The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder

by Patricia Highsmith

  Rose went down the stairs, as scared and shaky as she’d ever felt ringing somebody’s doorbell, or waiting in the car while Jane did her job. She’d ring up Hank. Hank White his name was, living somewhere in Greenwich Village. She hoped she could dig up the number somehow, because she didn’t think it was listed under his name, and she might have to ring other people to get it. He’d come, if it concerned Eddie. She realized she was worried about Eddie. And Hank was the only person she could tell this to, because Jane kept Eddie hidden from her friends, kept him in a locked closet when anyone came (even Tommy), and spanked him later if he’d chattered. Rose found her car finally. The keys were in the dashboard. She drove towards her home, which was an apartment in a town about eight miles away.

  Jane washed her face and combed her curly, blonde-rinsed hair by way of pulling herself together, but it didn’t help. She picked up a paperback book and flung it at Eddie in a backhanded gesture. It caught Eddie in the side.

  “Ik-ik!” Eddie cried, and leapt a couple of inches into the air. He turned a puzzled face towards Jane, and braced himself to jump to one side or the other, in case Jane tried to strike him again.

  “You’ll damn well stay in your closet tonight!” said Jane, advancing. “Starting now!”

  Eddie wriggled easily from her outstretched hands, and leapt to the frame of a picture over the sofa.

  The picture fell, Eddie landed on the sofa again, and seized an icebag that had been lying there for some time. He hurled the icebag at Jane. It fell short. “Chi-chi-chi-chi-chi!” Eddie chattered without stopping, and his round eyes had gone wide and pink at the outer edges.

  Jane was determined to catch him and stick him away. Suppose the cops for some reason suddenly knocked on the door? Or broke in? What kind of trail had that dumb Rose left behind? All Rose had to her credit was a nice face and a fast car. Jane picked up the end of the madras counterpane that covered the sofa, intending to throw it over Eddie and capture him, but Eddie leapt to the center of the room. Jane pulled the counterpane all the way off and advanced with it.

  Eddie threw an ashtray at close range and hit Jane in the cheek with it. The ashtray fell and broke on the floor.

  Jane got angrier.

  Now Eddie was on the drainboard in the kitchenette, brandishing a paring knife, chattering and squeaking. he picked up half a lemon and threw it.

  “You little insect!” Jane muttered, coming towards him with the counterpane. She had him cornered now.

  Eddie dove straight for Jane, landed with four feet on her left arm, and bit her thumb. He had dropped the knife.

  Jane cried out. Her thumb began to bleed, the blood oozed and dripped. She picked up a straight chair. She’d kill the little devil!

  Eddie dodged the chair and at once attacked Jane’s legs from behind, nipped into one calf and sprang away.

  “Ow!” Jane yelled, more with surprise than pain. She hadn’t even seen him go behind her. She looked at her injury and saw that he’d drawn blood again. She’d fix him! She closed the one open window so he couldn’t escape, and went for the paring knife on the floor. She felt inspired to sink it into his neck.

  Eddie jumped on to her bent back, on to the back of her head, and Jane toppled over. She hurt her elbow slightly, and before she could get up, Eddie had bitten her nose. Jane touched her nose to see if it was still all there.

  And Eddie dived for the doorknob. He supported himself on one hind leg, and worked at the top bolt, turning the little knob. If he could turn the big knob at the same time, the door would open with a pull, but he had to abandon his effort when he heard Jane’s steps close behind him. Eddie sprang down just as the knife point grated against the metal door.

  “Chi-chi!”

  Jane had dropped the knife. Eddie picked it up, ran up Jane’s hip and shoulder and struck her in the cheek with the knife point. He used the knife as he had seen people do, sometimes with stabbing motions, sometimes sawing, and then suddenly he flung the knife away and leapt from Jane’s shoulder to a bookcase, panting and chattering. Eddie smelled blood, and this frightened him. Nervously Eddie threw a book at Jane, which came nowhere near hitting her.

  Jane was aware of blood running down her neck. Absurd that she couldn’t catch the little beast! For an instant, she felt that she couldn’t breathe, that she was going to faint, then she took a deep breath and gathered her strength.

  Plock! A book hit Jane on the chest.

