The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  The money wasn’t his, that was the thing. If it were he could be seeing her that evening, and the next, and the next, and the one after that. But it wasn’t. It was a meaningless bulge in his wallet that could take him this far, and no farther. And that knowledge made everything else meaningless: the clothes, the manner, everything he had made himself into. Without the money it was all nonsense. With it …

  With it! He had been looking merely ill at ease; now he looked physically ill under the impact of the thought that struck him. An instant concern showed in Ann Horton’s lovely eyes. Apparently she was a girl with strong maternal instinct.

  ‘You’re not well,’ she said.

  The idea, the glorious realization, was a flame roaring through him now. He rose from it like a phoenix.

  ‘No, I don’t feel very well,’ he answered, and could hardly recognize his own voice as he spoke, ‘but it’s nothing serious. Really, it isn’t.’

  ‘Well, you ought to go home right now,’ she said firmly. ‘I have the car downstairs, and it won’t be any trouble at all …’

  Arthur mentally struck himself on the forehead with his fist. He had thrown away one opportunity; did he have to throw this one away as well? Yet, Mrs Marsh’s rooming house had never appeared as wretched as it did just then; it was impossible to have her drive him there.

  Inspiration put the words into his mouth, the proper words to impress the father and daughter. ‘There’s so much work to be done,’ said Arthur, wistfully courageous, ‘that I can’t possibly leave it.’ And then he added with as much ease as if he had practiced the lines for hours. ‘But I do want to see you again. Do you think if I called tomorrow evening …?’

  After that, he told himself grimly whenever the fire inside him threatened to flicker uncertainly, he had no choice. And Charlie Prince, of course, was not even offered a choice. At exactly seven minutes before midnight, after considerable choked protest and thrashing around, Charlie Prince lay dead on his bed. Entirely dead, although Arthur’s fingers remained clasped around his throat for another long minute just to make sure.

  It has been remarked that the man with the likeliest chance of getting away with murder is the man who faces his victim in a crowd, fires a bullet into him, and then walks off – which is a way of saying that it is the devious and overly ingenious method of murder that will hang the murderer. To that extent Arthur had committed his murder wisely, although not out of wisdom.

  The fact is that from the moment he had left Ann Horton to the moment he finally released his fingers from Charlie Prince’s throat he had lived in a sort of blind fever of knowing what had to be done without a thought of how it was to be done. And when at last he stood looking down at the body before him, with the full horror of what had happened bursting in his mind, he was at a complete loss. The soul had departed, no question about that. But the body remained, and what in the Lord’s name was one to do with it?

  He could bundle it into the closet, get it out of sight at least, but what would be the point of that? Mrs Marsh came in every morning to make up the room and empty the wastebaskets. Since there was no lock on the closet door there was no way of keeping her out of it.

  Or take Charlie Prince’s trunk standing there in the corner. He could deposit the body in it, and ship it somewhere. Ship it where? He put his mind to the question desperately, but was finally forced to the conclusion that there was no place in the world to which you could ship a trunk with a body in it, and rest assured that murder wouldn’t out.

  But he was on the right track with that trunk, and when the solution came at last, he recognized it instantly and eagerly. The storage room in Mrs Marsh’s was a dank cavern in the depths of the house, barred by a heavy door, which, though never locked, made it a desolate and chilly place no matter what the season. Since there was no traffic in that room, a body could molder there for years without anyone being the wiser. Eventually, it could be disposed of with no difficulty; the object now was to get it into the trunk and down to the storage room.

  To Arthur’s annoyance he discovered that even though the trunk was a large one it made a tight fit, and it was a messy business getting everything arranged neatly. But at last he had it bolted tightly, and out into the hallway. It was when he was midway down the stairs that the accident happened. He felt the trunk slipping down his back, gave it a violent heave to right it, and the next instant saw it go sliding over his head to crash down the rest of the distance to the floor with a thunder that shook the house. He was after it in an instant, saw that it remained firmly bolted, and then realized that he was standing eye to eye with Mrs Marsh.

  She was poised there like a frightened apparition, clad in a white flannel nightgown that fell to her ankles, her fingers to her lips, her eyes wide.

  ‘Dear me,’ she said, ‘dear me, you should be more careful!’

  Arthur flung himself in front of the trunk as if she had vision that could penetrate its walls. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to make any noise, but somehow it slipped …’

  She shook her head with gentle severity. ‘You might have scratched the walls. Or hurt yourself.’

  ‘No,’ he assured her hastily, ‘there’s no damage done. None.’

  She peered around him at the trunk. ‘Why, that’s that nice Mr Prince’s trunk, isn’t it? Wherever can you be taking it at this hour?’

  Arthur felt the perspiration start on his forehead. ‘Nowhere,’ he said hoarsely, and then when she knit her brows in wonder at this he quickly added, ‘That is, to the storage room. You see, Charlie – Mr Prince – was supposed to give me a hand with it, but when he didn’t show up I decided to try it myself.’

  ‘But it must be so heavy.’

  Her warmly sympathetic tone served nicely to steady his nerves. His thoughts started to move now with the smooth precision of the second hand on a good watch.

