Staples said, “Could anybody else get in during the movie?”
“No. There’s only one door, and anybody coming in has to walk right in front of the screen.”
“So the killer’s definitely one of the five others watching the movie.”
Bray looked sour. “One of them,” he agreed, and the elevator stopped. He pushed open the door and we followed him into a square high-ceilinged room with black carpeting and puffy white low chairs and another uniformed cop. “This way,” Bray said, and the three of us trooped across the room and through an open doorway on the far side.
The scene of the crime. Oh, my God, and the victim himself, lying sprawled in a white leather chair and looking perfectly ghastly. His eyes were open and staring ceilingward, but the eyeballs were sunk too deep in the sockets, as though everything inside there had shriveled. A great sticky-looking stain the color of beaujolais smeared the white leather back of the chair. My victim had been much more discreet.
With difficulty, I forced myself to look at the rest of the place, which was a very plush little screening room. Ten of the white leather chairs, on chrome rollers, were scattered about the gray carpet, intermixed with small white formica Parsons tables. The entire wall to the left of the entrance formed the screen, flanked by drapes which would probably close when no movie was being shown. Framed movie posters were mounted on the side walls, and a small but generous bar was built in at the back.
Staples said, “I thought you said there was only one door.” He nodded toward a second door, next to the bar.
“Projection booth,” Bray told him. “It’s like a little closet in there, and no other way out.”
“Ah.” Staples walked around the body in the chair, studying it from different angles. “Deader’n hell, isn’t he?”
Bray said to me, “If you’re going to throw up, there’s a john past the elevator.”
“I’m not going to throw up.” In fact, I wasn’t at all queasy, though I preferred not to look at the dead man. Bray had simply been letting me know again that he didn’t like my being here.
Staples, having studied the corpse long enough to memorize it, now said, “Fine. Where’s our suspects?”
“Back this way.”
We went out through the other room again, past the elevator, down a short white hall, and into a bookcase-enclosed room done in shades of orange and brown. Tall narrow windows at the far end of the room showed the February nakedness of tree branches and the rear of some building on 68th Street. The low chrome-armed chairs in here were covered with brown corduroy and on them were sitting half a dozen distressed-looking people. I saw no one I knew, but two or three of the faces were familiar, probably from press parties. All of the faces were troubled and nervous, as though we were tax men here for an audit. Another uniformed policeman stood stolidly in a corner, pretending to be a guard in a bank.
Bray addressed the group: “I’m sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll try not to take much longer. I’m Detective Sergeant Bray, and this is Detective Sergeant Staples. We’d like to find out what happened. Does anybody have any suggestions?”
The troubled faces turned toward one another, this way and that, but the only one who spoke was a tall slender ash-blonde woman in black slacks and a pearl gray sweater, who asked, as though hoping against hope, “I suppose it must have been one of us?”
“It does seem that way,” Bray told her. “I’m sorry. Unless someone has another theory?”
But no one did. The faces remained troubled, and attentive.
Bray said, “All right. Then we might as well begin.” The interrogation that followed was informal in style but very thorough, starting with the names and functions of everyone present. The oldest man here, sixtyish, almost completely bald, stocky, with a vaguely Mittel-European accent, was our host, Hugo Lanisch, co-producer of the film they’d been watching. The slender blonde in the black slacks was his most recent wife, Jennifer; in her early thirties, cool and beautiful and well-bred, she looked as though she’d come with the town house, and probably she had.
There was one black among the white faces, a bearded plump fortyish man named Gideon Fergus, who’d been hired to write the music for the film. I remembered his work from several black exploitation movies; mostly bongos and electric guitars.
Then there were two people from United Films, the company that had financed the movie and would be its distributor. The stout black-haired woman with the serious hornrim glasses and the overly loud way of speaking was Ruth Carr, the East Coast story editor and presumably the one who had interested United Films in the project in the first place. And the 35-year-old slender fag in the leather pullover and big yellow glasses and long blond hair was Barry McGivern, the company’s assistant advertising director.
Finally there was the projectionist, a neatly dressed young man of about 25 named Jack March. An executive in embryo, March had an earnest expression, short blond hair, metal-rim glasses and a modest California tan. He had apparently decided his role at a murder was to look very alert, in case anybody should want coffee.
Having established names and pedigrees, Bray turned the floor over to Staples, who cheerfully but insistently worked out where everybody had been seated during the screening. With only six in the audience, they had not clustered together but had been fairly widely distributed through the room. Staples eventually had to produce paper and pencil and do a sketch plan of everybody’s position, but when he was finished the layout was clear. Wicker had been the farthest from the screen, so that any of the others could have left his or her seat, traveled on hands and knees, and approached him from behind without being seen by anyone else.
Except the projectionist. Young March had been watching the film through a small window next to the projector, but it turned out he’d seen the movie before—he was the messenger who’d brought it here from the cutting room on the west coast—and he hadn’t been completely attentive. He explained there were always things to be done in the projection booth, but that was undoubtedly a polite falsehood; the second time through, A Sound Of Distant Drums was probably more than a bit boring. Besides, if the killer had stayed on his knees behind Wicker the projectionist would have been unlikely to see him in any case.
