The bride wore black

by Cornell Woolrich

  A chorus of concerned protest went up.

  “Now?”

  “Why, you just stepped oif one bus, you’ll be dead!”

  “Ah, Margaret, why don’t you wait over until the morning at least?”

  “It isn’t that—it’s that telegram. I don’t know, it gives me a creepy feeling, I can’t shake it off. A thing like that isnt funny, it’s—it’s malicious; there’s something almost

  dangerous about it. Anyone that would do that—well, there’s no telling what —”

  “Why don’t you try just once more,” the old family doctor suggested soothingly. “Maybe he’s gotten back in the meantime. Then, if he hasn’t and you still feel like going, ni drive you over to the bus station; my car’s right outside now.”

  This time they didn’t bother closing the doors at all; they didn’t have to be told to be quiet. With one accord they all shifted out into the hall after her and fanned out in a wide half circle, ringing her and the telephone aTOund, listening in breathless sympathetic silence. It was as though she were holding a public audition for her innermost wifely distress.

  Her voice shook a little. “Operator, get me the city again. That same number—Seville 7-6262.”

  From time to time he could hear a splatter of quick running footsteps somewhere nearby, and a burst of crowing laughter from Cookie, and an “I see you!” from her. Mostly up and down the hall out there.

  Hide-and-seek, he supposed tolerantly. They said there were two things that never changed, death and taxes; they should have added a third—children’s games. Even this she seemed to be able to go about in a soothing, fairly subdued way, without letting the kid be too boisterous about it. Must be the professional touch, that. He wondered how much kindergarten teachers earned. She was certainly good.

  One time there was a stealthy, stalking cessation of sound, a little more long-drawn-out than the others, and he looked up to find her hiding herself just within the room doorway. She was standing with her back to him, peeping out around it into the hall. “Ready?” she called genially.

  Cookie’s answer came back with unexpected faintness. “Not yet—wait.”

  She seemed to enjoy it as much as the kid. That was the right way to play with them, he supposed—put your whole heart and soul into it. Children were quick to spot ^Aack of enthusiasm. You could tell Cookie was already crazy about her. He was evidently seeing her in a different light than he had in the school, where she had to maintain a certain amount of discipline.

  She turned her head, found him watching her approvingly. “He’s gone into that little storage space built in beneath the staircase,” she confided with a twinkle. And then, more seriously, “Is it safe for him to go in there?”

  “Safe?” repeated Moran blankly. “Sure—there’s nothing in there, couple of old raincoats.”

  “Ready,” a faint voice called.

  She turned her head. “Here I come,” she warned, and vanished from the doorway as unnoticeably as she had first appeared in it.

  He could hear her pretendedly questing here and there for a preliminary moment or two, to keep up the relish of the game longer. Then a straining at woodwork and a muffled burst of gleeful acknowledgment.

  Suddenly his name sounded with unexpected tautness. “Mr. Moran!” He jumped up and started out to them. It had been that kind of a tone: hurry. She’d repeated it twice before he could even reach them, short as the distance was.

  She was pulling at the old-fashioned iron handgrip riveted to the door. Her face was whitening down around the chin and mouth. “I can’t get it open—see, that’s what I meant a minute ago!”

  “Now, don’t get frightened,” he calmed her. “There’s nothing to it.” He grasped the iron handgrip, simply pulled it up a half inch parallel to the door, the latch tongue freed itself, and he drew out the heavy oaken

  panel. It was set into the back of the staircase structure, half the height of the average door and a little broader. It did not quite meet the floor, either; there was a half-foot sill under it.

  Cookie clambered out hilariously.

  “See what it was? You were trying to pull it out toward you. It works on a spring latch and you have to free that first by hitching the iron bracket up; then you pull it out.”

  “I see that now. Stupid of me,” she said half-shamefacedly. She gestured vaguely above her heart, fanned a hand before her face. “I didn’t let on to you, but what a fright it gave me! Phew! I was afraid it had jammed and he’d smother in there before we could—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry … darn shame …” he said contritely, as if it had been his fault for having such a door in his house at all.

