Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  Brand said in a slightly more relaxed voice, “Well, you’ve landed me on a spot. I’ll have to get off it by myself. But for God’s sake stay away from here from now on, Fenn. You could get us both in a jam.”

  “How about my payoffs?” Fenn demanded plaintively.

  “I ought to stop right now.”

  “You won’t.” Fenn sounded almost comfortable. “I’ve still got my evidence salted away. And that reminds me, Perry, I’ve had some reverses lately. Some extra expenses. How about letting me have a little advance until next month? I’ll knock it off the next payment.”

  “You can go to hell,” Brand told him. “All I have to do is open my mouth to the cops and you lose your license. We’re going to refigure these payoffs, Fenn. I’m just about fed up.”

  Fenn said in the placid voice of one who has been through these little crises before. “We’ll refigure nothing. You think it over, Perry. I’ll see you next month.”

  “Well—stay away from this house. I mean it. I’ll—I’ll meet you somewhere when the time comes. Understand, Fenn?”

  Fenn said, “Okay, okay. See you later, Perry.”

  He hung up and sat there licking his lips reflectively, thinking about many things.

  In the taxi on the way back to headquarters Zucker said to Gray, “How about it, Mike? Was Brand telling the truth about the Champion dame?”

  “He doesn’t know how to tell the truth,” Gray said.

  Zucker laughed a little. “Maybe it slips out by mistake sometimes. What do you know about Karen Champion?”

  “Very little,” Gray said. “I’ve only talked to her twice. My guess is she takes refuge in fantasy instead of acting out her aggressions. But it’s only a guess. About that ‘homicidal type’ business—” Gray laughed. “There’s no such thing, of course. That theory went out with Lombroso. Nobody can tell at a glance that a person’s homicidal.”

  “If she actually did go after Brand with a poker, though—”

  “If she did, I’ve guessed wrong,” Gray said. “I often do, of course. I’ll bet, though, Brand leaves that part out of his sworn statement. He was being cagey, trying to cover up. What he was covering is anybody’s guess.”

  “He could have killed Albano himself,” Zucker said. “If Albano was threatening his life, Brand might have decided to strike first. Or the Champion woman could have done it. I don’t want to discount Brand’s story without thinking it over. After all, he did know about Albano and Karen Champion.”

  Gray said, “Brand knows everything that Susan Turk knows, by now. She’d tell him anything he asked. Probably do anything he told her to.”

  Zucker shook his head. “How does a guy like that get such a hold over people? Hypnotism?”

  “They often use hypnotism, but it isn’t necessary for this kind of thing. One method they use is arresting transference in the positive stage—”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Gray smiled. “Sorry. All it means is there’s a point in analysis, fairly early usually, where the patient builds up a strong feeling of admiration for the therapist. A good therapist knows he has to get the patient beyond this stage before the therapy can work very well. A man like Brand does his damnedest to arrest the process right there, keep the client in the positive transference stage forever. Then he can do whatever he likes with the client. It’s a damned, dirty business taking advantage of people in trouble that way.”

  Zucker grunted again. “Well, Brand’s my problem now. I’m going to see if we can connect him with the killing in any way. The Champion woman, though—how about making her your problem?”

  “That would be up to her, wouldn’t it?” Gray asked. “I can’t twist her arm and force her into therapy. Though God knows she needs it.”

  “I’ve been talking to the D.A.,” Zucker told him. “Before we’re through the question of sanity’s bound to come up. Karen’s sanity, Champion’s sanity—they’ve already been questioned. Now Brand’s in it, and we may need somebody like you officially as consultant. Have you got time to work with us again, Mike? You’ve been a lot of help in cases like this in the past.”

  “I’d like to,” Gray said.

  “Good. I wish you’d talk to Karen Champion, then. Tell us what you think of her. Make up your mind whether Brand was lying.”

  Gray said dubiously, “All right, I’ll try. We may lock horns over this, though, Harry. It’s happened before. If I take her on as a patient then my first duty’s to her.”

