A Kiss Before Dying (22 page)

Leo Kingship returned to his apartment at ten o’clock on Wednesday night, having worked late in order to compensate for some of the lost hours Christmas had entailed. ‘Is Marion in?’ he asked the butler, giving him his coat.

‘Out with Mr Corliss. She said she’d be in early though. There’s a Mr Dettweiler waiting in the living room.’

‘Dettweiler?’

‘He said Miss Richardson sent him about the securities. He has a little strongbox with him.’

‘Dettweiler?’ Kingship frowned.

He went into the living room.

Gordon Gant rose from a comfortable chair adjacent to the fireplace. ‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly.

Kingship looked at him for a moment. ‘Didn’t Miss Richardson make it clear this afternoon that I don’t want—’ His hands fisted at his sides. ‘Get out of here,’ he said. ‘If Marion comes in—’

‘Exhibit A,’ Gant pronounced, raising a pamphlet in each hand, ‘in the case against Bud Corliss.’

‘I don’t want to—’ The sentence hung unfinished. Apprehensively, Kingship came forward. He took the pamphlets from Gant’s hands. ‘Our publications—’

‘In the possession of Bud Corliss,’ Gant said. ‘Kept in a strongbox which until last night resided in a closet in Menasset, Massachusetts.’ He gave a light kick to the strongbox on the floor beside him. The open lid was bent out of shape. There were four oblong Manilla envelopes inside. ‘I stole it,’ Gant said.

‘
Stole it?
’

He smiled. ‘Fight fire with fire. I don’t know where he’s staying in New York, so I decided to sally forth to Menasset.’

‘You crazy—’ Kingship sat heavily on a couch that faced the fireplace. He stared at the pamphlets. ‘Oh God,’ he said.

Gant resumed his seat next to the couch. ‘Observe the condition of Exhibit A, if you will. Frayed around the edges, soiled by many fingermarks, centre pages worked loose from the staples. I would say he had them for quite some time. I would say he drooled over them considerably.’

‘That – that son of a bitch—’ Kingship spoke the phrase distinctly, as though not accustomed to using it.

Gant prodded the strongbox with his toe. ‘The History of Bud Corliss, a drama in four envelopes,’ he said. ‘Envelope one: newspaper clippings of the high school hero; class president, chairman of the prom committee, most likely to succeed and so on and so forth. Envelope two: honourable discharge from the army, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, several interesting though obscene photographs and a pawn ticket which I have discovered may be exchanged for a wristwatch if you have a couple of hundred dollars you don’t need. Envelope three: college days; transcripts from Stoddard and Caldwell. Envelope four: two well-read brochures describing the magnitude of Kingship Copper Incorporated, and this’ – he drew a folded sheet of blue-lined yellow paper from his pocket and passed it to Kingship – ‘which I can’t make head or tail of.’

Kingship unfolded the paper. He read halfway down it. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m asking you.’

He shook his head.

‘It must have some bearing on this,’ Gant said. ‘It was in with the pamphlets.’

Kingship shook his head and handed the paper back to Gant, who returned it to his pocket. Kingship’s gaze dropped to the pamphlets. The grip of his hands crackled the thick paper. ‘How am I going to tell Marion?’ he said. ‘She
loves
him.’ He looked at Gant dismally. Then slowly his face smoothed out. He glanced at the pamphlets and back at Gant, his eyes narrowing. ‘How do I know these were in the strongbox? How do I know that you didn’t put them there yourself?’

Gant’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, for—’

Kingship went around the end of the couch and across the room. There was a telephone on a carved table. He dialled a number.

‘Come on now,’ Gant chided.

In the silence of the room the buzzing and the clicks of the phone were audible. ‘Hello? Miss Richardson? This is Mr Kingship. I’d like to ask a favour of you. A big favour, I’m afraid. And absolutely confidential.’ An unintelligible twittering emanated from the phone. ‘Would you please go down to the office – yes, now. I wouldn’t ask you, only it’s terribly important, and I—’ There was more twittering. ‘Go to the public relations department,’ Kingship said. ‘Go through the files and see whether we’ve ever sent any promotional publications to – Bud Corliss.’

‘Burton Corliss,’ Gant said.

‘Or Burton Corliss. Yes, that’s right – Mr Corliss. I’m at my home, Miss Richardson. Call me as soon as you find out. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miss Richardson. I appreciate this—’ He hung up.

Gant shook his head wryly. ‘We’re really grasping at straws, aren’t we.’

