The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

THE FILM

  Title: The Guilty, 1947

  Studio: Monogram Pictures

  Director: John Reinhardt

  Screenwriter: Robert Presnell

  Producer: Jack Wrather

  THE CAST

  • Bonita Granville (Estelle Mitchell/Linda Mitchell)

  • Don Castle (Mike Carr)

  • Regis Toomey (Detective Heller)

  • John Litel (Alex Tremholt)

  • Wally Cassell (Johnny Dixon)

  Coincidentally, the film version of Woolrich’s excellent suspense story was being filmed at the Monogram Pictures lot at exactly the same time that Fall Guy (1947), based on Woolrich’s story “C-Jag,” was being shot. And, as with that low-budget B picture, the storyline of The Guilty begins with Woolrich’s premise, then deviates sharply in a successful attempt to throw in every cliché of noir films of the era while retaining some of the story’s elements.

  Clichés? How about Dixon being transformed into a shell-shocked, mentally disturbed war veteran? How about having Estelle turned into identical twins—naturally, one good, one evil? Finally, how about having the best friend, the one who has so obviously been out there helping the suspected killer, turn out to be the murderer?

  The very attractive Bonita Granville was cast in the dual role by the producer, Jack Wrather, who happened to be married to her. She was most famous for her exuberant sweetness as a young actress, playing Nancy Drew in four films, among other good-girl roles, but she does a credible job as the bad twin (as well as an excellent job as the nice one). Wrather was less famous as a filmmaker than he was as part of President Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet,” as well as running the company that produced such television series as The Lone Ranger and Lassie.

  An amusing moment for the careful viewer: In their struggle, Carr knocks Dixon out cold. When he tries to revive him by throwing a glass of water in his face, he misses it completely!

  HE LOOKED LIKE MURDER

  Cornell Woolrich

  I CAN’T SAY I TOOK A SHINE to the idea of clearing out and turning the place over to him like that on a Monday night. If it’d been any other night but Monday. Monday I always did my studying-up for the night class I went to once a week, on Tuesday night. He knew that by now. We’d been rooming together long enough.

  But he went ahead and asked it anyway. “—And I got a ring from her just before I left work. She said it’s very important, she’s got to see me right tonight, and it’s got to be someplace where we can talk. Now you know I can’t go over to her place on account of the way her family feels about me. So I told her to come up here, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind—” And then he ended up, “Just this once. I won’t ask anything like this of you again, Red.”

  I thought: Darned right you won’t, because you’ll get turned down flat if you do. But what could I do? Refuse point-blank to his face? That wouldn’t have made for very pleasant living together afterwards. And after all, he did have half-rights in the place.

  I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been a half-decent night. But there was one of those fine needle rains oozing; the kind that doesn’t fall, that you don’t even see in the air, but that just shows by wetting the surface of the street and tickling the back of your neck. It was no use going to the library and doing my stuff there; that closed at nine and I would have been only about half-through by then. I saw where I’d have to let it go altogether tonight, try to cram it all in just before class the following evening. Just roam around for tonight and try to find someplace to hang out in, out of the mist.

  “All right,” I gave in, “what time does curfew go into effect?”

  “Now you don’t have to dodge meeting her, I don’t mean that,” he protested. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about her and me. This isn’t a date, there’s nothing underhanded about it. She said it’s something that concerns both our futures, and it’s just that there isn’t anyplace else we can talk in privacy. And with the three of us around here at the same time, you wouldn’t be able to get your studying done and we wouldn’t be able to talk freely. You don’t have to duck out before she comes; I just thought I’d explain the situation to you ahead of time, to avoid embarrassment. She said she’d be here around eight-thirty or a little after.”

  “It’s nearly that now.” I reached for my hat, edged up my coat-collar. “Maybe I can find some kind of a show,” I suggested half-heartedly.

  He followed me to the door. “Now don’t be peeved about this, will you, Red?”

  What was the use of being a grouch about it? As long as I was doing it I might as well do it obligingly, I figured. My disposition matches my hair; I can get sore, but I can’t hold it. “Forget it,” I squinted at him. He closed and I went down.

  I met her coming up. I’d never seen her before, but I’d heard him talk enough about her to know it was she. She had on a raincoat made of green cellophane. I’m quick to judge. She was a nice girl. So nice she could have brought an overnight-case here with her, and you’d know just by looking at her there was nothing shady about it.

  I edged over to give her room. She knew who I was too, I guess, from him. She smiled sociably. “I hope he didn’t chase you out on my account?” she said.

  I didn’t know if he wanted her to know he had or not, so I said: “No, that’s all right, I was going out anyway.”

  There wasn’t very much more than that for us to say; we didn’t know each other after all. “Well, goodnight,” she said, and went on up. “Goodnight,” I said, and tipped my hat and went on down.

  I heard him come out to the door and let her in, just before I quitted the bottom of the staircase. She hadn’t knocked or anything, he must have seen her from the window. “Hello, Estelle,” I heard him say. His greeting sounded a little grave, a little troubled, I thought.

