A Kiss Before Dying (24 page)

He stood on a chain-railed catwalk staring fascinatedly at an army of huge cylindrical furnaces ranked before him in diminishing perspective like an ordered forest of giant redwood trucks. At their bases men moved methodically, regulating incomprehensible controls. The air was hot and sulphurous.

‘There are six hearths, one above the other, in each furnace,’ Mr Otto lectured. ‘The ore is introduced at the top. It’s moved steadily downward from hearth to hearth by rotating arms attached to a central shaft. The roasting removes excess sulphur from the ore.’

He listened intently, nodding. He turned to the others to express his awe, but only Marion stood on his right, wooden-faced as she had been all day. Leo and that Dettweiler were gone. ‘Where’d your father and Dettweiler go?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know. Dad said he wanted to show him something.’

‘Oh.’ He turned back to the furnaces. What would Leo want to show Dettweiler? Well … ‘How many are there?’

‘Furnaces?’ Mr Otto dabbed perspiration from his upper lip with a folded handkerchief. ‘Fifty-four.’

Fifty-four! Jesus! ‘How much ore goes through them in a day?’ he asked.

It was wonderful! He’d never been so interested in anything in his whole life! He asked a thousand questions and Mr Otto, visibly reacting to his fascination, answered them in detail, speaking only to him, while Marion trailed unseeingly behind.

In another building there were more furnaces; brick-walled, flat, and over a hundred feet long. ‘The reverberatory furnaces,’ Mr Otto said. ‘The ore that comes from the roasting furnaces is about ten per cent copper. Here it’s melted down. The lighter minerals flow off as slag. What’s left is iron and copper – we call it “matte” – forty per cent copper.’

‘What do you use for fuel?’

‘Pulverized coal. The waste heat is used to generate steam for making power.’

He shook his head, whistling between his teeth.

Mr Otto smiled. ‘Impressed?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ Bud said. ‘Wonderful.’ He gazed down the endless stretch of furnaces. ‘It makes you realize what a great country this is.’

‘This,’ Mr Otto said, pushing his voice over a roaring tide of sound, ‘is probably the most spectacular part of the entire smelting process.’

‘Jesus!’

‘The converters,’ Mr Otto said loudly.

The building was a vast steel shell, percussant with the sustained thunder of machines and men. A greenish haze obscured its far reaches, swimming around shafts of yellow-green sunlight that pillared down through crane tracks and catwalks from windows in the peaked roof dim and high above.

At the near end of the building, on either side, lay six massive dark cylindroid vessels, end to end, like giant steel barrels on their sides, dwarfing the workmen on railed platforms between them. Each vessel had an opening in its uppermost surface. Flames burst forth from these mouths; yellow, orange, red, blue; roaring up into funnel-like hoods overhead that swallowed and bore them away.

One of the converters was turned forward on the cogged rollers that supported it, so that its round mouth, scabrous with coagulated metal, was at the side; liquid fire rushed from the radiant throat, pouring down into an immense crucible on the floor. The molten flow, heavy and smoking, filled the steel container. The converter rolled back groaningly, its mouth dripping. The yoke of the crucible lifted, caught by a great blunt hook from whose block a dozen cables rose in unwavering ascension, rose higher than the converters, higher than the central spine of catwalk, up to the underbelly of a grimy cab that hung from a single-railed track below the dimness of the roof. The cables contracted; the crucible lifted in slow, weightless levitation. It rose until it was higher than the converters, some twenty-five feet above the ground, and then cab, cables, and crucible began to draw away, retreating towards the cupreous haze at the northern end of the building.

The centre of it all! The heart of the heart! With rapt eyes Bud followed the heat-shimmering column of air over the departing crucible.

‘Slag,’ Mr Otto said. They stood on an island of railed platform against the south wall, a few feet above the floor and mid-way between the two banks of converters. Mr Otto touched his handkerchief to his forehead. ‘The molten matte from the reverberatory furnaces is poured into these converters. Silica is added, and then compressed air is blown in through pipes at the back. The impurities are oxidized; slag forms and is poured off, as you just saw. More matte is added, more slag forms, and so on. The copper keeps getting richer and richer until, after about five hours, it’s ninety-nine per cent pure. Then it’s poured out in the same way as the slag.’

