The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  Just for that we'll —

  No, wait a second, just a second, Eve! Tim grabbed her arm again, frowning and giving her a look of having too much to endure. You know, it's really you who's keeping me in bed; you're exhausting me. I'm paying for each precious moment with these desperate maneuvers. I need sustenance. Is there any more coffee?

  Not much, and it's not hot anyway. Now, Tim, you know you're —

  That's all right, hand it over.

  Tim, you know you're just stalling. Eve took the coffeepot from the floor and passed it to Tim. I've had enough —

  No, I need this to recover the energy it's costing to stay in bed. Now, while I sip this pleasantly lukewarm coffee, let's talk this out — like civilized people. We can even be friends afterward. See each other now and then, have dates — He took a sip of coffee, his eyes laughing at her over the rim of his cup.

  Here — he leaned across Eve and, reaching to the floor, picked up her cup.

  I don't want any more, she said. I've got coffee nerves now.

  Just a little. He poured the remainder of the coffee into her cup, half filling it, and handed it to her. It's not bad; it's still pretty warm.

  Eve accepted the cup and took a tiny tentative sip. It is not, she said, it's cold. But she leaned back and, making a face, took another sip, then several more. For a time she sat staring absently ahead, holding the cup and saucer in her lap. Then she spoke. I suppose it would be nice, she said casually, for a man to meet someone like that. Someone exotic, beautiful. She laughed indulgently. I suppose all men have little daydreams.

  Tim looked at her. I really don't know.

  I mean, she said hastily, even men who are happily married. Men who wouldn't even think of — well, I just mean it would be fun, I imagine, for most men to meet someone like that if only to talk to her. Just to look at someone really beautiful — even if they never saw her again. Tim didn't answer and after a moment Eve turned to look at him.

  He had put his cup on the table and was lying on his side, facing Eve, head propped in his hand, regarding her with mocking amusement. You know, of course, that this beats the former world's record for utter silliness — exhibiting obvious jealousy of an imaginary woman.

  Eve shrugged her shoulders, refusing to smile. I don't know, she said. After all, I didn't imagine her; you did. That's what came into your mind when I spoke of a cocktail party. And it's not jealousy; don't be absurd. She looked at him coldly. It's just that — well, there's always an unconscious reason for our daydreams. They're very revealing; they show how we're dissatisfied, how we wish things were different.

  My little psychiatrist, he said. Analyzing while you wait. He grinned. Look, I forgot to tell you that when she sat down and brought that raven hair into range, I could see she had dandruff. The gasp I gave when she edged closer was because I couldn't breathe for the reek of garish perfume. When she spoke, one of those harplike notes ended in a belch, and I suspect she wore falsies.

  You probably peeked.

  I did. What a disappointment! He leaned forward and kissed Eve's shoulder. Oh, I'll admit she was beautiful, though unbathed. Yet what have I been trying to do all along? To stay right here. Quite obviously I'd rather be with you, reading the Sunday paper, than with her — not reading the paper. Now, what does that prove?

  That you're getting old and decrepit.

  Tim grinned and sat up. Is that so? Well, I guess you also need proof that —

  No, I don't! We're getting up right now!

  Okay, okay. Just so you know you're my own true love. He kissed Eve's shoulder again, then spoke seriously. Look, do you really want to go to this cocktail party?

  Eve looked at him speculatively. Well, we don't absolutely have to. She smiled, now, fondly, tolerantly. I just thought —

  There's some bottled Martinis in the refrigerator. We could have cocktails right here in bed. I'll blow smoke in your face and it'll be just like —

  If you can think of something you'd rather do, we'll do that. Just go to a movie or something, if you want.

  You didn't read the front section of the paper. Tim reached out to the stack of Sunday papers at the foot of the bed and began pawing through them. O'Dwyer has closed all movies down.

  Why?

