Thirty Hours with a Corpse

by Maurice Level

  “For that hand, aside from the characteristics that would be sufficient for any expert to know it from all other right hands, has a marking that calls attention when you see it. A scar, running from the end of the ring-finger to the base of that line which palmistry terms ‘life-line.’ A scar which must be so plain that it cannot be unnoticed. So, God forbid, if one of us were the murderer and chanced to draw off his gloves, there would be every chance in the world for you, gentlemen, for me, to identify that hand immediately and ask for the man’s arrest at the next station.”

  “Oh!” the young woman gasped.

  The two men stared at their gloved hands instinctively.

  “And,” the younger man spoke, “that photograph is to appear in the morning papers?”

  “We’ll see it when we arrive?” the old gentleman wondered.

  “No,” I explained, “the print was given to the press only tonight, and the Paris papers won’t reach us until tomorrow.”

  My information appeared to have disturbed the young woman. She spoke after a moment of hesitation, yielding to curiosity:

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Nothing easier than that,” I assured her. “I have a print in my briefcase. Here it is.”

  She took it.

  Her husband looked over her shoulder. The old gentleman, after murmuring: “Will you permit me?” crossed the compartment and sat at her side for a closer glance. All three stared at the print intently. Such attention tensed their faces that I might have believed they were staring at the real hand. But as the light was not too strong, I leaned over to indicate the details.

  “See that white streak? Isn’t it clear? That’s the scar, see? And over here—”

  “Growing stuffy in here,” the young man said. “Mind if I open the window?”

  He slid the pane of glass into its groove in the door panel, and cool air rushed in. The old man wiped his forehead and said: “Oh, how good that feels!”

  I was about to go on with my explanation, but at this moment the locomotive shrilled piercingly and a formidable uproar started. I spoke loudly, for the tumult increased and covered my voice: “We are entering the tunnel. I shall resume when we’re out of it—can’t hear anything now—”

  The old gentleman sank back on the seat. The young woman kept her eyes on the photograph. The husband leaned against the side of the car, and I saw his lips move, guessed the words: “It’s stuffy.”

  And he leaned out of the window, as if to place his face in the rush of air. It seemed to me then that I heard an odd sound, something like a muffled cry or a moan, with another, slighter, indescribable noise, a crunching, squishing sound. My companions must have heard it also, through that thunderous din, for all three lifted their heads questioningly. Then, as it was not repeated, we looked at the print again. For a minute, the train crashed on in the tunnel, then the sounds lessened, the air felt lighter, and the steam which had whirled into our compartment through the open window drifted and dissolved. We were rolling under the open sky again.

  But as I was about to resume my explanation, I suddenly noticed that the young man, braced in his corner near the window, one arm hanging outside, had grown dreadfully pale. He swept us, his wife, with an insane stare.

  “You feel faint, Monsieur?” I risked.

  He lurched, and I scarcely had time to catch him as he fell face forward. It was then that I noticied at the end of his right arm something bloody, broken, shapeless, a mass of flesh and smashed bones dripping blood.

  “Oh! The poor fellow!” the old gentleman cried out. “He slipped and struck the wall of the tunnel. His hand’s gone!”

  The young wife rose.

  Already, ripping the sleeve of the wounded man, I was applying a tourniquet improvised with my handkerchief to stop the spurting blood. He opened his eyes, his bewildered eyes, and his glance swept down his arm to his horrible wound. Then he looked wildly at the motionless girl. She dropped back on the seat, and with chattering teeth she clutched him against her breast without speaking a word.

  Suddenly, the old man’s sentence echoed in my ears: His hand is gone. And I looked down at the photograph fallen to the floor of the car. The wounded man followed my eyes with his own. And I remembered that I had said: he will be discovered unless he strikes off his hand at the wrist.

  The suspicion, then the certainty, entered my consciousness almost together. But before those pleading eyes in the tortured face, I had neither the will, nor perhaps the wish, to speak. And we waited for daylight without exchanging another word.

