Bedside Murder

Chapter V

In a way, that one little thing frightened me more than even the shot that had knocked me sprawling off the steps. Remembering the fall, I noticed that I was getting stiff and sore.

The living room, which had always seemed so cheery, had clots of dark shadow in the corners. We heard the distant murmur of the voices of Kim and Baldy. Once, Betty shuddered. She crossed over and sat on the arm of my chair. We held hands like a couple of frightened schoolgirls. In a low voice, I told her of the two attempts she knew nothing about. She held my hand even tighter. Her plump fingers were cold.

In fifteen minutes they came back to the living room. Kim had a smudge of dirt across one cheek. Both men looked relieved.

“No fiendish devices, no infernal machines,” Baldy said. He sat down and picked up his glass. “As far as the window is concerned, I don’t think it can be opened from the outside. My guess is that it wasn’t completely latched. There’s a catch on each side, just above the ventilator. If only one of them was unlatched, it would give a man a chance to edge up one side and slip a knife blade through to disengage the other catch. They’re both latched now. And we’ve been over every square inch of that room.”

“If nothing was disturbed, why was the window opened?” I asked.

“My guess,” Kim said, “is that they were in there when Betty arrived and didn’t have a chance to finish what they had started.”

Betty gasped again. “When I heard that noise, I thought it was the wind blowing the curtains. You mean—”

Baldy patted her shoulder. “They’re gone now, lambie. Don’t keel over. You’re a big girl now.”

The color came back into her round cheeks and she smiled shyly at Baldy.

Kim walked over and up the steps to the door. He examined the sliding bolt and chain of ornamental brass, tugged at the chain.

“Strong enough,” he said.

“How do we work this?” I asked.

Kim sauntered down into the room, his hands in his pockets. “How about this? We’ll shove off now and wait in the hall until you kids get the chain across the door. Either Baldy or I will be back early in the morning. In the meantime, don’t open the door for any reason at all. Don’t leave this room unless the building starts to burn down. Understand?”

Betty and I nodded in unison. He pulled a fiat automatic out of the side pocket of his suit coat and handed it to me, the muzzle pointing at the ceiling. He sat down beside me.

“This little thing here—” he began.

“—is the safety catch,” I said. “And the clip holds eight and the gun is a basic Browning patent.”

Kim gave me a look of complete disgust. “Showoff!” he said.

Betty and I walked them to the door. Baldy muttered something to Betty and she went out into the hall with him, closing the door behind them.

“Pause for refreshment,” Kim said, leaning back against the wrought iron railing, his face moody. I looked at him with narrowed eyes. I began to tap my foot.

“At least you should make me say no,” I said.

At that moment the door swung open and Betty came in, a canary-well-swallowed look on her face. Kim left without a word. I slammed the door and locked it.

“He’s nice,” Betty said dreamily.

“At least he’s cooperative,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, go to bed!”

“Why, Hank honey! You don’t mean that after brushing off half the loose dough in New York, you’d get swooney over a two-bit lawyer?”

“Go to bed!”

She giggled and I walked off and slammed my bedroom door. After I had climbed in and after the lights were out, she tapped on my door.

“Come on in,” I said. “I’m not asleep yet.”

She was in her powder blue robe. I saw the hall light shine on it just before she closed my door. The bed creaked as she sat on the edge of it.

“Are you mad because I kidded you?” she asked.

“For heavens sake, Betty! Of course not! I was just mad at Kim. I thought when you went into the hall with Baldy, he’d try to kiss me. I was all braced to give him a polite no thank you. I must be slipping. His nice brown eyes don’t glaze any more when he looks at me. He looks at me like a scientist inspecting a bug.”

“Maybe he’s worried about you.”

“I hope that’s it. Or else my best friends better start telling me.”

We sat without speaking for a time. Though I ached with weariness and the reaction from shock, I wasn’t sleepy. I guessed that Betty felt the same way. I heard the far-off blare of a tug in the harbor, the soft sound of tires when a car went by. Around us were millions of people. A certain percentage would die during the night or the next day.

There’s nothing like wondering if you’re going to die to help you do a little evaluation of your place in society. I thought of myself in some bright little kitchen in some bright little house. Maybe if Mother and Dad hadn’t died I’d be in one of those bright kitchens. Maybe I’d have a kid. The husband would be a cop, maybe. A tall guy. A nice guy. I could almost see him. For some dopey reason, he wore Kim’s face.

