A Kiss Before Dying

by Ira Levin

  That was when she heard the shot. It smacked loudly through the house, and as the sound died the ceiling light shivered as if something upstairs had fallen. Then there was silence.

  The radio said, ‘At the sound of the chime, ten p.m., Central Standard Time,’ and a chime toned.

  ‘Dwight?’ Ellen said.

  There was no answer.

  She went into the dining room. She called the name louder: ‘Dwight?’

  In the living room she moved hesitantly to the staircase. There was no sound from overhead. This time she spoke the name with dry-throated apprehension: ‘Dwight?’

  The silence held for another moment. Then a voice said, ‘It’s all right, Ellen. Come on up.’

  She hurried up the stairs with her heart drumming. ‘In here,’ the voice said from the right. She pivoted around the newel post and swept to the lighted doorway.

  The first thing she saw was Powell lying on his back in the middle of the room, limbs sprawled loosely. His jacket had fallen away from his chest. On his white shirt blood was flowering from a black core over his heart.

  She steadied herself against the jamb. Then she raised her eyes to the man who stood beyond Powell, the man with the gun in his hand.

  Her eyes dilated, her face went rigid with questions that couldn’t work their way to her lips.

  He shifted the gun from the firing position to a flat appraising weight on his gloved palm. ‘I was in the closet,’ he said, looking her straight in the eye, answering the unasked questions. ‘He opened the suitcase and took out this gun. He was going to kill you. I jumped him. The gun went off.’

  ‘No – oh God—’ She rubbed her forehead dizzily. ‘But how – how did you—?’

  He put the gun in the pocket of his coat. ‘I was in the cocktail lounge,’ he said. ‘Right behind you. I heard him talking you into coming up here. I left while you were in the phone booth.’

  ‘He told me he—’

  ‘I heard what he told you. He was a good liar.’

  ‘Oh God, I believed him – I believed him—’

  ‘That’s just your trouble,’ he said with an indulgent smile. ‘You believe everybody.’

  ‘Oh God—’ she shivered.

  He came to her, stepping between Powell’s spraddled legs.

  She said, ‘But I still don’t understand – How were you there, in the lounge?’

  ‘I was waiting for you in the lobby. I missed you when you went out with him. Got there too late. I kicked myself for that. But I waited around. What else could I do?’

  ‘But how – how—?’

  He stood before her with his arms wide, like a soldier returning home. ‘Look, a heroine isn’t supposed to question her nick-of-time rescuer. Just be glad you gave me his address. I may have thought you were being a fool, but I wasn’t going to take any chances on having you get your head blown off.’

  She threw herself into his arms, sobbing with relief and retrospective fear. The leather-tight hands patted her back comfortingly. ‘It’s all right, Ellen,’ he said softly. ‘Everything’s all right now.’

  She buried her cheek against his shoulder. ‘Oh, Bud,’ she sobbed, ‘thank God for you! Thank God for you, Bud!’

  ELEVEN

  The telephone rang downstairs.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ he said as she started to draw away.

  There was a lifeless glaze to her voice: ‘I know who it is.’

  ‘No, don’t answer it. Listen’ – his hands were solid and convincing on her shoulders – ‘someone is sure to have heard that shot. The police will probably be here in a few minutes. Reporters, too.’ He let that sink in. ‘You don’t want the papers to make a big story out of this, do you? Dragging up everything about Dorothy, pictures of you—’

  ‘There’s no way to stop them.’

  ‘There is. I have a car downstairs. I’ll take you back to the hotel and then come right back here.’ He turned off the light. ‘If the police haven’t shown up yet, I’ll call them. Then you won’t be here for the reporters to jump on, and I’ll refuse to talk until I’m alone with the police. They’ll question you later, but the papers won’t know you’re involved.’ He led her out into the hallway. ‘By that time you’ll have called your father; he’s got enough influence to keep the police from letting out anything about you or Dorothy. They can say Powell was drunk and started a fight with me, or something like that.’

