A Kiss Before Dying

by Ira Levin

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well that was it. Only they beat me to it.’ She breathed a drawn-out ‘Oh’ of commiseration. ‘If that isn’t a shame … You didn’t talk to anyone about it, did you?’

  ‘No. They just beat me to it.’

  ‘Well,’ she said with a sigh, ‘things like that happen. It certainly is a shame though. An idea like that—’

  When he had finished talking to her, he went into his room and stretched out on the bed, feeling good all over. Leo and his suspicions, nuts to him! Everything was going to be perfect. Jesus, that was one thing he was going to do – see that she got some of the money.

  TEN

  The train, having passed through Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven, and New London, continued grinding eastward along the southern border of Connecticut, passing between flat snow on the left and flat water on the right; a segmented serpent from whose body trapped people vapidly gazed. Inside, aisles and vestibules were clogged with the Christmas Day overflow.

  In one of the vestibules, facing a dirt-stained window, Gordon Gant occupied himself by counting codfish-cake bill-boards. It was, he reflected, a hell of a way to spend Christmas Day.

  Shortly after six o’clock the train reached Providence.

  In the station, Gant addressed several questions to the bored oracle of the information booth. Then, regarding his watch, he left the building. It was already dark outside. Crossing a wide and slushy thoroughfare, he entered an establishment which called itself a ‘spa’, where he made quick work of a steak sandwich, mincemeat pie, and coffee. Christmas dinner. He left the spa and went to a drugstore two doors away, where he purchased an inch-wide roll of Scotch Tape. He returned to the station. He sat on an uncomfortable bench and read a Boston tabloid. At ten minutes to seven he left the station again, proceeding to a nearby place where three buses stood waiting. He boarded a blue and yellow one marked Menasset – Somerset – Fall River.

  At twenty minutes past seven the bus paused midway down Menasset’s four-block Main Street, discharging several passengers, Gant among them. After a brief acclimatizing glance, he entered a 1910-looking pharmacy where he consulted a thin directory, from which he copied an address and a telephone number. He tried the number in the phone booth and, when the phone on the other end of the line had rung ten times without answer, hung up.

  The house was a shabby grey box, one storey, the sills of its darkened windows furred with snow. Gant looked at it closely as he passed. It was set back only a few yards from the sidewalk; the snow between door and sidewalk was undisturbed.

  He walked to the end of the deserted block, turned and came back, passing the grey house again, this time paying more attention to the houses on either side of it. In one, framed in the window’s home-made Christmas wreath, a Spanish-looking family was dining in an atmosphere of magazine-cover warmth. In the house on the other side of the grey one, a solitary man was holding a globe of the world in his lap, spinning it in its frame and then stopping it with his finger and looking to see which country his finger had chosen. Gant passed, walked to the other end of the block, turned, and came back. This time, as he passed the grey house, he turned sharply, cutting between it and the Spanish-family house. He went around to the back.

  There was a small porch. Facing it, across a little yard laced with stiff clothes-lines, was a high board fence. Gant went up on the porch. There were a door and a window, a garbage can and a basket of clothes-pins. He tried the door; it was locked. The window was locked also. Propped on the sill within was an ice company sign, a square placard with 5, 10, 25, and X printed around the four sides. The X side was uppermost. Gant took the roll of Scotch tape from his pocket. Tearing off a ten-inch length, he pressed it across one of the window’s dozen panes, the one below the central latch. He fitted the ends of the tape over the pane’s moulding and tore off another ten-inch strip.

  In a few minutes he had cross-hatched the rectangular pane with cellophane strips. He struck it with his gloved fist. There was a cracking sound; the broken glass sagged, held in place by the tape. Gant began to pull the tape ends from the moulding. When that was done he drew the rectangle of cellophane and broken glass from the window and lowered it noiselessly to the bottom of the garbage can. Reaching through the window, he unfastened the latch and raised the lower section. The ice placard fell back into the darkness.

  He took a pencil flashlight from his pocket and leaned through the open window. There was a chair piled with folded newspapers before it. He pushed the chair aside and climbed in, closing the window after him.

