Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  The light was on in the hall, but he was still out in the kitchen. She remembered she’d left both lights on when she came up. She took a step forward and stopped abruptly, looking over the rail down into the hall again, bewildered suddenly. A door was opening, the door to the basement. She knew its special hinge that whined in spite of all the oil she’d put on it. He was going, very quietly still, down into the basement. But he never went down there. He never looked at the furnace, or replaced a blown fuse, or did any of the things her father did in their basement at home. She wondered for an instant if he was sick. But that was silly. If he was sick he’d head for the washroom on the second floor.

  She pulled her robe around her, went along to the head of the stairs and bent down to unlatch little Jane’s folding gate. She took hold of the latch, looking down into the lighted hall. Suddenly there was no light. She was staring down into pitch and total blackness. The lights had gone off. There was nothing but darkness thick as a blanket thrown over her head. She could hear the soft pad of footsteps coming very quietly back up the basement steps.

  SEVEN

  THE SOFT PAD OF FOOTSTEPS was coming back up the basement stairs. Janey swallowed down the great lump swelling in her throat. She moistened her lips and swallowed again. The hinge whined softly and she heard the muted click of the catch as the door closed. Her legs were frozen, gripped in an awful paralysis as the blackness crept tighter and closer around her, suffocating her in its relentless cold invisibility. She drew herself sharply up and clenched her fists. “No! I’m crazy! There’s no one there. I’m just hearing things. The power’s gone off. All over town. The power’s gone off!”

  She jerked her head around toward her room and stiffened rigidly again. The power was not off. She could see the faint greenish glow change to red, sifting from the street through the closed slats of the Venetian blind at the front window. Her mouth and throat turned dry again as she turned quickly back, her eyes straining down into the inky blackness of the stair well. Perhaps it was just their power that had gone off—

  Then she heard the loose board in the pantry in front of the dining-room door. Something heavy had touched it— something heavier than she was and lighter than Gus. There wasn’t a board or step in the house that creaked or a door that opened that she didn’t know and couldn’t recognize. It was part of the enchanted game she’d played, when Gus had been out at night and she was happily curled up in bed warm and waiting, clocking his progress into the house and through it until he got to the top of the steps and suddenly remembered and started tiptoeing until he got into their darkened room, invariably hitting the foot of his bed, swearing softly until she broke into a laugh.

  He was always so funny. But this was not funny. The swinging door from the pantry into the dining-room was opening. She could hear the soft swish as it scraped its semicircular pattern across the end of the rug. Her eyes strained wide over the rail, staring down, not sure at first, then horribly sure, with a desperate panic clutching at her heart.

  It was a light. A faint nebulous glow came seeping, foggy and indistinct, until it focused, brightening, taking form, creeping out of the dining-room across the floor into the hall, moving out, onto the rug, rising slowly, like baleful water, up the white baseboard, the nebulous glow sifting between the banister posts, throwing them into wide, shadowy bars against the white walls, moving bars as the ball of light moved deliberately forward, deliberate and purposive. It was someone. Someone with a reason. Someone who knew she was there alone. The telephone call. The disguised voice. It flashed into her paralyzed mind with the speed of light, and with the purpose of light, illuminating and clarifying it.

  She jerked her body erect, her hands steady and her knees firm and strong. She opened her mouth to scream, to scream and run to the window to scream again. Then she flashed her hand to her mouth and swung around to the door of little Jane’s room. She couldn’t scream. If she screamed she’d frighten little Jane. Her mind clicked sharply into place as she reached quickly down to the rickety gate, tried it to see it was latched, and turned and ran along the dark passage to her room. If they’d turned off the lights they might have torn out the telephone, too— but that she could see, and then, if she had to, she could open the window in front and scream out into the street. She ran around the foot of Gus’s bed. Nobody could frighten little Jane. Nobody could come into her house at night and creep around and frighten her child. It was the sort of thing a child might never get over. Her cheeks flushed with sudden anger that burned out all trace of fear. The hand she thrust out reached the telephone accurately. As the dial tone buzzed in her ear her finger flashed around the slots to the last one. Operator. She whirled the dial around and waited, her breath coming quickly.

  There was one ring, two rings. She flashed around, looking out into the hall. The soft glow of the light reflected up the narrow shaft of the stairs was brighter. The dark shadow of the rail along the hall was moving, coming closer into focus as the glow reflecting it brightened and came nearer. Janey listened, holding her breath. The corner step where the crooked stairs turned to the second floor had not squeaked. That she would have heard. Then as she did hear it, her heart tightening, the operator’s calm voice was in her other ear.

  “May I help you?”

  “Call the police, 42 Locust Street. Emergency.”

  Her voice was crisp and very clear.

  “There’s someone in the house. The lights are cut off. My child and I are here alone. And call me back quickly. Locust 4298.”

  “42 Locust Street. Locust 4298. Right.”

