Psychomania: Killer Stories

by Stephen Jones

  But his manners were beautiful and she soon forgot the grossness of his exterior envelope as she rang for the tea and they chatted like old friends; for his own part Pizar was estimating the value of the documents, private papers and other debris of Leon Freitas’s long and rich life which had been left behind, much as the receding tide leaves its deposits on the shore, and his shrewd glance was raking across what seemed to be acres of shelving.

  In the meantime he munched delicately at the sandwiches, mentally cursing his hostess’s sparse appetite - the train journey had been long and slow, as is the Italian custom, and there had been no buffet car - tinkled his silver spoon against the rim of his china cup and listened to Mme Freitas’s small-talk with feigned interest. That had always been infallible in his line of business, especially with ladies from whom there was much to be hoped; so Albano Pizar, who had a thousand dreams riding on the wings of this interview, crossed his plump ankles encased in the silver-grey silk socks, nodded wisely from time to time and continued to rake the shelves with his seemingly lethargic gaze; estimating, assessing, scheming, devouring, while all the time he kept up the polished mechanisms of polite conversation expected in the world in which he usually moved.

  After the éclairs, which were more to Pizar’s taste, the talk passed almost imperceptibly to business, and at length, after more than two hours, to the subject of Pizar’s visit. Without raising too many hopes, said Mme Freitas - after all, none should know better than her visitor that the whole of her husband’s literary estate was committed to existing publishers - she had been able to scrape together some material; part of it previously unpublished. She did not know whether it might make a small volume, perhaps two, if he cared to take it on; she was sorry, it was all she could offer.

  Though seemingly calm, Pizar was inwardly excited and hardly able to contain himself; his hopes had been rising throughout the interview. However, he remained master of his nerves, merely looked at his hostess with narrowed eyes and continued to puff with empty confidence at the cigar he had lit at Mme Freitas’s graciously extended permission. He was well aware, he said, of madame’s generosity; more than he could say. It would be impossible to know what might be made of the material without careful examination; could he borrow the documents if madame raised no objection?

  He had already engaged a room at a nearby hotel and intended to spend that evening in going through the papers to see what sort of book they would make. He would then call on madame the following day, if she were agreeable. He thanked her for her offer of accommodation at the Palazzo but the arrangement he had already made would do nicely; he had already taken up too much of her time. If he could have the material, he would take his leave and return the following afternoon.

  Mme Freitas agreed to Pizar’s proposals without raising any objection, much to the latter’s surprise; she excused herself for a moment and unlocked a drawer of the desk. She took out a red leather folder containing the documents in question; the clasp was locked. She handed the folder to Pizar, together with the key, enjoining him to take great care of the contents. Scarcely able to credit his good fortune Pizar stammered his thanks. Five minutes later, in Mme Freitas’s car on his way back to the hotel, he was unlocking the folder with trembling fingers.

  ~ * ~

  II

  Punctually at three the following afternoon Pizar was back at the Palazzo Tortini. The interview again took place in the great study where Mme Freitas worked. Pizar had spent long hours the previous evening on the contents of the folder, his heart sinking lower as the night progressed. A cursory examination of the original material had left him with very little hope that his visit had been successful; later and more detailed examination had confirmed it. He had returned to the Palazzo with a desperate plan half-formulated in his mind.

  The interview passed much as before, except that on this occasion Mme Freitas offered him stronger refreshment. Ice clinked coolly in the glasses and, as the oddly assorted couple discussed the possibilities for a book, Pizar awaited the opportunity which he knew must come if only he had the patience. So he spun out the conversation as long as he decently could; went into much pretend detail over the projected manuscript; world rights, royalties and so forth; and all the while as Mme Freitas bent over the desk, studying the legal points he had enumerated for her approval, his eyes were searching the crowded shelves.

  His chance came much sooner than he had supposed. The secretary appeared at the door of the study to say that Dr Manzanares had called to see madame; she hesitated a moment and then excused herself. To Pizar’s delight the secretary followed her, closing the door behind herself. Pizar sat very still, the drumming of his fingers on the surface of the desk the only outward sign of his nervous tension; he opened the red leather folder, left the key ready in the lock. His eyes once again raked the shelves, the red, the green, the blue and the yellow whirling into one blurred effect to his overheated gaze.

  He was still sitting at the desk, the folder locked, when Mme Freitas returned ten minutes later. She excused herself, with many apologies; asked if he would stay to tea. Pizar declined with thanks, glancing at his watch; it had been a great pleasure. He had much to do, but he would write. A few minutes later he had left, the leather folder clutched firmly under his arm, while Mme Freitas went back into the drawing room to attend to the needs of her second guest.

  Later that night, when Dr Manzanares telephoned the hotel, he was told that Pizar had left on the eight o’clock train. Doubtless he would be in Rome by this time. The doctor smiled grimly to himself. Doubtless. He consulted his watch, rummaged in his timetables. Pizar would have just made the connection for Paris. He drew the telephone towards him and dialled the Palazzo Tortini.

