She Woke to Darkness (3 page)

I had my key with me, and unlocked the door of my suite, went in and tossed the envelope on a table while I stripped off my coat and went into the bathroom to run a glass of cold water.

There was half a fifth of cognac on the coffee table in the sitting room, and I poured out a stiff slug to put on top of Elsie’s Monnet before going to bed.

With the glass in my hand and a lighted cigarette between my lips, I sat down and idly opened the envelope. I took out the sheaf of typed pages and glanced at them.

There was a title page with capital letters in the center:

SHE WOKE TO DARKNESS

by Enid Morgan (pseudonym)

I turned to the first page and saw it was neatly typed on light-weight paper. I took a sip of cognac and started reading Elsie’s unfinished manuscript.

4.

Aline Ferris woke to darkness and to fear. For a long, shuddering moment she lay still, fighting her way through blind panic.

She knew instantly that she lay in a strange bed in a strange room. She didn’t know whether she was alone or not. But she did know that if she had a bed-companion he would almost certainly be a stranger.

Her mouth was dry and her tongue seemed paralyzed. Pain throbbed in her temples even as she lay quietly on her back, and she dreaded to move her head. She was partially clothed, and there was a damp pillow under her head. Her legs were cold from thighs to unshod toes.

Her arms lay stiff and straight beside her, hands clenched into fists that drove sharp fingernails into her palms. She willed herself to relax them slowly. First the right and then the left. With sickening fear she spread the fingers of her right hand flat on the sheet and forced them to move the short distance to the edge of the mattress. Then the other hand. Slowly, her heart pounding with fear of what she might encounter. A foot, two feet, and then, with sharp gratitude, she stretched her arm full length and knew she lay alone on the double bed.

She became aware of faint light in the room, and turned her eyes slightly. It came dimly through a narrow oblong high on the wall to the left of the bed, and she recognized it as a translucent transom above a door. That definitely meant a hotel room to Aline.

Summoning all her strength and courage, she turned on her right side and groped out with her left hand. Her fingers touched a bedside table, moved on to encounter an ashtray and then the base of a lamp, then upward to a dangling brass chain.

She closed her eyes tightly against the anticipated glare before pulling the chain, but the light penetrated her lids like a flash of lightning. She quickly buried her face in the pillow, fighting back nausea; and the dull pain throbbing in her temples became sledgehammer blows.

Moaning and clutching the pillow she lay still until the tortuous spasm subsided, then slowly lifted her head, waited a while until her eyes were accustomed to the light against her lids. Cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked distastefully at her surroundings.

The room was like thousands of impersonal hotel bedrooms. Middle-class, she guessed. There was an overstuffed chair covered with flowered chintz, another straight-backed chair near the door, the conventional chest of drawers, and a dressing table with mirror and bench near the window.

Aline ran one hand down her body. The nylon slip was twisted around her hips, and she lifted herself slightly to straighten it. Then she sat up slowly, clenched hands pressing tightly against throbbing temples.

Her silk print dress was draped on one arm of the overstuffed chair, and a crumpled pair of nylon panties lay on the floor, halfway between bed and chair. Beside the bed her alligator pumps were placed neatly side by side with toes pointing outward. There was no luggage and no other article of clothing visible.

Aline gritted her teeth against returning nausea and looked down at herself with loathing. Her left stocking was twisted and baggy, but still rolled above the knee on a round garter. The other was coiled around her slim ankle.

Something peculiar about the left stocking caught her attention. She blinked her glazed eyes at it, reached down fearfully and extracted a green paper folded lengthwise four times and inserted beneath the roll above her knee.

She unfolded it wonderingly, smoothed it out between her fingers, squinting in an effort to focus her aching eyes.

A two-dollar bill! But what on earth…?

For a long time she had difficulty comprehending the significance of the bill. Then she suddenly understood! Anger swept over her, mingling with loathing and self-pity.

A two-dollar whore!

That’s what she had become. Racking sobs tore at her chest and rose in stifling knots to her throat. The cheapest sort of drunken floosie. Staggering up to a hotel room with a man who figured it was worth two bucks when he left her. Two filthy bucks, by God!

Her tears came at last. Hot tears that streamed down her cheeks and eased the knots in her throat. She blindly tore the offending bill into narrow strips, then crossways into tiny bits and flung them over the bed.

