Double Feature

by Donald E. Westlake

  Cold air was seeping in, despite the lack of wind. I stepped back from the doorway, shivering a little and looking again at the frostbitten hanging plants. I said, “Have you been keeping this door open very much?”

  “Not much at all,” Bray said. “Why? Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know if anything matters,” I told him. “I’m just trying to get a picture of the situation.”

  Staples said, “Shall I close it now?”

  “Might as well.”

  Staples closed the French doors and then he and Bray watched me as I wandered around the bedroom, studying things at random and trying to come to a decision. Finally I turned to Bray and said, “I’m sorry, Sergeant Bray. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but this time inspiration just refuses to hit.”

  He frowned at me, and I could feel his confusion and his mistrust. He believed I was lying, but he didn’t know why. He said, “You don’t see any indication of murder, eh?”

  “Indication? I don’t see any proof. There’s plenty of indication, but you already know that. The argument at the party, the amount of alcohol they’d drunk, all the rest of it.”

  “But no proof.” Now it was Bray’s turn to wander the room, glowering at this and that. “There’s something here,” he said. “I know it, but I just can’t get hold of it.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help,” I told him. “I hate to spoil a perfect batting average.”

  “You’re not spoiling it,” Staples assured me. Now that he was being vindicated his manner was bluff and hearty. “If there’s nothing here, and you find nothing, then you’re still batting a thousand.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not saying Sergeant Bray is wrong. I do know what he means, that there’s a certain something about all this that doesn’t feel just right. But I don’t know what it is any more than he does.”

  That mollified Bray, without spoiling Staples’ pleasure, and soon afterwards they sent me off again to be driven home. Staples’ farewell to me was, “See you at three.”

  “What? Oh, Gaslight.” That had entirely slipped my mind. “You and your wife at three. Absolutely.”

  Bray being present for this exchange, it became necessary to widen the invitation to include him, and he thanked me and said he’d try to make it. But his mind was still on the death of Margo Templeton, and his vague conviction that something was wrong.

  Well, he would find it or he wouldn’t. I’d done what I could for my fraternity brother.

  Good luck, George.

  SIX

  The Chainlock Mystery

  I was rewriting my questions to match Big John Brant’s answers when Staples called again. “It looks like I’m going to be late,” he said. “We’ve had a new development.”

  Poor George. “In the Templeton case?”

  Not poor George. “No, as a matter of fact, it’s in the Laura Penney case.”

  Why did my heart flutter? I was the one in the clear. “A new development? That’s wonderful.”

  “We’re not sure yet,” Staples told me. “It’s an anonymous letter with a tip in it.”

  Edgarson! That son of a bitch, that rotten filthy bastard! Clutching the phone so tightly that my fingers hurt, I said, “A tip? What kind of tip?”

  “It’s all very vague and roundabout. But it isn’t just some crank who read about it in the papers, because it’s got details in it that only an insider would know.” Then he dropped the other shoe: “Do you know any friend of Mrs. Penney’s with connections in Boston?”

  “Boston? You mean, besides me?”

  Staples said, “You? I thought you were a native New Yorker.”

  “No, I’m a Boston boy.”

  “Well, it can’t be you. Can you think of anybody else?”

  “I’ll put my mind to it,” I promised.

  “Fine. Anyway, the reason I called, I might be a little late for the movie. Patricia’s coming direct to your place and I’ll meet her there. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Of course. No problem.”

  “Fine. See you then.”

  * * *

  I was in the kitchenette, putting together a quick lunch prior to the screening, when it seemed to me I heard some scratching sounds at the front door. Stepping out to the living room, a piece of baloney in my hand, I saw the door partway open and a hand reaching through to poke at the chainlock.

  “Hah!” I cried. “Hah, you son of a bitch, you won’t get in now!”

  The hand withdrew and the door closed. He’d given up, the bastard.

  Wait a minute. Was there something on the chainlock? Squinting, trying to see, I moved toward the door as the man on the other side gave it a sudden loud thump. The door shook, and the chainlock ball fell out of its slot. The chain swung free, and the door opened wide, and Edgarson came walking into my apartment.

  “Yak!” I ran back to the kitchenette, exchanged the slice of baloney for my longest and sharpest knife—which was neither particularly long nor particularly sharp—and then I crouched in the doorway, snarling and at bay. “Don’t come any closer!”

  Edgarson gave me a pitying smile. “Do you want to see how I’d take that knife away from you?”

  “I’m serious about this,” I said.

  So he came over and took the knife away and tossed it into the sink and released my arm. “Now we can talk,” he said.

  I headed toward the door, but he didn’t follow. Instead, he stood in the kitchenette doorway and called after me, “It’s mighty cold out there.”

  And I in my shirtsleeves. Hand on the doorknob, I looked back at him and saw he wasn’t behaving in a threatening manner. He was simply standing there by the kitchenette, watching me, waiting for me to settle down. Also, he hadn’t been more physical than necessary in disarming me of the knife. Hesitant, not sure what I should do next, I said, “What do you want, Edgarson?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “I have friends coming here pretty soon,” I told him. “Including two policemen.”