‘Will they be pouring copper soon?’

Mr Otto nodded. ‘The converters are operated on a stagger system, so that there’s a continuous output.’

‘I’d like to see them pour the copper,’ Bud said. He watched one of the converters on the right pouring off slag. ‘Why are the flames different colours?’ he asked.

‘The colour changes as the process advances. That’s how the operators tell what’s going on inside.’

Behind them a door closed. Bud turned. Leo was standing beside Marion. Dettweiler leaned against a ladder that climbed the wall beside the door. ‘Are you enjoying the tour?’ Leo asked over the thunder.

‘It’s wonderful, Leo! Overpowering!’

‘They’re going to pour copper over there,’ Mr Otto said loudly.

Before one of the converters on the left, a crane had lowered a steel vat, larger than the crucible into which the slag had been poured. Its steep sides were a three-inch thickness of dull grey metal, as high as a man. Its rim was seven feet across.

The mammoth cylinder of the converter began to turn, rumbling, rolling forward in its place. A wraith of blue flame flickered over its clotted mouth. It turned further; a volcanic radiance blasted from its interior, veils of white smoke arose, and then a flood of racing incandescence came bursting out. It spilled forward and fell gleamingly into the giant bowl. The steady molten flow seemed motionless, a solid, shining shaft between the converter and the depths of the vat. The converter turned further; new ribs twisted fluidly down the shaft, and again it was motionless. Within the vat the surface of the liquid appeared, slowly rising, clouded by whorls of smoke. The bitter smell of copper singed the air. The steaming shaft thinned, twisting, as the converter began rolling back. The thin stream petered out, its last few drops rolling over the swell of the cylinder and sparkling to the cement floor.

The smoke above the vat dissolved in vaporous wisps. The surface of the molten copper, a few inches below the vessel’s rim, was an oblique disc of glistening oceanic green.

‘It’s green,’ Bud said, surprised.

‘When it cools it regains its usual colour,’ Mr Otto said.

Bud stared at the restless pool. Blisters formed, swelled, and popped glutinously on its surface. ‘What’s the matter, Marion?’ he heard Leo ask. The heated air above the vat trembled as though sheets of cellophane were being shaken.

‘Matter?’ Marion said.

Leo said, ‘You look pale.’

Bud turned around. Marion seemed no paler than usual. ‘I’m all right,’ she was saying.

‘But you’re pale,’ Leo insisted, and Dettweiler nodded agreement.

‘It must be the heat or something,’ Marion said.

‘The fumes,’ Leo said. ‘Some people can’t stand the fumes. Mr Otto, why don’t you take my daughter back to the administration building. We’ll be along in a few minutes.’

‘Honestly, Dad,’ she said tiredly, ‘I feel—’

‘No nonsense,’ Leo smiled stiffly. ‘We’ll be with you in a few minutes.’

‘But—’ She hesitated a moment, looking annoyed, and then shrugged and turned to the door. Dettweiler opened it for her.

Mr Otto followed after Marion. He paused in the doorway and turned back to Leo. ‘I hope you’re going to show Mr Corliss how we mould the anodes.’ He turned to Bud. ‘Very impressive,’ he said, and went out. Dettweiler closed the door.

‘Anodes?’ Bud said.

‘The slabs they were loading on the train outside,’ Leo said. Bud noticed an odd mechanical quality in his voice, as though he were thinking of something else. ‘They’re shipped to the refinery in New Jersey. Electrolytic refining.’

‘My God,’ Bud said, ‘it’s some involved process.’ He turned back to the converters on the left. The vat of copper, its angular handle hooked by the crane overhead, was about to be raised. The dozen cables tensed, vibrating, and then rigidified sharply. The vat listed from the floor.

Behind him Leo said, ‘Did Mr Otto take you up on the catwalk?’

‘No,’ Bud said.

‘You get a much better view,’ Leo said. ‘Would you like to go up?’

Bud turned. ‘Do we have the time?’

‘Yes,’ Leo said.

Dettweiler, his back against the ladder, stepped aside. ‘After you,’ he smiled.

Bud went to the ladder. He grasped one of the metal rungs and looked upwards. The rungs, like oversize staples, ran narrowingly up the brown wall. They focused at a trap in the floor of the catwalk, which projected perpendicularly from the wall some fifty feet above.