  “Even if you decide she’s a killer?”

  Gray looked distressed. “That’s one of the unsolved problems of psychotherapy. You try to get the patient to go to the police and confess, of course. If they won’t—well, you just have to play it as it bounces. Society does have to be protected, after all. I know that. Anyhow, I’ll go and see Karen Champion again. I’ll call her this afternoon and take it from there. Okay?”

  As it happened, he didn’t have to call her.

  16

  Gray’s phone was ringing when he unlocked his office door. Dr. Ettinger’s brisk voice said, “Mike? Have you got time to stop in here at Karen Champion’s place before you go home this evening?”

  “I’d be glad to,” Gray told him. “I’d like to talk to her. Anything wrong?”

  Ettinger hesitated and dropped his voice a little. “Physically she’s perfectly all right. But I’m worried about her. The emotional shock’s the bad part. I’m afraid she may crack up. For a long time now she’s been in some kind of emotional tail-spin, but you’ll never get her to admit it. Now this happens, and—I don’t know, it seems to have put the lid on, somehow.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “She’s terrified of going to sleep,” Ettinger said. “I gave her a heavy jolt of sedative last night and she went out like a light, but along about four o’clock her husband came up pounding on the door and woke her. There was a policeman here and Champion didn’t get in, but Karen hasn’t been to sleep since. God knows how she kept herself awake with all that sedation, but she did it. Looks as if she’s made up her mind never to shut her eyes again. And she’s got to get some sleep. I’m afraid she’ll really crack up if she doesn’t.”

  “What is it?” Gray asked. “Is she scared? Afraid Champion will get at her?”

  “No, it’s more than that She fights off sleep. The minute she starts to drift off, she goes into a panic.”

  “Is she hanging onto things?” Gray asked.

  Ettinger sounded surprised. “Yes, she is. The bedclothes, anything she can reach. She’s been mentioning you, and I thought if you could have a talk with her she might quiet down. It’s worth trying. She seems to have some kind of feeling about you that—well, it seems to relieve her anxiety a little.”

  “Has she asked for me?” Gray said.

  “Yes, several times.”

  “All right,” Gray told him. “I’ll be over about six.”

  Karen’s knuckles were white as she gripped the blue down comforter over her. The brown hair straggled on the pillow, looking matted, as if she had been turning her head from one side to the other constantly for a long time.

  “Hello, Mr. Gray,” she said in a tight, small voice.

  “Hello,” Gray said, smiling. The uniformed nurse who had admitted him to the apartment hovered slightly. Gray said, “It’s all right. Mrs. Champion and I will have a little talk. Thanks, nurse.”

  The woman nodded and shut the door behind her. Karen Champion said, her voice hoarse and low, “I’m not really sick. I don’t need a nurse. It’s just—I can’t sleep.”

  “Do you know why you can’t?” Gray asked.

  “I don’t want to!” She stiffened defensively under the comforter, her knuckles tightening on its edge. Her eyes defied him.

  Gray said in an easy voice, “All right Why should you?” He got a cigarette pack out of his pocket offered her one.

  One of her hands very tentatively let go of the blue satin, reached out. Her eyes searched his with sur
prise.

  “Got an ash tray?” Gray asked.

  “I—on the bureau, I think.”

  Her eyes followed him mistrustfully as he crossed the room and sat down again. This was a gambit she hadn’t expected. Gray lit her cigarette for her and then glanced around the room.

  “Mind if I open the shade?” he asked. “I like this time of day. There’s no need to keep the room dark while we talk.”

  She nodded, still not speaking, and he got up again to raise the shade and let in the late shafts of the evening sun.

  Coming back to the bed, Gray looked at her and said, “You look uncomfortable. Sit up if you want to. Nobody’s going to make you lie there like a log until you fall asleep. It won’t work, anyway.”

  “Won’t it?”

  “Of course not. Tension can keep you awake until—oh, I suppose eventually you’d pass out of sheer exhaustion. But it might take days.”