Suddenly I was homesick for the old neighborhood, the old way of life. Running up the stairs two at a time after school. The cooking smell in the hallway of the flat. The noise of kids at play out in the summer dusk.

I wanted to cry.

To keep myself from crying, I started to talk about the people who had been in that neighborhood. I talked about the old times.

Betty and I had done a little reminiscing in the past. Not much. We’d never had time to do much.

“Remember,” I said softly, “the time that Hubey Goekner was trying to figure out what was going on in that pianobox in back of the grill and fell off the roof on top of it.”

“Um hmm,” she said.

I tried to remember who had been in that pianobox. Suddenly I remembered that it was fat little Betty Lafferty. I blushed in the darkness. She would certainly remember that day. She and Skin Mosher had been in there together, hiding from the rest of us. That was just before her family had moved away, taking her along.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said.

“Why not?” she asked, innocently.

“Well, I guess you had sort of a crush on Mosher.” I remembered that Hubey had fallen feet first, busting the boards on top of the pianobox. One of the boards had smacked Betty on the top of the head. She was a kid that I had never played with much. I guess the time I saw her with the blood running out of her reddish hair was the first time I had ever really noticed her.

“Could be,” she said.

“What did your folks say when you got home?” I asked.

“They never found out about it,” she said, a giggle in her voice.

I frowned in the darkness. That was strange. I remembered that her father had walked her down to the doctor’s, with her crying every step of the way. It wasn’t possible that Betty had forgotten. You never forget the major catastrophes of childhood. Of course, the major catastrophe had come a week later when the truck had run over Mosher and killed him.

“I wonder what ever became of Skin Mosher?” I said casually. I remembered that little eleven year old Betty Lafferty had gone to the funeral two days before she had moved away.

“Gosh, I don’t know,” Betty said.

It was getting stranger and stranger.

“Remember the time when you were sitting behind Carol Jorgasen and cut off her braids with the teacher’s shears?” I said softly. I had never heard of anyone named Carol Jorgasen, and to my knowledge Betty Lafferty never cut off anyone’s braids.

“I sure do,” she said. “I caught the devil for that.” She yawned and stretched. “Guess I better get back to my bed, Hank. Sweet dreams.”

I waited until she crossed the room, put her hand on the knob. Then I spoke up in a tight, strained voice.

“Just exactly who are you? You aren’t Betty Lafferty.”

I could have counted slowly to ten before she answered.

“What kind of a joke is this, Hank?” she laughed and said.

“It isn’t a joke. Who are you?”

As she walked back toward the bed, I reached up and clicked on the bed lamp. There was no expression on her usually cheerful face. She sat on the bed again, even though somehow I didn’t want her so close.

“I needed a job,” she said. “I wanted to work for somebody like you. I went to your old neighborhood and talked to the people who are still there that knew you. I wanted to pretend that I was from the same section. It would give me a chance to talk to you. By accident I found out about Betty Lafferty. She moved away when she was eleven and you were thirteen. She was killed in England during the war. I memorized a lot of stuff and came to see you and told you I was Betty Lafferty. It worked. Is there anything wrong with that?”

I wanted to be fair. “You could have told me of your own accord, Betty, or whatever your name is,” I said. “You knew a month after you came with me that I was satisfied and that I would have kept you on and probably laughed at the trick you played on me. Why did you wait so long? You came to work for me six months ago.”

Her face looked doughy, the eyes lifeless and dull. “I would have come to you much sooner, Miss Ryan. It took a little time to find you, you know. Your press releases call you Laura Lynn. I suppose you were trying to hide behind that name.”

“What do you mean?”

“I suppose you didn’t want to be known as Henrietta Ryan, after what happened. I didn’t get to you soon enough, you know. I didn’t have the money to follow you to Chicago.” Her voice was as lifeless as her face.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I didn’t want to tell you to your face. But I might as well. It doesn’t make any difference, I suppose. I wanted it to be quick.”

“You wanted what to be quick?” The fear was like something black and velvety that was slowly beginning to fill my throat.

“My name is Carla Planck. Ever hear of George Planck?” Her lips pulled back from her teeth in an odd grin.

I had heard of the name, somewhere. I repeated it softly. George Planck. Of course! George Planck was one of those fur robbers. George Planck was the one that died two hours before Dad did.

Betty saw by my face that I remembered.

