The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  Kane had showed the police the letter which he had received from Dorian, written that fateful afternoon on Fabian’s mezzanine. It had done some little good, he thought. It had worried Lieutenant Sam Graden, had awakened the first glimmer of doubt in Graden’s stolid, plodding thought mechanism.

  Defensively, Graden had said, “Suppose there was a big blonde woman. Suppose, even, that she gave Miss Westmore an aspirin tablet.” Graden had shrugged, bunching the fat at the back of his neck. “That wouldn’t prove anything. That wouldn’t prove the aspirin was poisoned. The poison, Mr. Kane, was found in Miss Westmore’s apartment.”

  Kane thought it proved a great deal. Dorian’s letter had established the existence of the big blonde whose initials were I.M.P. Since she existed, why had she kept under cover, if she was guiltless? And why had the maid at Fabian’s lied?

  Kane was waiting there in the alley for the maid, for Anna Nelson—he had got her name from newspaper clippings. It was 8:45 P.M. and Fabian’s kept open that late on Monday nights as a convenience for war workers. An hour before, Kane had wandered across Fabian’s mezzanine, had covertly watched Anna Nelson as she swept up the ashes and lipstick-stained cigarette butts. A tall, hollow-chested woman, this Anna Nelson, thirtyish, not particularly intelligent looking. Given a homely face, she had tried to make it exotic, accenting the narrowness of the eyes, rouging the small mouth into something that was cruel and catlike, increasing her natural pallor into a paper-white mask to achieve a quality she probably thought of as “mysterious.”

  She would not, he thought, be too difficult to pick up.

  He waited and counted the minutes. Rain had extinguished his cigarette, but he left it dangling cold and limp in his lips.

  At 9:00 he stepped away from the thin yellow light that illuminated the doorway through which Fabian’s employees entered and left the building. He stood in the shadows where the eaves dropped their beaded curtain upon him and looked toward the light. The first of the clerks were coming through the door, through the three gas pipe chutes that sifted them into three single file columns. There were checkers inside to examine the purses and any parcels that were carried from the store—a precaution against pilfering—but that didn’t slow the general exodus much. Two yards from the door, the three columns blended into a kaleidoscopic pattern of hats and faces that disintegrated into the darkness.

  Standing there, his eyes jerking from face to face, Kane felt more than ever the awful oppression that time imposed. Suppose he missed Anna Nelson tonight. There would not be another Monday night for Dorian. Life would never have another Monday night. Cold sweat dribbled from his armpits and traced an icy line along his ribs. There were too many faces for only one pair of eyes. And there was too much waiting for one man’s patience. Too much of everything but time.

  * * *

  —

  Then as Kane stood with a sea of humanity eddying and swirling about him, he saw Anna Nelson. She was all the way over on the other side of the alley, holding a black patent leather purse up over her head to protect her hat from the rain.

  Kane threw himself across the tide, plunged through to the other side. She was ahead of him, hurrying along the fringes of the crowd to get her cheap finery to shelter as soon as possible. Ahead of her, near the mouth of the alley was a wide puddle of water, and Kane thought that might be turned to his advantage. He broke into a limping trot that brought him to the puddle at the same time that Anna Nelson was skirting it. He then had the self-imposed alternatives of splashing through the puddle or running into Anna Nelson.

  He splashed through as though hell bent on catching somebody in the crowd beyond, stopped, threw up his hands in a hopeless gesture. He heard her small cry of dismay, turned as though noticing her for the first time. He’d spattered her pale hose and the side of the dark cloth coat with its rabbity fur trim.

  “Say, I’m terribly sorry.” He was gravely concerned. She stood a moment looking down at the spatter marks, her lips a thin red line of exasperation. Fumbling in her purse for a handkerchief, she flung daggers at him with her narrow eyes.

  “Here—let me.” He jerked out his handkerchief to wipe the mud and water from her coat. She backed from him, said with acerbity, “No, thank you!”