  Moving hesitantly, Karen pushed back the covers and sat up, shoving the pillows into a support behind her. She wore a rumpled blue bed-jacket of quilted satin. She tried to smooth it a little, but Gray noticed that with one hand she still clutched the down comforter.

  He didn’t speak again. They sat in silence until Karen finished her cigarette.

  Then Gray said, “I expect you’ve got quite a lot on your mind, haven’t you?”

  Karen gave a hoarse, unexpected little laugh and then looked surprised at herself. “That’s the understatement of the year,” she said.

  Gray grinned at her. “What would you say is the biggest of the problems?”

  “I—I don’t know. They’re all big.” She rubbed her cheek, letting go the comforter to do so. Gray looked away quickly to hide the interest in his eyes. She clung to things, then, only when some unidentified inward problem obsessed her that had nothing to do with these current problems. She could talk quite calmly about the very real difficulties of her situation and feel no need to cling for support to the blanket or the chair.

  Watching her, Gray said, “You almost witnessed a murder. That would shake anybody.” But in his mind he was asking himself, did she swing the pipe on Albano herself? Knowingly or unknowingly? Could she have killed him without realizing or remembering what she did?

  Karen shuddered a little. “It was—bad. I haven’t stopped shaking yet. I came so close to seeing who did it. The door was just closing behind him. And all that blood—”

  “How do you feel about Albano?” Gray asked when she paused.

  “I don’t know. I feel terrible, of course, but—I ought to feel worse than I do. I didn’t love him. I wouldn’t—you know—sleep with him. I almost wish now I had.” She shut her eyes briefly.

  “And then there’s Dennis,” she said. “He tried to get in here last night. He’s tried twice today.” She opened her eyes, the pupils enormous, and gazed at Gray with terror in her face. “If he gets in he may kill me,” she said in a whisper.

  “He won’t get in.” Gray smiled at her. “Want another cigarette?”

  She shook her head. “Was it Dennis—last night?” she asked, her voice a thread of sound. “Did he—do it?”

  “What do you think?”

  She turned her head restlessly against the pillows. “I don’t know. I know it was Dennis who tried to kill me with the lamp that night. But this—I just don’t know. Of course Dennis was jealous of Oliver. I think he had somebody following us, peeping in windows. And Dennis is really—unbalanced.”

  “You’re making a strong case against him,” Gray said.

  “Am I? I don’t think I want to. Somehow I just don’t—don’t believe it was Dennis killed Oliver.”

  “Then who?”

  Again she shook her head on the pillow. “A burglar, maybe. Somebody with a key, though—and nobody has a key but me.

  “Could anyone have stolen your keys long enough to get one duplicated?” Gray asked.

  Karen blinked at him. “I suppose so. I’m pretty careless with my handbag sometimes. Most people are. If you look at it like that almost anybody could have a key. How awful!” She shivered.

  Gray said, “The lock’s been changed, didn’t they tell you? If you keep your keys safe from now on, nobody can get in any more.”

  Karen sighed. “I’m glad.” She rubbed her eyes. “I would like another cigarette, thanks. Mr. Gray—” She looked into his eyes above the match he held for her. “Will you tell me the truth about something?”

  “I’ll try. What is it?”

  “The police do think I might have killed Oliver, don’t they?”

  “They don’t know who did it. They have to suspect every possible person, as a working hypothesis to start with.”

  Karen sighed heavily. “So I’ve got that trouble on top of all the others.” She drew on the cigarette and blew out a thick blue cloud. “Mr. Gray, I’ve wondered something else. Things look so bad for me—I realize that. I’ve had the craz—the silly notion that somebody might be trying to make it look as if I’d killed Oliver. Is that possible?”

  “Almost anything’s possible at this stage.”

  “It might seem as if I’d made up the story about Dennis attacking me with the lamp just to set the stage. So I could pretend later somebody broke in to kill Oliver. As if I’d—” She paused and swallowed painfully. Then with deliberate effort she said, “—as if I’d lied about that night.” It seemed to cost her a lot to speak the word “lie.” But she got it out.