  Well, well! One swat with a chair would do for Eddie!

  Jane reached for the straight chair which had fallen on its side. When she had it in position to swing, Eddie was not on the bookcase. Jane felt his fast little feet going up her back, started to turn, and had a glimpse of Eddie with the counterpane in his hands, climbing over her head with it. Jane lost her balance and fell, stumbling against the chair that she was lowering.

  Eddie skipped from one side of the hump on the floor to the other, pulling the thin cloth over his enemy. He seized the nearest object—a conch shell from the floor near the hall door—and took a grip with both hands. He came down with this on the woman’s slightly moving head under the counterpane. Eddie slipped and rolled over, but he kept his fingers in the crease of the shell, and struck again with it. The crack was a satisfying sound to Eddie. Crack! Crack! He heard a dreary moan from the heap.

  Then for no reason, as he had dropped the knife for no reason, Eddie dropped the conch shell on the carpet and gave it a nervous kick with a hind foot. He allowed himself a few chatters, and peered about as if to see if someone else were in the room with him.

  He heard only the tick-tick-tick of the clock in the bedroom beyond the hall. He was aware of the blood smell again, and withdrew some distance from the counterpane. Eddie sighed, exhausted. He loped to the window, fiddled with it for an instant, and gave it up. It had to be raised, and it was heavy.

  It was growing darker.

  The telephone rang. There flitted across Eddie’s mind the familiar image of Jane or someone picking up the telephone, talking into it. Once Eddie had been told or allowed to do this, and he had dropped the telephone, and people had laughed. Now Eddie felt fearful and hostile towards the telephone, towards the hump on the floor. He kept looking to see if the hump stirred. It did not. He was thirsty. Eddie leapt to the drainboard, looked around and felt for a glass of water or anything with liquid in it, which he always smelled before drinking, but he saw no such thing. Using both hands, he turned a tap and cupped one hand and drank. He made a perfunctory effort to turn the tap off, didn’t quite succeed, and left it trickling.

  The telephone stopped ringing.

  Then Eddie opened the refrigerator—a little uncomfortably because he had been scolded and slapped for this—and seeing no fruit in the lighted interior, scooped a handful of cooked stringbeans from a bowl and started to nibble them, kicked the door shut with a hind foot, and loped off on three legs. He felt at once tired, flung the beans down, and jumped into a rocking chair to sleep.

  When the doorbell rang, Eddie was curled in the seat of the rocking chair. He lifted his head. The room was quite dark.

  Suddenly Eddie wanted to flee. The smell of blood was uglier. He could open the front door and go, he realized, unless the woman had put on the special lock which required a set of jingling keys to open. She kept the keys hidden. Eddie had succeeded only once with a key, somewhere for fun, with Jane and Rose. Keys were usually too stiff for him to turn.

  Buzz-buzz.

  It was the downstairs bell, different from the apartment door which gave a ting. Eddie was not interested in the bell, he simply wanted to escape now. He sprang to the doorknob again, and seized the smaller knob above with his left hand. It turned, but the door did not open. Eddie tried again, turning the doorknob also with his feet. Then he pushed the doorjamb, and the door swung towards him. Eddie leapt down and loped silently down the stairs, swinging
himself out at the turnings by one of the balusters. Downstairs the door was easier—he thought—and he could also slip out when the next person came in.

  Eddie jumped up to the round white knob, slipped, and then tried turning it while standing on his hind feet. The door opened.

  “Eddie! Ed-die! What the—”

  Eddie knew the voice. “Chi-chi!” Eddie jumped onto Hank’s arm, flung himself against Hank’s chest, chattering madly, and feeling that he had a long and desperate story to tell. “Aieeee!” Eddie was even inventing new words.

  “What’s goin’ on, eh?” Hank said softly, coming in. “Where’s Jane?” He glanced up the stairs. He closed the door, settled Eddie more securely inside his leather jacket, and climbed the stairs two at a time.

  Jane’s door was ajar and there was no light on.

