Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  “Why did you assume this file would be in the building at all?”

  “The news reports had said police suspected a link between Michael Rossiter’s murder and Guy’s. That meant it had to be one of only a handful of people and all of them would be at Galleries Portáge. Someone couldn’t carry a file that size back with them into the mall without being noticed. Either that or Guy had hidden it to protect himself. That’s why I assumed it was here, at the paper.”

  She had thought her pounding heart would burst from her chest. She had not talked to Alcock. The newscast she had heard had made no such claims. Only a whim had suggested the file might still be at the Citizen, not ash in a fireplace. But he seemed to have believed her.

  “You weren’t at the mall opening, were you?” he had asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She’d hesitated.

  “Why not?!”

  “I checked into a hotel. I just needed to be away from my husband for a while.”

  “I see.” He had paused and then said in a suspicious tone: “There’ve been news reports on all day.”

  Believing herself caught in the lie, she had held her breath in dreaded anticipation. But Mellish continued in a different vein: “Then why did you just come here now, in the evening? Have you discussed this with anyone else? Have you talked to the police?”

  Now, forcibly pushed in a vault in the sub-basement, a starkly lit narrow chamber with a ceiling just low enough to contort her neck, she wondered if she had given the best answer. She had tried to remember from novels and movies and news features what one was best advised to do in a situation such as hers. Play for time, she had thought. If she had told him the truth, that Leo knew, that soon—she prayed—someone would notice her unattended purse and her long absence and alert the police, then he might panic. His laboured breathing, his strained voice, had told her he was not as calm as he tried to appear. So she had lied, had told him she had stayed in bed all day and had heard no newscast until the supper hour. This had apparently satisfied him. But now, with her only hope lying in someone finding her absence from the newsroom significant and beginning a search, she thought: would they think to come this far? All the way to the building’s dungeon?

  When Mellish had forced her from the landing down the back stairs her still-hopeful mind had raced over the possibilities for flight. But there had been always the knife point to keep her disciplined. “You can scream all you want,” he had said. But, of course, screaming would have done nothing. Except for the fourth floor, the building was virtually empty and the stairwell was a sink into which all sound poured and none released. There had been a moment in the backroom of the first floor. The door had jerked back on a faulty pneumatic hinge as she stepped through and for the briefest span she was out of Mellish’s reach. With an animal’s urgency, she had darted toward the door that led into the front lobby, but Mellish had been quicker, grasping her shoulder painfully, digging his fingers into her flesh while his other hand pressed the tip of the knife against her back. The swiftness and strength in a man of his girth had surprised her and it had been then that she had begun to lose hope.

  On the way down the basement stairs, as he peeled off his leather jacket, she had asked him the obvious questions: Why is this file important? What does it have to do with you? But he had only grunted and refused to reply. She had tried to bargain with him then. Let me go, take the file, and we’ll forget all about this. But it had been a pointless and desperate act on her part, born of the fright, and he had remained curiously silent. There had been only his rough breathing, the echo of their footfalls, and then, as they reached the second of the two basements, something new, the distinctly rank and sweet odour of sweat, of the sort that accompanies sudden terror, cutting through air already redolent with its own peculiar pungency. Now it seemed to fill the vault, and Liz could see the stains blooming along Mellish’s shirt. His hands, oily with perspiration, methodically rotated the handle of the letter opener. His eyes had lost their earlier rancour and were instead opaque and in-turned. Was this the way he behaved with his previous victims? If so, it made him seem even more dangerous, almost demented, so short-fused that the wrong word or wrong gesture would set him off. Or did something else lie behind his agitation? It occurred to her then that he might be claustrophobic, or phobic in some other way. But danger lay in that as well. He would be mad to get out.

  He waved the knife at her. “Move farther back,” he ordered, dropping his jacket and the file on the concrete beside him.

