Murder in Mount Holly

by Paul Theroux

  “It’s for the good of the country,” said Mrs. Gneiss.

  Mr. Gibbon said that it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get one of the guards. They could lure him to Miss Ball’s house. The only thing they needed was a decoy. They had to find a decoy . . .

  Her face chalky with make-up, her cheeks rouged with circles, her lips gleaming with the scarlet goo of nearly one whole tube of lipstick, her hair a stiff mass of tight curls, her round body solid with corsets and fixtures, Miss Ball waddled to the back door of the Mount Holly Trust Company and looked for a bank guard to lure.

  It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was very hot. This caused the make-up to run a bit and get very sticky. Beads of perspiration appeared at Miss Ball’s hair-line, behind her ears and on her neck.

  There seemed to be no one to lure. She could see people walking back and forth inside the bank, accountants and tellers. They had little or nothing to do with the storing of money. They just collected it. But no one came out of the back door.

  Miss Ball rather enjoyed standing there. Like a siren, she could lure anyone. It gave her a feeling of power. She knew the attraction that a woman’s flesh had for men. They couldn’t resist it. How many times had Juan, on the pretext of checking the cans of floor wax, covered her with rancid kisses in the broom closet? He couldn’t stand it any longer. She understood the urge and let him paw her and grunt. Duty meant nothing. History was full of the stories of men who had given in to the low murmur of beckoning flesh. Fortunes, whole countries had been lost, careers ruined for a few minutes of pleasure in the bed of a beautiful woman.

  And then she thought, when you’re a decoy you’ve got to have something to decoy. There was nothing in the back of the Mount Holly Trust Company to lure. A dog sniffed at the hem of her dress and scuttered away, two little boys meandered by throwing spitballs at each other, and once someone peered from the second story of the bank. Miss Ball had glanced up, but before she regained presence of mind enough to wink at the person (one never knew what floor plan he had in his pocket) he turned away.

  A full hour passed. Miss Ball was tired; her getup was a wreck. Her handbag felt like a large stone. She knew she didn’t look as crisp as she had when she arrived. A man likes freshness and vitality in a woman. If much more time passed Miss Ball knew that she would be able to offer none of these.

  Then a man appeared at the back door. Miss Ball pressed her lips together. She trembled. The man was white, wearing a blue suit with a matching cap, rimless glasses and a badge. He looked like a bus conductor. But he was a bank guard, and he certainly had a dozen more rolls in the hay left in him. He shuffled out the door with a shopping bag, then went inside and got another bundle and put that beside the shopping bag. After one more trip inside he deposited an umbrella and a pair of rubbers beside the other bundles.

  Miss Ball took one step toward the man. She eyed him, fluttered her eyelashes, and said hoarsely, “That’s an awful lot of gear for a little man.”

  “Par’ me?” said the man. He squinted through his glasses and coughed. Miss Ball corrected her false impression: the man did not have a dozen rolls in the hay left in him. He had one perhaps, at the most two. Also he was down at the heel and out at the elbow. But it made no difference. He knew the bank inside out. He had the information they wanted.

  “Give you a hand?”

  The man took another look at Miss Ball. The look cost the man a great effort. He shrugged.

  Miss Ball smiled, took the shopping bag and umbrella and led the way. The man picked up the other bundles and the rubbers and followed. Success, thought Miss Ball.

  They walked along Mount Holly Boulevard and attracted considerable attention.

  The man glanced at her once or twice, then cleared his throat and asked her if she minded carrying the bag.

  Miss Ball said that she didn’t mind doing anything. She winked again.

  The man said that he lived across town. Miss Ball said she knew a shortcut. She walked along as briskly as her little legs would move her and finally got to her house. With a sigh she dropped the bags and said that she could go no further.

  “That’s okay,” said the man. “I’ll carry the stuff. I was planning to anyways.”

  Then Miss Ball shrieked. The man dropped what he was carrying.

  “For golly sake!” she said. “Look where we are!”

  The man said he didn’t recognize the place.