  Epidemic of plague. Citizens are warned to keep off the streets. To stay home — in bed. I was afraid to frighten you, so I didn't mention it. But that's why I've been trying to —

  I didn't see the front section at that. Eve sat up and stretched her arm toward the stack of newspapers. Where is it? Is there anything —

  Just the usual crop of news; much the same as always. Tim continued to hunt through the pile of papers. It looks, as on every other day, like a very depressing world. A good one to stay out of, if only for a day. He pulled the magazine section from the stack and opened it, leaning forward and looking at it, frowning and glancing at the headings as though hunting for something.

  Oh, the puzzle! Eve said, pointing to the page he had turned to. I haven't seen that, either. Give me the puzzle; I just want to glance at it.

  Tim folded the page back to the cross-word puzzle and handed the paper to Eve his face carefully expressionless.

  Eve took the paper and lay back again. Crepuscular, she said.

  What?

  Eve opened the drawer of the table beside her with one hand, rummaged through it, and produced a yellow wooden pencil. “Quality of evening light,” she said, eleven letters. It's “crepuscular” they always use that. She began writing the word on the puzzle.

  Without moving the rest of his body Tim moved one arm toward the stack of papers. He took a corner of the news section between thumb and forefinger and drew it slowly from the stack, sliding it quietly over the smooth silk surface of the comforter toward him.

  ‘Traduce, defame,’ said Eve.

  Tim quietly released the newspaper, and his hand lay motionless on the blanket. Slander?

  No, I thought of that, she said. It doesn't fit. Six letters.

  Malign.

  Malign? Well, it fits. She wrote the word on her puzzle.

  Very quietly, Tim raised his knees, picked up his paper and propped it in his lap. He leaned forward, adjusted the pillow at his back, then lay back again, glanced at the front page, then turned a page with hardly a sound from the paper.

  Eve began to erase a word. Dross, particularly in steelmaking, she said.

  Slag.

  Of course. She finished erasing, then wrote the word down.

  Tim turned a page, then raising the paper to eye level, began to read. He read to the bottom of a column, raised his eyes to the top of the next, and became aware of a silence. He turned to Eve.

  She was waiting, her eyes on his face, brows lifted in sardonic patience. Quite a wise guy, aren't you? she said.

  Tim grinned. Why, no, he said. What do you mean? He laid down his paper and put an arm round her shoulder. Come here, he said, you haven't given me a kiss.

  I kissed you good morning, said Eve, which is all you've got coming to you. Go kiss that harpy of yours. But she allowed him to draw her closer.

  That's right, you did, he said, but a glance at the clock will show you that we're approaching the afternoon. You seem to have lounged the morning away.

  Yes, said Eve, it was all my fault. She gave him a wifely peck on the cheek, and smiled wryly. Do you suppose there's a three-year-old anywhere who's quite as spoiled as you are?

  Nope, said Tim cheerfully, but that's a part of your wifely duty — to spoil me, heap flattering endearments on my head, anticipate my slightest wishes.

  Of course; anything you say.

  Tim squeezed her shoulders gently. You didn't want to go to that wingding, did you? Because if you do, there's still —

  No. Eve smiled at him. I didn't. And I'd have realized it myself two seconds after I mentioned it, if you'd given me a chance to get a word in edgewise.

  I didn't think you did. He leaned down to kiss Eve's ear. What you really want to do is rel
ax, rest, take things easy.

  Maybe. But we are getting up.

  I don't have to get dressed, though?

  No, you can put on your robe.

  And we'll finish the paper first?

  Yes, but that doesn't include reading every line in the news, book, sports and want-ad sections.

  Here. Tim picked up the crossword puzzle and handed it to Eve. What's a three-letter word meaning the greatest contribution to civilized enjoyment since the invention of the wheel?

  Don't tell me it begins with B?

  That's right, said Timberlake Ryan, b-e-d, bed. Hand me the sports page.

  Collier's, May 15, 1948, 121(20):13, 40, 42, 44, 47

  It Wouldn't Be Fair

  Suppose you found this guy dead, said Charley. He stood beside the lieutenant's desk, hands in pockets, rocking gently on his feet, a lean young man, with an intelligent face. Murdered. Shot and poisoned in his library.

  The library?

  His library; big estate in England.

  The lieutenant swung his swivel chair toward the window behind him. The morning light cut across one shoulder onto a face made thin by years of insufficient sleep and grooved from decades of worry. Out of our jurisdiction, he said.

