A Century of Great Suspense Stories

The Girl Who Married a Monster Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher (1911–1968) was one of the most remarkable figures ever produced by the mystery genre. And the same could be said of him in the science fiction genre, too. Whether he was working as author, critic, or editor in these fields, his name on a story, novel, or magazine invariably meant that you were getting the best the field had to offer. Under the name H. H. Holmes, he wrote a number of memorable mystery novels; under his own name he created at least two dozen fantasy stories that are still being reprinted today. He touched virtually every writer of his time — by teaching them through the craft he brought to his fiction; or by buying and editing their stories for one of his magazines (he was co-founder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, for just one example); or as a critic: he wrote 850 weekly columns for the New York Times Book Review. And he was no snob. He was the first major critic to seriously review paperback originals. He died far too young, at age 57.

There seemed from the start to be an atmosphere of pressured haste about the whole affair. The wedding date was set even before the formal announcement of the engagement; Doreen was so very insistent that Marie must come at once to Hollywood to serve as maid of honor; the engagement party was already getting under way when Marie arrived at the house; and she had barely had time for the fastest of showers and a change of clothes when she was standing beside Cousin Doreen and being introduced to the murderer.

Not that she knew it for certain at that moment. Then — with one of Doreen’s friends ad-libbing a bebop wedding march on the piano and another trying to fit limerick lyrics to it and all the others saying “Darling...!” and “But my agent says...” and “The liquor flows like glue around here” and “Live TV? But my dear, how quaintly historical!” — then it was only a matter of some forgotten little-girl memory trying to stir at the back of her mind and some very active big-girl instincts stirring in front. Later, with the aid of the man in gray and his strange friend with the invisible fly, it was to be terrifyingly positive. Now, it was vague and indefinable, and perhaps all the more terrifying for being so.

Marie had been prepared to dislike him. Doreen was only a year older than she (which was 27) and looked a year younger; there was something obscene about the idea of her marrying a man in his fifties. Marie was prepared for something out of Peter Arno, and for a moment it was a relief to find him so ordinary-looking — just another man, like the corner grocer... or no, more like the druggist, the nice one that was a bishop in the Latter Day Saints. For a moment after that it was a pleasant surprise to find that he was easy, affable, even charming in a way you didn’t expect of ordinary elderly men. He was asking all about her family (which was of course Doreen’s, too) and about Utah and how was Salt Lake nowadays, and all the time he made you feel that he was asking about these subjects only because they were connected with you.

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 semipermanent, 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 radio-actress 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... 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 a 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 Peabody, 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 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 fiancée 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 police 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 them. “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 fiancée’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 know 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 five percent 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 deliberately 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?”

“May I ask you one question, Doreen?”

“Make it a bargain. One apiece. Something I want to say to you, too... You first.”

“Has he... has he talked to you about insurance?”

“Of course. It’s sensible, isn’t it? He’s better off than you seem to think, you know, and I’m young and healthy so the premiums are low. He’s paid the first premium on a policy for me. One hundred grand. And now that your worst fears are confirmed—”

“Oh, Doreen! How can you?”

“I’ve a favor to ask of you. Don’t go back to the seagulls and the Tabernacle yet. Stick around a while. We’ll find you a job if you want; I’ve got contacts.”

“Then you do think you need somebody to—”

“I said I believed him, didn’t I? It’s just... Well... Oh, skip it! Go home if you want to. Go marry a Fundamentalist and run off to the Arizona Strip. Luther marries ’em only one at a time — and when he marries me, he’s going to stay married.”

“I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay, Doreen. But oh... You’re not just my cousin. You’ve always been my best friend. And now... I just don’t understand you at all.”

“That is news?” Doreen asked, and switched off the light.

It was a small tasteful wedding, held in the Sma’ Kirk O’ the Braes, and chiefly distinguished by the fact that the maid of honor never met the eyes of the bridegroom.

Throughout the service Marie could not help thinking of what marriage meant to her, or rather what she hoped it might mean. And here were Doreen and Luther...

“Why? Why?” She was almost in tears as MacDonald helped her into his car after the bridal couple had left for a Palm Springs weekend.

“We’re going,” MacDonald said, “to see the best man on Whys in L.A. You’ve met him, though it wasn’t one of his more brilliant appearances. That’s the second time Luther Peabody’s bested him, and if I thought Nick was capable of such a human reaction, I’d say it rankles.”

“Who is he, Mac? That whole scene was so strange...”

As they drove to downtown Los Angeles, MacDonald sketched a little of the career of Nicholas Joffe Noble, ex-Lieutenant, L.A.P.D. How the brightest Homicide man in Los Angeles had been framed to take the rap for a crooked Captain under investigation; how the sudden loss of job and reputation at the beginning of the depression had meant no money for an operation for his wife; how her death had broken him until he wound up on Skid Row living on sherry... and puzzles.

