A Room to Die In

by Jack Vance

  “That’s all they’re worth to me. I own three books,” Jones said calmly, “the telephone directory, a Sears-Roebuck catalogue, and the Marin County Building Code”

  “You must plan to acquire a lot more directories and catalogues.”

  He inspected the bookcases sourly. “I don’t intend to use them for books.”

  “What else can you use them for?”

  “Storage. Tools, nails, hardware, things like that.”

  Behind them, Maudley shuddered. Ann stared in horror. “I won’t let you have them. It’s desecration.”

  Martin Jones was not abashed. “To put something to honest use? Look at those books. Do you suppose Nelson read them? Do you think anybody ever read them? I’ll bet a hundred dollars most of them weren’t opened more than once. If at all.”

  Ann was momentarily silenced. She probably would have lost the bet, she thought.

  “Books,” intoned Edgar Maudley, “are a repository of knowledge, of ideas, of inspiration, which otherwise would be lost.”

  Jones grinned. He picked up one of the books, turned to the title page. “Stones of Venice, by John Ruskin.” He flipped some pages, and read a passage aloud in a nasal, mincing voice:

  And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away; —a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of Colored light; a treasure heap, it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, —sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and in the midst of it the solemn forms of angels, sceptered and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground—

  He broke off. “Doesn’t this guy ever run out of breath? He must have written when ink was a penny a quart.”

  After a pause, Ann said, “You might use the cases to hold your collection of comic books and TV Guides.”

  And Edgar Maudley said, “Ruskin wrote to a cultured and discriminating audience who, whether they agreed with his ideas or not—and most of them did not—at least had the grace to recognize the felicity of his style.”

  Jones angrily tossed the book down. “What burns me about you people is that first you invent a club, then you pull the plug on anybody who doesn’t want to join. I’m not interested in walking around with a lily in my hand, or sobbing over a dead mouse.”

  “Neither were the Neanderthals,” retorted Ann. “All they cared about was cramming food into their gullets and bashing other people with clubs.”

  “Not entirely apropos,” said Maudley primly. “You probably mean Zinjanthropus or Eanthropus.”

  “What it boils down to,” growled the contractor, “is that you’re calling me an ignorant peasant—which bothers me not one bit, coming as it does from a schoolmarm whose biggest decision is whether to play blind-man’s-bluff or tic-tac-toe with the kiddies. But—”

  “My word, you’re an offensive man,” declared Maudley. “I think you should apologize to Miss Nelson.”

  Martin Jones laughed. “Sure. If she apologizes for calling me an ignorant peasant.”

  “First convince me otherwise,” said Ann, tossing her head.

  “That would involve reading a lot of stupid books about pomegranates and angels’ wings. I’d rather remain ignorant.”

  Ann took up The Stones of Venice. “Read this book, and I’ll give you the bookcases.”

  Jones’s flat cheeks twitched sardonically. “You already gave them to me.”

  “I took them back, Mr. Jones.”

  “It would be nice,” said Jones. “But I don’t have the time.”

  “Just turn your TV set off two hours early tonight,” suggested Ann. “That should get you well started.”

  “TV? I don’t have one.”

  “What do you do with your spare time?”

  “Lady, I don’t have any spare time. I’m running a big construction job. I have thirty-eight men on my payroll. I’m fighting architects, building inspectors, subcontractors, the bank, four unions, the planning commission, and the customers. When I have a minute I figure new jobs. And now you want me to recline in a hammock reading about angel wings?”

  “You’ve got time to come over here and putter around the garden.”

  Jones chuckled. He hefted the book. “It’s a lot to ask for two beat-up old bookcases. Still . . . why not? Maybe you’ll make a cookie-pusher out of me yet.”

