Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  PART TWO

  We went into the kitchen and shut the door. I thought it would help to lessen the horror of the thing in the living-room. But it didn’t. All the time I was talking, planning what seemed, even though I’d made up my mind to it, absolutely preposterous, the feeling of the corpse remained. It was almost worse, as if now we were not there to watch it, it might suddenly stand up and some stealthy sound might stir beyond the door, bringing the panic, which was so close to the surface anyway, spouting up like a geyser.

  I’d got us both drinks. I was sitting on a stool. The automatic can opener, which I was always bumping into when I was in the kitchen, hung on the wall, brushing against my elbow. Virginia stood by the window. She had taken off her coat. The scarlet geranium she’d bought the day before glowed on the sill behind her.

  I made myself think of us as just any two people having drinks in any kitchen, and gradually, in spite of the fear and the sense of unreality, the plan began to form and to seem practical. Our apartment house had its own garage in the basement. There was a service elevator, a service entrance and a little service alleyway. If we waited until it was really late, I could bring the car into the service alley. Virginia and I together could get the body down in the elevator. We could put it in the luggage compartment of the car. I could drive—anywhere—and dump the body.

  I looked at my watch. It was five to eight.

  “We’ll wait till one or two. No one will be using the service elevator then; no one will be in the alley. He’s heavy but the two of us can get him to the elevator.”

  I paused, looking across at her. She was being wonderfully unhysterical. That, more than anything, was making it possible.

  “You think you can do that?” I said. “Help me?”

  “Of course. But isn’t there a man all night in the garage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’ll see you taking the car out.”

  “Maybe he will, but it won’t matter. If ever it comes up, we’ll have a reason for taking it out so late.”

  “What reason?”

  “Any. We weren’t tired. We thought we’d drop into a nightclub. We can actually do it—after we’ve dumped the body.”

  “But where shall we take him?”

  “Anywhere.” An idea came. “Wall Street. Why not? At night Wall Street’s deserted as the Sahara.” An almost frightening self-confidence was coming to me. “Yes, we’ll drive down to Wall Street and when we’ve dumped him that’s all there’ll be to it. Later, after they’ve found him, they may eventually get on to the fact that you’d been married to him. They might even come here for a routine check. But if he was the way you said he was, there must be dozens of people who wanted to kill him. There’ll be nothing definite to point to you, and by then we’ll have worked out an alibi for you together.”

  The tautness of the skin over her cheek-bones had relaxed. She was, I could tell, beginning to hope. But there was a cautious, almost wary look in her eyes.

  “What about the gun?” she said.

  “We’ll throw it in the river tonight.”

  “But if they do come and check, they may find out you owned one.”

  “I’ll say it was Beth’s, which it was, and that I got rid of it when she died.”

  “Then—then it may work?”

  “Of course it’ll work. We just have to sit here and sweat it out until one.”

  She came over and stood in front of me. She put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Lew, I don’t know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “Oh yes there is. There’s everything.”

  I rested my hand on hers and with the other one felt in my pocket for my cigarette packet. It was empty.

  I said, “If you really want to do something for me, toss me a packet of cigarettes from the drawer.”

  She started towards the cabinet and then stopped. “There aren’t any. I noticed before I went out. But I bought a carton. They must be in the living-room.”

  A memory came of her walking in from the hall, stopping in her tracks, the package dropping from under her arm. It destroyed the little kitchen world of false security.

  “I’ll go get them,” I said.

  When we’d gone into the kitchen, I had turned out the lights in the living-room. Now it was an ominous cavern of dark and lighter shadows. I turned on a lamp. The illumination seemed dazzling. The body, huge, humped, sprawled across the carpet, seemed to fill the room. I could see the carton of cigarettes in its drugstore paper sack lying just beyond it by the door to the hall. I skirted the body. The cigarettes were only an inch or so from the outstretched right hand. As I bent and picked them up, my own hand brushed against a thick finger. From the contact, nausea came first, then near-panic. I dropped the cigarettes again. I fell to my knees. I felt the wrist, then the arm, then I lugged the arm upward.

  “Virginia!”

  After the silence, my voice sounded like a yell. As I looked up, she came running to the kitchen door.

  “What is it?”

  I stood up. I fought down the panic because I had to.

  I said, “We can’t wait until one. It’s getting stiff. If we wait, we’ll never get it in the back of the car.”

  She took a few steps towards me.

  “You’re sure?” Thank God her voice was all right.

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “Then?”

  “We’ll have to risk it. I’ll get the car. I’ll bring it to the alleyway. We’ll have to get him down and into it.”

  “And then?”

  “I’ll take the car back to the garage. We’ll leave it there until it’s late enough—then I’ll dump him.”

  The moment when I might have cracked had passed. It wasn’t, after all, as impossible as it had seemed. The residents in the apartment house, when they got their cars from the garage, used the regular elevators to the basement. Who would be likely to be using the service elevator after eight? It was dark now. Who would be in the alley?

  I said, “I’ll go down the back way. I’ll open the door to the alley. Then I’ll get the car and come back.”

