by Ira Levin
‘Isn’t that the craziest thing?’ she said. ‘I hear he’s practically blind without his glasses.’ She lapsed into silence.
Each bottle had a white label with black lettering. A few bore an additional label that glared poisonin red. He scanned the rows of bottles quickly, his mind registering only the red-labelled ones. The list was in his pocket, but the names he had written on it shimmered in the air before him as though printed on a gauze screen.
He found one. The bottle was a bit above eye level not two feet from where he stood. White Arsenic – As4O6s – POISON. It was half filled with white powder. His hand moved towards it, stopped.
He turned slowly until he could see the girl from the corner of his eye. She was pouring some yellow powder from the tray of a balance into a glass cup. He turned back to the wall and opened his manual on the counter. He looked at meaningless pages of diagrams and instructions.
At last the girl’s movements took on sounds of finality; the balance being put away, a drawer closing. He leaned more closely over the manual, following the lines of print with a careful finger. Her footsteps moved to the door. ‘So long,’ she said.
‘So long.’
The door opened and closed. He looked around. He was alone.
He took his handkerchief and the envelopes from his pocket. With the handkerchief draped over his right hand, he lifted the arsenic bottle from the shelf, put it on the counter, and removed the stopper. The powder was like flour. He poured about a tablespoonful into the envelope; it fell in whispering puffs. He folded the envelope into a tight pack, folded that into a second envelope and pocketed it. After he had stoppered and replaced the bottle he moved slowly around the room, reading the labels on drawers and boxes, the third envelope held open in his hand.
He found what he wanted within several minutes: a box filled with empty gelatine capsules, glittering like oval bubbles. He took six of them, to be on the safe side. He put them in the third envelope and slipped it gently into his pocket, so as not to crush the capsules. Then, when everything appeared as he had found it, he took the manual from the counter, turned out the lights, and left the room.
After retrieving his books and his jacket, he left the campus again. He felt wonderfully secure; he had devised a course of action and had executed its initial steps with speed and precision. Of course it was still only a tentative plan and he was in no way committed to carry it through to its goal. He would see how the next steps worked out. The police would never believe that Dorrie had taken a lethal dose of arsenic by accident. It would have to look like suicide, like obvious, indisputable suicide. There would have to be a note or something equally convincing. Because if they ever suspected that it wasn’t suicide and started an investigation, the girl who had let him into the supply room would always be able to identify him.
He walked slowly, conscious of the fragile capsules in the lefthand pocket of his trousers.
* * *
He met Dorothy at eight o’clock. They went to the Uptown, where the Joan Fontaine picture was still playing.
The night before, Dorothy had been anxious to go; her world had been as grey as the pills he had given her. But tonight – tonight everything was radiant. The promise of immediate marriage had swirled away her problems the way a fresh wind swirls away dead leaves; not only the looming problem of her pregnancy, but all the problems she had ever had; the loneliness, the insecurity. The only hint of grey remaining was the inevitable day when her father, having already been appalled by a hasty unquestioning marriage, would learn the truth about its cause. But even that seemed of trifling importance tonight. She had always hated his unyielding morality and had defied it only in secrecy and guilt. Now she would be able to display her defiance openly, from the security of a husband’s arms. Her father would make an ugly scene of it, but in her heart she looked forward to it a little.
She envisioned a warm and happy life in the trailer camp, still warmer and happier when the baby came. She was impatient with the motion picture, which distracted her from a reality more beautiful than any movie could ever be.
He, on the other hand, had not wanted to see the picture on the previous night. He was not fond of movies, and he especially disliked pictures that were founded on exaggerated emotions. Tonight, however, in comfort and darkness, with his arm about Dorothy and his hand resting lightly on the upper slope of her breast, he relished the first moments of relaxation he had known since Sunday night, when she had told him she was pregnant.
He surrendered all his attention to the picture, as though answers to eternal mysteries were hidden in the windings of its plot. He enjoyed it immensely.
* * *
Afterwards he went home and made up the capsules.
He funnelled the white powder from a folded sheet of paper into the tiny gelatine cups, and then fitted the slightly larger cups that were the other halves of the capsules over them. It took him almost an hour, since he ruined two capsules, one squashed and the other softened by the moisture of his fingers, before he was able to complete two good ones.
When he was finished, he took the damaged capsules and the remaining capsules and powder into the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. He did the same with the paper from which he had poured the arsenic and the envelopes in which he had carried it, first tearing them into small pieces. Then he put the two arsenic capsules into a fresh envelope and hid them in the bottom drawer of his bureau, under the pyjamas and the Kingship Copper pamphlets, the sight of which brought a wry smile to his face.
One of the books he had read that afternoon had listed the lethal dose of arsenic as varying from one-tenth to one-half of a gram. By rough computation, he estimated that the two capsules contained a total of five grams.
