Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 11, November 1960

Murder Most Convenient by Gilbert Ralston

A salesman is an individual who will repeat ad nauseam that he has something decidedly excellent to sell. But, of course, salesmen must sell themselves first. This is not easy. Because this product, you see, is frequently somewhat dubious.

My name is Jonathan Keeler Wainright. I am forty-six years of age, a widower, at present in the best of health.

What follows is the truth. I shall not embellish it, simply stating the facts as they occurred chronologically as I remember them.

Let us begin then at noon on the twenty-fifth of June, at the lunchroom counter of the bowling alley of a town called Three Forks, a typical California suburban development, without dignity, or a decent restaurant. I sat at the end seat of the counter, steeped in contemplation of happier times, picking occasionally at a weary slab of glutinous apple pie. I have always taken pride in my appearance and I must have seemed an outre and vaguely foreign figure in this decidedly inelegant lunchroom.

“More coffee, Mister?”

The gutteral croak broke in on my reverie, sending tiny flames of shock up my spine as I looked up at the counterman. I shook my head emphatically.

“That’ll be a dollar thirty.”

I paid the proffered check, tucking the odd two dimes under the saucer, the counterman palming them with a mumbled grunt of thanks. He was peering curiously at me as I fumbled my wallet back into my pocket, my hands clumsy with the ache to snap his turkey neck.

“Ain’t you Ray Goetz?” he said.

I shook my head again.

“Funny, you look like him, sorta.”

I forced a cordial smile, although the question started me. Coincidence, I thought. Use it. Use it.

“You sellin’ somethin’?” he said, making a desultory effort to clean the counter with a distasteful piece of cloth.

“Argus Pools,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

“Swimming pools.”

“Goetz building one?”

“Yes.” The counterman riveted his gaze on me, birdlike in his interest. “You sure you ain’t a relative or somethin’?”

“No.”

“Too bad you ain’t.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Goetz is loaded, that’s why. Load — ed!” He returned to his blue plate specials, pleased with his knowledge of the great.

It has always been my habit to consciously organize myself, to gather myself, as it were, before entering a commercial fray, making a soldier’s survey of the terrain. I did so, before the flamboyant facade of the Goetz Realty Company. A small black beetle rested upon the walk before me. I crushed it carefully with my foot; then I made my way up the walk and through the entrance door, my bearing confident and crisp.

There were no tenants at the several desks in the large room, lending it a sterile and impermanent air, only the muted whine of the air-conditioner alive in the summer afternoon. I stood there for a full minute before my eyes became accustomed to the gloom; finally, I was able to read the words “Ray Goetz” on the middle panel of a door leading off, sunlight bright beneath it. I was forced to gather myself again, the empty room playing on my nerves. Ten deep breaths, I told myself. Then knock. Low voice. Confidence. My hands still shook a little when I rapped on the door.

“Come in.”

I stood in the doorway after I had opened it, staring at the man behind the massive desk. “I’m Jonathan Wainright,” I said. “Argus Pools.”

“Figures,” Goetz replied. He seemed annoyed at my hesitancy, at the way I was staring at him. “What’s eating you?”

“Someone told me that we look alike. I’m startled to find it’s true. I beg your pardon.”

Goetz scowled at me, examining me from head to foot, finally rising. “Have a chair, Wainright,” he said, affably enough. “Over there in the light. Turn your face.” He circled me then like a judge at a stock show, making little clucking noises in his throat before he sat down at his desk again. “Heard about things like this,” he said. “Never thought one of them would happen to me.”

“It is surprising, isn’t it? The Resemblance.”

We were almost the same height and coloring, except that my hair was grayed somewhat more than his. A caricature of me, the features almost matched, except that they were somewhat stronger in his case, lips and eyes almost identical. His voice was not unlike my own, except that it was uncultured, a quality exaggerated by the crude patois of his speech.

“I quit being surprised a long time ago, Wainright,” he said, “but this shakes me some. It really does.” He followed my glance around the room. Then he said, “Jazzy little dump, isn’t it? Monument to the great American Chump.” He smiled crookedly, still scrutinizing me.

“Chump?”

“That great body of installment buyers known as the common man. My dear departed customers. The great big beautiful unwashed public. The chumps.” He was preening himself, spreading out the feathers of his superiority for me to examine.

