The Good Old Stuff

Death Writes the Answer (aka This One Will Kill You)

He held the magazine up as though he were still reading it, but he watched her across the top of it, ready to drop his eyes to the story again should she look up.

For the moment the excitement, the carefully concealed anticipation, of the past month faded, and he wondered, quite blankly, why he was going to kill his wife. Myra had no major faults. In the eight years of their marriage, they had had no serious quarrels.

Peter Kallon looked across the small one-room apartment at her, and slowly the dislike and the determination built up again in equal quantity. It had started about six months before, and then it was only an intellectual game. How would a man kill his wife without fear of discovery? And, in the midst of the game, he had looked at Myra with the cold objectivity of a stranger and found that the eight years had changed her.

Eight years had thickened her figure, put a roll of soft tissue under her chin, but the years had done nothing to alter that basic untidiness which he had once found so charming.

Peter Kallon was a very tidy man. By day he entered neat columns of figures on pale yellow work sheets. His linen was always fresh, his razor in the exact same spot on the bathroom shelf, trees inserted in his shoes each night.

But Myra, even though childless, seemed to find it impossible to handle the housekeeping details of an efficiency apartment with its minuscule bath, cubbyhole kitchen, Murphy bed. Eight years of litter had worn away his quite impressive patience with the monotony of water dripping on sandstone.

The thought of being a widower was quite engaging. Peter Kallon had a passion for puzzles. Crosswords, cryptograms, contests. He attacked all with equal dry ardor. Murder became a puzzle.

And a month ago he had arrived at the final detailed answer.

He looked across at her. A strand of graying brown hair hung down her cheek. She sat with one leg tucked under her, an unlaced shoe on the swinging foot. She was reading a novel, and as she came to the end of each page she licked the middle finger of her right hand before turning the next page. That little habit annoyed him. Long ago he had given up trying to read any book Myra had finished.

It would be such a pity to have the answer and not put it into effect.

Lately he had been looking at the young girls on the street and in the office. There was the clean line of youth about them.

Myra set the book aside, smiled over to him, and scuffed her way into the kitchenette. He heard her fill a glass with water from the faucet, heard the small familiar sound she made in her throat as she drank. He knew that as she came back into the room she would be wiping her mouth with the back of her right hand. She was.

It would never do, he thought, to say, “Myra, I’m tired of being married.” Poor Myra. She would never be able to support herself. That would mean quite a drain on him, supporting two establishments. No. Murder would be tidy. Myra could die without knowing that he had grown to hate her and her ways with all the dry passion of a careful, fastidious man.

She turned on the transistor radio, spun the dial to a station. Myra continued to read.

“You’ve got two stations there,” he said.

She cocked her head on one side, listening. “But you can hardly hear that other one.”

He came angrily across the room and reset the dial. She never did anything crisply and purposefully. Never on time, never able to move fast.

Most murders were too hasty. The motive was too clear. Their few friends would never suspect him of having a motive to kill Myra. He knew that their friends considered them beautifully adjusted.

When murders weren’t too hasty, they were too contrived, too full of details that the murderer was incapable of handling neatly.

The perfect murder, he had decided, could be quite detailed, if the details were handled by a man competent to do so. A man like Peter Kallon. He was the sort of man that no one had ever called Pete. Not even his mother or his sister.

He looked over at her again and saw that the book had sagged down onto her heavy thigh. Her head was tilted over onto her shoulder and she breathed audibly through her open mouth. Each night they stayed home it was the same. She would expect him to awaken her when he was ready to go to bed. Now there was no need to discipline his expression. While she slept he could look at her with all the naked, helpless fury at his command.

In that moment he made up his mind, finally and completely, with no possibility of changing it. Peter Kallon decided to make himself a widower and put into effect the plan he had worked out.

Friday he made her write the note.

He sat at the small desk, scribbling. He made frequent grunts of disgust, crumpling what he had written. She asked him what the trouble was.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said impatiently.

He wrote for a long time, then said irritably, “The hell with it,” crumpling what he had written.

“What is the trouble, darling?” she asked.