  “Now?” She was trying to keep the terror out of her voice, but it was there.

  “Now,” I said.

  I got my overcoat from the hall and drew Virginia back into the kitchen.

  “Just sit here and wait. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

  I’d already realised that the floor plan was almost ideal. A service entrance from the kitchen led to the fire-stairs, and the service elevator was no more than thirty feet along the bare cement corridor. There was one, but only one, other kitchen door between us and it. I didn’t know who it belonged to. I didn’t know any of the neighbours.

  I went quietly down the corridor and pressed the button for the service elevator. I could hear it lumbering up; then it arrived and the door slid open. For a split second I thought: My God, someone’s in it. But it was only a mop standing head up in a bucket. As I descended, I thought of Sheila entertaining the family at 79th Street, of the familiar Denham existence going on with nothing more ominous to disturb it than anxiety as to whether or not Aunt Peggy would be “at her best”. I had been swept into another world. Even its geography was almost unknown to me. Once, the year before, when the lights had fused, I’d gone down the back way to the basement looking for the superintendent—and had failed. The memory supported me. I’d gone down, I’d wandered around bleak deserted areas, I’d even complained. They’d told me that the superintendent lived in the front and that if anyone needed him the proper procedure was to call down to the doorman to summon him.

  That had been it, hadn’t it? Then what was there to fear?

  The elevator came to a halt. The doors opened and I moved out. The garage was off to my left. I knew that. Almost directly in front of me, only a few feet away, was the basement fire door which led to the alley. I hurried to it and dropped the bar. As I half opened it, the cold night air rushed in. I looked o
ut into the high-walled alley. A thin cat scurried. An old newspaper, blown into grey scattered individual sheets, strewed the cement surface. Not a soul.

  I shut the door again, leaving the bolt hanging down. Usually when I wanted the car, I called down from the apartment for the attendant to bring it to the head of the ramp, but sometimes in the past for one reason or other, I’d just walked straight in. Doing it now would surely raise no suspicions. I threaded my way through dusty corridors past furnaces, pipes, the whole complex of a large apartment house’s intestines, back to the front of the building and the regular elevators, for that was the orthodox way of approaching the garage.

  I went through the ordinary door and up the side of the ramp. One of the garage men was sitting outside his little cubicle reading the paper, his feet up on a chair. I knew him and he knew me.

  “Hi, Mr. Denham—want the Chevy?”

  He yelled to the other man. In a couple of minutes my car had been brought to the head of the ramp. In a couple more minutes I’d driven out into the street around the block and in again through the delivery entrance right up to the open fire door.

  When I got back to the kitchen, Virginia was sitting at the white enamel table with her coat on. She jumped up.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s a cinch. It’s just getting him there.”

  “There wasn’t anyone around?”

  “No one. Ready?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m ready.”

  “Quick then. I left the service elevator open.”

  As we hurried into the living-room, I thought of the blood. If I carried him, blood would get on my clothes and I’d have to drive back to the garage. Better my suit than my overcoat. I took off the coat and threw it on a chair. I looked down at the body. Virginia came to my side.

  “Take off your coat,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, understanding.

  At first as we struggled silently and with growing despair, it seemed impossible—not just revolting and soul-destroying, but impossible. The dead weight was tremendous. We yanked and pulled. Once, as we rolled him on to his side, his leg kicking out, it seemed, with conscious viciousness, sent a table and lamp clattering to the floor. There was a moment in our planlessness when we were on the brink of collapse. Then, from some dim recess of my memory, I remembered the fireman’s grip. I got down on my hands and knees; I pulled one huge arm over my shoulder. While Virginia, panting, almost sobbing, pushed and clawed, I exerted all my strength and it was done. He was standing upright, or rather he was upright, lumbering forward on to my back. His head lurched over my shoulder; his cheek, cold, obscene as wax, was pressing against my cheek.

  I was facing in the wrong direction. I managed to swivel around.

  “Get the coats,” I said.

  Virginia ran to the chair.

  I lugged him through the kitchen. I lugged him out to the cement corridor. The worst part wasn’t the weight or the cheek, it was the dreadful dead shuffle of his toes dragging behind me—a monster noise from a monster movie. Ahead of me the dim light in the service elevator gleamed like a hopelessly inaccessible beacon. Somehow I got there. Virginia came in after me.

  I said, “Press B for the basement.”

  I had him up against the wall, jammed between my back and the wall, relieving me of some of the weight. As the elevator went down, he swerved sideways. I almost fell. Virginia jumped against me, pushing. Her foot caught the bucket. The mop tilted sideways; the damp woolly head splashed against my other cheek.

  Then, when the nightmare should have reached its peak, it was all right. Maybe I had worn out my capacity for horror. The basement was as bleakly deserted as before. Virginia, hurrying ahead of me, opened the fire door and then, running to the car, opened the luggage compartment with the car keys. There were a few seconds of lurching forward, tilting, pushing, shoving with hands made savage by suppressed panic. Then the luggage compartment was shut.

  We stood gasping, looking at each other. I turned my back.