‘Bottleneck,’ Dettweiler murmured beside him.

He began to climb. The rungs were warm, their upper surfaces polished smooth. He climbed in a steady rhythm, keeping his eyes on the descending wall before him. He heard Dettweiler and Leo following after him. He tried to visualize the sight the catwalk would offer. To look down on the scene of industrial power…

He climbed the ladder up through the trap and stepped off on to the ridged metal floor of the catwalk. The thunder of the machines was diminished up here, but the air was hotter and the smell of copper stronger. The narrow runway, railed by heavy chain between iron stanchions, extended in a straight line down the spine of the building. It ended halfway down the building’s length, where it was cut off by a broad strip of steel partition wall that hung from the roof to floor, some twelve feet wider than the catwalk. Overhead, on either side, crane tracks paralleled the runway. They passed clear of the partition that ended the catwalk and continued into the northern half of the building.

He peered over the left side of the catwalk, his hands folded over the top of one of the waist-high stanchions. He looked down upon the six converters, the men scurrying between them …

His eyes shifted. To his right, twenty feet below and ten feet out from the catwalk, hung the vat of copper, a steel-rimmed pool of green on its slow procession towards the far end of the building. Ghosts of smoke rose from the liquid sheen of its surface.

He followed it, walking slowly, his left hand tracing over the dipping curves of the chain railing. He stayed far enough behind the vat so that he could just feel the fringe of its radiant heat. He heard Leo and Dettweiler following. His eyes climbed the vat’s cables, six and six on either side of the block, up to the cab a dozen feet above him. He could see the shoulder of the operator inside. His eyes dropped back to the copper. How much is in there? How many tons? What was it worth? One thousand? Two thousand? Three? Four? Five? …

He was nearing the steel partition, and now he saw that the catwalk didn’t end there after all; instead it branched six feet to right and left, following the partition to its edges like the head of a long-stemmed T. The vat of copper vanished beyond the partition. He turned on to the left wing of the T. A three-foot chain swung across the catwalk’s end. He put his left hand on the corner stanchion and his right on the edge of the partition, which was quite warm. He leaned forward a bit and peered around the partition at the receding vat. ‘Where does it go now?’ he called out.

Behind him Leo said, ‘Refining furnaces. Then it’s poured into moulds.’

He turned around. Leo and Dettweiler faced him shoulder to shoulder, blocking the stem of the T. Their faces were oddly inflexible. He patted the partition on his left. ‘What’s behind here?’ he asked.

‘The refining furnaces,’ Leo said. ‘Any more questions?’ He shook his head, puzzled by the grimness of the two men.

‘Then I’ve got one for you,’ Leo said. His eyes were like blue marbles behind his glasses. ‘How did you get Dorothy to write that suicide note?’

Everything fell away; the catwalk, the smelter, the whole world; everything melted away like sandcastles sucked into the sea, leaving him suspended in emptiness with two blue marbles staring at him and the sound of Leo’s question swelling and reverberating like being inside an iron bell.

Then Leo and Dettweiler confronted him again; the smelter’s rumble welled up; the plates of the partition materialized slippery against his left hand, the knob of the stanchion damp under his right, the floor of the catwalk – but the floor didn’t come back completely; it swayed anchorless and undulant beneath his feet, because his knees – Oh God! – were jelly, trembling and shaking. ‘What’re you—’ he started to say, but nothing came out. He swallowed air. ‘What’re you – talking about—’

‘Dorothy,’ Dettweiler told him. Slowly he said, ‘You wanted to marry her. For the money. But then she was pregnant. You knew you wouldn’t get the money. You killed her.’

He shook his head in confused protest. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No! She committed suicide! She sent a note to Ellen! You know that, Leo!’

‘You tricked her into writing it,’ Leo said.

‘How – Leo, how could I do that? How the hell could I do
that
?’

‘That’s what you’re going to tell us,’ Dettweiler said.

‘I hardly knew her!’

‘You didn’t know her at all,’ Leo said. ‘That’s what you told Marion.’

‘That’s right! I didn’t know her at all!’

‘You just said you
hardly
knew her.’

‘I didn’t know her
at all
!’