  ‘I suppose it is,’ he said, and laughed deprecatingly, ‘but it seemed better to do it myself than keep waiting for Mr Prince to help. He’s very unreliable, you know. Just takes off when he wants to, and you never know how long he’ll be gone.’

  ‘I think it’s a shame,’ said Mrs Marsh firmly.

  ‘No, no, he’s a bit eccentric, that’s all. But really very nice when you get to know him.’ Arthur took a grip on the trunk. ‘I’ll get it down the rest of the way easily enough,’ he said.

  A thought struck Mrs Marsh. ‘Oh, dear me,’ she chirped, ‘perhaps everything did happen for the best. I mean, your making a noise and bringing me out and all. You see, there’s a lock on the storage room now, and you’d never have got in. I’ll just slip on a robe and take care of that.’

  She went ahead of him down the creaking cellar steps, and waited in the storage room until he trundled the trunk into it. A dim light burned there, and, as he had remembered, dust lay thick over everything in sight. Mrs Marsh shook her head over it.

  ‘It’s dreadful,’ she said, ‘but there’s really no point in trying to do anything about it. Why, I don’t believe anyone uses this room from one year to the next! The only reason I put the lock on the door was because the insurance company wanted it there.’

  Arthur shifted from one foot to the other. His mission completed, he was willing, in fact, anxious, to leave, but Mrs Marsh seemed oblivious to this.

  ‘I don’t encourage transients,’ she said. ‘What I like is a nice steady gentleman boarder who’s no fuss and bother. Now, take that trunk there,’ she pointed a bony forefinger at what appeared to be a mound of ashes, but which proved on a second look to be a trunk buried under years of dust. ‘When that gentleman moved in …’

  Arthur felt himself swaying on his feet while the gentle chirping went on and on. In this fashion he learned about the gentleman in the first-floor rear, the gentleman in the second-floor rear, and the gentleman in the third-floor front. It was as though her conversational stream had been dammed up so long that now it was released there was no containing it. And through it all h
e sustained himself with one thought. He had got away with murder – really and literally got away with murder. When the door to the storage room closed behind him, Charlie Prince could rot away without a soul in the world being the wiser. The checks would come every month, five hundred dollars each and every month, and there was Ann Horton and the world of glory ahead. The best of everything, Arthur thought in and around Mrs Marsh’s unwearying voice, and he knew then what it felt like to be an emperor incognito.

  The monologue had to come to an end sometime, the heavy door was locked and stayed locked, and Arthur entered his new station with the confidence that is supposed to be the lot of the righteous, but which may also come to those who have got away with murder and know it beyond the shadow of a doubt. And even the tiniest fragment of unease could not possibly remain after he met Mrs Marsh in the hallway one evening a few weeks later.

  ‘You were right,’ she said, pursing her lips sympathetically. ‘Mr Prince is eccentric, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is?’ said Arthur uncertainly.

  ‘Oh, yes. Like practicing writing his name on every piece of paper he can get his hands on. Just one sheet of paper after another with nothing on it but his name!’

  Arthur abruptly remembered his wastebasket, and then thought with a glow of undeserved self-admiration how everything, even unforgivable carelessness, worked for him.

  ‘I’m sure,’ observed Mrs Marsh, ‘that a grown man can find better things to do with his time than that. It just goes to show you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘it certainly does.’

  So, serenity reigned over Mrs Marsh’s. It reigned elsewhere, too, since Arthur had no difficulty at all in properly endorsing those precious checks, and even less trouble in spending the money. Using Charlie Prince’s wardrobe as his starting point, he built his into a thing of quiet splendor. Drawing from Charlie Prince’s narratives, he went to the places where one should be seen, and behaved as one should behave. His employer beamed on him with a kindly eye which became almost affectionate when Arthur mentioned the income a generous aunt had provided for him; his acquaintance with Ann Horton, who had seemed strangely drawn to him from the first evening they spent together, soon blossomed into romance.

  He found Ann Horton everything he had ever imagined – passionate, charming, devoted. Of course, she had her queer little reticences, dark little places in her own background that she chose not to touch upon, but, as he reminded himself, who was he to cast stones? So he behaved himself flawlessly up to the point where they had to discuss the wedding, and then they had their first quarrel.

  There was no question about the wedding itself. It was to take place in June, the month of brides; it was to be followed by a luxurious honeymoon; after which, Arthur would enter into a position of importance in the affairs of Horton & Son at a salary commensurate with that position, of course. No, there was no question about the wedding – the envy in the eyes of every fine young man who had ever courted Ann Horton attested to that – but there was a grave question about the ceremony.

  ‘But why do you insist on a big ceremony?’ she demanded. ‘I think they’re dreadful things. All those people and all that fuss. It’s like a Roman circus.’

  He couldn’t explain to her, and that complicated matters. After all, there is no easy way of explaining to any girl that her wedding is not only to be a nuptial, but also a sweet measure of revenge. It would be all over the papers; the whole world of fine young men would be on hand to witness it. They had to be there, or it would be tasteless in the mouth.

