The Deadly Percheron

by John Franklin Bardin

  I sat down beside her. “Sara, I’ve forgotten so many things.” For the next ten minutes I told her briefly all that I remembered in just the way I had remembered it. I told her I could remember nothing from the time I was attacked in New Jersey until I came back to my senses in the hospital. “And now you say I was carrying on an investigation,” I concluded. “If I was I know nothing about it now.”

  When I had finished Sara put her arms around me and held me close to her. I kissed her brown hair, her uptilted nose, marveled at the way she wrinkled her eyes when she smiled. “George,” she said, “you were right here in this apartment with me all that time you can’t remember. We came here after you had me rent the house in Jersey. You were terribly sick from the wound in your cheek, and you wanted no one to know where you were. You would sit in the dark and tremble at the slightest noise.”

  In my joy at finding her again, I had forgotten my fear that Sara would recoil from the scar on my face. Now I was amazed to discover that she knew about it already. I asked her to tell me what had happened.

  She went over to a secretary and took a long box and a small notebook from the bottom drawer. She handed them both to me, then sat down on the floor at my feet, her legs crossed under her skirt the way she always used to sit, and told me the story of my blank months. “I was frightened the first week of your disappearance last October,” she said. “I visited Lieutenant Anderson everyday to see if he had news of you. All he could tell me was that you had left his office with Jacob and that girl – later you were to tell me that the man was not Jacob but an impostor – and that Nan had told the Lieutenant that you had left her apartment after falling in the subway and refusing medical assistance.

  “All through October I heard nothing of you. I was worried sick. I didn’t know if you’d been killed, or if you had suffered amnesia. Then, about the 10th of November, one night as I was packing to leave on a visit to my parents in Chicago, the front doorbell rang.”

  “You say this was on the 10th of November?” I asked.

  “Yes. I threw the porch light on and answered the door. At first all I saw was what looked like a bundle of old clothes slumped on the porch. I also heard a rustling noise in the yard, as if a small boy were running away. But I did not see who it was. By that time, I had recognized the bundle as you and I had seen that you were unconscious and bleeding profusely from an ugly wound in your face.”

  Then my ‘timetable’ was off! The time I had spent at Nan’s apartment was less than a month, instead of a month to six weeks.

  Sara was pointing to the long box she had given me a few minutes before. “Open it,” she said, “and look at what is in it.” I opened the box cautiously. Inside was a thick layer of cotton wool which I unwrapped. I saw a long, horn-handled hunting knife. That part of the cotton that had rested next to the blade of the knife was stained darkly with dried blood. As I looked at the wicked implement I felt the scar on my face begin to burn and all the hate that had been pent-up during the many months of my half-life repossessed my brain. I threw the box that contained the dagger aside.

  “George,” Sara was saying, “someone had thrown that knife at you! I found it buried in the lintel. Whoever threw it meant to kill you, George. Instead the knife struck you an awful, glancing blow and ripped half your face open!

  “When you came to you, told me about Nan and the ‘doctor’ and the ‘treatments.’ You told me that you wanted to find the person responsible for Frances Raye’s death, your kidnapping and the repeated attempts on your life yourself – you felt that you should be the one to bring the murderer to justice.”

  I realized suddenly that I had not suffered a loss of memory at the time I was struck on the porch. This meant that another, later blow caused the amnesia, and by chance I forgot what had happened when I came to on the porch! But when had I suffered the second, later blow? I felt as if this knowledge were on the tip of my tongue, that in a few minutes I would be able to say it.

  “I tried to dissuade you,” Sara went on. “It seemed to me that you had suffered enough and that it was dangerous for you to try to hunt down the killer. But you wouldn’t listen to me. You had me rent the house in New Jersey and assign an agent to manage it. You even had the agent deposit the rent monthly in our bank, and to send his reports to my parents’ address in Chicago where they were forwarded to us in New York! I rented this apartment, in this building, on your theory that it was the safest place to carry on the investigation unobserved because it was the last place the murderer would expect to find you. But, beyond that, when Anderson asked me to look at a body that had been found in the North River wearing your clothes – you had been dressed in an old pair of pants and a torn shirt that were not yours when I found you on the porch – you had me identify the body as you to throw even Anderson off your track!”

  “But whose body was that which Anderson found in the river?” I asked.

  “From the description I gave you at the time you decided it was Tony’s – the man who had guarded you, who had posed as Jacob and who must have died of injuries received in the taxi accident.”

  I nodded my head. It all began to fit together, although there were still many questions to be answered. And, as Sara recounted these buried details of my past, I remembered things, too. There had been a notebook that I had kept… a notebook in which I had put down all my findings during my investigation. I asked Sara about it.

  “You’re holding it in your lap, George,” she said. “I gave it to you a little while ago when I gave you the knife. Remember, you hired the Ace Detective Agency to do most of your work for you. They interviewed Nan Bulkely and later her roommate, Denise Hanover. From them you found out that Nan had been receiving threatening telephone calls which she said you made. You knew that you did not make those calls. I think you decided that if you could discover the identity of the person who was threatening Nan, you would have a clue to the murderer.”