  She seemed to want to continue to discuss possibilities, as though there was a hidden morbid streak in her. “I suppose if worse had come to worst, you could have broken it down, though, at a moment’s notice.”

  “I could have taken something to it, yes,” he agreed.

  She seemed surprised. He saw her eye glance apprais-ingly over his husky upper torso. “Couldn’t you have broken it down with your bare hands or by crashing your shoulder against it?”

  He fingered the edge of the door, guided it outward so she could scan it. “Oh, no. This is solid oak. Two inches thick. Look at that. Well-built house, you know. And it’s in a bad place; there isn’t room enough on either side to run against it, to get up impetus. The turn of the wall here only gives you a couple yards of space. And on the inside it slants down with the incHne of the stairs; you can’t even stand up full-length. The closet’s triangular, wedge shaped, see? Swing your arm too far back over your shoulder, on either side of the door, and it would

  jam against the sloping top. Or against the wall indentation out here/’

  Suddenly, to his surprise, she had lowered her head, gone through the low doorway into the darkness inside. He could hear her sounding the thick sides of it with her palms. She came out again in a moment. “Isn’t it well built!” she marveled. “But it’s stuffy in there, even with the door open. How long do you suppose a person could last if they did actually happen to get themselves locked into such a place?”

  His masculine omniscience was caught unprepared for once. He’d evidently never given the matter any thought before. “Oh, I don’t know …“he said vaguely. “Hour and a half, two hours at the most.” He looked up and down the thing with abstract interest. “It is pretty airtight, at that,” he conceded.

  She winced repugnantly at this thought she had herself conjured up, wholesomely changed the subject. Everyone, after all, has odd moments of morbid conjecture. She leaned down, grasped Cookie from below the armpits and started to march his legs stiffly out before him like a mechanical soldier. “Well, mister.” Then she deferred to Moran: “Do you think he should go to bed now?”

  Cookie started some more vertical emphasis. He was having too good a time to give it up without a battle. “One more! One more!”

  “All right, just one more and then that’s all,” she conceded indulgently.

  Moran went back to his chair in the living room. He’d finished his paper. Exhaustively; even down to the quotations of stocks he didn’t own but would have liked to. Even down to letters from readers on topics that didn’t interest him. He took out a cigar the man he’d lunched with had given him today, appraised it, accepted it for

  smoking, stripped it and lit it up. He blew a lariat of sky blue around his head with ineffable comfort. He sat there with it for a moment in a complete vacuum of contentment.

  It was a seldom enjoyed luxury, and he almost didn’t know what to do with it. His head started to nod. He caught it the first time, took time off to put his cigar on the tray beside him so he wouldn’t drop it and bum a hole in Margaret’s carpet.

  Cookie came tiptoeing in with exaggerated mincing of footfalls that was almost a hobbling creep, probably impressed upon him from outside, carrying Moran’s soft-toed carpet slippers, one in each hand. Soft toed and softsoled. “Miss Baker says to put these on, you feel better,
” he whispered sibilantly.

  “Say, that’s fine,” Moran beamed. He bent down and effected the change. “Tell her she’s spoiling me.”

  Cookie tiptoed out with the discarded shoes—heavy soled, thick toed—with as much precaution as when he’d come in, even though the object of his care was unmistakably still awake.

  Moran sprawled back and, when the second and third nods came, let them ride. A girl like that oughta … oughta be in a jewelry-store window… mmmmmm…

  * * *

  He MEANT WELL, but oh, God, it was like being on the rack to have to sit there beside him and listen to him. “Yessir, I brought all three of you girls into the world. I can remember the night you came as clear as though ‘twere yesterday. And now look at you, sitting here beside me, all grown up and married and with a youngster of your own—”

  And frightened, oh, how frightened, she thought dismally, eyes straining for the bus that seemed never to come.