SIX
He followed his regular routine on Wednesday, attending all his classes, but he was no more a part of the life and activity that surrounded him than is the diver in his diving bell a part of the alien world in which he is submerged. All of his energies were turned inward, focused on the problem of beguiling Dorothy into writing a suicide note or, if that could not be contrived, finding some other way to make her death seem self-induced. While in this state of laboured concentration he unconsciously dropped the pretence of being undecided as to whether or not he would actually go through with his plans: he was going to kill her; he had the poison and he already knew how he was going to administer it; there was only this one problem left, and he was determined to solve it. At times during the day, when a loud voice or the chalk’s screech made him momentarily aware of his surroundings, he looked at his classmates with mild surprise. Seeing their brows contracted over a stanza in Browning or a sentence in Kant, he felt as though he had suddenly come upon a group of adults playing hop-scotch.
A Spanish class was his last of the day, and the latter half of it was devoted to a short unannounced examination. Because it was his poorest subject, he forced himself to lower the focus of his concentration to the translating of a page of the florid Spanish novel which the class was studying.
Whether the stimulus was the actual work he was doing or the comparative relaxation which the work offered after a day of more rigorous thinking, he could not say. But in the midst of his writing the idea came to him. It rose up fully formed, a perfect plan, unlikely to fail and unlikely to arouse Dorothy’s suspicion. The contemplation of it so occupied his mind that when the period ended he had completed only half the assigned page. The inevitable failing mark in the quiz troubled him very little. By ten o’clock the following morning Dorothy would have written her suicide note.
That evening, his landlady having gone to an Eastern Star meeting, he brought Dorothy back to his room. During the two hours they spent there, he was as warm and tender as she had ever wished him to be. In many ways he liked her a great deal, and he was conscious of the fact that this was to be her last such experience.
Dorothy, noticing his new gentleness and devotion, attributed it to the nearness of their wedding. She was not a r
eligious girl, but she deeply believed that the state of wedlock carried with it something of holiness.
Afterwards they went to a small restaurant near the campus. It was a quiet place and not popular with the students; the elderly proprietor, despite the pains he took to decorate his windows with blue and white crêpe paper and Stoddard pennants, was irascible with the noisy and somewhat destructive university crowd.
Seated in one of the blue-painted wall booths, they had cheeseburgers and chocolate malteds, while Dorothy chattered on about a new type of bookcase that opened out into a full-size dining table. He nodded unenthusiastically, waiting for a pause in the monologue.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, ‘do you still have that picture I gave you? The one of me.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well let me have it back for a couple of days. I want to have a copy made to send to my mother. It’s cheaper than getting another print from the studio.’
She took a green wallet from the pocket of the coat folded on the seat beside her. ‘Have you told your mother about us?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Why not?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Well, as long as you can’t tell your family until after, I thought I wouldn’t tell my mother. Keep it our secret.’ He smiled. ‘You haven’t told anyone, have you?’
‘No,’ she said. She was holding a few snapshots she had taken from the wallet. He looked at the top one from across the table. It was of Dorothy and two other girls – her sisters, he supposed. Seeing his glance, she passed the picture to him. ‘The middle one is Ellen, and Marion’s on the end.’
The three girls were standing in front of a car, a Cadillac, he noticed. The sun was behind them, their faces shadowed but he could still discern a resemblance among them. All had the same wide eyes and prominent cheekbones. Ellen’s hair seemed to be of a shade midway between Dorothy’s light and Marion’s dark. ‘Who’s the prettiest?’ he asked. ‘After you, I mean.’
‘Ellen,’ Dorothy said. ‘And before me. Marion could be very pretty too, only she wears her hair like this.’ She pulled her hair back severely and frowned. ‘She’s the intellectual. Remember?’
‘Oh. The Proust fiend.’
She handed him the next snapshot, which was of her father. ‘Grrrr,’ he growled, and they both laughed. Then she said, ‘And this is my fiancé,’ and passed him his own picture.
He looked at it speculatively, seeing the symmetry of the clear planes. ‘I don’t know,’ he drawled, rubbing his chin. ‘Looks kind of dissolute to me.’
‘But so handsome,’ she said. ‘So very handsome.’ He smiled and pocketed the picture with a satisfied air. ‘Don’t lose it,’ she warned seriously.
‘I won’t.’ He looked around, his eyes bright. On the wall next to them was a selector for the jukebox at the rear of the restaurant. ‘Music,’ he announced, producing a nickel and dropping it into the slot. He traced a finger up and down the twin rows of red buttons as he read the names of the songs. He paused at the button opposite ‘Some Enchanted Evening’, which was one of Dorothy’s favourites, but then his eyes caught ‘On Top of Old Smoky’ further down the row, and he thought a moment and chose that instead. He pushed the button. The jukebox bloomed into life, casting a pink radiance on Dorothy’s face.
She leaned at her wristwatch, then leaned back, eyes closed rapturously. ‘Oh gee, just think,’ she murmured, smiling. ‘Next week no rushing back to the dorm!’ Introductory guitar chords sounded from the jukebox. ‘Shouldn’t we put in an application for one of the trailers?’
‘I was down there this afternoon,’ he said. ‘It may take a couple of weeks. We can stay at my place. I’ll speak to my landlady.’ He took a paper napkin and began tearing careful bits from its folded edges.