  I looked at the fat notebook in my hands. Here was documentary evidence about the blank months of my life. At last the past was on the verge of being recaptured! “How long did I carry on this investigation?” I asked Sara.

  Sara paled. She knelt and pressed my hands next to her breast so that the notebook fell on the floor. “Oh, George, promise me you won’t take up the investigation again. Please, promise me that!”

  “It’s out of my hands now,” I told her. “Anderson has reopened the investigation.” And I told her about the events of the last few days and of Nan Bulkely’s death that morning. “But answer my question. How long did I carry on the investigation?”

  Sara stood up. She walked away from me. “Until the last of April of this year, George. One day you went out on one of your rare trips – you know you very seldom left the house but let the detective agency do most of the actual spadework for you – and I never saw you again until this afternoon.”

  “But where did I go that day?” I asked. “And what happened to me?”

  Her answer was amazing. “I don’t know what happened to you – apparently whatever it was caused you to lose your memory – but I know where you said you were going. It was an address in Coney Island. You’ll find it in the notebook.”

  For the next half-hour I read hurriedly through the notebook, my “dossier” as Sara called it. The whole first section was devoted to newspaper clippings and these provided a history of the police investigation of Frances Raye’s murder, most of which I already knew. I noticed that one of the tabloids had used the murder as a point of departure for a seething editorial on the inefficiency of the Police Department – small wonder Anderson was so concerned over the case!

  After the many news stories came reports of what I had done from day to day. These began in late January. From them I saw that the investigation had proved slow and arduous and I had progressed little at first. As I read, I began to remember this period of my life – sometimes fragments of days would return to me before I read my curt précis of them, sometimes afterwards. I remembered the
decision I made to confide in a private detective agency, and the fears that I had then that my activities would be reported to the police. But after the reports from the Ace Detective Agency began to come in, the investigation began to go forward again.

  The agency had concentrated on Nan Bulkely. I had had them interview her after I had attended a performance of the longtime hit show “Nevada!” and discovered that its star, Mildred Mayfair, was Nan. One report told of a “mysterious admirer” who had been sending anonymous gifts and making queer telephone calls. Another told of the gift of a fur coat accompanied by a card. I had pasted the card to a leaf of the notebook – how the detectives I hired managed to secure it I never knew, probably by bribery or theft. It contained only the scrawled initials: E.A.B.

  On March 15, the Ace Detective Agency had reported: “Mayfair went out with E. A.B. after last night’s performance. At the matinee today she was visibly nervous and frightened.” Later, “Mayfair has asked Hanover to share her Central Park apartment.” This was the last of the detective agency’s reports.

  The next entry, and the next to last, was along account written in my own hand of a visit I paid to a famous law firm on Broad Street. As I looked at this I remembered that interview. I had spoken to a Mr James G. McGillicuddy, an ancient barrister of Scotch descent, who had served as attorney for John Blunt’s estate. His answers to my questions, all concerning the estate, had been especially guarded but he had admitted that there had been “another bequest made by Mr Blunt that was not part of his will.” I had not been able to garner much more information on this point. Some person, or persons – Mr McGillicuddy’s wording was too cautious to reveal which — had been fortunate enough to be the beneficiary of a sizeable living trust fund which had been established during old Blunt’s life. I could not get the name of this beneficiary and by the terms of the trust agreement it was not a matter of court record. I stressed the fact that I was Jacob Blunt’s psychiatrist and needed this information for my patient’s peace of mind. “I have heard rumors about the younger Mr Blunt which, if true, do his father’s memory a disservice,” the old lawyer had said with an air of chill dignity. Then he had stood up behind his fine old colonial desk and had dismissed me with a wave of the hand and an exaggerated nod of the head that might, under more favorable circumstances, have developed into a courtly bow.

  But it was the last entry in the notebook that brought memories rushing back into my mind helter-skelter, head over heels. This was nothing new. It was the photograph of Jacob’s childhood friend, “Pruney,” which he had handed me that first day in my office and that I had never returned to him. As I looked at it I remembered that black moment in the subway as the train rushed past me, hurling me down, and I heard Nan’s voice say: “Get the photograph!” And I remembered stepping out of the elevated station at Coney Island and looking around me. Then there were many snatches of memory, images and sounds, that were not orderly or related to one another. One was a feeling of walking down a long, twisting passage and listening to a high, tittering voice mock me. Another was of just one word, the word “ocean”; I saw it in blinding letters before my mind’s eye. And then, for some queer reason, I remembered the night I had stood outside the Fun House at Coney Island and stared laughing at my crazily distorted image in the flawed mirror…

  I felt that it was all there, that in just a moment I would understand…I looked down at the picture in the notebook, examined the desperate face of the small boy standing beside Jacob. I saw that the picture was pasted down only at one end and that it could be lifted up. I lifted it and saw the same initials again, this time in old Blunt’s handwriting as Jacob had told me when he gave me the picture – E.A.B. But there was something else, too. I had written under those initials the name, Edgar Augustus Blunt, and the address, 5755 Ocean Avenue.

