It was a screwball idea from the very first, but I saw no reason why it shouldn’t work. Anyway, I definitely did not care for an affair with anyone other than Godiva. I had Ellicia — or part of her — and I had to be one hundred per cent essential.
You see what I was driving at. I would quietly establish Godiva’s presence in the apartment by little gestures such as rumpling the bed and tossing a few feminine things about for the house maid to see. The fact that no one ever actually saw Godiva coming and going would lend. I thought, spice to the affair.
I would write a few notes, and at the proper time place them where Ellicia would find them. I would come home from work that day and when she confronted me with the notes, I would tell her that there was nothing serious, as yet, between Godiva and myself, that Godiva was just an understanding creature who would listen to my small talk of the office, drink coffee with only the kitchen table between us, all alone. I would say that I was sorry Ellicia had found out but that Godiva’s place never contained a crowd of magpies swizzling champagne while I’d just come from a nerve-wracking day.
I knew that Ellicia, thinking Godiva a flesh and blood female, would recognize the danger of that sort of affair and chase the crowd away and threaten to tear my eyes out if I ever saw Godiva again.
So I rented the apartment, sneaked in a few feminine things, skipped dinner at home four or five times with the old, suspicious excuse of working late, and saw four or five shows to keep me out longer than any sort of dinner should have taken. When I considered the time ripe, I disguised my handwriting well enough, penned a few mush notes, one of which thanked me profusely for the Wardmore Arms apartment, and slipped the notes in the pocket of a suit which I asked Ellicia to send to the cleaners for me when I phoned her that afternoon.
I sat back and waited — and went through the unpleasant process of having my stomach turn over a sixteenth of an inch at a time. Ellicia didn’t phone. I knew she’d found those notes where I had apparently forgotten them. But all afternoon she didn’t phone.
I wanted to get away early that afternoon and see what was giving. I was low with the thought that Ellicia had found the notes and simply laughed at them. But some cluck in the control lab let a tanker of sulphuric acid slip past him loaded with nitrogen. I decided to see to it myself, and early darkness had come before I finally left the plant.
Ellicia was at her dressing table, brushing her tumbling dark hair, when I opened the door. “Hello, Rick.” I heard the cracking of icicles. Well, well, so she had seen the notes and the chemical reaction was bubbling to a head.
I put my hands on her shoulders, our gazes met in the mirror, and her mouth twisted up. I watched a tear gather in the corner of each eye. “Rick! How could you do such a thing? That Godiva creature…!”
I went into my song and dance. Nonchalant, you know. “Well, as vet, there is nothing between…”
“Nothing between! Rick! To think you’ve been seeing such a horrid woman. Why, I… I…”
“Easy now, hon. Godiva isn’t so bad. She’s…”
“…She’s a witch! She’s an old crone. I know. I went to her apartment and saw her!”
The hush was so deep my voice sounded like the squeaking of a mouse in the Grand Canyon. “You did which?”
“I saw her, talked to her — the tramp! Those notes in your pocket — in one of them she thanked you for the Wardmore Arms apartment. It wasn’t hard to locate her.”
Somebody was nuts. Sure, I bad mentioned the apartment house in one of the mush notes I’d written. I had done that so Ellicia could get a sort of intangible verification of the existence of Godiva Hoffman by calling the Wardmore Arms and learning that a woman by that name had — supposedly — rented an apartment there. But not a verification of this sort. I had tried to manufacture putty and somehow it had turned into dynamite.
I didn’t know I was gripping Ellicia’s shoulders so hard until she wiggled out of my grasp. I said, “Ellicia, you’ve got to believe me. This thing was a joke. I… It… Godiva Hoffman is a nonesuch.”
“It’s not a joke, Rick Hershey! But she is a nonesuch! There’s not another such creature like her in all the world. Rick, where are you going?”
“I’m going to get acquainted with a hallucination,” I said. I turned quickly, kissed her hard. “This is important, hon. I’ll explain everything when I get back. Everything, so help me!”
“Rick!” The word almost floored me at the door. “If you ever see that Godiva creature again… If you so much as…” There it was, the fierce, possessive love of womankind that’s echoed through the ages from mother Eve. I had it, I was one hundred per cent. But before I could enjoy it I had to see about this hallucination.
I opened the door of the apartment in the Wardmore Arms and slipped inside. The place looked just as I had left it. But my nose tingled. There was the odor, faintly, of cooking, the ranker odor of cigar smoke.
I stood in the small living room, gulping. I looked all around the cozy room with its big chair. Nothing. No movement anywhere. I tiptoed to the door of the bedroom, intending to go on through to the kitchenette to see what had been cooked. But Godiva Hoffman was on the bed, eyes closed, one arm behind her head.
She was a crone, all right. Big flabby face that shrieked a tale of acute alcoholism, pouchy eyes that were probably bleary when open, matted, dead-looking, mouse-colored hair. Her soiled print dress was twisted, as if she’d staggered into the bedroom and passed out. But she hadn’t passed out. She’d been shot half an inch above the ear and had bled a lot. Her head and the side of her face were a mess.
On the floor near the bed was a thirty-eight revolver. Beside it lay a powder-blackened rended pillow. Somebody had wrapped the gun in the pillow, pointed it at Godiva’s head and pulled the trigger, all nice and silent and messy.
I picked up the gun. It felt too familiar. It had come from the desk in my study at home.
On top of all that a flat voice said behind me, “You’re covered, bud,” and for a second I thought I was going to die right then and there.
I turned around. A paunchy man with a cigar in his face was in the doorway. He held a gun on me without a tremor. He flipped back his lapel, and I got an eyeful of policeman’s badge. “Drop the gun,” he said. I dropped the gun.
“Well, well,” he said. “A ducky little love nest killing, eh? You get tired of the bag, let her pass out on the bed and shoot her.” He clucked his tongue. “Bub, you ain’t the killer type. Or you wouldn’t have got panicky, left the gun and then tried to come back. Your hands wouldn’t have rattled the key in the lock so long and hard when you were letting yourself in just a minute ago.”
“How did you get here?”
“How do we ever get here? Somebody phoned headquarters and said they thought they’d heard a smothered shot in this apartment. Now let’s me and you get chummy. What’s your history?”
It took several long, hard breaths to rejuvenate my stricken corpuscles. “This is all a mistake, officer. A bad mistake. There’s no such person as Godiva Hoffman. Back in my college days we made her up. She doesn’t exist, you understand?”
“Now, look; your lawyer’ll have to decide whether or not you’re going to make an insanity plea. But with me you can be frank, eh? Just give with the personal history.”
I looked at Godiva Hoffman. She was still there, real as death. At least I knew I wasn’t nuts. I was just here with a corpse and a cop, that’s all. “My name Is Rick Hershey,” I croaked, “thirty-two years old, five feet eleven, weight a hundred and seventy. Chemical engineer, I like my coffee with cream, but no sugar. Did a six months’ hitch in the army early in the war, never been arrested, never…”