“It is a handsome office.” I said, looking at the black leather divan, the prints on the wall, the heavy bronze lamp in the corner.

“Not bad for a Chicago street rat,” he replied, obviously pleased by my flattering appreciation. “Saw one like it in a book. Hired a character to match it for me.” He reached with his left hand for a cigar out of the silver humidor behind him, lighting it clumsily from an ornate desk lighter, spitting the bitten tip onto the beige rug. (I particularly despise cigar smoke, clouds of which billowed around me as he continued.) “Fellow tried to pad a couple of bills. So I stilled him for his. He’s still hollerin’. Guess he should have read the motto there on the desk.” He pointed out a small brass plaque that proclaimed: “Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You.” I read it, knowing then that this was the enemy, always and forever the enemy.

“You own the pool company?” His words were measured now, the professional, preliminary opening skirmish.

“I’m the sales and service representative.”

He looked musingly at me. “Salesman,” he said. “For a pool company.” He went on, mouthing his expensive cigar, the tobacco a soaked horror against his lips. “Here we sit. Twins. One up. One down. How old are you?”

“Forty-six.” I was hypnotized by his rudeness.

“I’m forty-seven.”

“You go to college?”

“Yes.”

“Got a degree?”

“Bachelor of Fine Arts.”

“Married?”

“No. Not married.”

“That’s the way it goes. You got a college degree and expensive tastes and I got four million dollars. You have to sell pools and I retire and have a lovely wife.”

Fortunately, I have learned to control myself. I ignored what he’d said and came right to the point of my visit. “I have the contract for you to sign, Mr. Goetz,” I said. “For the pool.”

He looked sharply at me, a speculative look in his hard blue eyes. “What contract?” he said.

“Your secretary sent me the order. In a letter. I have it here.” I drew out a copy of the letter and laid it before him.

“Don’t have a secretary any more. Not here, anyway. Sold out the business two weeks ago.”

I fought the feeling of disaster, knowing he was the sort who would pounce on any weakness like a cat, keeping the signs of my agitation out of my face. I remembered the order in the mail, the endless pressure from the home office to make a sale, the risk I had taken in accepting the order without a contract.

“I’m sure the work has begun,” I said. I was definite, calm.

“Yes, it has,” he answered. “Without a contract.”

“The steel should have arrived also,” I said weakly, sparring for time.

He gave me another analytical glance before he spoke. “It has.”

I pointed to the pages on the desk. “Here’s the contract,” I told him. “It’s a simple purchase order. I marked the place for you to sign.” My calmness and force were having some effect on him. He reached for the pen in the holder in front of him, hesitated.

“I want to read it first,” he said, flicking a contemptuous finger at the document.

“Please do,” I replied.

“I want to read it later. Later tonight.” Goetz was measuring me again, the speculative glimmer still in his eyes.

“It would be gratifying,” I said, “if you could read it now, Mr. Goetz. I have an engagement in Los Angeles tonight. It’s a long drive back.” It was a mistake to press him, the cheap little power complex craving a victim, hungry for an audience.

“Mr. Wainright.” Even the way he pronounced my name had become a subtle insult. “You supposed to service this deal?”

I nodded.

“Service it then.” Suddenly he grew affable again, his ego evidently sufficiently well fed for the moment. “Come to the house for dinner. I’ll read the contract and sign it tonight.”

I balanced future hours of this game of cat and mouse against another miserable meal in the bowling alley. “All right, Mr. Goetz,” I said. “I should be delighted to come to dinner.”

Goetz pointed to the contract. For the first time I noticed that the middle fingers of his right hand were bandaged. “Fold that for me,” he said. “I have a sore hand. Caught it in a piece of machinery. Chewed the tips of two fingers off.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied.

Goetz looked at me, amusement touching his lips. “No you’re not, Wainright. Right now you hate my guts.” He smiled, silkily. “But I’m not such a bad fellow when I get my own way. You’ll get over your gripe.”

He was mistaken.

There was an elongated convertible parked in front of the building, chromed, blatant, expensive. Goetz paused a moment near it, fishing awkwardly for the keys with his injured hand. He turned to me again.

“You got a car, Wainright?”

“In the parking lot at the bowling alley,” I said.

