“Maybe you’d better.”
May moved to the fire and knelt on an upholstered stool. She looked like a supplicant at confession. Corey stood beside her, listening, feeling the heat of the flames.
“He’s one of those people,” she said, “who takes pleasure in tormenting those weaker than himself. A manipulator. He likes to raise people up and then dash them down. It’s the way he gets his kicks. He can’t satisfy himself any other way. They all hate him at the studio — he’d never be missed.”
Corey said nothing.
“I won’t tell you what he does to me. But I can give you an example of how he treats others. There’s a new boy in the series — his name is Tony Bhajwa.”
“The Asian kid,” Corey said. “The waiter. I’ve seen him — he isn’t bad.”
“He could be very good. He has talent. Jason cast him in this bit part and then expected Tony to lick his boots. But the boy isn’t like that — he has a mind of his own. Well, the other day I heard Jason talking to one of the writers. He said he wants the wog dropped from the story.” May turned a cold eye up to Corey. “The wog. Dropped. That’s my dear, civilized Jason Hughes-Price.”
They noticed the time and Corey had to make a run for it. He promised to think about the plan, but only that.
Two days later he was still trying for a complete night’s sleep and, on the job, his hand was shaking so much he could not brush one color up against another. The weekend was hell. He tried drinking himself to sleep and only made himself sick. Afterwards he lay on the bed wondering what had happened to his uncomplicated life.
Growing up in Baytown, he had never expected to amount to a great deal. His father had gone as far as he could toward becoming a concert pianist. But you get no points for coming close and Herbert Keith ended up as Herbie the sign painter, doing jobs like lettering the glass doors at the Bowl-O-Drome when his trembling hands would let him. He also played rehearsal piano for the Kiwanis variety shows which, to Corey s way of thinking, was slightly better than being put in a pit with a bear.
Blessed escape from the house of the domineering women awaited Corey as soon as he got together the money and the nerve to fly to Montreal. Two years there tending bar at the Sheraton-Mt. Royal and he was off again to England. Nothing but fun ever since, he told himself as he lay in the dark, wondering if he would have to make another dash for the loo. The room smelled of gin and beer. He managed to get up and fall around, putting the empty bottle and tins outside in the corridor.
With his head back on the pillow, he had a vision of the immaculate library up the hill. It could be his. Christ, what a thought. All he had to do was take part in May’s adventure and he would end up with a woman who thought he was the greatest man in the world — and with a house like an ocean liner. The plan might work. It could work!
He took a chance and telephoned on Monday at the same hour as the previous week. She answered the phone. “No, it’s all right,” she said. “He’s upstairs in the shower.”
“I thought over what we discussed.”
“And?”
“If I don’t try, I’ll wonder for the rest of my life.”
“You have to be certain in your own mind, Corey.” She sounded as if it had nothing to do with her. “You have to want me that much.”
“That’s one thing I couldn’t be more certain about.”
“All right,” she said, lowering her voice and speaking quickly. “Wednesday night, day after tomorrow. Be here by nine-thirty. I’ll leave a light on in the kitchen so you won’t need a torch. Force your way in — don’t be afraid to break the lock. Disturb some things in the library, then get the poker and wait inside the doorway. Jason will show up by ten minutes to ten at the latest.”
“For sure? And he’ll be alone?”
“Count on it, dear. He’s the Greenwich Observatory time signal.”
On Wednesday night at nine-fifteen, Corey Keith picked his steps along the garden path toward a rectangle of orange kitchen light. The perpetual English smell of wet grass hung about him like washed net curtains. On the porch, he put a knee and a shoulder against the door, pressed hard, heard the spang as the flimsy lock let go, moved inside, closed the door, and stood breathing deeply. The kitchen smelled of fresh fruit and central heating. A yellow telephone hung on flowered vinyl wallpaper. If it rings, he thought, I’ll drop dead right here on May’s kitchen floor. The cops will have to come and cart my body away.
Out of the kitchen, down a dim corridor, into the carpeted area by the front entrance, then a right turn through a doorway two feet thick and he was in the library. Embers whispered behind the curved brass screen. He saw the heavy poker. Not yet.
There were silver trophies on the mantelpiece. These would do as evidence of the robbery in progress that Jason Hughes-Price must soon interrupt. Corey put his gloved hands on a cricket player and a golfer and took them to a settee, where he dropped them on the end cushion. Then he sat down. It was not even 9:30. He tried to think about the man he was about to kill but his mind refused to cooperate. Once as a lad in a cabbage field near Baytown he had tried to capture tiny white butterflies in his cupped hands. Their erratic flight had frustrated him throughout the broiling afternoon. The mental image of May’s husband was like a cabbage butterfly. Corey put his head back and closed his eyes.
The door! He sprang to his feet, heart pumping, eyes on the tiny clock beside a photograph of May in pirate costume. Ten minutes to ten — he had fallen asleep — typical!
Corey took his place at the doorway and was listening to the owner drop keys on a table when he realized he didn’t have the poker. Too late now — he would have to overpower the man somehow and use the poker afterward. Steps along the carpet, movement in the doorway, a hesitation.
Corey stepped forward, grabbed for a shoulder, felt arms fly up against his own, and then they were together in the light. Jason was not much taller than May. Corey put one hand on his throat, holding his lapel with the other. It was not an effective strangle but the producer’s face went crimson, partly from his efforts to break the grip. Corey saw a tanned, half-bald head, round green eyes, and a thick moustache of the guardsman style, heavily waxed and shaped to spiky points.
Corey was astonished at his own lack of strength. This little man was on the verge of breaking free. It was all he could do to hold him. If he was going to succeed, he would have to get mad. Damn it, this was stupid!
Rocking back and forth, neither making a sound except for the spitting gasps of men moving furniture, faces inches apart, the moment came when their eyes met. They saw each other. They stopped moving, still holding on, and then there was a softening in the green eyes. Fear went out of them. “You’re about as good at this,” Hughes-Price said, “as I am.”
It was all over. Corey dropped his arms and stepped back. He began to tremble so hard he had to clasp his hands and hold on.
“I guess I came home too soon,” the producer said. “Sorry if I scared you. But I like my Wednesday night football.” He was standing very still, observing the intruder’s face. “We could both use a drink. O.K.?”
Corey nodded. He waited until he had been handed a glass of Jason Hughes-Price’s Scotch for the second consecutive week. He obeyed the older man’s quiet order to sit himself down. They both drank.
Hughes-Price was still watching his face. “You don’t look to me like a man who steals. Down on your luck?” When Corey did not reply, he said, “Cheer up — it isn’t the end of the world. If I was going to call the police I would have done so by now.”