  You investigate anyway, Charley said cheerfully, and find that the dead guy's wife is a homicidal maniac, that her husband kicked her out into a blizzard on Christmas Eve, after squandering her fortune on another woman, and that she happens to own the Webley-Vebley 12-12 pistol which fired the bullet found in his brain.

  Someday, said the lieutenant, you'll be too smart for your own good. Whatever you're up to or after, I have a feeling, amounting to a conviction, that the answer is going to be no. I never heard of a Webley-Vebley.

  Annie would not be surprised. Charley took a paper clip from the desk and, lowering his head, began carefully bending it straight. Furthermore, the dead man's wife had run a full-page ad in the local newspaper threatening to kill him, she was alone with him during the last ten minutes of his life, and in her handbag are three African darts each tipped with a poison which kills instantly by turning the blood into putty. You suspect anybody?

  The lieutenant shrugged. Looks like maybe the wife did it.

  Typical police stupidity. Charley tossed the paper clip at the polished spittoon on the floor and it hit with a ping, then rattled inside. Annie has often pointed out to me that we constantly leap to conclusions on just such flimsy evidence.

  The lieutenant leaned forward, hands clasped, forearms on the desk. Okay, he said coldly, Just who is this Annie?

  Annie is a brain. Of frightening power. A marvel at murder. But a brain bounded on the north by gorgeous brown hair, on the south by a magnificent coast line, and —

  Spare me, said the lieutenant. I am an old, old man. Just how does this mighty brain work?

  While we absurd police, satisfied with our ridiculous evidence, are lounging around the station house or stealing fruit from innocent peddlers, Annie is finding the more subtle clues which blundering police methods invariably miss. And she discovers presently what she suspected all along. Charley hitched his chair closer to the lieutenant's desk. The wife is innocent. The murdered man's aunt, who raised him from childhood, sacrificed everything to put him through college, and who has been completely paralyzed for thirty-five years except for her ears which she can still wiggle slightly —

  She did it?

  Exactly. The rare Webley-Vebley is the only known pistol with a trigger so sensitive it can be fired by a flick of the ear.

  The lieutenant leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the ceiling for a considerable time. Colhaus, he said finally. You know Colhaus in the Thirteenth Precinct? He has a daughter —

  No, said Charley, Annie. I am not interested in anyone's daughter but Annie. You may not understand —

  I might, said the lieutenant. Unlikely as it may seem, I was young once. The remedy in a case like yours — I should say, the cure — is to marry the girl.

  I can't. Charley's smile disappeared, and his face looked thinner. In spite of some success during six years as a member of Homicide, Annie regards me as only a reasonably well-qualified moron in the field of murder investigation. From her experience, he said bitterly, covering hundreds of cases, she has formed a very low opinion of police and their methods.

  The lieutenant gestured with his thumb toward a huge oak-framed display cabinet which hung on the wall opposite. Its green felt surface, under the glass, was paved with dozens of overlapping photographs and deadly mementos: cruelly sharp photos of bodies in every state of violent death, sullen-faced men and women, struggling or passive, in the arms of the police, actual pistols and blackjacks wired in place.

  You were with me on those, said the lieutenant. Some of them. You did good work; sometimes. Tell her about them.

  I did.

  And?

  Crude and slipshod work. We often arrested and convicted the first guy we suspected. Sometimes, in fact, the only suspect. And often very obviously the obvious suspect. Do you realize what that means?

  Tell me.

  They were innocent.

  The lieutenant smiled bleakly. Yes! What about the Crowley case? Clearcut.

  It was, said Charley gravely, but it took two weeks to break. Perhaps you thought that was fast? Tell me. You sometimes stop to eat, on a case? Even sleep?

  Yes.

  Fool. There is no time for anything but drinking. Naturally you are pitifully slow.

  This Annie is faster?

  She often solves cases a full forty-eight pages before Perry Mason.

  The lieutenant sighed. Just what did you have in mind? he said.