  “I’ve noticed that about you, Mr. Thorpe,” he said, and crossed the room casually to sit on my sofa. “You’ve gotten real chummy with those two officers.”

  “They told me about that anonymous letter you wrote.”

  That produced a happy smile. “Oh, you know about that already, do you? I was going to mention it.”

  Releasing the doorknob, I moved back into the living room, saying, “This isn’t fair, you know. It really isn’t fair.”

  He spread his hands. “What isn’t fair, Mr. Thorpe? You owe me ten thousand dollars. You’ll pay me before twelve o’clock noon tomorrow.”

  “I don’t owe you! The evidence is destroyed, you don’t have anything on me any more.”

  “Oh, that little razzle-dazzle you pulled, about what story you’d tell.” He shook his head, his smile turning down at the corners. “Well, that’s in the past now, isn’t it, Mr. Thorpe? You’ve already told your story, haven’t you? And you can’t change your story any more than I can change mine.”

  “So it’s a stalemate,” I said.

  “Not quite.” His smile became happier again. “There’s still one difference between us,” he said. “I didn’t kill Mrs. Laura Penney, but you did. And I know you did.”

  “But you can’t do anything about it. You just admitted as much, you can’t change your story.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Thorpe. About the only way I can be a good citizen now is anonymously.”

  “You can’t prove anything.”

  “Well, sir, Mr. Thorpe, what proof do I have to have to write an anonymous letter? All I need do is attract their attention, wouldn’t you say so? And leave the rest to them?”

  “You already did that.”

  “Oh, that one.” Modestly he smiled and shook his head. “I could do a lot better than that, Mr. Thorpe.”

  “Is that right? What could you say? How is an anonymous letter going to—”

  The phone rang. I glanced over at it, annoyed, and then finishe
d my sentence as I crossed the room to answer it. “—be more persuasive than I am? I know them now, they’re my friends. Hello?”

  Staples: “Fred again, Carey. Listen, this is taking a while, I’m definitely going to be late.”

  Glowering at Edgarson, I said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Fred.”

  “Patricia’s on her way, though. And I’ll get there just as soon as I can.”

  “We won’t start without you,” I promised.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s amazing how many people don’t really come from New York.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Tell you all about it when I see you.”

  “Right. So long.”

  I hung up, and Edgarson said, “Let’s see, now, would that be Fred Staples? Detective Sergeant, Homicide South?”

  “Excuse me a minute,” I said, and went into the bathroom, where I swallowed a Valium with Alka Seltzer. Then I stood for a long minute looking at my reflection in the mirror.

  I knew what I had to do. What choice was there?

  I got the hammer from the storage cabinet under the sink, and then I eased open the door just far enough to see him out there. He was on his feet, strolling comfortably around, at home and at ease. He stopped at the bookcases, he browsed, he selected an issue of Third World Cinema and leafed through it. Would he stop at the two-page spread of stills from the porno movie?

  He would. Clutching the hammer, I slipped out of the bathroom and across the carpeted living room floor. Remembering how readily he had taken that knife from me, wincingly aware of what he might do if he saw me coming at him with a hammer in my hand, I found myself torn between the needs of speed and silence, and I did a sort of frantic tiptoe plunge across the room, lifting the hammer high over my head.

  * * *

  I was zipping Edgarson into the Valpack when the doorbell rang.

  I looked up. The digital clock on my desk read 3:02; Staples, or possibly his wife.

  I finished zipping, then ran into the bathroom, turned off the water, dried the hammer, put it away. As I was coming out of the bathroom the doorbell rang again. To stall any longer would be suspicious, so I buzzed my visitor in and then dragged the Valpack into the bedroom, where with great difficulty I managed to hang it in the closet.

  Trotting back to the living room, I scooped into a desk drawer the former contents of Edgarson’s pockets, and then just had time to double-check that the bloodstain on the floor was completely cleaned up. Then there came the knock at the hall door, and I opened it to admit Patricia Staples, bundled up like Anna Karenina. “Mrs. Staples. Come in.”

  She came in, and we transferred a series of hats, coats, scarves and gloves from her person to the hall closet, during which I told her of her husband’s most recent phone call and she agreed that yes, Fred had told her he might be late, but she was used to that. It was hard to keep to a schedule if you were a policeman’s wife.

  While agreeing with all that, I took a few seconds to frown at my breached chainlock. It looked no different from before, it appeared not to have been damaged in any way, and yet Edgarson had come through it as though it were made of grass. How had he done it?

  “What a nice place you have here,” Mrs. Staples was saying, moving on into the living room.

  So we had a few minutes of chitchat of the normal type, ending with her deciding to have a bourbon and water if that’s what I was having. It was.

  I went off to the kitchenette to mix the drinks, and she made me very nervous by roaming around the living room, looking at this and that. Was there anything left to be noticed?

  I brought the drinks out as quickly as possible, and she smiled at me and said, “You know, bachelors aren’t supposed to be good housekeepers, but you keep this place just spick and span.”

  “Well,” I said, “I just shove everything out of sight.”

