The Second Longest Night

by Stephen Marlowe

  And later, much later, there was Lydia in Venezuela. I hadn't wanted to see her. I was afraid. Deirdre's twin sister. I would look at her and conjure memories. Or worse. Lydia did not share the same memories but wanted to share new ones, Lydia with the remembered body because it had not been one, but two. . . .

  “Chet, you're just standing there. I was talking' to Marianne Wilder. I need someone to talk to. You sent her away.”

  “Go ahead and talk,” I said.

  “You can't just turn it on. Marianne Wilder looked as if she wanted to listen. You know how it is. When you have troubles but someone else's troubles are so much worse, you get sympathetic. It's good for both of you.”

  “Are your troubles so much worse?”

  “Chet.”

  “Are they?”

  “I get to thinking about how Ralph—Listen, Chet. Maybe he had too much wine. I don't know. Maybe he was thinking. He was so terribly sensitive and introspective. I mean, killing Paco Del Rey to defend me like that. It was still killing. He mentioned it once. We ran. We had to run. They'd have crucified us. Ralph knew that, but still I—I think he wanted to go back. I think he didn't know what to do. I once read a story with a clever notion like that. It was a fantasy about temporary death. In every life there comes a time, the author said, when a man thinks he wants to commit suicide. He doesn't keep it up too long, or he's in hot water. But what if—that's what the story said—what if there was such a thing as temporary death? Temporary, Chet. I wonder how many people commit suicide, thinking like that. This is a dream. It couldn't be happening. I'll die and then everything will be all right. They'll miss me or whatever happened to make me feel like this will unhappen. Everything will be fine. Of course, it's in the unconscious mind. It justifies suicide. A night of death, like sleeping. Taking their lives like that, they don't admit the truth,- not in their unconscious minds. It's the longest night, Chet. It's death. It's forever.”

  She was not crying. Her beautiful face was drawn and grave. “Do you understand what I mean?” she asked me.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Lydia, tell me. Was it Ralph who killed Francisco Del Rey?”

  “Why, what a strange question. You were there.”

  “No, I wasn't. I came in after he was dead. Ralph had the gun. Did you kill him, Lydia?”

  “Ralph was protecting me.”

  “If you did it, it was self-defense. Wasn't it?”

  “He hollered for Del Rey to let me go. Del Rey wouldn't. It was as if he had gone crazy.”

  “That's a lot of crap,” I said. “You wouldn't have taken a chance like that. Ralph was very jealous. That much I knew. If he came in with a gun and' saw you and Del Rey clinching, he might have shot all right, but you'd have no guarantee who'd stop the bullet. He'd be a wild man.”

  “I was lucky. I don't think I like whatever it is you're driving at. Does it matter who killed Del Rey? He had it coming, didn't he? You ran away with us, didn't you? You're as guilty as poor Ralph was.”

  “Ralph never laid a hand on that gun and you know it.”

  “But I was there.”

  It was hard to tell if she were more angry than amused or the other way around. I shrugged and said, “You're right, though. It doesn't matter. The chances of you or me—or Ralph, if he was alive—being extradited, are nil.”

  “So why don't we forget about it?” Lydia was sitting on one of the room's three wooden chairs. She smiled up at me and lit a cigarette, not really waiting for an answer. It had been a purely rhetorical question. Outside, there was no sound. It was barely cool enough in the cabin to want to keep your jacket on. I thought of the hot, sultry Maracaibo region of Venezuela, where I'd been with Lydia and Ralph. I thought of the bitter cold top of Hall Mountain, a few thousand feet above us, and the silent silver cathedral domes where Ralph had spent the happiest times of his life.

  I said, “You're right. Let's forget about it.”

  “Good. Shall I make you coffee now, or would you like to go back to the house?” She was still smiling. I smiled back at her.

  I said, “Get undressed.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  LYDIA LOOKED FRIGHTENED. “What did you say?”

