The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  So the thoughts whirled around and around, but Robert only stood there, taut with helplessness.

  And there was no one to confide in, which made it that much harder. The only acquaintances he numbered in the world were the other men in his office, and they would never have understood. He worked, prosaically enough, in the credit department of one of the city’s largest department stores, and too many years there had ground the men around him to a fine edge of cynicism. The business of digging into people’s records, of searching for the tax difficulties, the clandestine affairs with expensive women, the touch of larceny in every human being – all that was bound to have an effect, they told Robert, and if he stayed on the job much longer he’d find it out for himself.

  What would they tell him now? A pretty girl next door? Husband’s away most of the time? Go on, make yourself at home!

  How could he make them understand that that wasn’t what he was looking for? That what he wanted was someone to meet his love halfway, someone to put an end to the cold loneliness that settled in on him like a stone during the dark hours of each night.

  So he said nothing about it to anyone, but stayed close to the wall, drawing from it what he could. And knowing the girl as he had come to, he was not surprised when he finally saw her. The mail for all the apartments was left on a table in the downstairs hallway, and as he walked down the stairs to go to work that morning, he saw her take a letter from the table and start up the stairway toward him.

  There was never any question in his mind that this was the girl. She was small and fragile and dark-haired, and all the loveliness he had imagined in her from the other side of the wall was there in her face. She was wearing a loose robe, and as she passed him on the stairway she pulled the robe closer to her breast and slipped by almost as if she were afraid of him. He realized with a start that he had been staring unashamedly, and with his face red he turned down the stairs to the street. But he walked the rest of his way in a haze of wonderment.

  He saw her a few times after that, always under the same conditions, but it took weeks before he mustered enough courage to stop at the foot of the stairs and turn to watch her retreating form above: the lovely fine line of ankle, the roundness of calf, the curve of body pressing against the robe. And then as she reached the head of the stairs, as if aware he was watching her, she looked down at him and their eyes met.

  For a heart-stopping moment Robert tried to understand what he read in her face, and then her husband’s voice came flat and belligerent from the room. ‘Amy,’ it said, ‘what’s holdin’ you up!’ – and she was gone, and the moment with her.

  When he saw the husband he marveled that she had chosen someone like that. A small, dapper gamecock of a man, he was good-looking in a hard way, but with the skin drawn so tight over his face that the cheekbones jutted sharply and the lips were drawn into a thin menacing line. He glanced at Robert up and down out of the corners of blank eyes as they passed, and in that instant Robert understood part of what he had seen in the girl’s face. This man was as dangerous as some half-tamed animal that would snap at any hand laid on him, no matter what its intent. Just being near him you could smell danger, as surely the girl did her every waking hour.

  The violence in the man exploded one night with force enough to waken Robert from a deep sleep. It was not the pitch of the voice, Robert realized, sitting up half-dazed in bed, because the words were almost inaudible through the wall; it was the vicious intensity that was so frightening.

  He slipped out of bed and laid his ear against the wall. Standing like that, his eyes closed while he strained to follow the choppy phrases, he could picture the couple facing each other as vividly as if the wall had dissolved before him.

  ‘So you know,’ the man said. ‘So what?’

  ‘… getting out!’ the girl said.

  ‘And then tell everybody? Tell the whole world?’

  ‘I won’t!’ The girl was crying now. ‘I swear I won’t!’

  ‘Think I’d take a chance?’ the man said, and then his voice turned soft and derisive. ‘Ten thousand dollars,’ he said. ‘Where else could I get it? Digging ditches?’

  ‘Better that way! This way … I’m getting out!’

  His answer was not delivered in words. It came in the form of a blow so hard that when she reeled back and struck the wall, the impact stung Robert’s face. ‘Vince!’ she screamed; the sound high and quavering with terror. ‘Don’t, Vince!’

