“You knew Helen,” he said in a kind of faraway voice. “She was a wonderful woman. We were married twelve years, Clay. I must have been crazy. But I’m not making much sense, am I?” He tried to smile but it broke on him.
I blew out some more smoke and said nothing. He looked at the gun as though he had never seen it before, but he kept on pointing it at me.
“About eight months ago,” he continued, “I made some bad investments with my own money. I tried to get it back by other investments, this time with Donna’s money. It was very foolish of me. I lost that, too.”
He shook his head with slow regret. “It was quite a large sum, Clay. But I wasn’t greatly worried. Things would break right before long and I could put it back. And then Helen found out about it…
“She loved me, Clay. But she wouldn’t stand for my dipping into Donna’s money. She said unless I made good the shortage immediately she would tell Donna. If anything like that got out it would ruin me. I promised I would do it within two or three weeks.”
He stopped there and the room was silent. A breeze came in at the open window and rustled the drapes.
“Then,” David Wainhope said, “something else happened, something that ruined everything. This isn’t easy for me to say, but…well, I was having an …affair with my secretary. Miss Kemper. A lovely girl. You met her.”
“Yes,” I said. “I met her.”
“I thought we were being very—well, careful. But Helen is — was a smart woman, Clay. She suspected something and she hired a private detective. I had no idea, of course …
“Today, Helen called me at the office. I was alone; Miss Kemper was at lunch. Helen seemed very upset; she told me to get home immediately if I knew what was good for me. That’s the way she put it: ‘if you know what’s good for you’!”
I said, “Uh-hunh!” and went on looking at the gun.
“Naturally, I went home at once. When I got here, Donna was just getting out of her car in front. Helen’s convertible was also in the driveway, so I put my car in the garage and came into the living room. I was terribly upset, feeling that Helen was going to tell Donna about the money.
“They were standing over there, in front of the fireplace. Helen was furious; I had never seen her quite so furious before. She told me she was going to tell Donna everything. I pleaded with her not to. Donna, of course, didn’t know what was going on.
“Helen told her about the shortage, Clay. Right there in front of me. Donna took it better than I’d hoped. She said she would have to get someone else to look after her affairs but that she didn’t intend to press charges against me. That was when Helen really lost her temper.
“She said she was going to sue me for divorce and name Miss Kemper; that she had hired a private detective and he had given her a report that same morning. She started to tell me all the things the detective had told her. Right in front of Donna. I shouted for her to stop but she went right on. I couldn’t stand it, Clay. I picked up the poker and I hit her. Just once, on the head. I didn’t know what I was doing. It — it was like a reflex. She died on the floor at my feet.”
I said, “What am I supposed to do — feel sorry for you?”
He looked at me woodenly. I might as well have spoken to the wall. “Donna was terribly frightened. I think she screamed, then she turned and ran out of the house. I heard her car start before I realized she would tell them I killed Helen.
“I ran out, shouting for her to wait, to listen to me. But she was already turning into the road. My car was in the garage, so I jumped into Helen’s and went after her. I wasn’t going to do anything to her, Clay; I just wanted her to understand that I hadn’t meant to kill Helen, that it only happened that way.
“By the time we reached that curve on Stone Canyon I was close behind her. She was driving too fast and the car skidded on the turn and went over. I could hear it. All the way down I heard it. I’ll never get that sound out of my mind.”
I shivered and closed my eyes. There was no emotion in me anymore — only a numbness that would never really go away.
His unsteady voice went on and on. “She must have died instantly. The whole front of her face…My mind began to work fast. If I could make the police think it was my wife who had died in the accident, then I could hide Helen’s body and nobody would know. That way Donna would be the one missing and they’d ask you questions, not me.
“The wreckage was saturated with gasoline. I — I threw a match into it. The fire couldn’t hurt her, Clay. She was already dead. I swear it. Then I went up to the car and looked through it for something of Helen’s I could leave near the scene.
“I came back here,” he went on tonelessly, “and hid Helen’s body. And all the time thoughts kept spinning through my head. Nobody must doubt that it was Helen in that car. If I could just convince you that Donna was not only alive after the accident, but that she had gone away…
“It came to me almost at once. I don’t know from where. Maybe when staying alive depends on quick thinking, another part of your mind takes over. Miss Kemper would have to help me —”
I waved a hand, stopping him. “I know all about that. She told me. And for Christ’s sake stop calling her Miss Kemper! You’ve been sleeping with her — remember?”
He was staring at me. “She told you? Why? I was sure —”
“You made a mistake,” I said. “That note you signed Donna’s name to was typed on the office machine. When I found that out I called on your Miss Kemper. She told me enough to get me started on the right track.”
The gun was very steady in his hand now. Hollows deepened under his cheeks. “You — you told the police?”
“Certainly.”
He shook his head. “No. You didn’t tell them. They would be here now if you had.” He stood up slowly, with a kind of quiet agony. “I’m sorry, Clay.”
My throat began to tighten. “The hell with being sorry. I know. I’m the only one left. The only one who can put you in that gas chamber out at San Quentin. Now you make it number three.”
His face seemed strangely at peace. “I’ve told you what happened. I wanted you to hear it from me, exactly the way it happened. I wanted you to know I couldn’t deliberately kill anyone.”
He turned the gun around and reached out and laid it in my hand. He said, “I suppose you had better call the police now.”
I looked stupidly down at the gun and then back at him. He had forgotten me. He settled back on the couch and put his hands gently down on his knees and stared past me at the night sky beyond the windows.
I wanted to feel sorry for him. But I couldn’t. It was too soon. Maybe some day I would be able to.
After a while I got up and went into the bedroom and put through the call.
1953
MICKEY SPILLANE
THE LADY SAYS DIE!
Mickey (born Francis Morrison) Spillane (1918-2006) was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in a tough neighborhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He sold his first stories to the top American magazines at the age of seventeen, then switched to pulp magazines and comic books; he was one of the creators of superheroes Captain Marvel and Captain America. He took time out for World War II, in which he flew combat missions and trained pilots for the Air Force, then he returned to continue his writing career while also becoming a trampoline performer for Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus and working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to break up a narcotics ring.
Spillane created his most famous character, Mike Hammer, for a comic book, but when the publisher failed he converted the story and hero into a novel, I, the Jury (1947), which became a national phenomenon, selling many millions of copies, as did his next six books. At one time, his first seven books all ranked among the top-ten best-selling novels in U.S. history. While most critics savaged them, partly because of their relatively (for the time) graphic depictions of violence and references to sex, partly because of his avowed right-wing patriotism, readers loved him, and the objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand wrote of him admiringly, comparing reading his books to listening to a military band in a public park. Most of his early novels were made into motion pictures, including I, the Jury (1953), with Biff Elliot as Hammer; the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955), with Ralph Meeker as Hammer; and The Girl Hunters (1963), in which Spillane himself played the detective. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master for lifetime achievement in 1995.