Mostly Murder

by Fredric Brown

  Another step and another, slowly. He should hurry, for she lay in the open in the moonlight, not far from the carnival lot. It would not be long before she would be found. He should hurry, but he walked slowly.

  One step, then another.

  And a long time later, he stood beside the tracks of the jungle, watching a switch engine couple freight cars behind the big engine that stood waiting to take them—and him—away.

  A busy little devil of a switch engine, with gaping red maw of firebox, and spewing smoke from its stack, as it ran silently—

  Silently?

  He didn’t have to reach up with his hands to know that they were still there, that he had forgotten to take them out—those plugs of thick wax that protected his ears from the roar of the cannon!

  And now, knowing that, he didn’t have to guess at the rest. He didn’t have to know the words of her pleading when she had called to him not to go away, when she had even run after him, an arm thrust out in supplication, to bring nun back…

  The silent little devil of a switch engine went past him, down to the other end of the yards; it started back. He walked out onto the track in front of it. He turned, facing away from it, as it came. And his hands went up, now, and took the plugs of wax from his ears.

  He stood there, very still, hearing—this time—a voice behind him.

  Miss Darkness

  IT WAS LATE IN THE afternoon, almost dinner time, when Miss Darkness came to stay at Mrs. Prandell’s boarding house. The evening papers had just come, and—while Mrs. Prandell was taking Miss Darkness upstairs to show her the advertised vacant room—Mr. Anstruther, in the sitting room downstairs, was saying, “Quite a bit of excitement downtown this afternoon, Miss Wheeler. Did you see any of it?”

  “You mean the bank robbery, Mr. Anstruther? No, I was at the main library all afternoon, doing my research.” Miss Wheeler’s research, of course, was for her magnum opus, a study of Elizabethan poets, a project which had engaged all of her thoughts since her retirement two years before as a teacher of high school English. A strange thing, Miss Wheeler’s affinity for Elizabethans; in the flesh those robustious fellows would have shocked her past measure. “Did you see any of it?”

  “I heard the sirens,” said Mr. Anstruther, and he wondered why Miss Wheeler—who had a sudden picture of Mr. Anstruther, as Ulysses, tied to the mast of a ship—giggled a little. But upstairs, Mrs. Prandell was opening the door of the vacant room. “Fifteen dollars,” she said, “with breakfast and dinner. We don’t serve lunches. Or it’s ten dollars, just with breakfast.” Her tone of voice added that if Miss Darkness didn’t want it, plenty of others would.

  “I—I’ll take it,” said Miss Darkness. “Just with breakfast.”

  “Linens once a week; no cooking in rooms; no guests, of course, except in the sitting room downstairs; no pets; no radios after ten o’clock; you furnish your own soap, towels, light bulbs; and breakfast either at seven-thirty or eight-thirty, whichever you prefer. Some go to work earlier than others so we have two times. Which do you want?”

  “Eight-thirty, please.”

  “And—” Mrs. Prandell glanced down at the small, cheap cardboard suitcase which Miss Darkness had brought, “payable in advance, please.” She unbent a little when Miss Darkness had fumbled in her purse and handed over a ten dollar bill. “I’ll make you out your receipt after dinner; I’ve got to help the cook now. What did you say your name is, Miss—?”

  “Westerman,” said Miss Darkness. “Mary Westerman.”

  So Mrs. Prandell went downstairs to supervise the cooking, and Miss Darkness (who had not yet, of course, been named that) went into her room and shut the door.

  A little while later, about the time Mrs. Prandell was preparing to tinkle the dinner bell, Miss Darkness left her room. At the turn in the stairs, she almost ran head on into Mr. Barry, ascending for a preprandial wash-up.

  Mr. Barry, insurance salesman, was—by the consensus of Mrs. Prandell’s paying guests—a very nice young man. Certainly he was the most presentable male within a radius of blocks. He was not tall, but then neither was Miss Darkness. And he had dark curly hair and humorous eyes and a nice mouth that started, involuntarily, to purse into a whistle when he saw Miss Darkness.

