My dear Sister:
I have reason to fear that someone close to me is Jack the Stripper.
You know me, I trust, too well to think me a sensationalist striving to be a star witness. I have grounds for what I say. This individual, whom I shall for the moment call “Quasimodo” for reasons that might particularly appeal to you, first betrayed himself when I noticed a fleck of blood behind his ear—a trifle, but suggestive. Since then I have religiously observed his comings and goings, and found curious coincideuces between the absence of Quasimodo and the presence elsewhere of the Stripper.
I have not a conclusive body of evidence, but I believe that I do have sufficient to bring to the attention of the authorities. I have heard you mention a Lieutenant Marshall who is a close friend of yours. If you will recommend me to him as a man whose word is to be taken seriously, I shall be deeply obliged.
I may, of course, be making a fool of myself with my suspicions of Quasimodo, which is why I refrain from giving you his real name. But every man must do what is possible to rid this city a negotio perambulante in tenebris.
Yours respectfully,
Harvey Flecker
“He didn’t have much to go on, did he?” Marshall observed. “But he was right, God help him. And he may have known more than he cared to trust to a letter. He must have slipped somehow and let Quasimodo see his suspicions. … What does that last phrase mean?”
“Lieutenant! And you an Oxford man!” exclaimed Sister Ursula.
“I can translate it. But what’s its connotation?”
“It’s from St. Jerome’s Vulgate of the ninetieth psalm. The Douay version translates it literally: of the business that walketh about in the dark; but that doesn’t convey the full horror of that nameless prowling negotium. It’s one of the most terrible phrases I know, and perfect for the Stripper.”
“Flecker was a Catholic?”
“No, he was a resolute agnostic, though I have always had hopes that Thomist philosophy would lead him into the Church. I almost think he refrained because his conversion would have left nothing to argue with Father Pearson about. But he was an excellent Church Latinist and knew the liturgy better than most Catholics.”
“Do you understand what he means by Quasimodo?”
“I don’t know. Allusiveness was typical of Professor Flecker; he delighted in British crossword puzzles, if you see what I mean. But I think I could guess more rapidly if he had not said that it might particularly appeal to me …”
“So? I can see at least two possibilities—”
“But before we try to decode the Professor’s message, Lieutenant, tell me what you have learned here. All I know is that the poor man is dead, may he rest in peace.”
Marshall told her. Four university teachers lived in this ancient (for Southern California) two-story house near the Campus. Mrs. Carey came in every day to clean for them and prepare dinner. When she arrived this morning at nine, Lowe and de’ Cassis were eating breakfast and Hugo Ellis, the youngest of the group was out mowing the lawn. They were not concerned over Flecker’s absence. He often worked in the study till all hours and sometimes fell asleep there.
Mrs. Carey went about her work. Today was Tuesday, the day for changing the beds and getting the laundry ready. When she had finished that task, she dusted the living room and went on to the study.
The police did not yet have her story of the discovery. Her scream had summoned the others, who had at once called the police and, sensibly, canceled their classes and waited. When the police arrived, Mrs. Carey was still hysterical. The doctor had quieted her with a hypodermic, from which she had not yet revived.
Professor Flecker had had his throat cut and (Marshall skipped over this hastily) suffered certain other butcheries characteristic of the Stripper. The knife, an ordinary kitchen-knife, had been left by the body as usual. He had died instantly, at approximately one in the morning, when each of the other three men claimed to be asleep.
More evidence than that of the locked doors proved that the Stripper was an inmate of the house. He had kept his feet clear of the blood which bespattered the study, but he had still left a trail of small drops which revealed themselves to the minute police inspection—blood which had bathed his body and dripped off as he left his crime.
This trail led upstairs and into the bathroom, where it stopped. There were traces of watered blood in the bathtub and on one of the towels—Flecker’s own.
“Towel?” said Sister Ursula. “But you said Mrs. Carey had made up the laundry bundle.”
“She sends out only sheets and such—does the towels herself.”