  The operator cut the connection. The dial tone buzzed again in Janey’s ear. She slipped the phone quietly back into the cradle, her hand resting on it to pick it up again, her body straight and taut on the side of the bed, her small, pointed jaw tight, her hot blue eyes fixed on the foggy glow of light out in the hall. It had stopped. The shadow of the stair rail had stopped moving. It was stationary on the wall. The center board in the hall on the second floor hadn’t creaked. But they were close. Too close.

  The phone rang sharply. The shadow of the rail jerked and moved crazily up and down for an instant and was fixed and still again. Janey caught the phone up and raised her voice as she said, “Hello,” turning so it would carry out into the hall and down to the listening ears below. The light moved abruptly and disappeared—into Gus’s den. She knew that even before she heard the faint click as the telephone down there was raised and she could hear the sharp breathing of someone else there on the line.

  “The police are on their way, Mrs. Blake,” the operator’s crisp voice said. “The patrol car’s at Fifth and Fetter. It ought to be there in less than a minute. I’ll call you again. Or why don’t I call the people across the street? Who—”

  Janey moistened her lips. The downstairs phone had gone quietly back into place. The quickly drawn breath was no longer there in her ear. The light was in the hall again. The shadow of the rail flew up to the white wall and was blotted out as the light below faded and disappeared as silently as it had come.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t bother. I—I think he’s gone. But you’d better call again.”

  She put the phone down. The police were coming. Maybe Gus would come with them, she thought. It flashed into her mind that that was silly. Gus was with the county police. It was the city police coming here to her. County and city police weren’t the same at all. She went quickly over to the window and drew up the blinds. There was a little light outside, light in relation to the pitchy-blackness inside the house. She crept back quickly into the hall and stood leaning over the rail, looking down. There was no sound, nothing. Then abruptly she heard a sound. It was the oil burner. She heard it switch on and heard the familiar tap-tap-tap, like little ghosts playing hopscotch up and down the hot-water pipes as it started to work. She stood there, listening. After a long moment she let her breath out and drew it in again slowly. It meant that a door or window had been opened and cold air was coming into the house. The
thermostat was set at 60. She listened still. The oil burner was still going. Then there was another tap-tap, louder than that the little ghosts made in the pipes. She turned and ran to the front window and threw it up. She leaned out. A car with lights dimmed was at the curb. A dark uniformed figure was at the end of the walk, another at the front door, knocking on it.

  “I’ll come down,” she called.

  “You stay there, ma’am, till we get in. We’ve got the house surrounded.”

  It did not sound stilted or absurd to Janey. It sounded wonderful.

  “Okay. I think it must be the back door. The switch is in the basement.”

  She closed the window and went back into the hall. In a moment she heard heavy honest feet on the first floor and saw bobbing lights with a nebulous glow that held no terror. She unlatched the gate and tied her robe more securely around her as she felt her way down the stairs. She was halfway down to the first floor when the lights flashed on. The policeman standing by the front door stared at her. He thrust his gun back into the holster.

  “You could ’a got shot easy, lady,” he said irritably. “I told you to say up there.”

  Janey came on down the stairs. She drew herself up with dignity. “I don’t want my little girl waked up,” she said stiffly. “I don’t want people tramping all over the house waking her up.”

  The policeman stared at her. “Look, lady. You don’t seem to realize—” He stopped. “Okay, Mrs. Blake. I guess you scared him away. The back door’s open. I’ll have a look all around upstairs. You go in there and sit down. I won’t wake your girl up.”

  Janey went into the dining-room, switched the lights on, and sat down. She was sitting there, the sapphire sparks still shooting from her wide blue eyes, when he came back again.

  “All okay upstairs, Mrs. Blake. Are you all right?”

  Janey nodded.

  “If you’re alone here, I’ll leave a man—”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Janey said quickly. “I’m sure he won’t come back. My husband will be home pretty soon. We’ll be perfectly all right. I’m not scared. I—I was at first, but then I—I was just mad, I guess.”

  He hesitated, looking at her sitting there. You wouldn’t think she had that much of what it takes. Mosquito weight, plenty of punch.

  “All right, Mrs. Blake. You’ll be all right. You go to bed and go to sleep. We’ll keep an eye out. Will you leave a note for your maid not to touch anything down there around the fuse box, and tomorrow we’ll dust that switch for fingerprints.”

  “I don’t have a maid,” Janey said.

  “Okay, then, Mrs. Blake. I’ll lock up in back for you and go out the front door. Tomorrow morning Lieutenant Williams’ll want to talk to Mr. Blake about this. Can you see he’s here round nine-fifteen? And you ought to get him to put a bolt on your kitchen door. Any dime-store key’ll open it.”

  He was back in an instant. “Good night, Mrs. Blake.”

  “Good night.”

  She waited for him to close the door, still very calm. The closing of the door shattered all her control as instantly as if it had been a rainbow bubble hitting the floor, bursting into a million pin points of soapy water.