  Funny about that. I mean, Miss Wheeler and Miss Gaines, sitting in the sitting room awaiting the call to dinner, could see the turn of the stairs and Miss Darkness standing there. But they saw only a rather mousy-looking girl in a cheap, ready-made dress, whereas Mr. Barry saw much more than that. One might say that he saw the girl herself through the inexpensive dress (in a nice way, of course, for he was a nice young man) and he liked what he saw. Miss Darkness was small-boned and delicate, beautifully wrought. Her face was pale, to Misses Wheeler-Gaines; milk-white, to Mr. Barry. Her eyes were big and dark (like moonlit pools) and a little frightened.

  Mr. Barry smiled at her. He said, “Nobody tells me these things. (A misleading statement, for everybody told everything at Mrs. Prandell’s; the only reason Mr. Barry hadn’t heard was that he had just come in.) You’re staying here? A new guest?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Darkness, and her eyes were wary now, but not so frightened.

  “Then may I introduce myself? Walter Barry.”

  “Mary Westerman,” said Miss Darkness. “And may I pass, please? I’m almost late for a dinner appointment.”

  There wasn’t room on the stairs, of course, for Mr. Barry to step aside and bow, but he approximated it pretty well. He stood there watching as she went on down the stairs and out the door. In the sitting room Miss Wheeler looked at Miss Games and Miss Games looked at Miss Wheeler. And the dinner bell tinkled. An hour later Miss Darkness returned and went directly to her room. Going upstairs shortly after that, Miss Wheeler saw that the light was out in Miss Darkness’ room and wondered. It was scarce eight o’clock.

  That was Tuesday.

  It was Thursday night, at dinner, that gossip grew. Oh, you may be sure that she had been discussed Tuesday night and Wednesday night, but mildly and with reservations because young Mr. Barry had been present at both of those meals and had shown an inclination to leap to the breach in defense at the slightest word against the new guest.

  It was Thursday night that Miss Gaines said, “There’s something wrong with her, Mrs. Prandell. She’s afraid of something. She’s even afraid of the light.”

  “Of the light?” Mr. Anstruther asked. “What do you mean?”

  “She sits in the dark, up in that room. And she stays away from our sitting room downstairs here. Why, the first night she was here, I went past her door at eight, and she was sitting in the dark, and again last night. You can see the crack of light under that door when it’s on inside the room, you know.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mrs. Prandell, “she goes to bed early.”

  “Not that early, surely. At least, she’d turn on the light to prepare for bed, and she didn’t, I know because I went up to my room for a handkerchief last night just a minute after she came in, and she was in the dark in there.”

  “How strange,” said Miss Wheeler. “Mrs. Prandell, did she say anything to you that would explain…?”

  Mrs. Prandell shook her head wonderingly.

  “What could explain it?” Miss Games asked.

  Mr. Anstruther cleared his throat pontifically. “Oh, there are any number of possible explanations. I could think of half a dozen offhand. She might have trouble with her eyes, for one thing, and be ordered by a doctor to avoid electric lights.”

  “Then wouldn’t she wear dark glasses—at least, when she wasn’t in her room?” asked Miss Gaines. “No, it couldn’t be that, Mr. Anstruther. Why, last night, when she was coming down the stairs she stopped to think, part way down, as though she was deciding whether to go back or go on, and she was staring right into the bright light at the foot of the stairs while she stood there. She wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Or perhaps,” said Mr. Anstruther, “she is afraid, hiding from someone. And hers is a
front room. Yes, I know there’s a shade on the window. Does the shade work properly, Mrs. Prandell?”

  “I believe so, I’ll check tomorrow.”

  “Or perhaps,” said Mr. Anstruther, “she is a religious fanatic, given to meditation whenever alone…. No, I don’t really think that, I was just suggesting possibilities.”

  “And you have three to go,” said Miss Gaines. “You said you could think of half a dozen.”

  “Perhaps she works or is associated with blind people, or expects to be. She is learning, deliberately, to get their point of view, as it were, by practicing being blind when she is alone.”

  “She isn’t working with or for the blind,” said Mrs. Prandell. “She isn’t working at all. And she volunteers no information about herself.”

  “She could avoid the window,” said Miss Wheeler, “without having to stay in the dark. Even if the shade is broken.”

