Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  “Probably,” Gray said wryly. “He doesn’t want any further investigation either. So Crain’s in Europe?”

  “In France, I think. I stopped in at the Golden Pheasant for lunch one day, and Eleanor and Crain were there. She introduced him. I joined them.”

  “What were they talking about?” Gray asked.

  “Mostly about the town they lived in when they were kids. A place in Pennsylvania. They didn’t pay much attention to me. They were both laughing a good deal. But I don’t think it was really very funny to Eleanor. Crain was saying how much Eleanor had changed.”

  “Did he say how?”

  “Well—I gathered her family was very strict. Eleanor never talked about her folks. But from what Crain said, I guess they must have been very strict—some pretty rigid religious sect. Eleanor wasn’t allowed to go to movies or dances.”

  “She came from a pretty strict family?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Oh, yes. And Crain did say something Eleanor tried to brush off. That Eleanor had run away from home. To New York. That was during the war. She must have met Sam there.”

  “She wasn’t too strict herself, was she?”

  Mary laughed ruefully.

  “She tried to break every rule in the book.”

  “Yes,” Gray said. “But with her background, she’d probably have felt a great deal of guilt.”

  “Eleanor never felt guilty in her life,” Mary said positively.

  Gray said, “There’s a theory that the compulsive gambler tries to lose, not to win. Eleanor seemed to put herself in awkward positions. Even dangerous ones. At least, that’s my impression.”

  “But she wasn’t trying to get killed.”

  “Perhaps she was,” Gray said. “Not consciously, of course. But the masochist attracts the sadist. The victim attracts the killer. Guilt can cause a need for punishment, and sometimes a person actually invites punishment.”

  Gray stopped.

  He put down his cup, stood up, and went quickly into the next room. He picked up the African violet and turned the pot upside down. The reddish pot had a hole punched out of its base. Gray took a nail file from his pocket and probed. His face changed a little.

  “Got an old newspaper?” he asked Mary Dunne, who had followed him.

  “I’ll get one.”

  Gray spread it on the floor and carefully lifted the violet, earth and all, from the pot. He probed the tangle of roots with his file. Something fell onto the newspaper.

  Gray replaced the plant and picked up the object. He cleaned it and held it up to the light.

  “It’s a key,” Mary Dunne said blankly.

  “Yes. Do you recognize it?”

  She took the key and examined it.

  “I don’t think so. It doesn’t fit any lock in this house.”

  Gray took the key back and dropped it into his pocket.

  “No,” he said slowly. “It wouldn’t.”

  “But who put it there? How did you know it was there?”

  “I didn’t know. It was a hunch.” Gray hesitated. “Leave it at that, for now. I’ve got to go.”

  “Is … there going to be more trouble?”

  Gray said, “I’m not sure. It depends on what this key will open.”

  26

  The psychoanalyst stood before the door of Sam Pope’s apartment and tried the key gently in the lock.

  It fitted.

  He opened the door slightly, closed it again, and replaced the key in his pocket. Then he went downstairs and looked up and down the street. Halfway along the block, under an apartment-house awning, he saw a uniformed doorman. Buttoning his topcoat, Gray walked toward him.

  “I know everybody in this building,” the man said, after a brief conversation. “I know most of their friends by sight, too. But that’s as far as it goes.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have recognized Mr. Pope?”

  The doorman squinted along the street.

  “Let’s see. Wednesday night. The Farwells generally throw a party on Wednesday. They’re in Seven C.” He pinched his lower lip. “They had a Buick, a Cadillac, and a Dodge that night.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  The doorman said, “Their guests, I mean. I know their cars by sight. Around nine, you say?”

  Gray took newspaper clippings from his pocket—a picture of Pope, and one of Dunne—and held them out.

  The doorman shook his head.

  “Well, it was a pretty quiet night, but I’m afraid I just didn’t notice. I don’t know either of those two—except what I saw about them in the papers lately.”

