I walked up the hall to Johnny’s bedroom. I half expected the door to open for me as I came up and Johnny to be standing there waiting.
But it didn’t, and he wasn’t. I tried the knob and it turned and the door swung with a creak like a haunted house, and I went in and shut it and it creaked again, and Johnny’s voice said, “Who’s that? Who’s there?” in a mumble, and I felt around on the wall for the switch and then the room lit up and there was my darling sitting up in bed all sleepy and blinky, not naked as I had imagined he’d be, but in his pajamas.
Marsh’s rhapsodic monotone, which had had the devotional quality, fell so low it became a mutter. They had to strain to hear him.
I think at first he thought I was Audrey, or Marcia, because he rolled out of bed and snatched his robe and put it on.
But then his pupils must have adjusted, because he recognized me. You could see his eyes do it.
They scarcely heard him at all now. He was clenching air with his fists and, feeling nothing, opening his big hands in a curiously supplicating way.
Could you speak a little louder? Inspector Queen asked softly. Marsh looked at him, frowning.
I’ve seen his eyes many times since, he said with more volume. At night. Even daytimes. I could read them like a neon sign. Recognition. Comprehension. And then shock.
They stayed shocked just long enough for me to compound my mistake. That stupid mistake. I wasn’t thinking at all at that moment. It was sheer feeling.
The flowering, you might say. The bursting point.
I stripped off the gloves and wig. I tore the gown off. Stood there naked. And I took a step toward him and held out my arms, and that was when I saw the shock in his eyes turn to revulsion, absolute revulsion.
He said to me, “You filthy, filthy pig. Get out of my house.”
Marsh turned his back to them and made little throat-clearing noises. When he spoke again it was to unoccupied space, as if he had wished them away and they had obediently disappeared.
I found myself saying some things to him then... I remember... about my love... my years of fighting to hide it from him...
I knew it was worse than useless — his eyes told me that — but I couldn’t stop myself, it all came out, everything, and all the time I knew it was a fatal mistake... that he wasn’t capable of understanding... any more than you... although I hope... I hoped...
He never raised his voice. It was brutal. He was cruel, viciously so. The things he called me... unforgivable things from an intelligent, civilized man... even if he couldn’t share my feelings, he’d known me so long, we’d been such friends. If I’d been a leper and deliberately infected him out of malice he couldn’t have shown more hate, as if I were his enemy... All the time he was cutting me to bits, the shame, the guilt, the fear — the panic — grew. All my years of being careful — successfully — thrown away in one uncontrollable act. In one night.
He was threatening to expose me.
I don’t know why Johnny reacted so violently to what he’d found out about me. I hadn’t really done anything to him except reveal myself for what I was. He couldn’t handle the revelation. Maybe he had a deep-seated hangup about inversion. A lot of men do... as if they’re afraid the same thing is buried in them, and by attacking it in others... I don’t know.
I had no time to analyze Johnny then. I was too busy panicking.
He was threatening to expose me; and that would be the end of me. At that moment that was all I could think of — that, and shutting his mouth. The cast-iron Three Monkeys thing was on his bureau and the next thing I knew I found myself smashing him over the head with it. It was like a reflex. No rational thought behind it. He mustn’t tell. I must keep him from talking.
That’s all I knew.
Marsh turned around and they saw the surprise in his eyes at the sight of them, and then the distaste, almost the contempt, as if he had caught them eaves-dropping. But even that drained rapidly out of his eyes, leaving them empty.
It never occurred to me that Johnny wasn’t dead. I simply took it for granted. He looked dead... sprawled there... his pale, almost green, face... the blood...
I opened the door a crack and looked out and my heart jumped. There was a tall girl on the landing in a dressing gown, about to go downstairs. She turned her head a bit, and I saw it was Audrey Weston.
Paralyzed, I watched her go down.
She was down there only a couple of minutes. She came back up with a book and went to her room.
I looked down at myself. I was naked. I’d forgotten. I began to shake. Suppose she’d seen me?
I’d hardly had time to feel relieved when Marcia came out of her bedroom — I knew instantly it was Marcia, because I saw her red hair as she passed under the nightlight — and she headed for downstairs, too.
I suppose desperation calmed me down. I hadn’t dreamed that people would be wandering about the house in the middle of the night.
All I could think of now was getting safely back to my room. Marcia was downstairs — she might come back at any moment, as Audrey had. I didn’t dare go the way I was, without a stitch on — that would be a dead giveaway if I were seen... and the thought of getting back into drag, the way I had come, was even worse. Suppose one of the women saw me in women’s clothes? In their clothes?
Yet I had to get out of Johnny’s bedroom.
There was only one thing I could think of, and that was to put on something of Johnny’s. The brown suit he’d been wearing was lying on the chair. I managed to squeeze into it...
Ellery nodded. Both shoulder seams of Benedict’s suit were split open, a fact the District Attorney was going to appreciate.
At the last moment it came to me — fingerprints. My brain was working independently; it wasn’t mine. No panic now. I felt nothing. I used the handkerchief I found in Johnny’s pocket — it’s still there — and wiped off everything I’d touched... the Three Monkeys where I’d held it, the doorknob, whatever I’d come in contact with.
I ran back to my own room.
I locked the door, took off the suit and packed it at the bottom of my suitcase. And washed...
Marsh shut his eyes again.
He said in an exhausted, final way, There was Johnny’s blood on me.
That was the body of it.
There were appendages. Why had he hung onto Benedict’s suit?
“Was it because it had belonged to Johnny?” Ellery asked.
“Yes.”
Queen fils regarded Queen père. The Inspector could only shake his head.
“You realize, Al, there’s blood inside the jacket? Undoubtedly Johnny’s, which got on your bare hide when you struck him and then smeared the lining when you put the jacket on for your escape. Didn’t it occur to you that, with the blood types matching — Johnny’s and the stains’ — and the suit found in your possession, it was the most damaging kind of evidence against you?”
“I didn’t think it would be found. Nobody, not even Estéban, knew about the hidden closet. Anyway, I couldn’t bring myself to part with the suit. It was Johnny’s.”
Ellery found himself turning away.
Inspector Queen wanted to know about the marriage. “It doesn’t add up, Marsh. Not in view of what you’ve just told us about yourself.”
But it did.
On the night of the murder Marcia, who was occupying the room next to Marsh’s, heard his door open and peeped out. He was in the full flight of his obsession and he neither heard nor saw her. As Marsh passed under the nightlight in the hall, bound for Benedict’s room, Marcia got a full view of his face and, in spite of the woman’s outfit and makeup he was wearing, she recognized him.