Gentle Murderer
Authors: Dorothy Salisbury Davis
“Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Josephine Tey … Dorothy Salisbury Davis belongs in the same company. She writes with great insight into the psychological motivations of all her characters.” —
The Denver Post
“Dorothy Salisbury Davis may very well be the best mystery novelist around.” —
The Miami Herald
“Davis has few equals in setting up a puzzle, complete with misdirection and surprises.” —
The New York Times Book Review
“Davis is one of the truly distinguished writers in the medium; what may be more important, she is one of the few who can build suspense to a sonic peak.” —Dorothy B. Hughes,
Los Angeles Times
“A joyous and unqualified success.” —
The New York Times
on
Death of an Old Sinner
“An intelligent, well-written thriller.” —
Daily Mirror
(London) on
Death of an Old Sinner
“At once gentle and suspenseful, warmly humorous and tensely perplexing.” —
The New York Times
on
A Gentleman Called
“Superbly developed, gruesomely upsetting.” —
Chicago Tribune
on
A Gentleman Called
“An excellent, well-controlled piece of work.” —
The New Yorker
on
The Judas Cat
“A book to be long remembered.” —
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
on
A Town of Masks
“Mrs. Davis has belied the old publishing saying that an author’s second novel is usually less good than the first. Since her first ranked among last year’s best, what more need be said?” —
The New York Times
on
The Clay Hand
“Ingeniously plotted … A story of a young woman discovering what is real in life and in herself.” —
The New York Times
on
A Death in the Life
“Davis brings together all the elements needed for a good suspense story to make this, her fourth Julie Hayes, her best.” —
Library Journal
on
The Habit of Fear
“Mrs. Davis is one of the admired writers of American mystery fiction, and
Shock Wave
is up to her best. She has a cultured style, handles dialogue with a sure ear, and understands people better than most of her colleagues.” —
The New York Times Book Review
on
Shock Wave
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
1
“B
LESS ME, FATHER, FOR
I have sinned …”
Father Duffy had heard the phrase over and over again that night, for it was Saturday and he was assistant pastor of St. Timothy’s, one of the largest parishes in Manhattan. He had heard small voices whisper of disobedience, untruths and petty thefts, older voices stumbling in their quest for delicate ways to phrase indelicate sins … lust, drunkenness, cruelty and sloth; and he had listened to the urgent rasp of the aged, repeating sins long since forgiven but well remembered by the sinner whose each accounting might be his last. Some had come on tiptoe, some in bold clicking heels and some in measured shuffling from the last pew in the church, where even now they would be sitting like Lazarus, repeating their unworthiness.
It was after nine o’clock and neither side of the confessional was occupied. The priest sat in the semi-darkness, his body stiff and aching, with his hand on his breviary. He was waiting for perhaps one tardy penitent, as a child watches for one last drop from a turned-off faucet. He smiled at himself for the stubbornness that kept him waiting there, sweat-soaked, for just one more. That was greed of a sort. Through the open window above him the August heat rolled in like a fat old man, and settled with him in the cubicle. It brought the smell of dust, bus exhaust, frankfurters and tobacco smoke. He would have liked a cigarette … ten minutes more. He held his watch to the dim, curtained light: nine twenty-three. In a brief hush in the flow of traffic down Ninth Avenue someone called, “Good night, Father.”
That would be to Father Gonzales, another assistant. His stole laid away for the night, Gonzales would be standing a moment on the church steps before going around to the rectory for sandwiches and a cold drink. A wave of street traffic muffled the voices. Father Duffy felt the ribbon in his breviary and opened the book, still without turning on the light although he had yet a half-hour’s reading to finish his office of the day.
Why should he wait like this? Why should he wait in the darkness? A thousand priests had confessed a hundred thousand sinners that night, and in the morning as many more as needed would be confessed. And even now, for as many as confessed … he heard a roar of drunken laughter somewhere, a woman’s giggle, a police siren, the smashing of a bottle … “Father …”
He was startled at the voice, having heard no sound near him, nor noticed any light as the curtain parted. He glanced at the face beyond the screen, thinking he might have imagined the voice, weary as he was. He averted his eyes immediately. But in the darkness beneath him he could still see the outline of the face. As his imagination held it, the facial contours were like the negative of a film in which the lines are so exaggerated as to suggest great suffering. And yet the wide eyes were full of calm, he thought. The penitent was there, having won a great struggle with himself. He was a young man, and the small, worn face reminded Father Duffy of pictures of St. Francis. He was reminded also of boys he had seen in the war after their first experience under fire … boys no longer … all this in the instant while he drew the panel across the empty section and made the sign of the cross.