Leo’s fists clenched. ‘You sent for our publications in February nineteen hundred and fifty!’

Bud stared, his hand bracing tightly against the partition. ‘What publications?’ It was a whisper; he had to say it again: ‘What publications?’

Dettweiler said, ‘The pamphlets I found in the strongbox in your room in Menasset.’

The catwalk dipped crazily. The strongbox! Oh, Jesus Christ! The pamphlets and what else? The clippings? He’d thrown them out, thank God! The pamphlets –
and the list on Marion
! Oh, Jesus! ‘Who are you?’ he exploded. ‘Where the hell do you come off breaking into a person’s—’

‘Stay back!’ Dettweiler warned.

Withdrawing the single step he had advanced, Bud gripped the stanchion again. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

‘Gordon Gant,’ Dettweiler said.

Gant! The one on the radio, the one who’d kept needling the police! How the hell did he—

‘I knew Ellen,’ Gant said. ‘I met her a few days before you killed her.’

‘I—’ He felt the sweat running. ‘Crazy!’ he shouted. ‘You’re crazy! Who else did I kill?’ To Leo, ‘You listen to him? Then you’re crazy too! I never killed anybody!’

Gant said, ‘You killed Dorothy and Ellen and Dwight Powell!’

‘And almost killed Marion,’ Leo said. ‘When she saw that list—’

She saw the list! Oh God almighty! ‘I never killed anybody! Dorrie committed suicide and Ellen and Powell were killed by a burglar!’

‘Dorrie?’ Gant snapped.

‘I – everybody called her Dorrie! I – I never killed anybody! Only a Jap, and that was in the army!’

‘Then why are your legs shaking?’ Gant asked. ‘Why is the sweat dripping down your cheek?’

He swiped at his cheek. Control! Self-control! He dragged a deep breath into his chest … Slow up, slow up … They can’t prove a thing, not a goddamn thing! They know about the list, about Marion, about the pamphlets – okay – but they can’t prove a thing about … He drew another breath …

‘You can’t prove a thing,’ he said. ‘Because there isn’t anything to prove. You’re crazy, both of you.’ His hands wiped against his thighs. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I knew Dorrie. So did a dozen other guys. And I’ve had my eyes on the money all along the way. Where’s the law against that? So there’s no wedding Saturday. Okay.’ He straightened his jacket with stiff fingers. ‘I’m probably better off poor than having a bastard like you for a father-in-law. Now get out of the way and let me pass. I don’t feel like standing around talking to a couple of crazy lunatics.’

They didn’t move. They stood shoulder to shoulder six feet away.

‘Move,’ he said.

‘Touch the chain behind you,’ Leo said.

‘Get out of the way and let me pass!’

‘Touch the chain behind you!’

He looked at Leo’s stone-like face for a moment and then turned slowly.

He didn’t have to touch the chain; he just had to look at it; the metal eye of the stanchion had been bent open into a loose C that barely engaged the first of the heavy links.

‘We were up here when Otto was showing you around,’ Leo said. ‘Touch it.’

His hand came forward, brushed the chain. It collapsed. The free end clanked to the floor; it slid rattlingly off and swung down, striking noisily against the partition.

Fifty feet below cement floor yawned, seemed to sway …

‘Not as much as Dorothy got,’ Gant was saying, ‘but enough.’

He turned to face them, clutching the stanchion and the edge of the partition, trying not to think of the void behind his heels. ‘You wouldn’t – dare …’ he heard himself saying.

‘Don’t I have reason enough?’ Leo asked. ‘You killed my daughters!’

‘I didn’t, Leo! I swear to God I didn’t!’

‘Is that why you were sweating and shaking the minute I mentioned Dorothy’s name? Is that why you didn’t think it was a bad joke, and react the way an innocent person would have reacted?’

‘Leo, I swear on the soul of my dead father—’

Leo stared at him coldly.