  The matter was serious enough; for, two hours after Albano Pizar had departed from the palace so hurriedly, Mme Freitas, returning to her study, had discovered that some of the files had been disarranged. Slowly, but with mounting alarm, she had gone through the documents with her secretary. A number were missing; the loss was not serious so far as their records were concerned. Mme Freitas had copies of everything on file. But most of the missing documents were letters Freitas had once written to a lady with whom he had become rashly involved; they were of a sensational nature and were marked not for publication during the lifetime of Mme Freitas.

  The implications were plain; by a lucky coincidence Pizar, the type of man for whom fortune occasionally relents, had lighted on the two files which were immediately saleable for his purposes. Mme Freitas turned white; she was a Sicilian and of proud stock. She had a long memory and a hard, unforgiving nature. She breathed in deeply when she saw the extent of the damage Pizar might be able to inflict, and Dr Manzanares was immediately recalled to the Palazzo. Then followed various phone calls culminating in the information that Pizar was presumably on the Paris express.

  Little could be done at that moment but what might be managed through legal and other channels was immediately put in hand; scandal threatened the great author’s reputation and Mme Freitas spent lavishly in order to bring Pizar’s plans to nothing. But he seemed to have disappeared; no information was forthcoming. There was silence for more than two months and then the explosion occurred.

  Despite the risk of libel, the copyright nature of the letters and the embargo on their publication, certain scandalous magazines, notably in London, Paris, and Rome, printed simultaneous articles on Freitas, obviously based on the contents of the letters. So carefully had the matter been dealt with that Mme Freitas’s legal advisers were powerless to act. The storm grew and the press were actually besieging the doors of the Palazzo at the height of the publicity.

  Mme Freitas, accompanied by Dr Manzanares, fled to a retreat in the Umbrian Hills until the clamour should have died away; in the meantime Pizar was interviewed on the television and radio channels of several European countries, more stories followed, and even learned and respectable journals in more than a dozen countries were running speculative artic
les on what had become one of the most interesting literary memoirs of the century. To all the publicity Mme Freitas maintained a deaf ear and a stone face. But she passed many hours of quiet reflection; she had been duped and exploited by a man of mean spirit to whom she had intended to do a kindness, and she could not and would not forget.

  She and Dr Manzanares, in their endless conferences, estimated that Pizar could not have made less than £25,000 to £30,000 out of the stolen letters and this fact burned with a sort of sullen inflammation in the widow’s mind. Pizar’s solicitors had eventually replied to her own lawyers and the ineffective exchanges of ponderously worded letters had dragged on over the months without coming to any definite conclusion. In the end Mme Freitas had given instructions that any projected suit should be dropped and the literary furore gradually died down.

  But Mme Freitas had not forgotten and she was dumbfounded to receive for her approval, some three months after this, proofs of the book Pizar had originally solicited from her. All during the long months of scandal and notoriety she and Pizar had never exchanged a letter and the receipt of the projected volume assumed an air of complete unreality in her mind. Dr Manzanares’s indignation had no end but he was completely stupefied when Mme Freitas merely initialled the proofs and sent them back to Pizar’s publishers. Surely Madame did not intend to let this unspeakable rascal exploit her further, he spluttered.

  But Mme. Freitas smiled a cold, quiet smile which promised many things and Dr Manzanares was persuaded into silence. The widow thought long on the topic. Like all Sicilians she had infinite patience and she waited with confidence for an opportunity to strike at the man who had done her family name such harm. In the event it was a whole year after the publication of the Pizar-inspired Freitas work before the widow made her move. In the meantime she had received a considerable sum in royalties from Pizar and a personal letter - the first since his flight from her house.

  He mentioned nothing but business matters, hoped she was well and rendered a strict account of all sales. He was her devoted servant, etc., etc. Mme Freitas smiled a colder smile than ever.

  A month later she replied. Dr Manzanares was never able to discover what she had written in the letter; it must have been couched in such subtle and enticing terms that Pizar could not, as a man of business, afford to ignore it. Even so, he must have sensed a considerable amount of danger in again venturing into the Palazzo Tortini and Dr Manzanares guessed that his deliberations had taken agonizing days and nights before cupidity won out over his natural fears.

  Dr Manzanares was astonished to hear from his old friend one sultry afternoon in July that Mme Freitas had received a reply from Pizar; he was on his way, he would be there that afternoon.

  Once again Pizar was driven out from the station in Mme Freitas’s car; he was sullen and on guard, not unprepared for scenes and arguments. His fleshy face looked more debased with the grosser pleasures of the world than ever. To his surprise Mme Freitas made no reference to the letters. She received him in the study as before and had evidently put herself out to be charming to him. She congratulated him on the success of the Freitas volume and on the perspicacity and understanding with which he had edited and introduced it.

  Pizar bowed stiffly; the inside of his collar was wet with cold sweat; he was ill at ease and something told him that the situation was very wrong. They drank tea and ate sandwiches for an hour. Then Mme Freitas kindly thanked him for his visit and dismissed him. Pizar was stunned. He blinked, his eyes turning to her curiously, as though he had heard amiss.

