Sinners and Shrouds

by Jonathan Latimer

  Sinners and Shrouds

  Jonathan Latimer

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  Chapter 1

  A BUZZING noise woke Sam Clay. He woke cautiously, feeling the sun on his face, but he did not open his eyes. From the ache at the base of his skull, his taut throat muscles, the coppery taste in his mouth, the semi-paralysis gripping his limbs, he knew the shock of seeing sunlight would kill him. He lay without moving, sweating a little and hoping he could go back to sleep, but the buzzing disturbed him.

  It was, he decided, either a fly or a symptom of his hangover. The latter would be something new, even to him: a buzzing hangover. He pictured himself trying to explain it to a doctor and resolved to give up drinking. At least, mixed drinking. He tried to remember what he had drunk. Five stingers with Tom Nichols at the Drake, then a bottle of red wine and some brandy with dinner. Or did he have the brandy later? He seemed to recall blending brandy and champagne at a bar somewhere. He also seemed to recall drinking brandy in a taxi, and on a roller coaster.

  The evening had a mixed-up, dreamlike quality. He remembered a row with a doorman on Walton Place, a hundred-dollar cheque he’d cashed at the 69 Club, a bottle of brandy he’d bought somewhere else, a pretty redhead smiling at him in a smoky joint full of violin music, but he couldn’t put the memories in any order. And he had no memory at all of getting home.

  There was a sudden clamour of bells by his left ear. When his muscles stopped twitching, he reached towards the sound, found the telephone and brought it to his lips. The movement set waves of pain through his head.

  ‘Hallo.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Well, speak up,’ he said. ‘It’s your dime.’

  There was a sharp click at the other end of the line. He tried to put the phone on its cradle, missed, and the phone fell to the floor. The noise made his head throb. The buzzing began again and he opened his right eye, saw a bluebottle fly beating at a copper screen under a pale blue ceiling.

  He studied screen and ceiling for a time. The ceiling bothered him most. It was unmistakably blue, seen through either eye. And it was not his bedroom ceiling, unless somebody had painted it while he was out. Without moving his head he looked to the left, saw chintz curtains, a Chinese print and a dressing-room with a mirrored table covered with perfume bottles. By the dressing-room entrance was a chair on which were wool socks, nylon shorts, a shirt and a grey flannel suit. The clothes were his and he felt his chest and thighs and discovered he had slept naked.

  He sat up slowly, narrowing his eyes against the headache, and stared at the twin bed to his left. A woman lay in it, her face turned from him, her straw-coloured hair gleaming on a pillow. He could see a bare shoulder, a bare arm and the outline of a slender body under a white blanket. She looked young.

  Beside the telephone cradle, on an ivory table between the beds, was a half-empty magnum of brandy. His stomach unsettled by the musty, grape odour of the brandy, he swung his feet to the rug and tottered uncertainly towards the dressing-room. He picked up his clothes and went through the opening at the far end.

  Fluffy towels lined one side of the nile-green bathroom and under them was a tub with a single faucet shaped like a dolphin’s head. A corner of the room held a shower stall with an opaque glass door. He found a cylinder of Alka-Seltzer tablets in a cabinet over the washbasin, put three in a glass of warm water and then, while they sizzled, turned on the shower. He picked up the glass and carried it into the shower with him.

  While hot water poured over his face and chest, he tried to place the girl in the bedroom. He knew lots of girls, but none with straw-coloured hair. The Alka-Seltzer finished bubbling and he drank it. He put the glass outside the shower and when the headache caused by bending had gone, he grinned and sang: ‘You’ve got straw-coloured hair; I only like straw-coloured hair …’ He stopped, realizing the music he had in mind didn’t quite fit the words. It also didn’t quite fit the truth, which was that he liked red, black, brown and golden hair just as well, and would, if green ever became fashionable, like that, too.

  He felt much better when he came out of the shower. He dried himself with one of the big towels, discovering in the process bruises on his chin and chest and a cut under one eye. He wet a corner of the towel, sprinkled on tooth powder and rubbed his teeth. They were all still there. He found a safety razor and, after he had lathered his face with a cake of scented soap, he shaved cautiously, then rinsed off what was left of the soap, dried himself and stared into the mirror.

