A Kiss Before Dying

by Ira Levin

  The car pulled up before a low brick building, at the door of which waited a lean, white-haired, unctuously smiling man in a dark suit.

  He forgot what he was eating, that’s how interested he was in lunch. He pulled his eyes from the window across the room, the window through which could be seen the buildings wherein heaps of grey-brown dirt were purified to gleaming copper, and looked down at his plate. Creamed chicken. He started eating more quickly, hoping the others would follow suit.

  The carefully dressed white-haired man had turned out to be a Mr Otto, the manager of the smelter. Leo having introduced him, Mr Otto had led them into a conference room and begun apologizing for things. He apologized smilingly for the tablecloth that left bare one end of the long table – ‘We’re not in the New York office, you know’ – and he apologized suavely for cool food and warm wine – ‘I’m afraid we lack the facilities of our big city brethren.’ Mr Otto longed transparently for the New York office. Over the soup he spoke of the copper shortage and disparaged the suggestions of the National Production Authority for its mitigation. Occasionally he referred to copper as ‘the red metal’.

  ‘Mr Corliss.’ He looked up. Dettweiler was smiling at him across the table. ‘You’d better be careful,’ Dettweiler said. ‘I found a bone in mine.’

  Bud glanced at his nearly empty plate and smiled back at Dettweiler. ‘I’m anxious to see the smelter,’ he said.

  ‘Aren’t we all,’ Dettweiler remarked, still smiling.

  ‘You found a bone in yours?’ Mr Otto inquired. ‘That woman! I told her to take care. These people can’t even cut up a chicken properly.’

  Now that they had at long last left the brick building and were crossing the asphalt yard to the buildings of the smelter itself, he walked slowly. The others, coatless, hurried ahead, but he drifted behind, savouring the climactic sweetness of the moment. He watched an ore-laden train disappear behind a steel wall at the left of the buildings. At the right, a train was being loaded; cranes swung copper into the cars; great square slabs like solidified flame that must have weighed five or six hundred pounds each. A heart! he thought, gazing up at the monstrous brown form that filled more and more of the sky – a giant heart of American industry, drawing in bad blood, pumping out good! Standing so close to it, about to enter it, it was impossible not to share the surging of its power!

  The others had vanished into a doorway at the base of the towering steel mass. Now Mr Otto smiled within the doorway, beckoning.

  He moved forward less slowly, like a lover going to a long-awaited tryst. Success rewarded! Promise fulfilled! There should be a fanfare! he thought. There should be a fanfare!

  A whistle screamed.

  Thank you. Muchas gracias.

  He went into the darkness of the doorway. The door closed after him.

  The whistle screamed again, piercingly, like a bird in a jungle.

  THIRTEEN

  He stood on a chain-railed catwalk staring fascinatedly at an army of huge cylindrical furnaces ranked before him in diminishing perspective like an ordered forest of giant redwood trucks. At their bases men moved methodically, regulating incomprehensible controls. The air was hot and sulphurous.

  ‘There are six hearths, one above the other, in each furnace,’ Mr Otto lectured. ‘The ore is introduced at the top. It’s moved steadily downward from hearth to hearth by rotating arms attached to a central shaft. The roasting removes excess sulphur from the ore.’

  He listened intently, nodding. He turned to the others to express his awe, but only Marion stood on his right, wooden-faced as she had been all day. Leo and that Dettweiler were gone. ‘Where’d your father and Dettweiler go?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. Dad said he wanted to show him something.’

  ‘Oh.’ He turned back to the furnaces. What would Leo want to show Dettweiler? Well … ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Furnaces?’ Mr Otto dabbed perspiration from his upper lip with a folded handkerchief. ‘Fifty-four.’

  Fifty-four! Jesus! ‘How much ore goes through them in a day?’ he asked.

  It was wonderful! He’d never been so interested in anything in his whole life! He asked a thousand questions and Mr Otto, visibly reacting to his fascination, answered them in detail, speaking only to him, while Marion trailed unseeingly behind.

