The Black Angel

by Cornell Woolrich

  “Don’t,” I sobbed. “You’ll bring me flowers; you’ll bring me candy; you’ll kick about the coffee all you want, all you want. You will, you will again, you’ll see.”

  He smiled as though he had his doubts. “But in case, in case I don’t, afterward, after it’s over—Angel Face, you won’t let anyone else bring you flowers home at night or kick about the coffee, will you? Don’t let anyone else—I know you’re young yet—but that belongs to me.”

  “Never,” I panted despairingly, “never anyone else but you. It’ll be you or no one at all. Kiss me again. Again. Again. Oh, just once more. Another. They don’t stay on. Kirk, how can we make them last?” Forever is such a long time.

  “There’s something else I want to tell you. I’ve always wanted to, ever since that night. This is my last chance; I have to now; there’s only a minute left. You remember that night?”

  How could I ever forget it?

  “I only went there to tell her I was backing out. That the trip was off. Even the first time, at two. Before I knew what had happened, before I knew it had been taken out of my hands. I’d been thinking it over. I knew it was you, had always been you, would always be you. The other thing was just a week-end spree, a binge, no different from a kid playing hooky from school for one afternoon—and coming home all rashed up with poison ivy afterward, so he don’t do it again in a hurry! Only, I was supposed to meet her at the station, and I couldn’t just let her stand there waiting and not show up. I didn’t want to do that to her; she was a woman, after all. So I went over there to try to break it to her ahead of time. No one answered at two, the first time I was there. I went back to the office and I tried to reach her on the phone a couple of times in between. Then when I still couldn’t get her I went back again at six, when I left the office. What I’m trying to tell you is I went over there—to tell her it was off.”

  He ran his thumbnail ruefully along the wire, like harp strings. “I don’t expect you to believe me; I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It must sound like sour grapes at this late day. But, Angel Face, it’s true. I wasn’t going with her. That’s all I can say.”

  I leaned my forehead tenderly against the wire toward him. “Darling,” I said, “I’ve always been able to tell when you were lying. And I’ve always been able to tell when you were telling the truth. And I still am, now. So don’t be afraid. I believe you.”

  “Thanks.” He sighed gratefully. “That’ll make it a little easier.”

  They came over to take him inside again. So this was it now, and words became just empty sounds. “You’ll be back. This isn’t good-by. Now remember that—I’m just saying so long to you for a while. Take good care of yourself, darling—until—until I see you again. Oh, wait, just let me kiss him once again——”

  “Get ready with some more of that bad coffee, darling, so I’ll have something to growl at when I——”

  “I’ll be waiting with it.”

  “So long for a while, Angel Face.”

  Isn’t it pitiful how two people can kid themselves when they know they’re both lying?

  The wire stencil that had framed our kiss was empty; his lips were gone. The murmur of his voice hovered about it for a moment more, as if I were still hearing him say it, though I wasn’t any more. “So long, Angel Face.”

  I had that much back again, at least. He always called me that. That was his name for me when we were by ourselves. That was a special thing, from him to——

  5

  REVERY BY MATCHLIGHT

  THE FLAT WAS GONE NOW, AND IN ITS PLACE THERE were the four cramped walls of a furnished room. I wouldn’t have wanted the flat any more, even if there had been money enough to hang onto it; I would have run into him a thousand times a day, from every chair, from every corner of it. I would have heard him wheezing in the shower, howling for the towel that was never there; I would have heard him chuckling over there in that corner where the radio used to be; I would have heard him snoring over in the other bed, late at night——

  Life was simpler here in this place. Life was a shot of novocain. Life was carpet slippers all day long, and a bathrobe, and hair that wasn’t combed. Life was a rickety iron bed that wasn’t slept on, just was wept on. Life was a can punched open maybe once a day, not from hunger, just from a sense of duty. Life was a knock on the door and an “Are you all right in there, lady? This is the landlady; I ain’t seen you in three or four whole days now, and I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t nothing the matter.”