  He saw the familiar lean face with the hooked nose and sandy eyebrows. Someone had once called him a Scotch Arab, and he thought this morning he would look particularly well on a camel. He noticed blood oozing from the cut under his eye and he stuck a piece of adhesive tape over it. He bent down to pull on a wool sock, but he was unable to balance on one leg and had to sit on the edge of the tub. He was still a little drunk. He put on shorts, socks, shirt and trousers, combed his hair and then looked around for his shoes. Finally, he saw them in the bedroom.

  He stopped in the dressing-room to douse his face with toilet water from a crystal bottle, wincing when the alcohol stung his skin. Among the perfume bottles on the mirrored table he caught sight of a gold-beaded evening purse and a diamond-and-sapphire clip. These, and what he had seen of the apartment, made him decide the girl was rich. That was all right with him: if he had to get mixed up with a girl, he preferred she be rich. Rich, young, beautiful and of royal blood, if possible.

  His shoes were between the beds, lying on the carpet beside the fallen telephone and a black brassière. As he stooped to pick up the shoes, he looked at the girl. She was in the same position, her blonde hair veiling the pillow, one bare arm across the white blanket.

  ‘Hallo,’ he whispered.

  She didn’t hear him. Her hair trembled in the breeze from the window, but she didn’t move. Her shoulder was softly curved, the flesh smooth and tan, and he could see enough of her back to know she was naked under the covers.

  ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘You got company.’

  He took both shoes in one hand and shook her. Under his palm her flesh was cool. He heard a clock ticking somewhere. ‘Wake up,’ he said again, then pulled blanket and sheet off the bed. Her back was lovely, firm-muscled and smooth, with broad shoulders and fluid hips. Except where a swim-suit had covered her buttocks, her skin was tan. He grasped her shoulder and rolled her over on her back.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he began and broke off, staring at raw wounds on breasts and belly, at a grotesque blot on the sheet beside her where blood had seeped through into the mattress and was drying a parchment brown.

  She was beautiful, all right. She was also dead.

  He looked at her face, saw pale skin that held no colour besides two crimson smears of lipstick and the violet of mascara on the lids of the almond-shaped eyes. Her expression was serene, as though she had died in her sleep. He dropped his shoes and without taking his eyes off the body found the brandy bottle, uncorked it and drank. For a second he was sure he was going to be sick, then the liquor took hold, a jagged sphere of flame in his stomach. He drank again and put the bottle back on the table. He saw his hand was shaking.

  He stared again at her face, but he did not know her. She was a stranger. For a moment he felt relief, and then he realized that not knowing her meant nothing. Not with the blackness that lay behind him. He felt again and drank once more from the bottle. Then he sat on the twin bed and started to put on his shoes, his hands fumbling with the laces.

  He tried desperately to recall something about the night that would tell him where he was and how he came to be there. But it was no use. Beyond the few unreal memories of brandy and roller coasters that had slid across his mind be
fore, like out-of-focus pictures on a dimly lit screen, there was only a dark void. His shoes tied, he lifted the telephone from the carpet and put it back on its cradle. Then, after an instant’s hesitation, he covered the body with sheet and blanket, hiding the composed face that might have been asleep. He found his necktie, put it on, and then his coat. He wondered if seeing the rest of the apartment would help him remember. At least, he could find out who the girl was.

  He went to the bedroom door. Beyond was a small hallway with a red-lacquer-and-gold-brocade love seat and a Persian carpet. He tiptoed through this and found himself in a living-room which held a black satin divan, two basket-shaped chairs, chromium lamps, a mahogany desk, and by one of the windows, another love seat, this time finished in white leather. On the wall over the divan hung, a copy of a Picasso clown. Across the back of the divan, obviously tossed there, was a mink coat, silky, dark and thick; and on the desk was a Morocco-leather folder containing a picture of the dead girl.