“Ten years ago,” MacDonald said, “on my first case, one of the old-line Homicide boys steered me to him. Called him the Screwball Division, L.A.P.D. If a case makes no sense at all — and Lord knows that one didn’t! — feed the facts to Nick Noble. His eyes sort of glaze over and something goes tick inside... and then the facts make a pattern.

“I’ve told him a lot about Doreen. He’s been looking up some more stuff on Peabody, especially the Seattle case. Way I see it, we’ve got two problems here: Why is Doreen deliberately marrying a presumable mass murderer, and how in God’s name are we going to prevent another ‘accident’? And if those questions have an answer, we’ll find it in the Chula Negra café, third booth on the left.”

The little Mexican café was on North Main Street, near the new Federal Building, and the old Plaza and the medium-new Union Station, and the old Mexican Church and the new freeway which had brought them downtown. It had a new jukebox with some very old records and cheap new sherry in cracked old glasses.

In the third booth on the left the white little man sat, a half-full glass before him. He said “Mac” to MacDonald and “Miss Arlen” to Marie and then he brushed his white hand across his sharp-pointed white nose. “Fly,” he said. “Stays there.”

There was no fly. Marie looked down, embarrassed, and said, “Lieutenant MacDonald thought maybe you could—”

“Heard Mac’s story,” Mr. Noble interrupted. “Need yours. Talk.”

And while MacDonald beckoned the plump young Mexican waitress and ordered more sherry, Marie talked. When she had finished, she watched the bright blue eyes expectantly. But they didn’t glaze. Instead Mr. Noble shook his head, half in annoyance, half perhaps to dislodge the persistent if invisible fly.

“Not enough,” he said. “No pattern.”

“A whodunit’s one thing,” said MacDonald. “This is a whydunit. Why should a girl deliberately marry a Bluebeard? F. Tennyson Jesse works out quite an elaborate and convincing theory of murderees, people who deliberately invite being murdered.”

“But Doreen isn’t at all like that!” Marie protested.

“I know. Miss Jesse’d agree; Doreen doesn’t fit the type. Some women want morbid sensation and pick out low, often strange kinds of men.”

Marie said hesitantly: “You read about people being hypnotized. Luther does have such queer eyes—”

“Tabloid stuff,” said Noble. “She knows what she’s doing. Not enough. No pattern.” He emptied his glass.

“And there’s no official action we can take to protect her,” said MacDonald. “That’s the frustrating part. We can’t go spending the taxpayers’ money without a complaint. The insurance company’s just as helpless. Dan Rafetti from Southwest National was in to see me today. He wanted some notes on Peabody to show Southwest’s lawyers, but he wasn’t hopeful. They can’t dictate the policyholder’s choice of beneficiary. All they can do is stop payment — when it’s too late.”

Slowly Marie rose from the table. “It was very nice of you to bring me here, Mr. MacDonald.” She hoped her voice seemed under control. “And it was very silly of me to think you and your friend could pass a miracle. I did think you, at least, as an officer, might protect her.”

“Wait a minute, Marie!” MacDonald was on his feet, too.

“It’s all right, Mr. MacDonald. I can get home. At least if — when Doreen gets back from Palm Springs, I’ll be there to—”

“You?” Noble’s voice was sharp and dry. “You staying there with them? After marriage?”

“Why, yes. Doreen asked me to.”

“Tell,” he commanded.

Hesitantly she sat down and told. The blue eyes faded and thought seemed to recede behind them. Suddenly he nodded and said to MacDonald, “Recap M.O.”

“Peabody’s modus operandi? It’s stayed the same as in your case. Apparently a mild dose of sleeping pills, then when the woman’s unconscious a sharp blow to the base of the skull with the edge of the hand. Defense is always a broken neck by accident while under the influence of a slight self-administered overdose: Almost impossible to disprove.”

The eyes glazed again. When their light returned it was almost painfully bright. “Pattern clear,” he said. “Obvious why. But proof... Now listen. Both of you.”

The cute plump waitress refilled the water glass uninstructed.

Doreen and Luther had been back from Palm Springs for two days now, and the honeymoon was figuratively as well as literally over.

How could she go on living here? Marie thought. Even to save Doreen. But Mac and Nick Noble said it would be only a matter of days... Marie squirmed back into the corner where Mac had first found her and tried to cut herself off from the quarrel that raged.

“But it’s only plain damn common horse sense, Luther!” Doreen was screaming. “We have the good luck that Marie’s going around with a cop and he lets slip that they’re reopening that Seattle case. Are you just going to sit around and wait for them to extradite you?”

Luther Peabody’s tone was too imperturbable to be called a shout, but it matched Doreen’s in volume. “The Seattle D.A. would be an idiot to reopen the case. I was acquitted—”

“You weren’t! They were hung juries. They can try you again and I won’t let them!”