  “Jane?” he called, and knocked once. Then he went in. “Jane?—Where’s the light here, Eddie boy?” Hank groped, and after a few seconds, found a light switch. He heard footsteps coming down from the next floor, and instinctively he closed the door. Something was wrong here. He looked around at Jane’s living room in astonishment. He’d been here before, but only once. “What the hell happened?” he whispered to himself. The place was a shambles. A robbery, he thought. They’d dumped the stuff in the middle of the floor and intended to come back.

  Hank moved towards the heap on the floor. He pulled the madras cover back slowly.

  “Holy cow!—Holy cow!”

  Eddie flattened himself against Hank’s sweater and closed his eyes, terrified and wanting to hide.

  “Jane?” Hank touched her shoulder, thinking maybe she’d fainted, or been knocked out. He tried to turn her over, and found that her body was a bit stiff and not at all warm. Her face, her neck were dark red with blood. Hank blinked and straightened up. “Anybody else here?” he called towards the next room, more boldly than he felt.

  He knew there was no one else here. Slowly it dawned on him that Eddie had killed Jane with his little teeth, maybe with—Hank was looking at a kitchen knife a few feet away on the floor. Then he saw the cream-and-pink colored conch shell. “Get down, Eddie,” he whispered. But Eddie wouldn’t be dislodged from the sweater.

  Hank picked up the knife, then the shell. He washed them both at the sink in the kitchenette, and saw a faint pinkness run off the shell. He turned the shell upside down, and shook the water out of it. He dried it thoroughly with a dishtowel. He did the same with the knife. Jane must have attacked Eddie. Hadn’t Rose hinted as much? “We’re gettin’ out, Eddie! Yes, sir, yes, sir!”

  Then Eddie heard the comforting sound of the zipper that closed Hank’s jacket all the way up. They were going down the stairs now.

  Hank had not forgotten to wipe the doorknobs when he left Jane’s apartment, and he had made sure the door locked behind him in a normal way. Hank had thought to telephone the police at once, when he’d been in Jane’s apartment, then had thought to telephone them later once he got Eddie home safely. But he didn’t. He wasn’t even going to telephone Rose. Rose wouldn’t want any part of it, and Hank knew she could be trusted to keep her mouth shut. The body would be found soon enough, was Hank’s opinion, and he didn’t want Eddie blamed for it. The police, if he’d rung, would have asked him what he knew about it, and they’d have found out somehow about Eddie, even if Hank had tried to hide him.

  So Hank bided his time on Perry Street, Greenwich Village, where he shared an apartment with two young men, and two days later, he caught an item in a newspaper saying that Jane Garrity, aged forty-two, unemployed secretary, had been found dead in her apartment in Red Cliff, New Jersey, victim of an attack by an unknown assailant or assailants, maybe even children, because her wounds and blows had not been severe. The actual cause of death had been a heart attack.

  The police would know Jane’s record, Hank thought, and the company she kept. Let them worry about it. Hank reproached himself for having given Eddie to Rose, but she’d been fond of Eddie, and Hank had felt a bit guilty when he and Rose had broken up. But now that he had Eddie back, Hank was not going to part with him. Eddie showed no further interest in opening doors, because he was happy where he was. He had a small room to himself, with ropes to swing on, a basket bed, no door at all, and one of Hank’s friends, a sculptor, constructed something like a tree for Eddie in the living room. Hank began writing a rather long epic poem about Eddie, whose life story was to be veiled, metamorphosed, allegorized. The Conqueror Monkey. Only Hank and Eddie knew the truth.

  Hamsters vs. Websters

  The circumstances under which Julian and Betty Webster and their ten-year-old son Laurence acquired a country house, a dog, and hamsters, were most sudden and unexpected for the family, and yet it all hung together.

  One afternoon in his air-conditioned Philadelphia office Julian suffered a heart attack. He had pain, he sank to the floor, and he was whisked to a hospital. When he had recovered some five days later, his doctor gave him a serious talk. Julian would have to stop smoking, reduce his working hours to six or less per day, and a country atmosphere would be better for him than living in an apartment in Philadelphia. Julian was shocked. He was only thirty-seven, he pointed out.

  “You don’t realize how you’ve been driving yourself,” the doctor replied calmly, smiling. “I’ve spoken with your wife. She’s willing to make the change. She cares about your health, even if you don’t.”