  She did as she was told, taking a few steps backward until she could feel the cool wall against her shoulderblades. The vault was about ten feet deep, with a tier of shelves on each of the side walls and a meagre centre aisle. She had been in it once before, years earlier, with Vera, in search of a particular microfiche. Certain little-used or rare library items were stored in the vault, but she could tell from a quick glance that things had changed. Where she stood at the back, a few microfiche filing cabinets remained, but the shelves, which she’d remembered as having contained stationery items, now seemed cluttered with bits of machinery, items that spilled over from the shelves visible just beyond Mellish’s shoulders. None of them looked serviceable as a weapon.

  “I want you to find a piece of paper,” Mellish said. His voice was tight, his breathing still hard.

  Perplexed, Liz looked vaguely around the shelves. “Why do you need a piece of paper?”

  “It’s you who needs a piece of paper, my love. You have a suicide note to write.”

  A cry almost escaped her lips. His intent was clear. She battled to maintain a semblance of calm before replying. “Why would I be committing suicide?”

  “I don’t know, do I? You’ll have to think of something. You’re the talented Go! writer. You’ve been feeling depressed. No. I have a better idea. You’ll confess to Guy Clark’s murder and now you’re feeling remorseful.”

  “They’ll never believe it, Roger.” It was the first time she had said his name. Somehow it seemed important to re-establish their bond as colleagues. “I don’t think many women are strong enough to strangle a man.”

  “They’ll believe it. You look capable enough and they’re desperate for a solution. Besides, you weren’t at the mall. You were in a hotel. Hotels don’t keep track of their guests’ every movement. What kind of alibi could you possibly get?”

  Liz thought quickly. “I met someone. He would vouch for me.”

  “A man? You really are having marital problems, aren’t you?” His eyes narrowed suddenly. “What’s his name then?”

  “Vronsky. Steve Vronsky.” It was the first name that came to her mind but she regretted it as soon as it slipped from her mouth. It sounded ludicrous to her ear.

  Mellish, however, failed to catch the allusion to Anna Karenina’s lover. He shrugged impatiently and said, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll bet there’s a Mrs. Vronsky somewhere who would be very unhappy if she knew what her husband was up to.”

  She wanted to laugh. In other circumstances she would have laughed. But she felt the vault growing warmer with her warmth and the vision came to her suddenly of the door to this tomb slamming with deathly finality. How long would the air last? And then she remembered something Vera had said casually on her previous visit: “We never close this door. It has a combination lock and the combination was lost years and years ago. So be careful if you’re ever down here on your own.” The memory struck her with terrible force. Even if it were determined she was inside, would there be enough time to bore through the steel and stone before the air ran out? She shivered despite the vault’s heat. She had to keep him talking. Time was her single ally. Shaking a little, feeling now a chill like those that accompany fevers, she said, “What about motive, Roger? What reason would I have to murder Guy?”

  “You hated him!” The irritable tone of his voice suggested her question was completely unreasonable.

  “Okay, everyone disliked him, Roger. But that’s hardly
enough.”

  “Shut up and find some paper.”

  Liz bent down and began to grope around the shelves nearest her. She guessed pieces of paper might be binding the packets of microfiche, but that would be her last resort. In the meantime, she would stall by a painstaking search through the debris on the shelves, which, as luck had it, appeared genuinely to contain no paper.

  “Hurry up!” Mellish said.

  “Then you look at your end.”

  “No!” he shouted. And then more softly, as if trying to get himself under control: “No. I don’t care for confined spaces. And besides, I don’t want to leave fingerprints. Just in case.”

  She had been right. His agitation had more than one source. How could she use this? She thought: I must appear to sympathize, to care. She said, “Have you always been claustrophobic? I’ve always been a bit acrophobic myself.” She hoped she had the word right. Acrophobic? Heights? She rattled on: “Ever since I was a child I’ve been uncomfortable with heights. When did confined spaces start to bother you?”