“He was my brother,” she said softly. “I thought about it for a long time. George would never do that sort of thing. I was his kid sister. I was by his bed when he died. He told me before he died that he was trying to help your father catch some thieves and your father shot him.”

I tried to laugh. “He was trying to make you feel good. His prints were all over the gun he killed my father with.”

She didn’t pay any attention. “I was glad your father died. But it wasn’t enough. The police department told your mother he was a hero. She believed it. I prayed for her to die too. Then I stopped praying and I followed her wherever she went. One day I was behind her at the edge of a subway platform. Nobody would think that a little fat fourteen year old girl would do what I did. That’s how I got away with it. She screamed as she fell.”

I knew then that Carla Planck was completely mad. Her mouth twitched. Her fingers constantly curled and uncurled.

“By the time I came after you, you were gone. Part of your father lives in you, you know. You have no right to live. For nine years I’ve been waiting to kill you, Miss Ryan.”

I wanted her to keep talking. I was afraid of what would happen when she stopped.

“Why didn’t you do it when you first came to work for me?” I asked quickly.

“Because I’d be suspected. I want to go on living. After you die, I can begin to live.”

“But if you kill me in a locked apartment, they’ll get you for it.”

“Not if I open the window afterward, they won’t.” She smiled proudly. “Those two men think the window was opened once. I planted that in their minds. You have to be clever to kill. I know how to be clever.”

It was as though she wanted me to approve of her cleverness, to tell her that she was a bright kid. The gun Kim had given me was over on the bureau, a thousand miles away.

“How do you intend to do it?” I asked.

She looked at me with the dull blue eyes. “I guess I better strangle you.”

The fat hands reached suddenly for my throat. I hit her in the face with all my strength and screamed as I rolled toward the wall. I had hopes of being able to get away from her, but then her fat fingers closed on my wrist. She had the horrid, unbelievable strength of madness. I cried out with the pain, and tried to lift her and lower my head so I could bite her.

The other fat hand closed on my throat, and the world became a slowly swirling pool of darkness. A mile away glass tinkled thinly.

Then I could breathe. There was a hoarse shout, a loud explosion and a scream. It was a funny scream. It was as though somebody had stuck their head out of a moving car and screamed. It seemed to be carried away so suddenly. It ended in a squashy noise.

Somebody was close to me, breathing hard. I felt the faint touch of his breath. I wanted to tell him that it was a wonderful thing to be able to breathe and did they appreciate it?

And suddenly I was kissed. And that, in its way, was just as nice as breathing. So, to make certain that it would last an adequate length of time, I put my arms up and around the neck of someone who obviously had a neck built for the sole purpose of putting arms around.

The lips went away.

“Faker,” Kim said softly.

I looked up into his brown eyes. The wonderful glaze was there and I decided that I would become a specialist.

I would spend the best years of my life plotting exactly how to put that glaze there and how to keep it there.

Suddenly I remembered. I sat up and tried to ask a question. My voice didn’t work the first few times. Then I asked it. Kim sat on the edge of the bed.

“Baldy’s phoning your policeman friend, Dan. I had the silly idea that I could trap your visitor by hiding on the roof where I could watch the fire escape platform outside this window. I was up there when you screamed. I made good time coming down. I kicked the window out and came through. She let go of you and raced for the gun. She got there first. I knocked it out of her hand as she fired it at me. She missed. When I went after it, she went toward the window. She might have been all right except that I was waiting on the roof with a piece of pipe I picked out of the trash in front of this place. I left the pipe on the fire escape. She must have stepped on it.”

I shuddered. I clung to him, looking through tear-misted eyes toward the bedroom door.

Baldy appeared in the door, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. He looked wryly at us. “People, you are looking at a guy with a defective judgment of the fair sex,” he said.

Kim’s voice was muffled by my hair. “Go out into the living room and sit down and maybe I’ll come and look at you,” he said. “I can’t right now.”

Baldy left.

Kim kissed me. “You make so much more money than I do, darling.”

“You shouldn’t let a thing like that bother you,” I answered softly.

He held me at arm’s length. “Bother me! Honey, I was just gloating.”

At that moment Dan knocked on the apartment door. Through the broken window I could hear heavy feet and low voices in the alley. The end of fear. Be gay, Hank. Be ready with the quick retort, the bright-colored, billboard charm.

I wanted to say something to Kim that was deep and warm and real and honest. But all I could do was grin like a happy fool.