  “It’s my house! Well, isn’t that the limit! God help us—it’s a miracle.”

  The man said that he had to be going. He had the week’s shopping in the bags, not to mention his wife’s umbrella (he called it a bumbershoot).

  “You just take your brolly and your shopping and come in. We’ll have a little tea. I’m weak. I don’t think I can make it into the house.”

  The man tried to carry Miss Ball into the house. He struggled and panted. Miss Ball remarked that he must have been a very strong man in his youth. The man said he was.

  Miss Ball poured a large tumbler full of whisky and handed it to the man. The man drank it and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Red-eye,” he said.

  “Oo! You like your tea, don’t you now?”

  The man said he didn’t mind a spot now and then. He put his arm around Miss Ball and began pinching her breast.

  “Not here, darling,” said Miss Ball. She tossed her head in the direction of upstairs. Then she stood up and took his hand and pulled him upstairs.

  Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss tiptoed out of the kitchen and upstairs after them. They listened, their ears against the door.

  Inside the room bodies fell, groans resounded, flesh met flesh with slaps and shrieks. Miss Ball squealed, the man roared. Furniture fell and glass broke.

  “Lotta spunk left in her!” Mr. Gibbon whispered.

  “They’re having fun!” Mrs. Gneiss said. She squeezed Mr. Gibbon’s knee.

  “Clever little woman,” Mr. Gibbon said. “See, she must have learned that in one of the books. She’ll get him naked and helpless and then turn on the heat. She’ll get him talking about the bank and find out. The man goes away happy and doesn’t suspect a thing. Nice as you please.”

  But there was no talking. The noise had ceased, and now Miss Ball could be heard crying softly. Mr. Gibbon wanted to go right in, but he waited five minutes, and when nothing had changed (the only sound was Miss Ball sniffing) he drew out his pistol and broke the door down.

  The room was covered with blood. Sheets and curtains were torn and hanging in shreds, the mirror was shattered, and on the floor lay the bank guard, a large knife-handle sticking out of his back. Bloody handprints were smeared all over the walls and floor. In the corner, a murderous look in his eye, was Juan. His shirt was torn and bloody, his hair bristled. He glowered.

  “Dobble cross me! Dat agli gringo bestid don’t know what heet heem. I been seeting that share for two jowers.”

  “Warren!” screamed Miss Ball. He turned. Mr. Gibbon took aim and fired. The impact sent Juan into the wall like a swatted fly. Then he fell, his head making a loud bump on the floor.

  “There’s two commies out of the way,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Get a mop! See if anyone heard! Lock the front door! This is it, boys! It’s war! We won a battle but we haven’t won the war yet! Fall to, get this mess cleaned up, load the guns!”

  Neither Miss Ball nor Mrs. Gneiss moved a muscle. They looked at Mr. Gibbon with horror.

  “Hurry up!” said Mr. Gibbon. “You all deef?”

  11

  Mrs. Gneiss’s empty suitcases came in handy for storing the dismembered bodies of Juan and the bank guard. At first, Mrs. Gneiss was all in favor of getting the bank guard’s ­fingerprints on the gun and calling the police. They would tell the police that there had been a terrible fight between the two men. Juan had stabbed the guard and then the guard had shot Juan
for stabbing him. Tit for tat, so to speak. It made some sense. But Mr. Gibbon saw that if the guard had been stabbed he wouldn’t have been able to shoot Juan. Or if Juan were shot the guard would have survived. The murder was without precedent if it was to be believed. They gloomily hacked up the bodies with Mr. Gibbon’s hunting knife, stuffed them into Mrs. Gneiss’s suitcases and put the suitcases and the clothes into the attic. Miss Ball’s Stay-Kleen and Surfy Suds took care of the gore on the rug.

  Good Old Providence had done them a turn. The neighbors had miraculously not heard “The Fracas,” as Miss Ball called the double murder. The three comrades had stayed up all night keeping a vigil over the bodies in case the police should come. Then they would have said, yes, we killed the lousy commies. But the police never came. And just as well, the two ladies thought. Mr. Gibbon thought differently: he was convinced that Juan and the bank guard were “in cahoots” (the bank guard more than anyone was a stoolie and a cheat, working for coons as he did). Mr. Gibbon was, as he put it, “pleased as punch” to have plugged Juan, a man he suspected to have been spying on him for nearly a year.