A girl’s voice sang:
On top of old Smoky,
All covered with snow,
I lost my true loved one,
For courtin’ too slow …
‘Folk songs,’ Dorothy said, lighting a cigarette. The flame glinted on the copper-stamped match-book.
‘The trouble with you,’ he said, ‘is you’re a victim of your aristocratic upbringing.’
Now courtin’s a pleasure,
But partin’s a grief,
And a false-hearted lover
Is worse than a thief …
‘Did you take the blood test?’
‘Yes. I did that this afternoon too.’
‘Don’t I have to take one?’
‘No.’
‘I looked in the Almanac. It said “blood test required” for Iowa. Wouldn’t that mean for both?’
‘I asked. You don’t have to.’ His fingers picked precisely at the napkin.
A thief he will rob you
And take what you have,
But a false-hearted lover
Will lead you to the grave …
‘It’s getting late—’
‘Just let’s stay to the end of the record, okay? I like it.’ He opened the napkin; the torn places multiplied symmetrically and the paper became a web of intricate lace. He spread his handiwork on the table admiringly.
The grave will decay you,
And turn you to dust.
Not one man in a hundred
A poor girl can trust …
‘See what we women have to put up with?’
‘A pity. A real pity. My heart bleeds.’
Back in his room, he held the photograph over an ashtray and touched a lighted match to its lowest corner. It was a print of the year-book photo and a good picture of him; he hated to burn it, but he had written ‘To Dorrie, with all my love’ across the bottom of it.
SEVEN
As usual she was late for the nine o’clock class. Sitting at the back of the room, he watched the rows of seats fill up with students. It was raining outside and ribbons of water sluiced down the wall of windows. The seat on his left was still empty when the lecturer mounted the platform and began talking about the city manager form of government.
He had everything in readiness. His pen poised over the notebook opened before him and the Spanish novel, La Casa de las Flores Negras, was balanced on his knee. A sudden heart-stopping thought hit him; what if she picked today to cut? Tomorrow was Friday, the deadline. This was the only chance he would have to get the note, and he had to have it by tonight. What would he do if she cut?
At ten past nine, though, she appeared; out of breath, her books in one arm, her raincoat over the other, a smile for him lighting her face the moment she eased through the door. Tiptoeing across the room behind him, she draped the raincoat over the back of her chair and sat down. The smile was still there as she sorted her books, keeping a notebook and a small assignment pad before her and putting the remaining books in the aisle between their seats.
Then she saw the book that he held open on his knee, and her eyebrows lifted questioningly. He closed the book, keeping his finger between the pages, and tilted it towards her so that she could see the title. Then he opened it again and with his pen ruefully indicated the two exposed pages and his notebook, meaning that that was how much translation he had to do. Dorothy shook her head condolingly. He pointed to the lecturer and to her notebook – she should take notes and he would copy them later. She nodded.
After he had worked for a quarter of an hour, carefully following the words of the novel, slowly writing in his notebook, he glanced cautiously at Dorothy and saw that she was intent on her own work. He tore a piece of paper about two inches square from the corner of one of the notebook’s pages. One side of it he covered with doodling; words written and crossed out, spirals and zigzagging lines. He turned that side downward. With a finger stabbing the print of the novel, he began shaking his head and tapping his foot in impatient perplexity.
Dorothy noticed. Inquiringly, she turned to him. He looked at her and expelled a troubled sigh. Then he lifted his finger in a gesture that asked her to wait a moment before returning her attention to the lecturer. He
began to write, squeezing words on to the small piece of paper, words that he was apparently copying from the novel. When he was through, he passed the paper to her.
Traducción, por favour, he had headed it. Translation, please:
Querido,
Espero que me perdonares por la infelicidad que causaré. No hay ninguna otra cosa que puedo hacer.
She gave him a mildly puzzled glance, because the sentences were quite simple. His face was expressionless, waiting. She picked up her pen and turned the paper over, but the back of it was covered with doodling. So she tore a page from her assignment pad and wrote on that.
She handed him the translation. He read it and nodded. ‘Muchas gracias,’ he whispered. He hunched forward and wrote in his notebook. Dorothy crumpled the paper on which he had written the Spanish and dropped it to the floor. From the corner of his eye he saw it land. There was another bit of paper near it, and some cigarette butts. At the end of the day they would all be swept together and burned.
He looked at the paper again, at Dorothy’s small slanted handwriting:
Darling
I hope you will forgive me for the unhappiness that I will cause. There is nothing else that I can do.
He tucked the paper carefully into the pocket on the inner cover of the notebook, and closed it. He closed the novel and placed it on top of the notebook. Dorothy turned, looked at the books and then at him. Her questioning glance asked if he were finished.
He nodded and smiled.
They were not to see each other that evening. Dorothy wanted to wash and set her hair and pack a small valise for their weekend honeymoon at the New Washington House. But at8.30 the phone on her desk rang. ‘Listen, Dorrie. Something’s come up. Something import ant.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve got to see you right away.’
‘But I can’t. I can’t come out. I just washed my hair.’