Death Has a Small Voice

by Frances Lockridge

“Doesn’t make much difference, does it,” Sven Helder asked her, slowly, making cautious approach. He stopped ten inches below the floor level. “Go too high she can jam,” he said.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” Pam said, and stepped up. “Ring when you want me,” Helder said, and sighed, and closed the sliding door. The elevator began to inch downward.

  Pam unlocked the double doors lettered “North Books, Inc.” She went into the dark offices—the almost dark offices. Some light sifted in from windows; in New York it is never wholly dark. The offices, as they always did, seemed much larger at night. Pam found herself, and this again as always, wondering who sat at the many desks and what they did at them. Ideas formed in a mind, and words were found for them; the ideas were communicated, in varying degrees of accuracy, to other minds. That was the gist of it; but between, many people sat at many desks, and at machines, too. Tall filing cases, like those near the door, were filled with—with what? Pam turned on lights. She went among the desks to Jerry’s book-lined office in a corner. She turned on lights there.

  She could play back from Jerry’s recorder, instead of from the other thing, whatever it was, on Miss Corning’s desk. That way, Pam thought, she wouldn’t have to use the earphones. Earphones made her feel shut in.

  She found the recorder. She took the record from its envelope and dropped the envelope, absently, in a wastepaper basket. She put the record on the turntable and set it going. There was only a faint hum, first. Then there was a voice; a woman’s voice. It was faint, as if the speaker had failed to hold the microphone close enough to lips. Yet it was distinct, and for all the present smallness of the captured sound, Pam felt that the voice itself had been raised, excited.

  “You must be crazy,” the voice said. “Why would I—?”

  “Because you have no choice,” another voice said.

  A man had spoken this time; spoken sharply, breaking in. His voice, also, had been raised; it had an oddly metallic texture, but that might be the machine’s distortion. There was a moment’s pause. Then the woman laughed. The laughter seemed high to Pam North, listening; seemed too high by far.

  “You’ll huff and you’ll puff,” the voice said. “You’ll blow the girl down.”

  “More,” the man said. “Much more, if necessary.”

  “Really,” the woman said. “You’ve lost your mind, haven’t you? Megalomania, isn’t it? To save your withered little ego you want me—My God!”

  “We’re not going over that again,” the man said, rhyming the word with “rain.” “If you need the money, I’ll make good what you’d lose.”

  “Everything else aside, how would you know?” the woman asked. “How would anybody? And what’s that got to do with it? I’ve spent a year on it. More than a year. Count all the time it was happening. All the time you—”

  “We’ve been over that,” the man’s voice said, cutting in again, now harsh. “You made yourself clear. You’re very good at that sort of thing.”

  “Clarity,” she said. “The fine edge of clarity, remember? Too fine an edge, I gather. Too—”

  “I want the copies,” the man said. “Damn you, if you think—”

  “See my agent,” the woman said, and laughed again.

  He said, “Don’t laugh!” He must have spoken very loudly. “I tell you, quit laughing!”

  “The withered little ego!” the woman said. “The poor, trembling little man! When I remember—”

  “Don’t,” the man said. “I tell you—don’t!”

  “Pompous little man,” the woman said, and now her voice, also, was further raised—or she had moved nearer the microphone. “Frightened little man. Your reputation. Your precious little job. Oh, they’ll laugh, all right. Don’t think they won’t laugh. They’ll say, ‘You know who he is, don’t you? He’s the one who doesn’t come up smiling. He’s the prating, sniveling little man who couldn’t—’”

  “That was a lie,” the man said. He called her a name. His voice was high, violent.

  “Suppose it was?” she said. “Literally, a lie. Essentially, the truth. Call it a symbol. You talked about symbols, remember? I didn’t forget.” She laughed again.

  Then there was a moment of silence before the man spoke once more. His voice now had a strange timbre; there was a curious detachment in his voice; it was almost, Pam thought, as if he spoke to ears which could no longer hear him speak.