  The flashlight’s disc of pallid light glided swiftly over a cramped and shabby kitchen. Gant moved forward, treading softly on worn-through linoleum.

  He came to a living room. The chairs were fat and velvet, rubbed bald at the arms. Cream-coloured shades were drawn down over the windows, flanked by floral-patterned paper drapes. There were pictures of Bud all over; Bud as a child in short pants, Bud at high school graduation, Bud in a private’s uniform, Bud in a dark suit, smiling. Snapshots were tucked in the frames of the portraits, surrounding the large smiling faces with smaller faces also smiling.

  Gant went through the living room to a hallway. The first room off the hallway was a bedroom; a bottle of lotion on the dresser, an empty dress box and tissue paper on the bed, a wedding picture, and a picture of Bud on the night table. The second room was the bathroom; the flashlight caught decals of swans on moisture-faded walls.

  The third room was Bud’s. It might have been a room in a second-class hotel; apart from the high-school diploma over the bed, it was barren of anything suggesting the occupant’s individuality. Gant went in.

  He inspected the titles of some books on a shelf; they were mainly college texts and a few classic novels. No diaries, no engagement books. He sat behind the desk and went through the drawers one at a time. There were stationery and blank scratch pads, back issues of Life and the New Yorker, term papers from college, road maps of New England. No letters, no calendars with appointments written in, no address books with names crossed out. He rose from the desk and went to the dresser. Half the drawers were empty. The other contained summer shirts and swimming trunks, a couple of pairs of argyle socks, underwear, tarnished cufflinks, celluloid collar stays, bow ties with broken clips. No papers lost in corners, no forgotten pictures.

  Perfunctorily he opened the closet. On the floor in the corner there was a small grey strongbox.

  He took it out and put it on the desk. It was locked. He lifted and shook it. Its contents shifted, sounding like packets of paper. He put the box down again and picked at its lock with the blade of a small knife he carried on his key-chain. Then he took it into the kitchen. He found a screwdriver in one of the drawers and tried that. Finally he wrapped the box in newspaper, hoping that it didn’t contain Mrs Corliss’s life’s savings.

  He opened the window, took the ice placard from the floor, and climbed out on to the porch. When he had closed and locked the window, he tore the placard to size and fitted it in the open pane, blank side out. With the strongbox under his arm, he moved quietly between the houses to the sidewalk.

  ELEVEN

  Leo Kingship returned to his apartment at ten o’clock on Wednesday night, having worked late in order to compensate for some of the lost hours Christmas had entailed. ‘Is Marion in?’ he asked the butler, giving him his coat.

  ‘Out with Mr Corliss. She said she’d be in early though. There’s a Mr Dettweiler waiting in the living room.’

  ‘Dettweiler?’

  ‘He said Miss Richardson sent him about the securities. He has a little strongbox with him.’

  ‘Dettweiler?’ Kingship frowned.

  He went into the living room.

  Gordon Gant rose from a comfortable chair adjacent to the fireplace. ‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly.

  Kingship looked at him for a moment. ‘Didn’t Miss Richardson make it clear this afternoon that I don’t want—’ His hands fisted at his sides. ‘Get out of here
,’ he said. ‘If Marion comes in—’

  ‘Exhibit A,’ Gant pronounced, raising a pamphlet in each hand, ‘in the case against Bud Corliss.’

  ‘I don’t want to—’ The sentence hung unfinished. Apprehensively, Kingship came forward. He took the pamphlets from Gant’s hands. ‘Our publications—’

  ‘In the possession of Bud Corliss,’ Gant said. ‘Kept in a strongbox which until last night resided in a closet in Menasset, Massachusetts.’ He gave a light kick to the strongbox on the floor beside him. The open lid was bent out of shape. There were four oblong Manilla envelopes inside. ‘I stole it,’ Gant said.

  ‘Stole it?’

  He smiled. ‘Fight fire with fire. I don’t know where he’s staying in New York, so I decided to sally forth to Menasset.’

  ‘You crazy—’ Kingship sat heavily on a couch that faced the fireplace. He stared at the pamphlets. ‘Oh God,’ he said.

