The Long Night (27 page)

“Gilmore didn't confess,” I said. “I dictated the words to him. All he did was agree just before he died.”

“Well, isn't that enough?”

“For the police, yes. But I happen to know better. I happen to know that it was your brother who entered Judith's apartment that night; that it was your brother who strangled Judith with one of her own belts.”

In a brittle voice, she asked, “How do you know?”

“Because I saw him,” I said. “I saw him leave before I went upstairs and found her dead with the belt round her neck.”

The light from the window still shone gold on Carole's hair but darkness had come into her eyes and her skin felt cold. As she drew away from my hand, she said, “You're making this up. I don't know why, but you are. And you've spoiled everything. I had hoped all the unpleasantness was over; I thought perhaps we might——” she turned away and put the back of her hand to her mouth “—we might be able to make a fresh start.”

“Who's we? You and Clive?”

“Of course. What else did you think I meant?” But that wasn't what she had meant.

“I was thinking of Kovak,” I said. “Has he made any plans yet to dispose of his wife?”

It took Carole quite a while to digest that. Then she looked at me over her shoulder like I was something that'd crawled out of the woodwork. “It's no use talking to you,” she said. “No matter how many times I tell you there's nothing between Ivor Kovak and me, you still won't believe me. Perhaps you'd better go.”

“When I do, I'll pay a call on the Homicide Bureau and lay information against your brother. That is, unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you persuade Mister Kovak to meet the cost of that vacation you recommended,” I said. “Ten grand should just about cover it.”

She swung round swiftly to face me and her eyes were like ice. “You're a strangely selective blackmailer. Or will you
threaten to expose him to his wife when you've spent the first ten thousand?”

“Let's deal with one thing at a time. Is Clive's life worth the money or isn't it?”

“Clive didn't have any part in it. The man who visited Judith Walker's apartment that night wasn't my brother.”

“Then how is it that I saw Clive coming out of the street door?”

“You didn't! He wasn't there. He hadn't seen Judith since he was sent to prison.” She had tears in her eyes as she added, “Why don't you leave him alone? King Gilmore tricked him, then she threw him over, and now you're trying to lie his life away. You know he wasn't the man who left Judith's apartment.”

“If he wasn't the man, who was? Could it have been Kovak?”

“No . . . no . . . no!” With both hands, she pushed back her hair and stared up at me wildly. “Ivor Kovak was here; I've admitted he was here. He didn't leave until after four o'clock and Judith was dead by then. What reason would he had have for killing her, anyway?”

“None that I know of,” I said. “And that goes for everybody else who got involved with Judith Walker . . . except Clive. He had a motive; she jilted him for the guy who had railroaded him to the pen. I think any jury would find him guilty without having to leave the courtroom. Don't you?”

With no emotion in her voice, she said, “Yes. Ever since I knew he'd been discharged from prison two days before she was murdered, I've been afraid of that. Nobody would believe him . . . nobody.” She put her hands over her face and rested her head against me and took a long, shuddering breath. Like she was very young and very scared, she said in a muffled tone, “Help me . . . I don't know what to do. Please—please help me. Clive has gone through enough; I can't let him suffer any more. But don't make me ask Kovak for money. I'll do anything else—anything . . . you want.”

Her hair had a vague scent and her scalp was pink beneath the shining gold. Little wisps of white-gold curled on the back of her neck. She was more desirable than any woman I have ever known. And she was mine—if I wanted her. It wouldn't
last: what I felt for her was never meant to last. But, while it did, she was mine.

Something pounded in my throat and my chest grew too tight to breathe. Very slowly, I took her by the shoulders and held her away from me until her hands slid down from her face and she looked up at me with misted eyes that wouldn't let me go. She was streaked with tears and her body was shaking.

I forgot Deborah. I forgot all the others that had been before Deborah. My choice was simple—if I had any choice. All I had to do was to let King Gilmore's lies go undisturbed. Nobody else need pay for what had happened the night a double-cross bounced. Clive Van Buren would be in the clear . . . and Kovak . . . and . . .