  ‘And why do you insist on a skimpy little private affair?’ he asked in turn. ‘I should think a girl’s wedding would be the most important thing in the world to her. That she’d want to do it up proud. Standing there in the living-room with your father and aunt doesn’t seem like any ceremony at all.’

  ‘But you’ll be there, too,’ she said. ‘That’s what makes it a ceremony.’

  He was not to be put off by any such feminine wit, however, and he let her know it. In the end, she burst into tears and fled, leaving him as firm in his convictions as ever. If it cost him his neck, he told himself angrily, he was not going to have any hit-and-run affair fobbed off on him as the real thing. He’d have the biggest cathedral in town, the most important people – the best of everything.

  When they met again she was in a properly chastened mood, so he was properly magnanimous.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘did you think I was very foolish carrying on the way I did?’

  ‘Of course not, Ann. Don’t you think I understand how high-strung you are, and how seriously you take this?’

  ‘You are a darling, Arthur,’ she said, ‘really you are. And perhaps, in a way, your insistence on a big ceremony has done more for us than you’ll ever understand.’

  ‘In what way?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that I haven’t been as happy in years as I’m going to be if things work out.’

  ‘What things?’ he asked, completely at sea in the face of this feminine ambiguity.

  ‘Before I can even talk about it there’s one question you must answer, Arthur. And please, promise you’ll answer truthfully.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Then can you find it in your heart to forgive someone who’s done a great wrong? Someone who’s done wrong, but suffered for it?’

  He grimaced inwardly. ‘Of course I can. I don’t care what wrong anyone’s done. It’s my nature to forgive him.’

  He almost said her but caught himself in time. After all, if that was the way she wanted to build up to a maidenly confession, why spoil it? But there seemed to be no confession forthcoming. She said nothing more about the subject – instead, spent the rest of the evening in such a giddy discussion of plans and arrangements that by the time he left her the matter was entirely forgotten.

  He was called into Mr Horton’s office late the next afternoon, and when he entered the room he saw Ann there. From her expression and from her father’s he could guess what they had been discussing, and he felt a pleasant triumph in that knowledge.

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mr Horton, ‘please sit down.’

  Arthur sat down, crossed his legs, and smiled at Ann.

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mr Horton, ‘I have something serious to discuss with you.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Arthur, and waited patiently for Mr Horton to finish arranging three pencils, a pen, a letter opener, a memorandum pad, and a telephone before him on the desk.

  ‘Arthur,’ Mr Horton said at last, ‘what I’m going to tell you is something few people know, and I hope you will follow their example and never discuss it with anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Ann has told me that you insist on a big ceremony with all the trimmings, and that’s what makes the problem. A private ceremony would have left things as they were, and no harm done. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Arthur, lying valiantly. He looked furtively at Ann, but no clue was to be found there. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Then, since I’m a man who likes to get to the point quickly I will tell you that I have a son. You’re very much like him – in fact, Ann and I were both struck by that resemblance some time ago – but unfortunately, my son happens to be a thoroughgoing scoundrel. And after one trick too many he was simply bundled off to fend for himself on an allowance I provided. I haven’t heard from him since – my lawyer takes care of the details – but if there is to be a big ceremony with everyone on hand to ask questions he must be there. You understand that, of course.’

  The room seemed to be closing in around Arthur, and Mr Horton’s face was suddenly a diabolic mask floating against the wall.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Arthur whispered.

  ‘That means I must do something now that Ann’s been after me to do for years. I have the boy’s address; we’re all going over right now to meet him, to talk to him, and see if he can’t get off to a fresh start with y
our example before him.’

  ‘Prince Charlie,’ said Ann fondly. ‘That’s what we all used to call him, he was so charming.’

  The walls were very close now, the walls of a black chamber, and Ann’s face floating alongside her father’s. And, strangely enough, there was the face of Mrs Marsh. The kindly, garrulous face of Mrs Marsh growing so much bigger than the others.

  And a trunk, waiting.

  The Betrayers

  Between them was a wall. And since it was only a flimsy, jerry-built partition, a sounding board between apartments, Robert came to know the girl that way. At first she was the sound of footsteps, the small firm rap of high heels moving in a pattern of activity around her room. She must be very young, he thought idly, because at the time he was deep in Green Mansions, pursuing the lustrous Rima through a labyrinth of Amazonian jungle. Later he came to know her voice, light and breathless when she spoke, warm and gay when she raised it in chorus to some popular song dinning from her radio. She must be very lovely, he thought then, and after that found himself listening deliberately, and falling more and more in love with her as he listened.

  Her name was Amy, and there was a husband, too, a man called Vince who had a flat, unpleasant voice, and a sullen way about him. Occasionally there were quarrels which the man invariably ended by slamming the door of their room and thundering down the stairs as loud as he could. Then she would cry, a smothered whimpering, and Robert, standing close to the wall between them, would feel as if a hand had been thrust inside his chest and was twisting his heart. He would think wildly of the few steps that would take him to her door, the few words that would let her know he was her friend, was willing to do something – anything – to help her. Perhaps, meeting face to face, she would recognize his love. Perhaps—