  I thought about the two of them intermittently during the next few hours, but only because of the inconvenience they were putting me to. I had a hard time of it. Man is a creature of habit. My habit was to study for night class on Monday evenings, and because that had been disrupted I found myself at a complete loss for something to do. I couldn’t find a show that suited me. Then before I could make up my mind, it was already too late for one, so that took care of that. I’m not a solitary drinker, never have been, so that excluded taprooms. I finally compromised by sitting down at a little coffee counter somewhere and poring slowly through a tabloid I’d bought. For the first and last times in my life I found myself doing anagrams and acrostics by the time I’d worked my way to the back of it.

  When the clock hands started inching into the last half-hour before midnight, I finally chucked it, started back. I’d given them three hours together. That should have been enough, they should have been able to settle the destiny of the world in three hours. I didn’t feel obliging now any more. If she was still up there chewing the rag with him, then she was going to clear out and give me a chance to get these wet shoes off. On the up-and-up or not, it wouldn’t look right if she stayed very much later than this, and the two of them ought to have sense enough to realize that without being told.

  I took a look up at our room windows from the other side of the street first, before I crossed over. They were brightly lit up, and as I looked I saw his shadow flit across one of them. No sign of her, though. “Here I come, ready or not,” I grunted. I’d absorbed so much moisture into my shoes by this time they made a little squirting sound every time I pressed them down.

  I crossed over, let myself in the street door, and trudged up the stairs. I took off my hat and beat it out against the rail as I went up, to get the spray off it.

  I listened outside the room-door a minute to see if I could still hear her voice in there. Not that I wasn’t going in. I could hear him moving around quite plainly but I couldn’t hear anything said, so she must have left. He sounded very active, almost hurrie
d. In the brief moment I stood there I heard him pass back and forth across the room three times. He might have been just pacing though, not doing anything.

  I rapped. There was a sudden silence, movement stopped dead, but he didn’t come over to the door. I had to rap a second time.

  He opened it, looked out at me, skin pulled back tight around his eyes. Then it relaxed again. He’d been holding it defensively a minute, at a narrow width. When he saw it was me he opened it wide, but I’d caught the hesitation.

  “What’d you do that for?” he said a little sharply, as though it had rattled him. “Didn’t you have your key?”

  “What’s matter, you nervous?” I said. “Sure I had my key. Why should I go dredging into my damp pockets, as long as you were in here?” I came in, glanced around. “Girl-friend gone?”

  “Yeah, just before you got here.”

  “You’re some guy. You mean you let her go alone, didn’t even take her home, on a night like this?”

  “I put her in a taxi at the door.” He’d flung himself into a chair which happened to be facing my way. He made the mistake of crossing his ankles out at full leg length from his body. That way the soles of his shoes were tipped-up from the floor. I could see both of them; they were dust white, bone-dry. I’d never yet heard of anyone putting a girl into a taxi by staying back within the shelter of the doorway and letting her cross the wet sidewalk to the curb by herself.

  He was lying. He’d made that up on the spur of the moment, because he was ashamed to have me think he hadn’t been more considerate of her. I didn’t call him on it. Why should I have a row with him, it wasn’t any of my business. I had my own lamentable condition to occupy me. I peeled off one sock, then the other, took a twist in them, drops of water oozed out. I meant it as an indirect way of rubbing it in, but he seemed too preoccupied to get the point.

  I knew him well enough by now to know something was getting him. No chatter, like when he’d been out with her of an evening and I had to listen to all about how wonderful she was. On the other hand, no fretting and complaining either, like when the mother’s campaign to separate them had first started in. Not a word. His face was a mask of some deep emotion or other, frozen fast, caked on him. I couldn’t name what it was, I’m no soul doctor.

  He stayed in that chair where he’d first dropped into when I came in, made no move about getting to bed. Finally, coming to the bedroom-opening and looking out at him, buttoning my pajama coat, I said: “What’s matter, did you have a row?”

  He didn’t give me a direct answer. “Why should we have a row?” was the way he put it.

  It wasn’t any of my business, I’m no cupid.

  He got up suddenly, as though a spring had been uncoiled under him, went over to the cupboard where we usually kept a bottle of liquor in reserve. He brought it out, held it to the light. “This all gone?” he said disappointedly, and let his arm trail down again with it.

  I’d been the one had supplied it, and it hadn’t been the last time I’d seen it, so someone must have helped himself to it liberally, fairly recently—maybe within the past hour or so.

  “I’m going down to the corner a minute and get a quick one,” he said.

  “What d’you want a drink for at this hour?” We weren’t either one of us topers. We weren’t goody-goods that didn’t touch drink, but we usually only went in for it when we were out celebrating on a Saturday night or something like that. This nightcap business was something new. I felt like saying, I was the one was out in the wet, you weren’t, I ought to need one if anyone does. But I let it go by. I noticed he didn’t ask me if I wanted to come with him. But then after all, that might have been because he saw me already half-into my pajamas, I figured. I wouldn’t have gone even if he’d asked me to, anyway.

  “I’m going to bed,” I warned him. “Better take your own key with you.”

  “I’m coming right back,” he assured me. “I’m going to bed too.”