  “I’m all right. Sure, I’m great. Don’t worry if you don’t see me or hear me, even for a week at a time. I’m still here; I’ll still be sitting in here.”

  “Do you want me to get you a paper, help you to pass the time?”

  I screamed it, but she didn’t hear it because I screamed it inside of me. “I don’t want the time to pass! It’s going too quick already! I want it to stand still! I want it to freeze!”

  “No, thanks, there isn’t anything I want to read about or know about.”

  Life was like that.

  I reached the low point of the whole thing, the bottommost dip of the graph, the night someone from the Police Property Clerk’s Office came around to return his things. They give them back to you, it seems; they give you back everything but the main thing: who was in them. That they keep; that’s theirs, to plug into the lighting system and then throw away.

  This was just routine, the usual procedure when they send them up to that place, but I didn’t know that, and at first sight of them hanging over his arm, empty, it gave me a horrible twinge, as though—it was over and he was gone already. I took them and I signed something and thanked him and closed the door. And if I let out all the stops afterward, that was just between me and those clothes of his.

  I knew, though, as I lay there, face burrowing into the folds of his jacket, that I could never be so utterly, heart-brokenly, abandonedly forlorn again as I was there in that little room, with just the light bulb overhead to see me. From then on, whether there was hope or not, whether there was a chance or not, the curve was bound to be upward. Things could never look so dismal to me again. You can only cry like that once. Once and for one man. I gave him that. That was my testament of love.

  Afterward, I remember, I was sitting dully on the edge of the bed, stroking the empty sleeve of his coat across my lap and slowly pulling myself together after the recent drenching outburst. The things that had been in his pockets that last night were in a couple of little manila envelopes, fastened to a buttonhole of the coat. I detached them and emptied them out. The money he’d been carrying and his wrist watch and his key holder, and even his seal ring, were in one. And less valuable things in the other. A chromium pencil (that had always been out of lead) and a business letter or two and a laundry ticket with a Chinese character on it, standing for shirts that were still waiting for him somewhere and that he’d never call for now.

  It was like a poignant rosary of the commonplace, to pay out these things one by one before my eyes.

  And a battered package of his brand of cigarettes, with still the same two leftovers in it that must have been in it that night. Oh, they were so honest, these police! They wouldn’t touch a convicted man’s last two cigarettes. But they’d send him, for something he hadn’t done, up to meet his——

  And a pair of those lucky-number counterfoils from the last time we’d been to a show together. You know the kind. You detach the stubs and drop them in a box on your way in. And then a week from Thursday, if that particular number happens to be drawn——The remark he’d made that night came back to me: “I never had any luck with one of these stunts yet!” He hadn’t been lucky in more things than that, poor boy.

  The envelopes were empty now. The pitiful collection was all spread out on my lap. No, wait—one last thing. It came sidling out at a shake of the envelope.

  Nothing. The ultimate in valuelessness. A folder of matches. Even that they’d conscientiously returned to me. Everything, everything b
ut him himself they’d seen to it that I got back.

  It was one of hers, in the bargain. I recognized it by the turquoise cover, the inevitable double M. One superimposed on the other, so that it really looked like a single M with double outlines.

  That, I couldn’t help thinking, was rubbing it in a little, although most of the sting was gone at this late day. He must have picked it up to use the last time he was there and then absent-mindedly put it into his own pocket instead of returning it to wherever it had been lying. As anyone might be apt to do. And here it was now, in my palm. About all that was left of her pitiful, ephemeral glamour. That had expressed itself, thought the quintessence of elegance was to stamp initials wholesale all over everything—on match covers and highball glasses and, I supposed, lingerie. I didn’t hate her. I found, tonight, I never had. I’d been badly frightened for an hour or two that day. And ever since I’d just been sorry for her. Still, I got a peculiar mordant satisfaction from shredding the remaining match or two that were all that still clung to this battered token. Striking them, to flash transiently for a moment, like she had. And then—she was gone now. She was gone like this: Phwit! And there it was, on the floor, something to be thrown out.