  As it was still dark when the train reached Vallorbe, the wounded man was not taken off the train until we arrived at Lausanne. I never heard of him again.

  But I know that the murderer of Pergolese Street was never found.

  Thirty Hours with a Corpse

  DAY HAD come at last. The two men looked at each other and although they did not move or speak, each read in the eyes of his companion relief—followed quickly by fear. With the growing light a murmur of voices came up from the newly awakened street. They waited tensely almost as if they expected some unknown accuser to burst open the door, rush in, and seize them.

  An interruption such as that, or death, even, at the hands of an infuriated mob would have been welcome, anything that would somehow, some way, break the continuity of horror that had held them for hours speechless and motionless beside the dead body of a woman lying face downward on the floor.

  But life was resuming its activities casually enough in the streets, sounds of opening shutters, the shrill cry of a vegetable vendor. It was this last sound that seemed to arouse the younger of the two men, Armand Barthe. Barthe’s eyes held a staring fixity of expression, but his lips trembled now. He hesitated for a moment, looked toward the window, then with a quick, convulsive movement picked up his overcoat and put on his hat.

  “Where are you going?” Guiret asked sharply, before he had reached the door.

  “Out—out—come with me—”

  “You must be crazy. It won’t be long before the concierge will be up to do our rooms. He would find it and the police would be on our tracks before we could get out of Paris—”

  “But—but we are lost, we are lost—”

  “No!” Guiret denied vigorously, even though he could not, at the moment, see any way to escape the consequences of the crime.

  Barthe usually deferred to his roommate on important questions. He appeared to gain a momentary composure, to feel almost reassured. He did not speak because he felt that Guiret had not yet made definite plans. Guiret was thinking, he knew that, and while he waited to hear the results of that thinking, he put his palms over his eyes, pressing them on the eyeballs, but even then he seemed to see the body.

  “Armand—” Guiret said, so abruptly that Barthe started violently, as if awakened from sleep.

  “What is it?”

  “Get your big trunk—it’s empty, isn’t it?”

  “Yes—” Barthe replied, but made no move to go.

  Guiret got up impatiently, went into Barthe’s bedroom, and came out dragging the high, round-topped trunk after him. The sweat was running from his temples, for the trunk was heavy even though it was empty. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, then unfastened the straps and lifted the cover.

  “Yes, it will do,” he said. “Help me—”

  “Help you?” Barthe questioned stupidly.

  “Yes, yes!” Guiret cried out, suddenly tense, unnerved for a moment through the contagion of his friend’s terror.

  “I—I can’t—”

  “But we must!” Guiret insisted. “We must cram it inside some way. It’s our only chance. There is a train for Switzerland in two hours, another one later if we miss that. We’ll buy three tickets, two for us to Lausanne, the third to check the trunk somewhere else. We’ll be far away when the customs inspector tries to open it. We’ll cross Germany, go as far as Hamburg. There we will get a boat for somewhere.”

  “But if w
e are suspected?”

  “Why should we—two tourists—who would bother us? Come on, now—you take the head.”

  For a few moments there was no sound in the room save their labored breathing.

  “Wait—wait!” Barthe cried out nervously.

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “The head has fallen back—”

  “Hold it up, then. Now—now press down. There, you see, it was quite simple—”

  Barthe drew his hands back from the head that he had supported almost tenderly, a strange gentleness that grew out of his horrified remorse. He stepped back and, when he heard the snapping of the lock into place, he grasped the table for support. Guiret buckled the straps, then straightened up briskly.

  “Call the concierge,” he said. Then he noticed that Barthe held his hat in his hand, his overcoat over his arm. “Never mind,” he said hastily, “I’ll tell him.” He opened the door, stepped into the hall, and called down the stairs: “Monsieur Legros—Monsieur Legros!”

  The loud voice of the concierge responded: “What is it?”

  “Will you give us a hand to take down a trunk?”