  “Number five,” said Mr. Anstruther. “She is a believer in spirits. She is trying to establish contact with someone she loved who has just died. Perhaps she thinks she has powers as a medium. And darkness is conducive—”

  The outer door opened, and Miss Wheeler, seated at the end of the table opposite Mrs. Prandell’s end, turned her head so she could see into the hallway. She turned back and whispered, “Here comes Miss Darkness now,” and nothing more was said until they had heard her footsteps go on up the stairs.

  Miss Gaines pushed her chair a little. She said, “I do believe—”

  “That you have forgotten your handkerchief, again,” said Mr. Anstruther. “Am I right, Miss Gaines?”

  There was a general laugh at the table, and Miss Gaines reddened very slightly, but she went upstairs. When she came back, everyone at the table looked at her, and she nodded.

  There was a moment’s silence after that and before the topic was reopened, young Mr. Barry came in, which was a shame. Mrs. Prandell’s boarders hadn’t had so mystifying a thing to talk about in years.

  That was Thursday. On Friday at the earlier of the two breakfast times Miss Wheeler glanced across the table at Mr. Anstruther and said, “Have you heard the latest about the bank robbery last Tuesday?”

  “No, Miss Wheeler. What is it?”

  “One of the two bandits was caught at the time, you know, and the other got away—with the money. Now they think a woman drove the getaway car.”

  “Indeed?” said Mr. Anstruther, and his graying, bushy eyebrows rose a full centimeter. “And do they have a description of the woman?”

  Mr. Barry put down his fork.

  “No,” said Miss Wheeler, and you could tell there was disappointment in her voice. “The witness who thinks he saw the car start up, around the corner from the bank, was quite a distance from it. He thinks that it was a young woman, though.”

  “Indeed?” said Mr. Anstruther, more hopefully. “And that was Tuesday afternoon, was it not?”

  Mr. Barry asked, “What do you mean by that, Mr. Anstruther?”

  Mr. Anstruther’s eyebrows climbed back down again. But before he could formulate an answer, Miss Gaines saved the day by asking for details of just what had happened during the robbery; she hadn’t read about it.

  “Two men entered the bank, with guns,” explained Miss Wheeler. “They wore masks; they must have put them on in the entryway, between the inner doors and the outer doors. One of them had a small valise and they held up the bank and put all the bills from the cashiers’ cages into it, and got away—got outside, anyway. Of course the alarm went in while they were leaving.”

  “And one was caught right outside?”

  “Not right outside, no. But the police cars, closing in, picked up a man known to be a bank robber two blocks away, on foot. One of the police recognized him. He had a gun, although he’d got rid of the mask, and he wasn’t the one who had the satchel of money. They arrested him, of course, and they’re holding him, but only on the charge of having the gun; they can’t prove any more than that, unless they can find the other man—or the woman.”

  “And this witness?” asked Mr. Anstruther, glad that attention had been diverted from his remark about Tuesday.

  “Someone the police found the next day. A man who, from some distance, remembers seeing a man carrying a small satchel get into a car parked around the corner from the bank, right after the holdup. He says there was a woman behind the wheel, but he couldn’t identify either man or woman. But the police figure the two men split up right outside the bank, one going one way and the other—the one with the money—to where a getaway car had been waiting. That, I believe, is what they call it—a getaway car.”

  Mr. Barry smiled at her. He said, “Yes, Miss Wheeler. That’s what they call it. I think you missed your vocation, Miss Wheeler.”

  “That isn’t true, Mr. Barry. I would have made a very poor detective, if that’s what you meant.”

  Mr. Barry smiled at her and stood up. He said, “You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Prandell? And, Miss Wheeler, that wasn’t what I meant.”—

  That night after dinner, Mr. Barry sat on the porch steps until the others had gone to their rooms, except Mr. Anstruther, who went downtown to a movie.

  Miss Darkness, he thought, that’s what they call her.

  Oddly, the name seemed, to him, to fit quite well without a sinister connotation. Miss Darkness, with dark hair and dark eyes.

  But, too, there was a dark mystery. Why did she sit in darkness, evening after evening? It wasn’t because she retired right away; she’d been heard moving about the room. Hiding?

  Mr. Barry rose from the steps and strolled down to the corner and back so he could see her window without seeming to. It was dark all right, and the shade was down. But the shade alone would have been sufficient, especially for a second-floor room.