  Gray said, “There was a light-green Chrysler coupé, last year’s model…”

  “No—wait a minute, though. There was a gray coupé.” He snapped his fingers. “It must have been green. That neon across the street always makes a light-green paint job look gray at night. It was a Chrysler coupé, I know that.”

  “And?”

  “It came along from that way, past me—I didn’t notice it then, but I did notice it park right down there. It was … oh, between nine and ten, I guess. I’m not too sure. It didn’t stay parked long.”

  “How long?”

  “Five, ten minutes, at most.”

  “Did anybody get out of it?”

  The doorman considered.

  “Yes. A man got out. He went in there.”

  “The apartment house where Pope lived?”

  “That one, anyhow,” the doorman said, pointing. “I didn’t notice him come out. But I heard the engine start, so I looked around, and the car was pulling out. It drove down that way. So I never got a good look at the man in it.”

  “Did you get any impression of him at all?”

  “No. I think he had a hat and overcoat on.”

  “Could you say it was either of these two men?” Gray asked.

  The doorman studied the newspaper photographs again.

  “No. It might have been anybody.”

  “But it was a man. And he was alone in the car?”

  “I guess it was a man. He was in a hell of a hurry. I couldn’t see if he was alone in the car, though. I only saw one person get out of it.”

  “In a hurry,” Gray said. “Well, that fits. You can’t pin down the time any closer?”

  The doorman shook his head.

  “But you’re sure it was a light-green Chrysler coupé?”

  “Green or gray. That neon’s funny. But it was a Chrysler coupé.”

  Zucker said, “It’s no good, Mike. There are hundreds of light-colored Chrysler coupés in San Francisco.”

  “In the right place at the right time?”

  Zucker shook his head.

  Gray said, “What about the key to Pope’s apartment?”

  “Well, what about it? Anybody could have put it in that flowerpot. Hoyle’s the right man.”

  “No. He isn’t guilty of murder.”

  “All right, who is?”

  “I don’t know if anybody is,” Gray said. “Legally, I mean.”

  Zucker’s thick brows drew together.

  “Legally?” he asked, a new note in his deep voice. “Just what do you mean by that?”

  Gray hesitated.

  “Come on. Let’s have it. What the hell are you driving at, Mike?”

  The psychoanalyst said suddenly, “I’m driving at this. I believe the killer was Howard Dunne.”

  “What? Oh, for God’s sake! Howard Dunne—”

  “That’s what I said. I meant it.”

  Zucker waited a moment. Then he shook his head.

  “No. It couldn’t have been Dunne. Even if it could—you’re saying he was insane.”

  “I—”

  “That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

  “Damn it,” Gray said. “It isn’t black and white. Most of the time Dunne was sane enough. He couldn’t have been committed. That isn’t just my opinion. He saw two psychiatrists and a neurologist before he came to me. They didn’t recommend institutionalization.
There weren’t any grounds for it, as far as anybody could tell. Under enough stress Dunne could become psychotic, like any of us. I knew damn well that commitment to a sanitarium would have made him psychotic.”

  “But you’re saying he was anyway. Get it straight, Mike. Was he sane or wasn’t he?”

  “He was in a psychotic state at least three times. When he killed Eleanor. When he killed Sam Pope. And when he committed suicide.”

  Zucker snorted.

  “He killed Pope after he committed suicide? Where’s your evidence? What motive could he have had?”

  “The motives were buried,” Gray said. “Even Dunne didn’t know what his real motives were. He didn’t dare recognize them. He’d suppressed them from his consciousness ever since childhood. But they were there. Every dream, every feeling, added up to a motive that frightened Dunne so much he never dared face it. He was beginning to. I saw it fairly soon, but that didn’t help. If I’d told Dunne the truth, before he felt safe enough to face it himself, he’d have panicked. But it happened anyway. Sam Pope pushed Dunne over the edge.”

  “What was this thing Dunne couldn’t face?”

  “He was homosexual,” Gray said.