  But they had to make short-range plans. The morning after the fracas the three sat around the table (the news was on, but spoke only of the gallstones and the war, both with fervor; the disappearance of a certain bank guard was not mentioned). They looked haggard and mussed, having stayed up all night keeping their vigil. They tried to think of a way to cover up the murder for the time being. They knew that afterward, when the truth about the Mount Holly Trust Company was known (a Com­munist Front Organization filled with black pinkoes), the murder would be laughed off and their fortune would be secure. Mean­while, they would have to think of a way to pacify the bank guard’s wife. Unless he had been lying when he told Miss Ball that he had to take the groceries home to his wife; maybe he didn’t have a wife at all. But how could they find out?

  It was Miss Ball that came up with the solution. Without a word she darted upstairs to the suitcases. She came back almost immediately, seated herself as before and dropped a blood-stained wallet on the table. Gingerly—because the plastic wallet was still sticky with the gentleman’s blood—Miss Ball picked through it. Out tumbled membership cards, wedding pictures, snapshots of little kids with beach pails, and finally the prize: a picture of the man himself and a woman—obviously his wife; she looked grim and stood apart from him—who was leaning on the very same umbrella that was now resting against the wall upstairs in Miss Ball’s attic. On the back of the photograph was printed: “Benny’s Fotoshop—Close to You in the Lobby of the Barracuda Beach Hotel,” and under that in ballpoint: “Baracuta Beach, 1962.” There was also an identification card which read:

  Harold Potts, Jr.

  1217 Palm Drive

  Mount Holly

  In case of accident please notify a priest and

  Mrs. Ethel Potts

  (address as above)

  Harold’s blood type, a little ragged card with a picture of Jesus on the front and a prayer on the back, and a relic of a tiny piece of cloth that had “touched a piece of the True Cross” sealed in plastic, were also among the valuables. Mr. Gibbon searched in vain for a party card. He came up with a few suspicious-looking documents, but remarked, “He’d be a fool if he carried the thing around with him.”

  Miss Ball paid no attention to Mr. Gibbon’s investigation. She had found what she wanted.

  Dear Ethel (Miss Ball wrote),

  I wonder if you remember me? We spent those lovely days together at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in ’62. We met briefly during a bridge game. (I can’t remember if we were playing, watching, or just passing by the bridge tables—goodness how the memory starts playing tricks as the years go by!)

  To make a long story short I met dear old Harold just yesterday at the Mount Holly Trust Company—well, I tell you Harold just couldn’t stop talking! We came to my house for tea and just talked and talked and talked of the wonderful days we spent at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in ’62. Harold said he had a touch of gastritis and wanted to go straight to bed, couldn’t walk so he said. Well, here it is 10 in the am and he’s still sleeping like a baby! I called the bank and told them he wouldn’t be in this morning. I think his tummy needs a rest, frankly Ethel, and I just hate the thought of waking him up, so peaceful he looks. I think he should be improving in the next few days and I’ll be sure to have him call you when he wakes up.

  I just wanted to let you know that he’s safe in the hands of an old friend and that there’s no need to get all flustered and call the Missing Persons Bureau! Ha-ha! And that I look forward to more happy days like the ones we spent at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in ’62.

  Your old friend,

  Nettie

  “Perfect,” was all Mr. Gibbon said.

  “I feel as if I know her,” Miss Ball said.

  The letter was sent special delivery (“What’s thirty cents,” Mrs. Gneiss said), without a return address, in a plain envelope. Mr. Gibbon estimated that it would be in Ethel Potts’s hands before noon.

  “What about Warren’s nearest of kin,” Mrs. Gneiss asked.