“Oh.” The nun sounded disappointed.
“I know how you feel, Sister. You’d welcome a discrepancy anywhere, even in the laundry list. But that’s the sum of our evidence. Three suspects, all with opportunity, none with an alibi. Absolutely even distribution of suspicion, and our only guidepost is the word Quasimodo. Do you know any of these three men?”
“I have never met them, Lieutenant, but I feel as though I know them rather well from Professor Flecker’s descriptions.”
“Good. Let’s see what you can reconstruct. First, Ruggiero de’ Cassis, professor of mathematics, formerly of the University of Turin, voluntary exile since the early days of Fascism.”
Sister Ursula said slowly, “He admired de’ Cassis, not only for his first-rate mind, but because he seemed to have adjusted himself so satisfactorily to life despite his deformity. I remember he said once, ‘De’ Cassis has never known a woman, yet every day he looks on Beauty bare.’”
“On Beauty …?” Oh yes. Millay. Euclid alone… All right. Now Marvin Lowe, professor of psychology, native of Ohio, and from what I’ve seen of him a prime pedant. According to Flecker …?”
“I think Professor Lowe amused him. He used to tell us the latest Spoonerisms; he swore that flocks of students graduated from the University believing that modern psychology rested on the researches of two men named Frung and Jeud. Once Lowe said that his favorite book was Max Beerbohm’s Happy Hypocrite; Professor Flecker insisted that was because it was the only one he could be sure of pronouncing correctly.”
“But as a man?”
“He never said much about Lowe personally; I don’t think they were intimate. But I do recall his saying, ‘Lowe, like all psychologists, is the physician of Greek proverb.’”
“Who was told to heal himself? Makes sense. That speech mannerism certainly points to something a psychiatrist could have fun with. All right. How about Hugo Ellis, instructor in mathematics, native of Los Angeles?”
“Mr. Ellis was a child prodigy, you know. Extraordinary mathematical feats. But he outgrew them, I almost think deliberately. He made himself into a normal young man. Now he is, I gather, a reasonably good young instructor—just run of the mill. An adult with the brilliance which he had as a child might be a great man. Professor Flecker turned the French proverb around to fit him: ‘If youth could, if age knew …’”
“So. There they are. And which,” Marshall asked, “is Quasimodo?”
“Quasimodo …” Sister Ursula repeated the word, and other words seemed to follow it automatically. “Quasimodo geniti infantes …” She paused and shuddered.
“What’s the matter?”
“I think,” she said softly, “I know. But like Professor Flecker, I fear making a fool of myself—and worse, I fear damning an innocent man … Lieutenant, may I look through this house with you?”
He sat there staring at the other two and at the policeman watching them. The body was no longer in the next room, but the blood was. He had never before revisited the scene of the crime; that notion was the nonsense of legend. For that matter he had never known his victim.
He let his mind go back to last night. Only recently had he been willing to do this. At first it was something that must be kept apart, divided from his normal personality. But he was intelligent enough to realize the danger of that. It could produce a seriously schizoid personality. He
might go mad. Better to attain complete integration, and that could be accomplished only by frank self-recognition.
It must be terrible to be mad.
“Well, where to first?” asked Marshall.
“I want to see the bedrooms,” said Sister Ursula. “I want to see if Mrs. Carey changed the sheets.”
“You doubt her story? But she’s completely out of the—all right. Come on.”
Lieutenant Marshall identified each room for her as they entered it. Harvey Flecker’s bedroom by no means consorted with the neatness of his mind. It was a welter of papers and notes and hefty German works on Latin philology and puzzle books by Torquemada and Caliban and early missals and codices from the University library. The bed had been changed and the clean upper sheet was turned back. Harvey Flecker would never soil it.
Professor de’ Cassis’s room was in sharp contrast—a chaste monastic cubicle. His books—chiefly professional works, with a sampling of Leopardi and Carducci and other Italian poets and an Italian translation of Thomas à Kempis—were neatly stacked in a case, and his papers were out of sight. The only ornaments in the room were a crucifix and a framed picture of a family group, in clothes of 1920.