“Leave it there. Get in.”

He drove with a flourish, tooling the big car expertly through the streets of Three Forks, impatient and agressive with the less opulant traffic. I examined him covertly as he drove, cigar clamped in his teeth. This is the way, I told myself. This is how it is done. Assurance. Arrogance. The acceptance of superiority without question. “Get a load of this toy,” he said, reaching for a telephone under the dash, then placing a call to his home through the mobile telephone operator.

The Goetz residence crouched at the top of a rolling hill, overlooking the town, a fenced and manicured show-place, flat-roofed, red-bricked, heavy with glass and modernity.

“One hundred and fifty thousand bucks,” he said, as we got out of the car.

“Charming,” I replied.

Goetz turned to me, a twisted smile hovering around his lips. “Come off it, pool salesman,” he said. “You hate it. You’re the quiet New England type. If I gave it to you, you wouldn’t live in it. You’d sell it to another hustler like me and find yourself a quiet little cottage full of nice, conventional mouldy furniture.”

“Perhaps I would,” I said.

“C’mon in.”

The interior of the house was incredibly, unbelievably beautiful. I remember my feelings of shock as we entered the living room, my feet slipping deliciously into the velvety pile of the wall-to-wall carpet, the cool touch of muted music somewhere in the background. The room was done in gentle grays and black, sparsely and tastefully furnished, an occasional spray of flowers a colorful accent against the otherwise unadorned walls. Goetz did something to a hidden electric switch behind a set of white drapes. whispering them aside, uncovering a wall of glass which ran the full length of the room. I saw the patio stretching away from the house, and beyond that, the ugly scar of the excavation for the swimming pool.

“Sit down, Wainright,” Goetz said. “I have a couple of calls to make. I’ll go and tell my wife you’re here.”

He departed at once, leaving me free to give my attention to a Chinese screen in a corner of the room unable to keep my fingers from caressing the luscious lacquer, tracing the intricate design.

“Do you like my room?”

Spinning in the direction of the sound, for a moment I was without poise, having been startled by the voice of the dark woman standing there.

“I’m Mina Goetz,” she said. “You do look like him.”

“Jonathan Wainright,” I said. “I came about the pool.”

“I know,” she replied. “He told me.” She waited calmly for me to speak again. Part Indian, I thought, Mescalero — perhaps Comanche.

“It is a lovely room,” I said. “Did you do it?”

She was impassive, weighing her reply. “Yes,” she finally said. “It’s easy, when you have anything you want to work with.”

“It’s never easy. Not really.”

“Don’t flatter me, Mr. Wainright. I’m not used to it.” She moved quietly into the room. “Please sit down. Will you have a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“There are cigarettes beside you.” She moved to the wall switch, closed the drapes. “I like that better. It filters the light. Besides it shuts out that awful hole your men made.” She curled up on the chair across from me, sinuously winding her legs into a comfortable position, the light playing on her high cheek-bones, sculpturing her face. Ubasti, cat-woman, ready for the blood.

“Tell me what you do next.”

“Tomorrow we put the steel in. It’s like a basket. In the afternoon we spray in the cement.”

“Spray it in?” She was making conversation, covering her scrutiny of me with questions.

“It’s a new system,” I said. “Squirts concrete out of a hose. Like a fire hose. Then we plaster, and the job is done.”

“And then what?”

“We put the water in while the plaster is still wet. Whole job takes only a few days.”

“How did you happen to get into this business?” She asked.

I told her a little about my back ground. She was an exceedingly good listener, although I found her remarks somewhat conventional and ordinary.

“Where are your people?” she asked, finally.

“They died some years ago. I was an only child.”

“I’m sorry. And your wife?”

“I am a widower.” Hesitating before following her lead, I decided to risk it, caution giving way to curiosity. “How long have you been married?” I asked.

There was a decided pause before she replied. “Three years,” she said. I could see the shadow cross her eyes as she spoke. “Three years,” she said again.

“Makes it sound like thirty, doesn’t she?” Goetz was standing in the doorway, a drink in his bandaged hand, “C’mon, let’s eat.” He moved toward the dining room, his eyes hot and savage as they flicked across his wife’s face.

