Mostly Murder

by Fredric Brown

  He reached out and caught her wrist, pulled her into his lap and kissed her soundly.

  (And this, Ginny thought, is the time I should take him to task for lying to me. About the cupboard last night and—But he didn’t really he, did he? No, he just didn’t tell all the truth, and that’s not quite as bad. But—Dirk, can’t we be frank with one another?)

  But she didn’t say any of it. Dirk had stopped kissing her and his voice was very serious.

  He said, “Ginny”—and it was seldom he called her that instead of Angel—“you do know the whole story about this house now. That Mrs. Pratt told you. Are you still sure you want to live here?”

  “Yes,” said Ginny, and again a bit fiercely, “yes. It’s our house, Dirk, ours! If we’d rented it, it might be different. But we’re going to stay here, forever.”

  And she jumped up from his lap and ran out into the kitchen to get supper ready for them.

  It was getting dark out, and she turned on the kitchen light and scurried about getting the salad put together.

  Dirk was an awful dear not to complain when she treated him like this, and from now on she’d keep things on hand so he could have a real meal, even if she didn’t have time to go to the store.

  When they had eaten, Dirk yawned and stood up. He said, “Well, Angel, guess I’ll pop over to see Walter Mills and get that pistol. He’s letting me have it for twenty bucks.”

  “Could—could you teach me how to shoot?”

  “Why not? We can set up a little range in the basement. I’d like a spot of practice myself. I’ll take the car and be back in—oh, an hour and a half at most.”

  Ginny washed the dishes and straightened up the kitchen as soon as he’d left, and that still gave her an hour to wait before he’d return. Or maybe he’d be later than he said, if he stopped to talk. Who was this Walter Mills? She hadn’t heard his name mentioned before.

  She went into the living room and sat down in the Morris chair. It was becoming Dirk’s favorite chair, and she’d resolved to sit in it only when he wasn’t there. Giving it up to him when he was there gave her a comfortable feeling of being a dutiful wife. After all, a man should have a chair all his own.

  The book—a mystery novel—was still on the arm where Dirk had left it. She opened it to the first page and tried to read, but found that the words didn’t mean anything to her.

  She sighed, put the book down again, and let herself think.

  Was there money hidden in the house? If so, it wasn’t hers or Dirk’s, and it wouldn’t do them any good to find it, because they’d have to turn it over to the police, so why was Dirk so interested?

  But wait—it would do good to find it.

  Of course—that was why Dirk was hunting for it! There wouldn’t be any danger, then. They’d give it to the police, and be sure that the story got in the papers, all the papers. And that man would read it, and he’d know the money wasn’t here and there wouldn’t be any reason for his coming back, ever.

  Of course! The end of danger, the end of worry and fear, if the money was found. (Dirk, now I understand. You knew that, but you didn’t talk about it because you didn’t want to scare me about the danger while the money might still be here.)

  But where would it be hidden? Could she find it, where the police and Dirk had failed? Well, she had one edge on them; she was a woman, and the money had been hidden by a woman. She said, “Let’s see, let’s pretend I’ve got some money I want to hide.”

  And she closed her eyes. A compartment in a cupboard, or something built into a wall? No, because I’d have to have someone build it for me and then I wouldn’t be the only one who knew. I can’t use tools, so probably poor Mrs. Cartwright couldn’t.

  But I wouldn’t just put it in a drawer. I wouldn’t put it in a mattress or anything like that because that’s where somebody would look first. I think I’d hide it down in the cellar somewhere. I don’t know just why, but a cellar seems somehow permanent. There seems more security in something hidden in a cellar, doesn’t there?

  Ginny got up out of the Morris chair and went through the kitchen to the head of the stairs leading down to the basement, and turned on the lights down there. And slowly, thoughtfully, went down the steep steps, looking around.

  In or around the furnace? Oh, no, there’s heat there. I wouldn’t want my money to burn or to char from heat. Well away from the furnace.

  Those dusty shelves? There were some old cans standing on them, things left there that hadn’t been thrown out yet. In one of these cans, maybe? No, I wouldn’t put it there, she thought. Because a can might get thrown out by mistake when I wasn’t around.

  But just the same, Ginny went over and looked at the shelf. There was a paint can, with the lid stuck on so tightly that she couldn’t get it off, and it wouldn’t be in there anyway. There was a little paint sloshing around in it, and she wouldn’t put money in a messy paint can anyway.

  The next can had some nails in it, rusty second-hand nails that had been salvaged and saved.

  The next can—why, that was a new one! Dirk must have put it there. The label was turned the other way, and in idle curiosity she picked it up, The lid was loose and fell off as she took it down off the shelf.

  And then, with horrid fascination, she was staring into the white powder that filled the can three-fourths of the way up, and she knew somehow what it was even before she turned it around to read the label. Lye.

  What on earth had Dirk been doing with lye?

  And then, because it was important that she have an answer to that at once, she stood there until she found it. Of course—he’d been here alone the second day, while she’d been downtown buying curtains. And he’d cleaned out the basement here with a hose.

  And he must have had trouble with the drain, and got some lye from the store and fixed it. Of course.

