A Room to Die In

by Jack Vance

  “No. None of it seems real.”

  Tarr looked at her quite unprofessionally. “It’s real enough. I have to repeat—you mustn’t take any chances.”

  She shivered. “I don’t plan to. . . . I don’t really know what to do with myself.”

  “Don’t you have a friend you could visit? Somebody completely unconnected with this business?”

  Ann considered. “There’s Barbara Crane in Sonoma. I might drop in on her.”

  “Try to be back before dark,” said Tarr. “I don’t want to frighten you or limit your freedom, but facts are facts. Somebody went to considerable trouble to try to kill you. He might try again.”

  Ann turned north on Highway 101, toward Sonoma, a town twenty or thirty miles away. After a few miles her interest in visiting Barbara Crane began to dwindle. Barbara taught sociology at Sonoma Junior College; she would demand a detailed explanation for Ann’s presence, which would lead to hours of hashing everything over. Martin, Barbara’s husband, taught geology and was inclined to absolute judgments. The visit lost its attraction.

  She turned off the freeway and drove westward, over a gently rolling landscape, once placid and rural but now blotched with housing developments. Meanwhile “Martin Crane” had suggested “Martin Jones.” Or perhaps the housing developments had worked to this end; whatever the cause, Ann found herself occupied with the image of that dour individualist engrossed in Ruskin’s Stones of Venice.

  Perhaps she should have been surprised, but it seemed quite natural to come upon a sign reading:

  PLEASANT VALLEY ESTATES

  Top Value for Discriminating Home Buyers

  A MARTIN JONES Development

  Ann slowed and halted. From the road she could see two dozen houses in various stages of construction, with as many more lots in the process of being graded. On one of these she spied the contractor, sighting through a transit toward a young man in carpenter’s overalls who held a surveyor’s rod.

  Ann watched for several minutes. Then Jones straightened up, jotted something on a clipboard, called to the rodman—who drove a stake, wrote on a label, and tacked it to the stake—and moved on to another location. Martin Jones bent once more over the transit and the process was repeated.

  Ann backed her car into the driveway. Martin Jones spotted her, scowled, and returned to his transit. “Five inches low!” he called to the rodman. “That’s all for now.” He walked over to Ann.

  “What brings you out here?”

  “I was driving past, noticed your name, and stopped.”

  His attention was distracted by a pickup loaded with doors pre-hung in their frames, and he jerked as if he had been struck with a pin. “Hey, Shorty, not there! Does that house look like it’s ready for doors?”

  “It’s where Steve told me to bring them,” the truck driver said defensively.

  “Where? House fourteen? Or house four?”

  “It might have been four.”

  “You bet your life it was four. What good are doors here? The roof isn’t even framed yet. Use your head!” The pickup moved on; Jones turned back to Ann. “You got to watch these guys every minute. About one in ten knows what he’s doing.”

  “You’re busy,” said Ann politely, “so don’t let me keep you.”

  “I’m always busy,” he growled. “I’d go broke in a week if I weren’t.” He glanced up and down the street. “I’ve got to make the rounds. Come along if you like,” he said, looking everywhere but at Ann. “I’ll show you around.”

  “If you’re sure you can spare the time.”

  “No time lost. I’d let you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Ann climbed out. The sunlight was bright; the new lumber smelled clean and fresh; the clatter of hammers, the whine of power saws, made cheerful sounds. Ann found it impossible not to relax.

  Martin Jones seemed to sense her mood and became almost cordial. “Let’s walk down this way. I’ll show you the whole thing, from beginning to end.” He led her to a lot where a loader was scooping up two tons of red-brown earth at a thrust. “Incidentally,” said Martin Jones, “I read your book. Or most of it.”

  “How did you like it?” He had read it!

  “Hard to say. He writes like somebody building one of the old-time houses, full of stained glass and gingerbread. If you like that kind of thing, I suppose it’s great.”