  “I said get undressed. Take your skirt off.” I walked over in front of her chair. Sunlight streamed in through the closed window and made a warm yellow square on the floor. A faint wind had stirred. You could hear it now, moving in the pines. It was the only sound.

  “What kind of crazy joke is that?”

  “No joke. Take your skirt off or I'll take it off for you. It makes no difference to me.”

  She looked at me and bit her lip. Then she stood up fast and tried to get by me and out the door. I caught her shoulder and got my other hand against her chest, stiff-arming her back into the chair. “Are you going to take it off?” I said.

  She sat there and inhaled on her cigarette. I shrugged and leaned over her and got my hands on the waistband of her white wool skirt. It was elastic. I tugged at it. She squirmed around on the chair, and sat on one hip.

  Suddenly she jabbed the hot end of her cigarette against my face. I jerked away from her, rubbing my cheek. She stood up quickly, lithely, and ran for the telephone on the table. I didn't know who she thought she would call. I don't think she knew, either. It was one of those old-fashioned standing models with a foot-long stem and a heavy base. She removed the receiver and jiggled the hook. I reached her and put my hand down on the hook. We struggled for possession of the telephone. She was a big girl, strong enough to fight like a wildcat when she was desperate. She was desperate now. She wrenched the telephone away from me and brought her knee up in a quick blurring motion, driving it into my groin.

  I staggered back and felt my legs going weak as the pain flooded through me. She came after me and swung the telephone at my head. I brought my shoulder up and took the heavy base there. The wire went taut and she dropped the phone, but I was already on the way down. She leaped after me, using her nails and elbows and knees. She sensed she had taken plenty out of me with her knee the first time. She didn't bother cursing. I thought the cursing would come later, if at all. She sank her teeth into my hand and I had to club the side of her face with my other hand to make her let go.

  She panted and writhed as I attacked her skirt again. She twisted away from me and lashed out with her long legs. The skirt ripped. I got my hands on either side of it and pulled. It was then that she started to curse. The skirt came off in my hands with part of her slip. When she kicked at my face with her right leg, I caught it at the knee and held it. I ran my hand up her thigh to where a brief bathing suit would have reached. I didn't really know if I wanted to find what I knew would be there. I felt it with my fingertips—the puckered scar-tissue where eleven stitches had been taken when she was twelve years old.

  “All right,” I said. “You can stop fighting, Deirdre.” She snarled at me. It was the most inhuman sound I have ever heard a human make. I wasn't ready for what came next. I thought she was all finished. But when I let go of her leg she kicked me again, the same place, harder. She lunged away from me, picked up the telephone and swung the heavy base at my face. It caught me at the side of my head, immediately in front of the ear. I tried to stand up. My head was a tunnel through which all the long freights in California were rushing.

  I heard Lydia's footsteps retreating across the floor. I struggled to my hands and knees, barely able to support my weight. Then I heard the footsteps coming back. I started to get up. I was on one knee and Lydia was standing over me with a bread knife she had got in the kitchen. The blade, which had a serrated edge, looked a mile long.

  Gradually the trains made it to the other end of the tunnel and departed. I stood up and reeled toward her. I was almost out on my feet. She backed away. I said, “Don't be a fool. You can't do that. You can't do anything now.”

  “Don't come near me, Chet. I'm warning you.” I thought if I went to her slowly it would be all right. I took a step, and another, and then tripped over the
telephone wire, stumbling toward Deirdre. She held the knife out in front of her with both hands grasping the handle and let me impale myself. I twisted to one side as I fell, swinging my arms wildly. The blade entered high up on the inside of my right arm, just below the armpit. The knife was wrenched from Deirdre's hands as I fell. It stuck in my arm and ripped through muscle and tendon as I hit the floor.

  For a long while there was nothing but the suggestion of pain in my arm. Then I saw Deirdre sitting next to me on the floor. She wore her blouse and what was left of the torn slip. Her flank was against my chest. She had turned me over on my back and was sitting alongside of me, facing toward my head. In her left hand she held the knife. The blade looked silver and black. She had thrust her right hand in my armpit, squeezing the pressure point there. There was blood on the floor and blood on her arm and more seeping out of me.