  “I told you not to laugh,” the man said. “Remember, I told you that. I gave you a chance, remember. I—”

  The man’s voice was harsh, monotonous. It did not, in tone, threaten. But the woman screamed.

  It was a tiny, faraway scream, as it came from the record—a thin scream; it was as if a doll had screamed.

  “It will be like killing a snake,” the man said, in the same harsh, uninflected voice. “A small, bright, deadly snake.”

  “You ca—” the woman’s voice said, and then there was a harsh, guttural sound—a sound made uglily of effort and of pain; perhaps of terror. There was no other sound for a minute or more. Then there was a sharp sound as if something of metal, or perhaps of glass, had fallen against a surface equally hard.

  After that, there was only the low humming of the machine, as the record turned slowly on its table. No other sound came from the record.

  Pamela North stood and watched the record turn; stood and waited for the voices to resume; stood and after a moment began to tremble a little, thinking that she had heard murder. She stopped the little machine, then. She took the record from it, and held the record in both hands and looked at it. It was only a little record. From a record like that one might hear a song.

  It was while she stood so, holding the record, that Pam heard a sound from the outer office. It was a small sound; it was as if someone, moving carefully, had touched the back of a chair, and moved it against another chair, or against a desk. Pam turned toward the door she had left open behind her.

  As she turned, the lights went off in the outer office.

  Pam was quick, then. She was quick to the light switch by the door. After she had flicked it down she stood motionless, in semi-darkness, wishing it a deeper darkness. She listened, and heard no further sound. She tried to make her breathing soundless.

  When still there was no repeated sound from the outer office, and in its shadow no movement, Pam thought that she might have been wrong. There had been someone there, of course. Someone had put out the lights. But could that have been Sven Helder, not—not the man whose voice had talked of killing? Perhaps he had come to get her, seen the lights on and not seen her, turned off the lights to go grumbling down again. Perhaps—

  She should, she realized, have remembered the telephone sooner. She lifted it, now, and started to dial a familiar number before she realized there was no tone.

  As she realized this, she realized, too, that there would not be. There would be a light on the switchboard in the receptionist’s cubbyhole by the door. There would be nothing else. If she was to use the telephone, she must reach the switchboard. But to reach it, she must cross the outer office. If she got that far, she would have a chance to run for it.

  She waited for several more minutes, as motionless, as quiet, as she could wait—as acutely listening. There was no sound from the outer office. She thought of the washroom off Jerry’s office as a hiding place; at once rejected it as a trap. She must get out.

  She moved, then. Her shoes were quickly removed, held in her hands. On stockinged feet she went softly through the door from Jerry’s office and then, instead of crossing the outer office directly, along the wall to her right. She would move a few feet and then stop, to listen. And now, somewhere—it seemed everywhere—she could hear the breathing of another person.

  She had been standing by Miss Corning’s desk, her hands resting lightly on it. Then she crouched a little, made herself small, strained eyes and ears, moved in little steps toward safety. She moved among other desks, around them, feeling each desk as somehow a barrier to pursui
t. She moved with each step nearer the door, and safety.

  She was almost at the door, could almost reach it, when she heard footsteps behind her. He had been waiting—and she knew it now too late—in the concealment of high, metal filing cases. She tried to turn.

  She was not quick enough.

  Sven Helder turned his copy of Time magazine upside-down on the table in front of him, extracted his large watch from a pocket, and looked at the watch. As he had known it would, the watch showed the hour to be ten-thirty. Mr. Helder picked up Time magazine, closed it, and put it in the drawer of the table. He looked at the ledger in front of him and re-informed himself that, Mrs. Gerald North had gone up at 2132—Helder was a retired chief petty officer, and liked a log kept in a ship-shape manner—and had not come down. Helder sighed deeply and shook his head heavily. It was like them.

  She knew, she had been there often enough to know, that the building closed at ten-thirty. The front doors were locked, then. Helder made his final rounds then. After them he had his sandwiches and coffee; after that he went to sleep in his room in the basement. These things happened nightly, except on Sunday. Mrs. Gerald North knew that as well as anyone. It was merely that she was, after all, like the rest of them. She had no regard for regulations.