I turned to wait by the door for her. She was standing in the middle of the room, her dark face placid, only her eyes alive as she watched her husband leave the room. She moved then, as though consciously willing, herself to move.

Ray Goetz stood at the head of the table, the drink already at his place, a maid hovering nervously in the background. He motioned me to a place. “Sit down, Wainwright.” It occurred to me with some interior amusement that this was the fourth time the man had ordered me to a seat. “Have a drink.”

Drinking at the dinner table has always seemed to me to be an abomination.

“Better have one. Part of your contract.” Goetz could not abide a refusal of any request.

The silvery voice of his wife broke into the building tension. “Don’t press it on him, Ray,” she said. “Some people don’t like to drink at dinner.”

“So they don’t,” said Goetz. “So they don’t.” He took a deliberate swallow of his drink. “You know something?” he said. “Mrs. Goetz doesn’t like to drink at dinner either. That is, she doesn’t like for me to drink at dinner. I have a very stylish wife, Mr. Wainright.”

My eyes went from one to the other, searching for a clue to the relationship between them. She was smiling sweetly, her even teeth bright in the candlelight.

“My husband is a drunken pig, Mr. Wainright,” she said, her gentle voice calm as she began her dinner. Goetz rose out of his seat, his face murderous. “Sit down, Ray,” she said. “Eat your soup.”

Force coupled with gentility is power. Mina Goetz had depth, more than Ray Goetz could ever understand. Also I had begun to sense a fact which should have been obvious from the very beginning. Ray Goetz loved his wife, and was rendered desperately helpless by her. She could hurt him, and did several times before the interminable dinner faltered to a close, Goetz glowering and affable by turns, filling his whiskey glass again and again. Mrs. Goetz and I covered up our reaction to his condition with small talk, carefully engineered by my hostess, for whom my admiration continued to grow.

In many respects I found the situation captivating. I’ve always been titillated and intrigued by violence of any kind, and so I found our efforts to keep the conversation going an exciting counterpoint to the unpleasantness of my host and client. It was fatiguing, however, and I felt relieved when we moved to the living room for coffee. For a moment I envied the servants their escape, as I heard their cars going down the drive; then I thought of the days of peace the eight hundred dollar commission for the pool would buy for me. The peace I’d have until the next time, of course. Until the next Goetz stood in my way.

“How are your fingers?” I asked. Goetz, searching for a safe subject of conversation.

“They hurt some.” He waved the glass in his hand. “This stuff makes a good anesthetic.”

“Would you like me to look at them?” Mina asked.

“Let ’em alone. Practice on the poor.”

Goetz went back to his drink. I must have looked questioningly at her.

“I was a nurse once,” she said.

Goetz was weaving over her, his slack mouth gone hard again. “You want to know why I asked him here?”

“Yes,” she said, “if you want to tell me.”

“Wanted you to see what you might have got for yourself,” he said. “Look at him! Fancy clothes. Fancy college. I’ve been pushing him around all day and he hasn’t got the guts to tell me off.”

I’d risen to my feet. The little vein began to throb in my temple, a rhythmic thump, thump, as he went on.

“Looks like me, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he? Except for one thing. He ain’t got two dimes to rub together!” He stood over me, his drunken face a loose sneer. “He stands there taking this — for a commission, for a two-bit commission!”

I could feel his rage now, a pleasant tingle in my fingertips. Aria da Capo, I thought. Song of the end. This is the way. Always, Always...

Mina Goetz’s voice cut into my concentration.

“Ray, stop it,” she said. “Stop it, now!”

“Sure, I’ll stop it! I’ll stop it!” He reached into his coat pocket. “Here’s your contract, pool salesman!” He threw it on the floor. “Take it. Go on, take it. And get out!”

The scene was a tableau for a moment, Mina standing to one side, Goetz raging and dominating the room, my head swirling, swirling. After a moment, I stooped to pick up the contract.

“It’s not signed, Mr. Goetz.” I said, making my voice as calm as possible.

“And it’s not going to be signed, pool salesman.”

I tried again, patiently, the little shocks going through me now, again and again. “You can’t do that, Mr. Goetz. Why, I’ve the signed order from your secretary.”

“My secretary? She’s long gone, Mr. Wainright.” He was spitting my name now. “Nobody but an idiot starts construction without a contract.”