  Julian was of course won over. He loved Betty. He could see that the doctor’s advice was reasonable. And Larry was hopping with joy. They were going to have a real country house with land, trees, space—a lot better than the silly paved playground of the big apartment building, which was all Larry could remember, since his family had moved there when he was five.

  The Websters found a two-story white house with four gable windows and an acre and a half of land, seventeen miles from Philadelphia. Julian would not even have to drive to his office. His firm had changed his job from that of sales manager to sales consultant, which Julian realized was another way of saying traveling salesman. But his salary remained the same. Olympian Pool built swimming pools of all sizes, shapes and colors, heated and unheated, and also provided vacuum and filter-cleaning devices, purifiers, sprays and bubble-makers, and all kinds of diving boards. And Julian, he realized himself, made a good impression as salesman. His appointments were follow-ups of responses to mailed advertisements, so he was sure of being received. Julian was not high pressure. His manner was quiet and sincere, and he didn’t mind disclosing difficulties and extra expenses from the start, if he saw that there were going to be any. Julian chewed his reddish-brown mustache, pondered, and expressed his opinion with the air of a man who was thinking out loud about his own problems.

  Now, Julian got up at eight, strolled around his garden-in-progress, breakfasted on tea and a soft-boiled egg instead of coffee and cigarettes, looked at the newspaper and worked the crossword—all according to doctor’s orders—before departing in his car around ten. He was due home around four, and that was the end of his day. Meanwhile, Betty measured windows for curtains, bought extra rugs, and happily took care of all the details that were necessary to make a new, bigger house a home. Larry had changed schools and was getting along well. It was the month of March. Larry wanted a dog. And there were rabbit warrens in an outhouse on the property. Couldn’t he have rabbits?

  “Rabbits breed so,” said Julian. “What’ll we do with them unless we sell them, and we don’t want to start that. Let’s get a dog, Larry.”

  The Websters went to a pet shop in their nearest town with the idea of inquiring about a kennel where they could buy a terrier or German shepherd puppy, but in the pet shop there were such splendid looking basset puppies, that Betty and Larry decided they had found what they wanted.

  “Very healthy!” said the woman of the shop, fondling a floppy-eared, brown and white puppy in her arms.

 
That was obvious. The puppy grinned and slavered and wriggled in his loose hound’s skin, which was so ready to fill out with the aid of Puppy-Spruce, Grow-Pup, dogbone-shaped biscuits and vitamins, all of which Julian bought in the shop.

  “Look at these, Pop!” Larry said, pointing to some hamsters in a cage. “They’re smaller than rabbits. They could live in the little rooms we’ve got.”

  Julian and Betty agreed to buy two hamsters. Only two, and they were so darling with their soft, clean fur, their innocent, inquisitive eyes, their twitching noses.

  “All that space should be filled a little bit!” said Betty. She was as happy as Larry with the day’s purchases.

  Larry absorbed what the pet shop woman told him about hamsters. They should be kept warm at night, they ate cereals and grains of all kinds, and greenery such as carrots and turnips. They were nocturnal, and did not like direct sunlight. Larry installed his two in one of the cubicles in the rabbit warren. There were six such cubicles, three above, three below. He provided water and a pan of bread, plus a bowl of sweet corn from a tin he had found in the kitchen. He found an empty shoe box, which he filled with old rags, and this would be the hamsters’ bedroom, he hoped. What to name them? Tom and Jerry? No, they were male and female. Jack and Jill? Too juvenile. Adam and Eve? Larry thought he would decide on names later. He could tell the male, because of a black patch between his ears.

  Then there was the puppy. The puppy ate, peed, slept, and then awakened to play at two in the morning the first night. Everyone woke up, because the puppy had quit his box by the radiator and scratched at Larry’s door.

  “I love him!” said Larry, half asleep, rolling on the floor in pajamas with the puppy in his arms.

  “Oh, Julian,” said Betty, collapsing into her husband’s arms. “What a wonderful day! Isn’t this better than city life?”

  Julian smiled, and kissed his wife on the forehead. It was better. Julian was happy. But he didn’t want to make a speech about it. He’d had a tough time quitting cigarettes, and now he was putting on weight. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.