The bride wore black (20 page)

The apparatus made a muted whirr, waiting. The necessary flow of thought wouldn't seem to come. Inspiration appeared to be log-jammed. He glanced helplessly up at the row of his own books on a shelf, as if wondering how he'd done it before.

A floorboard creaked unexpectedly somewhere near at hand. He whirled around in the chair, frowning menacingly at the supposed interruption.

There was no one in the room with him at all; the door was still securely closed. The flames leaped higher behind him, filling the cavern of the fireplace with heat and a crimson rose glow.

The Cameron girl snapped her head around, found his eyes boring into her from the doorway some five minutes later. "Wh-what happened?" she faltered uneasily. "No quarantine this morning?"

"I seem to have hit an air pocket. Come in here, will you? I want to talk to you. Maybe thatll help to get me started."

"You sure you want me in there in the holy of holies?" she wanted to know almost frightenedly.

"rm sure," he said in a flinty voice.

She made her way in ahead of him, looking back across her shoulder at him the whole way. He closed the door on the two of them. "Sit down."

"That chair? I thought no one else was allowed."

"That's Sam's line of talk." His eyes fixed themselves on her piercingly. "What's the difference between one chair and another?" The question almost seemed to have a special meaning.

She sank into it without further protest. He squatted down, adding an extra log or two to the fire, which was only now beginning to draw, as though he'd had to start it a second time. Then he sat back diagonally opposite her, in a chair she had occupied whenever she had been in here before. He seemed to be watching her closely, as though he'd never seen her before.

"What 11 I talk about?" she suggested presently.

He didn't answer, just kept watching her. A minute or two ticked by; the only sound in the room with them was the steadily increasing hum from the fireplace.

"Deep thought," she said mockingly.

"Let me feel your hand a minute," he said unexpectedly. She extended it to him indolently. The palm was perfectly dry. The wrist was steady.

He flung it back at her with such unexpected force that it struck her across the chest. He was on his feet. "Come on, get out of that chair fast," he said hoarsely. "You sure had me fooled. What's your racket, kid?"

But before she had a chance to answer, he was already over at the door, had thrown it open, was thumbing her out past him with an urgency that had something tingling about it.

"What's the matter with you, anyway?" she drawled

reproachfully as she regained her own doorway opposite.

"Keep out of the way for a while; don't come in here, no matter what you hear. Got that straight?" Some of the rough edge left his voice as he called up the stairs with suddenly regained urbanity, "Miss Kitchener, could I speak to you down here a minute?"

The diligent pitter-patter of her typing, which had been like soft rain on a roof, broke off short and she came down unhesitatingly, at her usual precise, fussy little gait.

He motioned her in. "How far have you gotten?" he asked, closing the door.

"I'm midway through the opening chapter," she announced, beaming with complacency.

"Sit down. The reason I called you is I'm changing this lead character's name to No, sit down there, right where you are,"

"That's your chair, isn't it?"

"Oh, any chair. Sit down while I discuss this with you." He forced her to take it by preempting the other one.

She lowered a spine stiff as a ramrod to the outermost edge of it, contacting it by no more than half an inch.

"Will changing his name give you any extra work? Has he appeared by name yet in the part you've already transcribed?"

She was up again with alacrity. "Just a moment, I'll go up and make sure "

He motioned her down again. "No, don't bother." And then with mild wonderment, "You were just going over that part, how is it you can't recall offhand? Well, anyway, it occurred to me that in Northern stories readers are used to identifying French-Canadian characters with the villain, and therefore it might be advisable to

Miss Kitchener, are you listening to me? What's the matter, are you ill?"

"It's too warm in this chair, the heat of the fire. I can't stand it."

Without warning he reached forward, seized one of her hands before she could draw it back. "You must be mistaken. How can you say the chair's too warm for you? Your hand's ice-cold trembling with cold!" He frowned. "At least let me finish what I have to say to you."

Her breathing had become harshly audible, as though she had asthma. "No, no!"

