“I don’t know. That’s why I said to draw the shade. The light’s at one side. If he shoots at your shadow, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll hit you.”
“Thoughtful, aren’t you?”
Merlini opened the door of a large wardrobe and disclosed a close-set row of the very best in men’s haberdashery. Floyd’s taste ran to bright colors and fancy checks.
“Besides,” Merlini added, his voice muffled, as his head pushed in among the clothes. “This murderer is a poisoner. I don’t really think he’ll shoot.”
“There are poisoned arrows.”
“Stop arguing and get at it.”
I realized he was serious about it, and followed instructions. The shooting didn’t come off. I stepped into the bathroom and under a warm shower. I had just finished toweling myself when Merlini looked in.
“Finished? Good.” He reached around and snapped the light switch, leaving me in darkness.
The bedroom light went out next, and I heard him raise the shade and open the window.
“Now what?” I said crossly from the doorway. “Are you going to sleep in your clothes?”
“No. We don’t sleep. Get dressed and keep it quiet. We’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I’ll be damned if I will!”
“And sorry if you don’t. I’m going to do a spot of high-class burgling. You write detective stories. Here’s your chance to see how the Compleat Burglar does it.”
“Do it in the morning. I want sleep.”
“Burglary is a nocturnal pursuit. Aren’t you interested in this case at all?”
“I don’t like it,” I growled. “It’s screwy. It’s a painting by Dali. The surrealism murder. Footprints on the ceiling! Bah! Limp watches and six-legged mutton chops! Murder in Wonderland!” But I climbed into my pants just the same.
“Sure it wasn’t something you ate? Which reminds me—”
I heard the click of the catches as he opened the suitcase, the rustle of waxed paper, and the liquid sound of a bottle being decanted. I reached out in the dark and fumbled for some.
“I thought this case had all the elements you like,” he said.
“I’m not so sure,” I argued doubtfully. “Look what we’ve got. A corpse, presumably poisoned. And with cyanide. I’ve done a little research on murder methods lately — thinking about doing a mystery melodrama. And, in case you don’t know, that’s a suicide’s poison. It’s by far the most popular poison, with its nearest competitors — lysol and bichloride of mercury — not even close runners-up. Three and a half to four percent of all New York City suicides vote for it. And it practically never occurs in homicide, except in detective stories. Did you notice what sort of bottle she had?”
“Yes. I’ve got it in my pocket. It originally held nail polish and there are some other cosmetics of the same brand on her dressing table.”
“Exactly. A nail-polish bottle is just the sort of thing a would-be suicide might hide a cache of poison in. I can’t somehow see a murderer confronting his victim with, ‘Here, have a snort of this rare old nail polish.’ Linda may have been balmy, but a nail-polish-drinking complex is a new one on me.”
“What’s this?” Merlini asked. “Are you making out a case for suicide? Or just pointing out how clever the murderer was when he faked the appearance of suicide?”
“I don’t know exactly. Certainly not that last. I wouldn’t say that in faking a suicide it was so very clever to leave footprints on the ceiling. Lighting fires, cutting phones, scuttling boats, and taking it on the lam in a noisy motor-boat certainly don’t lull suspicion of murder either. As for leaving the body in the wrong place by a couple of hundred yards — clever! He must be a damn-fool idiot!”
“Or else?” Merlini suggested.
“Or else he didn’t know she was an agoraphobe.”
“A fact that everyone we’ve met to date seems to have been quite aware of.”
“That’s why I said I didn’t think I liked this case. It even eliminates the mysteriously absent Floyd. It alibis every single one of as nice a kettle of suspects as I have ever seen. You know what the isolation device in detective fiction is? The author puts all his suspects at a week-end party miles out on the Sussex downs. Or in an office building sixty-odd stories up and no elevators running, the only door jammed. Or on a mountain top surrounded by a forest fire — I’m not making those up, they’ve all been used — or on shipboard, or in a plane, or — on an island. And why? So that when the body is found it will be obvious at once, even to the village constable, that the culprit is among those present.”
“Yes. It skips several uninteresting chapters in which the police go to great trouble eliminating all the professional crooks that might be around. Simplification.”
“Sure. And what happens here? I ask you. Everybody on a nice handy island completely surrounded by water, boats all sunk. So far, fine and dandy. But, because the corpse has a rare mental disease that everyone knows about, and since none of them appear to be nitwits enough to have faked a suicide and slipped up on the biggest detail of all, it lets them out. Every last one of them! When the Inspector goes to work tomorrow, all he has to do is run through his filing cabinet and pick out someone named Boston Joe, Harry the Dip, or Dopehead Charlie. Anybody and everybody could have done it except the people who might make it a good yarn.”
“You’re lazy, Ross. You want your murders dished up, all laid out for writing, a kick at the end of each chapter, an even 75,000 words, good installment breaks, a movie angle, and a socko finish. And I’m not so sure but what you’ve got it and don’t know it. Here, have some more Scotch. Those footprints. Any ideas there?”
“Sure, The guy that made ’em is twelve feet tall and can walk on his hands. List of suspects narrowed down no end. We just circularize the circuses and find out which giant answers the description. Element’ry, my dear Watson. But you do have an idea. I can smell it. Trot her out.”
“Years ago,” he said reflectively, “when barber shops were supplied with reading matter instead of picture magazines, I ran across a story in one of the weird-story pulps that deserved a better fate. Its hero was struck by a bolt of lightning. Instead of killing him, it played merry hell with his personal gravitational field. Twisted it all around. His friends just managed to get him indoors before he floated off. But they couldn’t keep him down. He was, suddenly, the exception that proved Isaac Newton’s little rule. The earth repelled rather than attracted him. Awful predicament. They had to screw a table, chairs, and a bed to the ceiling, and he lived there, upside down. For him, the ceiling was the floor, and everything that wasn’t fastened down promptly fell up—to the floor. He had to eat off the underside of his table and drink his coffee with the cup bottomside up. Inconvenient as anything. And the story ended on a lovely little note of horror. Can you guess what?”
“He went to Hollywood,” I hazarded.
“Worse,” Merlini said. “He looked out the window. Can you visualize what he saw? Trees growing upside down. The earth, solid and heavy, pressing down horribly, close overhead. And below, a sheer, terrifying drop of uncounted millions of light years — the whole length of the universe! It got him finally. His friends came in one day and found he’d disappeared. The window was open at the top.”
“And that, I hope, concludes our broadcast for this evening. The Man From Mars will be with you again tomorrow night in another — That’s funny. Third time tonight.”
I could sense Merlini’s start of interest.
“Third time for what?” he asked sharply.