--Not Mildred....
I stand still: a shudder swarms my skin, draws my throat taut, uprises
in my hair....
* * * * *
... the white room larded with books: the face noble and reticent, and
the swift births of amaze, of pity, of horror ... indecorous death.
Pale hands fluttering up like rebellious dreams--and fallen.
* * * * *
My own hands bar my eyes.... How do I know this is not morbid nonsense?
--What then is sense?
I am not so used to murder that this news, passionately close to my
love’s life, should not move me.
--I do not blame you, that you are moved.
“_What can I do?_”
I speak these words aloud, and the despair that dwells in them takes
shape. Shape of an impulsion. I know already what I am going to do. But
I contrive even now to laugh at myself.
--Fine man of science, driven by despair. Illogical, driven man!
I take off my clothes, and though the night is warm, I shiver in my
bed.
_f_
I am asleep and dawn is all about me: dawn within me: I am up from bed
and I am putting on my clothes. My face in the mirror wakes me. I am
half dressed already, and my mind says: “You must not forget to shave.”
I see my face. The mirror is by the window, it stands on a highboy in
my bedroom. Dawn is a mingling of stirs: whistle of boat in the river
fog, rattle of wagon in the gray cool mists turning and twisting,
footbeat solitary on the damp hard pavement--this is dawn coming by the
window into my room, to my face. I look at my face, and then my face
awakes me.
I put a fresh blade in my razor and shave swiftly. I take off the
underwear of yesterday that my hands, while I slept, put on: I bathe
cold: I dress fast.
The street is not different from the dawn that drenched my room. Stone
is solitary, damp: houses are stifled by the night that they hold, that
is passing. I buy a _Times_ and a _World_ at the corner stand where the
dark hunched man with thick glasses and a bristling beard gazes at me
with exaggerated eyes. I do not look at the paper, waiting for the car.
As I sit in the car, I read quietly what I expected to find. Here is
the substance:
It is a simple case. Mr. LaMotte’s serving man, Frank Nelson, is
implicated and is already in the Tombs. His master gave him the
evening off, and clearly the crime could not have been committed
without knowledge of this and of the fact that Mr. LaMotte was alone.
At about 8.30, a man came to the apartments where Mr. LaMotte has
his chambers and told the colored doorboy, Elijah Case, that he had
an important note to be delivered in person. Elijah phoned up and
Mr. LaMotte responded. Elijah carried the man to the third floor,
pointed out the door, heard the messenger knock, saw him enter ...
and went down. Little time passed before the elevator signal rang
again. Elijah went up, opened the elevator door and the messenger
stepped in.... Elijah recalls him clearly. “How do you happen to be
so certain?” the police asked him. “I dunno. But I is.” He says the
man was dressed entirely in black, and that his head was white. “Do
you mean white like a _white man_?” “Nossah ... I means white lak ...
lak chalk.” “Even his hair?” “I don’ remember no hair. A white head.
Da’s all.” “Even his eyes?” Elijah shuddered. “Yessah. Dey was white,
too.”... The police infer that the colored boy, who is simple-minded
and imaginative, made up his monster after he had learned the event.
In any case, Elijah went back to his little hall office: and shortly
after a call came in, by phone, for Mr. LaMotte. No: Mr. LaMotte
had no private phone. Instructions were, not to say in any instance
whether Mr. LaMotte was at home, to get the name and announce it
first. It was Mrs. LaMotte, the deceased’s mother. She often called,
and although frequently Mr. LaMotte would tell the boy: “Say I am not
at home” ... that doubtless was why he used the house phone ... never
in the three years Elijah had worked at the apartment had Mr. LaMotte
failed to answer his signal, and never had he refused to speak to his
mother. Elijah phoned up, now, and received no answer. This satisfied
the mother who rang off. But it began to trouble Elijah. Mr. LaMotte
never walked down, and also he never left without giving word to the
boy. During all that time, Elijah had not been required to leave his
little office in full view of the hall. Finally, Elijah was scared.
He phoned again. No answer. He went up, and rang, and pounded on
the door. He went down into the Square and found an officer. They
broke open the door, for the pass-key was with the janitor who was
away.... The murdered man was lying on his back in the library, with
a wound in his heart. There was little blood, no weapon, no sign of
a struggle. But the weapon must have been a long and slender knife
aimed with rare accuracy. Nothing seemed to be missing. The small
safe in a recess of a bookcase was shut, no fingerprints were found.
If the object was theft, the valuable stolen is unknown and hence its
loss is still a mystery. Or else the thief was frightened off ...
that happens. A simple case, which leaves the police in confidence of
a quick solution....
I noted the address and left my papers on the foul straw seat of the
car. A man with a skull-like head, skin yellow and tough and eyes
that bulged with a lost tenderness, reached out for them. Leaving, I
was aware of the two mournful rows of humans facing each other like
lugubrious birds on swinging perches.... I found the number and flashed
my police card at a brown boy who took me up: the wonder in his eyes
was mingled with proprietory pride at his connection with a headline
murder. At the door stood a policeman. I heard myself say, coolly:
“I am Doctor Mark of the Institute.” I did not show my card.
