Exeunt Murderers

by Anthony Boucher

  In these first few moments the Hollywood party seemed to vanish and it was almost as if she was still back in Salt Lake and it was perfectly understandable that Doreen should marry him no matter how old he was—and no matter how hard a little-girl memory tried to place the name LUTHER PEABODY (in very black type) and the photograph (much younger) that had gone with it.

  At this point Doreen had said, “Luther, be nice to Marie, huh? I have to make like a hostess,” and disappeared. Marie was alone with Luther Peabody, the party whirling around them like a montage gone mad. It wasn’t quite what he said or where he touched her as he casually steered her toward the bar, though the words were deliberately suggestive and it was not a touch commonly bestowed by a bridegroom upon the maid of honor. It was more that the voice was too soft and the fingers were too soft and the eyes—the eyes that fixed her, and her alone, as if only they were in the room—the eyes were much too hard.

  The little-girl memory was still a fragment; but whatever it was, it reinforced this sudden adult recognition of peril. Without conscious thought Marie found that she had evaded Peabody, slipped behind two men arguing about guild jurisdiction in TV, and lost herself in a deep chair in an obscure corner.

  Her whole body was trembling, as if it had been, in some curiously public way, outraged. And she was thinking that by contrast, a Peter Arno Lecher-of-Great-Wealth would make a clean and welcome cousin-in-law.

  It was in the corner that the man in gray found her.

  “You’re Doreen’s cousin Marie,” he stated. “My name’s MacDonald. You don’t have a drink. Or rather,” he added, “you didn’t have one.” And he passed her one of the two martinis he was holding.

  She managed, by an active miracle, not to spill any; but she still needed two sips before she could properly arrange her face into the right smile and say, “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good,” he said. “I wasn’t sure about plying you. One never knows with girls from Salt Lake.”

  “Oh, but I’m not a Saint.”

  “Who is? Thank God.”

  “I mean” (the smile came more easily now) “I’m not a ‘Mormon.’ Doreen isn’t, either. Our fathers came to Salt Lake when they were both widowers, with us squalling on their hands. They married Utah girls, and all this enormous ‘Mormon’ family you read about in Doreen’s publicity is just step-family.”

  “Remind Doreen some time,” he said dryly. “She’s never disbelieved a word of her publicity. Including” (his eyes wandered about the brawling room) “the word ‘starlet.’ How long does one go on being a starlet? Is it semi-permanent, like being a Young Democrat? They’re still dunning me for dues when I should be putting the money into a hair-restorer.”

  “Oh, but you are young!” she reacted hastily. She’d never have said so ordinarily—he must be in his late thirties. But she had stopped shaking and he was comfortable and reassuring and not at all like a middle-aged fragment of memory with soft fingers and eyes from hell.

  Mac-what’sit seemed almost to read her thoughts. He looked across to the bar, where Luther Peabody was being charming to some columnist’s third assistant leg-woman. “You just got in, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Marie said uneasily. “It’s all been done in such a rush. …”

  “And you’d just as soon get out again.” It wasn’t a question. “I have a car. …”

  “And that,” said MacDonald, “is Catalina.”

  They were parked on a bluff in Palos Verdes. It was almost sunset.

  “There’s something so wonderful,” Marie said softly, “about being on a high place and looking at something new. The this-is-the-place feeling.”

  “Kingdoms of the world …” MacDonald muttered. “You see, I knew Doreen when she first came here. Met her through a radioactress friend of mine.” His voice hardened oddly.

  “Were you …?” But Marie didn’t finish the sentence. They had come almost close enough for such a question, but not quite.

  “… in love with Doreen?” MacDonald laughed. “Good Lord, no. No, I was thinking of the girl who introduced us. One of my best friends killed her.”

  Suddenly the photograph and the black type were very clear, and Marie knew the story that went with them.

  MacDonald did not miss her sudden start. He eyed her speculatively. “That’s why I recognized you—because I knew Doreen way back when. You don’t look anything alike now, but back before she got the starlet treatment … And she had the same this-is-the-place look.”

  “And now …” Marie said.