  “Pardon, madame,” he stammered, rising to his feet. “But I understood from your letter ... There were to be other documents released ... it says here ...”

  “I do not care what it says there,” said Mme Freitas coldly, her manner completely changed. “I have no more to say to you.”

  “But madame ...” Pizar began again. Sweat ran down his forehead into his eyes, momentarily blinding him.

  “I have made this long and expensive journey from Paris for a specific purpose. I have hotel and other expenses. I shall have wasted a week ... I demand recompense for my trouble and monetary outlay.”

  “Recompense!” exploded Mme Freitas. She looked at Albano Pizar and her eyes roved over him in a cold and knowing manner which sent tremors coursing through his blood.

  “You demand recompense, Monsieur Pizar?”

  She stood up with a brusque movement that transfixed him where he stood.

  “Very well,” she said at length. “You shall be recompensed. Come with me. My husband left other bequests, which I think may interest you. Only this time you must pay the full price.”

  She led the way out of the study and along a corridor hung with tapestries and lit by crystal chandeliers which were now turned over to electric light. Pizar panted alongside, momentarily regretting his outburst.

  “Pardon, madame,” he said. “If I inadvertently said anything—”

  “Enough, Monsieur Pizar,” said Madame icily. “You have made your choice. You demanded recompense. And recompense you shall have.”

  The pair went down an ornate iron staircase; the contrast here to the rest of the Palazzo was marked and severe. Dusty, naked electric bulbs made harsh shadows as they descended and the silhouettes of the great author’s widow and the literary agent were grotesque and distended on the discoloured walls. She was silent until they came out on to a stone-flagged corridor at some distance below the house.

  “My late husband had a little cabinet here, Monsieur Pizar,” she said. “Here he devoted himself to experiments in coarser fields of literature ...”

  She did not enlarge but her meaning was plain. Pizar’s eye began to glisten. Pornography? Was it pornography she meant? If so ... He sucked in his breath and then had to hurry to keep up. It was a curious room, Pizar saw, when she opened the door; evidently part of the great days of the Palazzo Tortini. Chandeliers with huge candles, now thick with dust; sagging bookcases, seemingly held together by the weight of the rotting leather volumes they held; red leather walls. He stared, fascinated. He had never seen anything like this. He bent to the bureau Mme Freitas indicated. The curtains billowed behind him but his greedy eyes had time only to see the spidery handwriting before him. Then the world spun and consciousness faded.

  Dr Manzanares stepped out from behind the moth-eaten curtain and looked ruefully at the sprawled form of Pizar on the carpet. He put down the heavy candlestick on the bureau and bent to feel for the literary agent’s heartbeat. Reassured, he turned to Mme Freitas. “Recompense!” he growled. “He’ll have recompense enough ...”

  “Save your strength, my friend,” said Mme Freitas with a cold, tight smile. “We have much to do tonight. The tide will soon be on the turn.”

  ~ * ~

  III

  Albano Pizar awoke to confused roaring, sickness in his head and the taste of blood in his mouth. Blurred shapes flickered grotesquely in front of his eyes and the soft slurp of water came to his ears. A groaning noise translated itself into pain and the pain apparently proceeded from himself. He attempted to move and was brought up short with a clanking noise. He opened his eyes and was fully awake.

  He gazed into the hard eyes of Mme Freitas and Dr Manzanares. He was leaning against a cold rock surface and the air smelled damp and foul. Electric bulbs gleamed high up in glass globes bolted to a dark, Romanesque ceiling. In the distance the sun burned itself out smokily in water; dark water, which swirled among the piles and through iron gratings to lap sullenly on a shelf of stone a dozen yards away from him.

  “The tide is turning,” said Dr Manzanares with satisfaction. “The flood will soon begin.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” said Pizar stiffly, some of his old confidence returning. “There are laws in this country against assault.”

  He fingered his throbbing skull as he spoke and felt his left hand arrested. A stab of surprise shot through him as he saw that there was a manacle locked round his
left wrist. He followed the new steel chain down with his eyes. He saw that the linked length, which was about ten feet long, was locked to an ancient ring sunk into the granite wall at his back. It was impossible to escape. He felt little fear as yet, only curiosity. He looked back to Mme Freitas and the doctor.

  The latter stood in shadow but the great author’s widow seemed to be brooding over him. Pizar stepped forward to the length of his chain. The two merely retreated before him. He had his right hand free but they stood just beyond his reach.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he asked again. He began to laugh as though they were having a joke with him. But the words died with a whimper in his throat.

  “Let me out of here,” he called, his voice echoing unpleasantly under the high vaulting of the roof. The noise seemed to stir something in the shadow. The lapping of the water was louder now and with sick numbness he saw eyes watching him down near the water’s edge. He turned back to the two in front of him, their menacing immobility combining to strike into his consciousness.