  “Just lay still,” she said. “I'm trying to stop the bleeding. If you move, if you try anything, I'll let you bleed to death.”

  I did what she said. I didn't move a muscle. I felt very weak. After a while she placed the knife down alongside of her thigh and took her other hand away from my armpit. She found her skirt on the floor and ripped two long strips from it, binding my upper arm tightly. I felt lightheaded. I wouldn't have lasted a round with the kid sister of the junior amateur flyweight champion of the world.

  “I can't let you die, can I?” Deirdre said. “I have to, though. There isn't any other way out, is there?”

  “You ought to find a way,” I said. “You killed Del Rey and made your husband think it was self-defense. But he wasn't really your husband because you had already killed his wife and made it look like your own suicide. Then you killed Ralph and were going to make it look like an accident or suicide too, weren't you?”

  “Why did you keep poking your nose where it didn't belong, Chet?”

  I laughed. “Because being a private detective wasn't just a passing fancy. Because I had to find out things. Remember?”

  “I was crazy to marry you. If I hadn't married you, everything would be all right now.”

  “It's another kind of temporary death, isn't it?” I said. Only in a way it's not temporary and in a way it's not death. Yeah, death is the longest night, like you said. You didn't want any part of that. So you chose the second longest night. You killed your sister and changed places with her.”

  I tested my right arm. I could barely move the fingers. Deirdre picked up the knife and put the point against my neck, digging it in a little. She said, “Don't try to move. I want you to lie perfectly still until I decide what to do with you. You can't prove what you said, can you?”

  “You proved it yourself. With that scar on your thigh. It's why you wouldn't go swimming that day at Angel Falls, isn't it?”

  She leaned down on the knife handle. I felt the blade digging deeper into my neck. “Talk,” she said. “I want to hear how you found out.”

  “Not just me,” I said. “Three people found out. Del Rey did. I should have known then. And Ralph must have found out. You had us all fooled for a while, but I was the biggest sucker. It figured with Ralph. You were his wife, he thought. You were upset. You were so upset, you were almost sick. He pitied you and would have done anything for you. If you acted strange, so what? Lydia had to get over her sister's death, Ralph thought. But me, I was the sucker.” I smiled but she didn't smile back. “I don't know.. I guess if they gave out awards for the kind of acting you did the last few weeks, you'd win them all.”

  “I never should have come up here with Ralph yesterday. He was so absent-minded, I thought I could get away with it. He knew I was. different. It was the shock of my sister's death. He was very understanding. He never laid a hand on me. It would be all right, he said. He would wait. But last night up here, he drank too much wine. Come on, Lydia, he said. I fought him off, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. If only he had waited. Because I had it all planned.' I would stage an accident. Then, later, much later, it would explain the scar. But last night he was drunk. Act like my wife, he said. We made love. Afterwards, he touched the scar. He didn't say anything. But he knew. I wasn't Lydia. I couldn't possibly be. We went outside together. He stood looking down at the lights of Escondido, and I pushed him.”

  “Del Rey found out in Maracaibo,” I said. “I should have guessed then myself. You told him about something you remembered, a conversation he had with your father about the fifty-fifty oil split with the Venezuelan government. Only Lydia hadn't been present at that conversation. Deirdre was. After that, Del Rey thought he could get anything he wanted from you. So you had to kill him.”

  “I stumbled over your gun down at the showers that night. I timed it just right. I made eyes at Paco. He was wild for me. When Ralph came in I suddenly started fighting. It looked like Paco was trying to rape me. I shot him and let Ralph take the gun from me.”

  “You couldn't get away with a masquerade like that forever, even though you were identical twins. You could play the role magnificently, but what the hell did it matter? You couldn't keep up with the complications. Nobody could. It was one of the complications that told me. The letter. You were going to give it to Cabot. You were all set, but Marianne had seen you writing it. Naturally, it was in your handwriting. It was signed Deirdre. But if you had just written it and Deirdre had been dead for weeks, that meant you weren't Lydia. You were Deirdre. So you had to destroy the letter.