  Zucker said, “Dunne? He—now wait a minute! I know the background of this case maybe better than you. There isn’t a thing in Dunne’s past that shows anything like that. And we’d have dug it up; you know that. Dunne was a woman-chaser.”

  Gray said wearily, “I’ve only told you half of it. The other half is that Dunne probably never had a homosexual experience. Or, if he did, it was when he was a youngster, and he managed to forget all about it. But the important point is that Dunne himself never knew consciously that he was sexually attracted to men, not to women. He couldn’t let himself realize that. That was the nightmare he was running away from in every way he could. Everything he did kept shouting, ‘I’m a man.’ He had to shout, to drown out the voice inside. The voice that kept trying to tell him the truth.”

  Zucker shook his head stubbornly.

  Gray said, “I won’t give you a lecture on the Oedipal situation. But it was there, all right. Dunne’s early experiences were inconsistent. Sometimes his mother was affectionate, and sometimes she rejected him completely. His father treated him the same way. A child turns to anyone who loves him, and runs away from anyone who punishes or rejects him. That’s the way it was with Howard Dunne. Whenever his mother rejected him, he turned to his father. That’s where the homosexual attitude started. But the father was also a strong, dominant, tyrannical figure. So Howard was afraid of his father, too.”

  “You call that an explanation?” Zucker said. “It just mixes things up worse.”

  “It did for Howard Dunne,” Gray said. “Especially when his father was killed. Howard thought that was his fault. There was a letter he’d hidden … well, skip that. The important point is that Howard’s father was extremely masculine, and a mixture of an affectionate, kind father, and a tough, punishing one. So Howard both loved and feared his father. It might have turned out some other way. In Howard’s case, the basic pattern was a violently conflicting attitude toward his father—or to men who looked or acted like his father.”

  Zucker said, “You mean Sam Pope.”

  “Yes. Pope was Howard’s father, come to life again. That’s why Howard needed to be close to Pope—he had loved his father—but the closer he came, the more his unconscious homosexual tendencies rose toward the surface, and the more panicky he felt. That’s when he’d have to find a woman. To prove he was masculine. But afterwards he was disappointed and angry, because no woman could give him what he really wanted—and didn’t know he wanted. He felt guilt, too—the Oedipal situation. He was afraid his father would punish him. And, in a way, he wanted punishment.”

  Zucker nodded.

  “I can buy that,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Sure. The unconscious mind can learn that if you’re punished for misbehavior, then you’ll be forgiven afterward. Howard wanted punishment, and he needed to confess—but he never confessed the truth. For he didn’t know it. He got himself into all lands of trouble—in the army, with women—but there was one trouble he never got into. I mean actual homosexuality. And yet that was what he was really confessing to when he got himself in trouble for some other apparent reason. He’d feel a little better after he’d been punished. But it never lasted long, because he hadn’t really confessed. He couldn’t. He was too afraid of his father.”

  Zucker said, “I’m following you so far. But it still isn’t evidence that he killed anybody. You know that.”

  “I know. But Howard Dunne did kill Eleanor—”

  “Hold on. Motive?”

  Gray said, “You see, Howard needed to be close to Sam Pope—as long as it wasn’t too close. That’s one reason he married Pope’s sister. And it’s why he had an affair with Pope’s wife. Also, of course, he was proving his masculinity, as well as getting a feeling of nearness to Sam Pope.”

  “But why should he have killed Pope’s wife?”

  “I don’t know. She might have threatened to tell Pope about their affair. That could have sent Howard into a panic. He could have killed her then.”

  “But you don’t know. It boils down to that.”

  Gray hesitated.

  “He was keeping something back. He didn’t entirely trust me. He was beginning to. If Pope hadn’t pushed him into a trap where he couldn’t escape, he’d have told me he killed Eleanor Pope. But I didn’t know soon enough.”

  “What if he had told you?”

  Gray said, “Well, I’d have tried to get him to turn himself in to you, of course. And I’d probably have succeeded.”