They both gained their feet simultaneously. He pressed her down by the shoulder, firmly but not roughly, so that she sank into the chair again. She attempted to writhe out of it sideways this time. Again he gripped her, pinned her down. Her spectacles fell off.

"Why is your face so white? Why are you so deathly afraid?"

She seemed to be in the throes of hysteria, beyond reasoning. A knife unexpectedly flashed out from somewhere about her her sleeve, perhaps and was upraised against him across the back of the chair. Her hand was quick; his hand was quicker. He throttled it by the wrist, pinning it down over the chair top; it turned a little, and the knife fell out, glanced off the low fire screen behind her and into the flames.

"That's a funny implement for a typist to be carrying around with her; do you use that in your work?"

She was struggling almost maniacally against him now; something seemed to be driving her to a frenzy. He was exerting his strength passively, holding her a prisoner in the chair with one hand riveted at the base of her throat. He was standing affside to her, however, not directly before her. She alone was in a straight line with the fireplace.

"Let me up let me up!"

"Not until you speak," he grunted.

She crumpled suddenly, seemed to collapse inwardly, was suddenly a limp bundle there in the chair. "There's a gun in there, above the zinc partition trained on this chair! Any minute the heat will A sawed-off shotgun filled with "

"Who put it there?" he probed relentlessly.

"I did! Quick, let me up!"

"Why? Answer me, why?"

"Because Tm Nick Killeen's widow and I came here to kill you. Holmes!"

"That's all," he said briefly, and stepped back.

He took his hand away too late. As it broke contact, there was a blinding flash behind her that lit up his face, a roar, and a dense puff of smoke swirled out around her, as though blown out of the fireplace by a bellows worked in reverse.

She heaved convulsively one more time, as though still attempting to escape by reflex alone, then deflated again, staring at him through the smoke haze that veiled her.

"You're all right," he assured her quietly. "1 emptied it out before I started the fire up a second time, only left the powder charge in it. The dictation machine saved me; you must have accidentally brushed against the lever, turned it on, when you came in here last night. It recorded the whole proceeding, from the first warning creak of the floor to the replacing of the zinc sheet that roofs the fireplace. Only I couldn't tell which one of you it was; that's why I had to give you the chair test."

The door flashed open and the Cameron girl's frightened white face peered in at them. "What was that?"

He was, strangely enough, twice as rough spoken and curt to her as he had been to the woman in the chair, the way one is to a puppy or a child that can't be held

responsible for its actions. "Stay out of here," he bellowed, "you damned nuisance of an autograph-hunting, hero-worshiping school brat, or Til come out there, turn you over my knee and give you a spanking that'll make you need cotton wool someplace else besides your ankle!"

The door closed again twice as quickly as it had opened, with a gasp of shocked incredulity.

He turned back to the limp, deflated figure still cowering there in the chair. She seemed to hang suspended in a void; she had lost one personality without regaining another. His voice dropped again to ordinary conversational pitch, as with an adult. "What were you going to do to her in case it had worked?" he asked curiously.

She was still suffering from shock, but she managed a weak smile. "Exactly nothing at all. She wasn't even on my list. She couldn't have endangered me. I might have tied her up in order to get away, that's all."

"At least you're fair-minded in your death dealing," he conceded grudgingly. He watched her for a moment, then went over and poured her a drink without turning his back on her. "Here. You seem to be all in shreds. Knit yourself up again."

She tottered waveringly erect at last, one hand out to the chair back. Then little by little a change came over her. She seemed to fill out before his very eyes, gain color, body, like those outline drawings they had once given to a child named Cookie Moran. The life-force, that inextinguishable thing, flowed back into her. Not the cold, spinsterish tide that had been Miss Kitchener; something warmer, brighter. Though her hair was still artfully streaked with gray and drawn tightly back, the last vestiges of the prissy Miss Kitchener seemed to peel away, roll off her like a transparent cellophane wrapping. She was somehow a young, more vibrant woman. A woman who knew no fear, a woman who knew how to

admit defeat gracefully. But a vengeful sort of grace it was, even now.