  “Aw now look, miss—” Kane delivered his most disarming smile, “you ought to let me have your coat cleaned. It was all my fault. I thought I saw somebody I knew, and I was trying to catch her. You know how it is when you’re in a strange town—you keep looking for familiar faces.”

  “And speaking of familiar faces,” she retorted, “have you noticed yours lately?”

  Somebody in the passing crowd snickered. Anna Nelson tossed her head, turned, walked out into Meridian Street. Kane fell into step beside her.

  “My name is Peter Kane,” he said.

  She looked straight ahead and walked swiftly. “What do you expect me to do—fire a twenty-one gun salute?”

  He laughed. “Hardly. I’ve had enough guns go off in my face. Look, miss, after you’ve been in the Army and knocked about the world a little, you get so you can tell something about people. Now I can tell you’re not the sort of a girl who’d pick up with a stranger. But I’m superstitious enough to think that if you get off to a bad start in a strange town that’s the way it will always be. I was thinking of going into business here—”

  “Well, go right ahead,” she said tartly. “Go into the boat business. Or maybe manufacture water wings.”

  “But you’re the first person I’ve run into, and you’re making this a bad start for me.” They had reached Washington Street, were waiting side by side on the curb for the light to change. He looked over at her, caught her appraisive sidelong glance. That line about going into business had turned the trick for him, he thought, because it suggested money.

  “Let’s start all over again,” he wheedled, “and do it right. Now. My name is Peter Kane. How do you do, Miss Zilch.”

  She laughed. “It’s Miss Anna Nelson.”

  “That’s much better,” he said. “Now if we could just go somewhere and talk things over with a steak, I’d feel much better about this Hoosier hospitality I’ve heard about and haven’t seen. What about it?”

  “Wel-l-l, I just don’t know exactly.” The light had changed, but she wasn’t doing anything about it.

  Kane said, “Sure you know. With me, all you have to do is say scram and I’ll scram. Or you can name a restaurant with a bar and we’ll make an event of it.”

  She faced him abruptly, smiling with her catlike mouth. “All right. It’s an event.”

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll do it up brown.”

  After two cocktails it was Peter and Anna—with the third cocktail he tried holding her hand. She gave his hand a little brush-off that didn’t mean a thing, and laughed. He could see that this wasn’t going to be hard. Especially it wouldn’t be hard after he flashed the roll he was carrying. They concluded the dinner with a brandy and Benedictine, and Kane got to talking about crowds. He didn’t go for crowds. Take the Army, there was a crowd for you, and a man could get too much of it.

  “Give me a snug room with steam heat and the lights down low. Maybe Lombardo is coming in on the radio, and I’ve got a highball within easy reach and a good-looking girl who understands—” He gave his head an appreciative half shake. “That’s life. You can have your crowds.”

  “I don’t like crowds either,” Anna said. Then, with what she intended for an arch look, “I never have any crowds at my apartment.”

  He reached across the table and patted her hand. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  She giggled. “The check, I guess.”

  He summoned the waitress, peeled bills off his roll, tipped lavishly, and was satisfied that Anna Nelson missed none of this display. On the way out, Kane picked up a fifth of whiskey at the bar. He left Anna in the
shelter of the entry while he stood at the curb to hail a cab.

  * * *

  —

  It was an old, remodeled residence, newly faced with asphalt siding and apparently partitioned into small flats. The front door opened into a long dingy central hall with a wide stairway rising up to the second story. Kane and Anna Nelson climbed the stairs, and she led the way to a color-varnished door at the rear of the upstairs hall. Anna handed him an ordinary skeleton key.

  He cocked an eyebrow at the key. “For keeps?” he said and smiled on one side of his mouth. And she laughed softly as he unlocked the door. She went in and Kane followed. She turned, slid her hands up under the lapels of his coat, pulled him toward her. He let the whiskey bottle slide out of his hand onto a chair, put both arms around her.

  He said, “Baby, you’ve got what it takes.”

  She pushed out of his arms. “You make yourself at home,” she invited, “and give a girl a chance to get comfortable. And,” she added as she walked toward the inside door, “don’t drink up all the liquor.”