  Gant resumed his seat next to the couch. ‘Observe the condition of Exhibit A, if you will. Frayed around the edges, soiled by many fingermarks, centre pages worked loose from the staples. I would say he had them for quite some time. I would say he drooled over them considerably.’

  ‘That – that son of a bitch—’ Kingship spoke the phrase distinctly, as though not accustomed to using it.

  Gant prodded the strongbox with his toe. ‘The History of Bud Corliss, a drama in four envelopes,’ he said. ‘Envelope one: newspaper clippings of the high school hero; class president, chairman of the prom committee, most likely to succeed and so on and so forth. Envelope two: honourable discharge from the army, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, several interesting though obscene photographs and a pawn ticket which I have discovered may be exchanged for a wristwatch if you have a couple of hundred dollars you don’t need. Envelope three: college days; transcripts from Stoddard and Caldwell. Envelope four: two well-read brochures describing the magnitude of Kingship Copper Incorporated, and this’ – he drew a folded sheet of blue-lined yellow paper from his pocket and passed it to Kingship – ‘which I can’t make head or tail of.’

  Kingship unfolded the paper. He read halfway down it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It must have some bearing on this,’ Gant said. ‘It was in with the pamphlets.’

  Kingship shook his head and handed the paper back to Gant, who returned it to his pocket. Kingship’s gaze dropped to the pamphlets. The grip of his hands crackled the thick paper. ‘How am I going to tell Marion?’ he said. ‘She loves him.’ He looked at Gant dismally. Then slowly his face smoothed out. He glanced at the pamphlets and back at Gant, his eyes narrowing. ‘How do I know these were in the strongbox? How do I know that you didn’t put them there yourself?’

  Gant’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, for—’

  Kingship went around the end of the couch and across the room. There was a telephone on a carved table. He dialled a number.

  ‘Come on now,’ Gant chided.

  In the silence of the room the buzzing and the clicks of the phone were audible. ‘Hello? Miss Richardson? This is Mr Kingship. I’d like to ask a favour of you. A big favour, I’m afraid. And absolutely confidential.’ An unintelligible twittering emanated from the phone. ‘Would you please go down to the office – yes, now. I wouldn’t ask you, only it’s terribly important, and I—’ There was more twittering. ‘Go to the public relations department,’ Kingship said. ‘Go through the files and see whether we’ve ever sent any promotional publications to – Bud Corliss.’

  ‘Burton Corliss,’ Gant said.

  ‘Or Burton Corliss. Yes, that’s right – Mr Corliss. I’m at my home, Miss Richardson. Call me as soon as you find out. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miss Richardson. I appreciate this—’ He hung up.

  Gant shook his head wryly. ‘We’re really grasping at straws, aren’t we.’

  ‘I have to be sure,’ Kingship said. ‘You have to be sure of your evidence in a thing like this.’ He came back across the room and stood behind the couch.

  ‘You’re sure already, and you know damn well you are,’ Gant said.

  Kingship braced his hands on the couch, looking down at the pamphlets in the hollow of the cushion where he had been sitting.

  ‘You know damn well you are,’ Gant repeated.

  After a moment Kingship’s breath sighed out tiredly. He came around the couch, picked up the pamphlets, and sat down. ‘How am I supposed to tell Marion?’ he asked. He rubbed his knee. ‘That son of a bitch – that God-damned son of a bitch—’

  Gant leaned towards him, his elbows on his knees. ‘Mr Kingship, I was right about this much. Will you admit I might be right all the way?’

  ‘What “all the way”?’

  ‘About Dorothy and Ellen.’ Kingship drew an irritated breath. Gant spoke quickly: ‘He didn’t tell Marion he went to Stoddard. He must have been mixed up with Dorothy. He must be the one who got her pregnant. He killed her, and Powell and Ellen somehow found out it was him and he had to kill them too.’

  ‘The note—’

  ‘He could have tricked her into writing it! It’s been done before – there was a case in the papers just last month about a guy who did it, and for the same reason; the girl was pregnant.’

  Kingship shook his head. ‘I’d believe it of him,’ he said. ‘After what he’s done to Marion, I’d believe anything of him. But there’s a flaw in your theory, a big flaw.’

