A Curtain Falls (7 page)

“Because he
used
it to communicate something specific,” Alistair said.

“What about where he says he
played Pygmalion
at the beginning of the letter? Ziele disagrees with me, but we found the actor who played that role in
Pygmalion
’s revival last fall. I think it could refer to him. He even knows one of the murder victims.” Mulvaney was insistent, even stubborn in his conviction.

Alistair answered him with infinite patience.

“Normally, I would disagree with Ziele, too. But here, I think he’s right. The writer of these letters is too sophisticated. Or, to put it a different way, he’s doing something far more complex than merely referring to an actual role in a play.”

“Huh?” Mulvaney appeared thoroughly confused.

“What Alistair is saying is that it would be too obvious,” I said.

Alistair smiled with approval. “And why are these women dead?”

“Some guy killed them. What does it matter?” Mulvaney was growing impatient and began to grumble.

“I think it matters
how
they were killed,” Isabella said, sensing Mulvaney’s increasing frustration. “Porphyria’s lover is strangled and Shakespeare’s Desdemona is smothered. But what’s similar in both cases is that the woman bears no physical sign of it, so there’s no visible evidence of her pain.”

She paused for a moment.

“Simon, is that consistent with the actual deaths you’re investigating?” She eyed me with curiosity.

I nodded yes, but it was Mulvaney who spoke up.

“Definitely. We have been saying all day that our killer wants them to die pretty.”

Mulvaney’s comment was music to Alistair’s ears. “That’s exactly my point.” Alistair’s broad smile revealed his perfect, white teeth. “Mark my words, once we understand more about him and why it’s important to him not just to kill— but to kill in this manner— then we’ll have discovered the key to understanding him.”

Mulvaney and I went on to describe how each death had been staged, in the most literal sense of the word.

Alistair said, “I think it is in the staging that the figure of Pygmalion comes into play. I’m not referring to the production that Timothy Poe starred in,” he cut off Mulvaney, who had opened his mouth to say something, “but to what the character of Pygmalion represents. So I’m certain he knows the legend of Pygmalion, the man who created a beautiful woman made of marble and fell in love with her. What seems important here is the act of creation.”

Isabella added even more. “Yes, and look at what the lines
emphasize about her. In both cases, the man loves her. He doesn’t actually wish to harm her, as the Othello quote suggests when he refuses to
shed her blood
or
scar her skin
. In the Browning passage, the poet-killer wants to preserve a perfect moment, and even when she’s dead, he continues to see her features as lifelike. See the final phrase, where he says,
again laughed the blue eyes
?”

She pointed to the relevant phrases from the first letter. “He sees himself as having created something new and preserved it.”

Mulvaney interrupted. “Wait just a minute. You’re saying the writer of these letters killed two women because he is
preserving
something about them? That makes no sense.”

Isabella was quick to respond, saying, “He’s not preserving their
life
. He’s preserving his idea about them— about their potential, about what they might become, if he made things a bit different.”

Alistair put it a different way. “I believe what Isabella is suggesting is that for this writer, life disappoints— but perhaps art does not.”

And with that comment, Alistair overreached.

“This is murder,” I said heatedly, “not art.”

“But perhaps not from the killer’s point of view,” Alistair said, making his point with renewed urgency. “His view is what matters, you recall— not your own.” He held up both letters before us. “The man who writes this— and I do believe it is a man— is not governed by rational thought. But we shouldn’t assume he is unintelligent or uneducated. This writer knows Shakespeare. He knows Browning. And he proceeds absolutely according to his own logic. And that is what we must—” He immediately stopped himself. “Rather, that is what
you
must remember if you are to solve these murders.”

Mulvaney chuckled. “Unless we get lucky and catch him in the act.”

“Well then,” Alistair said pleasantly, “you will be very lucky indeed. The man you seek is a meticulous planner who is unlikely to make careless mistakes.”

Isabella retreated to the corner of the room with a cup of tea. Was it my imagination, or did she seem changed? It was unlike her to take so little interest in a case that Alistair obviously found compelling.

“Don’t discount luck. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got,” I said lightly.

I glanced at my watch. We needed to get to
The Times
before five o’clock.

But I had one more question for Alistair. “Why do you think he wrote these letters? I mean, why even bother? It would have been less work and less risk for him simply to kill and walk away.”

Alistair shrugged. “He’s not the first, you know. And he certainly won’t be the last. But he is highly unusual. Most criminals do not enter into correspondence about their crimes. The fact he has done so implies we are dealing with a truly unique personality.”

He picked up both letters and returned them to me.

“I’ll also make a prediction: he will keep writing, and I expect you will see more of him— and less of other writers— in his future missives. He has used the work of others to demonstrate his intelligence and get our attention. Now that he has it . . .”

Alistair paused for a moment, then leaned closer to us as he continued to talk. “He wants to communicate something specific. The question is, to whom? He may be taunting you to
show he’s smarter than you. And we can’t avoid thinking of Jack the Ripper, can we? He began by insulting the police, but when the papers published his letters— well, assuming at least some of the letters
were
his and not hoaxes— I think he fell in love with his own celebrity. I say this in order to warn you to be very careful in this case.”

“Comparisons to other letters aside, Alistair, what do you really think of all this? Whom, exactly, are we looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted frankly. “But I do know one thing. What you’ve seen so far is only the beginning if you cannot stop him. He put a great deal of effort into first creating a perfect crime scene and then penning a letter to make sure others would understand what he hoped to accomplish. I daresay you’ll find he put similar effort into his choice of victim. He is enjoying every aspect of his handiwork. And a man who enjoys something this much will not stop— at least, not of his own accord.”