  Helder got up heavily and went to the elevator. He clanged the door closed and started it up; at the fourth floor, he clanged the door open. If she hadn’t heard the elevator by now, she wouldn’t hear anything. Nevertheless, he yelled, “Hey, Mrs. North!” Nobody answered.

  Helder made a remark under his breath, ran the elevator to floor level—he wasn’t going to step up—and went to the closed doors of North Books, Inc. There was no light showing through the glass panels. Nevertheless, he pushed at the doors and found them unlocked. He poked his head into the dark offices, and again called Pamela North. But by then he knew what had happened.

  She had gone down the stairs, instead of ringing for him. She must have gone—let’s see now. She must have gone when, about ten, he’d gone down to the head for a minute. Anyway, she clearly wasn’t there now.

  He closed the door to North Books, Inc., and locked it, as Mrs. North had neglected to do. He went back to the elevator and trundled it down. He supposed she had meant all right; probably she’d meant to save him a trip. She was like that. But she ought to have remembered that he’d have to check up on her unless she signed herself out. Well—there you were. Even the best of them.

  He looked at his log when he was back at the table. He knew he had not made a mistake, and he hadn’t. Mrs. North had not signed herself out. He shook his head over this. He would have thought better of her. He went to the double doors of the building. He stepped out of them and stood just outside for a moment. It was a pleasant night, warm for late October. Not that the weather was to be trusted, in the fall. It would snow any day now.

  He watched a station wagon pull away from the curb two doors down the street. He looked east and west along the street, and saw no one. He went back inside and locked the doors behind him. He started on his last round of the night.

  III

  Tuesday, October 28:10 A.M. to 2:25 P.M.

  Acting Captain William Weigand sat in his small office, at his rather battered desk, in the West Twentieth Street station house, and dealt with routine. There was not, and had not been for several months, much that was not routine. People continued to kill other people, of course. They killed with guns. In certain areas they killed with knives. They killed with blackjacks, and with the leather of shoes and sometimes with their fists. They left bodies on the streets, and in the parks and in the North and East rivers. By and large, they were caught, or would be caught. By and large, they were taken care of on the precinct level.

  The takings off were, nevertheless, part of the routine of Homicide, West. Reports came in; reports were read, initialed, passed along. Reports passed over Weigand’s desk, found their way to the desk of Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley; went on from there, through channels, to files. Excitement was no part of it; imagination did not enter in. Fingerprints and laundry marks, known associates, known methods, known feuds, most of all informers—these things entered in, made up the routine. These things made it hard to get away with murder.

  It had been a light night. There had been a knifing in Harlem, solved already. There had been a brawl in a Village bar and it had ended in homicide—homicide not intended, hardly realized. And the Hudson had given up a body.

  The last alone awaited solution. The body had not yet been identified. It was that of a small man in his thirties—five-feet-six, one hundred thirty-five, brown hair and eyes, scar (probably old gunshot wound) upper right chest; no recent dental work, and a good deal needed; brown suit from a Broadway clothier, no cleaner’s marks; blue shirt, cuffs frayed, laundry mark being checked; brown shoes, recently half-soled; blue socks. No hat found with body. Fingerprints being checked.

  Bill Weigand initialed the report, consigned it to an out basket. Sergeant Aloysius Mullins came in and said, “Morning, Loot, I mean Captain. Got an identification on the North River one.”

  “Right,” Bill said, and reached for the report. Mullins gave it to him, and crossed the room to his own desk.

  The small man with the gunshot scar had been Harry Eaton, burglar by occupation and no master of his trade. He had been thirty-two years old. He had spent seven years of the last ten in jail, and had been on parole when he died. He had been three times convicted of felonies; another conviction would have meant life imprisonment. That, at any rate, no longer hung over the bruised head of little Harry Eaton. He had died of strangulation, having first been knocked unconscious by a blow behind the right ear. He had been throttled. And that was uncharacteristic. Reading it, Bill Weigand said, “Hm-m.”