He shifted his grip on the stanchion. It was slick with sweat. ‘You wouldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘You’d never get away with it.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’ Leo said. ‘Do you think you’re the only one who can plan something like this?’ He pointed to the stanchion. ‘The jaws of the wrench were wrapped in cloth; there are no marks on that ring. An accident, a terrible accident; a piece of iron, old, continually subjected to intense heat, weakens and bends when a six-foot man stumbles against the chain attached to it. A terrible accident. And how can you prevent it? Yell? No one will hear you over the noise. Wave your arms? The men down there have jobs to attend to, and even if they should look up, there’s the haze and the distance. Attack us? One push and you’re finished.’ He paused. ‘So tell me, why won’t I get away with it? Why?’

‘Of course,’ he continued after a moment, ‘I would rather not do it. I would rather hand you over to the police.’ He looked at his watch. ‘So I’ll give you three minutes. From now, I want something that will convince a jury, a jury that won’t be able to take you by surprise and see the guilt written all over you.’

‘Tell us where the gun is,’ Gant said.

The two of them stood side by side; Leo with his left wrist lifted and his right hand holding back the cuff to expose his watch; Gant with his hands at his sides.

‘How did you get Dorothy to write the note?’ Gant asked.

His own hands were so tight against the partition and the stanchion that they throbbed with a leaden numbness. ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said. They leaned forward to hear him. ‘You’re trying to scare me into admitting – to something I never did.’

Leo shook his head slowly. He looked at the watch. A moment passed. ‘Two minutes and thirty seconds,’ he said.

Bud whirled to the right, catching the stanchion with his left hand and shouting to the men over at the converters. ‘Help!’ he cried, ‘Help! Help!’ – bellowing as loud as he could, waving his right arm furiously, clutching the stanchion. ‘Help!’

The men far off below might as well have been painted figures; their attention was centred on a converter pouring copper.

He turned back to Leo and Gant.

‘You see?’ Leo said.

‘You’ll be killing an innocent man, that’s what you’ll be doing!’

‘Where’s the gun?’ Gant asked.

‘There is no gun! I never had a gun!’

Leo said, ‘Two minutes.’

They were bluffing! They must be! He looked around desperately; the main shaft of the catwalk, the roof, the crane tracks, the few windows, the … the crane tracks!

Slowly, trying not to make it too obvious, he glanced to the right again. The converter had rolled back. The vat before it was full and smoking, cables trailing slackly up to the cab above. The vat would be lifted; the cab, now over two hundred feet away, would bear the vat forward, approaching along the track that passed behind and above him; and the man in the cab

–a dozen feet up? four feet out?–would be able to hear! To see!

If only they could be stalled! If only they could be stalled until the cab was near enough!

The vat lifted …

‘One minute, thirty seconds,’ Leo said.

Bud’s eyes flicked back to the two men. He met their stares for a few seconds, and then risked another glance to the right, cautiously, so that they should not guess his plan. (Yes, a plan! Even now, at this moment, a plan!) The distant vat hung between floor and catwalk, its skein of cables seeming to shudder in the heat-vibrant air. The box-like cab was motionless under the track – and then it began to come forward, bearing the vat, growing imperceptibly larger. So slowly! Oh God, make it come faster!

He turned back to them.

‘We aren’t bluffing, Bud,’ Leo said. And after a moment: ‘One minute.’

He looked again; the cab was nearer – a hundred and fifty feet? One thirty? He could distinguish a pale shape behind the black square of its window.

‘Thirty seconds.’

How could time race by so fast? ‘Listen,’ he said frantically, ‘listen, I want to tell you something – something about Dorrie. She—’ He groped for something to say – and then stopped wide-eyed; there had been a flicker of movement in the dimness at the far end of the catwalk. Someone else was up here! Salvation!

‘Help!’ he cried, his arm semaphoring. ‘You! Come here! Help!’

The flicker of movement became a figure hurrying along the catwalk, speeding towards them.

Leo and Gant looked over their shoulders in confusion. Oh, dear God, thank you!

Then he saw that it was a woman.

Marion.

* * *

Leo cried out, ‘What are you – Get out of here! For God’s sake, Marion, go back down!’

She seemed not to hear him. She came up behind them, her face flushed and large-eyed above their compacted shoulders.

Bud felt her gaze rake his face and then descend to his legs. Legs that were trembling again … If he only had a gun … ‘Marion,’ he pleaded, ‘stop them! They’re crazy! They’re trying to kill me! Stop them! They’ll listen to you! I can explain about that list, I can explain everything! I swear I wasn’t lying—’

She kept looking at him. Finally she said, ‘The way you explained why you didn’t tell me about Stoddard?’