  I induced her to sit on the sofa, and sat down beside her. She raised her glass. “Cheers.”

  I agreed, and we drank, and I said, “Of course, I’m not really a bachelor.”

  She raised mildly interested eyebrows. “You’re married?”

  “Separated. My wife is in Boston, getting a divorce.”

  “How sad.” She leaned toward me slightly. “Do you have children?”

  “Two. A boy and a girl.”

  “Do you get to see them?”

  What a thought. “Sometimes,” I said. “Not as much as I’d like, of course.”

  “Of course.” She sipped at her drink, ruminating. “Divorce is such a terrible thing.”

  I could do this conversation from across the street: “And yet, sometimes it’s the only answer.”

  She sighed, and sipped, and sighed again, and said, “Did you read that article in last month’s Reader’s Digest?”

  “‘New Hope For Dead People’?”

  Big blue eyes blinked slowly. “What?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Which article did you mean?”

  “The one by the Monsignor about divorce.”

  “No, I missed that one.”

  “He felt it was a very serious step.”

  “I feel that way, too.”

  “Particularly for the children.”

  Enough about the damn children. I said, “Well, the grown-ups feel it too, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” She paused, thinking her goldfish thoughts, sipping away at her bourbon, looking as beautiful and as intelligent as a sunset. Gazing away across the room, she said, “Fred can’t have children.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Not on a sergeant’s salary.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Another sigh, another sip. “It’s difficult to bring a child into the world these days.”

  “Sometimes it’s difficult not to.”

  Those eyes beamed at me again. “Beg pardon?”

  “Nothing. I was just agreeing with you,” I explained, and the sound of the telephone saved me.

  It was Fred: “Listen, Carey, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m just not going to get there at all. Al Bray and I are up to our asses in this thing, it looks as though it might be the break we were looking for.”

  My back was to Patricia. I closed my eyes and said, “The anonymous letter?”

  “It just might do it. Wish us luck.”

  “Oh, I do.”

  “The problem is, we aren’t going to be able to get away, not for hours.”

  I looked at Patricia Staples, sitting on my couch. I would have to go on talking with her, and there would be no search parties to rescue me. “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “Well anyway, Patricia’s there, isn’t she?”

  “Right here,” I said brightly.

  “And the whole point was for her to see the picture. Would you mind? I mean, as long as she’s there.”

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like me to wait?”

  “We’ll be hours, Carey. Thanks for the thought, but you and Patricia go ahead, okay?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Could I talk to her?”

  “Of course.”

  I turned the phone over to Patricia, and noted that both glasses seemed to be empty. While husband and wife spoke together, I carried the glasses into the kitchen, built new drinks, and fretted over Edgarson’s anonymous damn letter. Was he coming from beyond the grave—or the Valpack—to even the score? Had he revealed more than he’d realized in that first anonymous letter?

  And yet, it seemed unlikely Fred Staples would have talked to me the way he had if the trail were leading in my direction. Or that he would cheerfully leave me alone with his wife.

  Encouraged by those thoughts, I carried the drinks back to the living room to discover that Patricia was off the phone now and looking at my movie posters. She accepted the new drink with thanks, downed some of it, and said, “Well, I guess we’re supposed to go ahead and see the movie.”

  “Right,” I said, and while I got out the print and threaded the first reel into the projector I sai
d, “I want you to know I feel proud that Fred trusts me alone with you.”

  “Oh, it’s me he trusts,” she said carelessly. “He thinks if you made a pass at me I’d push you away.”

  Was there something ambivalent in that remark? I frowned at her, but her expression was as blank as ever. I went back to threading the film. (I would have had everything set up ahead of time, except for Edgarson dropping in.) With the film ready, I placed the projector, turned the sofa at right angles to the wall, and switched on my telephone machine so we wouldn’t be disturbed. “There we are,” I said. “All set. If you’ll just sit where you were…”

  She did. I switched off the lights and on the projector, waited to be sure the focus and frame were right, and then sat down next to her. Gaslight began.

  The first time Ingrid Bergman became frightened, Patricia clutched my hand. She held it tight, while all the time gazing at the screen, and the second time Ingrid Bergman became frightened Patricia drew my hand into her lap and held it there with both of hers.

  What a warm lap. The backs of my knuckles were being pressed downward into the cleft, and heat radiated up like rose petals from that crotch. On-screen, Joseph Cotten suspected something was wrong, but smooth Charles Boyer had command of the situation. And the third time Ingrid Bergman became frightened Patricia did some complex rubbing movement involving hands and body and knuckles, and at that point enough was enough. So I reached across with my free hand, and drew her face to mine, and drank deeply the nectar of her lips.

  She did not struggle. Nor, on the other hand, did she particularly enter into the proceedings, though both her hands did continue to press my hand deeply into her lap. Generally I would say that she took this kiss the way she had taken the conversation that had preceded it; with mild polite interest.

  All kisses must end, and at the finish of this one Patricia drew back her face just far enough so we could see one another’s eyes in the flickering reflected light from the screen. Solemnly we looked at one another. Solemnly she said, “We shouldn’t.”