“Maybe you could help me. You see, I’ve got one account, a garage, that’s giving me a bad time. The man won’t keep the books the way I tell him to. We’ve quarreled about it. I’m trying to write a letter to him, but I can’t seem to get it right. If I could dictate it to you and you wrote it down... I always think better on my feet somehow.”

“Of course, darling,” she said.

He laid out a fresh sheet of her notepaper and put his fountain pen beside it. She took his place at the small desk.

“What’s his name?”

“Don’t bother with that, Myra. I’ll copy it over. Let me see now. First paragraph. ‘You know how hard I’ve tried to make everything work out. But there is no use trying any more.’ New paragraph. ‘Please don’t condemn me too much for taking this step. I am certain that you will be happier in the future because of it.’ There! That ought to do it.”

He leaned over her shoulder and read the words she had written in her childish scrawl. The words, as usual, slanted uphill to the right edge of the paper.

“Like that pen?” he asked casually. There was the coldness of sweat against his ribs.

“I like a heavier point,” she said. “You know that.”

“Just a habit. A fine point makes better-looking writing. Here, sign your name on that sheet. For my file.”

She obediently wrote “Myra.” He took the pen from her hand before she could write the last name. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me look at this. I think you were bearing down too hard on it.” He examined the point, holding it under the lamplight. “Get up a minute, dear. I want to try it.”

He sat down and wrote on another sheet.

“No, I guess it’s okay. Thanks, dear. I’ll recopy this letter and send it to the man. I think it’ll be all right.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. For a long time he did not risk looking at her. When he did he saw that she was engrossed in the novel again, without suspicion. Just to be certain, he copied the letter, using the actual name of one of his clients, making the contents a bit more businesslike. He showed it to her. She said that she guessed it sounded all right.

After she had fallen asleep he read the note over. Finger-prints on it were quite all right. He would just make certain that he found the note first.

A bit stilted, perhaps, but the intent was unmistakable. It was on her gray monogrammed notepaper. He put it with his business papers, knowing that she never looked at them. He wanted to take a long walk to get the tension out of him. But that might look a bit odd, and his plan didn’t call for it.

Instead he took out the manila folder containing the contest puzzles he was currently working on. Within fifteen minutes he was so deeply engrossed in the puzzle that he had actually forgotten his plan. The deadline of this one was near. It was a puzzle that assigned numerical values to letters of the alphabet, and the object was to fill out a grid with words in such a way that the highest possible total was reached.

At midnight he put his solution into the envelope and addressed it. Myra awakened by herself, yawned, and smiled sleepily at him. Trusting Myra! For a moment his resolve was weakened by pity. He thought of the envelope in his hand. The first prize was fifty thousand dollars. With fifty thousand dollars, life could be made bearable, even with Myra. Money would buy a certain amount of liberty from the married state.

But, as a winner of many very small prizes, he knew how remote his chances were.

He smiled back at her and they went to bed.

On Saturday afternoon he had, as he expected, an hour alone in the apartment. It was a ground-floor apartment in the back of the building, the windows half shadowed by cedars. That was a necessary part of the plan. He took the fishline from the closet shelf, cut off a ten-foot length and tied a loop in the end, made a slipknot. The windows were of the sort with a permanent screen, and they could be opened or closed by inside cranks. Each movement had been planned. The handles on the small gas stove pointed straight down. They turned in the right direction for his purposes. He slipped the noose over one handle, pulled it tight, ran the other end of the string to the window, and poked it through one of the meshes of the screen. The window was open a few inches. Then, carrying a screwdriver for the sake of appearances, he went outside and around the building to the window. He found the end of the string, pulled it slowly and firmly. It gave slightly and then came free. He pulled it all the way out through the mesh, forcing the knot through, then pushed firmly against the window. As he had expected, the crank made a half turn and closed.

He hurried back into the apartment and found that the kitchenette was filled with the stink of gas. The burner, unlighted, was on full. He turned it off, opened the window to air the place.

The stove had four burners. He made three more lengths of string with slipknots at the end, knots that would slip off when the handles pointed directly at the window. He put the four lengths of string on the closet shelf.