  Nothing seemed familiar until, on the sand-coloured carpet by one of the chairs, he saw his felt hat. He was moving towards it when, from the bedroom, came the sound of the telephone, strident, imperative and shocking. Fear tightened his muscles as he hurried to the bedroom, took the phone off its cradle and put it under the pillow he had slept on. The ringing had been like a voice shouting at him. He waited tensely, the buzzing of the fly loud in his ears, but no one came. The phone clicked angrily under the pillow for a time, then became silent. A gilt electric clock on a chest of drawers read 8.35.

  He tried to piece together what he had seen. There had been no evidence of a party in the living-room: he must have come up alone with the girl and gone directly to the bedroom. But not uninvited, if the magnum of brandy meant anything. On the other hand, he thought grimly, what had happened to her was certainly uninvited. He looked around the bed for a weapon that had made the wounds, but he found only a pair of black evening slippers and two sheer stockings. His eye caught sight of the black brassière, noted a trailer of black thread. He picked the brassière up, discovered the hooks had been torn loose. Quickly, he crossed to the dressing-room, lifted the black evening gown that lay half on the dressing-table stool, half on the floor. It was ripped, as were the black panties he discovered nearby.

  He went back to the bed and stared down at the white blanket covering the girl’s body, remembering the peaceful expression on her face. It made no sense, this combination of serenity and violence, except as part of a nightmare that made no sense to begin with.

  He was reaching for the brandy bottle again when he heard a sound somewhere in the apartment: a click of heels on a wooden floor. Clutching the bottle, he tiptoed to the dressing-room, stood with his back against the wall.

  A Negro girl, walking carefully with a breakfast tray, crossed his line of vision and went between the beds. She put the tray on the ivory stand.

  ‘Breakfast, honey,’ she said.

  She waited a moment, then reached down and shook the white blanket. ‘You ain’t foolin’ me,’ she said. ‘I heard the telephone, too.’

  She pulled down the blanket and froze, all expression gone from her face. Then she screamed, a thin, off-key sound that seemed to come from the top of her head, and turned and ran towards the door. Half-way across the room she stumbled, fell to one knee. As she scrambled to her feet, Clay moved behind her, struck at her head with the bottle. She grunted, slid face down along the hall floor, crumpling the Persian rug. She wore a garter belt, but no panties.

  He set the bottle on the floor, stepped over her, walked along the hall and went out the front door. He found himself in a corridor lined with other doors. The one he had just come from, he saw, was marked 703. At the far end of the corridor was an elevator shaft and an unmarked door. He opened the unmarked door, found cement stairs leading downwards. He was between the fifth and fourth floors, moving as quietly as possible, when he saw a man bending over a trash can on the landing below. The man was a hunchback and he was muttering spitefully as he fingered cardboard boxes and torn papers. Clay caught the words ‘… eye of a needle’ as he turned back and went through the door to the fifth-floor corridor. He pushed the elevator button and waited, hearing a whirr of machinery, but no other noise.

  At last metal doors slid open, revealing a pasty-faced boy in a blue uniform. ‘Down?’ he asked.

  Clay said, ‘Yeah,’ in a muffled voice and stepped to the back of the elevator where the boy could not look at him. The doors closed and the car started down. As the indicator registered 3, a buzzer in the car sounded and a red light marked 7 glowed. The buzzer pulsed, imperative, insistent, frantic.

  The boy spoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Somebody’s got ants in their underdrawers.’

  Clay muttered ‘Yeah’ again, and when the doors opened he went out into a small lobby with two divans and an artificial fireplace. There was no one back of the reception desk.

  In the street hot air pressed against his face. A doorman and a nurse holding a chubby child by a harness were talking near the kerb. Two girls in shorts went by on bicycles. The child gurgled at him, but he paid no attention. He turned left and started along the sidewalk. He was two blocks away when the police car slid past him, its siren moaning.

  Chapter 2

  BRIGHTLY coloured umbrellas, like mutant mushrooms, sprouted from metal tables in the restaurant courtyard. Two Filipino busboys, wearing freshly starched white coats, were distributing silver and napkins from a tea cart and near them, by a long table, a plump woman was arranging marigolds in pottery vases. She smiled as Sam Clay went by the table.