  “Is there blood?”

  “I can’t see.”

  “Give me the coat.”

  I slipped on my overcoat. So did Virginia. She took out a comb and combed her hair. Then she combed mine. As she leaned towards me, I gripped her and held her against me. I thought: Now we’ve been through this together, nothing can separate us, and I felt a quite incredible joy.

  “What do we do now, Lew?”

  “Go for a drive.”

  “A drive?”

  “We can’t dump him yet and if I take the car straight back it’ll look odd. We’ll just drive for a bit—then I can take it back.”

  We were both climbing into the car. In a few seconds we were out on the street. Driving into its leisurely evening activity was like being awakened from a dream into normal reality. No, not normal, of course not—driving through Manhattan with a body jammed in the luggage compartment had little that was normal in it.

  But there was enough normality to make it possible to go on. I looked at myself in the windshield mirror, then I looked at Virginia. There was nothing to indicate what we’d been through. Nothing at all. I drove downtown to the U.N. Building and then uptown again. We hardly spoke, but every now and then I’d turn my head to her and every now and then she’d brush her hand against mine. The only thing that was unendurable was lack of cigarettes. We’d left them behind. I stopped at a corner drugstore on Third Avenue. Virginia got out and came back with two packets.

  We smoked avidly, drove at random and then, about half an hour later—this seemed the minimal time to put in—we went back to the apartment house. I left Virginia off at the front entrance. The doorman was showing some other people into a taxi. As I drove away I saw him raise his hand to Virginia. She waved back. I drove around and down into the garage to the head of the ramp.

  The garage man said, “Well, you weren’t out long.”

  “We couldn’t get into the movie we wanted to see,” I said. “We decided to come home and blow ourselves to a nightclub later on instead.”

  “One of them girlie shows? Wouldn’t consider trading chores with me, would you, Mr. Denham? I’m on all night tonight.”

  He had his extra set of keys. That was the normal procedure. As he climbed into the car and shot it up through the lines of other parked cars, I had expected a tremor of panic to come. But it didn’t. Now it was out of sight, the corpse seemed to have lost its power.

  It hadn’t though. The moment I let myself into the apartment, I could feel its lingering presence. I took off the overcoat and looked at myself in the hall mirror, twisting to see my back. Yes, there was blood on the grey gabardine of the shoulders, not much, but some. I went into the living-room. Virginia wasn’t there. The overturned table and lamp sprawled across the carpet, horribly suggesting the shape of the body.

  “Virginia.”

  She came out of the kitchen, carrying a basin.

  She said, “There’s blood on the carpet.”

  We were both down on our knees. The stain wasn’t wide but it was long and irregular, winding this way and that, maddeningly blurred by the oriental design of the carpet. She started to scrub. As I knelt at her side, panic stirred, a different kind of panic, a surface, brittle jitteriness in which the tiniest thing seemed impossibly complicated. Was soap and warm water right? Was that what one used to remove blood? How did one know?

  At last it looked all right. At least you couldn’t see anything—not with the naked eye. Virginia took the basin back into the kitchen. I put the table and lamp back into place. The gun was still lying on the carpet. I picked it up.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Throw it in the river.”

  “I know, but what are you going to do with it now?”

  “Put it back in the drawer,” I said, and then, “There’s blood on my suit.”

  “I know.”

  “We’d better get rid of it, hadn’t we?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Down the incinerat
or chute.”

  “I’ve got to take a shower.”

  “Yes,” she said, “yes.”

  We both showered. When I was dressed again, I took the bundled-up suit and headed for the kitchen. Virginia, in a short black dress, came hurrying after me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking the suit to the chute.”

  “Not like that.”

  She snatched the suit from me, ran into the kitchen and came back with scissors. She sat down and began cutting the jacket to pieces with erratic jagged strokes. Then she started on the trousers. As I watched her, her tension frayed on mine.

  I said, “The zipper won’t burn. Probably the buttons won’t either.”

  “No, no. That’s right.”

  Almost wildly she was snipping off the buttons, ripping out the zipper. When she’d finished, I scooped up the fragments of the suit from her lap. I started for the kitchen. I was just at its threshold when the front-door buzzer rang.

  It was the worst of all the moments because it was the world making its first demand on us before we’d prepared ourselves for anything. I spun around to Virginia. She had turned to me. Then both of us did exactly the same thing. We glanced hectically around the room as if there must be some huge, damning sign of what had happened. There wasn’t anything, of course. The room looked exactly the way it had always looked except that the dark material of the carpet was faintly darker where we’d scrubbed.

  The buzzer sounded again more persistently.

  It was Virginia who said, “Answer it.”

  “But if it’s the police.”

  “How could it be the police?”

  “If someone’s framing you—why not?”

  “My God!” She hesitated. “But the doorman knows I’m here. He saw me coming up. If it is the police and we don’t answer, it’ll be worse.”

  That was so obvious that I should have thought of it too, but the grotesque unnaturalness of standing there clutching the bloodstained fragments of my grey gabardine suit had blurred my reactions.

  I brought the bundle of scraps back to her.