Her sobbing changed to hysterical laughter. Good enough for her! It was exactly what she deserved! Oh, God in heaven! How could she have allowed it to happen again? After being so careful. So very, very careful for the past month… since the last time.

Again the tears flowed, gently yet copiously, tears of self-pity, relaxing her body and easing the throbbing pain in her temples.

She didn’t know where she was or what time it was or how she had got there or who the man was who had paid her the final insult of slipping a two-dollar bill into her stocking.

She didn’t know anything. Try as she would, she could not remember anything after that third martini at Bart’s party. Always, in the past, there had been some vagrant memories of the things that happened during her alcoholic blackouts. Vague, disconnected and unreliable, but with a certain pattern and meaning if one worked hard at putting them together.

This time, there was nothing.

Aline wiped her eyes with the top sheet and sank back against the damp pillow, determined to go back step by step and recall everything she could from the moment she had decided to attend Bart’s party.

Let’s see. She had decided to accept Bart’s invitation at the last minute. About eight o’clock, she guessed. After all sorts of stern resolves not ever to trust herself at a drinking party again.

But she had been practicing self-control for a whole month. She was sure she could stop in time. It seemed absurd to pass up a good party just because she was afraid she wouldn’t stop drinking before she lost control.

After that horrible last time, she couldn’t possibly make the same mistake. She knew, now, that she was different from other people who drank. Her body reacted differently. Probably something to do with basic metabolism, or an allergy.

For a full month she had been checking her alcoholic intake to see exactly how she was affected by certain amounts under varying conditions. In the past it had happened because she hadn’t recognized the danger signals in time. It hadn’t worried her… not in the beginning. She would sometimes take one or two beyond her capacity and have a slight mental lapse. A few minutes or half-hour, perhaps, and then she’d be conscious again. She’d be nauseated, of course, and have to run to somebody’s bathroom, but that would be the end of it. Something to joke about with the others and dismiss from her mind.

Until a month ago!

That night had taught her a much-needed lesson. She still cringed and wanted to vomit every time she let herself remember it, which was not often. A month had glossed the horror over as scar tissue covers an open wound. Even though the experience was the most horrible that any fairly decent girl could suffer, it had happened, and she was still Aline Ferris, and that was that.

Nothing like that would ever happen again. She had learned her lesson. She could go to Bart’s party if she decided she wanted to. There was no real reason why she shouldn’t.

Just to test herself, she had mixed a light rye and water as she moved restlessly about her small apartment. She was bored with being alone, bored with the prospect of going out to dinner alone, and overwhelmingly bored with the heartsick loneliness of the past month.

The first drink had reassured her and told her exactly what she needed to know. There was a gentle glow which she recognized and welcomed. That’s what a drink should do to a normal person… relax the body and tranquilize the mind. Nothing wrong about that. Just be sure the effect was gradual and recognize one’s limits.

She had felt certain that her mistake in the past had been to take too much alcohol into her system too swiftly. She had not allowed time enough between drinks for each to have its normal effect before piling another on top of it. But now that she knew all about spacing her drinks and calculating the effect of each one before taking another, she was just as safe as anybody.

To make a final test before deciding she could safely trust herself at Bart’s party, she poured another rye and water. Slightly stronger this time, but still a moderate drink.

Her sense of certitude and well-being had increased. One didn’t have to worry if one watched one’s self and remained alert for the danger signals.

That was the most important thing, she thought contentedly as she went into her small dressing room to sit before the mirror and inspect her face. Until a month ago, she had not dreamed there was a danger line. From now on, she would be on guard against it.

Her mirror had reflected flushed cheeks and glowing eyes. She powdered her face lightly and rouged her lips, ran a comb through her hair and patted it into place. She had showered earlier, just after getting home from the office, and wore only her slip, panties and bra.

Turning from the mirror, she kicked off scuffed mules and got clean stockings from a drawer. God, she felt good after her self-imposed penance. Bart always gave good parties. He hadn’t said who’d be there tonight, but some of the gang, certainly. They would be glad to welcome her back into circulation. Some of them knew what had happened last time at Betty Elaine’s party. Well, not exactly everything, but enough to guess at the rest. And they would help her tonight. They were good kids. They didn’t like to see a girl like Aline make a complete fool of herself.

She slipped on her alligator pumps and chose the gold and blue print dress. It set off her slim waist and nice hips, and the heart-shaped neckline was flattering.