So now the characters and the setting had been established. A rich old movie producer, his rich young wife, a third-rate black composer, two studio functionaries and a reliable small-time director had gathered in a room to watch for the first time a film in which they were all interested. What they were seeing was a rough cut, still several minutes too long and with no musical score. In the course of this screening, one of the others had shot the director, for reasons yet to be established.
But before getting to motive, Bray was interested in one more physical aspect of the crime: the sound of it. Taking over from Staples, he said, “Mr. Wicker was killed with a .25 caliber revolver. Now, that wouldn’t make as much noise as a .45 automatic, but it wouldn’t exactly be quiet either. Just how loud is this movie you were watching?”
It was Gideon Fergus, the black composer, who answered: “Not very loud at all. It’s much more of a mood piece than Jim’s other films, probably because it’s the first time he was doing his own original script. And there wasn’t any music yet, of course.”
Barry McGivern, the advertising man from United Films, said, “Well, there was that one shot in the movie. Remember? Just after they get off the train.”
Ruth Carr, the stout story editor with the loud voice, loudly said, “Do I remember? I’ll say I remember, it scared me half to death.”
Bray, the patient bulldog, said, “There was a gunshot in the movie?”
There was general agreement; yes, there had been one gunshot in the movie. Barry McGivern drove home the obvious point: “The killer could have fired his gun at the same precise moment.”
“Very tricky to get it that close,” Bray said. “But possible, I suppose. Did anybody hear Wicker make any kind of sound just after the shot?”
Ruth Carr said, “I’m afraid nobody heard anything, just after the shot, because I gave out a yell.”
Barry McGivern told her indulgently, “I must say, Ruth, you startled me more than the gunshot did.”
Bray said, “You screamed?”
“I’m sorry,” Ruth Carr said, but her smile was more proud than sheepish. “I’ve always been that way, I’m a real sucker for movies. They catch me every time.”
“All right.” Bray’s disinterest in Ruth Carr’s little personality traits was so total that even she noticed it, and looked offended. He ignored that, too, saying to the group at large, “Were there any other loud noises in the course of the film? Anything else that might have covered the sound of a shot?”
Gideon Fergus said, “There were two or three door slams, but I don’t know that they were that loud.”
Ruth Carr said, “And the jet taking off. That one hurt my eardrums.”
A little discussion ensued among Gideon Fergus, Ruth Carr and Barry McGivern as to whether or not the wail of a jet taking off was the kind of sound that would cover the noise of a gun being fired. Hugo and Jennifer Lanisch, I noticed, took no part in this discussion, nor in any of the talk that had preceded it. They sat fairly close together, but not touching and not looking at one another, and though God knows they were far from twins—he with his gleaming round bald head and deeply lined face, she with her oval face framed by heavy ash-blonde hair—their expressions were nearly identical. Both were defensive, blank, rigidly controlled, tightly held in check. Looking at them, the thought came to me: Was Jennifer playing around with young Jim Wicker?
This same thought had apparently occurred to both Bray and Staples, and once the sound-effects discussion ran itself out the two detectives began poking delicately into the general question of motive. How long had each of our suspects known Jim Wicker, what was the state of each relationship, how had the relationship been formed? The questions were general, and ostensibly aimed at all the suspects equally, but it was plain that the questions were focusing more and more frequently on Jennifer Lanisch.
Were Bray and Staples doing this out of perversity? Or was it possible they didn’t know who the murderer was? Finally it seemed to me the only thing to do was break my promise of silence, which I did by saying, “Well, of course Jack March is the killer, but that still leaves the question of why. I suppose once we find out his real name the motive will become more clear.” Everybody stared at me, even the uniformed cop in the corner. Bray looked as though he might burst a blood vessel, but Staples was merely bewildered, and when he said, “What are you talking about?” I heard in his voice the forlorn prayer that I would actually know what I was talking about.
I did. “I suggest his real name isn’t Jack March,” I said, “because he’s so obviously in disguise. You’ll notice the tan on the lower half of his face is lighter than on the upper half, meaning he’s just recently shaved off a full beard. Also, his clothing is all brand spanking new, suggesting he’s been used to a different sort of garb. That short haircut also looks very recent, and those spectacles are fakes, with clear glass. I have a pair myself, they were a prop in a movie, and they reflect light differently.”
By now, everybody was staring at young March instead of at me, and March didn’t like it at all. “That’s silly,” he said. “Yes, I shaved off my beard when I got this job, but that doesn’t mean I killed anybody.”
“You were the only one behind Wicker while the film was being screened,” I pointed out.
Staples, looking at me with hope and terror and warning all mixed in his expression, said, “Any of the others could have crawled around behind Wicker, we already established that.”
“Taking a chance on being seen by the projectionist? Besides, I haven’t yet mentioned the real proof.”
“Then I wish you would,” Staples said, and I could see Bray silently agreeing.
“The gun was fired,” I said, “in conjunction with a loud sound in the film, probably a gunshot. But the gunshot in the film was so unexpected that Miss Carr screamed when it happened. Only someone who had seen the picture before would know about that gunshot and be able to anticipate it and use it. And only March, who carried the print here from Los Angeles, had seen the picture before. Only March knew the film.”