When Myra returned from the store, he was working on a new puzzle which had just come out.

That was on Saturday. He gave himself Sunday as a breathing space and began the second part of the campaign. Myra was a person who needed a great deal of sleep. Peter decided to see that she would become starved for sleep.

Monday night he talked her into a late movie. After they got back to the apartment he talked long and animatedly about the picture they had seen, ignoring her yawns and sighs. They were in bed by two thirty. He set the alarm for seven and saw that she got up when he did. On Tuesday he phoned four times during the day, knowing from the drugged sound of her voice that he was awakening her each time. Tuesday night he took her out to dinner and then to another movie. He watched her in the movie and awakened her the two times she fell asleep. He insisted on seeing part of the picture over and afterward invented an excuse to call on friends.

They were in bed by midnight, but Peter lay in the darkness for a time and then awakened her to tell her that he was ill. Her concern for him kept her from getting very much sleep that night. And on Wednesday morning Peter phoned the office and said that he was not well. He demanded copious attention all through the day. Myra cared for him and dragged about with the drugged look of a sleepwalker.

It was hard for him to conceal his excitement and anticipation. At five o’clock he got up and dressed, declaring that he felt much better. In fact, he said, he was famished.

At seven o’clock, with the dishes washed, Myra sat across the room from him and fell asleep, making no attempt to read.

“Myra!” he said, quite loudly. “Myra!”

She didn’t stir. Everything up to this point had been preparation. And now he realized that the actual commission of the deed required no particular call on his strength and determination. Actually it was as though she were already dead. He opened the kitchenette window several inches, took the four strings, fastened them to the handles, careful not to touch the handles with his fingers. Myra was snoring throatily.

He poked the strings through the screen knowing that she had no more reason to use the stove, knowing that in the semi-darkened kitchenette the dark strings would be invisible. He took his keys out of his pocket and put them on the desk. He took the note from among his business papers, folded it once and placed it on the desk, an ashtray on top of it, in a conspicuous spot. It was important that he be without keys and that the note be out in the open for anyone to find. It would be best if someone else should find it. Then he could snatch it away and handle it.

Everything was ready. He spoke to her sharply, went over and shook her.

“Myra!”

She smiled blearily up at him. “Gee, I’m so tired I could die!”

That startled him for a moment, and then he felt a deep ironic amusement at her choice of words.

“Honey, I feel guilty not working today. I’m going down to Benninger’s drugstore. They’re a client, and I can do a little checking. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Maybe I’ll go to bed.”

“No. Don’t do that. It’s only a little after seven. You go to bed now and you’ll wake up before dawn.”

“Okay,” she said dreamily. “I’ll wait until you come back.”

He opened the door, looked back at her, and said, “Goodbye, honey.”

She yawned. “ ’Bye, Peter.”

He shut the door, heard the latch click. Now came the period of most danger. The night was very dark. The apartment house was on a quiet street. When he was certain that he was unobserved, he went quickly along the dark line of cedars. He looked cautiously through the windows of the living room. He could see the back of the wing chair in which she sat, her hand slack on the arm of the chair, the edge of one shoe. She did not move. Every object in the room stood out with a strange clarity, as though he were seeing the room for the first time, and had been asked to memorize the contents and the position of each item.

Cedar brushed his cheek as he moved back to the kitchenette window. He found the four strands, conquering panic as, for a moment, it appeared that one had slipped back through the screen. He pulled slowly and steadily. The four strings pulled free and he yanked them through the screen, balled them in his hand. Then he pressed the window shut, walked out to the edge of the building, looked up and down the deserted sidewalk, then hurried across to the walk and went south with long strides to the Benninger drugstore.

The younger brother was behind the counter. Peter’s lips felt stiff as he smiled. It seemed to him that in some secret place in his mind he could hear the whisper of escaping gas. A good thing the stove was a cheap one without a pilot light.

“Thought I’d stop by and see how the new register tape is working.”

“It seems to be going okay, Mr. Kallon. It slowed us up the first week getting used to it, but now it’s second nature. I like the way it keeps all the sales separated by department.”