Hugo Ellis’s room was defiantly, almost parodistically the room of a normal, healthy college man, even to the University banner over the bed. He had carefully avoided both Flecker’s chaos and de’ Cassis’s austerity; there was a precisely calculated normal litter of pipes and letters and pulp magazines. The pin-up girls seemed to be carrying normality too far, and Sister Ursula averted her eyes.
Each room had a clean upper sheet.
Professor Lowe’s room would have seemed as normal as Ellis’s, if less spectacularly so, if it were not for the inordinate quantity of books. Shelves covered all wall space that was not taken by door, window, or bed. Psychology, psychiatry, and criminology predominated; but there was a selection of poetry, humor, fiction for any mood.
Marshall took down William Roughead’s Twelve Scots Trials and said, “Lucky devil! I’ve never so much as seen a copy of this before.” He smiled at the argumentative pencilings in the margins. Then as he went to replace it, he saw through the gap that there was a second row of books behind. Paperbacks. He took one out and put it back hastily. “You wouldn’t want to see that, Sister. But it might fit into that case we were proposing about repressions and word-distortions.”
Sister Ursula seemed not to heed him. She was standing by the bed and said, “Come here.”
Marshall came and looked at the freshly made bed.
Sister Ursula passed her hand over the mended but clean lower sheet. “Do you see?”
“See what?”
“The answer,” she said.
Marshall frowned. “Look, Sister—”
“Lieutenant, your wife is one of the most efficient housekeepers I’ve ever known. I thought she had, to some extent, indoctrinated you. Think. Try to think with Leona’s mind.”
Marshall thought. Then his eyes narrowed and he said, “So …”
“It is fortunate,” Sister Ursula said, “that the Order of Martha of Bethany specializes in housework.”
Marshall went out and called downstairs. “Raglan! See if the laundry’s been picked up from the back porch.”
The Sergeant’s voice came back. “It’s gone, Loot. I thought there wasn’t no harm—”
“Then get on the phone quick and tell them to hold it.”
“But what laundry, Loot?”
Marshall muttered. Then he turned to Sister Ursula. “The men won’t know of course, but we’ll find a bill somewhere. Anyway, we won’t need that till the preliminary hearing. We’ve got enough now to settle Quasimodo.”
He heard the Lieutenant’s question and repressed a startled gesture. He had not thought of that. But even if they traced the laundry, it would be valueless as evidence without Mrs. Carey’s testimony …
He saw at once what had to be done.
They had taken Mrs. Carey to the guest room, that small downstairs bedroom near the kitchen which must have been a maid’s room when this was a large family house. There were still police posted outside the house, but only Raglan and the lieutenant inside.
It was so simple. His mind, he told himself, had never been functioning more clearly. No nonsense about stripping this time; it was not for pleasure. Just be careful to avoid those crimson jets. …
The Sergeant wanted to know where he thought he was going. He told him.
Raglan grinned. “You should’ve raised your hand. A teacher like you ought to know that.”
He went to the back porch toilet, opened and closed its door without going in. Then he went to the kitchen and took the second best knife. The best had been used last night.
It would not take a minute. Then he would be safe and later when the body was found what could they prove? The others had been out of the room too.
But as he touched the knife it began to happen. Something came from the blade up his arm and into his head. He was in a hurry, there was no time—but holding the knife, the color of things began to change. …
He was half naked when Marshall found him.
Sister Ursula leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door. She felt sick. Marshall and Raglan were both strong men, but they needed help to subdue him. His face was contorted into an unrecognizable mask like a demon from a Japanese tragedy. She clutched the crucifix of the rosary that hung at her waist and murmured a prayer to the Archangel Michael. For it was not the physical strength of the man that frightened her, nor the glint of his knife, but the pure quality of incarnate evil that radiated from him and made the doctrine of possession a real terror.