  In another building there were more furnaces; brick-walled, flat, and over a hundred feet long. ‘The reverberatory furnaces,’ Mr Otto said. ‘The ore that comes from the roasting furnaces is about ten per cent copper. Here it’s melted down. The lighter minerals flow off as slag. What’s left is iron and copper – we call it “matte” – forty per cent copper.’

  ‘What do you use for fuel?’

  ‘Pulverized coal. The waste heat is used to generate steam for making power.’

  He shook his head, whistling between his teeth.

  Mr Otto smiled. ‘Impressed?’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Bud said. ‘Wonderful.’ He gazed down the endless stretch of furnaces. ‘It makes you realize what a great country this is.’

  ‘This,’ Mr Otto said, pushing his voice over a roaring tide of sound, ‘is probably the most spectacular part of the entire smelting process.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘The converters,’ Mr Otto said loudly.

  The building was a vast steel shell, percussant with the sustained thunder of machines and men. A greenish haze obscured its far reaches, swimming around shafts of yellow-green sunlight that pillared down through crane tracks and catwalks from windows in the peaked roof dim and high above.

  At the near end of the building, on either side, lay six massive dark cylindroid vessels, end to end, like giant steel barrels on their sides, dwarfing the workmen on railed platforms between them. Each vessel had an opening in its uppermost surface. Flames burst forth from these mouths; yellow, orange, red, blue; roaring up into funnel-like hoods overhead that swallowed and bore them away.

  One of the converters was turned forward on the cogged rollers that supported it, so that its round mouth, scabrous with coagulated metal, was at the side; liquid fire rushed from the radiant throat, pouring down into an immense crucible on the floor. The molten flow, heavy and smoking, filled the steel container. The converter rolled back groaningly, its mouth dripping. The yoke of the crucible lifted, caught by a great blunt hook from whose block a dozen cables rose in unwavering ascension, rose higher than the converters, higher than the central spine of catwalk, up to the underbelly of a grimy cab that hung from a single-railed track below the dimness of the roof. The cables contracted; the crucible lifted in slow, weightless levitation. It rose until it was higher than the converters, some twenty-five feet above the ground, and then cab, cables, and crucible began to draw away, retreating towards the cupreous haze at the northern end of the building.

  The centre of it all! The heart of the heart! With rapt eyes Bud followed the heat-shimmering column of air over the departing crucible.

  ‘Slag,’ Mr Otto said. They stood on an island of railed platform against the south wall, a few feet above the floor and mid-way between the two banks of converters. Mr Otto touched his handkerchief to his forehead. ‘The molten matte from the reverberatory furnaces is poured into these converters. Silica is added, and then compressed air is blown in through pipes at the back. The impurities are oxidized; slag forms and is poured off, as you just saw. More matte is added, more slag forms, and so on. The copper keeps getting richer and richer until, after about five hours, it’s ninety-nine per cent pure. Then it’s poured out in the same way as the slag.’

  ‘Will they be pouring copper soon?’

  Mr Otto nodded. ‘The converters are operated on a stagger system, so that there’s a continuous output.’

  ‘I’d like to see them pour the copper,’ Bud said. He watched one of the converters on the right pouring off slag. ‘Why are the flames different colours?’ he asked.

  ‘The colour changes as the process advances. That’s how the operators tel
l what’s going on inside.’

  Behind them a door closed. Bud turned. Leo was standing beside Marion. Dettweiler leaned against a ladder that climbed the wall beside the door. ‘Are you enjoying the tour?’ Leo asked over the thunder.

  ‘It’s wonderful, Leo! Overpowering!’

  ‘They’re going to pour copper over there,’ Mr Otto said loudly.

  Before one of the converters on the left, a crane had lowered a steel vat, larger than the crucible into which the slag had been poured. Its steep sides were a three-inch thickness of dull grey metal, as high as a man. Its rim was seven feet across.