  “Yeah,” Mullins said, from his desk. “You’ve got to where somebody used his hands.”

  Bill nodded. They did not need to discuss the minor oddity of that. Men like Eaton were never good life risks; they fell into bad company. They rather often got themselves killed—they went out of their rackets, they held out on a split, they threatened to pass on information. For such misdemeanors they were often beaten, sometimes fatally. They were sometimes shot. But it did not often happen that someone put hands on their throats, and squeezed life out of them. This is an awkward way of murder; a blackjack is handier and, unless circumstances make so noisy a method undesirable, a gun is handier still. Strangulation—except, of course, in the case of “muggers,” where murder is incidental—is a method of amateurs, and violent ones at that.

  However, it was not much to go on. Eaton remained routine. Bill took the first report out of the basket, clipped the identification report to it, and put both back in.

  “He lived down on Sullivan Street,” Mullins said. “Two-room, cold water, fifth floor. The precinct boys have been around.”

  Bill Weigand waited. There was more coming.

  “Coupla funny things,” Mullins said. “One, he’d stolen a dictating machine somewhere. Thing you dictate into. Funny thing to steal.”

  Nothing, Bill reminded him, was a funny thing to steal; not for a man like Eaton. Men like Eaton picked up what they could find, and disposed of it where they could. But Mullins did not need to be told this, and Bill Weigand continued to wait.

  “Well,” Mullins said, “seems like Eaton had written a book. About how he’d been a burglar.”

  “My God!” Bill said.

  “Yeah,” Mullins said. “Like that. Seems he sent it to two-three publishers and they all turned it down.”

  “Go on,” Weigand said.

  “Yeah,” Mullins said. “That’s right. Mr. North was one of them. There was a letter from him in Eaton’s place.”

  Bill Weigand said, “Oh.”

  “So there you are,” Mullins said. “I thought I’d better tell you.”

  Bill Weigand nodded. He said, “Right.” He stood up.

  “Well,” he said, “what are we waiting for, Sergeant?�
��

  Mullins couldn’t think of anything.

  Three cats yammered at Martha. They sat and yammered; they clawed at her skirt and yammered; they reared themselves against kitchen counters and spoke their anger and chagrin in the harsh accents of cats with blue eyes and masked faces. They spoke of neglect, of the collapse of the routine by which a cat prefers to live; they spoke of hunger. Most of all, they spoke of hunger.

  “What’s the matter with you cats?” Martha asked them, hanging her coat in the kitchen closet “What’s all the fussin’?”

  Spoken to, the three cats raised their voices in answer. Martini went to an empty tin pie plate and put her foot on it; Gin leaped to the counter which contained small cans of prepared beef, for juniors, and pointed at the cans. Sherry sang a dirge, in a voice pitched higher than the other voices.

  “Now that’s funny,” Martha told the cats. “You know you’ve had your breakfast. You’re trying to put one over.”

  They weren’t, the cats said. Had breakfast indeed! They had never eaten.

  “Well,” Martha said, and stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked around. “It is funny.”

  Their food pan was empty. That could be explained. They had eaten their breakfast and forgotten it. But their water bowl also was empty, and they would not have drunk a bowl of water since breakfast. And Mrs. North would not have forgotten; Mrs. North now and then forgot things—to order steel wool, for example. But she did not forget cats.

  Martha said “hm-m-m” and went in search. The search did not take long. Mrs. North was not in the apartment. And—she had been. She had got home from the country.

  Her week-end case, still packed, stood on the bedroom floor. But neither bed had been occupied. Martha said “hm-m-m” again and then, to the cats who followed her, “All right, come on.” She fed the cats. They ate with fervor. Martha watched them; she had been wrong to think they had been trying to put one over. They had been hungry cats. Martini stopped midway, hurried to the water bowl, lapped anxiously, hurried back, found her place again at the tin pie pan. Thirsty cats, too. Hm-m-m.