She hadn’t bothered to telephone that she had changed her mind and decided to attend the party. It didn’t matter. There would be a dozen or more anyway, with others dropping in later or leaving early.

She took one more short rye before going out. Just enough to give her that final lift that made an evening in New York so challenging and exciting to a girl who had been sedately reared in the mid-west.

Yes. It would have been about eight-thirty when she reached Bart’s apartment in the Village. She remembered paying the taxi fare and waiting impatiently while the driver made change for a five. It was eight-thirty. There had been a clock across the street above the entrance to a cellar restaurant. She had left the taxi driver the silver, and put the four bills in the small alligator handbag and gone up the steps…

Her handbag! Where was it?

Aline Ferris sat upright and looked wildly around the hotel bedroom. It was nowhere in sight. She dragged herself from the bed and waveringly made her way to the chest of drawers, frantically opened each one to find it empty. She searched the closet and looked under the bed without result. She opened the bathroom door.

Light from the bedside table spilled through the doorway onto the body of a man sprawled on the bathroom floor. His head was near the door, inches from Aline’s stockinged feet, and there was blood on the white tiles.

5.

That was the first chapter of Elsie Murray’s manuscript. I laid it aside and tossed off the rest of my cognac, thinking about Elsie and what she had told me about the script.

She did write pretty well for a beginner. With a lot of emotional intensity and feeling. Of course, the trouble in evaluating her as a writer came from the fact that I knew she was writing about an actual situation. If she had told me the truth back in her apartment, this whole thing had happened to her.
She
was Aline Ferris who had waked up in a strange hotel room and found a corpse in the bathroom.

I got up and paced back and forth while I wondered about Elsie. She had talked about the story as though it were an unsolved mystery. It was an intriguing situation for a book. If she had a good solution for it and could keep up the pace of the first chapter, it could well turn into a damned fine mystery.

But that was her trouble, of course. As she, herself, recognized. Almost anyone can describe interestingly something they have experienced personally. But without experience and a lot of solid craftsmanship, it’s very difficult to create situations and characters. She probably never would be able to finish the book.

But perhaps I could help her. I told myself it would be fun trying. It would be interesting to discuss the script with her, and find out exactly how closely she resembled the Aline Ferris in her story.

If she
was
a gal who passed out on her third martini and developed nympho tendencies… that made it all the more interesting.

I glanced at my watch and saw it was almost two o’clock. I remembered how she had kissed me just before her telephone rang, and mentally added up the number of drinks she had tossed off during the evening. It was more than three, that was a cinch. But she certainly hadn’t been even close to passing out with me.

Or… had she? How could one be certain? The way she described herself in the story, it was much more a mental blackout than a physical one that overtook her.

Maybe she had been on the verge of passing out while I was there. It was an interesting speculation.

I caught myself glancing down at the manila envelope with her telephone number penciled on it. She’d hardly be asleep yet, I thought. She’d be lying awake wondering if I had started to read her script, frightened to death that I’d think it horrible, yet very sure in her own mind that it was a masterpiece and that I’d recognize it as such.

It wasn’t difficult to convince myself that I really owed it to Elsie’s peace of mind to telephone her and say I thought the first chapter extremely good. I could do that honestly, and I knew I might have reservations if I waited to read more.

I went into my bedroom and gave the Murray Hill number to the hotel operator.

I heard Elsie’s telephone ring twice before there was a click and a man’s voice said, “Hello.”

I replaced my receiver very quietly without answering. I sat there on the side of the bed looking down at the instrument and thinking hard.

I could be mistaken.

But I didn’t think I was mistaken. I’ve worked with and around cops enough years to recognize the official sound of a policeman’s voice.

What was a cop doing in Elsie Murray’s apartment? Answering her telephone at two o’clock in the morning?

Of course, there had been that other telephone call which had made her so anxious to get rid of me. Maybe her jealous boy-friend was a dick. But why did he answer her phone instead of letting her do the honors?

I began to sweat a little as I sat there thinking it over. I’ve got too much imagination, of course. And I’ve worked around the police and criminals so much that I’m overly conscious of what can happen in this modern world of ours. The average man just doesn’t think about such things. He reads about murders and rapes in the paper, but they are always happening to someone else. It simply doesn’t occur to him that anything of that nature could ever come close to
him.

