Eric said to her back: “I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”
“Don’t you think she should be gotten out of here?” I said to the bartender. “We’ll take her home if necessary.”
“She’s all right if you don’t try to talk to her,” he said coldly. “Try to get her out of here before midnight and she fight like a wildcat.”
“You will not come and see her tomorrow,” Helen Swann was saying to Eric. “You’ll stay in your own home for at least one day of your leave, I hope. And for God’s sake let’s get out of here and back to civilization,” she concluded petulantly.
Civilization consisted of paying three times as much for our drinks and listening to the same kind of music played worse. After I agreed to go and see Mrs. Land the next day instead of Eric, Helen began to enjoy herself again, but Mary didn’t. We were in a smoke-filled basement, the most crowded because the most popular place in town, and it didn’t agree with Mary. After a couple of drinks she asked me to take her home.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said in the taxi with her head on my shoulder. “It’s the migraine again, and there’s nothing I can do about it except go to bed. The doctor said I’ll never get over it till I learn to face things I don’t like.”
“I’m sorrier. We shouldn’t have taken you to Paradise Valley. It was pretty depressing, wasn’t it?”
“We’ll paint the town red another night, eh?”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’d love to,” she said in a tired little-girl voice.
She left me in the lobby of her hotel and the elevator took her away. I felt depressed, partly because the evening had petered out but mostly because I felt responsible for Mary’s loss of spirits. I walked to the nearest bar and downed three double whiskies in the half-hour before closing-time. Then I walked home and went to bed.
My tenant Joe Scott usually worked on his paper till two or three in the morning, and slept until noon. He wasn’t in yet when I went to bed, and when I got up he was still sleeping. Though there was something I wanted to ask him, I decided not to wake him. Perhaps after a good night’s sleep Bessie Land herself would be willing and able to tell me what Black Israel was.
Bessie Land might have been willing, but she was not able.
I took a taxi to Chestnut Street and alighted at the corner within sight of the Paris Bar and Grill. The neon sign was out, and under the light snow which had fallen during the night the streets looked peaceful and deserted. The snow was heel-packed on the sidewalks where the early risers had beaten their path to work, but it was after nine o’clock now and there was no one in sight.
I raised my overcoat collar against the bitter gusts which whirled the snow between the buildings, and made my way to 214 Chestnut. Inside the tenement there were the sounds of morning life: babies crying and crowing, children playing, women’s voices raised in gossip and argument. But the hallway was cold and empty, and all the doors were closed to conserve the heat in the rooms. The third door to the left was closed like the others, and I knocked on it and waited. I might have waited forever if I hadn’t turned the knob and gone in.
Bessie Land was flat on her back on the bed, staring at the discolored ceiling. One arm hung over the edge of the bed so that the hand half-rested on the floor. From the hand spread a pool of blood. The white mongrel puppy huddled there, licking the bloody hand.
When I moved nearer, the dog crawled under the bed. I saw that Bessie Land’s throat was deeply cut. The pull of the skin had made a raw ellipse in her darkly glistening neck. A wavy-edged bread-knife rested on the quilt beside her head. She had her coat on, but it did not prevent her from being terribly cold.
5
THREE minutes after I entered my call at the pay phone in the hall, a police siren whooped in the distance. Another thirty seconds and it howled like a wolf in the street. Suddenly it stopped, as if somebody had shot it.
A police lieutenant in a blue uniform and a man in civilian clothes came down the hall toward me with the air of men going to work.
“My name’s Cassettari,” the Lieutenant said. “You didn’t touch anything, like I said?”
“Not a thing. That is, I touched her face to see if she was cold. She’s very cold.”
The man in civilian clothes, a middle-aged man with grey hair and a frosty bitter face, examined the body without disturbing it. “You said it, she’s cold,” he said. “Fast-frozen nigger wench. Any necrophiles around, might be a market.”
“How long’s she been dead, Doc?” Cassettari said. He had a fleshy Mediterranean face. A thick dead cigar made the right side of his mouth sneer continuously. He used the cigar instead of a finger to point at things. His fingers were busy holding his hips.
“Eight-nine hours. I’ll know better when I get her stomach out, if there’s any of it left after the liquor she’s been drinking. But take a look at the postmortem lividity.”
I took a look. The hanging arm was heavy with stagnant blood.
“Did she kill herself?” Cassettari said.
“Fingerprints should tell. Where the hell’s Randy?”
“He’ll be along. He had to pack his kit.”
After a minute or two, the doctor said: “Yeah, she killed herself. There’s a hesitation mark.” He pointed a casual finger at the slashed throat. I saw the shallow cut above and parallel to the deep wound. “You don’t get a hesitation mark when a buck nigger cuts his whore.”
I said: “There’s more to this case than a buck nigger cutting a whore.” I told them briefly why I thought so.
“He’s been reading The Shadow,” Cassettari said.
“He’s been reading Dick Tracy, too,” Doc said.
“This woman was murdered,” I said.
“This woman was murdered, he says,” Doc said. “If she was murdered it’s our business to find out.”
“I wouldn’t be meddling in your business if you showed any sign of knowing it.”
“Wait till you see a few more bodies,” Doc said. “You won’t go off the deep end every time you see one. I wonder where the hell Randy is.”
“If you won’t listen to me, I’ll find somebody who will.”
“He’s going to bring pressure to bear,” Cassettari said.
“Listen, son,” Doc said. “These niggers get bumped every day. This woman killed herself. Hesitation marks mean suicide, understand? You’re not in your field.”
I said: “Maybe you’re out of your class.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Cassettari said. “You talk too goddamn much. Wait a minute, give me your address and phone. I suppose you got to say your piece at the inquest.”
I gave him what he asked for and went away, walking on legs made stiff by anger.
After that I had to get my information about the case from the newspapers, and from Joe Scott. His paper was the tabloid type, and intended to give the case a play. (Next day I saw what they did with it: Navy Wife Suicides at Husband’s Desertion.) He told me that the bread knife which had cut Bessie’s throat bore only her own fingerprints, and those of Mrs. Kate Morgan. Kate Morgan pointed out that naturally her prints were on the knife, she used it for cutting bread. She was shocked and grieved by her roommate’s death, and besides she had a perfect alibi. A considerable time before midnight, when Bessie left the Paris Bar and Grill, Mrs. Kate Morgan had received a telephone call and had immediately gone to spend the night with a certain gentleman in a certain hotel. When she got home the police were there.