He understood nothing, and was impressed by me. I was beginning to be
impressed by myself.
Alone in the hall, I hesitated.--I need still not go in. Someone was in
the room, and he would come, and I could talk with him explaining my
personal interest in a friend. Why not go in? What was I doing here? I
had come like an automaton sprung by the despair of the distant night.
Moving, I lost my agony. Even this single stationary moment in the
hall brought to my nerves a starting pain as if to stand still were
some unnatural act forced by my will on my body.--Let me go on. The
door opened, and a blunt big man scrutinized me with the vacuous stare
that doubtless he took for subtlety. I watched myself dispose:
“I am Doctor Mark of the Institute.” I showed him my card, “... and a
friend: a family friend.” I did not hesitate. I wore a light top coat,
and I took it off.
The man softened and nodded.
“I am Lieutenant Gavegan.” We shook hands. “He’s in there, sir.” He
pointed with his thumb in a miracle of reticent grace. There was a
pause in which my will must have spoken. For he said, as if in answer:
“I suppose I can leave you alone in there, sir, a few moments. Don’t
touch nothing.”
I saw the image of a cigar in his flat mind as he moved toward his
friend, the officer at the entrance. I shut the door behind me.
_g_
I knew this room. The regimented books marched high toward the high
ceiling: the subtle notes upon the shelves of color and of plastic
twisted like flageolets in a bright cadenza down against the stout
march of the books. The square room veered roundly, the ceiling
vaulted: all was a concave shut and yet wide about this man who lay
upon the floor.
I knew the room, and I was not amazed. Casual thoughts....--Mildred was
here: you are the woman for whom men kill, a white-faced man killing
with shiny boots ... went through my mind as I leaned down: I was
unamazed and cool, lifting the sheet that lay upon the body.
The face did not stop me. I opened the white shirt with its solid
bubbles of blood, and my sure hands went to the wound. The blade had
been struck from a point higher than the breast, so that its angle
from above was acute. It had passed through the pectoralis major and
minor muscles, through the fourth intercostal space, and into the
right auricle of the heart. The ascending portion of the aorta had
been severed. Death was immediate and clean. No surgeon with a body
prostrate under his hand could have cut better. This body now was
prostrate before me. Swiftly, my eyes measured it: it was six feet,
possibly six feet two.... I folded back the shirt, and now, as if I had
been satisfied, I looked at the face of Philip LaMotte.
I studied the face which, not twelve hours since, had come to me in the
apocalyptic street. A white pallor overlaid the rich dark pigmentation.
The beard stubble had grown: it emphasized the accurate delicacy of
the chin and the tender strength of the lips. The nose arched high.
The brow was serenely broad: the black curled hair, like a filet, came
low and round. The shut eyes made the vision startling: a Saint of the
Chartres Porche.
I saw myself crouched over this slain saint whom death had sculpted
into marble. My mind remarked with an aloof surprise, how little my
observations and my will at work surprised me. Was I discovering,
indeed? or was I appraising? Was I probing a crime that for good cause
haunted me, or was I reviewing ... reviewing----?
I was on my knees crouched over the body of Philip LaMotte. I heard
the door. I looked up at the figure of Detective Gavegan. With careful
grace, I arose.
“Does the boy Case have a good memory of the man’s size, who brought
the message?”
“He says: about medium size.”
“How tall is Case?”
“You saw him. He’s a short darkey.”
“If the man’d been Mr. LaMotte’s size, Case would have known it?”
“Six foot, one and a half? Well, I guess.” Gavegan flattened his eyes
once more upon me in a simagre of study.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” he snickered. “They all likes to play
detective. How could so short a man have finished him so fine? Size
ain’t strength, Doctor Mark: no more than a big man need lack for
wits.” Gavegan’s huge form swelled.
I watched him. The hopelessness of making him respond to my
discoveries, still so dark to myself, fought against a pleasant call in
me that it would be wrong to hide anything from the law.
“Has that message ... has any letter been found?”
He shook his head wisely. “No: nor there won’t be. The final
examination is this morning. That’s why the body ain’t yet been
removed. But there won’t be. That letter was mere pretext.”
“This looks a simple case to you?”
“Plain motive. Theft. How do you know what Mr. LaMotte was carryin’ in
his pocket just last night? The butler knew. Mebbe a jewel for a girl.
Or a bundle of securities. Surely a wad of bills, and he preparin’ for
a journey.”
“Oh, he was preparing for a journey?”
Gavegan gave me a gentle look of pity.
“Come over here,” he beckoned with his head. On a small teak-wood desk
between the windows, lay a diary pad bound in black levant. It was open
to this day. There was one note, scrawled small in pencil:
“_Gr Ct M 10.30_”