Was this Mary?
I was shaking my head at the idea when I heard the scream. I started for the hall, but Tiny was already halfway down the stairs when I arrived. She was still yammering as she almost tripped on the last step and came flying toward me, hanging there, her head upraised and her eyes wet with unfeigned horror, a surge of tears shaking her as she clung to me.
I said, “What’s the trouble, Tiny?”
She pointed upstairs, her arm trembling.
“Mary!” she gasped. “She’s hurt up there!”
CHAPTER 3
Mary Ray’s bedroom was a symphony of French color, chosen to create the illusion of quiet charm and elegant living. The place sang of womanhood, from the broad, well-cushioned bed to the dainty furniture, lightly designed on the arms and backs and placed in just-so positions to blend with the décor of the walls. The carpet was wine-colored and soft underfoot. It was a picture book room, a haven of subdued charm, if you could keep your eyes on the furniture and fixtures. But that was impossible. The center of interest lay on the floor, on the carpet.
The center of interest was Mary Ray.
Because Mary Ray was obviously dead.
She lay on her back, near the bed, her arms raised over her long and flowing hair, as though reaching out for an impossible goal. She was wearing a black evening gown, strapless and low cut, but somebody had mutilated the original line above the bodice. Somebody had ripped it away, tearing it as it was pulled, so that it hung on her torso like a rag.
And under her dress, her right breast was smeared with a crimson stain. I kneeled to feel her pulse, knowing that she was dead before I touched her wrist.
Tiny was standing in the hallway, her head buried in her hands. She was trembling with a violent grief, a combination of shock and terror and sadness. The sound of her sobbing did things to my reflexes, holding me at Mary’s side in an attitude of mourning. The sight of her ripped at my stomach, reviving the good memories of the past, recalling to me the many facets of her personality—her essential kindness, her goodness, her genuine friendliness. And kneeling there, I felt the sorrow dry my throat. And after that, anger came to take its place.
I got off my knees and went to Tiny. I grabbed her hands and jerked them away from her face.
“Who killed her?” I shouted. “Who was the bastard that knifed her?”
“I don’t know,” Tiny said. Her face clouded with pain. “Please, I don’t know.”
“Think! Stop your goddam blubbering and think. Now! Because you’re going to have to do it for the dicks.”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“I’ll give you a minute to remember,” I said. “Start remembering what happened during the past few hours.”
She sat down in the little chair near the door, still sobbing quietly into her hands. I crossed the room to the chaise longue and stood over the small French desk near it. The top drawer was open. There were a few papers exposed, bills and letters. There was a wire brassiere and a small jewel box, unopened. I called Tiny over to me.
I said, “Is this where Mary kept her valuables?”
Tiny shook her head. “No, she didn’t. She always talked about her bank vault.”
“That’s better. She had no other hiding places in the house? Nothing tricky, like wall safes?”
“Nothing that I know about.”
“What was she wearing tonight, the last time you saw her? Close your eyes and think.”
Tiny thought, a long and studious moment. “She had her bracelet on.”
“Important jewelry?”
“It was her best, her very best. She always told us that it was worth a lot of money. Something she got from an old beau who was nuts about her—I can’t think of his name, but you probably know who I mean… The one she almost married.”
“A diamond bracelet?”
“A beautiful thing.”
“It’s not on her wrist now,” I said. “The bastard who killed her did it for the bracelet. It must have been worth plenty of loot.”
“Mary once said that she could get fifty grand for it.”
“Mary never lied,” I said. “Where’s the telephone.”
“There’s only one phone, downstairs, in the room we call the butler’s pantry.”
“Get down there now and call the police.”
She ran out and I returned to the body of Mary Ray, shaking my head at her, trying to fight down the sickness that was building inside me. The sight of her was a torture to me. The horror of the blood-red stain against her pale and elegant skin made me turn away from her, while my subconscious annoyed me with crazy questions.
I began to search for the skivvy, but the anger didn’t drain out of me. I scampered around the room, looking for everything and anything, my mind alerted with the idea that there must be something important in the room for me. But the carpet was clean.
I went back to the door and let my imagination play games with me. I struggled to kill the anger now, to think clearly and reasonably. Nothing came but an annoying itch to return to the little French desk. So I re-crossed the room and bent to examine the open drawer. I looked but I did not touch.
Sam Doughty would break my back if he came up here with his homicide boys and found that I had handled anything. The contents of the drawer were in disorder. On the right side, a few filigreed French handkerchiefs were fluffed up and unfolded, as though somebody had run through them quickly. Underneath them I saw traces of bright yellow silk, probably a brassiere or a neckerchief or some other item of feminine apparel. In the middle section there were a few garters, bright red and light blue, festooned with decorative bows. The jewelry box was made of leather and the top was tooled in a masterful design, dotted with small artificial stones, brilliantly colored and shimmering in the light. And on the other side of the jewel box, something caught my eye.
It was a small book, bound in green leather—not really a book, but a tiny pad, the sort of midget volume most women carry around in their bags for addresses and phone numbers. My hands burned with the yen to finger this tiny volume, to open it up and read a few of the names inside. This would be a collector’s item, a gimmick that might cause lots of people lots of trouble with the police department. I reached gingerly past the jewel box and my fingers closed over it. I was being a bad boy. I was setting myself up for Sam Doughty. But this was something I had to do. The little book could speak to me, it could tell me much about Mary Ray’s life, things that I had to know now.
Because I had made up my mind to catch the bastard who had butchered her.
My hand lifted the little green book, and I watched it come my way, as though the hand that clutched it belonged to somebody else. I was bending low over the desk drawer. I was concentrating on lifting the little green book when somebody hit me.
It was a shattering smack, a flat blow behind the ears that staggered me and shook me and threw me off balance; I fell to the right, but tried to turn as I fell. Then it hit me again, something harder than a fist, something made of metal. The impact caught me as I turned, and my eyes fogged with a gray mist that became suddenly black and filled itself with a thousand whirling spheres of light, a miasma of technicolored dots in which I began to spin on a mad merry-go-round ride. And I began to fall, not to my knees, but through the floor and into the cellar, and beyond the cellar into a pit, a deep black hole that seemed to be bottomless.
Then a crazy wind sang in my ears and I knew that I was no longer in Mary Ray’s bedroom.
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About the Author
Lawrence Lariar (1908–1981) was an American novelist, cartoonist and cartoon editor, known for his Best Cartoons of the Year series of cartoon collections. He wrote crime novels, sometimes using the pseudonyms Michael Stark, Adam Knight and Marston la France.
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Copyright © 1951, 1979 by Lawrence Lariar
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