  She was smiling slightly. She said, “Destroying the letter was easy. But what about you? I can't just kill you and expect to get away with it, and I can't let you walk around with what you know.”

  She was very matter-of-fact. Killing me was a job which somehow had to be done. Del Rey had been a psychopathic personality. Well, I was getting an education in psychopaths.

  I tried to look down my nose at the knife. I couldn't see the point of the blade. I was wearing it in my neck. As long as I didn't move, I hardly felt it. I wanted time. I was too weak to do anything now.. I thought my arm was still bleeding slowly.

  I said, “All along, it didn't make sense. I didn't think you would kill yourself just because you were a Red.”

  “Would you believe it, Chet? I never gave a damn about the Reds. I joined them and made contributions with father's money. I wanted to see if I could get away with it, as Joan Chandler. It was like a game.”

  I remembered a conversation I had had with her father. “Someone dared you,” I said.

  It made her grin. “Sometimes it used to scare me, how well you knew me. Yes. Someone dared me. Paco Del Rey did.”

  “But then things started getting hot. Duane Cabot was tracking Joan Chandler down. He didn't know if she was you or Lydia, but he would find out. There was something more important, though—ten per cent of King Oil. After you married me your father decided Lydia would get the stock.”

  “How did you ever find out?”

  “Ralph told me. After that, you must have got to thinking. Deirdre was going to be in hot water for being a Red. Deirdre had lost—or would lose—-a fortune in King Oil. Deirdre had what some people would consider a legitimate motive for suicide. But you weren't sure yet, were you? Your father was keeping everything very quiet until he made the transfer of stock over to Lydia. You had to find out but you didn't want to be caught snooping. So you paid Max Joy to steal the information for you—right in your own house.”

  “You're a clever bastard,” Deirdre said.

  “After you found out for sure, you figured all your problems would be solved if you died but could somehow go on living. Like what you said about temporary death. So one day when Lydia was in Washington you killed her. You made it look like suicide. You were alone in the house. It wasn't hard. She didn't suspect a thing. And you wrote a suicide note. You signed it. You left it with Lydia's body. You got into her clothing and jewelry and walked out of there.

  “Your own sister,” I said. “It must be real wonderful, living with yourself.”

  “She always had the best of it.
I was wild. Father liked Lydia because she was well behaved.”

  “You were his favorite.”

  “All right. All right. I won't try to justify it. Lydia had something I wanted. The oil stock. I had something I didn't want. Membership in the CP. We traded. It meant Lydia had to die.”

  “One and one also made two for Del Rey,” I said. “The fact that he was a Red. The way he was keeping part of his government's take in King Oil. If they found out he was a Red, King Oil might be investigated. He wasn't worried about Alex Lubrano, but—”

  “Who's Alex Lubrano?”

  “Someone who worked for me. But Del Rey was afraid of me. He was a psychopath, too.”

  Deirdre said, “What do you mean, too?”

  I shrugged. The knife bit deeper. I said, “If he could scare me off by killing Lubrano, he would do it. So he killed Lubrano. Your father was also worried about the oil. Let him go on worrying. I don't care. It's between him and the Venezuelan government. He's got a bigger worry now, anyway. He's got you.”

  “Is that all?” There was no wild look in Deirdre's eyes. They always had a wild look in the shamus books. She seemed perfectly normal in every way. Except that she was sitting half naked on the floor, with blood all over her hands, and holding a knife at my throat. I would have liked it much better if her eyes were crazy.

  “Almost,” I said. “Cabot was still looking for Joan Chandler. He thought it was Deirdre, but he wanted proof. He thought you could give it to him. But you wanted him to lay off. Any investigation could only lead to trouble for you. So you sent anonymous letters to the newspapers and his committee chairman about Cabot's former relationship with you. As a warning. You thought you could get him to lay off. It backfired.”