No Doors, No Windows

Fourteen: Ormond Always Pays His Bills

It was, perhaps, that Hervey Ormond had been a criminal for ten years. And when a man has been a criminal for that long — concealing it as well as Hervey Ormond — the first person to cry “Thief!” at him may well meet with misfortune.

Hervey Ormond shot his secretary three times.

Eleanor Lombarda was not a beautiful girl, a fact so obvious it had caused wonder among the more inquisitive residents of Chambersville. Wonder as to why Ormond — who was known to like his women full and fawning — had hired her. More, they wondered why he had kept her on for six years. Eleanor had been preceded by a string of comely girls, few of whom could actually take shorthand, or find the business end of a dictaphone. So it was with wonder that the residents of Chambersville saw the too-thin, too-nervous girl with the too-red face establish herself in the office of the Ormond Construction Company as Hervey Ormond’s personal secretary — for six years.

They might have been surprised to know that the reason for her stranglehold on the position was simply that she did a marvelous job. She was industrious, interested in the work and kept things in top-drawer shape. She always knew what was going on, precisely.

That was another reason why Hervey Ormond shot her three times.

“I found the reports,” Eleanor said, her face white in the glare of the lone desk lamp. For the first time in her life her face was not florid but a pale and unhealthy white.

“Yes,” Ormond said slowly, thoughtfully, closing the office door, “I know you did.”

He had returned for the dossier left behind that afternoon. He had returned abruptly and without warning, at midnight, to find Eleanor leafing through his hidden file.

Eleanor’s voice was nervously firm. “You aren’t paying me enough, Mr. Ormond. I want a raise … a big raise.”

Hervey Ormond was a fat little man. No more fitting description could be summoned up than that. He was a fat little man, almost the caricature of a butterball. Round of face and form, with rosy cheeks, little squinting eyes of gray paste, execrable taste in clothes and unsavory breath.

Luckily, it had not been his personal appearance that had made him his fortune. Perspicacity and a certain ruthlessness in business had done that.

That ruthlessness was now needed; much as he appreciated Eleanor’s sterling qualities around the office, she was tinkering with a long prison term for him as she riffled the papers.

“How did you get the drawer open?” he asked quietly, ignoring her demand for more money.

“The lock sprung,” she answered, a faint blush rising up from her long neck. It was this expanse of neck that had kept Ormond from making advances to her during the entire six years of their relationship. She had an exceedingly long neck and did not have the sense to wear necklaces or high-collared dresses to remove the exaggeration.

Ormond stared down at the desk drawer momentarily. It had been forced. The blade of her letter opener was bent.

“You were snooping,” he said.

“I want that raise Mr. Ormond,” she persisted. “I don’t see any reason to beat about the bush; I want three hundred dollars a week, and I only want to work three days each week.”

She seemed uncomfortable making demands, but she was firm. They were outrageous demands, but she made them firmly and quickly, as though plunging through with an unpleasant duty.

Ormond continued to ignore her requests. “What made you think there was anything in that drawer, Eleanor?”

She fumbled for a second with one of the stacks of notated papers, sliding them back into a three-ring notebook, snapping the clasps shut.

She didn’t answer.

“Why did you go snooping, Eleanor? Haven’t we been friends for a long time? Haven’t I paid you well?” His voice was one of confusion. His tones remained on one level, not angry and certainly not vindictive. Merely inquiring, as though trying to establish some pattern here.

Her head lifted, and she assumed a defiant tone. “There have been some large discrepancies in the material orders. I’ve been noticing it for some time.

“Why, you’ve been using inferior materials on all those state road constructions! You’ve been cutting requisition quality for ten years! They could put you in prison for twenty …”

It was at this point that Eleanor Lombarda received her three bullets.

Night surrounded the office building of the Ormond Construction Company. It stood two stories high in a tract of carefully clipped lawn, on the highway outside Chambersville. As the night came down, the crickets of Chambersville tuned themselves raspingly and waited for their baritone accompanists, the frogs, to arrive.

In the office, Hervey Ormond sat slumped in his desk chair, turned away from the desk itself. He slumped over so he could watch the body on the floor. Remarkably enough, in spite of everything he had ever believed, there had been very little blood.

Eleanor Lombarda lay twisted in the dim yellow egg-shape of light cast by the desk lamp. Her auburn hair had fanned out against the unpolished floorboards, and she seemed, in death, all the more unattractive.

“An unpleasant person,” Ormond murmured to himself, lowering his perfectly round chin into his cupped hand. “Just perfectly unpleasant.