‘I love you! I swear to God I do! I started out thinking about the money, I admit that, but I love you! You know I wasn’t lying about that!’

‘
How
do I know?’ she asked.

‘I swear it!’

‘You swore so many things—’ Her fingers appeared curving over the men’s shoulders; long, white, pink-nailed fingers; they seemed to be pushing.

‘Marion! You wouldn’t! Not when we – after we—’

Her fingers pressed forward into the cloth of the shoulders, pushing …

‘Marion,’ he begged futilely.

Suddenly he became aware of a swelling in the smelter’s thunder, an added rumble. A wave of heat was spreading up his right side. The cab! He wheeled, catching the stanchion with both hands. There it was! – not twenty feet away, grinding closer on the overhead track with the cables shooting down from its belly. Through the opening in its front end he could see a bent head in a visored grey cap. ‘You!’ he bellowed, his jaw muscles cording. ‘You in the cab! Help! You!’ Heat from the oncoming vat pressed heavily against his chest. ‘Help! You! In the cab!’ The grey cap, coming closer, never lifted.

Deaf?
Was the stupid bastard
deaf
? ‘Help!’ he roared chokingly again and again, but it was no use.

He turned from the swelling heat, wanting to cry in despair.

Leo said, ‘The noisiest place in the smelter, up there in those cabs.’ As he said it, he took a step forward. Gant moved up beside him. Marion followed behind.

‘Look,’ Bud said placatingly, clutching the partition in his left hand again. ‘Please—’ He stared at their faces, masklike except for burning eyes.

They came another step closer.

The catwalk dipped and bucked like a shaken blanket. The baking heat on his right began extending itself across his back. They meant it! They weren’t bluffing! They were going to kill him! Moisture trickled all over him.

‘All right!’ he cried. ‘All right! She thought she was doing a Spanish translation! I wrote out the note in Spanish! I asked her to translate—’ His voice faded and stopped.

What was the matter with them? Their faces – the masklike blankness was gone, warped into – into embarrassment and sick contempt, and they were looking down at …

He looked down. The front of his pants was dark with a spreading stain that ran in a series of island blotches down his right trouser leg. Oh God! The Jap – the Jap he had killed – that wretched, trembling, chattering, pants-wetting caricature of a man – was that
him
? Was that
himself
?

The answer was in their faces.

‘No!’ he cried. He clapped his hands over his eyes, but their faces were still there. ‘No! I’m not like him!’ He wheeled away from them. His feet slipped on wetness and kicked out from under him. His hands flew from his face and flailed the air. Heat blasted up at him. Falling, he saw a giant disc of glistening green sliding into place below; gaseous, restless, shimmering—

Hardness in his hands! The cables! The weight of his body swung down and around, pulling at his armpits and tearing his hands on protruding steel threads. He hung with his legs swinging against the taut cables and his eyes staring at one of them, seeing the frayed fibres that were stabbing like needles into his hands above. A chaos of sound; a whistle shrieking, a woman screaming, voices above, voices below … He squinted up at his hands – blood was starting to trickle down the insides of his wrists – the oven-like heat was smothering, dizzying, engulfing him with the noxious stench of copper – voices shouted to him – he saw his hands starting to open – he was letting go because he wanted to, it wasn’t the burning suffocation or the needles in his hands, he was letting go because he wanted to, just as he had jumped from the catwalk but instinct had made him grab the cables and now he was overcoming instinct – his left hand opened and fell – he hung by his right, turning slightly in the furnace heat – there was oil on the back of his hand from the stanchion or the chain or something – and they wouldn’t have pushed him either – you think
anyone
can kill? – he had jumped and now he was letting go because he wanted to, that’s all, and everything was all right and his knees weren’t shaking any more, not that they had been shaking so much anyway, his knees weren’t shaking any more because he was in command again – he hadn’t noticed his right hand open but it must have opened because he was dropping into the heat, cables were shooting up, someone was screaming like Dorrie going into the shaft and Ellen when the first bullet wasn’t enough – this person was screaming this godawful scream and suddenly it was himself and he couldn’t stop! Why was he screaming? Why? Why on earth should he be—