A Kiss Before Dying

by Ira Levin

  ‘Can you imagine how I felt? I didn’t think she had done it just on account of me, but I did think that it was sort of a – general despondency. Which I was a major cause of.

  ‘My work fell off after that. I was bucking too hard. I guess I felt I had to get terrific marks to justify what I’d done to her. I broke into a cold sweat before every exam, and my marks turned out pretty poor. I told myself it was because of the transfer; at nyuI had to make up a lot of required courses that weren’t required at Stoddard, and I’d lost about sixteen credits besides. So I decided to come back to Stoddard in September, to get myself straightened out.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Also maybe to try to convince myself that I didn’t feel guilty.

  ‘Anyway, it was a mistake. Every time I saw one of the places we used to go to, or the Municipal Building—’ He frowned. ‘I kept telling myself it was her fault, that any other girl would have been mature enough to shrug it off – but it didn’t do much good. It got to the point where I found myself going out of my way to walk past the building, needling myself, like looking into the airshaft tonight, visualizing her—’

  ‘I know,’ Ellen said, hurrying him, ‘I wanted to look too. I guess it’s a natural reaction.’

  ‘No,’ Powell said, ‘you don’t know what it means to feel responsible—’ He paused, seeing Ellen’s humourless smile. ‘What are you smiling at?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well – that’s it. Now you tell me she did it because she was pregnant – two months. It’s a rotten thing of course, but it makes me feel a whole lot better. I guess she still wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t ditched her, but I couldn’t be expected to know how things would turn out, could I? I mean, there’s a limit to responsibility. If you keep going back you could blame it on anyone.’ He drained the rest of his drink. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve stopped running for the police’ he said. ‘I don’t know where you got the idea that I killed her.’

  ‘Someone did kill her,’ Ellen said. He looked at her wordlessly. The piano paused between selections, and in the sudden stillness she could hear the faint cloth rustlings of the person in the booth behind her.

  Leaning forward, she began talking, telling Powell of the ambiguously worded note, of the birth certificate, of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

  He was silent until she had finished. Then he said, ‘My God. It can’t be a coincidence,’ as eager as she to disprove suicide.

  ‘This man you saw her with,’ Ellen said. ‘You’re sure you don’t know who he was?’

  ‘I think he was in one of my classes that semester, but the two times I saw them together were fairly late in January, when exams had started and there were no more classes, so I couldn’t make sure or find out his name. And right afterwards I left for New York.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen him again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Powell said. ‘I’m not sure. Stoddard’s a big campus.’

  ‘And you’re absolutely certain you don’t know his name?’

  ‘I don’t know it now,’ Powell said, ‘but I can find it out in about an hour.’ He smiled. ‘You see, I’ve got his address.’

  NINE

  ‘I told you I saw them together a couple of times,’ he said. ‘Well the second time was one afternoon in a luncheonette across from the campus. I never expected to see Dorothy there; it wasn’t a very popular place. That’s why I was there. I didn’t notice them until I’d sat down at the counter and then I didn’t want to get up and leave because she’d already seen me in the mirror. I was sitting at the end of the counter, then two girls, then Dorothy and this guy. They were drinking malteds.

  ‘The minute she saw me she started talking to him and touching his arm a lot; you know, trying to show me she had someone new. It made me feel awful, her doing that. Embarrassed for her. Then, when they were ready to leave she gave a nod to those two girls sitting between us, turned to him, and said in a louder-than-necessary voice, “Come on, we can drop our books at your place.” To show me how chummy they were, I figured.

  ‘As soon as they were gone one of the girls commented to the other about how good-looking he was. The other one agreed, and then said something like, “He was going with so-and-so last year. It looks as if he’s only interested in the ones who have money.”

  ‘Well, I figured that if Dorothy was a sitting duck because she was on the rebound from me, then I ought to make sure that she wasn’t being taken in by some gold-digger. So I left the luncheonette and followed them.

