I went over and sprawled out in a chair resignedly. “So this is what marriage has done to you?”
“It’s... it’s... oh Ed! I can’t tell you.”
“Take another drink,” I suggested. “The green lizards will chase the white elephants away and there won’t be anything to be afraid of.”
She mixed us both another drink, spilling some liquor on the rug. I lit a cigarette while I waited for her to bring mine, flipped the matchstick toward the closed bathroom door.
It lit with a little sizzle. I saw a dark blur that was just creeping out under the door. I said:
“Something’s leaking in the bathroom, Dolly. Better take a look.”
She was coming toward me with the two drinks. She looked toward the door and screamed. Her fingers opened and let the glasses drop.
I caught her before she followed the glasses, pushed her into a chair and took a better look at the dark blur.
It was blood. Spreading out under the door. I started toward the bathroom and Dolly began screaming.
I turned back and slapped her wide-open mouth. She went limp in the chair and her eyes stared at me.
I opened the bathroom door and looked in. It wasn’t pretty. Herman Meade was an old-fashioned guy who evidently didn’t go in for safety razors. The girl on the tile floor had done the job in one slash. “From ear to ear” had always been just a phrase to me. It’s more than that now.
I closed the door softly. Went back to Dolly who was gripping the arm of her chair and watching me with tight-clamped lips.
I stood in front of her and said: “That’s a hell of a place to conceal the body. Suppose it leaks through to the apartment below.”
She shuddered and moaned: “Oh my God!”
I sat down. “You’re in a tough spot, Baby. Better spill it.”
She opened her mouth to scream again. I doubled up my fist and shoved it under her nose. “One yap, and I’ll sock you and beat it.”
She knew I meant it.
“It’s June Benton. From the apartment across the hall. Oh my God, Ed! What am I going to do?”
“I’d suggest calling an undertaker.”
“She did it right there, Ed. Right in my bathroom. I didn’t know she was going to. I didn’t have the faintest idea. I knew she was upset but not that way.”
“Probably came on her all of a sudden.” I settled back to get the story from her, not because I particularly wanted a suicide story, but because getting it was second nature to me.
“Old stuff, I suppose. Stepping out on hubby and he got wise?”
“No. It wasn’t like that. Not what you think. She was crazy in love with Jim. Jim’s her husband.”
“He was stepping out, eh? And she bumped herself so as not to stand in the way of his happiness?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ed.” Dolly was moaning again. “They were like a pair of love birds. But she... she told me this afternoon she didn’t see any way out. Oh Ed!” Dolly looked at me with a frightened little scream. “I know what she meant now.”
“Yeh? You always were quick on the pick-up. What didn’t she see any way out of?”
“The terrible mess she’d gotten into. And it started all so innocently. We didn’t mean any harm. Just something to keep from being bored in the afternoons. It didn’t seem wrong. Lots of other girls went, too. But June was unlucky. Terribly unlucky. She just couldn’t win.” Dolly broke down and sobbed some more.
I had taken a cigarette out of my pocket to light it. I put it back in my pocket. God what a break! And I had been on the point of turning away from Dolly’s door without knocking a second time.
I did some fast thinking in a hurry. I’d have to get Dolly straightened out so she could talk coherently. Here was my first break after snooping around the city for a week without picking up the trail.
I said suddenly: “We’d better do something about the body. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do if the police find her here. They’ll probably arrest you and keep you in jail a week while they check up. And they mightn’t believe your story after all.”
That hit Dolly like a bucket of ice water. She wrung her hands and begged: “Help me, Ed. Tell me what to do. You know about these things. You’ve got to help me.”
“If you’ll cut out the hysteria.”
“I will, Ed. I swear I will. See, I’m calm as anything.”
She was wringing her hands as though she would tear each finger off. I got up and went to the door, opened it and looked out into the hall. It was deserted. I called to Dolly:
“Come here. Which is this girl’s apartment?”
Dolly came close to me and pointed shakily over my shoulder at a door opposite. “That one. That’s the Benton’s.”
“She and her husband live there alone?”
“Y-yes.”
“When will he be home?”
“Not for... an hour or so.”
I stepped across the hall and tried the door. It opened into an apartment that was a duplicate of the Meade’s. I stepped inside and got a six-foot throw rug from the kitchen entrance. Dolly drew out of my way with dilated eyes when I brought the rug in.
I threw it down in front of the bathroom door and said over my shoulder to her: “Better look the other way. This is going to be messy.”
It was. I rolled up my sleeves and got her on the rug. Made it into a trough to hold the blood in, and carried it across the hall to put the rug back where it had been — with the body laid out as though June Benton had fallen forward when the blood began to spurt.
Herman’s razor was clenched in her right hand. I got it away from her, ransacked the kitchen for a sharp butcher knife, smeared it with blood and pressed it in her cold fingers.
Not a nice job. But it looked all right when I was through. There wasn’t enough blood but I figured the dumb cops would think she’d been anaemic. I didn’t leave any fingerprints behind me, threw the nightlatch on the door and locked it as I went out.
Dolly was crumpled up in a big chair when I went in and closed her door behind us. I didn’t disturb her, but went right to work on the bathroom.
It wasn’t perfect when I got through, but what the hell? There wasn’t any reason for anyone to look for blood in the Meade bathroom.
I went out and closed the door behind me. Dolly had snapped out of it some. She had stopped whimpering. She looked at me like a cur dog waiting for a kick in the ribs.
I sat down and lit the cigarette I had put back in my pocket a little while before. Dolly didn’t say anything. Just watched me.
“Everything’s all right,” I told her, blowing out smoke. “Keep your mouth shut and pretend to be surprised when you hear the sad news.”
“Oh, it’s too utterly ghastly. I can’t bear to think about it. She was just sitting here talking to me as calmly as you please... in that very same chair you’re sit...”
“You just said you couldn’t bear to think about it. Don’t think — talk. What’s the low-down on it, Dolly? You said she was unlucky.”
“Terribly unlucky. I used to tell her it proved the truth of the old adage. You know: Lucky at love and unlucky at cards. She and Jim were so happy until...”
“Until what?”
Dolly pressed her lips together and looked secretive. “I... that is... I can’t tell, Ed.”
I pointed my cigarette at her. “Listen, Baby. I’ve just gone to a lot of trouble getting you out of a mess. You’re not out of it yet. Maybe I’ll decide to tell all I know. It all depends on what sort of explanation you’ve got for the whole thing.”
She wailed:
“But I’ve sworn not to tell, Ed. And you’re a newspaper man, too.”
“Was. I told you I’d quit.”
“But what does it matter? Why do you want to know?”
“Call it curiosity.”