  A little thing came into my mind. I don’t know how or from where. And as I thought of it, dwelt on the thought of it, it grew bigger and bigger, until it was crowding everything else out. I had seen one of these match covers up there myself. It had been wedged into the seam of the door, to keep the latch from closing fast. I had noticed it as I was standing there waiting to slip out, and I had picked it up, unfolded it, thrown it down again. It was just like this one; it had an M on it, and the pasteboard was blue on the outside.

  But here was the little thought that grew bigger and bigger: It wasn’t just like this one.

  It had been blue, but not turquoise, a far deeper shade. And the M on it wasn’t a double-lined M; it was single-lined.

  Why would she go to the trouble of selecting a certain trick monogram—naïve though it was—and then have it scattered around on everything in sight, if she was going to allow a variation of it, a symbol that didn’t quite match, to appear on one item? It wouldn’t have been in character. To her, monogramming spelt chic, and not to have carried it out identically on everything at once would have been a flaw.

  Besides, this very cover in my hand now showed she had carried it out on her matches as well as on everything else. Therefore, that other cover that I’d seen up there was not hers.

  That initial was somebody else’s. It stood for somebody else whose name began with an M. And that somebody else had killed her.

  There was a triple coincidence there that had kept me from realizing that fact until now. Both names, hers and her killer’s, began with the same letter. Just as Kirk’s own did, for that matter, although it would never have occurred to him to go around carrying his initials on match folders and things; he would have laughed at the idea as it deserved to be laughed at. And, secondly, this unknown seemed to have the same crass flair she did for having his things personalized with an initial. And, thirdly, it happened that the piece of pasteboard involved was blue, though of a quite different shade from the tone she had seemed to dote on.

  And in my excitement of mind that day, following the shock of the discovery I had just made, these discrepancies hadn’t made sense to me.

  They did now. Somebody whose name began with an M had been to see her that day, had detected something he didn’t like, had fixed the door so that he could return and catch her off guard, and when he had——

  Oh, if I only knew all the people she knew whose names began with M! Wait, there had been a book. Hadn’t there been a list of names, an alphabetical calling list, I’d snatched up and taken with me that day, at the last moment, in my flurry of panic-stricken departure? I hadn’t thought of it since; I hadn’t seen it since. But that latter fact alone argued that, if I had taken it, it was still around somewhere.

  I got out my handbag and started plumbing its depths and crevices. The woman never yet breathed who could be absolutely certain, at any one given time, of all that her own handbag holds. There is always some overlooked thing, some mislaid thing that she has lost track of, to be found lurking in its myriad compartments and zippered slits.

  There was in this one too. But not what I was looking for. And yet I was certain I had brought that thing away with me. I could remember its soft leather turquoise cover, its stepped page margins, as well as I could that single-lined M on the match cover. I had all but torn the lining out of the bag, and there was no use kneading it any further. I sat there with it dangling disheartenedly over my knee.

  Then I remembered that I’d gotten myself together rather carefully that day, to try to create a certain desired impression on her. I must have carried the other, the special, the dressy one. I’d forgotten I owned it. I hadn’t used it since. That had been the last time clothes, accessories, meant anything to me. I’d been down to elementals from then on.

  So I got it out and looked in that. And at the first touch of my fingers, as I unsheathed the mirror, turquoise flashed up at me like a patch on the black lining.

  I opened it at the M page. My fingers had stopped being steady any more. I thought: “Someone in this book killed her. The name is in this book. On this very page I’m holding open here. It’s looking right at me, staring me in the face. And I’m looking at it. But I can’t tell which one it is.”