After a moment’s reflection, he added, “At least your man appears to be writing personally to whoever finds the body, not to the police or the papers.”

Mulvaney and I exchanged guilty looks.

“Actually,” Mulvaney said as he drew in a deep breath, “the man
is
writing to the papers now. I got word this morning that
The Times
received a letter. I’ve no idea if the other papers received one as well. If they did,” his voice was grim, “they may not be so considerate as to check with us before printing it for the masses.”

“We’re headed to the
Times
offices now. Maybe you’d like to join us?” I asked.

Alistair’s expertise would be useful, and I expected him to
be interested enough to agree. But he accepted with so much exuberance that I almost began to second-guess my decision to involve him in the matter. I had not forgotten how, during our last case together, he had withheld significant information from me because it jeopardized his own ambitions. The last thing I needed was for him to allow his own interests once again to interfere with the investigation. He would be helpful only so long as our concerns were aligned.

“Isabella?” Alistair glanced toward her, and it was plain he wanted her to accompany us.

I busied myself replacing the letters in my leather bag, and I did not look up until I heard her response.

“No, thanks, I prefer to stay home.”

Her refusal had been crisp, but she came over to us and shook hands politely with Mulvaney, then me.

“It was good to see you again, Simon.” She was pleasant but distant.

To think it could be otherwise would be presumptive. But once, just a few months ago, it might have been different— and that realization itself was bittersweet.

We exited the apartment into the hallway and caught the elevator waiting on Alistair’s floor.

If I hadn’t chanced to look back, just before I stepped into it, I wouldn’t have seen the peculiar expression with which Isabella watched us leave.

But once she caught my gaze, she bit her lip, retreated into her apartment, and closed the door firmly between us.

The City Room, Times Building, West Forty-second Street

“Those hot off the press? Bring ’em over here.”

The front-desk editor, a balding man seated at the head of multiple rows of desks, barked the directions to a copyboy who was struggling to balance a stack of papers on each shoulder as he walked into the City Room of
The New York Times
. The papers the young man carried were newly printed, and their ink had marked his skin and clothing with giant black stains. He wobbled under their weight but did not drop them until he reached the editor’s desk. Each pile then landed with a loud thud as the copyboy’s careful efforts to ease his papers onto the desk failed, sending pencils, scissors, and notes flying.

Alistair, Mulvaney, and I surveyed this scene from the sole enclosed office on the fourteenth floor. We had been asked to wait here for the managing editor, whose office overlooked the
entire room— a maze of wooden desks occupied by reporters and editors who worked amid a tremendous din, breathing air that was heavy with a mix of cigarette and cigar smoke. With the door to the office open wide, we were free to observe reporters furiously punching out their stories on new Hammond typewriters; editors working with scissors and paste pots to make corrections; and even a small group of five men, their work presumably done, engaged in a raucous poker game in the back corner. Their game was punctuated only by the frequent spitting of tobacco into shiny brass spittoons that lined the room. Somehow, amid this chaos, tomorrow’s paper was being produced.

“Let’s check out the competition.” The front-desk editor ground his cigar butt into a saucer and grabbed a copy of
The Tribune
off the top of the stack. After thumbing through it in what seemed a matter of seconds, he moved on to
The Post
. He grunted in displeasure. “We got scooped on the Tyler embezzlement story.”

All the reporters in the room began to study what ever was on their desks with renewed interest.

“Johnny, next time you gotta work your sources on Wall Street better. Okay?”

“Sure, boss.” Nervously, the reporter who answered ran both hands through his tousled mop of brown hair.

But the front-desk editor moved on to other concerns. “Frank,” he said. “We got the story about the Snyder woman’s acquittal in that poisoning trial, right?” He neither looked up nor ceased flipping pages.

“Yeah, we got it, boss.” The answer came from a lean, wiry man. His voice, low with a rich timbre, came from the fifth desk down.

It was an unwelcome reminder of the verdict in my case, delivered only this morning. My stomach lurched and I felt my face burn with mortification— as though they were criticizing me, not merely discussing the jury’s verdict. Of course I should not have taken it personally, but I did. If only I had found better evidence against the woman . . . evidence that might have withstood her protestations of innocence.

“What does
The Post
say about it?” This time it was the reporter asking the question.

The editor grunted again. “Just their usual bombastic drivel. But they scored an interview with her estranged mother.”

Both were silent for a moment.

“Who marked up your story?” asked the editor.

“Mr. Seiden,” the wiry man said, “before he left early. He does on Fridays, remember?”

Though he had not once looked up from his papers, the editor sat up straighter and seemed to focus his attention even more sharply on the article he was reviewing. Down the line of desks, every man followed suit, attending closely to the task at hand.

From the back of the room, a stout man wearing a crisp blue suit with a yellow-and-red tie strutted toward us. Ira Salzburg, the managing editor, was short and squat, but his expensive, colorful clothes enabled him to cut a distinctive figure. He knew it— and his swagger reflected it.

Without acknowledging anyone on the floor, he ambled into his office, nodded, and shut the door with a sweeping dramatic flourish.

“Gentlemen.” He greeted each of us with a straightforward handshake.

After we finished our introductions, we sat in the stiff wooden chairs provided for guests while Mr. Salzburg sank into his large, cushioned chair and lit a cigar. “Welcome to Times Square.”