“I knew it, all right,” March said, and by the sudden harshness in his voice I knew we’d be hearing the truth now. “I knew it because I wrote it! And that son of a bitch stole it from me! I trusted him, I—I—This was my only chance to get even with him, while he’s watching it himself, sitting there watching the script he, he—” And March dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
I turned smiling to Staples. “Elementary, my dear Watson,” I said.
FOUR
The Problem of the Copywriter’s Island
Staples went whee-whee-whee all the way home. “Did you see Al Bray’s face? he demanded, and answered his own question by laughing out loud and slapping his gloved palm against the steering wheel.
I had in fact seen Al Bray’s face, and he’d looked as though a movie marquee had fallen on him. He didn’t say anything to me, but he kept looking in my direction like a Flat Earther faced with an astronaut. I, on the other hand, had sense enough to remain modest and to fade into the background after I’d done my little turn. There was no point preening; any man who intends to rub a cop’s nose in it had better be on safer ground than I was.
Anyway, March’s breakdown and confession had essentially finished that job, so Staples soon took me away, leaving Bray to care for the details. Morgue and technical people were just arriving as we reached the sidewalk, and while Staples had a word or two with them I scanned the block for Edgarson. He was nowhere to be seen; had the presence of the police scared him off?
Now Staples was driving me home, crowing all the way, and not sobering till he’d parked again next to the fire hydrant near my building. Then he said, “If you could do the same thing on the Laura Penney killing, it would be a great help.”
I could do the same thing, as a matter of fact, but I wasn’t going to. Young Jack March had been a great lesson to me, had I been in need of a great lesson: he’d demonstrated the folly of quitting. I had made a very nice circumstantial case against him, and no doubt in time the police would have established his true identity and his motive for killing Jim Wicker, but without the confession would it ever have been proved? If the gun couldn’t be traced directly to March—and my guess was that it couldn’t—some small doubt would have to remain, and with a halfway decent defense attorney that small doubt could surely be turned into an acquittal. March, the premeditated murderer, had planned everything up to the crime itself, but then had lost his moorings, his sense of purpose and his nerve. I, the unpremeditated murderer, hadn’t planned anything until after the event, but because I’d retained my nerve and my sense of purpose I was now the only human being on Earth who had been fully cleared in that killing.
But what Staples wanted was an expression of cooperation and sincerity of purpose. I obliged, telling him, “By God, I wish I could just point a finger and say, ‘That’s the killer.’ I was very fond of Laura, you know, I’ve realized that more and more since her death.”
Sympathetic understanding gleamed in Staples’ eyes. “I know what you mean. But we do have those photographs. We could go over them now, and maybe something’ll click for you.”
“Fine.” Then, because hospitality seemed necessary under the circumstances, and also because it was damn cold in Staples’ unheated car, I said, “Want to come up? We can have coffee and be comfortable.”
“Good idea.”
So the two of us climbed the stairs to my apartment and spent a while uncoating ourselves. Then I went to the kitchenette to make coffee, while Staples wandered around the living room, looking at my memorabilia. Seeing him near the desk, I called, “Would you mind switching on the phone machine? I want to hear my messages.”
“Sure.” He hovered over
it, willing but unschooled. “What do I do?”
“Turn the switch to playback and press the rewind button.”
He did both, and I went on with my coffeemaking while the machine gibberished itself backward at high speed and then began to unreel my latest messages: “Hi, Carey, it’s, um, Jack Freelander. Um. It looks as though, um, Esquire, um, might want that piece, um, um, I told you about, um, about the pornographic movie biz. Um. Would you be, um, free some time soon? I’d like to, um, pick your brains. Also, um. Do you happen to know, um, where Laura Penney is? Um. She doesn’t answer her phone. Um. See you later. Um. Um.”
I called, through the final stutters of Jack Freelander’s message, “How do you like your coffee?”
“Regular.” Staples came to the kitchenette doorway, saying, “I feel like I’m eavesdropping, listening to all that.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” Meantime, the second message had started. “Hi, sweetie, it’s Kit. I’ll be tied up this evening, but give me a call tomorrow. And I still say Jay English did it.”
“Christ,” I muttered. I gave Staples his coffee, and the two of us went back to the living room and message number three:
“Hello, Mr. Thorpe. How does it feel to be a murderer?”
* * *
After I put the mop away and made myself another cup of coffee, Staples insisted we listen to that last message another half dozen times, in hopes I’d eventually recognize the voice:
“Hello, Mr. Thorpe. How does it feel to be a murderer? Hello, Mr. Thorpe. How does it Hello, Mr. Thorpe feel to be a how does it Hello, Mr. how does it feel how does it, Mr. Thorpe, feel to be a murderer? a murderer? a murderer?”
“I just don’t know,” I said. “The voice sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”
Finally Staples gave up, saying, “He called you ‘Mr. Thorpe’, so I guess whoever he is he doesn’t know you all that well.”
“I guess he doesn’t. Excuse me a minute.” And off I went to the john, to pop a Valium. What did humanity do before these wonderful pills?
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