A Kiss Before Dying

by Ira Levin

  She listened with the muzzle of his gun jabbing painfully into her hip; painfully only at first, then numbingly, as though that part of her were already dead, as though death came from the gun not in a swift bullet but in slow radiation from the point of contact. She listened and then she cried, because she was so sickened and beaten and shocked that there was nothing else she could do to express it all. Her cries were long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.

  And then she sat staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap.

  ‘I told you not to come,’ he said querulously. ‘I begged you to stay in Caldwell, didn’t I?’ He glanced at her as though expecting an affirmation. ‘But no. No, you had to be the girl detective! Well this is what happens to girl detectives.’ His eyes returned to the highway. ‘If you only knew what I’ve gone through since Monday,’ he clenched, remembering how the world had dropped out from under him Monday morning when Ellen had phoned – ‘Dorothy didn’t commit suicide! I’m leaving for Blue River!’ – running down to the station, barely catching her, futilely desperately trying to keep her from leaving but she stepped on to the train – ‘I’ll write you this minute! I’ll explain the whole thing!’ – leaving him standing there, watching her glide away, sweating, terrified. It made him sick just thinking about it.

  Ellen said something faintly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ll catch you—’

  After a moment’s silence he said, ‘You know how many don’t get caught? More than fifty per cent, that’s how many. Maybe a lot more.’ After another moment he said, ‘How are they going to catch me? Fingerprints? – none. Witnesses? – none. Motive? – none that they know about. They won’t even think of me. The gun? I have to go over the Mississippi to get back to Caldwell; goodbye gun. This car? – two or three in the morning I leave it a couple of blocks from where I took it; they think it was some crazy high school kids. Juvenile delinquents.’ He smiled. ‘I did it last night too. I was sitting two rows behind you and Powell in the theatre and I was right around a bend in the hall when he kissed you goodnight.’ He glanced at her to see her reaction; none was visible. His gaze returned to the road and his face clouded again. ‘That letter of yours – how I sweated till it came! When I first started to read it I thought I was safe; you were looking for someone she’d met in her English class in the fall; I didn’t meet her till January, and it was in Philosophy. But then I realized who that guy you were looking for actually was – Old Argyle-Socks, my predecessor. We’d had Math together, and he’d seen me with Dorrie. I thought he might know my name. I knew that if he ever convinced you he didn’t have anything to do with Dorrie’s murder – if he ever mentioned my name to you—’

  Suddenly he jammed down on the brake pedal and the car screeched to a halt. Reaching left-handed around the steering column, he shifted gears. When he stepped on the gas again, the car rolled slowly backwards. On their right the dark form of a house slid into view, low-crouching behind a broad expanse of empty parking lot. The headlights of the retreating car caught a large upright sign at the highway’s edge: Lillie and Doane’s – The Steak Supreme. A smaller sign hung swaying from the gallows of the larger one: Reopening April 15th.

  He shifted back into first, spun the wheel to the right, and stepped on the gas. He drove across the parking lot and pulled up at the side of the low building, leaving the motor running. He pressed the horn ring; a loud blast banged through the night. He waited a minute, then sounded the horn again. Nothing happened. No window was raised, no light went on. ‘Looks like nobody’s home,’ he said, turning off the headlights.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘please—’

  In the darkness the car rolled forward, turned to the left, moved behind the house where the asphalt of the parking lot flowed into a smaller paved area. The car swung around in a wide curve, almost going off the edge of the asphalt into the dirt of a field that swept off to meet the blackness of the sky. It swung all the way around until it was facing the direction from which it had come.

  He set the emergency brake and left the motor running. ‘Please—’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘You think I want to do this? You think I like the idea? We were almost engaged!’ He opened the door on his left. ‘You had to be smart—’ He stepped out on to the asphalt, keeping the gun aimed at her huddled figure. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Come out on this side.’

  ‘Please—’

  ‘Well what am I supposed to do, Ellen? I can’t let you go, can I? I asked you to go back to Caldwell without saying anything, didn’t I?’ The gun made an irritated gesture. ‘Come out.’

  She pulled herself across the seat, clutching her purse. She stepped out on to the asphalt.

  The gun directed her in a semicircular path until she stood with the field at her back, the gun between her and the car.

  ‘Please,’ she said, holding up the purse in a futile shielding gesture, ‘please—’

  FOURTEEN

  From the Blue River Clarion-Ledger; Thursday, 15 March 1951:

  DOUBLE SLAYING HERE

  POLICE SEEK MYSTERY GUNMAN

  Within a period of two hours last night, an unknown gunman committed two brutal murders. His victims were Ellen Kingship, twenty-one, of New York City, and Dwight Powell, twenty-three, of Chicago, a junior at Stoddard University …

  Powell’s slaying occurred at 10 p.m., in the home of Mrs Elizabeth Honig, 1520 West Thirty-fifth Street, where Powell was a roomer. As police reconstruct the events, Powell, entering the house at 9.50 in the company of Miss Kingship, went to his second-floor room where he encountered an armed burglar who had earlier broken into the house through the back door …

  … the medical examiner established the time of Miss Kingship’s death as somewhere near midnight. Her body, however, was not discovered until 7.20 this morning, when Willard Herne, eleven, of nearby Randalia, crossed through a field adjacent to the restaurant … Police learned from Gordon Gant, KBRI announcer and a friend of Miss Kingship, that she was the sister of Dorothy Kingship who last April committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the Blue River Municipal Building …

  Leo Kingship, president of Kingship Copper Inc, and father of the slain girl, is expected to arrive in Blue River this afternoon, accompanied by his daughter, Marion Kingship.

