“The truth.”
He jabbed a finger toward the dossier. “You call that the truth?”
“It all fits. You knew your stepfather was dying, would in all likelihood die before Verity Bainbridge, causing you to lose out on all that money. You were greedy and ambitious and as fate would have it you lucked onto someone as greedy as yourself. Working in that sleep disorder laboratory at the university you somehow won Tibbetts’s confidence — he was easily suggestible and always good for a gamble, and probably a closet psychopath as well. You convinced him that he could murder a stranger and get away with it, would stand a better than even chance of being acquitted once a jury was persuaded he hadn’t known what he was doing when he committed the crime. You promised him fifty thousand dollars if he took the risk.” I tapped the dossier. “It’s all here, the whole chain of events.”
He regarded me with supercilious contempt. “And not a shred of proof. If there had been, the police would have discovered it.”
“Possibly — if they’d dug as deeply as I did. And been as lucky. It was pure luck I saw you on that TV show. Another thing that convinced me of your guilt was that you evidently found it advisable to sever yourself from your past, even to changing your name, an amusing but not especially clever change. Lyman, an anagram of Manly; Fox, the English equivalent of the French Renard.”
His expression remained aloof and disdainful. “And you, James, are neither amusing nor clever. A theory, as you must have taught in your own classrooms, is no good without proof.”
“We’ll see if the authorities share your opinion. I’m confident the case will be reopened. You’ll be ruined, you must know that.”
I picked up the dossier and rose. “Thanks for the invitation, Lyman, but I suddenly have no appetite.” With that I walked out of the room.
Now that it was over, I didn’t really care what happened to Lyman Fox. Enough that I knew my quest had been successful, that I’d done what I could to even the score for Verity Bainbridge. Nor can I say I felt any strong sense of satisfaction when I learned of Fox’s death. It was the final proof I needed. A man of Lyman’s professional standing and social prominence was not the sort who could face ruin and disgrace.
Nonetheless, as time passes, I suppose it’s not unnatural for a shade of doubt occasionally to trouble me. I have the firmest conviction that I proved my case, but as in many more celebrated cases, the evidence, one must admit, was circumstantial. I’m back home at the cottage now, snug and secure, yet for some reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping. The insomnia keeps getting worse. Maybe I should see a doctor.
Murder Set to Music
by Henry Slesar
© 1996 by Henry Slesar
“It’s one-thirty P.M.,” Tommy Noone said, lips close to the microphone. “One-thirty and still Noone Time.” It was his catch-phrase, familiar to radio listeners in White Mills and beyond — not too far beyond, the range of WMZ being less than two hundred miles.
Tommy had been the station’s engineer before he married the station owner’s daughter. Now he was also its disk jockey, spinning Sixties records from noon to six, to an audience of truck farmers and bored housewives, none more bored, or more truculent, than his wife Trina.
He dropped a needle on a Bee-Gee record and thought about Trina dead, her eyes closed, and, more gratifying, her mouth. He had conjured up the vision more than once in their fifteen-year marriage, but never thought of making it a reality until two weeks ago, when Trina told him she might sell the station.
“It costs more than it’s worth,” Trina said, and showed him the papers that proved it.
Tommy looked at the old wall clock. It read 1:45. He would make the first move in fifteen minutes.
He thought about how he would behave when they found her body. He wouldn’t overdo his grief. Everyone in White Mills knew the Noones were hardly a loving couple. He would be more shocked than tearful. He had warned Trina about that shaky ladder a dozen times. In fact, he mentioned it in front of Irma Goodwin when they picked out new curtains in her dry goods store. “You’re not hanging these until we get a new ladder,” Tommy had said.
It was time. He leaned into the microphone and said: “It’s two o’clock, folks, but it’s still Noone time, and time for more of your favorite Golden Oldies...”
The old tape reel was already in position. He flicked a switch to start it rotating, then slipped into a light topcoat. It was close to seventy degrees outdoors, but he felt the need for outer covering.
He was sure the treelined road between the studio and his house would be deserted. He could walk to his front door in less than eight minutes. If he met anyone, he would simply postpone his errand for another day. He liked to think of it as an “errand.”
When he arrived, Trina was sweeping the front porch. She looked at him in surprise.
“What are you doing home?”
He smiled. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”
She followed him. Sure enough, the curtains had been hung; the ladder leaned against the wall.
“They look great,” he said. “Only you shouldn’t have used that old ladder. You could have fallen and gotten a concussion.”
Before she knew what was happening, Tommy gave her that concussion. With her body arranged in front of the window, he ripped a curtain off its rod and put one end in her hand. Then he left. This time, he was far more careful about being seen.
It was just two-thirty when the last recording ended. It sounded like Frankie Avalon, but he wasn’t sure. “It’s two-thirty,” he said lovingly into the microphone, “but it’s still Nooooone time!” He stretched out the name longer than usual. But then, he felt better, stronger than usual.
He’d expected to be the one to call the police, but Ed Joseph, delivering the dry cleaning, peeked through the window when Trina didn’t answer the doorbell.
“Oh my God,” Tommy said to the solemn group around the dead woman. “What happened?” He looked at the curtain clutched in her hand, the old ladder with its wobbly rungs. “She fell, didn’t she? I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen!”
“Don’t think it happened that way,” Officer Buck Potter said, a man usually far more genial. “I think you killed her, Tommy.”
“Are you crazy, Buck? You know where I was all afternoon!”
“Sure do,” Potter said, and there were handcuffs in his big fists.
Why was Noone arrested? See The Final Paragraph (p. 285).
Continued from page 172
“We heard your broadcast,” Buck Potter said. “So we knew you had to be someplace else. You shouldn’t have left the weather report on that old tape, Tommy. Don’t think we’re expecting five inches of snow in June.”
The Smart Guys Marching Society
by Dennis Palumbo
© 1996 by Dennis Palumbo
When Dennis Palumbo appeared in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 1978, his “day job” was Hollywood screenwriter for such notable films as My Favorite Year and the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter. After a long absence from short story writing, Mr. Palumbo, now a psychotherapist, is back with a tale that pays homage to the Blackwidower tales of the late Isaac Asimov.