The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mysteries!

Precious Pigeon

Originally published in Manhunt, April 1963.

The motel was an old one, located on a once-busy highway that had been by-passed by the new city expressway.

The number of cars in the parking area indicated occupancy of about half the units. I slid my car to stop beside a four-year-old Chevy.

It was a hot, humid autumn evening, the last growl of summer. In the drab unit at the far end a baby was crying fretfully.

My own reaction to the surroundings was one of sharp distaste. I knew how Constantine must be chaffing, anxious to get on the final phase of the task we had planned. Constantine was living, I knew, only on the hope of escaping this and similar places forever.

I assumed he had been watching for me through a crack in the blind. The door of his room opened even as I approached.

I stepped inside and he closed the door quickly. He looked me up and down with envy and impatience in the dark eyes beneath the shaggy brows.

“Anyone see you, Cary?”

I shook my head. “We are total strangers, totally disconnected.”

“Good.” He turned toward the bureau, a great mass of man, swarthy, oiled with sweat. Something about Constantine always made me think of steam. Steam in the close confines of a dark room. “Drink?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

He helped himself to a drink from the bottle of dark rum atop the bureau. He always drank such liquids, heavy and dark, sweet brandies, wines, thick liquors.

His glossy, moist eyes were hooded by their heavy lids. “How was the honeymoon?”

I shrugged.

“Now she dies,” he said.

He saw a reaction in my face. He laughed, a sound heavy and thick. “Still the man of tender feeling.”

I didn’t let him ruffle me. “From the beginning,” I reminded him, “this job has consisted of two distinct phases.”

“Quite so, Cary. I am perfectly willing to complete the second division of labor, sparing you the details. By the way, how much is she actually worth?”

“Slightly more than two million dollars.”

A delicious shiver ran the length of his massive frame. “Two million... divided equally... we are millionaires, Cary.”

“Not quite. Not yet.”

“But soon — as soon as the precious pigeon dies.” He was growing more excited. He breathed as if he were smothering. “A million dollars... Ah, the thought of it! All my life I’ve waited and watched for this one, Cary. The big one at last...” Then a horrendous thought struck him. “There are no other heirs named in a will?”

“She is very young to think of making a will, Constantine.”

He trembled. “Don’t tell me—”

“No, no,” I said. “There is a will — now. She suggested it herself, insisted on it.”

“Ah, you are clever, Cary!”

“I am named sole heir.”

“You — and me.” Laughter shook him. He slapped his hands against his sides. “How little she dreams that her will covers both of us.”

“She has no idea.”

The laughter subsided to a smile that wreathed his face, pushing the flesh so that his eyes were almost buried. “Incidentally, Cary, I suppose you’ve thought of cutting me out?”

“Why do you say such a thing?”

“You are human, subject to all the vagaries of the human mind and emotions. It’s natural for the thought to occur to you. Do you deny it?”

“No, I can’t truthfully say that I do.”

“Good.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “I’m glad you didn’t try to pretend. Cary. It would be impossible to cut me out, you know.”

“I recognize facts and limitations when I see them,” I said.

“Excellent. You will not forget them, either. It was I who spotted the lonely, plain, precious pigeon after her parents died. My mind evolved the idea. My money financed you, Cary, so that you could meet her, woo her, win her.”

“I know.”

“While you were squiring her about, I lived in flea traps and ate gruel.”

“Must you...”

“I must remind you, yes,” he said. “I must impress one thing on you, Cary. My life has been the story of near-misses, of petty crime that didn’t quite pay, of deals that failed by a hair to jell. Of rotten prisons. Of waiting in cheap places like this one,” his hand made a gesture that despised the room, “until you returned with her. Until the moment when she dies and we become rich.

“So I warn you, Cary. I impress the truth of myself upon you. I gamble everything on this one. I am old now, and tired. Nothing will be left if I fail. Do you understand? We are inexorably bound together, Cary. We shall be accessories before, during, and after the fact. Think for one moment of cheating me, and I will destroy you.”

“Even if it means destroying yourself as well?”

“Even so,” he said calmly. “For I welcome destruction, if I am to have nothing. I fear destruction far less than you, Cary — and therein lies all the insurance I need. Are we clear on this point?”

“Quite.”

“Good. Would you care for a rum now?”

“Yes, I think I need it.”

We drank.

He burped softly. “Have you a plan?”

“That’s not my phase, is it?”

“Touché.” He smiled. “You’ve met important people through her, I’m sure.”

“A few. She hadn’t many friends.”