  An Editorial from the Clarion-Ledger; Thursday, April 19th, 1951:

  DISMISSAL OF GORDON GANT

  In dismissing Gordon Gant from their employ (story on page five) the management of KBRI points out that ‘despite frequent warnings, he has persisted in using (KBRI’S) microphones to harass and malign the Police Department in a manner bordering on the slanderous’. The matter involved was the month-old Kingship–Powell slayings, in which Mr Gant has taken a personal and somewhat acrimonious interest. His public criticism of the police was, to say the least, indiscreet, but considering that no progress has been made towards reaching a solution of the case, we find ourselves forced to agree with the appropriateness of his remarks, if not with their propriety.

  FIFTEEN

  At the end of the school year he returned to Menasset and sat around the house in sombre depression. His mother tried to combat his sullenness and then began to reflect it. They argued, like hot coals boosting each other into flame. To get out of the house and out of himself, he reclaimed his old job at the haberdashery shop. From nine to five-thirty he stood behind a glass display counter not looking at the binding-strips of gleaming burnished copper.

  One day in July he took the small grey strongbox from his closet. Unlocking it on his desk, he took out the newspaper clippings about Dorothy’s murder. He tore them into small pieces and dropped them into the waste-basket. He did the same with the clippings on Ellen and Powell. Then he took out the Kingship Copper pamphlets; he had written away for them a second time when he started to go with Ellen. As his hands gripped them, ready to tear, he smiled ruefully. Dorothy, Ellen …

  It was like thinkin
g ‘Faith, Hope …’

  ‘Charity’ pops into the mind to fulfil the sequence.

  Dorothy, Ellen – Marion.

  He smiled at himself and gripped the pamphlets again.

  But he found that he couldn’t tear them. Slowly he put them down on the desk, mechanically smoothing the creases his hands had made.

  He pushed the strongbox and the pamphlets to the back of the desk and sat down. He headed a sheet of paper Marion and divided it into two columns with a vertical line. He headed one column Pro; the other Con.

  There were so many things to list under Pro: months of conversations with Dorothy, months of conversations with Ellen; all studded with passing references to Marion; her likes, her dislikes, her opinions, her past. He knew her like a book without even having met her; lonely, bitter, living alone … A perfect set-up.

  Emotion was on the Pro side too. Another chance. Hit a home run and the two strikes that preceded it are washed away. And three was the lucky number – third time lucky – all the childhood fairy tales with the third try and the third wish and the third suitor …

  He couldn’t think of a thing to list under Con.

  That night he tore up the Pro and Con list and began another one, of Marion Kingship’s characteristics, opinions, likes, and dislikes. He made several notations and, in the weeks that followed, added regularly to the list. In every spare moment he pushed his mind back to conversations with Dorothy and Ellen; conversations in luncheonettes, between classes, while walking, while dancing; dredging words, phrases, and sentences up from the pool of his memory. Sometimes he spent entire evenings flat on his back, remembering, a small part of his mind probing the larger, less conscious part like a Geiger counter that clicked on Marion.

  As the list grew, his spirits swelled. Sometimes he would take the paper from the strongbox even when he had nothing to add – just to admire it; the keenness, the planning, the potence displayed. It was almost as good as having the clippings on Dorothy and Ellen.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he told himself aloud one day, looking at the list. ‘You’re a crazy nut,’ he said affectionately. He didn’t really think that; he thought he was daring, audacious, brilliant, intrepid, and bold.

  ‘I’m not going back to school,’ he told his mother one day in August.

  ‘What?’ She stood small and thin in the doorway of his room, one hand frozen in mid-passage over her straggly grey hair.

  ‘I’m going to New York in a few weeks.’

  ‘You got to finish school,’ she said plaintively. He was silent. ‘What is it, you got a job in New York?’

  ‘I don’t but I’m going to get one. I’ve got an idea I want to work on. A – a project, sort of.’

  ‘But you got to finish school, Bud,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘I don’t “got to” do anything!’ he snapped. There was silence. ‘If this idea flops, which I don’t think it will, I can always finish school next year.’

  Her hands wiped the front of her housedress nervously. ‘Bud, you’re past twenty-five. You got to – have to finish school and get yourself started some place. You can’t keep—’

  ‘Look, will you just let me live my own life?’

  She stared at him. ‘That’s what your father used to give me,’ she said quietly, and went away.

  He stood by his desk for a few moments, hearing the angry clanking of cutlery in the kitchen sink. He picked up a magazine and looked at it, pretending he didn’t care.