The waves were coming now, rolling up from my feet, slowly, slowly. “Do you mean you’re not signing, Mr. Goetz?”

“Get out,” he told me.

“I’ll pay it, if he doesn’t, Mr. Wainright,” Mina Goetz said.

Goetz turned on her savagely. “No, you won’t baby. I got you tied up. All tied up. You couldn’t buy him a hamburger if he was starving.”

The waves swept over me, calming me, soothing me. I gathered myself again. Goetz was glaring at me. It was wonderful, exhilarating. I faced him for the last time. “Fattura della Morte.” I said. “Fattura della Morte.”

“Get out!” he shouted.

I struck him, solidly, on the chin and mouth, relishing the impact of my fist. He went down, pausing for a moment on all fours, his bloodied mouth working, his eyes insane. It was good to be alive again, focused, feather-light. I struck again as he rose to his feet, a short chopping blow to the solar plexus. He would have been easy, even without the liquor. I stopped his clumsy rush with the cut to the windpipe, tripping him without difficulty, sending him crashing elaborately into the ornate coffee table.

Mina Goetz was holding the door open. “Get out of here,” she said. “Run!”

Our eyes met and held while I shook my head. The room was caught in a static moment of time, unreal, a ballet scored with violence. Careless, I assumed Goetz was unable to continue. I turned just in time to avoid the direct force of his next lunge, his right hand grasped a metal statuette which had rested on the table. For a moment we circled each other, Goetz turned animal, the effects of the liquor lost in fury. He lunged at me again, bringing down the statuette with crushing force on my shoulder, the pain beyond memory, a streak of fire. I struck him again and again with my good left arm, hard, to the face, to the body, trying desperately now for the killing cut to the back of the neck, terribly handicapped by my injured shoulder. I managed the kick to the ulnar nerve area of the arm which forced him to drop the statuette. But he leaped at me again, maddened fingers clawing for my throat. We fell, Goetz’s face a nightmare before my eyes, as I felt the inexorable pressure on my throat. I fought for breath, for vision, still hearing the animal sounds, the endless cursing that poured from his lips. Out of the whirling red haze I could see the man’s wife standing over us, the statuette raised high above her head, saw her bring it down once and then again, Goetz going limp upon me as she did so. I crawled from under him and staggered to my feet. Mina Goetz was looking down at the still form of her husband, her eyes wide, her breath coming in great gulps, the bloody statuette still in her hand.

“I hate him,” she said. “I hate him.”

I leaned over the table, gathering myself again, forcing strength into my exhausted body. When I looked up, the woman was on the floor beside her husband, her hands busy and professional. She held me with her eyes.

“He’s dead,” she said. “I killed him.”

I crossed over to Goetz and turned him over, feeling for a pulse as did so.

“He’s dead,” she said again. “I know.”

“What do we do now?” I asked her.

“Sit down. Rest. Let’s rest first.”

It was a singular moment. I was intrigued by the reaction of the woman. And I was surprised that she had not given the body of her husband a second look after assuring herself that he was dead, that she had made no protestations of sorrow or of concern, that she simply sat, thinking calmly, her long fingers quiet in her lap.

“We must notify the police,” I said.

“We can’t,” she said. “What will you tell them?”

“The truth. What happened.”

She shook her head. “We can’t. I killed him. You killed him. That’s all we can say.”

“We could say it was self defense.”

“They wouldn’t believe it.”

“I suppose not,” I said and, strangely enough, felt amused.

“Bury him,” she said, turning her warm brown eyes on me. “Bury him. In the bottom of the excavation for the pool. Tomorrow they’ll put the concrete in. He’ll never be found.”

“They’d find out,” I said. “Sooner or later they’d find out. They always do.”

“Only in fiction,” she said, and stood up quickly. It were as though she’d come to a decision.

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“The obvious. Take his place.” She was suddenly very animated, pleading. “You look like him. Take his place.”

“It’s impossible.”

“You wanted an opportunity. Take this one. Everything could be yours. Everything. There’d be no trouble about the business. It’s already sold. We were going away as soon as the pool was in. I could close everything out on the phone. Nobody would ever know. Nobody, just you and me.”

“Where would we go? I’ve no money.”