  ‘They went to a house a few blocks north of the campus. He rang the bell a couple of times and then he took some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door and they went in. I walked by on the other side of the street and copied down the address on one of my notebooks. I thought I would call up later, when someone else was there, and find out his name. I had a vague idea about speaking to some of the girls around school about him.

  ‘I never did it though. On the way back to the campus, the – presumption of the whole thing hit me. I mean, where did I come off asking questions about this guy just on the basis of some remark made by a girl who probably had a bad case of sour grapes? It was a cinch he couldn’t treat Dorothy any worse than I had. And that “on the rebound” stuff; how did I know they weren’t fine for each other?’

  ‘But you still have the address?’ Ellen asked anxiously.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I do. I’ve got all my old notes in a suitcase in my room. We can go over there and get it right now if you want.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed quickly. ‘Then all we’ll have to do is call up and find out who he is.’

  ‘He isn’t necessarily the right one,’ Powell said, taking out his wallet.

  ‘He must be. It can’t be anyone she started going with much later than that.’ Ellen stood up. ‘There’s still a phone call I’d like to make before we go.’

  ‘To your assistant? The one who was waiting downstairs ready to call the police if you didn’t show up in five minutes?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she admitted, smiling. ‘He wasn’t waiting downstairs, but there really is someone.’

  She went to the back of the dimly-lit room, where a telephone booth painted black to match the walls stood like an up-ended coffin. She dialled 5–1000.

  ‘KBRI, good evening,’ a woman’s voice chirruped.

  ‘Good evening. May I speak to Gordon Gant please?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Gant’s programme is on the air now. If you call again at ten o’clock you might be able to catch him before he leaves the building.’

  ‘Couldn’t I speak to him while a record is on?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but no telephone calls may be directed to a studio from which a programme is being broadcast.’

  ‘Well would you take a message for him?’

  The woman sing-songed that she would be glad to take a message, and Ellen told her that Miss Kingship – spelled out – said that Powell – spelled out – was all right but had an idea as to who wasn’t, and Miss Kingship was going to Powell’s home and would be there at ten o’clock, when Mr Gant could call her.

  ‘Any telephone number?’

  ‘Darn,’ Ellen said, opening the purse in her lap. ‘I don’t have the number, but the address’ – managing to unfold the slip of paper without dropping the purse – ‘is Fifteen-twenty West Thirty-fifth Street.’

  The woman read the message back. ‘That’s right,’ Ellen said. ‘You’ll be sure he gets it?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ the woman declared frostily.

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  Powell was feeding coins on to a small silver tray in the hand of a rapt waiter when Ellen returned to their booth. A smile appeared momentarily on the waiter’s face and he vanished, trailing a mumbled thank you. ‘All set,’ Ellen said. She reached for her coat which was folded on the banquette where she had been sitting. ‘By the way, what does he look like, our man? Aside from being so handsome that girls comment on it.’

&n
bsp; ‘Blond, tall …’ Powell said, pocketing his wallet.

  ‘Another blond,’ sighed Ellen.

  ‘Dorothy went for us Nordic types.’

  Ellen smiled, pulling on her coat. ‘Our father is blond – or was until he lost his hair. All three of us—’ Ellen’s empty coat-sleeve slapped over the top of the booth partition as her hand groped for it. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, glancing back over her shoulder, and then she saw that the next booth had been vacated. There were a cocktail glass and a dollar bill on the table, and a paper napkin which had been carefully torn into a delicate lacework web.

  Powell helped her with the obstinate sleeve. ‘Ready?’ he asked putting on his own coat.

  ‘Ready,’ she said.

  It was 9.50 when the cab pulled up in front of Powell’s house. West Thirty-fifth Street was silent, feebly lighted by street lamps whose beams had to strain their way through meshing tree branches. Yellow windowed houses faced each other on either side, like timid armies showing flags across no-man’s-land.

  As the roar of the departing cab faded away, Ellen and Powell mounted the steps of a dark, creaking-floored porch. After a few unsuccessful stabs for the keyhole, Powell unlocked the door and pushed it open. He stepped aside and followed Ellen in, throwing the door closed with one hand and flicking a light switch with the other.