  Ann often amused herself by imagining an adult as he must have been as a child. She now saw Martin Jones as a handsome, rebellious little boy, perhaps in fear of a heavy-handed father, but stubbornly defiant, who grew up to remain defiant of authority, in much the way Roland Nelson had defied social dicta. Then his abortive love affair. She wondered what the girl was like. A tramp, probably. Oh, well, it was no affair of hers.

  She went into the study to the companion bookcase and emerged with several dozen chess manuals, texts, compendia—her father’s own books, which she would keep. Edgar Maudley no longer occupied the couch. Ann assumed that he was visiting the bathroom and continued with her work. . . . Edgar came out of the hall leading from the bedrooms, and stalked out to his car. He walked, so it seemed to Ann, rather stiffly.

  He returned and resumed his seat on the couch.

  With both cases empty, Ann considered the Pandora Press Books. Maudley frowned as Ann sorted through the books, putting to one side those that attracted her, perhaps one in three. He could no longer restrain himself. “May I ask what you are doing?”

  “Picking out the books I want from the ones I don’t.”

  Maudley became almost tearful. “Do you realize that The Pandora Press was my grandfather’s creation? That these books are extremely rare, that with them I would have a complete file of Pandora publications?”

  Ann nodded. “I won’t give them to you outright, but I’ll sell them to you. This pile goes for, say, five dollars a book. This pile, the books I’d like to keep, I’ll let you have for twenty dollars a book.”

  Martin Jones had returned. “You’re letting him off cheap,” he told Ann. “Those books ought to go for three times that.”

  “No such thing!” exclaimed Maudley. “Merely because they’re rare doesn’t automatically make them valuable.”

  “Some of these books are valuable,” said Ann. “And you’re getting them cheap. Do you want them?”

  “Oh, I want them, all right.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, you can take them out to your car, and I’ll figure out what you owe me.”

  To Ann’s surprise, Martin Jones assisted. While the two men carried out books, Ann calculated. There were forty-six books at $5 each and nineteen books at $20 each—a total of $610. Not bad, thought Ann spitefully.

  The two bookcases were now empty. They were really handsome pieces of furniture. What a shame if Martin Jones did use them to store tools and hardware. He could not have been serious. . . . She wondered about him. Perhaps he had been teasing her— perhaps he occupied his spare time reading. His vocabulary was good; his outlook seemed broad. He was an interesting man, she thought—a tough, uncompromising fighter. Roland Nelson had been tough and uncompromising, too.

  She wandered back into the study. In that chair her father had died. She tried to imagine the scene: Roland Nelson somberly gazing out the window, then raising the revolver, holding it to his head, pulling the trigger. Unthinkable. But how else? Ann’s brain raced, seeking an answer. The floor? Concrete. Ceiling? Without mar or scar. Door? Window? Almost hermetically tight. Fireplace? A marmoset might have gained ent
ry—if the damper had been open, as it had not been. Walls? Sound as the ceiling, everywhere that she could see, unmarred, unbroken, unsullied. The single area not yet investigated was that section of the paneled wall separating study from living room, between the back-to-back bookcases. Ann returned to the living room and called to Martin Jones. “Would you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing contrary to your principles, like reading. I’d like you to move this bookcase away from the wall.”

  Jones approached warily. Ann snapped, “I won’t bite you. Just move the corner of the bookcase out into the room.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, Mr. Jones, either do it or don’t.”

  Edgar Maudley came into the living room. Two boxes of books remained, a large and a small. He scowled, lifted the small box, gave a pitiful groan, and staggered out the front door. “What’s wrong with him?” Ann asked. “He seems angry.”

  Jones chuckled. “He’s sore because I didn’t carry out that big box.” He put his shoulder to the bookcase, eased it three or four feet out across the vinyl tile that covered the floor.

  “Thank you.” Ann peered behind the bookcase.

  Martin Jones watched her curiously. “What’s the reason for all this?”

  “I had a fantastic idea that someone might have broken through the study wall, pushed the bookcase aside, shot my father and got back out the same way.”