  “And now,” MacDonald repeated. After a moment of silence he said, “Look. You’d better tell me about it, hadn’t you? It’s something you can’t say to Doreen, and it isn’t doing you any good bottled up.”

  Marie, almost to her own surprise, nodded. “Another martini first.”

  The seaside bar was small and almost deserted and exactly suited to letting one’s hair down. “Not that it isn’t as down as it can go, literally,” Marie tried to smile.

  “And very nice, too. Major difference between you and Doreen-that-was. Hers was always straight.”

  “I think she won’t have it waved because she won’t admit she’s always been jealous of mine. No, that’s catty and I shouldn’t; but I think it is the only thing in me Doreen’s ever envied. And it’s your fault. I only said it because you’re so easy to talk to.”

  “Occupational disease,” said the man whose occupation she didn’t know.

  The drinks came and the waiter went and Marie tried to find the words for the thing that frightened her. “You see,” she said, “I … know what it means to love the wrong man. Not just the wrong man, but a man who’s wrong. I was a secretary at the radiation lab up at Berkeley and there was this research-worker. … You’d know his name; it’s been in headlines. He was—it’s a melodramatic word, but it’s true—he was a traitor, and I was in love with him for months and never dreamed what he was like inside. I even wanted to defend him and stand by him, but then after he was convicted he took the mask off and for the first time… Anyway, that’s why I went back to Utah. And why I know how Doreen can love this man and yet not know him … and why I have to do something.

  “It isn’t just ‘woman’s intuition,’ or the fact that no man would ever see his eyes get like that or feel his fingers go softer than flesh. It’s what I’ve remembered. It must be a long time ago, maybe fifteen years. I think I was in junior high. But there was this big case up in Portland or Seattle or some place. He was … a Bluebeard, and this was the umpteenth wife he’d killed. It was all over the papers; everybody talked about it. And when you said something about murder, I remembered it all and I could see the papers. It was the same name and the same face.”

  Now it was out, and she finished her martini in one gulp.

  MacDonald showed no surprise. “That isn’t,” he said levelly, “the one I was thinking of. Maybe because we were obviously in junior high at different times. Funny how murder fascinates kids. I’ll never forget Winnie Ruth Judd in 1931, even if I didn’t understand half of it. And the one I’m remembering was a little before that, around ’29. Right here in L.A. Same name, same face.”

  “But it can’t be the same. Twice? He’d have been gassed the first time.”

  “Hanged, back then. But he must have been acquitted, both here and in Portland or wherever. Our innocent childish souls remember the grue, but not the trial.”

  “But they wouldn’t acquit him twice, would they?”

  “My dear girl, if you want statistics on the acquittal of murderers, even mass repeaters … You see, you came to a man in the right business.”

  Maybe it was the martini. Suddenly she felt that everything was going to be all right. This quiet man in gray would know what to do.

  “Formally,” he went on, “it’s Lieutenant MacDonald, L.A.P.D., Homicide. I don’t claim to bat a thousand, but that friend who killed the radio actress is in San Quentin now, doing life. All the information I can find on Luther Peabod
y, officially and unofficially, is yours to lay before Doreen. And no matter how much in love she is, it should be hard for her to keep her eyes shut.”

  “Lieutenant MacDonald, I love you,” said Marie. “And you’ll check your files right away and let me know?”

  “Files?” said MacDonald. “Of course. And,” he added with deliberate mystification, “I think I have another source that’s even better.

  “I’m damned if I see why,” Doreen objected petulantly, “you had to run off from the party like that yesterday. It was one wingding of a party and after all as maid of honor you’re part of the engagement. Besides, Luther was hurt. He liked you, and you didn’t give him any chance to show it.”

  Marie pulled on a stocking and concentrated on straightening its seam. “Are you really in love with Luther?” she asked.

  “I guess so. I like him. He’s fun. Even on his feet. Oh—! Want to finish zipping this for me? It always sticks … What’s the matter? Did I shock ums?”