‘I have to be sure,’ Kingship said. ‘You have to be sure of your evidence in a thing like this.’ He came back across the room and stood behind the couch.

‘You’re sure already, and you know damn well you are,’ Gant said.

Kingship braced his hands on the couch, looking down at the pamphlets in the hollow of the cushion where he had been sitting.

‘You know damn well you are,’ Gant repeated.

After a moment Kingship’s breath sighed out tiredly. He came around the couch, picked up the pamphlets, and sat down. ‘How am I supposed to tell Marion?’ he asked. He rubbed his knee. ‘That son of a bitch – that God-damned son of a bitch—’

Gant leaned towards him, his elbows on his knees. ‘Mr Kingship, I was right about this much. Will you admit I might be right all the way?’

‘What “all the way”?’

‘About Dorothy and Ellen.’ Kingship drew an irritated breath. Gant spoke quickly: ‘He didn’t tell Marion he went to Stoddard. He
must
have been mixed up with Dorothy. He
must
be the one who got her pregnant. He killed her, and Powell and Ellen somehow found out it was him and he had to kill them too.’

‘The note—’

‘He could have tricked her into writing it! It’s been done before – there was a case in the papers just last month about a guy who did it, and for the same reason; the girl was pregnant.’

Kingship shook his head. ‘I’d believe it of him,’ he said. ‘After what he’s done to Marion, I’d believe anything of him. But there’s a flaw in your theory, a big flaw.’

‘What?’ Gant demanded.

‘He’s after the money, isn’t he?’ Gant nodded. ‘And you “know” Dorothy was murdered because she was wearing something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue?’ Gant nodded again. ‘Well,’ Kingship said, ‘if he were the one who’d got her into trouble, and if she were ready to marry him that day, then why would he have killed her? He would have gone ahead and married her, wouldn’t he? He would have married her and got in on the money.’

Gant looked at him wordlessly.

‘You were right about this,’ Kingship said, lifting the pamphlets, ‘but you’re wrong about Dorothy. All wrong.’

After a moment Gant rose. He turned and paced up to the window. He looked through it dully, gnawing his lower lip. ‘I may jump,’ he announced.

When the door chimes toned, Gant turned from the window. Kingship had risen and was standing before the fireplace, gazing at the birch logs neatly pyramided there. He turned reluctantly, holding the rolled pamphlets at his side, his face averted from Gant’s watching eyes.

They heard the front door open, and then voices: ‘… come in for a while?’

‘I don’t think so, Marion. We’ll have to get up early tomorrow.’ There was a long silence. ‘I’ll be in front of my place at seven-thirty.’

‘You’d better wear a dark suit. A smelter must be a filthy place.’ Another silence. ‘Goodnight, Bud.’

‘Goodnight.’

The door closed.

Kingship wound the pamphlets into a tighter cylinder. ‘Marion,’ he called, but it came out too low. ‘Marion,’ he called again, louder.

‘Coming,’ her voice answered cheerfully.

The two men waited, suddenly conscious of a clock’s ticking.

She appeared in the wide doorway, perking up the collar of her crisp white full-sleeved blouse. Her cheeks were luminous from the cold outside. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘We had a—’

She saw Gant. Her hand froze, dropped.

‘Marion, we—’

She whirled and was gone.

‘Marion!’ Kingship hurried to the doorway and into the foyer. ‘Marion!’ She was halfway up the curving white staircase, her legs driving furiously. ‘Marion!’ he shouted grimly, commanding.

She stopped, facing rigidly up the stairs, one hand on the banister. ‘Well?’

‘Come down here,’ he said. ‘I have to speak to you. This is extremely important.’ A moment passed. ‘Come down here,’ he said.

‘All right.’ She turned and descended the stairs with regal coldness. ‘You can speak to me. Before I go upstairs and pack and get out of here.’

Kingship returned to the living room. Gant was standing uncomfortably in the middle of the room, his hand on the back of the couch. Kingship, shaking his head dolefully, went to his side.

She came into the room. Their eyes followed her as, without looking at them, she came up to the chair across from the one in which Gant had sat, at the end of the couch nearer the door. She sat down. She crossed her legs carefully, smoothing the red wool of her skirt. She put her hands on the arms of the chair. She looked up at them, standing behind the couch to her left. ‘Well?’ she said.

Kingship shifted uneasily, withering under her gaze. ‘Mr Gant went to – Yesterday he—’

‘Yes?’

Kingship turned to Gant helplessly.