  Well, Sir. Charley selected another paper clip. Singlehanded I have been unable to convince Annie that the murders of fiction, filled with brilliant deductions and subtle clues, have nothing to do with the facts of life. I have told her about our cases. They are dull. No African darts. No guns concealed in the wall which fire when the first frost contracts the woodwork. No hypodermic needles which inject a chemical freezing the blood to dry ice and causing the veins to explode. We don't even seem to find any footprints. So what does that mean? The answer is obvious to Annie. We are missing something. We are trampling countless delicate clues under our big flat feet. Convicting innocent men on obvious, ridiculous clues, while fiends, ingenious beyond our poor capacity to imagine, are lounging around the city laughing at us. Lieutenant, a man has to have respect from his wife.

  So?

  So I thought, sir, we'd take Annie along on the next case. Show her a real murder —

  No. The lieutenant stood up, walked out from behind his desk, and gestured at the walls of his office. This is not a book from the rental library, he said, with every killing an excursion trip. With his other hand he gestured at the window toward the police garage three stories below where a motorcycle idled, its vibrations gently rattling the window pane. This is Centre Street Police Headquarters; real police with work to do, not a picnic for amateur mystery-story — Charley, you know better.

  Charley, stood up and took his hat from the lieutenant's desk. I guess so. It's too bad, though; Della Street goes everywhere with Perry Mason.

  Colhaus —

  No, said Charley, Annie. He put on his hat and stood for a moment, looking at the floor. I rather expected this. Which brings me to my final hope. He reached inside his suit coat and brought out a bright green-jacketed book which he had held concealed under his arm. I would like you to read this. The thrilling adventures of Hercule Poirot.

  Why? the lieutenant demanded.

  It's a very fascinating story. And I would like you to finish it — he hesitated — before you come with me to Annie's tomorrow night.

  The lieutenant stared at Charley, his eyes narrowed. Some day, he said, you will be too smart for —

  It's my only hope. Charley opened the door and began backing out. My only chance is that your gray hairs and ancient wisdom will succeed where I have failed — the door was closi
ng — in persuading Annie that the police are as competent, in a much duller way, as Agatha Christie.

  Annie's living room, Charley had often noticed, was feminine and suited her perfectly. But he was not prepared, the following evening, for what it did to the lieutenant. The lieutenant — surrounded by dainty, softglowing lamps, pastel-tinted slip covers, bright modern paintings — looked as out of place as a bishop in a pool hall.

  But Annie was superb. She sat gracefully curled in a corner of the davenport, her hair, as always, even more gloriously brunette than Charley remembered. Her softly tanned face was eager, smiling, and alive. Her large, blue, and beautiful eyes were animated. She seemed confident.

  The lieutenant read Hercule Poirot, Charley announced. Loved it.

  Oh? Annie looked interested; she smiled. Did you figure it out?

  No, said the lieutenant.

  You mean, not till the end.

  I mean, said the lieutenant — he took a swallow of his drink — that I never did get it. I read the book. I finished it. Read the last chapter twice. And I still don't know who killed Aaron DeCourcey.

  But, Lieutenant. It said. It said Robert did it. He confessed.

  I know. We get those confessions all the time; they don't mean a thing. The lieutenant paused, took a thoughtful sip of his drink, then spoke decisively. I think maybe this Lacy guy did it: Lacy Spreckles.

  But —

  It figures, said the lieutenant. He hated the guy, he bought the gun, he had a fake alibi, he needed the money, he was about to be written out of the will, he said he'd do it, nobody else was —

  Annie recovered her voice. But, Lieutenant! He couldn't have done it! Don't you remember? About the sundial?

  Look, young lady; we had a case two months ago —

  Oh, those. Lieutenant, don't you remember? said Annie pleadingly. He and Lady Gwen were in the garden —

  Sure, I remember! But I didn't get it.

  But it's so simple. She forgave him with a smile. He and Lady Gwen noticed on the sundial in the garden that it was exactly three thirty. She remarked on it, remember? Then they figured out that that was sun time, two minutes slower than real time, so it was actually three thirty-two, don't you see? But then Hercule figured out that the sundial was over three hundred years old and during that time the revolution of the earth changed or something —