  They were in a pleasant-looking living room full of fat chintz-and-maple furniture. ‘You’d better stay down here,’ Powell said, going towards a staircase at the left side of the room. ‘Everything’s in a mess upstairs. My landlady is in the hospital and I wasn’t expecting company.’ He paused on the first step. ‘It’ll probably take me a few minutes to find that book. There’s some instant coffee in the kitchen back there. You want to fix some?’

  ‘All right,’ Ellen said, slipping out of her coat.

  Powell jogged up the stairs and swung around the newel post. The door to his room was opposite the side of the stairwell. He went in, flipping on the light, and shucked off his coat. The unmade bed, on the right against the windows, was littered with pyjamas and discarded clothes. He tossed his coat on top of the whole business and squatted down, about to pull a suitcase from under the bed; but with a sharp finger-snap he straightened up, turned, and stepped over to the bureau, which stood squeezed between a closet door and an armchair. He opened the top drawer and rummaged through papers and small boxes and scarves and broken cigarette lighters. He found the paper he wanted at the bottom of the drawer. Pulling it free with a flourish, he went into the hall and leaned over the stairwell banister. ‘Ellen!’ he called.

  In the kitchen, Ellen adjusted the sighing gas flame under a pan of water. ‘Coming!’ she answered. She hurried through the dining room and into the living room. ‘Got it already?’ she asked, going to the stairs and looking up.

  Powell’s head and shoulders jutted into the stairwell. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But I thought you’d like to see this.’ He let go of a stiff sheet of paper that came side-slipping down. ‘Just in case you have any lingering doubts.’

  It landed on the stairs before her. Picking it up, she saw that it was a photostat of his NYU record, the words Student Copy stamped on it. ‘If I had any lingering doubts,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

  ‘True,’ Powell said, ‘true’ – and vanished from the stairwell.

  Ellen took another look at the transcript and noted that his marks had indeed been pretty poor. Putting the paper on a table she returned through the dining room to the kitchen. It was a depressing room with old-fashioned appliances and cream-coloured walls that were brown in the corners and behind the stove. There was, however, a pleasant breeze blowing through from the back.

  She found cups and saucers and a can of Nescafé in the various cupboards, and while she was spooning the powder into the cups, she noticed a radio with a cracked plastic case on the counter next to the stove. She turned it on and, once it had warmed up, slowly twisted the selector knob until she found KBRI. She almost passed over it because the small celluloid-vibrating set made Gant’s voice sound unfamiliarly thin. ‘… and a little too much about things political,’ he was saying, ‘so let’s get back to music. We’ve just got time for one more record, and it’s the late Buddy Clark singing “If This Isn’t Love”.’

  Powell, having dropped the transcript down to Ellen, turned around and went back into his room. Squatting before the bed, he shot his hand underneath it – to bang his fingertips painfully against the suitcase, which had been pulled forward from its usual position flush against the wall. He jerked his hand out, waggling the fingers and blowing on them, and cursing his landlady’s daughter-in-law who apparently had not been satisfied with only secreting his shoes beneath the bureau.

  He reached under the bed again, more cautiously this time, and dragged the heavy-as-lead suitcase all the way out into the open. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, found the right one and twisted it in the two locks springing them. Replacing the keys, he lifted the lid. The suitcase was filled with textbooks, a tennis racket, a bottle of Canadian Club, golf shoes … He took out the larger items and put them on the floor so that it would be easier to get at the notebooks underneath.

  There were nine of them: pale-green spiral-bound notebooks. He gathered them into a bundle, stood up with the bundle in his arm and began inspecting them one at a time; examining both covers, dropping the books one by one back into the suitcase.

  It was on the seventh one, on the back cover. The pencilled address was rubbed and smudged, but it was still legible. He dropped the other two notebooks into the suitcase and turned around, his mouth opening to form Ellen’s name in a triumphant shout.