“We were ready to leave. There’s money here. Enough. Tickets — passports — everything.” She came close to me then, talking, talking, the pattern growing. “It’s just your hair really. We could dye it. People don’t notice things closely. It could be ours, all of it, the money, the house, everything. If we report it, we get nothing. Not even the money. Bury him. Take his place. I’ll help you.”

I weighed her statements carefully. I have a certain talent for masquerade, but this one required the coolest logic. It was a chance, a long one, fraught with danger and difficulties, but filled with drama. Perhaps, this swung the scales for me. “You’ll have to help me,” I said.

She was at my side in an instant, her hand on my arm. “I’ll help you. It’ll work. You’ll see.”

My torn coat was left in the living room while we walked to the excavation, my shoulder numb, but less painful, which assured me that there was no serious damage.

“There’s a shovel in the rear of the house,” she said. “The workmen left their tools.”

It was a luminous California night, moonlight flooding the bottom of the hole, turning the ugly excavation into a magic place. The digging was not difficult, the soft earth easily moved aside. Suddenly, I turned to her. “I thought of something else,” I said. “The fingers. He had two injured fingers. People must know about it.”

Her face was elfin in the moonlight. “I’m a nurse,” she said. “I can do it. It was just the tips.” Her lips were avid now, the wet tongue flicking in and out. “I was treating him. I have some novocaine. You won’t feel it.”

“You’re a little mad,” I said to her.

“Perhaps. A little.” She was smiling at me, gently. “It will all be worth it.”

Together, we dragged the limp and bleeding body to the hole, rolling him in face down, covering him carefully, pounding the loose soil into its old contour again, spreading the residue carefully over the bottom of the excavation. I made a last examination while she held the light.

“Now,” she said. “Now we are committed.”

“Yes,” I replied. “We are committed.”

“Come into the kitchen.”

I was reeling with fatigue. “No,” I said. “Not yet.” She was hard, definite, as she led me into the house. “You can sleep afterwards.”

“Can you do it?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

“I was a surgical nurse, a good one,” she answered. “I can do it. Just don’t watch.”

I woke from a drugged sleep hours later, her face a cameo over me, the memory of the night before a collage of wild color and blurred movements. Disoriented, for a few moments I fought reality. There was a deal of pain, my shoulder aching where Goetz had hit me, a number of other miscellaneous contusions making themselves felt. I looked curiously at my hand, suddenly recalling the scene in the kitchen the night before, the hypodermic and the knives, the hospital smell. Now the bandages were evidence that it had all been real.

“Hurry,” Mina Goetz said. “We’ve work to do.” She pointed to a bedroom window. A truck was standing there, two workmen beginning the construction of the steel basket for the pool.

“Will they dig?” she asked.

“No. There’ll be just the steel to put in.”

“How long before the cement man comes?” she asked.

“Four or five hours,” I said, “Maybe more.”

“They’ll expect you to supervise?”

“Only the steel work. The others are specialists.”

“Go out there now. Do your job. For the last time.” She smiled, a little secret smile. “Keep your bandaged hand in your pocket. They mustn’t see it. I’ll have a cup of good, hot coffee for you in the kitchen.”

Dressing was a painful and awkward process, my injured shoulder and hand making it very difficult to shave. She was in the kitchen when I entered, a charming breakfast set out for me. It was the first decent meal I’d had since coming to Three Forks, a pleasant start to an eventful day.

The inspection of the pool proved routine, although I had some difficulty keeping my eyes from returning time and again to the shallow end where the body lay. Fortunately my bandaged fingers began to ache, giving me a point of concentration while the steel workers built the basket for the pool and every now and then walked over the grave.

Mina was beside me when the truck left the house, our indiscretion covered with a net of steel. “It’s almost over, Jonathan. Almost over.” It was the first time she had called me by my given name. “When you go in that door again, you’ll start a new life. You’ll have a new name and a new life.” She stopped me at the door, both her hands on my shoulders. She kissed me, gently, her lips soft against mine. “You’re Ray Goetz now,” she said. “Rich, retired, and married.” Early that afternoon the cement machine started its work, spraying the layers of cement on the skeleton of steel.

“What do they do next?” Mina asked.

“They plaster it in a few days, then fill it with water. Then we may swim, if we wish.”