  “Well, I hadn’t thought … I mean, he’s so …”

  “Old? Listen, darling, there’s no substitute for experience. If you knew some of these young Hollywood glamor-boys …”

  “Doreen …” The zipping task was over, Marie was concentrating on the other stocking.

  “Mmmm?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have as just a house guest, but I asked a friend to drop in for a cocktail.”

  “Oh? I was kind of hoping you and Luther and I could settle down for the afternoon and make up for yesterday. Who is he?”

  “That nice MacDonald man I met at the party.”

  “Mac? Is that whom you ran away with? He’s okay, I guess … if you like serious-minded cops. You two can have fun disapproving of me. Doreen Arlen, Girl Failure.”

  “Oh, Doreen, is it that bad?”

  “No, don’t mind me. I’ve got a deal cooking at CBS, and there’s one of the independents that—Is that Luther already? How’s my face? Quick!”

  But it wasn’t Luther Peabody. It was Lieutenant Donald MacDonald, and he said, “Hi, Doreen. I hope it isn’t an imposition; I brought another guest.”

  Doreen shrugged. “Why doesn’t somebody tell me—?” Then she broke off. She and Marie found themselves involuntarily staring at MacDonald’s companion.

  He was a small man, almost inhumanly thin. He might have been any age from 40 to 60, and he would probably go on looking much the same until he was 80. The first thing that struck Marie was the dead whiteness of his skin—almost like the skin of a subterranean cave-dweller, or of a corpse. Then she saw the brilliant blue of his eyes, and an odd hint of so much behind the blue that she knew—despite the abnormal pallor, despite the skeletal thinness—this man was, in some way of his own, intensely alive.

  “Miss Doreen Arlen,” MacDonald said, “Miss Marie Arlen, may I present Mr. Noble?”

  “Any friend of Mac’s and stuff,” said Doreen. “Come on in. Luther isn’t here yet; you want to tend bar, Mac?”

  And somehow they were all in the living room and MacDonald was mixing drinks and it was a party and MacDonald’s Mr. Noble still hadn’t said a word. Not until MacDonald was arguing with Doreen about fetching another tray of ice-cubes (“The key to a martini is a pitcher full of ice”), did Mr. Noble lean toward Marie and say, “Right.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You were.” And Mr. Noble was silent again until MacDonald brought around the tray of drinks, when he shook his head and said, “Sherry?”

  “Sure,” said Doreen. “There’s sherry in the kitchen. Nothing special, mostly for cooking, but—”

  “Okay,” said Mr. Noble.

  MacDonald whispered to Doreen as she left, and she returned with a water glass, the sherry bottle, and a puzzled but resolute hostess-look. Marie watched Mr. Noble’s white hand fill the water glass. “You were right.” What did he know? Why had MacDonald brought him?

  The doorbell rang again, and this time it was Luther. He kissed Doreen, a little less casually than one usually kisses a fiancee before strangers, and then he was moving in on Marie with a cousinly gleam. If he tries to kiss me …, she thought in sudden terror.

  And Mr. Noble looked up from his water glass of sherry to say flatly, “Peabody.”

  Luther Peabody looked expectantly at Doreen. He started to say “Introduce me, dar—” and then he looked at Mr. Noble again. Lieutenant MacDonald had retired to the bar. He was smiling. Peabody stared at the bony white face as if trying to clothe it with flesh and color.

  “Lieutenant Noble,” he said suddenly. It was not the voice with which he spoke to women.

  “Ex,” said Mr. Noble. “Out of the profession now. But not you, eh, Peabody? Still in the same line of work?”

  “Doreen!” Luther Peabody’s voice had regained its vigor, and a new dignity as well. “What is the meaning of this—this absurd confrontation scene? It’s true that many years ago Lieutenant Noble, presumably in order to advance his own career, chose to hound me as a murderer because of the accidental death of my first wife. It’s a matter of public record that I was acquitted. I stand proved innocent by the courts. Why should this tragedy of my youth—?”

  Marie could hardly believe it, but she would have sworn that Doreen was on the verge of laughter. Mr. Noble kept looking at Luther, but his bright blue eyes glazed over as though something was going on behind him. “Phoenix,” he said. “1932. Same ‘accident’—fall from stepladder. Same double-indemnity policy. Not enough evidence. No indictment.”

