Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (classic novels to read txt) 📕

"You're afraid to lose control, aren't you? Sometimes, Bob, I think that explains you. To you, life is a ride on a tiger, and you've got to keep the reins every minute."

"Let's have none of these bad amateur psychoanalyses," he said, following her into the kitchen. He came up behind her and laid his hands on her waist. "And let's not fight. I'm sorry, Marge. I'm sorry for Bruce and for you."

Her head bent. "I know, Bob. Don't bother with words." She put the cigarette to her lips, took a puff of smoke, blew it out, lowered the cigarette, and twisted about between his hands. Her lips brushed his cheek. "Go on, I'll mix. I want to keep busy."

He returned to the living room and prowled out his unrest for a few minutes. The piano caught his gaze, he saw ruled bescribbled sheets and went over to look. Margery found him thus, when she came in with two glasses. "Sit down," she invited.

He regarded her through careful eyes, trying to judge her needs—and her demands, for his own warning. She was a trifle on the short side, her figure was good though tending to plumpness, and even he could appreciate the effect of her simple green dress. Her face was broad, with a slightly pug nose, very full lips, blue eyes under arched brows, a few freckles: "pert" was the word. Reddish hair fell in a soft bob just below the ears, which carried extravagant hoops.

He nodded at the piano. "So Bruce was composing again," he said.

"He was putting some poetry of his sister's to music, for some kind of little theater deal she has in preparation, over in the City."

"How was he doing? I can't read music."

"Listen." She sat down at the piano. "I'm a lousy player myself, but this will give you the idea."

Darkness was smoking in through the walls. She had to peer close to see the notes; her hands stumbled on the keys. And yet she created something gentle for him. Afterward the sounds tinkled in his memory like rain in a young year.

She ended it with a destructive sweep of her knuckles across the board. As the jangled basses fell silent, she said roughly: "That's all. He never finished it."

"I wonder—" Kintyre remembered not to sit on the couch; he found a chair. "I wonder if the world may not have lost even more than you and I, Marge."

"I don't give a four-lettering damn about the world," she told him. She crossed the room and snapped the light switch. The sudden radiance was harsh to them, they both squinted. "I'd settle for having Bruce back."

"So would I. Naturally." He accepted the drink she offered and took a long swallow. It was heavy on the whisky and light on the soda. "And yet he was a scholar of unusual gifts. He even (he, my student) changed my opinions about some aspects of Machiavelli's thought—emphasized the idealism—he would, of course. I remember him quoting at me, '... the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people.' Isn't that exactly the sort of thing which would stick in Bruce's mind?"

"'The best fortress.'" She stared into her glass. "It didn't help him much, did it?"

Kintyre groped for another cigarette. He was smoking too much, he thought; he'd have a tongue like a fried shoe sole tomorrow.

"How much do you know?" he asked.

"Only a little." The eyes she raised to him from the couch were desperate. "Bob, what happened? Who did it to him?"

"I can't imagine," he said tonelessly.

"But—could it have been an accident, Bob? Maybe by mistake for someone else—could it have been?"

"Perhaps." I lie in my flapping front teeth. You don't use pliers on a man without getting his name straight.

"What was in the paper?" he asked. "I haven't seen."

"I don't know. I've been sitting here, ever since the policemen came. They asked me if I could guess—God!" She emptied her glass in three gulps.

"Could you?" he murmured. "I find it hard to conceive of anyone who might hate Bruce."

"There was Gene Michaelis," she said. "I've been thinking and thinking about him. He and his father. I met them once."

"Yes. I'd forgotten that. But Michaelis is a cripple now, remember? He couldn't—"

"Bruce was called over to San Francisco. Someone called him on the phone. Don't forget that. I can't forget it. I sat here while he talked! He didn't say what it was about, he just left. Took the train. He seemed excited, happy. Said he'd be out late and—" Margery's breath snapped into her lungs. "Bob! Gene Michaelis, sitting there and waiting for Bruce to come in—and those great ugly hands of his!"

Kintyre got up and went over to the couch. He sat down on its arm, next to her. She felt blindly for his fingers; her own were cold.

"The police think Bruce was killed by professional criminals," he said. "Can you imagine any reason why?"

"No." Her head shook. "No. Only Gene Michaelis—he swore that accident was Bruce's fault. He almost had Bruce thinking so. You didn't see Bruce then. You didn't see how he was affected by it, his old friend biting at him like a dog, accusing him and his sister of—" She gave Kintyre a blurred look. "That was how Bruce and I started to live together. There was nothing else that would help him. He'd already proposed to me. I didn't want to get married again—to him—to get married. And he'd had no thought in his silly head of being anything but a gentleman. Sure. I practically shanghaied him into bed with me. What else would get that thing off his mind, Gene Michaelis lying on the highway with both legs mashed? Gene was the only person who ever hated Bruce, and just being hated nearly destroyed him. He couldn't have made any other enemies—knowingly—he wasn't able to!"

That's not quite true, thought Kintyre briefly. Jabez Owens.