  “I’ll be right up.”

  Guiret came back into the room, closed the door, and hurriedly took his wallet from his coat pocket. “Take some money,” he said: “One never can tell. We might get separated.”

  Barthe accepted the notes without counting them and put them in his pocket mechanically.

  The heavy step of the concierge was heard on the stairs and Guiret swung the door wide.

  “Good morning, Messieurs,” Legros said, under his habitual cordiality a note of surprise and disapproval: “Are you leaving?”

  “For a little vacation only, to the south of France.”

  Legros smiled cautiously: “You’re lucky. I wish I were in your shoes. I’d like to take a vacation.”

  “That will come, my man, that will come,” Guiret said absentmindedly.

  “Not at my age. I’m lucky to have a job when times are so hard—” He sighed regretfully and meaningly, thinking of the tip. “So this is the trunk—” He grasped one of the handles, lifted the trunk from the floor, and then allowed it to fall back again with a thud: “It weighs something, all right!”

  Barthe became if possible more pallid, and Guiret felt called upon to explain: “Our study books are in there, and books are heavy.”

  “That’s right,” Legros agreed amiably.

  “It’s not too heavy for you, is it?” Guiret asked anxiously.

  “No, oh, no—” the concierge protested. “I am over sixty, but there are few men who can lift more than I. Give me a hand. As soon as I have it on my back I can go it alone. Take hold, will you, Monsieur Barthe?”

  Barthe came forward weakly, but Guiret pushed him aside. “I’ll do it. Come on, let’s go, Monsieur Legros.”

  But Legros straightened up, no longer offering his broad back.

  “You know I would like to help you, Monsieur Guiret, but I have remembered—I cannot take the trunk down.”

  “Why not?” both Guiret and Barthe asked as if with the same breath.

  “You owe three months rent, that’s why. Oh, I understand how it is with students. One has money from home to pay and it goes for amusements. That’s not a crime with young men like you. But the proprietor is very strict on these matters. Last month when you sold that mahogany chest of drawers he pulled me up about it, said that nothing was to go out of here until you had paid your back bill.”

  “But we are leaving the rest of our things here, the rug, the curtains, the pictures.”

  “I know all that, but—just the same I cannot take the trunk down.”

  “But we’re going to pay the rent before we leave.”

  “Oh, that’s different! Why didn’t you say so?” He stooped over as if to take the trunk, then straightened up again, his hands on his back.

  “It can’t be much more than two thousand francs—” Guiret said lightly, taking out his wallet.

  “That I do not know,” Legros replied, somewhat indifferently. “I’ll give you three thousand and you can keep the change for yourself.”

  “Oh, no, I could not do that, Monsieur.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know as well as I that the bill must be made out by the proprietor.”

  “Very well, very well!” Guiret said impatiently. “Ask him to make it out, then.”

  “But he is not in Paris.”

  “Not in Paris?”

  “He will not be back until day after tomorrow. You should have let me know before. This is not like a hotel by the day where the proprietor always sits in the office. The rents are by the month, you know that, and you are three months—”

  “But we want to leave right away—”

  The concierge shrugged then smiled again genially as a solution offered itself: “Why don’t you go, then, take your small baggage and leave the trunk behind? I will send you the bill, you can send the money, and then I will forward the trunk.”

  “Yes, and how many days will that take?” Guiret muttered after a moment, without glancing at Barthe. “We will be a week without our books. No, you must telegraph the proprietor at once to send the bill. How long will it take for it to get around?”

  “Twenty-four hours, or a day and a half at most.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do,” Guiret agreed, in a tone that he tried to make nonchalant.

  The concierge cocked his ear and listened. “I am wanted below,” he said, and went out.

  As soon as the door closed Barthe gave way to a spasm of trembling. “We are lost,” he whispered.

  “Don’t be stupid. We are delayed, that is all. We cannot help it. Tell me how we can help it?”

  “We cannot,” Barthe agreed, without abandoning his hopeless manner.