  “Doesn^t seem possible. No sir, either you grew up too fast or I don’t feel old enough for my age, must be one or the other.”

  She matched her chortle with a wan smile by the faint light of the dashboard.

  “1 know,” he purred. He reached out and grasped her outside shoulder and juggled it hearteningly. “I know. You’re all worried and upset and wish you were down there already. Now, honey, don’t take on like that. It’ll be all right, it’s bound to be, how could it help being otherwise? Just ‘cause he doesn’t answer the telephone? Shucks, he’s probably over at one of the neighbors’ houses guzzling beer—”

  “I know, Dr. Bixby, but I can’t help it. It’s that telegram. It gives me the most uncanny feeling, and I can’t throw it off. Somebody sent that telegram—”

  “Nat-chelly, nat-chelly,” he chuckled benevolently, “telegrams don’t just send themselves. Maybe some blame fool in his office thought he’d like to get back at him…” But he let the thought die out; it wasn’t very convincing.

  She was staring ahead, down the state highway that skirted the opposite side of the bus station to where the doctor had his Ford parked. “It’s late, isn’t it? Maybe there aren’t going to be any more tonight…” She kept continually putting a finger to her teeth, replacing it a moment later with another one.

  Dr. Bixby good-naturedly drew her hand down, held it pressed to her lap. “I broke you of that habit when you were seven; you’re not going to make me do it all over again, are you?” He looked ahead through his none-too-spotless windshield. “Here she comes now. See those two lights way off down there? Yep, that must be her, all right.”

  Something soft brushing against his legs down by the floor roused him. He brought the point of his chin up off the second button of his shirt, looked down blurredly.

  Cookie was scampering around down there on all fours like a little animal, head almost lower than his feet. “Still trying to find someplace to hide?” Moran asked fondly.

  His young son looked up, sharply corrected his failure to keep abreast of current events. “We not playing now anymore. Miss Baker los’ her ring, I’m he’ping her to fine it.”

  Her voice sounded somewhere outside at that moment. “See it yet, dear?”

  Moran roused himself, got up and went out. He remembered seeing it on her when she first came in.

  The stair-closet door was wide open, as though she’d already been in there. She was exploring the baseboard across the way, on the opposite side of the hall, slightly bent forward, hands cupped to knees.

  “I don’t know how it happened to slip off without my feeling it,” she said. “Oh, it’s probably around somewhere. The only reason I’d feel bad about losing it is my mother gave it to me on my graduation…”

  “How about in here?” he said. “Have you looked in here? You stepped in here once, remember, and thumped the sides.”

  She glanced casually over her shoulder while she continued her search. “I looked in there already, but I didn’t have any matches, so it was hard to make sure^”

  “Wait a minute, I’ve got some right here. I’ll look again for you…” He stepped across the sill, struck a tarnished gold glow, crouched down with his back to the entrance.

  The sound the door made was like a pistol shot echoing up and down the enclosed hallway.

  POSTMORTEM ON MORAN

  Superior to Wanger:

  “Well, what’dja find out over there? You seem to be becoming our expert in murders-that-don’t-look-like-murders-but-are.”

  “Sure it was! Certainly it was! How can there be any doubt about it?”

  “All right, don’t blow all these papers off my desk. Well, Kling tells me the men he put on it don’t seem to feel as sure about that as you do yourself. That’s why I got his okay on your homing in. He was very nice about it—”

  “What?” Wanger became almost inarticulate. “What’re they trying to do, build it up that he locked himself in acci—”

  His superior sliced his hand at him calmingly. “Now, wait a minute, don’t get so touchy. Here’s what he means by that, and I can see his point, too. It’s true that Mrs. Moran got, or claims she got, an anonymous telegram with her sister’s name signed to it. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any trace of it found around the house; it’s disappeared, so there’s no way of tracing where it was filed from. It may have been filed right here in the city, and in her perturbation she didn’t notice the dateline. It’s true that the kid keeps prattling about a ‘lady’ playing games with him. The only two facts that point definitely to an adult agency’s being involved are the cut telephone wire and the note on the kid’s quilt—”

  Wanger forced up his underlip scornfully. “And what about the putty?”

