessed—I have irrefutably demonstrated In the method of the canon—the technique of the Master.
I paused like a happy child about to leap a crying, country brook.
May I have the Persian Slipper? I whispered almost coquettishly. In perpetuity now.
The screen door slammed. But the supper sweetness dreamed sweetly on the wind and I could smell my azalea, too.
Yes, snapped the Brown Recluse. It’s up in the hotel. At what used to be 221B. On the mantel.
Will you get it for me?
No, damn you. Get it for yourself.
My progress from the big elm and up the town that sundown evening is legend now. A dozen feet behind me purred Ory’s Plymouth cruiser. Lord, did they think I’d make a run for it? It took me one hour and fifteen minutes. Word spread fast Kids and old people, too, came out on porches and stared over iced-tea glasses at a middle-aged cripple slowly hobbling up brick sidewalks toward her freedom. Oh, the poor fools. Didn’t they know I had won—won, at last?
The hardest part was making it up three flights of those hotel steps. And the long hallway with a door open and a poor young colored maid making up a room. I got there at last I took the Persian Slipper down from its resting place on the mantel, under the patriotic VR. I sank into the Morris chair and, after a long spell, while all of them stood in the hall watching and craning their necks to see, I slipped my expensive hand-lasted shoe off my lovely foot. I wriggled my toes in the almost dark. I put on the Persian Slipper.
A strange thing has happened in the year since that night. I am sitting alone in my little room in a khaki, state uniform. The walls of the room are brown. Everything visible is some shade of brown. There is even a brownish cast to the beams of sunlight that manage to poke through my small window. Perhaps I am brown now, too—I have no mirror here. Only one spot of color blazes like a jewel in that dustbin of a place. Jade-green felt that curls into a cornucopia at the end, like asweet, subtle pastry; bright sequins of lavender and mauve and cosmos blue, a glitter as of rubies and amethysts from the little gems of paste.
And I am free! No longer am I a flower pinned to earth on one leg—a stork incapable of delivering real babies. I am free. And that’s because the Persian Slipper is touched with enchantment and makes it be London out there when the fog comes up. When the fog comes up and makes it be Soho and Limehouse in all that fleecy Dickens world of night. Because you see with my marvelous Persian Slipper I can browse and wander through that strip of Thames just east of Mansion House. And every night—when the fog is up—you’ll find me there. If you look.
O, do come looking—do find me in that fog some night!
We can sit till morning and tell each other tales of Sherlock Holmes so wondrous that even he will not believe!
Or, if you prefer, we’ll go to haunt a spider.
Poor Charlie Gribble. No one believes him when he tells them he’s shrinking.
Introduction
Bruce Francis, with this story, makes his first professional appearance in print. His friend and mentor, William F. Nolan, brought this piece to my attention just before the volume closed for submissions. And it’s evident that Mr. Francis not only has a long career ahead of him, but he also knows perfectly what makes a shadow not a shadow.
TO SEE YOU WITH, MY DEAR
by Bruce Francis
She was nearly asleep when she heard the voice.
“Lisa, turn out the light.”
The beginnings of a dream eddied down, fading as the soft blanket of sleep slipped away, leaving her feeling cold and exposed. She listened, but heard only the steady rise and fall of David’s easy breathing next to her on the bed.
He hadn’t spoken, she decided. But she was awake. Just adream, she reasoned, but still, she listened. A breeze stirred the curtain behind her and touched her ear.
“Lisa?”
She shivered.
“Turn out the light.”
She squinted at him through her lashes, hoping that he wasn’t watching her. His eyes were closed, and in the dim moonlight from the window, his skin shone pale and cold-looking, thin hands folded on his chest. As she watched, one finger began to tap impatiently, ticking off the seconds in unison with the clock that sat on the nightstand.
Okay, she thought, play the game and get it over with. She glanced at the darkened lamp, then turned back to him and spoke softly, “David, the lamp is off.”
He spoke without opening his eyes, “You left the light on in the living room, remember?” He smiled; a triumphant, infuriating smile.
Damn these stupid, childish games! He had always used them; little, inconsequential rivalries, manufactured from whim and circumstance. At the start, the games had been innocent and gently probing and there had been times that she had welcomed them as affectionate reminders, small pleas for her reassurance couched in his pride.
“What would you do if I … ?” he would ask.
“Anything you asked,” she would reply.
But gradually, he had changed the rules. The small pleas had become demands, her replies grudging recitations. The games had become conflicts, a sport of ugliness. But this time, she thought, it won’t get that far.
A headache began to throb, working painfully up the back of her neck as she rose from the bed.
“Where are you going?” asked David. She could
tell by the sound of his voice, mocking surprise, that he was still wearing that damned smile.
“To the living room.”
“Going to turn out the light?” He beamed happily.
“Yes … all right?”
He nodded. “That’s a good girl,” he chuckled.
She stopped and stared at him with a hard, determined scowl. He scowled back. Finally, a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. He had her. “Damn you,” she laughed as she tumbled into the bed. And, as she pulled the covers over her head, she damned her own predictability. Your score, David, she thought. Your score and your move.
“You’ve forgotten again, Lisa.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You are going to turn it off, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Forget it.” Easy, she thought, go easy. Give him a little time to get tired of this, then you can get up and turn off the light. She waited.
He sighed, and when he spoke his voice was even and maddeningly paternal. “If you don’t do what you’ve been told, you’re not going to get to sleep tonight. And, if you do fall asleep, you’ll be sorry. That could be bad, hmm? It will, I promise.”
She sawed off a phony, vaudeville snore and pulled herself into a tight ball under the covers. She pressed her face deep into the pillow, hoping that she would soon hear the rustling of the sheets as he rolled over and went to sleep. Instead, she heard a tapping behind her, moving along the headboard. Another one of the props from the very limited repertoire of David Gleason, she thought, picturing his thin fingers, curled like spider legs, creeping slowly toward her, then touching, wrapping themselves in her hair, twisting … Quite suddenly, she did not want it to touch her. The tapping stopped. There was a quiet zip-zip as the hand moved across the crisp fabric of the sheets. Then, just below her face, the delicate pressure of the fingers marching themselves up the pillow. She felt a finger brush her eyelash and she could smell the sweat on his hand. She flinched, wanting to move, but afraid it would bring the fingers rushing at her. Then it was gone. Above her in the darkness something moved on the air. She sensed it, flexing, tensed, dangling above her, waiting for her to open her eyes or to speak, waiting only slightly longer if she did neither until it dropped. She listened to the pulse racing in her ears and tried to hold her breath, but it only made her breath come faster as she waited. In an instant, she was off the bed, struggling with what could have been a tangle of bedclothes or David’s hands, clutching at her, pulling her back to the bed. As she fought, she felt the straps of her nightgown pull taut, then rip, momentum thrusting her forward. Her breasts bobbed naked and fingers flew at them, snapping, pinching. A swath of fabric caught her ankle and, with a small wounded cry, she fell into the corner, her shoulder colliding painfully with the wall.
Shadows 3 Page 4