  “A good trick,” said Jones. “Especially since the bookcases loaded with books weigh a ton or so apiece.”

  Ann frowned. “I just can’t imagine my father shooting himself. He wouldn’t do it.”

  “A man sometimes chooses his own time and place to die. Why be conventional and die of cancer? Everybody has to die sooner or later.”

  “Preferably later,” said Ann. “I’m conventional.”

  “I’ve noticed that. ‘Read a nice book, Mr. Jones. Be cultured like me and Mr. Maudley.’ ” But the mockery was good-natured, and Ann felt no obligation to retort.

  “You can push the bookcase back if you like. No, wait a minute.” She got down on her knees, looked at the floor. “That’s strange.”

  “What’s strange?”

  “The dents in the vinyl tile where the feet of the bookcase rested. It has only two legs, but there are three dents.”

  “ ‘Two legs’? Six legs.”

  “I mean the two at this end. And there are three dents from the middle pair, too.” Ann crawled to the other end of the case. “And three here as well.”

  Edgar Maudley came back into the room. He said in a peevish voice, “Mr. Jones, I’d be obliged if you’d help me with the big box. I’ve got a weak back—”

  “Sure. Just a minute.”

  Maudley came over to where Ann was examining the floor. “What now?”

  “These marks in the tile,” said Ann. “Notice the three sets of feet on the bookcase. Each pair is about nine inches apart. See where they’ve dented the vinyl? But notice that between each two there’s the print of a third foot. How can that be?”

  “The things women bother their heads about,” said Maudley. “What are you charging me for these books?”

  “It comes to six hundred and ten dollars.”

  He winced. “For my own books!”

  “They’re not your books,” said Ann acidly. “They’re my books. You don’t have to take them.”

  Edgar produced his checkbook and carefully wrote out a check. “There,” he whined. “Six hundred and ten dollars. I don’t have any choice.”

  “I won’t thank you,” said Ann, “because the books are probably worth two or three times that.”

  “Conceivably,” said Maudley. “In any event, the deal is consummated, and I’ll say no more about it.” Martin Jones seized the box that Edgar had found too heavy, hoisted it without effort, and carried it outside.

  Ann made a last puzzled inspection of the impressions in the tile. There was undoubtedly some pedestrian explanation, but what it was she couldn’t fathom.

  She took stock. The books were sorted; Martin Jones would take care of the bookcases; and she decided to give him the desk in the study. Maybe she’d insist that he read another book to earn it. It was fun to tease him, the surly brute.

  Where was that “article of medieval Persian craftsmanship” presented to Roland by Pearl, which Ann had been enjoined to keep? She inspected a china closet in the dining area, which contained a few inexpensive dishes. They could stay with the house. There was no other storage area in the living room.

  She went to inspect the bedrooms.

  The first bedroom was starkly empty; the second contained little more than a bed and dresser. In the wardrobe hung two or three men’s suits, a jacket or two. The dresser held underwear, socks, handkerchiefs. The barest minimum of personal belongings. Roland Nelson all over.

  The Persian miniatures were nowhere to be found. She went outside. Martin Jones was setting out dichondra. “All through?”

  “Almost. You’ve been through the house, of course.”

  Jones’s eyes narrowed. “I cleaned up the kitchen, straightened up here and there.”

  “Did you notice a set of Persian miniatures? In a carved ivory box?”

  “It’s in the bedroom, on the dresser.”

  “It’s not there now.”

  He frowned and led the way to the bedroom. He pointed to the top of the bureau. “That’s where the thing was. I saw it only this morning.”

  Ann swung around and marched outside. Edgar Maudley was preparing to leave. Ann said evenly, “I don’t seem to find the miniatures, Mr. Maudley. Have you seen them?”

  Maudley said in a lofty voice, “If you’re referring to an item which since 1729 has been a prized heirloom of my family—”

  “And which is going to be a prized heirloom of my family. Where is it?”