There are a hundred little things which go to make up the public memory of a man. I listed them as carefully for the Goetz that I was to become as for the Wainright I must erase. Mina was also busy; she dyed my hair, dressed my fingers which hurt abominably, and rummaged through the wardrobe to find clothes to fit me. As Wainright, I made a call to the Argus Pool Company, resigning without notice, taking a pleasant moment to annoy the management with a politely acid criticism of their product. Mina mailed the last of my business correspondence, returning the contract for the pool with a check in full, carefully signed, proving most adept at this minor forgery. (Actually, it is remarkably easy to forge an acceptable signature, if all the related documents are correct.) I had no family within reach, nor did Goetz. This simplified and helped. My furnished room in Los Angeles was canceled by mail, my clothes and personal effects stored through an obliging moving company. Mina dismissed the servants, and I kept out of sight while they grumbled their gratitude for a month’s salary in lieu of notice.

Day in and day out, Mina helped me with my study, patiently pounding in knowledge of Goetz’s background, reading and re-reading the records of his investments and banking affairs which she produced from the desk in the study. It was really a surprisingly simple chore. Goetz had arranged all his affairs for retirement and, inasmuch as his investments were for the most part in real property, there did not seem to be any difficulties which could not be surmounted. There were no visitors, except an occasional deliveryman, each of whose services, Mina stopped as of that date. Gradually, the personality and background of Goetz became clear to me, the cloak more easily worn, the part I was playing as definite as an actor’s role and as easily assumed.

The first test of my ability came on Monday of the second week, when I appeared at the local bank to deposit several routine checks received in the mail. People are essentially unobservant, and providing that the pattern of a personality is not changed or violated, a masquerade such as the one in which I was engaged is practical and possible. I did ordinary things, on several subsequent visits to town, progressing from one small public chore to another slowly and easily, grafting the idea of the new Ray Goetz over the town’s idea of the old, and by the middle of the third week had genuinely begun to enjoy my new existence, spiced as it was with danger, and made whole by the comfort and pleasure I had begun to take in Mina.

We had scheduled our departure for the end of the third week, feeling that we had sufficiently planted the idea that Goetz was still alive. (I took extraordinary pleasure in bathing in the pool, a cosmic jest which Mina did not appreciate.) It was a gracious period of my life, filled with music and laughter and the promise of better things to come. We prepared for our trip with care, first the careful scheduling of trains (I am nervous about flying), then the delightful chore of arranging the stops for our Grand Tour, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen.

Perhaps the peak of my enjoyment of this adventure came on our departure night, when we sat in the living room, a staid, wealthy American couple about to take a year’s vacation. I thought then of the rare pattern of the past few days, the odd and interesting beginning, the exciting climax, the wonderfully managed but uncontrived ending which somehow still remained too simple — and unsatisfactory from a dramatic viewpoint. As we sat and waited for the taxi to take us to the station it amused me to think of other endings I might contrive. I thought of Wainright, the man I had destroyed, and of Goetz, the man I had become, and how easy it would be for me to slip back into the character of Wainright again, picking up the threads of his life where it had stopped only three weeks before. To do so I would have to remove Mina, a simple matter in her present absurd and childish state of trust. A scarf properly applied, the body left in the bedroom, and the authorities on a merry chase for the absent but nonexistent husband — a wonderfully baffling puzzle. But there was the matter of my fingers, and above all the vast quantity of wealth which I was enjoying. It was an impractical idea, the contemplation of which ceased with the ringing of the doorbell announcing the arrival of the cab.

I smiled at Mina and opened the door to find two men on the porch, the first of them performing that idiotic and theatrical gesture of all police officers, showing me a metal badge, mumbling the usual formula. Mina was standing by the bags, her face a living question. I believe I carried the opening conversation off splendidly, seating them, offering them a drink.

“I’m Ray Goetz,” I said. “This is my wife, Mina. What can we do for you?”

“I see you are leaving, Mr. Goetz,” the tall one said. “We’ll be brief. Sorry to bother you.”

“Please go ahead,” I said. “We have allowed a little extra time.”

“We are looking for a Mr. Jonathan Wainright,” the tall man said.

“He’s not here,” I told him. “That is the name of the gentleman who came to put the pool in for us three weeks ago.”