  The telephone stopped ringing.

  ‘I wouldn’t feel right about leaving—’ she said as they started down the stairs.

  ‘Why not? I’m the one who did it, not you. It’s not as if I’m going to lie about your being here; I’ll need you to back up my story. All I want to do is prevent the papers from having a field day with this.’ He turned to her as they descended into the living room. ‘Trust me, Ellen,’ he said, touching her hand.

  She sighed deeply, gratefully letting tension and responsibility drop from her shoulders. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have to drive me. I can get a cab.’

  ‘Not at this hour, not without phoning. And I think the tramcars stop running at ten.’ He picked up her coat and held it for her.

  ‘Where did you get a car?’ she asked dully.

  ‘I borrowed it.’ He gave her her purse. ‘From a friend.’ Turning off the lights, he opened the door to the porch. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got too much time.’

  He had parked the car across the street and some fifty feet down the block. It was a black Buick sedan, two or three years old. He opened the door for Ellen, then went around to the other side and slipped in behind the wheel. He fumbled with the ignition key. Ellen sat silently, hands folded in her lap. ‘You feel all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice thin and tired. ‘It’s just that – he was going to kill me.’ She sighed. ‘At least I was right about Dorothy. I knew she didn’t commit suicide.’ She managed a reproachful smile. ‘And you tried to talk me out of making this trip—’

  He got the motor started. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You were right.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘Anyway, there’s a sort of a silver lining to all this,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that?’ He shifted gears and the car glided forward.

  ‘Well, you saved my life,’ she said. ‘You really saved my life. That should cut short whatever objections my father might have, when you meet him and we speak to him about us.’

  After they had been driving down Washington Avenue for a few minutes, she moved closer to him and hesitantly took his arm, hoping it wouldn’t interfere with his driving. She felt something hard pressing against her hip and realized that it was the gun in his pocket, but she didn’t want to move away.

  ‘Listen, Ellen,’ he said. ‘This is going to be a lousy business you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ll be held for manslaughter.’

  ‘But you didn’t mean to kill him! You were trying to get the gun away from him.’

  ‘I know, but they’ll still have to hold me – all kinds of red tape—’ He stole a quick glance at the downcast figure beside him and then returned his gaze to the traffic ahead. ‘Ellen – when we get to the hotel, you could just pick up your things and check out. We could be back in Caldwell in a couple of hours—’

  ‘Bud!’ Her voice was sharp with surprised reproach. ‘We couldn’t do a thing like that!’

  ‘Why not? He killed your sister, didn’t he? He got what was coming to him. Why should we have to get mixed up—’

  ‘We can’t do it,’ she protested. ‘Aside from its being such a –a wrong thing to do, suppose they found out anyway that you – killed him. Then they’d never believe the truth, not if you ran away.’

  ‘I don’t see how they could find out it was me,’ he said. ‘I’m wearing gloves, so there can’t be any fingerprints. And nobody saw me there, except you and him.’

  ‘But suppose they did find out! Or suppose they blamed someone else for it!
How would you feel then?’ He was silent. ‘As soon as I get to the hotel, I’ll call my father. Once he’s heard the story, I know he’ll take care of lawyers and everything. I guess it will be a terrible business. But to run away—’

  ‘It was a foolish suggestion,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really expect you to agree.’

  ‘No, Bud, you wouldn’t want to do a thing like that, would you?’

  ‘I only tried it as a last resort,’ he said. Suddenly he swung the car in a wide left turn from the brightly lighted orbit of Washington Avenue to the darkness of a northbound road. ‘Shouldn’t you stay on Washington?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘Quicker this way. Avoid traffic.’

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ she said, tapping her cigarette on the edge of the dashboard tray, ‘is why he didn’t do anything to me there, on the roof.’ She was settled comfortably, turned towards Bud with her left leg drawn up under her, the cigarette suffusing her with sedative warmth.