  “Do you like it?*

  Jones’s smile turned sheepish. “Parts of it are interesting. About the tides, for instance, and the mud flats. If they were just a bit different there wouldn’t be any Venice. . . . The tide flats along Black Point aren’t much different. They’d cost a lot to build on when you figure in a causeway, dredging, piles. It could always be worked into overhead, I suppose. The houses would sell; that’s the main thing.”

  They moved on to another lot, where carpenters were setting foundation forms, while laborers laid out reinforcing steel for the concrete. The sight of the steel reminded Ann of the cracked footing at the Cypriano house. She said, “I understand you built the Cypriano house.”

  He nodded shortly. “I did. While I was still young and easygoing.”

  “They’re having trouble with the foundations,” said Ann sweetly. “They seem to blame you for the trouble.”

  “They blame me?”

  “So I understand.”

  “That’s a laugh.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Blame Rex Orr, not me. He wanted a forty-thousand-dollar house on a twenty-thousand-dollar budget. I told him I’d have to cut corners awful close. He said to go ahead, just so long as it didn’t show. I used all utility lumber in the framing. The house stands up, but the floors squeak here and there. No harm done. Wherever I dared, I cut down on reinforcing in the footings. If the ground is solid, it makes no big difference. If the ground settles, though, there’s trouble. I explained this to Orr, but he gave me the green light. I guessed wrong. After the rains the ground began to go. I don’t feel too bad. I took a beating on that house.”

  “Don’t the building inspectors check on things like that?”

  “Sure. But there’s angles you can work. You put the steel in the forms, the inspector looks, signs the permit. As soon as he leaves you yank out the steel and pour concrete. Nine times out of ten you’re in business, with no harm done. But once in a while there’ll be trouble. I don’t have any remorse. Orr asked for a jackleg job where it wouldn’t show and he got it. The Cyprianos tried to make me the goat; in fact, Cypriano got nasty. He was going to bring out the building inspector, but Mrs. Orr backed me up.

  “Do you know something? Cypriano is a kook. I was sitting out there talking to him; he gave me a drink and then, sitting across the table, he began letting his keys swing back and forth. Slow and easy. And he’d say, ‘My, but it’s a peaceful day. How calm it is. How peaceful. Don’t you feel sleepy?’“ Jones gave a bark of savage laughter. “The so-and-so was trying to hypnotize me! Then he’d convince me that I should fix his house. I just laughed at him. He slammed off into one of the back rooms.”

  Ann listened in surprise and amusement. The taciturn Martin Jones was talking as if a dam had broken. They walked on to where a truck was discharging concrete into footings. Martin Jones became abruptly silent; stopping, he ran his eye along the forms that delineated the outer edge of the house-to-be. He called, “Hey, Pete!” But his voice was inaudible over the rumble of the concrete truck, and he strode off, beckoning to one of the carpenters, pointing to the offending form. Ann, sighting along the edge, saw that it was just a trifle crooked.

  While the contractor watched, the carpenter drove a stake with a sledgehammer, and wedged in a brace to straighten the form to Jones’s satisfaction.

  He rejoined Ann. “As I say, you’ve got to watch these guys every minute.”

  “It seems like an active life,” smiled Ann.

  “I don’t get bored. Ulcers, yes. Boredom, no.”

  “Do you really have ulcers?”

  He grinned, shak
ing his head. “It’s the building contractor’s occupational disease. But I’m too ornery for ulcers. Ask one of these carpenters what they think of my disposition.” He stopped abruptly to face Ann. “Let’s go somewhere tonight. A show . . . opera . . . circus . . . dog races . . . public library . . . you name it; I’ll take you.”

  Ann was so astonished she almost permitted herself to show it. Martin Jones asking for a date! He did have a potential. She was pleased, very pleased. More than very pleased. “Oh, I’d like to, but darn it, I can’t, not tonight.”

  Martin Jones’s mouth twisted at the corners. “Okay.”

  “Next week, perhaps,” Ann said hastily. “The police don’t want me going anywhere until they clear up these deaths.”

  “That might take a long time if that fellow Tarr’s running things.”