“When did he leave here?” the tall man asked.

“On Friday, June 26th, as I remember,” I said, hesitating appropriately.

“Do you remember the time?”

“About five o’clock in the afternoon. I remember, because I took him to town. The clock on the bank read five twenty-five as I dropped him off at the bowling alley.”

“Why there?” said the tall one.

“He said he left his car there.” (I could only bemoan my stupidity. But it had seemed perfectly safe to leave the Wainright car in the bowling alley parking lot, adding one more bizarre note to the disappearance of Jonathan Wainright, but I had forgotten that abominable counter man, whose memory of a stranger was the undoubted cause of this visit from the minions of the law.)

“Has something happened?” Mina asked.

“Just a routine disappearance, Mrs. Goetz. The car is still there. At the bowling alley. He never picked it up. Did he say anything to you that might indicate where he was going?”

They were being professionally casual. “No,” I replied. “He finished his supervisory job and left. I assumed he was going back to Los Angeles.”

“Why did he leave his car in town?”

“He met me at the office. I asked him to dine with us and saw no reason why we should take two cars. He stayed here over night, supervised the construction of the pool, then left.”

“Why did he stay here?”

“He was a pleasant enough fellow. We had a spare guest room.”

“We’re not questioning your motives, Mr. Goetz, just trying to get a little information. How did you get back to town?”

“In my car. Down the Country Club Road.” I felt secure now, the danger averted.

“What time was that?” The tall one was doing the talking, while his shorter companion was busy with his notes.

“We left at five o’clock.”

“You’re sure of the time?”

“Quite sure. I remember checking my watch.”

“You left here at five o’clock on Friday, arriving at the parking lot at what time?”

“Five twenty-five, by my watch.”

“We are trying to pinpoint the time as precisely as possible.”

“The clock on the bank read five thirty as I went by on my way back here.”

“You returned the same way?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure of the time, Mr. Goetz?”

“Positive.”

They rose to leave. The tall one looked at me for a moment, casually. “Mr. Goetz.”

“Yes.”

“What did Wainright look like?”

“Rather like me, I thought.”

“Yeah. We saw the picture.”

They were both, eyeing me now. “Would it be possible for you to take a later train?”

“Inconvenient, but possible.” I was superb. “Why?”

“We would like you to come to the station and write out a statement.”

“You are insisting?”

“Might as well tell you. It’s kind of important we find that fellow Wainright.”

“Is there something you haven’t told us?” Mina asked.

The tall officer stopped to hold the door for me. “Yeah, Mrs. Goetz. Two things.” I savored the pulsing feel of the room while Mina waited for her answer. “Wainright’s a pathological killer. We have three fugitive warrants for him.”

Mina, her eyes wide, looked from me to the officer. She was never more beautiful.

“Who did he kill?” she said, the words choking their way out of her throat.

“His wife, among others. Real name is Keeler — Jonathan Keeler. Sometimes he tags the name Wainright onto that.”

Mina was rigid, her hands shaking, her face turned up to mine like a flower in the sun, searching, searching. I smiled at her.

“You said there were two things,” she said.

The short officer answered this time. “Yes, Ma’am, there is another problem. We’d like Mr. Goetz to explain how he got to the bowling alley with Wainright that Friday at five o’clock on the Country Club Road.”

“I’ve already explained it,” I said.

“Not well enough, Mr. Goetz. There was a truck overturned on that road that Friday. Big, trailer truck. Had the road blocked from three to six.”

Mina was past speech as I turned at the door.

“Good night, Mina,” I said.

I shall always remember her face, as the complex web of circumstances drew tight around her. Fascinating, really fascinating.

My own position was ridiculous to say the least. They were polite enough to me when they took me to the station, even apologizing for the necessity of taking my finger prints, then maintaining the tradition of all police departments, keeping at me and at me, repeating in a hundred ways the same dull questions, over and over, annoying me to a point of distraction. I am not a patient man, nevertheless I bore this endless repetition for nearly two hours, feeling a sense of relief when at long last I asked for and received the proper equipment to write this account, which I have done as carefully and accurately as my recollection would permit.

I am somewhat regretful about making further difficulties for Mina Goetz, but after all the whole thing was her idea.

Signed,

Jonathan Keeler