  ‘You must have been pretty conspicuous, going there at night,’ he said. ‘He was probably afraid that an elevator man or someone would remember his face.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. But wouldn’t it have been less risky than taking me back to his house and – doing it there?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t intend to do it there. Maybe he was going to force you into a car and drive you out into the country some place.’

  ‘He didn’t have a car.’

  ‘He could have stolen one. It’s not such a hard thing to steal a car.’ A street-light flashing brushed his face with white, then dropped it back into the darkness where the cleanly-hewn features were touched only by the dashboard’s nebulous green.

  ‘The lies he told me! “I loved her. I was in New York. I felt responsible.”’ She mashed the cigarette into the ashtray, shaking her head bitterly. ‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped.

  He flicked a glance at her. ‘What is it?’

  Her voice had taken on the sick glaze again. ‘He showed me his transcript – from nyu.He was in New York—’

  ‘That was probably a fake. He must have known someone in the registrar’s office there. They could fake something like that.’

  ‘But suppose it wasn’t. Suppose he was telling the truth!’

  ‘He was coming after you with a gun. Isn’t that proof enough he was lying?’

  ‘Are you sure, Bud? Are you sure he didn’t – maybe take the gun out to get at something else? The notebook he mentioned?’

  ‘He was going to the door with the gun.’

  ‘Oh God, if he really didn’t kill Dorothy—’ She was silent for a moment. ‘The police will investigate,’ she said positively. ‘They’ll prove he was right here in Blue River! They’ll prove he killed Dorothy!’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  ‘But even if he didn’t, Bud, even if it was a – a terrible mistake – they wouldn’t blame you for anything. You couldn’t know; you saw him with the gun. They could never blame you for anything.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  Shifting uncomfortably, she drew her folded leg out from under her. She squinted at her watch in the dashboard’s glow. ‘It’s twenty-five after ten. Shouldn’t we be there already?’

  He didn’t answer her.

  She looked out of the window. There were no more street-lights, no more buildings. There was only the pitch blackness of fields, under the star-heightened blackness of the sky. ‘Bud, this isn’t the way into town.’

  He didn’t answer her.

  Ahead of the car a white onrush of highway narrowed to implied infinity always beyond the headlights’ reach. ‘Bud, you’re going the wrong way!’

  TWELVE

  ‘What you want from me?’ Chief of Police Eldon Chesser asked blandly. He lay supine, his long legs supported beneath the ankles by an arm of the chintz-covered sofa, his hands laced loosely across the front of his red flannel shirt, his large brown eyes vaguely contemplating the ceiling.

  ‘Get after the car. That’s what I want,’ Gordon Gant said, glaring at him from the middle of the living room.

  ‘Ha,’ said Chesser. ‘Ha ha. A dark car is all the man next door knows; after he called about the shot he saw a man and a woman go down the block and get into a dark car. A dark car with a man and a woman. You know how many dark cars there are driving around town with a man and woman in them? We didn’t even have a description of the girl until you come shooting in. By that time they could’ve been halfway to Cedar Rapids. Or parked in some garage two blocks from here, for all we know.’

  Gant paced malevolently. ‘So what are we supposed to do?’

  ‘Wait, is all. I notified the highway boys, didn’t I? Maybe this is bank night. Why don’t you sit down?’

  ‘Sure, sit down,’ Gant snapped. ‘She’s liable to be murdered!’ Chesser was silent. ‘Last year her sister – now her.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Chesser said. The brown eyes closed in weariness. ‘Her sister committed suicide,’ he articulated slowly. ‘I saw the note with my own two eyes. A handwriting expert—’ Gant made a noise. ‘And who killed her?’ Chesser demanded. ‘You said Powell was supposed to be the one, only now it couldn’t’ve been him ’cause the girl left a message for you that he was all right, and you found this paper here from New York U that makes it look like he wasn’t even in these parts last spring. So if the only suspect didn’t do it, who did? Answer: nobody.’