  “Just for a week or so.” Ann wondered if she was sounding overanxious, so she composed herself and became interested in the next lot. Here a crew of carpenters worked on the concrete slab, laying down redwood two-by-fours along the line of the eventual partitions, fixing them in place with a device which, after being loaded with a cartridge and a heavy nail, shot the nail through the wood into the concrete.

  “All four-bedroom houses,” said Jones, noting Ann’s interest. “Four bedrooms, two baths, playroom, and dining area. They should go fast. I won’t be a millionaire, but I’ll be out of the woods.”

  “You’re going to sell the Inisfail house?”

  “As soon as a buyer shows up.”

  “And your old family house, too?”

  “That shack.” He pursed his lips. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll remodel it.”

  “I like it better than the new house.”

  “Your father liked the old place better, too . . . What’s so interesting?”

  Ann had been watching the carpenters, conscious of a vague tickling at the back of her head. A laborer approached Jones, one hand aloft, blood streaming down his black wrist. “What happened to you?” asked Jones in disapproval. “You trying to cut your hand off?”

  “Just a scratch; some of that sharp wire went and dug me. I thought I’d better get a bandage.”

  “Right. If you don’t and you catch blood poison, there’s no insurance. Come along to the shack; I’ll fix you up.” He turned to Ann, and for once his expression was boyish, almost wistful. “Can I telephone you?”

  The word “insurance” had triggered a new set of thoughts. Ann said vaguely, “I’m moving; I don’t know where I’ll be. Perhaps I’d better call you. I think I’d better be going.”

  Martin Jones nodded brusquely. “Come along, Joe.”

  Ann returned to her car. Insurance . . . The answers to one or two questions could illuminate the entire case. Though now she knew—or thought she knew—how her father had been murdered.

  In San Rafael she stopped at a pay telephone and dialed the Cypriano house. Jehane’s voice came languidly over the wire.

  “Forgive me for bothering you,” said Ann, “but do you know if Pearl carried insurance?”

  “What kind of insurance?”

  “Life insurance.”

  Jehane considered. “I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “When she owned your house she undoubtedly carried fire-and-theft.”

  ‘Yes, certainly.”

  “Do you know the name of her agent?”

  “Arthur Eakins, in San Rafael. We just took over the policy. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s something connected with my father’s death.”

  “Oh. Incidentally, have you seen the afternoon papers?”

  “No. And I don’t plan to. Are they . . . bad?”

  “Not yet. But I advise you to stay out of sight if you don’t want reporters descending on you.”

  “That’s a good idea. Thanks.”

  Jehane said, “I’d offer you the use of our guest room if I thought you’d accept. Would you?”

  “That’s nice of you. But I don’t think I’d better.”

  “You’re not still at your apartment?”

  “No.”

  Jehane’s voice became thoughtful. “You could stay with us. Alexander really isn’t so awful. He’s been all morning crawling around over the rocks gathering up the chess set after his grand gesture.”

  “It was wonderful. But I do think I’d better stay where I am, at least for a while.”

  “Just as you like.” She sounded brusk.

  “Goodbye.”

  Ann looked up the address of Arthur Eakins in the telephone directory and drove to his office. Eakins proved to be an energetic little man with round, earnest eyes and a button nose. When Ann introduced herself, he became guardedly cordial. Yes, Pearl Maudley Orr had insured with him, both before and after her marriage to Roland Nelson. Roland Nelson had done likewise. He supplied particulars, and an opaque window blocking Ann’s perception was smashed.

  There was now very little about the case that she did not understand. She knew how her father had been murdered. She knew why. She even understood the reason for the abortive attempt on her own life; and she could guess the motive for the strangling of her mother.

  Leaving Eakins’s office, walking toward her car, she thought: What a simple, ingenious plot! And how evil, how selfish the perpetrator! She looked uneasily over her shoulder, thrilling with a sense of danger.

  She gained the comparative security of her car and sat thinking. There should be a graphic way to demonstrate her conclusions. After a moment a possibility suggested itself. In a nearby drugstore she once again consulted a telephone directory and located the office out of which the building inspectors worked.

