A Kiss Before Dying (23 page)

Kingship sat beside her, his arm about her bended shoulders. ‘Marion – Marion – be glad you didn’t find out too late.’

Her back was shaking under his arm. ‘You don’t understand,’ she sobbed through her hands, ‘you can’t understand …’

When the tears had stopped she sat numbly, her fingers knotted around the handkerchief Kingship had given her, her eyes on the pieces of yellow paper on the carpet.

‘Do you want me to take you upstairs?’ Kingship asked.

‘No. Please – just – just let me sit here.’

He rose and joined Gant at the window. They were silent for a while, looking at the lights beyond the river. Finally Kingship said, ‘I’ll do
something
to him. I swear to God, I’ll do
something.
’

A minute passed. Gant said, ‘She referred to your “good and bad”. Were you very strict with your daughters?’

Kingship thought for a moment. ‘Not very,’ he said.

‘I thought you were, the way she spoke.’

‘She was angry,’ Kingship said.

Gant stared across the river at a Pepsi-Cola sign. ‘In the drugstore the other day, after we left Marion’s apartment, you said something about maybe having pushed one of your daughters away. What did you mean?’

‘Dorothy,’ Kingship said. ‘Maybe if I hadn’t been—’

‘So strict?’ Gant suggested.

‘No. I
wasn’t
very strict. I taught them right from wrong. Maybe I – over-emphasized a little, because of their mother.’ He sighed. ‘Dorothy shouldn’t have felt that suicide was the only way out,’ he said.

Gant took out a pack of cigarettes and removed one. He turned it between his fingers. ‘Mr Kingship, what would you have done if Dorothy had married without first consulting you, and then had had a baby – too soon?’

After a moment Kingship said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘He would have thrown her out,’ Marion said quietly. The two men turned. She was sitting motionlessly on the couch, as she had been before. They could see her face in the canted mirror over the mantel. She was still looking at the papers on the floor.

‘Well?’ Gant said to Kingship.

‘I don’t think I would have thrown her out,’ he protested.

‘You would have,’ Marion said tonelessly.

Kingship turned back to the window. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘under those circumstances, shouldn’t a couple be expected to assume the responsibilities of marriage, as well as the—’ He left the sentence unfinished.

Gant lit his cigarette. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘That’s why he killed her. She must have told him about you. He knew he wouldn’t get near the money even if he did marry her, and if he didn’t marry her he would get into trouble, so … Then he decides to have a second try, with Ellen, but she starts to investigate Dorothy’s death and gets too close to the truth. So close that he has to kill her and Powell. And then he tries a third time.’

‘Bud?’ Marion said. She spoke the name blankly, her face in the mirror showing the barest flicker of surprise, as though her fiancé had been accused of having imperfect table manners.

Kingship stared narrow-eyed out the window. ‘I’d believe it,’ he said intently. ‘I’d believe it.’ But as he turned to Gant the resolution faded from his eyes. ‘You’re basing it all on his not telling Marion he went to Stoddard. We’re not even sure he
knew
Dorothy, let alone he was the one she was – seeing. We have to be
sure.
’

‘The girls at the dorm,’ Gant said. ‘Some of them must have known who she was going with.’

Kingship nodded. ‘I could hire someone to go out there, speak to them—’

Gant pondered and shook his head. ‘It’s no good. It’s vacation; by the time you managed to find one of the girls who knew, it would be too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘Once he knows the wedding is off’–he glanced at Marion; she was silent–‘he’s not going to wait around to find out why, is he?’

‘We’d find him,’ Kingship said.

‘Maybe. And maybe not. People disappear.’ Gant smoked thoughtfully. ‘Didn’t Dorothy keep a diary or anything?’

The telephone rang.

Kingship went to the carved table and lifted the receiver. ‘Hello?’ There was a long pause. Gant looked at Marion; she was leaning forward, picking up the pieces of paper from the floor. ‘When?’ Kingship asked. She put the pieces of paper in her left hand and squeezed them together. She looked at them, not knowing what to do with them. She put them on the couch beside her, on top of the two pamphlets. ‘Thank you,’ Kingship said. ‘Thank you very much.’ There was the sound of the receiver being replaced, and then silence. Gant turned to look at Kingship.

He was standing beside the table, his pink face rigid. ‘Miss Richardson,’ he said. ‘Promotional literature was sent to Burton Corliss in Caldwell, Wisconsin, on 16 October 1950.’

‘Just when he must have started his campaign with Ellen,’ Gant said.

Kingship nodded. ‘But that was the second time,’ he said slowly. ‘Promotional literature was also sent to Burton Corliss on 6 February 1950, in Blue River, Iowa.’

Gant said, ‘Dorothy—’

Marion moaned.

Gant remained after Marion had gone upstairs. ‘We’re still in the same boat Ellen was in,’ he said. ‘The police have Dorothy’s “suicide note” and all we have are suspicions and a flock of circumstantial evidence.’

Kingship held one of the pamphlets. ‘I’ll make sure,’ he said.

‘Didn’t they find
anything
at Powell’s place? A fingerprint, a thread of cloth?’