I’ve noticed that time and again when covering a case with Mike Shayne. A man’s wife goes out for the evening, for instance, leaving him home with the kiddies. He goes to sleep at ten o’clock, expecting her back later, and wakes up in the morning to discover she hasn’t returned.

Does he get frightened and call the police at once? Not your normal, average American citizen. He doesn’t want to make himself conspicuous. He thinks the police would laugh at him for worrying. He thinks of a dozen plausible explanations for his wife’s absence. And deep down inside him is the positive assurance that nothing can possibly have happened to his wife. So he sends the kids to school and goes off to work, and it isn’t until that night or maybe even the next day that he allows himself to become worried enough to call the Missing Persons Bureau. By that time, she’s probably been stiff in the morgue for twenty-four hours.

If anything had happened at Elsie Murray’s apartment that had brought the police in, I wanted to know about it. I had Elsie’s lipstick on my mouth, and my fingerprints were in her place. A dozen or more people had seen us leave the banquet together.

The first chapter of her manuscript had something to do with my feeling, I suppose. Reading that, and knowing that she was depicting herself in Aline Ferris.

I didn’t like it at all, but I didn’t see what I could do. I couldn’t afford to call police headquarters and ask if something had happened to Elsie. If anything had, I’d be mixed up in it soon enough without volunteering any information. I reminded myself that I wasn’t in Miami now, and the name of Brett Halliday simply didn’t swing any weight in New York.

I got up and walked around the room and thought about it, and went back into the sitting room for another small drink. A very small one this time.

I thought of Ed Radin while I was drinking it. That was my answer. Edward P. Radin has been called the dean of true crime writers. For many years he has been covering the New York crime beat, reporting and writing up the more sensational murders for national magazines and for books that are considered classics in their field. He was on a first-name basis with most of the important homicide officials in the city, and it would be a simple matter for him to check for me.

I’ve known Ed for years, and knew I could trust him implicitly to keep my name out of things as long as it was decently possible.

And I had his number in my address book.

I got my book out and thumbed through it as I went back into the bedroom. It was an old number that Ed had given me years before, but he’s the steady sort of family man who stays put, and I was hopeful he hadn’t moved.

I gave it to the operator and waited. This time the phone at the other end rang eight times before a gruffly sleepy voice answered. I didn’t recognize it, and asked, “Is that Ed Radin?”

“Yes. Who’s calling?”

“Brett Halliday, Ed.”

There was a slight pause, then Ed said wearily, “Oh, yeh. What’s up, Brett?”

“I don’t know, but I’m a little worried about something and you can do me a hell of a big favor if you will.”

“Sure.” He was wide awake now, and affable as always. “Shoot.”

“It’s this. Do you know anyone at headquarters you can call to ask if there’s anything wrong at a certain apartment on East Thirty-Eighth Street? Without explaining that I asked you to do it?”

“U-m-m. Yes. I can do that, if it’s important. Give it all to me, Brett.”

“Got a pencil?”

“Yes.”

I gave him the address. “The apartment’s on the third floor. Three-C, I think. It’s in the name of Ryerson Johnson, but is being sublet at present by a girl named Elsie Murray.”

“Hold it, Brett. I know Johnny Johnson. Has something happened…?”

“The Johnsons are away. In Maine, I think. It’s Elsie Murray I’m worried about.”

“Isn’t she the gal who was at the banquet tonight?”

“That’s the one. Look, Ed, I’ll give it to you straight, so you’ll know what you’re getting into. I met Elsie at the bar of the Henry Hudson tonight. We had a few drinks and went up to her place for a couple. She had part of a book manuscript she wanted me to read, and I brought it back to my hotel about an hour ago. I read one chapter and decided to phone her. A man answered her phone and I hung up. I can’t swear to it, but if I know anything about the breed, it was a cop’s voice. Can you check it?”

“Give me about ten minutes. Where can I reach you?”

I gave him my telephone number and room extension. Then I hung up. Ed Radin hadn’t laughed at my request. He’s like me. He’s been around enough not to laugh off possibilities.

I felt a lot better. If everything was all right, that was fine. If there was trouble, I’d be alerted in advance and have time to figure out just where I stood.

I wandered back into my sitting room, sat down and picked up Elsie’s manuscript again. I began riffling through the typewritten pages, reading a line or a paragraph or a page here and there to see what it was all about.