  As soon as she was out of the room, Kane wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, shuddered slightly. He took off his coat and hat, put them down on a chair. The small living room smelled of new wallpaper. There was a fluffy cotton rug on the floor, a matching sofa and chair in lime green, two lamp tables with pottery lamps on them, a cocktail table with glasses on it. It looked to Kane like one of those fifteen piece living room combinations offered for $198.95, including the framed Venetian sunset and an abundance of ashtrays. To his right was a mirror-faced closet door. On the opposite side of the room were two other doors, one of which led into the bedroom and the other doubtless opening onto the kitchen.

  Kane picked up the whiskey bottle, unwrapped it, broke the seal with his thumbnail. He took a pull from the bottle, corked it again, put it down on the cocktail table. He made a quick tour of the room, looking in corners and in the closet. Then he sat down and had another pull from the bottle. Maybe twenty minutes ticked off. Anna’s feet pattered in the next room. She was humming softly.

  He sat waiting and thought of Dorian.

  “Why so quiet out there, Peter?” Anna called to him. “Fix up some drinks, huh?”

  “All right.” Kane poured some whiskey, let her hear the clink of the bottle mouth against the glass. He could hear her fooling around with jars and bottles. There came the whiff-whiff sound of a perfume atomizer and after that, the whisk and rustle of satin—her housecoat. It would be black or scarlet, if he knew his Anna Nelsons. He got up, walked to the bedroom door and opened it soundlessly.

  Against one wall was a brass bedstead, and opposite that a scarred, white-enameled dresser. There was no rug on the floor. Her street clothes were heaped on the bed. The only illumination came from the pink paper-shaded lamps on the dresser.

  Anna was standing there, bending toward the mirror. Her housecoat was black rayon satin, to accent her pallor. She was applying small daubs of lipstick to the center of her little catlike mouth. She was so intent upon herself that she couldn’t see him there in the shadows at the door. She made a kiss-mouth at herself, practiced a smile that nauseated him. Then she took off the lid of a pressed glass box, removed some flashy piece of jewelry—a pin apparently, for she was fastening it at the low, narrow point of her V neckline when she noticed Kane watching her from the shadows.

  She twisted around, the pin not yet fastened and dangling from the folds of the satin. Her hands clasped the dresser edge behind her and her body leaned back from him. Kane thought this was something she had seen in a movie.

  She said, “You’ve got a nerve, busting into a lady’s bedroom!”

  “Haven’t I?” His voice was quiet, level, his face in the mirror calm, resolute. He stared down at the pin dangling at the neck of her gown. It was like a many-pointed star, its dull gleam somewhat like that of silver. Yet it wasn’t silver. Jewelers didn’t mount star sapphires in silver. She saw him staring at it, raised a hand to cover it tremulously.

  “Where did you get that pin, Anna?”

  “At Fabian’s.” She twisted her shoulders. “It’s just a cheap little thing.”

  He nodded. “Cheap at two thousand bucks.”

  She laughed. “You think I’m a millionaire, Peter?”

  “You wouldn’t want me to tell you what I think you are.”

  Something in his eyes, the sudden intense blue flame of them, got in under her skin. For an instant, fear ripped the white mask of her face wide open, and as suddenly the breach closed, the yellowish eyes narrowing.

  * * *

  —

  “What do you mean? Just what are you talking about, Mister Kane?”

  “The pin,” he said. “Hand it to me. I want the pin you stole from the big blonde on Fabian’s mezzanine last January—the big blonde you claimed didn’t exist.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Defiantly.

  “If you didn’t steal it, maybe she gave it to you so you’d keep your mouth shut.” His hand dropped to his suitcoat pocket, came out with a blue steel automatic pistol. “Hand over the pin, Anna.”

  “Damn you!” Bitterly. She tore the pin from the gown and handed it to him. He stepped back, looking at the pin. It was fashioned after a compass card with all of its points. The faintly luminous lines deep within the blue stone in its center seemed to quiver like the needle of a compass. He turned the pin over. In the center of the backing was a delicately engraved trademark—a keystone with a script letter “R.”