Margery's voice had risen raggedly, and her nails bit his palm. He stood up, pulling her after him by the wrist, and said: "Come on. We're getting out of here."

"What?" She blinked at him, as if waking from sleep.

"You're tired and scared and lonesome and hungry, and none of it is good. We're going out to dinner, and we'll talk about Bruce or whatever else you want, but we're going out."

"I have to work tomorrow," she protested.

"Cannonballs! Tell 'em you're down with Twonk's Disease and need the rest of the week off. Now grab your purse."

She followed him then, shivering. He drove her car slowly, to give her and the drink within her time; he spoke of trivia.

She hung back a moment when he had parked outside one of Oakland's first-class restaurants. "You can't afford this, Bob," she said.

"If you mention money once again, I'm going to wash your mouth out with five-dollar bills," he snapped. "Old greasy ones."

She smiled. "You know," she said, "you aren't so unlike Bruce after all. I remember how he also used to go out of his way for people. And then once when I tried to praise him for it, he answered, 'Ah, I'm no God damned saint.'"

"Sounds like Bruce," agreed Kintyre.

"He worshiped you," she said over the cocktails. "Did you know how much? You were everything he could dream of being, a traveler, an athlete, a scholar. He was even thinking of doing his military service in the Navy, because that's where you were. And then you treated him as an equal! You did more to make him happy than anyone else."

"I'd say you did," he parried, embarrassed.

"You know you pushed that affair." She was a little drunk, he saw, but no harm in that: under better circumstances, he'd have called it a happy drunk. "Remember how he and I first met? You were pub crawling with him one evening last year after you got back from Europe. You ran into me at the mulled-wine place; I was eating piroshki and looked very unglamorous, but I thought I'd have some fun with you—oh, hell, Bob, I thought there might be a chance to make you jealous—so I gave Bruce a big play. And you were delighted!"

"I thought he needed a girl friend," he said. "There's more in life than books and beer."

"You pander," she chuckled. "I'll bet you gloated when you found we were living in sin."

He shrugged. "If you can call it sin. Actually, Bruce was a very domestic type. I hoped you'd marry him."

"Sure," she said. "So I'm a very domestic type too, aren't I—ain't I—Bob, I know you don't like to dance, and your dancing is awful, but shall we try it just once before dinner?"

Afterward, when brandy and coffee were completing the meal, she said: "I'm still not sure if I was in love with Bruce or not. I always liked him. I think I was beginning to love him."

"I should imagine it would be hard not to, under the circumstances."

"He was the first man I ever knew who was—(a)—" she ticked the points off on her fingers—"interesting; which the solid citizens back in Ohio were not, not to me anyway—(b) reliable, which the local Bohemians are not."

"Please! Call me what else you will, but not a Berkeley Bohemian."

"You don't count. You're in a classification all by yourself. 'Reliable' was the wrong word. What do I mean? Faithful; steady; loving. I guess that's it. Loving—not himself, like most of these perpetual undergraduates; not—whatever you love, Bob, there must be something but I've never found out what unless it's that sailboat of yours. Bruce was loving of me. Loving all the world, but including me."

"You could call him tender," agreed Kintyre. "And yet he was a man. We took some rough hikes and pack trips, during the years we knew each other; and lately, after I got him interested in judo, he was doing very well. In the course of these amusements I've seen him get damaged now and then, sometimes rather badly. But he never admitted feeling any pain."

"I guess you'd consider that a virtue," she said.

They parked in the hills, with the Eastbay cities like a galaxy of stars below them, San Francisco an island universe across darkness. She sighed and leaned against him. He wondered, dimly alarmed, why he had come here.

"What are you going to do?" she asked him.

"Me? In the next few days, you mean? Oh, wind up his University work. Call on his family; haven't seen them in a long time now. What about you?"

"Carry on. What else is there?"

"I don't know," he said in his helplessness.

She turned to him and her fingers clawed at his coat. "Bob, don't take me back to my place," she whispered. "Not tonight. Don't leave me alone."

"Huh? But—"

"I know, I know, you're afraid I'll trap you—you conceited baboon. For Christ's sake, let me sleep on your floor tonight, I won't touch a hair of your sanctimonious head, but don't leave me alone!"

For the first time since he came to her, she began to cry.

The telephone woke him. He turned over, not wholly oriented. There was a woman sleeping beside him, wearing a pair of his pajamas. Where had he picked her up? Wait. Margery!

She slept very much like a child, curled in a ball. The pale foggy morning light touched a line of dried tears on her cheek. Kintyre remembered how she had clung to him. Nothing else had happened; she might have been his terrified young—No! That was a thought he clamped off before it had formed. Let it be said only that he had been a friend to her last night, and no more.

He was already padding into the kitchen, to pick up the phone before it woke her. "Hello," he said.

"Dr. Kintyre? Moffat."

"Oh—oh, yes, the officer. What is it?"

"I wondered if you knew what's become of Miss Margery Towne. She isn't at home." The voice had a bland none-of-my-business-but-I-do-need-help overtone. Had he spotted her car outside the house?

"I might be able to locate