  The mammoth cylinder of the converter began to turn, rumbling, rolling forward in its place. A wraith of blue flame flickered over its clotted mouth. It turned further; a volcanic radiance blasted from its interior, veils of white smoke arose, and then a flood of racing incandescence came bursting out. It spilled forward and fell gleamingly into the giant bowl. The steady molten flow seemed motionless, a solid, shining shaft between the converter and the depths of the vat. The converter turned further; new ribs twisted fluidly down the shaft, and again it was motionless. Within the vat the surface of the liquid appeared, slowly rising, clouded by whorls of smoke. The bitter smell of copper singed the air. The steaming shaft thinned, twisting, as the converter began rolling back. The thin stream petered out, its last few drops rolling over the swell of the cylinder and sparkling to the cement floor.

  The smoke above the vat dissolved in vaporous wisps. The surface of the molten copper, a few inches below the vessel’s rim, was an oblique disc of glistening oceanic green.

  ‘It’s green,’ Bud said, surprised.

  ‘When it cools it regains its usual colour,’ Mr Otto said.

  Bud stared at the restless pool. Blisters formed, swelled, and popped glutinously on its surface. ‘What’s the matter, Marion?’ he heard Leo ask. The heated air above the vat trembled as though sheets of cellophane were being shaken.

  ‘Matter?’ Marion said.

  Leo said, ‘You look pale.’

  Bud turned around. Marion seemed no paler than usual. ‘I’m all right,’ she was saying.

  ‘But you’re pale,’ Leo insisted, and Dettweiler nodded agreement.

  ‘It must be the heat or something,’ Marion said.

  ‘The fumes,’ Leo said. ‘Some people can’t stand the fumes. Mr Otto, why don’t you take my daughter back to the administration building. We’ll be along in a few minutes.’

  ‘Honestly, Dad,’ she said tiredly, ‘I feel—’

  ‘No nonsense,’ Leo smiled stiffly. ‘We’ll be with you in a few minutes.’

  ‘But—’ She hesitated a moment, looking annoyed, and then shrugged and turned to the door. Dettweiler opened it for her.

  Mr Otto followed after Marion. He paused in the doorway and turned back to Leo. ‘I hope you’re going to show Mr Corliss how we mould the anodes.’ He turned to Bud. ‘Very impressive,’ he said, and went out. Dettweiler closed the door.

  ‘Anodes?’ Bud said.

  ‘The slabs they were loading on the train outside,’ Leo said. Bud noticed an odd mechanical quality in his voice, as though he were thinking of something else. ‘They’re shipped to the refinery in New Jersey. Electrolytic refining.’

  ‘My God,’ Bud said, ‘it’s some involved process.’ He turned back to the converters on the left. The vat of copper, its angular handle hooked by the crane overhead, was about to be raised. The dozen cables tensed, vibrating, and then rigidified sharply. The vat listed from the floor.

  Behind him Leo said, ‘Did Mr Otto take you up on the catwalk?’

  ‘No,’ Bud said.

  ‘You get a much better view,’ Leo said. ‘Would you like to go up?’

  Bud turned. ‘Do we have the time?’

  ‘Yes,’ Leo said.

  Dettweiler, his back against the ladder, stepped aside. ‘After you,’ he smiled.

  Bud went to the ladder. He grasped one of the metal rungs and looked upwards. The rungs, like oversize staples, ran narrowingly up the brown wall. They focused at a trap in the floor of the catwalk, which projected perpendicularly from the wall some fifty feet above.

  ‘Bottleneck,’ Dettweiler murmured beside him.

  He began to climb. The rungs were warm, their upper surfaces polished smooth. He climbed in a steady rhythm, keeping his eyes on the descending wall before him. He heard Dettweiler and Leo following after him. He tried to visualize the sight the catwalk would offer. To look down on the scene of industrial power…

  He climbed the ladder up through the trap and stepped off on to the ridged metal floor of the catwalk. The thunder of the machines was diminished up here, but the air was hotter and the smell of copper stronger. The narrow runway, railed by heavy chain between iron stanchions, extended in a straight line down the spine of the building. It ended halfway down the building’s length, where it was cut off by a broad strip of steel partition wall that hung from the roof to floor, some twelve feet wider than the catwalk. Overhead, on either side, crane tracks paralleled the runway. They passed clear of the partition that ended the catwalk and continued into the northern half of the building.