“Very well. I wasn’t acquitted. But I was released three times. They can’t convict me. I’m comfortable here, thank you, and I’m staying.”

“I won’t be the wife of a man on trial for murder! We’ll go some place — any place — slip away — use another name for just a little while — just to let it get cold again—”

“My dear Doreen, I am staying.”

“And I know why, too! That filthy-rich tin heiress from Bolivia we met at Palm Springs! I see myself getting you out of town while she’s here. You’d sooner stay and be indicted or extradited or whatever it is and have all the scandal! What about my career?”

“You won’t mind, my dear, if I ask, ‘What career?’ ”

And after that, Marie thought wryly, it began to get nasty. And the plan wasn’t working. The Seattle rumor was supposed to make Luther eager to get out, put time-pressure on him. Mac was taking a week’s vacation, switching schedules with some other Lieutenant, so that he could act privately. He and a detective he’d hired were taking turns watching the house. And if Marie observed the faintest sign of anything wrong, she was to make a signal... What was the signal? She was so sleepy...

The newlyweds had stormed off to separate rooms. They had even stopped shouting across the house to each other. She was so sleepy, but it was so much trouble to get to her bed...

Marie managed to dig her fingers into her thigh so viciously that her eyes opened. “The faintest sign of anything wrong...” Of course. The first thing he’d do would be to drug the watchdog. He’d brought her the cup of cocoa Doreen had fixed. She had to make the signal... the signal...

She would be black-and-blue for weeks, but she kept digging into her thigh. Doreen insisted on keeping the Venetian blinds throughout the house with their slats slanted up, so sunlight couldn’t come through to fade the carpeting. If MacDonald saw any window with the slats slanting down...

She heard the gratifying rattle of the shifting vanes as her hand slipped loosely from the cord and her eyes closed.

“You was supposed to relieve me an hour ago,” said the man from the O’Breen Agency reproachfully.

“I know,” MacDonald snapped. “I’m on vacation, but that doesn’t stop a Homicide Captain from calling me down to Headquarters for more details on a report I filed last month. — What’s that!”

“Yeah, I was just gonna tell you, Lieutenant. That blind switched damn near an hour ago. I didn’t phone because I figured you was on your way here, and you don’t see me risking my license trying to break in—”

But MacDonald was already at the door. He had no more authority to break in than the operative; but he had self-confidence, a marked lack of desire to warn the murderer by ringing a bell, and a lock-gun. The operative followed hesitantly at his heels. They both stopped short at the archway from hall to living room.

With the blinds as Doreen liked them, the room would have been dark, but the moon shone down through the reversed slats of the warning-blind onto the body. It was chicly dressed, as any starlet should be, in a fur-trimmed dressing gown. Its face was painted to starlet-mannequin perfection and the moon gleamed back from a starlet’s overpainted fingernails. But one item differed from starlet standards: the coiffure.

The hair was so close-cropped that the head seemed almost bald.

MacDonald had switched the lights on and was bending over the body. “She’s breathing!” he yelled. “We got a break! Phone—” And in a moment he was through to Homicide, arranging for official reinforcements, an immediate ambulance, and the nearest patrol car in the meantime.

He set back the phone and looked up at a strange tableau. In the front arch stood the private operative, gun drawn, face questioning. In the other arch, leading to the bedrooms, stood Luther Peabody, staring at the unconscious girl on the floor.

“All right, lover-boy,” MacDonald began, not unglad that his position was, at the moment, unofficial. “My man has you covered. You’re not trying a thing — not any more. And before the regulars get here, you’re going to tell me a few fascinating items — starting with ‘Where’s Marie?’ ”

“I don’t understand,” Peabody faltered. “I heard all this noise...” His eyes never left the body.

MacDonald hesitated. The man worried him. He did look as if he had just awakened from a sound sleep. And what was stranger: the gaze he fixed on the body seemed (unless he were the world’s leading non-professional actor) to be one of absolute incredulous surprise.

Then a moan came from the floor that sounded almost like words, almost like “Did I...” MacDonald knelt and bent closer, still eying Peabody. “Did I... did I fix the slats right, Mac?” said the preposterous starlet-lips.

“Marie!” MacDonald gasped. “Then who—” Abruptly he rose as he saw a uniformed patrol-car man looming behind the operative. “MacDonald, Homicide,” he said, moving forward with his open wallet extended. “The girl’s alive — ambulance on the way.”

The patrol-car man said, “We spotted a dame high-tailing it away from here, took a chance on picking her up. Bring her in, Clarence!”

And 200 pounds of Clarence brought in a scratching, biting fury who was unmistakably Doreen Arlen Peabody.