As she finished her prayer, Marshall’s fist connected with his jaw and he crumpled. So did Sister Ursula.
“I don’t know what you think of me,” Sister Ursula said as Marshall drove her home. (Sister Felicitas was dozing in the back seat.) “I’m afraid I couldn’t ever have been a policewoman after all.”
“You’ll do,” Marshall said. “And if you feel better now, I’d like to run over it with you. I’ve got to get my brilliant deductions straight for the press.”
“The fresh air feels good. Go ahead.”
“I’ve got the sheet business down pat, I think. In ordinary middle-class households you don’t change both sheets every week; Leona never does, I remembered. You put on a clean upper sheet, and the old upper becomes the lower. The other three bedrooms each had one clean sheet—the upper. His had two—upper and lower; therefore his upper sheet had been stained in some unusual way and had to be changed. The hasty bath, probably in the dark, had been careless, and there was some blood left to stain the sheet. Mrs. Carey wouldn’t have thought anything of it at the time because she hadn’t found the body yet. Right?”
“Perfect, Lieutenant.”
“So. But now about Quasimodo … I still don’t get it. He’s the one it couldn’t apply to. Either of the others—”
“Yes?”
“Well, who is Quasimodo? He’s the Hunchback of Notre Dame. So it could mean the deformed de’ Cassis. Who wrote Quasimodo? Victor Hugo. So it could be Hugo Ellis. But it wasn’t either; and how in heaven’s name could it mean Professor Lowe?”
“Remember, Lieutenant: Professor Flecker said this was an allusion that might particularly appeal to me. Now I am hardly noted for my devotion to the anticlerical prejudices of Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris. What is the common meeting-ground of my interests and Professor Flecker’s?”
“Church liturgy?” Marshall ventured.
“And why was your Quasimodo so named? Because he was born—or found or christened, I forget which—on the Sunday after Easter. Many Sundays, as you may know, are often referred to by the first word of their introits, the beginning of the proper of the Mass. As the fourth Sunday in Lent is called Laetare Sunday, or the third in Advent Gaudete Sunday. So the Sunday after Easter is known as Quasimodo Sunday, from its introit Quasimodo geniti infantes … ‘As newborn babes.’”
“But I still don’t see—”
“The Sunday after Easter,” said Sister Ursula, “is more usually referred to as Low Sunday.”
“Oh,” said Marshall. After a moment he added reflectively, “The Happy Hypocrite …”
“You see that too? Beerbohm’s story is about a man who assumes a mask of virtue to conceal his depravity. A schizoid allegory. I wonder if Professor Lowe dreamed that he might find the same happy ending.”
Marshall drove on a bit in silence. Then he said, “He said a strange thing while you were out.”
“I feel as though he were already dead,” said Sister Ursula. “I want to say, ‘God rest his soul.’ We should have a special office for the souls of the mad.”
“That cues into my story. The boys were taking him away and I said to Rags, ‘Well, this is once the insanity plea justifies itself. He’ll never see the gas chamber.’ And he turned on me—he’d quieted down by then—and said, ‘Nonsense, sir! Do you think I would cast doubt on my sanity merely to save my life?’”
“Mercy,” said Sister Ursula. At first Marshall thought it was just an exclamation. Then he looked at her face and saw that she was not talking to him.
(1945)
PART III
Jeux de Meurtre
Threnody
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION (1952)
Strictly speaking, I made my first professional sale when I was sixteen: a short ghost story so abominably written that I now feel that the editor who bought it must have had a sadistic grudge against his readers. Fortunately it was not a murder story and thus did not impair the particular maidenhead under consideration in this anthology.
My professional murder writing dates from 1937, when Lee Wright accepted my first novel, and my murder short stories from 1942, when Ellery Queen bought the first Nick Noble puzzle. But the story here printed was written in January of 1936, when I still thought that I was going to be a playwright.
Exeunt Murderers Page 19