Maybe my decision would've been different if I hadn't let myself think of Ivor Kovak. Because it wasn't conscience that decided me. It was a revulsion born of jealousy. Whether I hate to admit the truth or not—that was the truth.

And that was why I hated myself. I wanted her. But two things kept us apart and would go on keeping us apart: Kovak—and Judith Walker. Carole could never change. For me, there would be no warmth in her while the memory of Judith lived. And that memory could never die.

I said, “I'll help you. I'll tell you what to do—if you'll do it.”

Her eyes moved over my face and she grew slowly pale. Then she shivered in a cold I couldn't feel. When she'd wet her lips, she asked faintly, “What is it?”

“Nothing you can't do,” I said. “Just come with me to police headquarters and confess that you strangled Judith Walker.”

For an endless moment, she stared and shivered and her eyes searched beyond me for a way of escape. When she realised her road led one way only, she said huskily, “I think you must be completely out of your mind. First it was Ivor Kovak . . . then you accused Clive. Now——” she looked down at my hands on her shoulders and then up into my face “—what kind of a guy are you, anyway?”

“What I am doesn't matter,” I said. “Not any longer. Once I thought I could forget what you'd done. Now I know it could never work out that way.”

“
You
know! Who are you to know anything? And let me go.” She shook me off and felt her shoulders as if to erase my touch. “Get out of here: and don't come back.”

“That's one thing you can be sure of. When I go, I won't come back. And neither will you.”

“No? Are you crazy enough to imagine I'd go to the police and tell them I killed Judith Walker, just because you say so?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you don't, I'll tell them exactly what you did and they'll come for you—if you prefer it that way.”

Very slowly, she backed away from me until she was almost at the door leading into her bedroom. I didn't try to stop her. I didn't move when she backed into the bedroom and the door closed. All I did was wait.

A drawer opened . . . a drawer shut . . . her heels tapped softly across the carpet . . . the door swung wide . . . she stood looking at me with the grey light all around her. She was very beautiful. But now the promise in her eyes was the promise of death.

I looked at the gun and the last vestige of doubt left me. I said, “That will achieve nothing. I've left a sealed envelope with my lawyer containing a full statement of everything I know. If I don't claim it by to-morrow morning, he has instructions to hand it to the police.”

She put her little finger to her mouth and nibbled at the knuckle while she smiled and thought and thought again. The gun didn't waver. She couldn't miss. With her lovely grey eyes shut, she couldn't miss.

After a long minute, she said, “Even everything you know might not be so very much. And you'd have to prove it . . . wouldn't you?”

“The police would do that,” I said. “Once they have reason to suspect you. . . .”

“Without any motive?” She leaned against the doorframe and smoothed back her shining hair and smiled. “You said yourself that no one had a motive—except Clive.”

“When they grill Kovak,” I said, “they'll have their motive. He'll confirm what I can only guess: you've been his mistress . . . and Judith found out. Judith put the squeeze on you. . . . Kovak is a wealthy man. Or he will be when he
gets rid of his wife—with your help. Maybe without even his knowledge. Am I boring you?”

“Not in the least. I'm fascinated by your mind. Do go on.” Her smile was tight. She was breathing as if she'd just climbed a long flight of stairs.

“You got Judith to buy two bottles of rye for you. Then you waited. Some time before the night she died, you must've overheard her talking with King Gilmore on the phone. She mentioned an appointment for two a.m. . . . or half after two; it doesn't matter. The main thing is you assumed her date was with Gilmore. That was all you needed to put your scheme into operation.”

The daylight was failing and flurries of rain were slanting against the window. I watched the drab sky as I went on. I didn't want to look at her.