‘Nothing,’ Kingship said. ‘Nothing at Powell’s place, nothing at that restaurant where Ellen—’

Gant sighed. ‘Even if you could get the police to arrest him, a first year law student could get him released in five minutes.’

‘I’ll get him somehow,’ Kingship said. ‘I’ll make sure, and I’ll get him.’

Gant said, ‘We’ve either got to find out how he got her to write that note, or else find the gun he used on Powell and Ellen. And before Saturday.’

Kingship looked at the photograph on the pamphlet’s cover. ‘The smelter—’ Sorrowfully he said, ‘We’re supposed to fly out there tomorrow. I wanted to show him around. Marion too. She was never interested before.’

‘You’d better see that she doesn’t let him know the wedding is off until the last possible moment.’

Kingship smoothed the pamphlet on his knee. He looked up. ‘What?’

‘I said you should see that she doesn’t let him know the wedding is off until the last possible moment.’

‘Oh,’ Kingship said. His eyes returned to the pamphlet. A moment passed. ‘He picked the wrong man,’ he said softly, still looking at the photograph of the smelter. ‘He should have picked on somebody else’s daughters.’

Was there ever such a perfect day? That was all he wanted to know – was there? He grinned at the plane; it looked as impatient as he; it craned forward at the runway, its compact body gleaming, the coppered kingshipand the crown trademark on its side emblazoned by the early morning sun. He grinned at the busy scene farther down the field, where
commercial
planes stood, their waiting passengers herded behind wire fences like dumb animals. Well, we all can’t have private planes at our disposal! He grinned at the ceramic blue of the sky, then stretched and pounded his chest happily, watching his breath plume upwards. No, he decided judicially, there really never was such a perfect day. What, never? No, never! What,
never?
Well – hardly ever! He turned and strode back to the hangar, humming Gilbert and Sullivan.

Marion and Leo were standing in the shade, having one of their tight-lipped arguments. ‘I’m going!’ Marion insisted.

‘What’s the dif
few
culty?’ he smiled, coming up to them.

Leo turned and walked away.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked Marion.

‘Nothing’s the matter. I don’t feel well, so he doesn’t want me to go.’ Her eyes were on the plane beyond him.

‘Bridal nerves?’

‘No. I just don’t feel well, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ he said knowingly.

They stood in silence for a minute, watching a pair of mechanics fuss with the plane’s fuel tank, and then he moved towards Leo. Leave it to Marion to be off on a day like this. Well, it was probably all for the good; maybe she’d keep quiet for a change. ‘All set to go?’

‘A few minutes,’ Leo said. ‘We’re waiting for Mr Dettweiler.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Dettweiler. His father is on the board of directors.’

A few minutes later a blond man in a grey overcoat approached from the direction of the commercial hangars. He had a long jaw and heavy eyebrows. He nodded at Marion and came up to Leo. ‘Good morning, Mr Kingship.’

‘Good morning, Mr Dettweiler.’ They shook hands. ‘I’d like you to meet my prospective son-in-law, Bud Corliss. Bud, this is Gordon Dettweiler.’

‘How do you do.’

‘Well,’ Dettweiler said, he had a handshake like a mangle, ‘I’ve certainly been looking forward to meeting you. Yes, sir, I certainly have.’ A character, Bud thought, or maybe he was trying to get in good with Leo.

‘Ready, sir?’ a man asked from within the plane.

‘Ready,’ Leo said. Marion came forward. ‘Marion, honestly wish you wouldn’t—’ but she marched right past Leo, up the three-step platform and into the plane. Leo shrugged and shook his head. Dettweiler followed Marion in. Leo said, ‘After you, Bud.’

He jogged up the three steps and entered the plane. It was a six-seater, its interior done in pale blue. He took the last seat on the right, behind the wing. Marion was across the aisle. Leo took the front seat, across from Dettweiler.

When the engine coughed and roared to life, Bud fastened his seatbelt. Son of a gun, if it didn’t have a copper buckle! He shook his head, smiling. He looked out of the window at the people waiting behind fences, and wondered if they could see him …

The plane began to roll forward. On the way … Would Leo be taking him to the smelter if he were still suspicious? Never! What, never? No, never! He leaned over, tapped Marion’s elbow and grinned at her. She smiled back, looking ill all right, and returned to her window. Leo and Dettweiler were talking softly to each other over the aisle. ‘How long will it take, Leo?’ he asked cheerfully. Leo turned, ‘Three hours. Less if the wind’s good,’ and turned back to Dettweiler.

Well, he hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone anyway. He returned to his window and watched the ground slide past.

At the edge of the field the plane turned slowly around. The engine whined higher, building up power …

He stared out of the window, fingering the copper buckle. On the way to the smelter … The smelter? The grail! The fountainhead of wealth!

Why the hell did his mother have to be afraid of flying? Christ, it would have been
terrific
having her along!

The plane roared forward.

He was the first to spot it; far ahead and below, a small black geometric cluster on the bedsheet of snow; a small black cluster like a twig on the end of a curving stem of railroad tracks. ‘There it is,’ he heard Leo saying, and he was faintly conscious of Marion crossing the aisle and taking the seat in front of him. His breath fogged the window; he wiped it clean.