  The shout didn’t come through. The exultant expression clung to his face for a moment, like a stopped movie, and then it cracked and slid slowly away, like thick snow cracking and sliding from a canted roof.

  The closet door was open and a man in a trenchcoat stood framed there. He was tall and blond, and a gun bulked large in his gloved right hand.

  TEN

  He was sweating. Not cold sweat though; hot healthy sweat from standing in the sweat-box of an airless closet in the sweat-suit of an imporous trenchcoat. His hands too; the gloves were brown leather with a fuzzy lining and elastic cuffs that held in the heat even more; his hands were sweating so much that the fuzzy lining was sodden and caked.

  But the automatic (weightless now like part of him after dragging heavily in his pocket all evening) was motionless; the inevitable trajectory of the bullet as palpable in the air as a dotted line in a diagram. Point A the rock-steady muzzle; Point B: the heart under the lapel of the cheesy-looking probably-bought-in-Iowa suit. He looked down at the Colt .45 as though to verify its blue steel existence, so light it was, and then he took a step forward from the mouth of the closet, reducing by a foot the length of dotted line AB.

  Well say something, he thought, enjoying the slow stupid melting of Mister Dwight Powell’s face. Start talking. Start pleading. Probably can’t. Probably he’s all talked out after the – what’s that word? – logorrhoea of a cocktail lounge. Good word.

  ‘I bet you don’t know what logorrhoea means,’ he said, standing there powerfully with the gun in his hand.

  Powell stared at the gun. ‘You’re the one – with Dorothy,’ he said.

  ‘It means what you’ve got. Diarrhoea of the mouth. Words keep running. I thought my ear would fall off in that cocktail lounge.’ He smiled at Powell’s widening eyes. ‘I was responsible for poor Dorothy’s death,’ he mimicked. ‘A pity. A real pity.’ He stepped closer. ‘The notebook, por favor,’ he said, extending his left hand. ‘And don’t try anything.’

  From downstairs, singing of a dance tune came softly.

  He took the notebook that Powell held out, dropped back a step and pressed it against his side, bending it in half lengthwise, cracking the cover, never taking his eyes or the gun off Powell. ‘I’m awfully sorry you found this. I was standing in there hoping you wouldn’t.’ He stuck
the folded notebook into his coat pocket.

  ‘You really killed her,’ Powell said.

  ‘Let’s keep the voice low.’ He moved the gun admonishingly. ‘We don’t want to disturb the girl detective, do we?’ It annoyed him the way Mister Dwight Powell was standing there so blankly. Maybe he was too stupid to realize … ‘Maybe you don’t realize it, but this is a real gun, and it’s loaded.’

  Powell didn’t say anything. He just went on looking at this gun, not even staring now – just looking at it with mildly distasteful interest, as though it were the first ladybug of the year.

  ‘Look, I’m going to kill you.’

  Powell didn’t say anything.

  ‘You’re such a great one for analysing yourself – tell me, how do you feel now? I bet your knees are shaking, aren’t they? Cold sweat all over you?’

  Powell said, ‘She thought she was going there to get married.’

  ‘Forget about her! You’ve got yourself to worry about.’ Why wasn’t he trembling? Didn’t he have brains enough … ?

  ‘Why did you kill her?’ Powell’s eyes finally lifted from the gun. ‘If you didn’t want to marry her, you could have left her. That would have been better than killing her.’

  ‘Shut up about her! What’s the matter with you? You think I’m bluffing? Is that it? You think—’

  Powell leaped forward.

  Before he had gone six inches a loud explosion roared; dotted line abwas solidified and fulfilled by tearing lead.

  Ellen had been standing in the kitchen looking out through the closed window and listening to the fading theme of Gordon Gant’s programme, when she suddenly realized that with the window closed, where was that pleasant breeze coming from?

  There was a shadowed alcove in a rear corner of the room. She went to it and saw the back door, with the pane of glass nearest the knob smashed in and lying in fragments on the floor. She wondered if Dwight knew about it. You’d think he would have swept up the—