  He closed the door after him and I quit thinking about him.

  I had to cross the room in my bare feet to put out the light, which he’d forgotten to do. No sense subsidizing the Edison Company.

  Something bit into my unprotected sole, and I snatched it up, held it with both hands for a minute. I looked to see what it was, and it was a little metal clamp or clasp, with a little wisp of green cellophane still thrust through it. His girl-friend had lost one of the fasteners of her raincoat. But it hadn’t just loosened and dropped off, they were patented not to; the tatter of green adhering to it showed it had been torn off bodily. Maybe she had caught it on something. I wondered why she hadn’t taken it with her, to try to have it reattached in some way; they must be hard to match up, if you lost one of them.

  I put it aside where it wouldn’t be mislaid and went to bed.

  It always took me three complete turns to get in position, about five minutes between each one. And once I was in position I didn’t want to get out of it for anybody.

  Just as I got into it, and was set for the night, the phone had to start ringing. I kept my eyes closed and tried to ignore it. I was sure it was a wrong number; what else could it be at this hour of the night? I kept hoping he’d come in just at that minute, and answer it and save me the trouble of getting up. Or else it would quit of its own accord.

  Neither thing happened. He didn’t come in, and it kept on. It kept on long after the usual length of signaling, as though the party were urging the operator not to desist. I had to give in finally. I got out of position, put on my bathrobe, and went over to it with a good sour face. I answered it in the dark, I knew where it was by heart.

  It was a woman’s voice. It had three elements in it, they were unmistakable from the very opening phrase. Some voices can be eloquent that way. The three tonal components were a deep-seated, cold hostility; the sort of hostility that has been borne over a considerable period of time; and a heated resentment, newer, brought on by the occasion itself, kept in leash only with difficulty; and lastly, less discernible than the other two, there was a thread of fear stitching through it.

  The voice didn’t address by name or give any opening salutation. “Will you please put my daughter on?” it began without prelude. “Now she promised me to have a definite understanding with you once and for all, and to come right back. Those were the conditions under which I let her go to see you tonight, and if you think that you’ll get anywhere by trying to influence her until all hours of the—” Then she stopped short and said, “This is Mr. Dixon, isn’t it?” She hated even to have to pronounce the name. I suppose she called him “that young man” to the girl.

  I’d been trying to say that it wasn’t all along. “No, this is Stewart Carr, his roommate; I expect him back any minute.”

  The cold hostility and the resentment immediately veered off, since they weren’t meant for me personally; only the thread of fear remained. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “Well I presume she’s left, then. If he was a gentleman, he would have seen to it that she reached home before now, he wouldn’t have kept her there until this hour, on such a rainy night, until I had to phone to remind—”

  I tried to be reassuring about it. “She left over three-quarters of an hour ago, she ought to be there any minute now, Mrs.—” I didn’t even know their last name. That should have been about right; I’d been in at least that long myself, and Dixon had said she’d left just before I—

  I’d evidently said the wrong thing; fear took over the voice, crowding everything else out. “Three-quarters of an hour ago! Then why isn’t she back here by now? It’s only six blocks to her own door, from there. It shouldn’t take her that long, for such a short distance.”

  It shouldn’t have, if that was all it was. And he’d said he’d put her in a cab, which should have cut the time it would take her down to next to nothing. I had sense enough not to mention that detail.

  “It wou
ld be just like him to keep her loitering along the way, on a wet night like this!” the voice went on bitterly. She was assuming that Dixon was bringing her back, I could see. I didn’t know whether I ought to disabuse her on this point or not. It would probably add fuel to her disquiet, to hear he’d let her make her own way back. And since the girl was bound to reach there any minute, what difference did it make anyway? Let her find out from the girl herself what had caused the delay; why did I have to be roused in the middle of the night about it?

  “She’ll probably be there in no time now,” I tried to calm her.

  “I sincerely hope so,” she fretted. And then on a note of taut warning, “If she isn’t back here soon I’ll—” She didn’t finish it; she’d hung up.

  I did too. I gave the oblivious door a dirty look. Why didn’t he come up here and answer his own tracer-calls? I had to get some sleep, I had to get up in the morning.

  I climbed back in and went through the triple gear shift again. I dropped off. Then sleep smashed apart, like an electric-light bulb that you pop, and the damn phone was ringing away again in the middle of the fragments.

  I went back to it in a sort of blur, too groggy even to be sore this time. It woke me right up, like a filch of cold water in the face. It was the same woman. You wouldn’t have known it by the voice. The voice was husky this time with out-and-out terror. No more genteel indignation and trepidation. Stark fright, maternal, unreasoning, straining at the leash of self-possession. “I demand to speak with John Dixon! I demand to know what’s become of my daughter!”

  “She isn’t back yet?”

  My futile surprise went unnoticed. “What has he done with her? Why isn’t she here? My Estelle wouldn’t stay out until this hour of her own accord. I know her better than that! I’ve been pacing the floor here until I can’t stand it any more; I’ve even been down to the corner three times in all the rain to see if I could see her coming— Do you know what time it is?”