  To her surprise, he answered straight away. “Since a bomb landed on the shelter I’d taken refuge in. I was a child and I was buried alive. I had to be dug out.” He gave her a sickly grin. “So you can see that I’m rather sensitive to places likes this.”

  “It must have been dreadful for you,” Liz murmured, still methodically turning things over on the shelves. “This was in England, I suppose?”

  “Of course it was in England! Do you think bombs dropped out of the sky here?”

  “I’m sorry, Roger. Sometimes I forget you’re English. Your accent isn’t that strong.”

  “I worked hard to get rid of it. I hated England. I couldn’t wait to get out. I had nothing but unhappiness there. Now stop stalling! Look in that bloody file cabinet at the back. There’s got to be some paper in there.”

  Liz pretended to fiddle with one of the drawers as though it were locked, or stuck. “Your mother died in the war, did she?”

  “She died in the same bomb shelter I was buried in.”

  “And your father?”

  “I didn’t know my father.”

  “Did you have no other family?”

  “For fuck’s sake, forget about my family. I want you to open the top drawer of that cabinet and show me what’s inside.”

  She did as she was told. The drawer contained bundles of microfiches, twenty or thirty fiches to a bundle, each covered with a sheet of blue paper bound by an elastic band. Standing in profile, and with Mellish’s watchful eyes upon her, she knew she could hardly slip off the wrappings and then hide them.

  “Show me!” Mellish commanded.

  She held up a bundle. “I don’t have a pen,” she said.

  “What’s that in your pocket?”

  With her other hand she felt along the side of her thigh. She had forgotten to return her cigarette lighter to her purse. “A lighter,” she replied.

  “Forget it. I have a pen in my pocket here.” He pressed the blade of the letter opener to his right pants pocket. “But you’ll have to come and get it. I don’t want any fingerprints. Come on.”

  She walked toward him, her stomach churning with a mixture of dread and disgust. Because he had placed himself on the lower step just outside the vault door, he was eye-level with her and she had to press against his belly to get her hands in his pocket. The heat of him seemed to swim around her; his breath so repugnant she wanted to turn her head but could not, forced by proximity to stare in his eyes while she groped in his pants pocket in a grotesque parody of flirtation. She noted the bloodshot sclera, the pupils shrunk to pinholes, a look, she thought—was she imagining it?—of incipient madness. She considered for a second crushing his genitals with her hand but, as if he had read her thoughts, he raised the letter opener and brushed its cool blade against her cheek. She pulled the pen, a cheap ballpoint, from his pocket and stepped back quickly.

  “Run your hand over it a few times,” Mellish said. “Just to remove anything of me on it. I wouldn’t want to leave any evidence. You never know. The police may not believe your suicide.”

  She thought: Of course they won’t. Suicides seek quick death, or painless death, or both. No one would impose the slow terror of suffocation on herself. The police would recognize the fraud right away. What would prevent her, once locked in, from tearing up her note, or better yet, writing the truth? With this murder attempt, Mellish had crossed beyond the borders of reason. This was desperation. But instead, as casually as she could, she said, “You’ve been very clever all along, haven’t you? For instance, how did you manage to kill Michael Rossiter and divert suspicion? Weren’t you with…Nan, isn’t it? Is that her name? Did you get her to lie for you?”

  “Nan? Good god, no. She probably would lie for me, though. But she wouldn’t be very good at it.” His voice grew impatient. “You’ve got the pen now. Start writing!”

  “Write what? ‘Dear World, I’ve been feeling a bit low lately. Sorry about Guy, but I had to do it. Yours truly, Elizabeth Elliott.’”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. The effect of sarcasm on Mellish was immediate. Under the unflattering light of the single bulb, the pale skin of his face reddened anew with angry clots of blood. He stared at her hatefully and she knew only his dread of the confined space restrained him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I just don’t know how to phrase it. Give me a moment to think.”

  Keep him talking, keep him talking.

  “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me how you fooled Nan?” She cleared a spot on the shelf nearest her and began to run the pen over it, writing a few nonsense words—whatever came into her head—pausing every so often as if in thought.