  Marty ……… Crescent 6–4824

  Mordaunt ……… Atwater 8–7457

  Mason ……… Butterfield 9–8019

  McKee ……… Columbus 4–0011

  “I’m looking at it,” my mind repeated, “and I can’t tell which one it is.”

  But I was going to find out.

  I didn’t even know his first name, or rating, or which precinct house he was attached to. So if there’d been more than one of them by that last name I might have got hold of the wrong one. In fact, I didn’t know anything about him. Only that he’d been a little less brutal, a little more human, that night that they’d brought Kirk back to the apartment. And I had to have someone to turn to; I couldn’t go the thing alone.

  So I walked into the precinct house that was the nearest to where she had lived and I asked for him. “Is there a Flood here?”

  “Wesley Flood, on Homicide, that who you want?”

  “I—I guess so.”

  “Name, please?”

  “Just say a young lady.”

  They showed me into some room at the back, and he saw me in there. It was he. He couldn’t place me for a minute, I could tell. Then he remembered. “You’re Murray’s wife; that’s it!”

  I told him wanly, yes, that was it.

  He looked me over surreptitiously, I guess to see how I was taking it, standing up under it. I caught a flicker of sympathy in his eyes, though I suppose he didn’t realize it showed. I really didn’t want that; I wanted advice and coaching.

  I told him what I’d found at the Mercer apartment. I told him what I thought it meant and what I intended doing about it.

  He heard me through. Just sat and listened attentively. There was no mistaking his expression, though. Finally I had to say, “You still don’t think I was up there that day, do you?”

  “Possibly you were——”

  “Well, here’s the book. Look, right here. Her book.”

  He leafed it, tapped it a couple of times against his thumbnail, handed it back. His attitude was unmistakable: it was over; it was water under the bridge. Whether I had been up there or not didn’t matter any longer. Hadn’t in the first place. The case was closed.

  He tried to talk me out of it at first. “Look, even taking your point of view, even granting that Murray—that your husband—isn’t guilty and that there’s someone else still at large who is, don’t you see you may be starting from a wrong premise altogether in basing something on this book and on that match cover you say you saw? There’s no hard-and-fast rule that the name of everyo
ne she knew had to go into that book. It could work the other way around, couldn’t it? Those she knew well, those she knew best, mightn’t be in it at all. She’d be so familiar with their numbers she’d know them by heart, wouldn’t have had to write them down. Only those she knew less well would be in the book.”

  I thought of Kirk’s name. She’d known him well enough to try to vamp him into going away with her, and his name was in the book. I didn’t tell him that; there was still an ache in that old wound.

  “There have been murders committed before, you know,” he went on, “by people having no telephone numbers to their name at all. What I’m trying to tell you is this: there’s no certainty——”

  “But nothing’s ever certain, is it? Only that you people have the wrong man.”

  He lidded his eyes deprecatingly. “Ah, you’d only get all muddied up. You’re too nice a person, Mrs. Murray. Don’t try it. You’re not her type; you won’t know how to handle half of these people.”

  “I’ll have to learn.”

  Maybe it showed on my face. Maybe he saw what he’d be doing to me by dampening, taking away this one incentive I had left. Maybe he thought it would be kinder after all to let me start out on a hopeless, foredoomed quest than on no quest at all, to just sit counting the days as they went by, crossing them off one by one on the calendar of my mind until that red-letter date, sometime during the week of May sixteenth, was reached.

  All I know is he suddenly changed. For no apparent reason, because of nothing that I had been able to say to convince him. “Try it, anyway,” he consented abruptly. “Go ahead and try it.”

  I’d intended to anyway, whether with his benediction or not. But I did need someone to angel me, even if against his own convictions.

  “Will they—do you think I’m running any risk of being recognized from the trial?”

  “Well, I didn’t know you at first, and I’m supposed to have a mind trained to remember faces. You didn’t take the stand, and you were kept pretty much in the background. I’d say if you change yourself around a little you’d have a pretty good chance of not being recognized.”