  And he hadn’t mentioned it to her because of the horrible connotation that lye had, in that house they lived in. Probably he’d intended to throw out the rest of it, and that was why he hadn’ bothered to put the lid on tightly again.

  Her hand shook a little as she put the can back on the shelf.

  And besides, it would take more than one can of lye to—

  But she caught herself up quickly before her mind could complete that hideous thought.

  (Dirk, why don’t you hurry? Come back quickly, my dear, so I won’t think the things I’m thinking. So I won’t keep remembering now that I’ve known you only a month, and that I’ve never known much about your affairs, and that you found this house and brought me to it. And that you knew better when I called Mrs. Pratt by the wrong name, and that you’ve avoided meeting her, and that the agent you bought the house from hadn’t known him.)

  (And, Dirk, that you’re slender and within half an inch of being five feet eleven, and that you didn’t mention buying lye, and you didn’t tell me why you were searching the house.)

  (Come back quickly, Dirk, so I can look at you and know how silly all of that is.)

  That was part of Ginny’s mind, and the rest of it was frantically following her eyes around the cellar, looking for a hiding place for money, a hiding place a woman might have used, that she, Ginny, would use.

  Concentrate on that to keep from thinking about the other.

  The meter box, there on the wall. Why not? It was metal, and it had a permanent look, and it was something a man wouldn’t think about because it belonged to the electric company and not to the house, and it had a hinged front. If inside it there was a place where—

  Ginny crossed to the box and opened it, and the money, of course, wasn’t there. A silly place, come to think of it; any meter reader might find it.

  But between the box and the wall? It didn’t look flush on one side, room even for the tips of Ginny’s fingers to reach in. They touched paper, but couldn’t pull it out.

  Up higher, and she found the top corner of whatever it was, pushed down gently, and it came out. A dirty white envelope, with something in it. And the s
omething proved to be banknotes, about twenty-or twenty-five of them, new, and in denominations Ginny had never seen before.

  And then suddenly she was aware that she was alone in the house, and with fingers that trembled she pushed the envelope back where it had been and hurried up the stairs to the living room.

  The clock showed her she’d been down there longer than she’d thought. It was time for Dirk to be back. (Dirk, please hurry. Why, tonight of all nights, did you stay to talk to your friend?)

  Maybe she could see his car coming now. Quickly she crossed over to the window that opened off the hall, the window that showed the vista toward town, the direction Dirk had gone.

  Up there past the first corner, opposite that patch of trees, there was a car parked at the curb. Half a block past Mrs. Pratt’s place. Odd that a car should stand there; there wasn’t a house within half a block of it. And it looked like Dirk’s car.

  But it couldn’t be. Why would he have parked it there?

  Moonlight shone brightly on the front of the car, but the back end of it was in the shadow of the trees. At that distance almost any sedan, she told herself, would look like Dirk’s. But—

  Dirk’s field glasses! She ran and got them, and peered at the car through them. Yes, it was Dirk’s car.

  And Ginny, feeling cold all over, knew the terrible truth. Not the details yet. But the main point. Her wild guesses hadn’t been so wild. Dirk was—the man! The murderer. It all fitted now, almost.

  And there was only one thing to do. Feeling as though she were commanding somebody else’s body instead of her own, Ginny walked—she couldn’t run—to the telephone. She’d have to call the police, tell them she’d found the money and—to hurry.

  The receiver to her ear, she jiggled the hook nervously, waiting for the “Number, please,” that would let her ask for the police, quickly. But the “Number, please,” didn’t come, and it came to her slowly that there wasn’t the familiar buzzing sound of a live telephone connection.

  He’d cut the phone wire.

  Stunned, Ginny sat there by the phone for seconds before the hand holding the receiver dropped from her ear, and the receiver itself clattered to the floor.

  The noise it made frightened her. It reminded her that she was utterly alone. Or was she?

  Alone—or worse.

  Because she heard the footsteps now on the walk outside. Heavy footsteps of someone who made no effort to walk silently.

  Coming here. There wasn’t any house beyond this. Coming here. For the money? For her? For—

  The footsteps turned in at the walk, came up the wooden steps and resounded across the wooden porch, and the doorbell rang.

  Should she run, out the back door and across the back yard, across the field behind it, run—?

  But her feet were taking her, instead, to the side window of the porch, whence she could see without being seen. She peered through the curtain, and then sobbing with relief ran to open the door.

  It wasn’t Dirk. It was a policeman, and never before had she been so glad to see a blue uniform.

  He took off his hat a bit awkwardly and said, “You’re Mrs. Rogers? The chief told me to stop in. Is your husband—”

  She didn’t let him finish. “I’ve found the money! The money Mrs.—Mrs. Cartwright hid.” And in breathless haste, her words were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to get it out, because now she was safe.

  “…down cellar. Come on and I’ll show you, and then—you can go with me to headquarters and we can turn it in, and—”

  Her heels clicked down the cellar stairs, and heavier footsteps followed and the envelope with the money in it was in her hand and she gave it to him. And caught her breath—and lost it.