“Sure,” Peter said. “It gives you a check on how you’re doing.”

“There’s a couple of new books of crosswords in since you were here a couple days ago.”

“Are there? Good.” He went casually over to the rack, picked out the new ones, put them on the counter, and slid up onto a stool. “I’d like a root beer, please.”

“Sure thing,” Benninger said. Charged water hissed into the glass. It also sounded like gas escaping. “How’s the missus?”

“What? Oh, she’s fine. Say, you don’t mind if I sit here and work one of these puzzles, do you?”

“Goodness, no! You go right ahead, Mr. Kallon.”

The puzzle he picked was based on names of cities and states. He glanced at the clock as he took his pencil out of his pocket. Ten of eight. He started the puzzle, lettering neatly and quickly. The Christmas city. Ah, that would be Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Number ten down bothered him. Six letters. The only all-rock town in the U.S. He worked on the surrounding words and finally the stubborn one turned out to be Ingram. He felt a glow of satisfaction as he filled it in.

But he couldn’t quite forget the hollow feeling in his middle, the flutter that was partly excitement, partly worry. What was going on at the apartment? Had she been awakened by the smell?

He finished the puzzle and looked at the clock. Nine fifteen. Later than he had dared believe.

“Finished it off?” Benninger asked.

“I got it.”

Benninger laughed. “You sure are one for the puzzles and contests. Remember that contest blank I give you and you won a fifty-dollar government bond with it?”

“Of course I remember it. Well, time to get home. I’ve been a little worried about Mrs. Kallon lately. She acts depressed.”

“It’s this changeable weather. Gets all of us down.”

“Well, be sure you get those tapes and your check stubs down to the office on Friday, Harry. ’Night.”

“Good night, Mr. Kallon. We’ll have ’em there on time.”

Peter let the door swing shut behind him. He felt that he had handled it exactly as planned. Nothing crude like calling attention to the time. His hand hadn’t shaken as he’d picked up the change from his dollar. No, it had gone quite well. That’s what came of understanding details and knowing how to handle them from a purely objective viewpoint.

He found himself walking too fast and forced himself to slow down. The night air was cool on his face. Breathable air. Fresh, life-giving air. His heels struck firmly and crisply and tidily against the sidewalk. He passed a neighborhood couple by a streetlight. He knew them by sight. That was lucky.

“Good evening,” he said cheerfully.

“Hello, Kallon,” the man said. Better and better. He hadn’t realized that the neighbor knew his name.

He pushed the front door open and walked down the long corridor, past the elevators, down to the corner and then turned left and went to his own door. He took a deep breath, knocked, and called gaily, “Myra! Myra! Open up. I forgot to take my keys with me.”

He could smell it then, the faint odor of gas. He waited to make certain that he actually smelled it before simulating panic. “Myra!” he yelled, hammering on the door. In a few moments now, other doors would open. “Myra!”

He was rattling the doorknob helplessly, kicking at the bottom of the door, calling to his dead wife when it happened. In the last fractional second of life that was left to him it was as though the door had curiously pulled loose in his hand. It smashed against him with a white-hot blasting flare, the heavy panel smashing him against the opposite wall of the corridor...

Because the girl was very upset and because she looked a little like his daughter, the police lieutenant was very gentle.

“You had no way of knowing,” he said.

“I still don’t understand how it happened.”

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “There was a heavy concentration of gas in the apartment. When a phone rings it makes a little spark inside it between the magnet and the arm on the clapper. So of course, after you dialed and got the connection, the line went dead at the first ring. You had no way of knowing.”

There was a stricken look in her eyes. “I... I was so anxious to make that call. One of the other girls wanted to, but it had to be me. I thought it would be exciting telling somebody that they’d won a fifty-thousand-dollar prize.”

The lieutenant reached over and clumsily patted the girl’s shoulder as she buried her face in her hands. “You had no way of knowing,” he said again. A nearby machine began to clack out a telegram, imprinting the words on the long paper tape. The lieutenant turned and walked stolidly out of the Western Union office.