  “As you can see, I don’t have it on my person.”

  “Very funny. Let’s look in your car.”

  “I don’t enjoy the implication. And I don’t care to have you prowling through my car.”

  “I think I’ll prowl anyway. Those miniatures were in the bedroom; you went in there, then you went out to the car carrying something under your coat. You swiped those miniatures.”

  “Think what you like. The subject, so far as I am concerned, is closed.”

  Ann walked to his car. The doors were locked. Ann swung around. “Please unlock your car. If you don’t have the miniatures I’ll apologize. If you do, I want them back.”

  “My dear young lady, I must insist that you drop the subject. In any event, I remind you that by every moral right they’re my property—that they passed into the possession of Roland Nelson only through the misguided generosity of my cousin Pearl.”

  Ann turned to Martin Jones. “I want you to witness this, Mr. Jones. I have reason to believe he has the miniatures in his car . . .”

  Jones eyed Maudley with dislike. He stepped forward, held out his hand. “Let’s have the key, Maudley.”

  Maudley eyed him nervously. “You’ll get no keys from me, sir. Stand aside.”

  Martin Jones gave his head a slow shake. “I could take them away from you. But it’s easier to break a window.”

  “You do that, sir, and I’ll charge you with vandalism.”

  “If the miniatures are there,” declared Ann, “I’ll charge you with theft.”

  White with fury, Maudley reached in his pocket for the car keys, unlocked the door, opened the glove compartment, and brought forth an ivory box, which he thrust at Ann. “Here you are. I let you have them under protest. And I assure you your possession will be only temporary.”

  “Oh?”

  “You have no right to any of this. Nor the money. I’ve been a gentleman so far, but no longer! The money, the books, the rugs, the miniatures belong to me, not you, and I intend to recover! The estate should never have gone to Roland Nelson in the first place.”

  “And why not, pray?”

  “Why not
? I’ll tell you why not! Because the marriage of Roland Nelson to Pearl Maudley was not valid.”

  Ann was astonished. “How so?”

  “Because,” snapped Maudley, “he never divorced your mother.”

  Ann leaned back on the fender of Maudley’s car. She controlled her voice. “Where did you hear this?”

  “Never mind where I heard it.”

  “At last,” said Ann, “it becomes clear where my mother got her information.”

  “You don’t deny it, then?” Maudley asked in a triumphant blat.

  “Deny what?”

  “That Pearl Maudley never was the legal spouse of Roland Nelson?”

  “Certainly I deny it.”

  “How can you? He never divorced your mother.”

  Ann could no longer control her laughter. “Why should he? He never married her.”

  Maudley started to speak, clamped his mouth shut. His face was red. Finally he stuttered, “This is not the situation as I understand it.”

  “Where did you get your information? From my mother?”

  “Yes, if you must know!”

  “Where is she?”

  “Where is she? How should I know? Los Angeles, I suppose.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  “Several months. Why do you ask?”

  “Inspector Tarr has been trying to locate her.”

  He chewed his lip. “She made no mention of non-marriage to your father. In fact, she gave me definitely to understand . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “How much did you pay her?” Ann asked gently.

  He chose to ignore her question. Instead, he said pompously, “You know, of course, that a murderer can’t inherit from his victim.”

  “What of it?” Ann instantly perceived the drift of Maudley’s thoughts.

  “There’s a line of investigation which in my opinion the police have neglected.”

  Ann pretended to be puzzled. “Investigation of what?”

  “The death of my cousin Pearl. From Roland Nelson’s point of view, she could not have died more conveniently.”

  Ann’s voice blared her contempt. “He didn’t see her the night she was killed. She died on her way down the hill from the Cyprianos.”

  “Oh? He lived nearby. Suppose she had called on him, mentioned where she’d been? He had only to knock her unconscious, drive back up the hill, run the car off the cliff, and walk home—a matter of twenty minutes.”