  “You see?” Peabody protested. “Another unfortunate—”

  “Santa Fe. 1935. Same accident. Same policy. Acquitted. Seattle. 1938.” He nodded toward Marie. “Same accident. No policy. Didn’t need it; family fortune. Three trials. Three hung juries. State dropped the case. Long gap; Seattle very profitable. Butte. 1945. Same accident. Woman lived. Refused to prosecute, but got divorce. Las Vegas. 1949. Acquitted.”

  “You left out the funny one, Nick,” MacDonald contributed. “Berkeley. 1947. Convicted, served 60 days for molesting. He went and clipped a hunk of hair off a woman he was a-courting, and she didn’t like it.”

  “Fernandez,” said Mr. Noble obscurely.

  “I trust you appreciate the allusion, Mr. Peabody? Your colleague Raymond Fernandez, New York’s 1949 Lonely Hearts killer, who also liked hair. He used it for sympathetic magic, but fetichism may have entered in. Which is it with you, incidentally? Some of the other victims showed signs of amateur barbering.”

  “Are you comparing me, sir, to such a brute as Fernandez?”

  “On second thought,” MacDonald mused quietly, “I withdraw the fetichism with him; brutes are more direct. Magic was undoubtedly his dominant motive. Now your true fetichist is usually to all appearances a fine plausible citizen. You’ll agree, Nick, that we’ve insulted Mr. Peabody needlessly? He and Fernandez have markedly different attitudes toward hair, if not toward …” He left the sentence incomplete.

  Marie held her breath, watching Doreen. Her cousin was still looking at Luther Peabody—not with fear and hatred, not with inextinguishable love, but now quite unmistakably with repressed laughter.

  “Lieutenant MacDonald!” Luther exploded with seemly rage. “Your ex-colleague may well be irresponsible and I suspect that he is more than a little drunk” (Mr. Noble calmly refilled his water glass) “but you’re an officer of the law. You know that the law has no charges to bring against me and that your imputations are slanderous. This is not my house. It’s my fiancee’s. I’ll leave it to her to order you and your sherry-tippling friend from the premises.”

  Now Doreen’s laughter burst out, clear and ringing. “Darling! You’re so cute when you’re stuffy.”

  She was the only unamazed person in the room.

  “Look, Mac,” she went on. “I’ve known this all along. I remember the news stories and the pictures. That’s why I first went out with Luther. I thought it’d be fun to see what a real, live, unconvicted professional Bluebeard was like. Then I got to kn
ow him, and I like him, and he doesn’t need to do any explaining to me. He’s going to tell me they were all accidents and that he’s a persecuted victim of fate—and he doesn’t need to, because I’m saying it first and I’m saying it to you, Mac, and to you, Mr. Noble. And I’m not ordering anybody out of any doors, but … do you really think there’s much point in staying?”

  “But why, Doreen? For heaven’s sake, why?”

  The girls were going to bed early. Even Luther Peabody had seemed disconcerted by Doreen’s reaction and had left soon after. (“I want to be alone, my dear, with this precious trust you have placed in my hands.”)

  “I told you, darling. I like him. Maybe I even believe him.”

  “But you can’t! It can’t all be just innocent coincidence. It piles up too much. And that funny thing about the hair …”

  “That,” Doreen admitted, patting her long straight hair, “might give a girl to think. But honest, he hasn’t made any passes at my hair. No fetichism about him.”

  Marie picked up the small book from the night-table. It was a WAC textbook on judo for women. “So you believe him?”

  “All right, so there’s a 5 per cent chance I’m wrong. A girl should be able to defend herself, I always say. If she wants to.”

  “Is that it? You don’t want to? Are things so bad you’re desperately looking for …?”

  Doreen lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry. I don’t need your wholesome Utah sympathy, thank you kindly. Doreen can look out for herself. And I’m not deliberately plunging to my death. Now will you go to sleep or am I going to have to go out and see what twenty-year-old wonders the TV’s offering tonight?”