“Father, I think I’ve done a terrible thing. I always wanted to do something good in my life, always, and it’s never worked out that way. I wanted to be a priest. I didn’t want to and I did want to … my mother saved …”
He spoke a little above a whisper, calmly for the first few words and then with mounting excitement. Father Duffy did not look up. He nodded his head slowly to quiet and encourage the distraught man.
“Father, I think I’ve killed someone. I wanted to die myself. But I committed murder instead. I wanted to do some good. I tried. I went up there—Father, are you listening?”
Again he nodded, trying to do it more slowly, no more than half-time to his heartbeat. Without articulating the prayer, the priest craved wisdom from heaven.
“I was always welcome up there, Father. All I had to do was let her know I was there if she was home. She was kind to me. Now I think she tried. I took a hammer with me. My mother gave me a hammer for my tenth birthday. It was the only present she ever gave me. St. Joseph was a carpenter, she said. I had the hammer, and when she said ‘why?’ I couldn’t remember why. That’s something I always wanted to know myself. Why? Why couldn’t I? Why didn’t anyone care? Why didn’t anybody pay attention? Why? Why? They could have. I didn’t run away. Now I remember why I took the hammer—her windows always stuck this time of year. It’s so hot … You don’t believe me, do you, Father? No. I can see you don’t …”
From a humble, pathetic outpouring, the tone was changing to something close to abuse. “If you don’t believe me …” The voice hesitated again.
Out of an inspired discretion, Father Duffy said almost matter-of-factly, “How long is it since your last confession?”
There was a long moment’s silence and Father Duffy anchored his chin upon his breast that his reflexes might not betray him into a sudden startling move.
“Oh, Father, when I was a child … Father McGohey gave me a prayerbook for my first Communion. Then he took it away because I was fighting, he said. But I’ll tell you the truth, Father. I always knew he didn’t take it away because I was fighting. He took it away because I lost the fight. Then my mother gave me the hammer. I wanted one with claws. She knew it. She had to give me one with two heads. I couldn’t take out nails if I made a mistake. I had to smash things … full of blood and hair. I washed it in the sink. The funny thing then, Father—I felt clean then, too. I never felt so clean before. I walked out without even looking back to see her …”
Somewhere near by a siren sounded … police, fire, ambulance … Father Duffy could not tell. The man beside him heard it, too. The priest could hear him suck in his breath through his teeth.
“They’re coming for me, Father. Only I don’t want them to come for me. It’s not that I’m afraid. I just want to walk in to them myself. I want to hang on just once. I want to be clean just once. I dreamed I was right up to my neck in slime once. It was all stinking and I kept trying to keep my mouth clean but it kept sucking me in. That’s what the world’s like if you let yourself get dirty once …”
The breviary slipped from the priest’s sweating hand. He let it go. Gratefully he felt it fall on his leg and slide down his cassock noiselessly.
“I thought if I could just keep my mouth clean I wouldn’t dirty anything kissing it. But I couldn’t even kiss the crucifix. I knew I couldn’t ever touch anything again without getting the slime all over it …”
The sirened car roared past the church, its wail sloughing off. Again the man’s voice changed, calmer now.
“I can make it now, Father. There’s still time. How much time we’re given in this world and how little to do with it that we really have to do! I had to commit murder to finally have something important to do with this half-hour. Sometimes I watch people with briefcases and suitcases fighting for taxis. That’s a sin, too. How jealous I am of them—only I’m not jealous of them for taking taxis. It’s just being important, having to be some place in such a hurry and somebody waiting for them. Father, absolve me, please, and let me hurry. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I confess to Almighty God, and to you, Father, that I have sinned …”
He had begun the routine of confession as he had learned it from the catechism as a boy. While the words of the confiteor flowed out by rote, Father Duffy strove in his own mind for the words that he would say to this man. How often he had striven to give each penitent a bit of guidance that would be especially his, that would give him hope and confidence that he could go and sin no more … To say to this man, “Go and sin no more …”
“… May the almighty and merciful God grant me pardon, absolution and full remission of my sins. Amen.”
Father Duffy moistened his lips. “There is penance you will do according to the laws of society beyond any I should give you,” he said slowly, sickening at his own inadequacy—the pompous, hollow words … “You are going to the police now?”
When he received no answer, he glanced at the man to see him nodding that he would. His eyes were streaming with tears. If he was sane, his soul was racked with remorse, the priest thought. Sane or insane, he was suffering and had suffered. But so also had his victim …