It was about what I’d expected, though really quite well written for an amateur. The dead man Aline found at the end of the first chapter was a complete stranger to her with no identification on his body. In a panic of fear that she has murdered him, she gets out of the hotel room without anyone seeing her.

Then she starts back-tracking, trying to find out what happened at the party after she passed out, who the dead man is and (of course) who killed him.

There were three male characters mixed up in the events of the evening, and from one after another, Aline had found out various things that occurred after she passed out. From my hasty look at the story, it appeared that Aline had been quite a girl with the men, and that, too, seemed to me to add up pretty well to an analysis of Elsie Murray. Finally, a disgruntled wife gets after her for stealing a husband, and the hell of it was that Aline didn’t know whether it was true or not.

That’s the point at which Elsie had stopped writing, admitting to me that she didn’t know how to finish it.

My telephone rang. I hurried in and it was Ed Radin. His voice was husky with excitement as he said hurriedly, “You hit it on the head, Brett, and it isn’t good. Elsie Murray is dead. Strangled. Within the past hour or so.”

So somebody else had finished it. Elsie’s story was ended.

I said, “She was alive when I left her, Ed.”

“I believe you. But its still a tough spot. Can you prove she was?”

“No. But they can’t prove she wasn’t.”

“Can you prove what time you left her? What time you reached your hotel?”

“Not a chance,” I said helplessly. “I didn’t meet a soul I know. I didn’t even glance at the desk clerk when I came in. The elevator boy may remember bringing me up, but there’s no reason for him to remember the time. I’ve been sitting here alone sipping a drink and reading her manuscript.”

“All right. Here’s what I advise,” said Ed rapidly. “Sit tight and say nothing. They’ll probably be around to you soon enough. If they don’t, by any chance, wait until you see a morning paper with the story in it, and then call in fast. Tell them the truth except for having telephoned me. Everything else, but for God’s sake keep that back. I’m going over to the apartment now to get the whole story. Chances are, I’ll be able to drop in on you and give you all the dope before they reach you. Don’t leave your room. Just go along normally until something breaks that pulls you into it.”

He hung up abruptly. I followed suit more slowly. So, this was it. After writing murder stories for fifteen years, I was suddenly in the middle of one up to my neck. I thought fleetingly about all the innocent guys I’d written about, caught in just such a set of circumstances and fighting desperately to prove their innocence. Now I knew how it felt to be trapped. The angry sense of futility. The outraged desire to proclaim my innocence and be believed.

I realized that every move I made from now on, every word I spoke, would be viewed with suspicion. I must do nothing to indicate that I was aware of what had happened to Elsie because Ed was covering for me and I’d get him in a hell of a jam if the truth ever came out.

I went back to the sitting room thinking deeply. There were the two telephone calls I had made through the hotel switchboard. There would be a record of those two calls. But they were both local, and I didn’t think the numbers would be available to the police. They would want to know about them anyway. All right, I’d tell the simple truth about the first call. That I had read a chapter of Elsie’s script and decided to phone her. When a man answered, I did the natural thing at that hour when you find another man is with a girl. I hung up.

I’d have to think of some explanation for my call to Ed Radin. That is, if the hotel did keep track of local numbers. Ed would know about that. We’d work something out together.

But the switchboard did keep track of long distance calls. That, I knew. And I wanted to make one fast.

I couldn’t afford to do anything to draw attention to me. Even going down in the elevator to a pay phone booth just off the lobby might well be noticed at that hour in a small, quiet hotel like the Berkshire.

But I had to make that call right away.

I checked the silver in my pocket and found I had only a couple of dimes. But that was all right. I could reverse the charges on this call.

Before leaving the room, I took off the black eye-patch I normally wear over my left eye. It is damnably noticeable, and removing it is a very practical method of disguise. I should explain that I wear it because of a boyhood injury to one eye which left me with a perfectly good eyeball but practically no sight in that eye. There is just enough vision so the eye strains to see if left uncovered, and I get bad headaches. I can and do leave the patch off for a few hours at a time with no bad effects. If I were seen going down to the pay phone without the patch on, the chances were I wouldn’t be recognized.

I went out into the corridor and down the rear stairs. I was on the third floor, and saw no one as I went down. Luckily, the stairs at the Berkshire end in a hallway at the rear of the lobby that leads into the dining room and The Five Hundred Room, and the phone booths are located at the end of that corridor. I went directly to them without having to pass through the lobby, and pulled a door shut behind me.