“Early that evening, you doped both bottles with chloral hydrate. Soon afterwards, you went to Judith's apartment and made her a gift of one of them. What excuse you gave her is immaterial. I think you made sure she hadn't much of her own kosher rye in stock before you left.

“The midnight fashion show was just tailor-made for your plan. I guess Kovak was surprised to see you there—not the other way round as you wanted me to believe. When he escorted you home, you invited him up here for a nightcap . . . soon's he was out for the count, you slipped out of bed and took a cab to Gifford Street.”

She stirred and came away from the doorway. Her face was bleak with hatred and her eyes were saying terrible things. She said, “Don't strain your imagination. We didn't go to bed.”

I said, “What difference does that make? . . . You found Judith lying drugged and a man unconscious on the floor like he had been doped, too. You thought he was King Gilmore. Joke is—I was the guy on the floor.” In a natural, unstudied movement, I reached for my pocket.

The gun lifted an inch higher and her arm went rigid. “I wouldn't,” she said. “If I were you, I wouldn't.” The sweet cider had become vinegar.

“Just fancied a cigarette,” I said. “But, if you object. . . .”

“Take one from the box on the table. And finish your crazy story.”

It was a tooled silver box lined with cedarwood: two compartments big enough to hold best part of a couple of hundred smokes. I took one and I lit it. And I doodled on the lid with my index finger while I finished my story.

“You called the police before you left,” I said, “so that Judith's boy-friend wouldn't have time to wake up and skip out. Then you went home to rouse dear Ivor. . . . Nice slick, streamlined scheme that couldn't miss. Pity brother Clive had to go and get himself released from jail without your knowledge and complicate things a trifle. Why didn't you let him act the fall-guy? He'd have fitted the part perfectly.”

She went very still and I thought I had driven her too far. Then she asked, “Anything else in the statement at your lawyers that you haven't mentioned?”

“No-o-o . . .” I said. “I don't think so. I couldn't put down in advance that you'd commit yourself by admitting you knew Judith was dead before four a.m. And it wasn't necessary to make the point that your brother gave you good reason for wanting to frame Gilmore as he had framed Clive. Nor that it took me far too long to realise Judith wouldn't have drunk that rye if she'd known it was spiked with chloral hydrate: therefore she hadn't monkeyed with the liquor so you and Kovak would be caught together by Mrs. Kovak: therefore it could only be the other way round—you did the monkeying. And the rest fitted . . . or are you going to waste time in argument?”

With wide, hypnotic eyes, she took one long step towards me: a graceful, swaying step that brought her close enough to let me see the pallor of her mouth beneath the crimson lipstick. In her cheeks lay dark shadows. She said, “No . . . I've no time to waste . . . because you lied about that statement . . . there isn't any statement . . . you must think I'm a fool. When you're dead, there'll be no one to tell.”

“They'll send you to the chair,” I said. “Kill me, and they'll ask a lot of awkward questions. After that, they'll wonder as I wondered, if Judith Walker hadn't been strangled with a belt because her killer's hands were too small to choke her to death—like your hands.” Almost in a shout, I added,
“Look at them! Lovely hands belonging to a lovely woman . . . Ivor Kovak's woman! You dirty, murdering——”

She shook as if a powerful electric charge had ripped through her. Then she thrust the gun forward and half-shut her eyes.

If she hadn't been too busy choking over my insults, she'd have pulled the trigger a lot quicker than she did. Before the gun went off, I'd scooped up the silver cigarette box and thrown it straight at her face.

And I didn't stop at that. With the bang of the gun ringing bells in my ears, I took a long low dive and wrapped my arms around her legs and brought her down in a flying tackle.

We landed hard. There was a moment in which neither of us moved. I could see her dead-white face and the sick light in her eyes. I could see a lot of things that she'd always kept hidden.

Then she said, “No . . . they'll never send me anywhere. . . .” Her hand lifted swiftly and the muzzle of the gun was in her soft, red mouth. The gun banged again.

THE END

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

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Copyright © Hartley Howard

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