  “And you’d have done your damnedest to prove he’d been insane at the time.”

  “Yes,” Gray said. “He was. But he was getting better. He was beginning to split the father-figure in a way he could handle.”

  “How’s that?” Zucker asked warily.

  “I said he both loved and hated his father. In other words, there was a good-father and a bad-father—Jekyll and Hyde—but they were inseparable. Howard couldn’t love the good-father without being afraid of the bad-father. Well, he’d begun to separate the two. I’d begun to symbolize the good part of his father, to him.”

  “What you call transference, eh?”

  Gray nodded.

  “Yes. He tried to make me into a punishing figure, but I wouldn’t play. I let him confess, but I wouldn’t take the next step he wanted and punish him. Eventually, he’d have been able to face the truth he’d never dared admit to himself, and then—the cure could have started. But Pope tried to move in.” Gray frowned. “You see how that would have frightened Dunne? With Pope actually living in the same house, Dunne’s unconscious mind felt it couldn’t keep its latent homosexuality concealed. And then the father-image would find out—the father Howard thought he’d killed—and everything would blow up completely.”

  “But you said Dunne wanted to be punished.”

  “He did. But not for homosexuality. Even he didn’t realize that was why he really wanted punishment. It was all mixed up in Howard’s mind—sexuality, murder, suicide….”

  Zucker said, “Let me get it straight. I’m trying to see this the way you do, Mike. Now—according to your theory, Dunne went over to Pope’s apartment that night and put cyanide in Pope’s medicine. Then he came back and mixed himself a drink with cyanide in it.”

  “He didn’t mix it himself. That’s important. He made Pope give it to him. He made his father kill him. Because he imagined he’d killed his father—or Pope. The same pattern repeated itself.”

  “But Pope was still alive then.”

  “From Howard’s viewpoint, Pope was already dead. He’d poisoned Pope’s medicine. But even then, he couldn’t admit the truth to himself. He made Pope kill him as a punishment for murder, not for homosexual feelings.”

  Zucker said, “There’s no evidence. It keeps coming back to that. You haven’t convi
nced me, and you couldn’t convince a jury. You could prove anybody’s guilt this way.”

  Gray was silent.

  Zucker said, “It might have been Dunne’s car parked in front of Pope’s apartment house that night. Dunne might have put that key in the flowerpot. But—I think the real point is that Hoyle’s motives make more sense.”

  “And Dunne’s don’t?”

  “You say he didn’t even know what they were himself. Well—how can we know them?”

  Gray said, “Half the time we don’t know our own real motives. It’s like learning to find our way around in a dark cellar. There’s only the sense of touch to depend on. Eventually, you know your way around, a little. But the only legal evidence is when a neurosis is acted out. The motive behind a peptic ulcer and a suicide attempt with a knife may be exactly the some. Except that the knife can be produced in court.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Zucker said. “You may be right about Dunne. I don’t think so. But you’ll never be able to prove it.”

  “And if I can’t, Hoyle will probably be convicted.”

  “Leave out the probably. He’ll go to the gas chamber.”

  Gray said suddenly, “Damn it, Harry, I’ve got to—”

  “What?”

  The psychoanalyst stood up.

  “I’ve got to find the right question to ask. Of the right person.”

  “Who?”

  “Maybe myself,” Gray said.

  27

  He was busy that day, but he found time to try to reach Carol Webster again. It was useless. He left word that he would be at La Noche around ten that night.

  The hardest part was to keep the thought of Maurice Hoyle out of his mind. Even when he succeeded, two other faces kept appearing. One he had never seen in the flesh—Eleanor Pope. The other was Howard Dunne.

  He felt completely blocked.

  The telephone rang. It was Arnold Farragut. He wanted to see Gray. The psychoanalyst made an appointment and turned back to his patient. It was even more difficult after that; Gray found it hard to concentrate.

  By five the last patient had gone, and Arnold Farragut’s tall, lean form drifted into the office.