  “Then what is there to do but wait calmly?” Guiret asked with irritation. “We both run the same risk. If I can be calm, why can’t you?”

  “If I could get out for a little fresh air—I’ll go down, take a few turns, it doesn’t matter where—”

  “No?” Guiret questioned sarcastically. “I suppose it doesn’t matter where you go to behave like a fool and attract attention to yourself ?”

  “Then come down with me. It would do you good, too, to get some air.”

  “I’m all right. What’s wrong with me? Someone must stay here.”

  “But it’s locked.”

  “There’s blood here.”

  “Where!” Barthe exclaimed, as if startled all over again.

  “Don’t talk so loud. Here—on the rug. I’ve covered it with the big chair. But if Legros started to clean—”

  “Yes. You’re right. But I—”

  He watched Guiret as he crossed to the door, turned the key in the lock, and then put it in his pocket.

  ***

  The interminable hours must be passing. It could not be that Time stood still. By an unhappy coincidence the clock on the mantel had stopped, and neither Guiret nor Barthe had had their own watches for months. They heard the hour of midday strike. Fatigue immobilized them, but fear and hunger kept them awake. They did not realize that they were hungry, and their physical exhaustion was so great that there was no place for remorse.

  Guiret would get up now and then, go into his bedroom, and wash his hands. He did this when Barthe stared at the trunk, Barthe who thought at one time that he saw the cover move. Guiret would stay in the bedroom until he believed that Barthe was not looking at the trunk, and then to justify his brisk return he would say:

  “Did you speak, Armand?”

  The first time, Barthe leaped to his feet and cried out nervously: “I didn’t speak, no, I didn’t say anything—no!”

  After that he did not respond to the question. Somehow it seemed to mark an indefinite passage of time.

  Suddenly Guiret burst out unexpectedly in a thin voice: “Will the day never end?”

  Immediately he regretted his words, for Barthe passed i
nto a sort of muffled hysteria. He threw himself downward on the divan, rolling his head among the pillows.

  “Legros must have heard by now,” Guiret said cheerfully, trying to calm him. “Surely he will show up any moment now. Don’t let him find you like this.”

  Barthe did not seem to hear. He remained face downward among the silken pillows, his shoulders lifting and falling with spasmodic shivers.

  A little later Guiret spoke again: “It will be dark soon.” And again he regretted his words and resolved to remain silent. Barthe repeated the words with new terror: “Yes, you are right, it will be dark soon.”

  The day seemed eternal. At last the shadows descended the length of the windows and gathered in the corners of the room. One by one the chairs became blurred, the trunk, however, in the middle of the room remaining visible, illuminated by a beam of light that seemed to come from nowhere. Guiret got up and went to the window and located the light from an apartment house window. He sighed and sat down again.

  For a while the darkness brought peace to both of them, for it blotted out the trunk. Barthe tried to forget that it was there and succeeded until the obscurity suddenly became peopled with ghosts. He got up jerkily and fumbled about for the cord that lighted the reading lamp.

  They faced each other again. The day was over, yes, but the night as many hours long was before them. Barthe stretched himself on the divan, turning toward the wall. His breathing became regular in sleep, then he lurched up with a choking gasp, awakened by the beginning of a nightmare that started with the events of the day before unrolling in memory toward that time when he had bent over her where she lay on the rug, and saw that she was dead.

  At daylight Barthe got up, raised the shades, turned out the light, took his place again on the divan, face to the wall, and seemed to be soundly asleep.

  “Now that he’s quiet, I can sleep,” thought Guiret, and lifted his feet on a stool, his head in the comfortable curved back of the armchair. In the beginning of that torpor where the will held but fragile control, he recalled vividly the events of the night before, events that he dare not think of in his waking moments for fear that once started on the path of memory he would find himself unable to stop when he reached the first premises of that terrible climax, the result of which was now securely locked and strapped in Barthe’s large trunk.