  He peered over the left side of the catwalk, his hands folded over the top of one of the waist-high stanchions. He looked down upon the six converters, the men scurrying between them …

  His eyes shifted. To his right, twenty feet below and ten feet out from the catwalk, hung the vat of copper, a steel-rimmed pool of green on its slow procession towards the far end of the building. Ghosts of smoke rose from the liquid sheen of its surface.

  He followed it, walking slowly, his left hand tracing over the dipping curves of the chain railing. He stayed far enough behind the vat so that he could just feel the fringe of its radiant heat. He heard Leo and Dettweiler following. His eyes climbed the vat’s cables, six and six on either side of the block, up to the cab a dozen feet above him. He could see the shoulder of the operator inside. His eyes dropped back to the copper. How much is in there? How many tons? What was it worth? One thousand? Two thousand? Three? Four? Five? …

  He was nearing the steel partition, and now he saw that the catwalk didn’t end there after all; instead it branched six feet to right and left, following the partition to its edges like the head of a long-stemmed T. The vat of copper vanished beyond the partition. He turned on to the left wing of the T. A three-foot chain swung across the catwalk’s end. He put his left hand on the corner stanchion and his right on the edge of the partition, which was quite warm. He leaned forward a bit and peered around the partition at the receding vat. ‘Where does it go now?’ he called out.

  Behind him Leo said, ‘Refining furnaces. Then it’s poured into moulds.’

  He turned around. Leo and Dettweiler faced him shoulder to shoulder, blocking the stem of the T. Their faces were oddly inflexible. He patted the partition on his left. ‘What’s behind here?’ he asked.

  ‘The refining furnaces,’ Leo said. ‘Any more questions?’ He shook his head, puzzled by the grimness of the two men.

  ‘Then I’ve got one for you,’ Leo said. His eyes were like blue marbles behind his glasses. ‘How did you get Dorothy to write that suicide note?’

  FOURTEEN

  Everything fell away; the catwalk, the smelter, the whole world; everything melted away like sandcastles sucked into the sea, leaving him suspended in emptiness with two blue marbles staring at him and the sound of Leo’s question swelling and reverberating like being inside an iron bell.

  Then Leo and Dettweiler confronted him again; the smelter’s rumble welled up; the plates of the partition materialized slippery against his left hand, the knob of the stanchion damp under his right, the floor of the catwalk – but the floor didn’t come back completely; it swayed anchorless and undulant beneath his feet, because his knees – Oh God! – were jelly, trembling and shaking. ‘What’re you—’ he started to say, but nothing came out. He swallowed air. ‘What’re you – talking about—’

  ‘Dorot
hy,’ Dettweiler told him. Slowly he said, ‘You wanted to marry her. For the money. But then she was pregnant. You knew you wouldn’t get the money. You killed her.’

  He shook his head in confused protest. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No! She committed suicide! She sent a note to Ellen! You know that, Leo!’

  ‘You tricked her into writing it,’ Leo said.

  ‘How – Leo, how could I do that? How the hell could I do that?’

  ‘That’s what you’re going to tell us,’ Dettweiler said.

  ‘I hardly knew her!’

  ‘You didn’t know her at all,’ Leo said. ‘That’s what you told Marion.’

  ‘That’s right! I didn’t know her at all!’

  ‘You just said you hardly knew her.’

  ‘I didn’t know her at all!’

  Leo’s fists clenched. ‘You sent for our publications in February nineteen hundred and fifty!’

  Bud stared, his hand bracing tightly against the partition. ‘What publications?’ It was a whisper; he had to say it again: ‘What publications?’

  Dettweiler said, ‘The pamphlets I found in the strongbox in your room in Menasset.’

  The catwalk dipped crazily. The strongbox! Oh, Jesus Christ! The pamphlets and what else? The clippings? He’d thrown them out, thank God! The pamphlets – and the list on Marion! Oh, Jesus! ‘Who are you?’ he exploded. ‘Where the hell do you come off breaking into a person’s—’

  ‘Stay back!’ Dettweiler warned.

  Withdrawing the single step he had advanced, Bud gripped the stanchion again. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.