  ‘What?’ Gant demanded.

  ‘He’s after the money, isn’t he?’ Gant nodded. ‘And you “know” Dorothy was murdered because she was wearing something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue?’ Gant nodded again. ‘Well,’ Kingship said, ‘if he were the one who’d got her into trouble, and if she were ready to marry him that day, then why would he have killed her? He would have gone ahead and married her, wouldn’t he? He would have married her and got in on the money.’

  Gant looked at him wordlessly.

  ‘You were right about this,’ Kingship said, lifting the pamphlets, ‘but you’re wrong about Dorothy. All wrong.’

  After a moment Gant rose. He turned and paced up to the window. He looked through it dully, gnawing his lower lip. ‘I may jump,’ he announced.

  When the door chimes toned, Gant turned from the window. Kingship had risen and was standing before the fireplace, gazing at the birch logs neatly pyramided there. He turned reluctantly, holding the rolled pamphlets at his side, his face averted from Gant’s watching eyes.

  They heard the front door open, and then voices: ‘… come in for a while?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Marion. We’ll have to get up early tomorrow.’ There was a long silence. ‘I’ll be in front of my place at seven-thirty.’

  ‘You’d better wear a dark suit. A smelter must be a filthy place.’ Another silence. ‘Goodnight, Bud.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  The door closed.

  Kingship wound the pamphlets into a tighter cylinder. ‘Marion,’ he called, but it came out too low. ‘Marion,’ he called again, louder.

  ‘Coming,’ her voice answered cheerfully.

  The two men waited, suddenly conscious of a clock’s ticking.

  She appeared in the wide doorway, perking up the collar of her crisp white full-sleeved blouse. Her cheeks were luminous from the cold outside. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘We had a—’

  She saw Gant. Her hand froze, dropped.

  ‘Marion, we—’

  She whirled and was gone.

  ‘Marion!’ Kingship hurried to the doorway and into the foyer. ‘Marion!’ She was halfway up the curving white staircase, her legs driving furiously. ‘Marion!’ he shouted grimly, commanding.

  She stopped, facing rigidly up the stairs, one hand on the banister. ‘Well?’

  ‘Come down here,’ he said. ‘I have to speak to you. This is extremely important.’ A moment passed. ‘Come down here,’ he said.

  ‘All right.’ She turned and descended the stairs with rega
l coldness. ‘You can speak to me. Before I go upstairs and pack and get out of here.’

  Kingship returned to the living room. Gant was standing uncomfortably in the middle of the room, his hand on the back of the couch. Kingship, shaking his head dolefully, went to his side.

  She came into the room. Their eyes followed her as, without looking at them, she came up to the chair across from the one in which Gant had sat, at the end of the couch nearer the door. She sat down. She crossed her legs carefully, smoothing the red wool of her skirt. She put her hands on the arms of the chair. She looked up at them, standing behind the couch to her left. ‘Well?’ she said.

  Kingship shifted uneasily, withering under her gaze. ‘Mr Gant went to – Yesterday he—’

  ‘Yes?’

  Kingship turned to Gant helplessly.

  Gant said: ‘Yesterday afternoon, absolutely without your father’s knowledge, I went to Menasset. I broke into your fiancé’s home—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘—and I took from it a strongbox I found in the closet in his room—’

  She pressed back into the chair, her knuckles gripping white, her mouth clamped to a lipless line, her eyes shut.

  ‘I brought it home and jimmied the cover—’

  Her eyes shot open, flashing. ‘What did you find? The plans of the atom bomb?’

  They were silent.

  ‘What did you find?’ she repeated, her voice lowering, growing wary.

  Kingship moved down to the end of the couch and handed her the pamphlets, awkwardly unrolling them.

  She took them slowly and looked at them.

  ‘They’re old,’ Gant said. ‘He’s had them for some time.’

  Kingship said, ‘He hasn’t been back to Menasset since you started going with him. He had them before he met you.’

  She smoothed the pamphlets carefully in her lap. Some of the corners were folded over. She bent them straight. ‘Ellen must have given them to him.’

  ‘Ellen never had any of our publications, Marion. You know that. She was as little interested as you are.’