  “Oh, no!” She gripped the edge of the table. She could hear heavy steps coming along the side of the house. They were all going, leaving her alone again. She ran to the front door, her heart in her throat, and stopped, the tears pricking like hot grease along her eyelids. She backed away from the door and went back into the dining-room, sank down into the chair, and put her head down on her arms. She raised it again quickly, listening. It was nothing but the icebox coming on. She listened again. The courthouse clock struck one. She looked at the clock on the thermostat by the door. One o’clock. Only one o’clock. If only Gus would come—if he’d only come home. At least he’d be proud of her for keeping her head, and not screaming and frightening the little Dane. She put her head down on her arms on the table for a moment to rest before she sat up to take up her vigil in the quiet night again.

  EIGHT

  IT WAS TEN MINUTES PAST TWO by the clock on the elegant simulated tortoise-shell dashboard and five minutes past by the clock on the courthouse tower as Connie Maynard flipped the wheel lightly around and turned out of the square into Fetter Street.

  “I tell you again, Gus,” she said patiently. “There’s nothing whatever wrong with me. No matter what Swede Carlson thinks or you or anybody else thinks. I just got a case of jitters, sitting out there alone.”

  Now that she was back in town, among houses and people who were alive, not dead, she was ready to believe that was the way it was. It had all been a sort of wild phantasmagoria that didn’t make any possible sense. She ought never to let anything like a conscience bother her. All a conscience was was an atavistic throwback to childhood, your own and your family’s, when you were taught a lot of nonsense and punished if you didn’t follow it. Janey wasn’t going to take any sleeping-pills. That was nonsense of another sort. More of her old broken-wing tactics.

  “I got the most awful jitters out there, Gus, and I’m terribly ashamed of myself. Will you excuse it, please? Just this once, please?”

  That was the line to take. She realized it instantly, aware of the change taking place in him as he relaxed a little in the seat beside her. There was no use being stiff-necked and combative, the way she’d started out being. It only made him more and worse of both. She ought to know him well enough by now to know that if nothing else.

  “I’m really horribly sorry, Gus. Please, don’t be cross at me. I guess I’m not nearly as competent as I try to pretend. I guess murder’s something you have to get used to, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” Gus said. He knew it from a lot of experience. He was sick out behind a row of garbage cans the first one he’d covered. Even if she didn’t see Wernitz on the cellar floor, she’d sat out in the dark and seen them take him away, and seen the ambulance. Imagining things was a lot worse sometimes than seeing them. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have let you go.”

  “Oh, then you’re not mad at me, Gus? Thanks! You’re sweet. May I kiss you? Do you mind if I do, Gus—just once?”

  She leaned over toward him, the car swerving with the quick movement of her body.

  “Drive, Connie. Drive the car and keep off the milk truck.”

  They weren’t quite on it, but they would be if Connie got her libido all unleashed, which usually happened when she got contrite and feminine. “And don’t make passes at your boss.” He grinned at her in the dark. She laughed and slowed the car down for the red light.

  “Who’s going to make them if I don’t?” she inquired easily. “Marriage has made you horribly stuffy, hasn’t it? Or are you just afraid to let yourself go?”

  The light changed. Instead of turning left toward her own house, she turned toward the center of town.

  “Hey,” Gus said. “Where—”

  “Who’s driving this car, Mr. Blake?” She kept to the right and down Locust Street. “I took you out, and I bring you back. The Maynard shuttle service has its standards.”

  “Don’t be a dope, Con. I don’t want you to drive out alone. I don’t care about you, but your father’ll be sore. It’s after two.”

  A smile moved in her yellow-green eyes. Something was finally working the way she’d planned it—planned and forgotten it in her sudden attack of moral jitters out in the Wernitz yard. She’d planned it on her way in to pick him up and take him out to Wernitz’s, as part of her cold war against Janey. Janey would be awake and watching, she was sure of that. She’d probably be upstairs in the dark, looking out the window, and she’d see her drive Gus up to the door. Gus would have to object to her going back by herself—as a supper guest at her father’s house that night, he’d have to object. And Janey would see them drive up, and drive off again. And it was working. The house was just a block away now. She let him protest until suddenly she was aware that something wasn’t working.

  Oh, m
y God! she thought. Her hand on the wheel tightened. The car lurched a little and came back as she caught herself and it. Something had gone wrong. Her mouth was as dry again as it had been out in the Wernitz yard. A policeman— More alert for the sight of the narrow red brick house behind the privet hedge at the moment than Gus, who turned telling her to drive on around the block and he’d take her home and get a taxi back, she’d seen the uniformed policeman come up and turn in there. Gus had not. She’d seen the lights in the house first, too, in the dining-room downstairs, in the living-room on the second floor, and bedroom on the third. Oh, no, she couldn’t have! But why were the lights on at a quarter past two, and why was the policeman going into the house? Connie moistened her parched lips. She must have done it.

  It was an instant of impulsive dismay not as close to horror as she had thought it was going to be, or as it had been out in the dark yard. Here in town, with Gus beside her, a fait accompli almost in her hands, she was herself again. She was the girl slipping back into the shadow of her father’s room, watching Janey, pleased that Janey was taking the sleeping-pills from her mother’s table drawer. She could feel the hard, tight smile on her face again there in the car. It was what she wanted. She’d been a stupid fool out at Wernitz’s.