“Your sister’s testimony was clear,” said the prosecuting attorney to the defendant. “There is no need to call her back. Now, is it not true that you entered the bedroom where the deceased was sleeping, asphyxiated her with a chloroform-saturated towel, and—”
The defendant began to cry. “I wasn’t there when she died!” he said wildly. “I was at Celia Hartman’s house. Only she wasn’t home. I had a key — that’s why the butler didn’t know I was there. But he thought he heard a voice calling in the hall — he testified to that.”
“He thought,” the prosecuting attorney emphasized sarcastically. “And a voice so unclear to him that it could be either male or female. The butler had been sound asleep — he had retired early under bromides because of a heavy cold. He believes he may have been having a nightmare. But he arose at once, put on his bathrobe, and examined the upper hall and the lower. No one was there.”
“My sister sent me there! She sent me, but she won’t tell you!” the defendant said. He stood up and faced his sister. “Lulie, in the name of God, tell them!”
“Order!” demanded the judge, pounding his gavel...
I never intended to have Jack blamed. That just happened. One thing built on another, and after it did, I began to think that Jack ought to suffer a little. A person needs to suffer to learn how to take care of himself. And after this Jack will have to take care of himself.
First, the police came. Jack had called them. I was across the street with old Mrs. Bellingham — she reminds me so much of Mama. And she isn’t right any more — she didn’t know when I came in, she can’t remember five minutes at a time. But even though Jack had called the police, and swore he was innocent, his fingerprints were all over the chloroform bottle. And there were the bruises on her shoulders where he’d held her to keep her from scratching out his eyes.
They were sure he did it. And I kept thinking: suffering toughens a person, and Jack needs toughening. Just for a little while. So I told them I wasn’t there, that I didn’t know anything.
After all, he intended to do it. That night, when I saw him fumbling in my medicine cabinet, I felt uneasy. He’s always borrowing things. But that night he had a queer, white look around his mouth. Earlier I’d heard them fighting, too, that’s when she got the bruises. But he told me she was asleep and he needed antiseptic for a scratch. As for her falling asleep right after a fight, that was natural. She was a beautiful animal, and a good fight relaxed her.
He was gone a half hour or so. Then he came tearing back. “For God’s sake, wake her up! Get a doctor!” he said. “I think she’s dead. Lulie, I didn’t mean it. But she swore she’d stop my exhibit, swore she’d kill Celia—”
I ran next door to their apartment. The nasty smell of chloroform hit me. I knew then what he had borrowed from my medicine cabinet. It was the chloroform I’d bought for my kitten when it had fits.
A towel hung from the bed beside Gigi. The chloroform smell came from it. I examined Gigi. “You’re always losing your head,” I told Jack. “She’s not dead. She’s breathing and her heart’s beating. You know how soundly she sleeps. But you idiot! How could this help us?”
“I don’t know — I didn’t want to lose the show — I don’t know,” he kept saying.
“Get out of here,” I said. “Go see Celia. Stay there a while. But don’t tell anyone, you hear? — about what you tried to do. I may have to call a doctor and I don’t want you around here talking too much. Remember, keep your mouth shut.”
He ran out.
I put cold water on Gigi’s face. I blew my breath into her mouth. It was useless. Before I began, I knew it. There had been no breath, no heartbeat, when I examined Gigi. She was dead before I ever got to their apartment.
And already I knew what I had to do. I don’t have a career, and Jack does. Besides, I want to take care of him — it’s my life! What else have I got?
I fixed it so that Jack would believe I was the one who really murdered her. That way, he could go on living and working; he wouldn’t have to hate himself so much. I picked up the towel, put it on her face, and poured the rest of the chloroform on it. My fingerprints were on the bottle, too. That was only natural. It was my chloroform.
Jack came back, found the towel on her face, and called the police. But when they questioned him, he just kept saying, “Talk to my sister, talk to my sister.” He didn’t know how to handle it. For what could he say that wouldn’t make him guilty, too?
The police found me across the street with that dear old soul, Mrs. Bellingham. She kept muttering how I’d been there since I came home from work. I had run in to see her for a minute when I first came home, and she didn’t remember I’d ever left. By then, with all those policemen and reporters around, I was almost numb. I didn’t say anything. I let them talk and I just nodded. It was so clear they thought Jack had killed her. Well, I was scared, and I kept thinking I hadn’t really done it. And Jack needed some sense scared into him. So I let it ride.
In those crazy dreams I always start to kill Celia. Then, like the girl beside the pool in the crystal house, when her eyes look directly at me they have no golden flecks. They aren’t dark. They are Gigi’s blue, slanted eyes.
I’ll sit here, quiet, free, for just another minute or two. Then I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them I did it.
Everyone in the courtroom gazed at her as Lulie abruptly arose from her seat. “Please! Please!” she cried. “Let him alone! He didn’t do it, I did it! But it wasn’t Gigi, it was the butler I killed. He wouldn’t take me to Celia. He was sitting in the kitchen sink, and I held his head under the faucet until he drowned!”
The judge pounded his desk with his gavel. “Bailiff,” he ordered. “Remove that poor woman from the court!”
Lawrence Treat
A As in Alibi
A police procedural starring Lieutenant Decker, the Chief of Homicide himself, in one of the best stories in this fine series... Keep your eye on the clock — all the clues stare you in the face...
Lieutenant Decker, the lean, gray-haired, gray-eyed Chief of Homicide, sat behind the beat-up desk in his tiny office and felt old. Empty inside. Past his prime. Licked, washed up. Twenty years ago he’d have shot fire and brimstone, and blasted this overweight slob into a confession.
But now — what? Here was Frank London, a half-baked, itinerant bum of a folk singer, sneering at him, sneering at the police. Logic hadn’t worked, threats hadn’t worked, the tricks of the trade hadn’t worked. Nothing had even dented the guy, and Decker had nowhere to go. Not up, not down. Not sideways. Just stay put and molder away. Call the case a bust, put it in the Unsolved File, and know in his heart that he’d failed.
There was only one thing that Lieutenant Decker was sure of: Frank London had killed her. Decker knew it and London knew he knew it — which was why London had that smirk on his face. A big, round, oversized face with large agate eyes, cheeks like little red balloons, and that impossible, twisted handlebar of a blond mustache decorating his lip.
It was a grotesque mustache, braided like a quoit or a pretzel or a wicker carpet-beater. The Beatles had their hairdo, Groucho had his cigar — but this joker had his mustache; and he was making a monkey out of Decker and the Homicide Squad and the whole police department. And when they released London, somebody would be the fall guy and his name was Decker. William B. Decker, a cop for 35 years and head of Homicide for the last 15. The smart thing was to hand in his resignation, then go home and tell Martha, his wife. And move to Florida or California and never work, never worry, never be alive again.