  ‘You’re out early.’

  He managed a twisted grin. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  Keeping the grin fixed on his face, he went to the stairway at the rear, conscious of her eyes following him. He turned to the right at the top of the stairs, found his keys and unlocked the door to his apartment. The sound of violins playing Noel Coward’s ‘Zigeuner’ came from the living-room and he hesitated before crossing the small foyer.

  The living-room was empty, but his Sunday paper was spread out on the beige cotton-twist rug. As he stared at the paper, noting the comics were missing, the built-in changer clicked, abandoned ‘Zigeuner’ for ‘I’ll Follow My Secret Heart’. He knew paper and records were merely indications that Gwen Pearson, his neighbour, had paid him a Sunday-morning call, but again he experienced the feeling of unreality that had come in the other apartment.

  It was as though he was the dream of the real Sam Clay who had awakened on a Sunday morning like a million other honest citizens and who had read the paper to music in his own living-room. The psychiatrists had a name for it, he remembered. Double walking. As he went into the bedroom, he half expected to meet himself coming out.

  But the bed had not been slept in and reality dropped fear into his stomach again. He sat on the grey chenille spread and thought numbly: Well, brother, you finally went and bought it. A triple-A, top-priority jam. The best. He palmed his face, feeling sweat on his forehead. He began to take off his clothes.

  In his coat pockets he found two packets of matches, one advertising a rectal ointment and the other, silver foiled, marked Riverview Park; a lip-stained handkerchief, a green hat-check numbered 67 and a crumpled five-dollar bill. He tossed these objects on the bed and went to the closet. As he draped the coat on a hanger he noticed a faint bulge of flannel over the inside pocket and, exploring with his fingers, felt something metallic. He drew it out, discovered he was holding what seemed for an astonished instant to be a tiny, glittering, green-and-white snake.

  It wasn’t a snake, he realized slowly; it was something even deadlier: a bracelet of square-cut sapphires and diamonds. And there could be no doubt as to where it had come from: it was the matching piece to the clip he’d seen in the dead girl’s apartment. Feverishly, he went through his coat again, then through his trousers’ pockets, but he found nothing else. The brac
elet was enough, though. Even to him it spelled murder: evidence and motive.

  Dazedly, he put the bracelet on the bureau with his wallet and took off the rest of his clothes. One thing he noted with satisfaction: there were no blood stains. But then there needn’t be, not if he’d undressed before the girl was killed. He’d read of French murderers who’d done that; it seemed to be a custom in France. Now, maybe, he thought wildly, it would become a fad in the United States.

  He took a clean pair of shorts from a bureau drawer. He had these on and was searching for a shirt when someone spoke from the bedroom door. ‘Welcome home.’ He spun around, dropping the shirt.

  Gwen Pearson was leaning against the door-jamb, one hand holding the Sunday comics and the other the front of a printed Japanese-silk wrapper. Her legs and feet were bare and her dark hair was piled in a bun on top of her head. She had on no make-up and she looked about fifteen years old. She was a television actress.

  When he got his breath, he said, ‘How long have you been here?’

  She gave him her Mona Lisa smile.

  ‘Next time I change clothes,’ he said, ‘I’ll send you an engraved invitation.’ He undid the shirt’s top two buttons, pulled it over his head. ‘What’s wrong with your place?’

  ‘No sun.’

  ‘There will be. All afternoon.’

  ‘This is morning. Or didn’t you know?’

  He jerked a pair of trousers from a hanger, stepped into them. She moved from the door, put the comics on the bureau and picked up the bracelet. ‘For me?’

  His voice came out a hoarse croak. ‘Naturally. I had Harry Winston make it up especially.’

  The bracelet made a clicking noise on the bureau top. ‘Costume jewellery!’ she said disdainfully.

  ‘Why don’t you go home?’

  ‘A nice balcony with cushions,’ she said, ‘and you begrudge a girl a little sun-bathing?’

  ‘Have you been out there without any clothes again?’