  A few minutes later he went into the kitchen. His mother was at the sink, her back towards him. ‘Mom,’ he said pleadingly, ‘you know I’m as anxious as you are to see myself get some place.’ She didn’t turn around. ‘You know I wouldn’t quit school if this idea wasn’t something important.’ He went over and sat down at the table, facing her back. ‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll finish school next year. I promise I will, Mom.’

  Reluctantly, she turned. ‘What kind of idea is it?’ she asked slowly. ‘An invention?’

  ‘No. I can’t tell you,’ he said regretfully. ‘It’s only in the – the planning stage. I’m sorry—’

  She sighed and wiped her hands on a towel. ‘Can’t it wait till next year? When you’d be through with school?’

  ‘Next year might be too late, Mom.’

  She put down the towel. ‘Well I wish you could tell me what it is.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mom. I wish I could too. But it’s one of those things that you just can’t explain.’

  She went around behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders. She stood there for a moment, looking down at his anxiously upturned face. ‘Well,’ she said, pressing his shoulders, ‘I guess it must be a good idea.’

  He smiled up at her happily.

  PART THREE

  MARION

  ONE

  When Marion Kingship was graduated from college (Columbia University, an institution demanding long hours of earnest study; unlike that Midwestern Twentieth Century-Fox playground that Ellen was entering) her father off-handedly mentioned the fact to the head of the advertising agency which handled the Kingship Copper account, and Marion was offered a job as a copy writer. Although she wanted very much to write advertising copy, she refused the offer. Eventually she managed to find a position with a small agency where Kingship was a name stamped on the washroom plumbing and where Marion was assured that in the not-too-distant future she would be permitted to submit copy for some of the smaller accounts, provided that the writing of the copy did not interfere with her secretarial duties.

  A year later, when Dorothy inevitably followed Ellen’s lead and went off to football cheers and campus kisses, Marion found herself alone in an eight-room apartment with her father, the two of them like charged metal pellets that drift and pass but never touch. She decided, against her father’s obvious though unvoiced disapproval, to find a place of her own.

  She rented a two-room apartment on the top floor of a converted brownstone house in the East Fifties. She furnished it with a great deal of care. Because the two rooms were smaller than those she had occupied in her father’s home, she could not take all her possessions with her. Those that she did take, therefore, were the fruit of a thoughtful selection. She told herself she was choosing the things she liked best, the things that meant the most to her, which was true; but as she hung each picture and placed each book upon the shelf, she saw it not only through her own eyes but also through the eyes of a visitor who would some day come to her apartment, a visitor as yet unidentified except as to his sex. Every article was invested with significance, an index to her self; the furniture and the lamps and the ashtrays (modern but not modernistic), the reproduction of her favourite painting (Charles Demuth’s My Egypt; not quite realistic; its planes accentuated and enriched by the eye of the artist), the records (some of the jazz and some of the Stravinsky and Bartók, but mostly the melodic listen-in-the-dark themes of Grieg and Brahms and Rachmaninoff), and the books – especially – the books, for what better index of the personality is there? (The novels and plays, the non-fiction and verse, all chosen in proportion and representation of her tastes.) It was like the concentrated abbreviation of a Help Wanted ad. The egocentricity which motivated it was not that of the spoiled, but of the too little spoiled; the lonely. Had she been an artist she would have painted a self-portrait; instead she decorated two rooms, changing them with objects which some visitor, some day, would recognize and understand. And through that understanding he would divine all the capacities and longings she had found in herself and was unable to communicate.

  The map of her week was centred about two landmarks; on Wednesday evenings she had dinner with her father, and on Saturdays she thorough-cleaned her two rooms. The first was a labour of duty; the second, of love. She waxed wood and polished glass, and dusted and replaced objects with sacramental care.

  There were visitors. Dorothy and Ellen came when they were home on vacation, unconvincingly envying Marion as a woman of the world. Her father came, puffing from the three fl
ights of stairs, looking dubiously at the small living-bedroom and smaller kitchen and shaking his head. Some girls from the office came, playing Canasta as though life and honour were at stake. And a man came once; the bright young junior account executive; very nice, very intelligent. His interest in the apartment manifested itself in sidelong glances at the studio couch.

  When Dorothy committed suicide, Marion returned to her father’s apartment for two weeks, and when Ellen died, she stayed with him for a month. They could no more get close to each other than could charged metal pellets, no matter how they tried. At the end of the month, he suggested with a diffidence unusual in him that she move back permanently. She couldn’t; the thought of relinquishing her own apartment was unimaginable, as though she had locked too much of herself into it. After that, though, she had dinner at her father’s three evenings a week instead of only one.

  On Saturdays she cleaned the rooms, and once each month she opened all the books to prevent their bindings from growing stiff.

  One Saturday morning in September, the telephone rang. Marion, on her knees in the act of polishing the underside of a plate-glass coffee table, froze at the sound of the bell. She gazed down through the blue-toned glass at the flattened dustcloth, hoping that it was a mistake, that someone had dialled the wrong number, had realized it at the last moment and hung up. The phone rang again. Reluctantly she rose to her feet and went over to the table beside the studio couch, still holding the dustcloth in her hand.

  ‘Hello,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Hello.’ It was a man’s voice, unfamiliar. ‘Is this Marion Kingship?’