  Because the man in the uniform looked less and less like a policeman as she stared at him. He was just under six feet tall, and he’d looked heavy, but she could see now in the light that that was because the shoulders of his coat were thickly padded.

  He stood there right under the light, looking into the envelope with greedy eyes, and she could see that there was make-up on his face. He stuffed the envelope into his pocket and turned to her.

  Ginny screamed, because there was murder in his eyes.

  There was a service revolver bolstered at his belt, but he didn’t reach for it. His hands were reaching for her throat, and he was between her and the stairway.

  She backed away, and he came on. In a moment now, she’d be backed into a corner and it would be over with. She backed away, and then she couldn’t back any farther because something was against her shoulder blades.

  The shelf. And with desperate hope, her hand closed around the can. The lye.

  His hands were almost on her throat when she threw it, can and all, with the white powder flaring out of the open can, into his face. Into his eyes.

  And it was his turn to scream, then, a scream of agony as he backed away. Too blinded with pain now to think of anything else, and unresisting as Ginny’s trembling hands got the gun from his holster….

  Dawn was different. She was sitting beside Dirk’s bed in the hospital, and he was conscious now, and even cheerful, although he was careful how he moved his head.

  His story had been told now. On his way back from Walter’s house, and a block and a half from home, a policeman had waved him to the curb. He’d obeyed and the policeman had come up and slugged him with a blackjack before he could even raise a hand to defend himself.

  And Ginny and the real police finished the story for him from there. Dirk had been tied and gagged, shoved down out of sight in the back of the car and Cartwright had come on to the house. Probably his original intention had been to overcome Ginny and tie her up, then have a full night to search the place at his leisure. He’d known that the house, unoccupied, had been watched. But he’d waited his first opportunity once they’d moved in and the police surveillance was lessened….

  “But, Angel,” Dirk said, wincing as he moved his head to look up at her again, “I know you did swell, and you’re a heroine and I was a washout. But aren’t you getting your story confused? You said once that you knew right away he wasn’t really a policeman and you figured your only chance was down there—where you could get at the lye while he was opening the envelope. And then something about being so glad to see him that—”

  Ginny put her fingers across his lips. “Doctor said you mustn’t talk too much, Dirk.”

  Yes, she realized she had got a bit mixed up in telling it. But there was one part Dirk must never know. She must never let him know what she had suspected and then actually thought during those awful moments before the killer came. She’d have to get her story straight so he’d never catch her out on that.

  “Of course I knew right away, Dirk. I mean, when I went to the door. But first I looked out the window, and I didn’t know then and that was when I thought he was a real policeman and I’d just found the money so I was glad. And out the window I saw—”

  “My car? Didn’t you see it parked down there?”

  “I saw a car,” said Ginny, “but I didn’t guess it was yours.” And she resolved to put the field glasses away quickly, the moment she got home, before he could find she’d used them.

  And then, because he was going to ask another question, she bent down and kissed him, and there were tears of penitence in her eyes.

  She said, “Oh, Dirk, let’s not talk about it any more. It’s all over, and it’s our place now, and I’ll never be afraid again.”

  And she thought, “I’ll have to be such a good wife to him to make up for those suspicions I had. And he’ll never know.” And she smiled, because a rather silly pun had just popped into her head: a little white lye had saved her life last night; and from now on a little white lie would help keep her marriage happy. Dirk would never, never know.

  The Dangerous People

  MR. BELLEFONTAINE SHIVERED a little, standing there on the edge of the platform of the little railroad station. The weather was cool enough, but it wasn�
�t the cold that made him shiver. It was that distant siren sounding off again. A far, faint wail in the night—the wail of a tortured fiend.

  He’d heard it first half an hour before, while he’d been getting a haircut in the little one-man barber shop on the main street of this little one-horse town. And the barber had told him what it was.

  “But that’s five miles away,” he told himself. It didn’t relieve his mind, though. A strong, desperate man could travel five miles in less than an hour, and anyway, maybe he’d escaped some time before they’d missed him. He must have; if they’d seen him go, they could probably have caught him.

  Maybe, even, he’d escaped this afternoon, and had been free for hours. What time was it now? Not much after seven, and his train didn’t get here until almost eight. Got dark early these days.

  Mr. Bellefontaine had walked a bit too rapidly from the barber shop to the station, more rapidly than a man who has asthma should. The steps up to the station platform had taken what little wind remained in him and he had put down his brief case to rest a moment before he crossed the platform to the station.

  He was still breathing hard, but thought he could make the rest of the distance now and get in out of the darkness. He picked up the brief case and was almost startled by its unaccustomed weight, until he remembered the revolver that was in it.

  Odd for him, of all people, to be carrying a revolver—even one unloaded and wrapped in paper, with the box of cartridges for it wrapped separately and in the other compartment of the case. But Mr. Murgatroyd, the client he had come out here to see on legal business, had asked him as a personal favor to take the gun back to Milwaukee with him and give it to his, Mr. Murgatroyd’s brother, to whom Mr. Murgatroyd had promised it.

  “Awfully difficult thing to ship,” Murgatroyd had said. “Wouldn’t know how to send it, parcel post or freight or what. Might even be illegal to mail one; I don’t know.”