The twig vanished under the wing. He waited. He swallowed and his ears popped as the plane soared lower.

The smelter reappeared directly below him, sliding out from under the wing. There were half a dozen rectilinear brown roofs with thick tails of smoke dragging from their centres. They crowded together, huge and shadowless in the overhead sun, beside the glittering chain-mail patch of a filled parking lot. Railroad tracks looped and encircled them, merging below into a multi-veined stem, down which a freight train crawled, its smudge of smoke dwarfed by the giant black plumes behind it, its chain of cars scintillating with salmon-coloured glints.

His head turned slowly, his eyes locked to the smelter that slid towards the tail of the plane. Fields of snow followed it. Scattered houses appeared. The smelter was gone. There were more houses, then roads separating them into blocks. Still more houses, closer now, and stores and signs and creeping cars and dot-like people, a park, the cubist pattern of a housing development …

The plane banked, circling. The ground tilted away, then levelled, swept closer, and finally came slicing up under the wing of the plane. A jolt; the seatbelt’s buckle bit his stomach. Then the plane rolled smoothly. He drew the pale blue webbing from the copper clamp.

There was a limousine waiting when they descended from the plane; a custom-built Packard, black and polished. He sat on a jump-seat next to Dettweiler. He leaned forward, looking over the driver’s shoulder. He peered down the long perspective of the town’s main street to a white hill far away on the horizon. At its summit, from the far side, columns of smoke arose. They were curving and black against the sky, like the cloud-fingers of a genie’s hand.

The main street became a two-lane highway that speared between fields of snow, and the highway became an asphalt road that embraced the curve of the hill’s base, and the asphalt road became a gravel one that jounced over the serried ribs of railroad tracks and turned to the left, rising up the hillside parallel to the tracks. First one slowly climbing train was overtaken, and then another. Sparks of hidden metal winked from ore-heaped gondola cars.

Ahead, the smelter rose up. Brown structures merged into a crude pyramid, their belching smoke-stacks ranked around the largest one. Nearer, the buildings swelled and clarified; their cliff-like walls were streaky brown metal, laced in spots with girdered fretwork and irregularly patched with soot-stained glass; the shapes of the buildings were hard, geometric; they were bound together by chutes and catwalks. Still nearer, the buildings merged again, the sky space between them lost behind projecting angles. They became a single massive form, large hulks buttressing larger ones into an immense smoke-spired industrial cathedral. It loomed up mountainously, and then suddenly swept off to the side as the limousine veered away.

The car pulled up before a low brick building, at the door of which waited a lean, white-haired, unctuously smiling man in a dark suit.

He forgot what he was eating, that’s how interested he was in lunch. He pulled his eyes from the window across the room, the window through which could be seen the buildings wherein heaps of grey-brown dirt were purified to gleaming copper, and looked down at his plate. Creamed chicken. He started eating more quickly, hoping the others would follow suit.

The carefully dressed white-haired man had turned out to be a Mr Otto, the manager of the smelter. Leo having introduced him, Mr Otto had led them into a conference room and begun apologizing for things. He apologized smilingly for the tablecloth that left bare one end of the long table – ‘We’re not in the New York office, you know’ – and he apologized suavely for cool food and warm wine – ‘I’m afraid we lack the facilities of our big city brethren.’ Mr Otto longed transparently for the New York office. Over the soup he spoke of the copper shortage and disparaged the suggestions of the National Production Authority for its mitigation. Occasionally he referred to copper as ‘the red metal’.

‘Mr Corliss.’ He looked up. Dettweiler was smiling at him across the table. ‘You’d better be careful,’ Dettweiler said. ‘I found a bone in mine.’

Bud glanced at his nearly empty plate and smiled back at Dettweiler. ‘I’m anxious to see the smelter,’ he said.

‘Aren’t we all,’ Dettweiler remarked, still smiling.

‘You found a bone in yours?’ Mr Otto inquired. ‘That woman! I told her to take care. These people can’t even cut up a chicken properly.’

Now that they had at long last left the brick building and were crossing the asphalt yard to the buildings of the smelter itself, he walked slowly. The others, coatless, hurried ahead, but he drifted behind, savouring the climactic sweetness of the moment. He watched an ore-laden train disappear behind a steel wall at the left of the buildings. At the right, a train was being loaded; cranes swung copper into the cars; great square slabs like solidified flame that must have weighed five or six hundred pounds each. A heart! he thought, gazing up at the monstrous brown form that filled more and more of the sky – a giant heart of American industry, drawing in bad blood, pumping out good! Standing so close to it, about to enter it, it was impossible not to share the surging of its power!

The others had vanished into a doorway at the base of the towering steel mass. Now Mr Otto smiled within the doorway, beckoning.

He moved forward less slowly, like a lover going to a long-awaited tryst. Success rewarded! Promise fulfilled! There should be a fanfare! he thought. There should be a fanfare!

A whistle screamed.

Thank you.
Muchas gracias.

He went into the darkness of the doorway. The door closed after him.

The whistle screamed again, piercingly, like a bird in a jungle.