  It all came back to me. I remembered every detail of my expedition that day I disappeared: the second visit to the lawyer’s office when I had told him honestly what I wanted and why and he had surprised me by giving me the name and address of John Blunt’s mysterious beneficiary. And I remembered going to 5755 Ocean Avenue. And I knew who killed Frances Raye and Nan Bulkely.

  I laid down the notebook and looked up expecting to see Sara. At first I didn’t see her, although I noticed that the door to the hall was open. I smiled to myself – had I been so intent on reading the notebook that I had made Sara restless? I called, “Sara, Sara! Where are you?” She did not answer.

  I stood up to walk to the door to see if she was out in the hall. As I crossed the room I found her body stretched out where she had fallen against the sofa. She had been stabbed to death with a knife just like the one that had been thrown at me.

  I picked her body up and laid it on the sofa. I bent down and kissed her gently on the forehead. I stayed there, my lips brushing the still-warm cheek. My grief was dry-eyed, perceptionless, embittered. I felt as if my lifeblood had run out with hers.

  Then something snapped inside me

  Epilogue

  I

  My hands will-lessly wrenched the blade from Sara’s body, held it high for an instant, then threw it to the farthest corner of the room. My voice cursed. My glands poured sweat from my pores; I felt it cold and trickling. Tears purged my cheeks. Yet inside I was numb, more asleep than awake – somnambulistic.

  Finally I straightened up and retreated to the chair that faced the sofa. I sat on it heavily, my gaze still riveted to Sara’s body, my breathing slow and stentorian. How long it was before I lifted my eyes and looked around the room again I do not know. All I remember is that when I looked at the open door to the hall, Lieutenant Anderson was standing there.

  I did not recognize him. I saw only a middle-aged man with graying hair and a sober expression. My first reaction was to be angry at this intrusion and to order the man out of my apartment. But I did not act on this impulse. A lethargy weighed on me and I sat staring at the man in the door. Then I saw that he was not alone, but that there were others behind him. I saw Jacob and Sonia. At this moment, Anderson stepped into the room and walked over to the sofa to bend over my wife’s body. I had the uncanny sensation that I was watching myself, seeing my own recent actions relived. I wanted it to stop as I felt I could not bear to watch this parody. “Sara is dead,” I said.

  Anderson turned and regarded me. His eyes were cold. “I know,” he said. “Why did you do it?”

  Sonia and Jacob had come into the room. Sonia started toward me as Anderson spoke, but an abrupt gesture of his hand stopped her. “Why did you kill her?” he repeated.

  His question had no effect on my emotions. The split continued: one part of me heard his query, considered it, responded (“I did not kill her,” I heard myself saying); while a second part of me ignored the words, did not even hear the sound of his voice, saw no intruders, remained intact and lonely.

  “Then why did you call the police a few minutes ago and say, ‘I want to report that I have murdered my wife, Sara Matthews’?”

  “But I didn’t,” I said. My answer was matter of fact, a direct response to a direct stimulus. Reason did not enter into it. My mind was numb.

  “Someone did. Someone made that statement, then gave this address.”

  “I made no call,” I said. “I did not kill her.”

  Anderson went over and picked up the bloodstained knife. He held it carefully in a handkerchief and held it out to me. “You killed her with this,” he said. “Then you threw it in a corner. I think we’ll find that the fingerprints on it belong to you.”

  “I was reading,” I said. “I must have been concentrating since I heard nothing. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. The door to the hall must have been ajar. Someone must have thrown a knife through it and killed her. There was no sound. I think it was meant for me.”

  “You say ‘someone.’ Who?”

  “I don’t know. The same person who killed Frances Raye and Nan Bulkely.”

  Anderson shook his head. “I think that person is
you. Oh, you’ve been very clever, Dr Matthews, both bold and clever. If I had been you I would never have had the courage to come to the police and enlist their aid before I committed two more murders. And it almost worked. You recognized the fact that the best sort of alibi for a murderer is a psychological set of the detective’s which causes him to ignore the possibility of the murderer’s guilt and to seek the culprit elsewhere. I’ve thought it over since last night and I can see that the story you told me about your amnesia, your persecution, your experiences in the hospital, all these things were carefully calculated to render me incapable of conceiving you as the killer.

  “I followed this line of reasoning and investigated further. I found that Detective Sommers was guilty of gross carelessness. He was not on duty all the time outside your house last night. When he started his shift he had not eaten breakfast and he sneaked off to an all-night restaurant. He now admits to having been off duty between five and six this morning, the very time Jacob Blunt gives as the approximate hour of Bulkely’s death. Since it was early in the morning when traffic is at low ebb, you could easily have left your place, taken a taxi to West Tenth Street, shot Bulkely and returned before Sommers got back.” Sonia protested. “But I was with him all that time. He never left the room!”

  Anderson turned to her. “I have only your word for that. You are his friend, and probably his accomplice.”

  I listened to what Anderson had to say with unnatural calm. This could not be happening to me, and even if it was – what did it matter? Sara was dead, murdered. That was all that mattered.

  But Sonia was not willing to give up so easily. “You’re bluffing, Anderson!” She was standing very straight, her shoulders thrown back, her dark eyes glowering. “You can’t prove this and you know it! If George is the murderer, where is his motive?”