  He saw a cat padfoot across the shadowed yard. Cats, he thought, see in darkness. And he could think of Mary Westerman as a cuddly kitten, if not a cat, but that still explained nothing. Surely she could not actually see in the dark….

  Saturday morning, in the sitting room, Miss Gaines watched Miss Darkness go out to eat her lunch, wherever she ate it. Then Miss Games strode resolutely into Mrs. Prandell’s kitchen.

  “She just went out,” Miss Gaines said. By this time, of course, the pronoun needed no antecedent.

  Mrs. Prandell glanced at the clock. “Well, it’s almost noon. She always goes out a while at this time, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, but—Far be it from me, Mrs. Prandell, to suggest snooping, but have you thought that she really might be—somebody dangerous to have around? What if she has the money from that bank robbery, for instance?”

  “She hasn’t, Miss Gaines. Don’t you think that I didn’t—for the protection of all of us—search her room and her belongings the first chance, after what Miss Wheeler told us.”

  Miss Gaines leaned forward eagerly. “And—?”

  “Just a few cheap things in a dime-store cardboard suitcase. That’s all. But just the same she’s leaving Tuesday, when her week is up. I don’t like mysteries, Miss Gaines. I won’t take another week’s rent from her.”

  “I’m glad of that, Mrs. Prandell.” Miss Gaines leaned forward confidentially. “Did Mr. Anstruther tell you? About yesterday?”

  “No. What?”

  “Why, he just happened to leave here, at noon, about the time she did. Just after her. He was walking right behind her for several blocks. Then she turned around and saw him and acted as though she thought she was being followed. She stared at him and then turned a corner and walked fast and was out of sight by the time he got to the corner.”

  Mrs. Prandell sniffed. “Just what I’d have thought,” she said. “Well, after next Tuesday—”

  It was that night, Saturday night, that Mr. Barry passed up his dinner in order to be sitting on the porch steps when Miss Darkness went out.

  “Good evening,” he said. “Beautiful night out.” It wasn’t; it wasn’t actually raining, but the sky was a bit cloudy and the air was hot and muggy.<
br />
  She actually smiled at him, but she answered briefly and went on before he could think of what to say, or ask, next. He watched as she went on down the street, and saw that she looked around behind her, twice. He thought, something is wrong; she’s afraid of something. She’s in danger, somehow.

  It was Sunday evening that Death came to Mrs. Prandell’s rooming house. It rang the doorbell at eight forty-five.

  Mrs. Prandell was just coming into the sitting room from the kitchen when the bell rang. Mr. Anstruther and Mr. Barry had both stood up to go to answer the door, but she said, “I’ll get it,” and walked on past them. Miss Gaines put down her magazine to listen.

  They heard the door open and Mrs. Prandell’s voice say, “Yes?” and a lower, nimbly voice say, “I’m William Thorber, city detective. Do you have a Melissa Carey staying here?”

  Nobody in the living room made a sound. They heard Mrs. Prandell say, “Not under that name, Mr. Thorber. But—Won’t you come in?”

  The detective said, “Thank you,” and came in. Mr. Barry stood up again, then, and started for the hallway, but Mrs. Prandell and Mr. Thorber were heading for the sitting room, he saw, and he sat back down again.

  Mrs. Prandell said, “We do have a mysterious young lady here whom we—well, whom we suspect of not using her right name. Will you tell us something of this—uh—Melissa Carey? She might be the one. And won’t you sit down, Mr. Thorber?”

  “Thank you, Mrs.—”

  “Prandell.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Prandell. Melissa Carey is five-five, slender, dark, twenty-three.”

  “Miss Darkness,” said Miss Gaines, a bit breathlessly. “I was sure, Mrs. Prandell, that—“

  “Darkness?” the detective interrupted. “Is that actually the name she gave?”

  “No, Mr. Thorber,” said Mrs. Prandell. “She is using the name Mary Westerman. We call her Miss Darkness because she always sits in the dark upstairs.”

  “Sits in the dark?” Mr. Thorber frowned. “I don’t see—Uh, when did she come here?”

  “Late Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after the bank robbery downtown. Is she wanted in connection with that, Mr. Thorber? Is she the woman who drove the getaway car? We read about that, of course.”