  Apparently mollified, Mellish said: “As I said, Nan wouldn’t be a very convincing liar. But it was easy enough to make her believe I was in my apartment the whole time. When I got home from work, I paid a brief visit to her and told her I was going to take a shower before we went to the restaurant. I knew she would be in her bathroom fussing with her hair or her makeup. Our bathrooms share a common wall, you see, and it’s fairly thin. You can hear the shower or snatches of conversation easily through the wall. So I turned on my shower and a tape-recording of me singing in the shower—I have one of those waterproof Walkmans; they’re really quite clever—and then just left the apartment by the back stairs.”

  “And no one saw you?”

  “It was the dinner hour. It was so hot for late September. Everyone was inside. And Rossiter’s is only five minutes on foot, most of it down a back lane. There’s lots of shadow under those big elms and I wore my straw panama to cover my hair and obscure my face. If anyone had noticed me, they probably wouldn’t even remember a man with a briefcase. I’m just another chap coming home from the office. There was a bit of a risk, but it was one I had to take. The whole thing only took about fifteen minutes. When I got back, I just dampened my hair, changed my clothes, and Nan never knew the difference.”

  “You say there was a bit of risk. Why didn’t you wait for another day? Or late at night?”

  “It was all timing. I only learned what Michael had learned Monday afternoon.”

  “What had he learned?”

  “Liz, don’t play me for a fool. You know what’s in this file!”

  “Then why is it so important to you?” She thought of Michael’s incriminating letter, still sitting in the photocopier.

  “It’s none of your business. Just keep writing.” He paused as if trying to control himself.

  “Anyway,” he continued after a moment, his voice falling into almost dreamy tones, “while Michael was out helping Bunny with something, I was just poking about his desk and I noted the draft of a letter to you. Well, I didn’t know it was to you at the time. There was just the body of a letter going to someone. And I knew I had to stop it, and him.”

  “Why didn’t you do something right then?”

  “Bunny knew I was there. So the next
day I phoned him in the morning and told him I’d left my glasses in his office—which I had. Deliberately. He said he had a couple of people dropping by that evening, but 6:30 or so was fine to come and pick them up. I said I wouldn’t be long. And I wasn’t.” He made a sickly grin.

  “That was taking a chance, wasn’t it? I mean, he could have told someone he would be meeting you at his house at 6:30.”

  “Yes, but I already had prepared my alibi, so it didn’t matter. I found the file right on top of his desk, and stuffed it in my briefcase. He hadn’t sent it.”

  “Or so you thought.”

  He regarded her stonily.

  Liz tried to keep her voice soothing. “Taking the violin was a good idea, though. A diversion?”

  “To provide a motive.”

  “Did you think it was the Guarneri?”

  Roger shrugged in the affirmative.

  “And where is it now?”

  She looked up to see a shadow of regret cross his heavy features. She felt a shiver of horror for she knew what he had done with the violin. He had destroyed it, even while believing it was a peerless instrument, a thing of remarkable beauty.

  “I had to do it, Liz. I couldn’t have it lying around. I used my marble rolling pin to crush it. I thought one blow would do but I had to keep hitting it and hitting it.”

  “And what did you do with the pieces?”

  “I had some potting stones. I put them in a bag with the pieces of violin, and later that night, after I left Nan, I drove to the Red, to the Alexander dock, and threw it in the river.”

  He looked at her as if seeking forgiveness. But she had nothing to give him, nothing to say. In what seemed like the years she had spent between the library and this subterranean vault, she had passed through disbelief, then shock, then fright. Her opportunities for escape had evaporated, her hope for rescue diminished by the minute, yet she found herself now almost morbidly calm and she wondered with an odd detachment if this was the way a live bird felt in a jaws of a cat. Her face must have been blank and ungiving, for abruptly Mellish’s mood changed. His eyes had shifted to the paper on which she was writing.