  Every nerve in Robert was alive now with her pain as the next blow was struck. His fingernails dug into the wall at the hard-breathing noises of scuffling behind it as she was pulled away.

  ‘Ahh, no!’ she cried out, and then there was the sound of a breath being drawn hoarsely and agonizingly into lungs no longer responsive to it, the thud of a flaccid weight striking the floor, and suddenly silence. A terrible silence.

  As if the wall itself were her cold, dead flesh Robert recoiled from it, then stood staring at it in horror. His thoughts twisted and turned on themselves insanely, but out of them loomed one larger and larger so that he had to face it and recognize it.

  She had been murdered, and as surely as though he had been standing there beside her he was a witness to it! He had been so close that if the wall were not there he could have reached out his hand and touched her. Done something to help her. Instead, he had waited like a fool until it was too late.

  But there was still something to be done, he told himself wildly. And as long as this madman in the next room had no idea there was a witness he. could still be taken red-handed. A call to the police, and in five minutes …

  But before he could take the first nerveless step Robert heard the room next door stealthily come to life again. There was a sound of surreptitious motion, of things being shifted from their place; then, clearly defined, a lifeless weight being pulled along the floor, and the cautious creaking of a door opened wide. It was that last sound which struck Robert with a sick comprehension of what was happening.

  The murderer was a monster, but he was no fool. If he could safely dispose of the body now during these silent hours of the night he was, to all intents and purposes, a man who had committed no crime at all!

  At his door Robert stopped short. From the hallway came the deliberate thump of feet finding their way down the stairs with the weight dragging behind them. The man had killed once. He was reckless enough in this crisis to risk being seen with his victim. What would such a man do to anyone who confronted him at such a time?

  Robert leaned back against his door, his eyes closed tight, a choking constriction in his throat as if the man’s hands were already around it. He was a coward, there was no way around it. Faced with the need to show some courage he had discovered he was a rank coward, and he saw the girl’s face before him now, not with fear in it, but contempt.

  But – and the thought gave him a quick sense of triumph – he could still go to the police. He saw himself doing it, and the sense of triumph faded away. He had heard some noises, and from that had constructed a murder. The body? There would be none. The murderer? None. Only a man whose wife had left him because he had quarreled with her. The accuser? A young man who had wild dreams. A perfect fool. In short, Robert himself.

  It was only when he heard the click of the door downstairs that he stepped out into the hallway and started down, step by careful step. Halfway down he saw it, a handkerchief, small and crumpled and blotched with an ugly stain. He picked it up gingerly, and holding it up toward the dim light overhead let it fall open. The stain was bright sticky red almost obscuring in one corner the word Amy carefully embroidered there. Blood. Her blood. Wouldn’t that be evidence enough for anyone?

  Sure, he could hear the policeman answer him jeeringly, evidence of a nosebleed, all right, and he could feel the despair churn in him.

  It was the noise of the car that roused him, and then he flew down the rest of the stairs, but too late. As he pressed his face to the curtain of the front door the car roared away from th
e curb, its taillights gleaming like malevolent eyes, its license plate impossible to read in the dark. If he had only been an instant quicker, he raged at himself, only had sense enough to understand that the killer must use a car for his purpose, he could easily have identified it. Now, even that chance was gone. Every chance was gone.

  He was in his room pacing the floor feverishly when within a half hour he heard the furtive sounds of the murderer’s return. And why not, Robert thought; he’s gotten rid of her, he’s safe now, he can go on as if nothing at all had happened.

  If I were only someone who could go into that room and beat the truth out of him, the thought boiled on, or someone with such wealth or position that I would be listened to …

  But all that was as unreal and vaporous as his passion for the girl had been. What weapon of vengeance could he possibly have at his command, a nobody working in a …

  Robert felt the sudden realization wash over him in a cold wave. His eyes narrowed on the wall as if, word by word, the idea was being written on it in a minute hand.