  “Meaning the kid couldn’t have reached the top of the door with it, that it? No, Kling tells me they tried him out on that. Didn’t interfere, just handed him the putty set, said, ‘Let’s see you cover up the door like the other night,’ stood back and watched. When he’d gotten as high up as he could go, he dragged over the three-legged telephone stool, climbed up on that, and his hands spanned the top crack beautifully. Now if he did that, of his own accord and without being coached, the second time, why, they wanna know, couldn’t he have done it the first?”

  “Hoch!” Wanger cleared his throat disgustedly.

  “They put him to another test. They said to him, ‘Sonny, if your daddy went in there, what would you do—let him out or make him stay in?’ He said, ‘Make him stay in there and play a game with me.’”

  “Are those guys crazy—where’re their heads? I suppose the kid cut the phone wire, too. I suppose he wrote out that note in printed capitals—”

  “Let me finish, will you? They’re not trying to say that the kid did all those things himself. But they are inclined to think along the lines of it being an accident, with a clumsy frightened attempt on someone’s part, afterward, to escape being involved.

  “Now here’s the theory of Kling’s men—and remember, it hasn’t jelled, they’re just playing around with it until something better shows up: Moran had some lady friend on the side. A fake telegram was sent to the wife to clear the coast. Before the woman got there, Moran, alone in the house with his kid, started playing games with him. He accidentally locked himself in the closet and the damn-fool kid puttied up the door. The woman shows up and Moran is smothered to death in there. She loses her head, deathly afraid of being dragged into it because of her reputation. She puts the kid to bed and leaves an unsigned note pinned to the quilt for the wife. Maybe the phone starts ringing while she’s there, and, afraid to answer it, she loses her head even further and cuts the wire. They think she even went so completely haywire that after having already opened the closet door once and seen that Moran was dead, she made a panicky attempt to leave things looking just like she found them by closing the door on him a second time and leaving him in there, even replugging the putty so it would look like the kid’s work and nobody else’s. In other words, an accident followed by a clumsy attempt at concealment on
the part of somebody with a guilty conscience.”

  “Pew!” said Wanger succinctly, pinching the end of his nose. “Well, here’s the theory of your man Wanger: bull fertilizer. Do I stay on or do I come off?”

  “Stay on, stay on,” consented his overlord distractedly. “Ill get in touch with Kling about it. After all, you can only be wrong once.”

  They seemed to be playing craps there in the room, the way they were all down on their haunches hovering over something in the middle of the floor. You couldn’t see what it was; their broad backs blotted it out completely. It was awfully small, whatever it was. Occasionally one of their hands went up and scratched at the back of its owner’s rubber-tired neck in perplexity. The illusion was perfect. All that was missing was the click of bone, the lingo of the dice game.

  A matron stood watchfully looking on, over by the doorway, without taking part in the proceedings herself. Something about her clashed with one’s sense of fitness. Almost anyone’s sense of esthetic fitness. She kidded the beholder, from the top of her head all the way down to her ankles, that she was going to end bifurcated, in a pair of trousers. Then at the ankles she ended in a skirt anyway; and the sense of harmony was revolted.

  Wanger, over in the opposite doorway, where he’d just come in unnoticed, stood taking in what was going on as long as he could stand it. Finally he strode forward, the apelike conclave disintegrated, to reveal a pygmy in the middle of the giants. Cookie looked even smaller than he was against their anthropoidal bulk.

  ““Not that way, not that way,” Wanger protested. “Whaddaya trying to do, anyway—sweat a kid that age?”

  “Who’s sweating him?” Wanger knew they hadn’t been. One of them put away a gleaming pocket watch he’d evidently been danghng enticingly at the end of its chain with complete lack of result.

  The matron threw back her head and laughed with a neigh like a horse.