  A three-minute walk took her there. At a counter she inquired if blueprints to all new construction were kept on file. The clerk admitted that such was the case. Ann asked to see those prints relating to the house at 560 Neville Road, near Inisfail, and was informed that such plans were not available for public inspection.

  Using the office telephone, she called Inspector Tarr, who expressed surprise at finding her still in San Rafael. “You’d better be sticking to home base till we tie this business up,” he warned her. “You had one pretty close call, remember? It could happen again.”

  “I don’t think anything is going to happen where I am now which is at the Building Department.”

  “What in the world are you doing there?”

  “Doing your work for you. Detecting.”

  “Well, well,” said Tarr. “And what have you detected?”

  “If you’ll meet me here, I’ll show you.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Tarr. “I’m not proud, lady. I’ll be right over.”

  Five minutes later Tarr appeared in the doorway. Ann rose from the bench where she had been waiting. “What’s this all about?”

  “I had an idea,” said Ann. “I came here to verify it, but the clerk won’t help me. Perhaps you have more influence.”

  “Influence to what end?”

  “To look at some blueprints. Specifically those to the house on Neville Road.”

  “Why this sudden interest in architecture?”

  “I think I can explain the death of my father. If I’m right, the blueprints will prove it.”

  Tarr stared at her, then went to the counter, and flashed his credentials. The blueprints were promptly forthcoming.

  He spread them out on the counter. Ann bent forward, peered closely, and gave a choked laugh of mingled triumph and tragedy. Her theory was now demonstrable fact.

  “Well?” asked Tarr.

  Ann pointed. “Look there.”

  Tarr frowned. “I must be dense. What are you trying to prove?”

  “First, how a bookcase with six legs can show nine dent marks. Second, how my father was murdered in a locked room.”

  Tarr ran his fingers through his hair. “Are you still on that kick? Look, no one has any murder motive but you. And if you did it, why aren’t you soft-pedaling the matter?”

  “I didn’t kill him.
But Arthur Eakins, the insurance agent, can tell you who did.”

  “I hate to feel like a chump,” said Tarr. “Why not explain in words of one syllable?”

  Ann did so. Tarr’s expression shifted through disbelief, skeptical interest, reluctant conviction, and finally disgust at his own stupidity. “Now I can’t claim any credit for breaking this case,” he said.

  “Do so anyway, by all means,” said Ann. “Personally, I just feel sick.”

  Tarr glanced at his watch. With sudden energy he said, “Let’s go get Eakins. It’s two o’clock. With any luck we can clear this thing up right now.”

  CHAPTER 13

  In the conference room adjoining the sheriff’s private office they had been assembled by ones and twos: first Ann with Arthur Eakins; then Edgar Maudley and Martin Jones, who exchanged glances of mutual detestation; then Alexander and Jehane Cypriano. The room was long, with dark oak wainscoting and a high ceiling, from which hung two frosted glass globes—a formal room incorrigibly ugly. Pushed against one wall was an oak table of institutional solidity at which sat a pair of uniformed deputies. The laity sat on straight-backed chairs ranged along the walls. There was little conversation. Edgar Maudley leaned toward Jehane once or twice to utter an earnest remark, to which Jehane responded politely. She wore a sheath of beige wool with a coat the color of black coffee; gold loops in her ears were her only jewelry; as usual she looked dramatically, wanly beautiful. Alexander Cypriano wore a dark-blue blazer with a scarf of maroon foulard knotted at the neck. Martin Jones had not bothered to change from his work clothes: tan whipcord trousers, a green windbreaker over a white shirt. He sat sulkily aloof, favoring first Edgar Maudley, then Alexander with bitter glances.

  The door from the sheriff’s office opened; into the room came Sheriff Metzger with Robinson, the district attorney; then Inspector Tarr and a young bespectacled assistant to the district attorney. The deputies straightened in their chairs.

  District Attorney Robinson and his assistant took seats at the table. Tarr pulled a chair away from the wall, seating himself like a boxer awaiting a bell.