“You work with a person, you sweat with her, you give her good money and she turns against you.

“It just doesn’t seem fair, that’s all. Just doesn’t seem fair.” Then he added as a tentative afterthought, “She was a fine secretary, though. Just fine. But an unpleasant person.”

Then his thoughts sank darkly. This was nothing circumspect like providing short shrift on building materials. This was not cutting the quality of goods so the kickback would be fatter. This was — and he hesitated to use the word in so close a juxtaposition to himself — murder.

Oh, my God, I’ve killed her! he thought, an agonized grimace briefly masking his loose features. I’ve killed the girl. I never, oh I never would have wanted to do that. No one would believe me — if I told them I’d lost my head. They all say that, I imagine. Oh, good Lord, this is terrible! She’s lying there in the middle of my floor, and I’m just sitting here, looking at her. I’ll “have to do something,” he finished, aloud.

But what could he do? Ormond swung idly back and around in the swivel chair, as though seeking some direction that led out. When the big wall clock, donated by Prester’s Jewelry Store at the office’s opening, struck three o’clock, Hervey Ormond was no farther than before.

It had been different, a different thing when the State Investigating Committee had come. They had gone over his books, found them satisfactory and been quite pleasant about everything.

The roads had buckled and warped, fallen apart at the shoulders and split at the points of most wear, but as Ormond had told Senator Frankenson and the other distinguished visitors, “There’s been some pretty heavy and unusual weather in this state recently, gentlemen. You might not be aware of that in Washington, and it’s certainly no slur against you or your attentiveness to the local situation — your place is at the seat of our great government, naturally — but it’s something we’re all too aware of, around here.

“With an that, and these new fuels they’re using that eat into the very molecular structure of roadbeds these days, well …”

He had left it hanging as his hands hung outstretched. A man who had done his job despite the vagaries of Man and Environment.

The committee had left.

There had been a substantial amount deposited to Senator Frankenson’s personal account — under the listing “campaign fund donations” — that next week.

Hervey Ormond always paid his bill promptly.

And this bill, too, had been paid. After six years it had been stamped, sealed and spindled — as Eleanor Lombarda lay silently on the floor of his office.

The clock had passed the 4:15 position, and suddenly, abruptly, as though the idea had been perching there on his knee, sucking ruminatively at his consciousness, Ormond knew how he would get rid of his ex-secretary.

It was the work of ten minutes to get the cement mixings from the shed behind the building, mix the gloppy mess and lay Eleanor in it.

He stood by, leaning against a tree, watching her harden into the mass. When it was sufficiently dry, he would take her out, dump her on the grass — he imagined it would be quite heavy so he stripped off his jacket, hanging it on a low branch — and let her finish hardening completely.

Then he would put her in the trunk of the car, cover her with a brick tarpaulin, and drive up to Round Schooner Lake.

He would tell everyone that Eleanor had been forced to visit sick relatives in Omaha. She had no one close here in town, and it was obvious a girl of her exceeding unattractiveness could not have a lover, so the ruse could very easily succeed.

With a little patience and a great deal of reserve, he was certain this bill would stay paid — and, happily, no rebates would be forthcoming.

He smiled, and listened to the crickets welcoming their baritone accompanists.

The drive to Round Schooner was quiet and pleasant.

The state troopers were, also; and they looked alike, of course. They were faceless and looked alike. Had one been two-headed with purple warty skin and wearing tie and tails, and the other a six-armed and gelatinous mass of mold, they would have looked alike to Hervey Ormond.

They were whipcord, impartial, disinterested Furies. They had come for him, and they meant to take him away. His State prescribed the electric chair; and though he had a great and abiding fear of personal extinction, he had an even greater fear of closed-in places. His State had its appeal for reinstatement of the death penalty in the courts. At the moment, his State prescribed nothing but years in closed-in places.

“All right, Mr. Ormond, get your hat. Let’s go.”

They walked him down the steps of the building, while the entire office staff watched. They hustled him heavily into the patrol car, and tooled it out the winding drive, onto the highway.

They sped toward the state police station five miles away, and beside Ormond in the back seat, the faceless police officer had decided to be clever.

“She came to the surface this morning … spotted by some kids fishing, Ormond.”

The fat little man clung to the car strap, silently watching the lines of houses and fir nurseries flit by.

And I’ve always been so good about paying my bills on time.

“Your big mistake.” the trooper said, with a grin, “was using your own cement. You should know that much sand don’t hold together.”