  “Are you a cop?” Anna wanted to know.

  Perhaps that was her only reason for lying—fear of the police for what they might do to her, because of the theft of the sapphire pin. He dropped the pin into his pocket and looked over the gun at her.

  “A private eye formerly,” he replied truthfully. “But I’m not anything now. Just a guy in love with a girl condemned to die in the electric chair.”

  The white mask tightened defensively. The small mouth compressed.

  Kane said, “Dorian Westmore. Doesn’t the name mean anything to you?”

  “The girl that poisoned her uncle—sure. I read about it. But I didn’t lie to the cops. There was no blonde woman at that desk opposite her when she was up on the mezzanine.”

  Kane motioned with his gun toward the bed. “Back to the foot of it, so you can watch yourself in the mirror,” he said. “Step on it, Anna. I’d just as soon kill you as not.”

  Maybe she thought he would. She backed to the bed, rested her hands on the blanket rail, which was just where he wanted them. He knelt across the bed, put his gun down a moment to catch her wrists in one hand. He picked up a stocking from among her clothes on the bed and lashed her wrists to the blanket rail.

  He said softly, “I’ve sent better souls than yours to hell, Anna Nelson. And they were just Nazis. Just dumb punks fighting because some crazy paperhanger told them to.” He reached into the inner pocket of his suitcoat, took out a flat leather case from which he removed a straight razor. She saw the flash of the bright steel in the mirror and the grim, emotionless face of the man who held it. Her indrawn breath was a small scream.

  “You—you wouldn’t kill me. You wouldn’t dare!”

  “No, Anna,” he said. “Killing’s too good.” Then he reached up to her hair, jerked a tuft of it loose from its pins, drew the keen edge of the razor across it.

  She screamed. Kane put a hand on the top of her head, and his blue eyes narrowed critically at her reflection. “Anna, I’m going to shave your head as bald as a clown’s. It isn’t a pretty-shaped head—too flat at the back. You’ll hate yourself. You’ll probably never live in the same house with a mirror.”

  “No!” She tried yanking herself free, her whole body wrenching, straining forward as she screamed. Kane bounced off the bed, got around in front of her. He had to slap
her to stop her screaming. “You’ll talk,” he said. “You’ll tell the police the truth. Just say that and we’ll go down to headquarters right now—you with all of your hair.”

  “I—I can’t. I—I wouldn’t dare—” She broke off. Her eyes twisted away from the hold his had upon them. From out in the living room came a faint, indefinable sound.

  Kane put the razor down on the dresser, left the woman tied to the bed, and went out into the living room.

  He stepped over to the front door of the flat and opened it. Nobody in the hall. He closed the door. And then—

  It was nothing more than a stirring of the air that reminded Kane he was standing with his back to the closet and that the door of the closet had opened. Something caught him a crushing blow on the top of his head. Lights exploded behind his eyes. The floor tossed him about on his feet, threw him.

  He got a hand to his coat pocket, fumbled for his gun, knowing for certain that he wasn’t going to come out of this in time, knowing that whoever had wielded the whiskey bottle wasn’t going to wait.

  Then the second blow, and Kane plunged headlong into the darkness and silence….

  * * *

  —

  The link was irreparably broken. Kane had known that it would be even before the second blow. Standing there, clinging to a chair that anchored him to a spinning world, he searched his pockets carefully. The star sapphire pin was gone. He knew as he took staggering steps to the door of the bedroom that Anna, too, was gone.

  Anna’s body was there, crouching at the foot of the bed. Kane thought that the exotic quality for which she had strived had finally been achieved. She was like some uncivilized being, prostrate before a heathen god. A human sacrifice at some weird ritual. Her legs were folded under her, her head down between her knees, her arms extended backwards and up, still lashed to the blanket rail of the bed. Her pallor was now an unearthly shade of blue.