  “His nearest of kin? Well, that’s me, I guess, and I know where he is!” Miss Ball said. She did not say it with regret; but there was no joy in her voice either. Miss Ball did not quite know what to think about Juan’s death. He had been very pleasant—if a bit jumpy—at first. Only lately had he been asking for more pin-money. He had also recently demanded to move in with Miss Ball, but she had discouraged that. He had a good heart. He had bought things for Miss Ball. He was constantly surprising her with little mementos like the framed picture of Clark Gable or the doilies—he adored doilies for a reason Miss Ball could not even guess at. He had “been with” Miss Ball for about ten months and had never once shown the sort of jealous rage that had prompted him to stab Harold Potts to death.

  Juan would have died violently sooner or later. It’s in the blood. Better he died in the privacy of Miss Ball’s own home than in the gutter. And then maybe Mr. Gibbon was right: maybe Juan was a communist. He was certainly dark, a Puerto Rican, there was no denying that! Mr. Gibbon was more familiar with the You-Know-Whos than Miss Ball. She knew that. He knew what he was doing. So goodbye, Juan, hasta luego and sleep well, Miss Ball thought.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Gibbon was getting impatient. “An itchy trigger-finger,” he said. Sooner or later Ethel Potts would start wondering who in Sam Hill was Nettie and might turn the letter over to the police. This would ruin Mr. Gibbon’s timing. Floor plan or no floor plan, they would have to rob the bank quickly—at least in the next week or so. Here Herbie was out of boot camp, on his way to the front lines—probably he had nailed a few dozen commies already. A greenhorn! And here was Mr. Gibbon with only these two rather unimportant fellow travellers to his credit.

  Mrs. Gneiss agreed. She said she was getting edgy. She didn’t enjoy getting edgy. If the robbery was to be done, it should be done as speedily as possible, so that they could all relax and enjoy the rewards and fame the robbery would bring them. She for one didn’t want Ethel Potts going haywire and accusing them of killing her husband. But as usual she said nothing more. Charlie knew best. She would wait until he gave the word. The whole thing was his idea, he was the brains and should make the decisions.

  “I’d just like to have a look around the bank tomorrow before we go ahead with it,” Mr. Gibbon said. Miss Ball should not come along. They didn’t want to arouse any suspicions. He and Mrs. Gneiss would just sort of mosey around the bank, seeing what they could see and getting the general layout of the place and, in short, “casing the joint.”

  Miss Ball said that suited her fine. They sat around the house reading and puttering around for the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Gibbon attended to his long-neglected paper bags; Mrs. Gneiss watched TV. But Miss Ball sat and scowled. Her brow grew more and more furrowed as the afternoon wore on. By
five o’clock she was genuinely distressed. Something had just occurred to her. No one took any notice of her, not even when she scribbled a little reminder on the notepad, which she always carried in her apron.

  12

  Miss Ball kept looking into store windows. Before each one she paused, touched at her hair, pressed her lips together and, reasonably satisfied with the reflection that stared out at her from the foundation garments or baked goods, she walked on toward the doctor’s office.

  She had begun to worry. She had read of a man who woke up one morning with the beginnings of a sixth finger; she had heard of a lung ballooning to twice its normal size when it had to do the work of two. And there were tonsils, adenoids, and the appendix, which often grew back if they were not watched properly and nipped, so to speak, in the bud. It was her operation that was making her jittery. How could she be sure that her insides wouldn’t grow back when so many other things grew back?

  Nature was hard to understand. You clip grass and trim bushes and pluck hairs and what do you get? More grass, stray branches and bushy eyebrows. Miss Ball found that she could not cope with nature. Nature was always ahead of her, ahead of everyone she knew.

  Miss Ball had been a farm girl. She could remember seeing her father pushing whole barrows of nourishing dung across rotting boards to the fields. She had peeled potatoes, she had awakened in a musty room covered with a damp quilt. That’s how it was when you lived close to the ground. It was damp and you were always kicking plants and dirt back into place, sifting stones, building walls, rocking on the porch and watching the crops fail. This was where Miss Ball learned Mother Nature’s spiteful ways.