“Didn’t mean to be cryptic. Honest,” said Nick Noble, brushing away the fly. “Thought you saw pattern. Seattle time-pressure wouldn’t pressure Peabody. Be less apt to act when under observation. Would pressure Doreen. Had to act while she still had him around.”

“The hospital says Marie’ll be out tomorrow. Nothing serious. Doreen was a failure even at learning judo blows out of handbooks. But if I’m going to shine as Marie’s savior, I’d better at least get completely straight what the devil happened. Want to help me sort it out?”

“No sorting. Straight pattern. Clear as soon as I knew Marie was staying on with them. Then all fell into place: Only possible why. Failure. Insurance. Family. Judo. Hair. Above all, hair.”

“OK. Let me try. Doreen’s not talking. We’re going to have to release her anyway. You can’t charge attempted murder when the victim won’t make a complaint; and Marie says think what it’d do to the family in Utah.”

“Step-family,” said Nick Noble.

“Yes, that’s a key point. With all Doreen’s publicity, you think of this vast Family; but Marie’s her only blood relative. That made the whole scheme possible. And the most cold-blooded — But let me try to reconstruct:

“Doreen meets Peabody. She remembers a little, checks up and learns more. Maybe she thinks, ‘He can’t get away with it forever’ — and from that comes the thought: ‘If any murder happens with him around, he’s it.’ ”

“Why,” said Nick Noble.

“Exactly. The only possible why for deliberately marrying a mass murderer: to have the perfect scapegoat for the murder you’re about to commit. She brings her cousin out here. They used to look a lot alike; really the main differences, speech and action aside, are Doreen’s elaborate starlet makeup and Marie’s wavy hair. So Doreen insures herself for an enormous amount, or maybe just lets Peabody do it, if that’s what he has in mind. But Doreen’s not worrying— She’ll kill Marie, using Peabody’s M.O. and putting her own clothes and makeup on the body. There’s still the hair. Well, Peabody has a psychopathic quirk about hair. He’s clipped tresses from his victims before. This time she’ll make it seem he’s gone hog-wild and cut off too much... too much to tell if it was straight or wavy. Meanwhile she’ll scrub her face, use the lightest makeup, wear Marie’s clothes, and wave her hair. She’ll be the little cousin from Utah. It’s her background, too; she was once very like Marie even in actions — it’ll be a simple role.

“So Peabody is convicted of the murder of his wife. Maybe even as the Utah cousin she’s going to be an eyewitness. It doesn’t matter whether he’s gassed or found insane. In any case the insurance company won’t pay him. Policy reverts to the estate, which consists solely of the Utah cousin, who now has a hundred grand in cash and never goes back. Perfect!”

“She thinks.”

MacDonald nodded. “She thinks... You know, Nick, unofficial head that you are of the Screwball Division, L.A.P.D., this was the ideally screwball case for you. Exact illustration of the difference between a professional and an amateur. If Peabody had killed Doreen, the motive and what you call the pattern would have been completely obvious; and yet he’d probably have executed the details so well that the worst he’d get would be another hung jury. Now Doreen had worked out the damnedest most unlikely pattern conceivable; but if (God forbid!) she’d brought off her murder, I swear she’d have gone straight to the gas chamber. Doreen wasn’t really good at anything, from acting to murder. Somewhere along the line, pure ordinary police routine would’ve caught up with the identification—”

“Radiation Lab,” said Nick Noble.

“Of course. Marie’s prints would be on file if she’d worked on such a security job. Then the hair: Doreen was giving herself a quicky fingerwave when she heard me rampaging around and panicked. I suppose later she’d have had a pro job done — and that’d be one more witness. Fake identity plus good old cui bono? and she’s done for. All thought out in advance... except what happens next.”

“Rouse,” Nick Noble agreed.

“Exactly. The English ‘blazing car’ murderer back around the time of Peabody’s debut. Everything brilliantly worked out up through the murder... then chaos. Arrested the day after the killing and executed four months later. Doreen would’ve gone that way too. But thanks to you—”

“What now?” Nick Noble asked as Rosario brought fresh glasses.

“Damned if I know. Maybe your pattern machine can figure it. She says she’s going back to Peabody if he’ll have her. Says she kind of likes him. Well, Marie didn’t! Marie hated him from the start—”

“—and didn’t hate you?” It was the first time MacDonald had ever seen a broad grin on that thin white face. “A little like Martha, Mac,” said Nick Noble. “A little.”

MacDonald remembered Martha Noble’s tragic operation. “Luckier,” he said. “Thanks to you.” He rose, embarrassed. “I’ll bring Marie around tomorrow. Want you to see her while she’s still all shaven and shorn. She’s lovely — it’s an experience. Well,” he concluded, “it’s been a hell of a murder case, hasn’t it? The murder case with no murder and no arrest. Files closed with nobody in prison and nobody dead.”

“That’s bad?” Nick Noble observed to his invisible insect.