  Everyone has a touch of larceny in him – wasn’t that what the old hands in his department were always saying? Everyone was suspect. Certainly the man next door, with his bent for violence, his talk of ten thousand dollars come by in some unlikely way, must have black marks on his record that the authorities, blind as they might be, could recognize and act on. If someone skilled in investigation were to strip the man’s past down, layer by layer, justice would have to be done. That was the weapon: the dark past itself stored away in the man, waiting only to be ignited!

  Slowly and thoughtfully Robert slipped the girl’s crumpled handkerchief into an envelope and sealed it. Then, straining to remember the exact words, he wrote down on paper the last violent duologue between murderer and victim. Paper and envelope both went into a drawer of his dresser, and the first step had been taken.

  But then, Robert asked himself, what did he know about the man? His name was Vince, and that was all. Hardly information which could serve as the starting point of a search through the dark corridors of someone’s past. There must be something more than that, something to serve as a lead.

  It took Robert the rest of a sleepless night to hit on the idea of the landlady. A stout and sleepy-eyed woman whose only interest in life seemed to lie in the prompt collection of her rent, she still must have some information about the man. She occupied the rear apartment on the ground floor, and as early in the morning as he dared Robert knocked on her door.

  She looked more sleepy-eyed than ever as she pondered his question. ‘Them?’ she said at last. ‘That’s the Sniders. Nice people, all right.’ She blinked at Robert. ‘Not having any trouble with them, are you?’

  ‘No. Not at all. But is that all you can tell me about them? I mean, don’t you know where they’re from, or anything like that?’

  The landlady shrugged. ‘I’m sure it’s none of my business,’ she said loftily. ‘All I know is they pay on the first of the month right on the dot, and they’re nice respectable people.’

  He turned away from her heavily, and as he did so he saw the street door close behind the postman. It was as if a miracle had been passed for him. The landlady was gone, he was all alone with that little heap of mail on the table, and there staring up at him was an envelope neatly addressed to Mrs Vincent Snider.

  All the way to his office he kept that envelope hidden away in an inside pocket, and it was only when he was locked in the seclusion of his cubicle that he carefully slit it open and studied its contents. A single page with only a few lines on it, a noncommittal message about the family’s well-being, and the signature: Your sister, Celia. Not much to go on – but wait, there was a return address on the stationery, an address in a small upstate town.

  Robert hesitated only a moment, then thrust letter and envelope into his pocket, straightened his jacket, and walked into the office of his superior. Mr Sprague, in charge of the department and consequently the most ulcerated and cynical member of it, regarded him sourly.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Robert, ‘but I’ll need a few days off. You see, there’s been a sudden death.’

  Mr Sprague sighed at this pebble cast into the smooth pool of his department’s routine, but his face fell into the proper sympathetic lines.

  ‘Somebody close?’

  ‘Very close,’ said Robert.

  The walk from the railroad station to the house was a short one. The house itself had a severe and forbidding air about it, as did the young woman who opened the door in answer to Robert’s knock.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘my sister’s name is Amy Snider. Her married name, that is. I’m Celia Thompson.’

  ‘What I’m looking for,’ Robert said, ‘is some information about her. About your sister.’

  The woman looked stricken. ‘Something’s happened to her?’

  ‘In a way,’ Robert said. He cleared his throat hard. ‘You see, she’s disappeared from her apartment, and I’m looking into it. Now, if you …’

  ‘You’re from the police?’

  ‘I’m acting for them,’ Robert said, and prayed that this ambiguity would serve in place of identification. The prayer was answered, the woman gestured him into the house, and sat down facing him in the bare and uninviting living room.

  ‘I knew,’ the woman said, ‘I knew something would happen,’ and she rocked piteously from side to side in her chair.

  Robert reached forward and touched her hand gently. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘How? What else could you expect when you drive a child out of her home and slam the door in her face! When you throw her out into the world not even knowing how to take care of herself!’

  Robert withdrew his hand abruptly. ‘You did that?’