“I suppose not. A plain girl slipping beyond the age of marriage, saddled with sick parents... But we need important people for your alibi, Cary.”

“I’ve joined a club or two,” I said. “Does she mind? Does she keep a close rein on you?”

“Not at all. She’s very understanding. She insists on my having an evening out occasionally.”

“Then we shall make it soon, provided she remains home when you have these evenings out.”

“She usually reads.”

He nodded ponderously. “And this Thursday evening — as she reads — a prowler will enter your home at ten o’clock. He will kill her and make off with a few items of value. These items I shall drop safely to the bottom of the river. After it is all over, you will take your grief to New York. There, in a few days we shall meet — total strangers. Nothing to tie her death to either of us. Nothing to link us to a scheme that required two phases.

“The casual meeting of the two strangers in New York will develop gradually into a firm friendship. Only we will know the friendship to be irrevocably cemented by our mutual past and the gradual division of two million dollars. I think we shall use foreign banks and a dummy corporation to affect the transfer. Do you agree?”

“You have it pretty well airtight, I think, Constantine.”

He rolled a swallow of rum lovingly down his throat. “Now — as to details. How about the servants?”

“Two. An old couple. They have quarters over the garages and usually retire early.”

“Excellent. Does she have friends who might visit her that evening?”

“I doubt it. I can’t guarantee that part of it, Constantine, but the odds are very much against it.”

“If the odds show against us, we’ll simply postpone it a few nights. And that leaves only one thing — a way to enter the house.”

I felt my face go even paler. He noticed, and his eyes despised me briefly. “You need not risk the apparent loss of a key or anything you’ll have to explain, Cary. I must be able to get in, get to her before she can raise an alarm. Before I leave, I can make it look as if entry was forced.”

“A window...” I mumbled.

He nodded. “Simply leave one unlocked.”

“Dining room,” I said. “Dining room is away from the garages... on the sheltered side of the house... fourth window down the west side of the house...”

I moved toward the door.

He caught my arm. “Don’t you want to know how I shall do it, Cary? Whether she’ll be strangled or struck over the head?”

“Not my phase, Constantine...”

I pulled away from him, ran, and collapsed in the car.

She cooked dinner herself Thursday night. She said she enjoyed cooking and did so often. I wished, however, she had made a less intimate gesture that evening.

She seemed to savor the feeling of our being alone together in the house. She really didn’t like servants. She was, I thought, too basically kind to order other people around.

“Cary...”

She looked almost unreal as I faced her across the candlelight.

“Yes?”

“Do you know what?” she laughed with delight. “I was a stranger today.”

“Stranger?”

“I went unrecognized. At least — almost. I ran into Jean Carraway at The Hub while I was shopping. She hardly knew me. Honest and truly. Said marriage had worked wonders for me. Have I really bloomed, Cary?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You always had the basic stuff, the bone structure, the figure under those plain dresses you used to wear.”

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “It goes deeper than that, Cary. If I have changed — bloomed, as Jean said — it was because of you. Cary... even if... If I should die tomorrow, I have lived. At last, I have lived...” What gave her the powers to have such a premonition?

I had to get out of the house quickly. My part was almost over. It remained now only for me to make sure that I was in the company of unimpeachable witnesses at ten o’clock, when phase two would take place...

A large cloud obscured the moon when I returned. Except for a single light upstairs in her bedroom, the house was dark.

I let myself silently in the front door. Passed like a shadow through the foyer.

Near the walnut-paneled staircase, I heard a slight sound. The massive bulk of Constantine loomed before me.

He realized I was there. He turned. From the hall table, I had picked up the heavy, antique marble figurine.

I struck him twice on the head before he knew what was happening. He fell across the table, smashing it. I bent over him quickly, striking my lighter. He was dead. The bone in his head was crushed.

Light spilled into the upper hall, and her voice, quick with anxiety, came to me.

“Cary... is that you?”

“Don’t come down here, darling!”

I ran quickly up the stairs; she was tall, slender and strangely and exotically beautiful in her negligee, the book she had been reading still in her hand.

“A prowler, darling...” I gasped. “A total stranger... Surprised him... scuffled... grabbed the first thing that came to hand...”

She touched me tenderly. “My poor Cary!”

“It’s okay... all okay now... think I killed him... call the police, will you?”

As she called, I was filled with the enjoyment of looking at her. If I had given meaning to her life, she had returned the gift fully.

And that was the thing I never could have explained, a thing Constantine never would have understood.

That I would fall in love with her.