  Gray said very softly, “And did you?”

  A little grimace of pain crossed her face. “No. That was the truth. That really happened.”

  “And other times?” Gray asked gently.

  Karen took a firm grip of the comforter. “Other times—not always,” she whispered. “Sometimes I—I guess I don’t tell the truth.”

  There was something almost ludicrous in the effort it cost her to say what she must realize he knew already, what was common knowledge among all her friends. But it had taken very real courage to admit even this much. And her knuckles showed white against the blue satin.

  Gray said, keeping his voice low and even, “Do you know why you hold on to the bedcovers that way?”

  She looked down in surprise. “I didn’t know I was.”

  “Try letting go,” he suggested.

  She shook her head with sudden vehemence. “I don’t want to. I won’t!”

  “All right. I just wondered how you’d feel if you tried.”

  “Scared,” she said. “It scares me.”

  “Why?”

  She paused and looked at him blankly. “Why—I’d fall, I think. Isn’t that craz—silly? I feel I have to hang onto something solid or I’ll—pitch over the edge and fall and fall.”

  “When do you have this feeling? I mean, all the time, or just when certain things happen?”

  “Not all the time. Just now. When I was—” She grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about it. Forget it.”

  Gray nodded equably. He smoked in silence. Karen drew so deeply on her own cigarette that the paper crackled red around the tip.

  “When I’m afraid of falling,” she said rapidly, as if eager to finish before her courage deserted her, “is when I remember times that I haven’t—haven’t quite told the truth about something.” She paused, and her breath came fast as if she had been running. Gray saw a pulse beating in the side of her throat. “Why should that be?” she asked him, almost fearfully.

  “We could try to find out,” he said.

  “I’d like to. I think. …” A little doubt sounded in her voice now.

  “Well, tell me about this falling. What does it bring to your mind to think of falling?”

  She paused for a moment. “Oliver. I think about Oliver. I remember how last night I switched on the kitchen light and saw him lying there…. Everything was so white, shining white, and he was lying on the floor and the blood was so red against the white. … It was as if he’d fallen from somewhere high up. I felt I was going to fall too. Everything was—slippery. I had to
hang onto something. Everything was so white and cold and silent—”

  She paused, but she wasn’t finished. Gray waited intently.

  “I know why I thought that,” she went on. “The whiteness and coldness. Snow. Last winter at Tahoe. When Dennis and I were snowed in together. I’ve never told anybody about this. I hate to remember it. You see, Dennis tried to kill me….”

  Her hand was locked hard on the comforter.

  “Tell me about it,” Gray said.

  “We were on the gallery of the lodge—a little balcony outside our bedroom window. There was a steep drop down below. Dennis tried to throw me over the rail. I’d have been killed.” She shut her eyes and shivered violently. Tears began to take shape beneath her closed eyelids. Without opening her eyes she reached for a drawer in the bedside table and pulled out a paper tissue to dry her eyes. It looked like an automatic gesture she had made so often she didn’t need to see to perform it.

  Gray said quietly, “You say you’ve never mentioned this before to anyone. Do you know why?”

  She opened her eyes to gaze at him inquiringly. “Why? I was—ashamed of it, I suppose. Ashamed that my own husband would want to kill me. I guess I felt—well, I can’t amount to much, can I, if my own husband hates me that much?” She caught her breath, half hiccough and half sob, and mopped at her eyes again.

  “But later on, when you told the police he’d attacked you with a lamp—did you feel differently about that?”

  Karen blinked. “I must have, mustn’t I? I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “There must be some reason why you felt free to report one case to the police, but not the other,” Gray persisted.

  “The thing that happened at the lodge—it frightened me so,” Karen said in a very low voice. “I wonder why? It was snowy—cold—we were alone up there on the gallery—Wait a minute.” She spread a hand over her eyes and breathed quickly. “I remember! That terrible dream! It reminds me of that nightmare I have sometimes—the one I never can remember much about afterward.”