  ‘My father did it. Her father.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘If you knew him,’ the woman said. ‘A man who thinks anything pretty is sinful. A man who’s so scared of hellfire and brimstone that he’s kept us in it all our lives!

  ‘When she started to get so pretty, and the boys pestering her all the time, he turned against her just like that. And when she had her trouble with that man he threw her out of the house, bag and baggage. And if he knew I was writing letters to her,’ the woman said fearfully, ‘he’d throw me out, too. I can’t even say her name in front of him, the way he is.’

  ‘Look,’ Robert said eagerly, ‘that man she had trouble with. Was that the one she married? That Vincent Snider?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the woman said vaguely. ‘I just don’t know. Nobody knows except Amy and my father, the way it was kept such a secret. I didn’t even know she was married until all of a sudden she wrote me a letter about it from the city.’

  ‘But if your father knows, I can talk to him about it.’

  ‘No! You can’t! If he even knew I told you as much as I did …’

  ‘But I can’t let it go at that,’ he pleaded. ‘I have to find out about this man, and then maybe we can straighten everything out.’

  ‘All right,’ the woman said wearily, ‘there is somebody. But not my father, you’ve got to keep away from him for my sake. There’s this teacher over at the high school, this Miss Benson. She’s the one to see. And she liked Amy; she’s the one Amy mails my letters to, so my father won’t know. Maybe she’ll tell you, even if she won’t tell anybody else. I’ll write you a note to her, and you go see her.’

  At the door he thanked her, and she regarded him with a hard, straight look. ‘You have to be pretty to get yourself in trouble,’ she said, ‘so it’s something that’ll never bother me. But you find Amy, and you make sure she’s all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ Robert said. ‘I’ll try.’

  At the school he was told that Miss Benson was the typewriting teacher, that she had classes until three, and that if he wished to speak to her alone he would have to wait until then. So for hours he fretfully walked the few main streets of the town, oblivious of the curious glance
s of passers-by, and thinking of Amy. These were the streets she had known. These shop windows had mirrored her image. And, he thought with a sharp jealousy, not always alone. There had been boys. Attracted to her, as boys would be, but careless of her, never realizing the prize they had. But if he had known her then, if he could have been one of them …

  At three o’clock he waited outside the school building until it had emptied, and then went in eagerly. Miss Benson was a small woman, gray-haired and fluttering, almost lost among the grim ranks of hooded typewriters in the room. After Robert had explained himself and she had read Celia Thompson’s note she seemed ready to burst into tears.

  ‘It’s wrong of her!’ she said. ‘It’s dreadfully wrong of her to send you to me. She must have known that.’

  ‘But why is it wrong?’

  ‘Why? Because she knows I don’t want to talk about it to anyone. She knows what it would cost me if I did, that’s why!’

  ‘Look,’ Robert said patiently, ‘I’m not trying to find out what happened. I’m only trying to find out about this man Amy had trouble with, what his name is, where he comes from, where I can get more information about him.’

  ‘No,’ Miss Benson quavered, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Robert said angrily. ‘A girl disappears, this man may be at the bottom of it, and all you can do is say you’re sorry!’

  Miss Benson’s jaw went slack. ‘You mean that he – that he did something to her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Robert said, ‘he did,’ and had to quickly catch her arm as she swayed unsteadily, apparently on the verge of fainting.

  ‘I should have known,’ she said lifelessly. ‘I should have known when it happened that it might come to this. But at the time …’

  At the time the girl had been one of her students. A good student – not brilliant, mind you – but a nice girl always trying to do her best. And well brought up, too, not like so many of the young snips you get nowadays.

  That very afternoon when it all happened the girl herself had told Miss Benson she was going to the Principal’s office after school hours to get her program straightened out. Certainly if she meant to do anything wicked she wouldn’t have mentioned that, would she? Wasn’t that all the evidence anyone needed?