Gant said: ‘Yesterday afternoon, absolutely without your father’s knowledge, I went to Menasset. I broke into your fiancé’s home—’

‘No!’

‘—and I took from it a strongbox I found in the closet in his room—’

She pressed back into the chair, her knuckles gripping white, her mouth clamped to a lipless line, her eyes shut.

‘I brought it home and jimmied the cover—’

Her eyes shot open, flashing. ‘What did you find? The plans of the atom bomb?’

They were silent.

‘What did you find?’ she repeated, her voice lowering, growing wary.

Kingship moved down to the end of the couch and handed her the pamphlets, awkwardly unrolling them.

She took them slowly and looked at them.

‘They’re old,’ Gant said. ‘He’s had them for some time.’

Kingship said, ‘He hasn’t been back to Menasset since you started going with him. He had them before he met you.’

She smoothed the pamphlets carefully in her lap. Some of the corners were folded over. She bent them straight. ‘Ellen must have given them to him.’

‘Ellen never had any of our publications, Marion. You know that. She was as little interested as you are.’

She turned the pamphlets over and examined their backs. ‘Were you there when he broke open the box? Do you know for certain they were in the box?’

‘I’m checking on that,’ Kingship said. ‘But what reason would Mr Gant have for—’

She began turning the pages of one of the pamphlets; casually, as though it were a magazine in a waiting room. ‘All right,’ she said stiffly, after a moment, ‘maybe it
was
the money that attracted him at first.’ Her lips formed a strained smile. ‘For once in my life I’m grateful for your money.’ She turned a page. ‘What is it they say? It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as with a poor.’ And another page. ‘You really can’t blame him too much, coming from such a poor family. Environmental influence—’ She stood up and tossed the pamphlets on the couch. ‘Is there anything else you wanted?’ Her hands were trembling slightly.

‘Anything else?’ Kingship stared. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Enough?’ she inquired. ‘Enough for what? Enough for me to call off the wedding? No’ – she shook her head – ‘no, it isn’t enough.’

‘You
still
want to—’

‘He
loves
me,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was the money that attracted him at first, but – well, suppose I were a very pretty girl; I wouldn’t call off the wedding if I found out it was my looks that attracted him, would I?’

‘At first?’ Kingship said. ‘The money is still what attracts him.’

‘You have no right to say that!’

‘Marion, you
can’t
marry him now.’

‘No? Come down to City Hall Saturday morning!’

‘He’s a no-good scheming—’

‘Oh, yes! You always know just who’s good and who’s bad, don’t you! You knew Mom was bad and you got rid of her, and you knew Dorothy was bad and that’s why she killed herself because you brought us up with your good and bad, your right and wrong! Haven’t you done enough with your good and bad?’

‘You’re
not
going to marry a man who’s only after you for your money!’

‘He
loves
me! Don’t you understand English? He loves me! I love him! I don’t care
what
brought us together! We think alike! Feel alike! We like the same books, the same plays, the same music, the same—’

‘The same food?’ Gant cut in. ‘Would you both be fond of Italian and Armenian food?’ She turned to him, her mouth ajar. He was unfolding a sheet of blue-lined yellow paper he had taken from his pocket. ‘And those books,’ he said, looking at the paper, ‘would they include the works of Proust, Thomas Wolfe, Carson McCullers?’

Her eyes widened. ‘How did you—? What is that?’

He came around the end of the couch. She turned to face him. ‘Sit down,’ he said.

‘What are you … ?’ She moved back. The edge of the couch pressed against the back of her knees.

‘Sit down, please,’ he said.

She sat down. ‘What is that?’

‘This was in the strongbox with the pamphlets,’ he said. ‘In the same envelope. The printing is his, I presume.’ He handed her the yellow paper. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She looked at him confusedly, and then looked down at the paper. 

She read barely a quarter of the closely-printed page, her cheeks draining of colour. Then she folded the paper with trembling care. ‘Well,’ she said, folding it again, not looking up, ‘haven’t I been the – trusting soul.’ She smiled crazily at her father coming gently around the end of the couch to stand helplessly beside her. ‘I should have known, shouldn’t I?’ The blood rushed back to her cheeks, burning red. Her eyes were swimming and her fingers were suddenly mashing and twisting the paper with steel strength. ‘Too good to be true,’ she smiled, tears starting down her cheeks, her fingers plucking at the paper. ‘I really should have known …’ Her hands released the yellow fragments and flew to her face. She began to cry.