  His voice tight with the exasperation of repetition, Gant said, ‘Her message said that Powell had an idea who it was. The murderer must have known that Powell—’

  ‘There was no murderer, until tonight,’ Chesser said flatly. ‘The sister committed suicide.’ His eyes blinked open and regarded the ceiling.

  Gant glared at him and resumed his bitter pacing.

  After a few minutes Chesser said, ‘Well, I guess I got it all reconstructed now.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Gant said.

  ‘Yeah. You didn’t think I was laying here just to be lazy, did you? This is the way to think, with your feet higher’n your head. Blood goes to the brain.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The guy breaks in about a quarter to ten – man next door heard the glass break but didn’t think anything of it. No sign of any of the other rooms having been gone through, so Powell’s must have been the first one he hit. A couple of minutes later Powell and the girl come in. The guy is stuck upstairs. He hides in Powell’s closet – the clothes are all pushed to the side. Powell and the girl go into the kitchen. She starts making coffee, turns on the radio. Powell goes upstairs to hang up his coat, or maybe he heard a noise. The guy comes out. He’s already tried to open the suitcase – we found glove smudges on it. He makes Powell unlock it and goes through it. Stuff all over the floor. Maybe he finds something, some money. Anyway, Powell jumps him. The guy shoots Powell. Probably panics, probably didn’t intend to shoot him – they never do; they only carry the guns to scare people. Always wind up shooting ’em. Forty-five shell. Most likely an army Colt. Million of ’em floating around.

  ‘Next thing the girl comes running upstairs – same prints on the door frame up there as on the cups and stuff in the kitchen. The guy is panicky, no time to think – he forces her to leave with him.’

  ‘Why? Why wouldn’t he have left her here – the way he left Powell?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Maybe he didn’t have the nerve. Or maybe he got ideas. Sometimes they get ideas when they’re holding a gun and there’s a pretty girl on the other end of it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gant said. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better. Thanks a lot.’

  Chesser sighed. ‘You might as well sit down,’ he said. ‘There ain’t a damn thing we can do but wait.’

  Gant sat down. He began rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand.

  Chesser finally turned his face from the ceiling. He watched Gant sitting across the room. ‘What is she? Your girlfriend?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Gant said. He remembered the letter he had read in Ellen’s room. ‘No, there’s some gu
y in Wisconsin.’

  THIRTEEN

  Behind the racing island of the headlights’ reach, the car arrowed over the tight line of highway, tarred seams in concrete creating a regular rhythm under the tyres. The speedometer’s luminous green needle split the figure fifty. The foot on the accelerator was steady as the foot of a statue.

  He drove with his left hand, occasionally giving the steering wheel an inappreciable right or left movement to relieve the hypnotic monotony of the highway. Ellen was huddled all the way over against the door, her body knotted tight, her eyes staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap. On the seat between them, snake-like, lay his gloved right hand with the gun in it, the muzzle riveted against her hip.

  She had cried; long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.

  He had told her everything, in a bitter voice, glancing frequently at her green-touched face in the darkness. There were moments of awkward hesitancy in his narration, as an on-leave soldier telling how he won his medals hesitates before describing to the gentle townsfolk how his bayonet ripped open an enemy’s stomach, then goes on and describes it because they asked how he won his medals, didn’t they? – describes it with irritation and mild contempt for the gentle townsfolk who never had had to rip open anyone’s stomach. So he told Ellen about the pills and the roof and why it had been necessary to kill Dorothy, and why it had then been the most logical course to transfer to Caldwell and go after her, Ellen, knowing her likes and dislikes from conversations with Dorothy, knowing how to make himself the man she was waiting for – not only the most logical and inevitable course, going after the girl with whom he had such an advantage, but also the course most ironically satisfying, the course most compensatory for past bad luck (the course most law-defying, back-slapping, ego-preening): he told her these things with irritation and contempt; this girl with her hands over her mouth in horror had had everything given her on a silver platter; she didn’t know what it was to live on a swaying catwalk over the chasm of failure, stealing perilously inch by inch towards the solid ground of success so many miles away.