"Well, I got them all but you. Holmes. Nick will overlook that. I'm only a woman, after all. Go ahead, call the police, Tm ready."

"I am the police. Holmes was hijacked into safety weeks ago; he's lying low in Bermuda. I've been living his life for him ever since, tearing the covers off his old books and reading them over again into the machine, waiting for you to show up. I was afraid the dog would give me away; it showed so plainly I wasn't its master."

"I should have noticed that," she admitted. "Overcon-fidence must have made me careless. Everything went hke clockwork with all the others Bliss and Mitchell and Moran and Ferguson."

"Look out," he warned her dryly, "I'm getting it all on there." He thumbed the dictation machine, making its faint whirring sound again.

"Do you take me for the usual petty-larceny criminal for gain, trying to cover up what he's done, trying to welsh out of it?" There was unutterable contempt in the look she gave him. "You have a lot to learn about me! I glory in it! I want to shout it from the housetops, I want the world to know!" She took a quick step over beside the recording apparatus; her voice rose triumphantly into the speaking tube. "I pushed Bliss to his death! I gave cyanide to Mitchell! I smothered Moran alive in a closet! I shot Ferguson through the heart with an arrow! This is Julie Killeen speaking. Do you hear me, Nick, do you hear me? Your debt is paid all but one. There, Detective, there's your case. Now bring on your revenge. To me it's a citation!"

"Sit down a minute," he said. "There's no hurry. It's taken me two and a half years to catch up with you; a few minutes more won't matter. I want to talk to you."

And when she had sat down, he said, "So you help-

fully put it all on the record for me. All but one thing. You neglected to add why; what this outstanding debt was. I happen to know now, I didn't for years. It was what held me up. I found out just in the nick of time for Holmes's sake, anyway. If I hadn't he the real Holmes would have been where the rest are by now."

"You happen to know why!" Sparks seemed to dart from her eyes. "You couldn't, no, nor anyone else. Did you live through it? Did you see it with your own eyes? A dry Hne or two on some forgotten, dust-covered police report! But it still stings in my heart.

"It's a long time ago now, as time goes, and yet all I have to do is shut my eyes and he's beside me again, Nick, my husband. And the pain wells up around me again, the hate, the rage, the sick, cold loss. All I have to do is shut my eyes and it's yesterday again, that long-past, unforgotten yesterday."

FLASHBACK: THE LITTLE

CASKET AROUND THE

CORNER

OR BETTER OR FOR worse, in sickness or in health, until death do ye part?"

"I do."

"I now pronounce you man and wife. Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. You may kiss the bride."

They turned toward each other shyly. She drew the filmy veil clear of her face. Her eyes drooped closed as his lips met hers in the sacramental kiss. She was Mrs. Nick Killeen now, not Julie Bennett anymore.

The members of their wedding party came crowding around; they were engulfed in a surging surf of bobbing heads, backslapping hands, congratulatory voices. The bridesmaids' tinted chiffon hats swept over her face one by one like colored gelatin slides, dyeing it without obscuring it, while each gave her a little peck of benediction. Through all the commotion, his eyes and hers kept seeking each other, as if to say, ""You're all that really matters to me, you, over there."

Then they were side by side again, Mr. and Mrs. Nick Killeen, her hand tucked submissively under his arm, as a wife's should be, her step matched to his, her heart beating his music. Down the long, vaulted church aisle they moved, toward where the doors stood open wide and the future, their future, waited. And behind them.

two by two, came the bridesmaids like a bed of mobile flowers, yellow, azure, lilac, pink.

The apsed doorway receded overhead, gave way to a night sky soft as velvet, pricked with a single star, the evening star. Promising things, long life and happiness and laughter; promising things but with a wink.

Their attendants hung back, as if bonded in some mischievous conspiracy, as the two principals unsuspectingly started down the short, spreading flight of church steps. The foremost of a short line of cars that had been held in readiness a few doors up the street meshed gears and started slowly forward to receive them. A gust of surreptitious giggling swept over those crowded in the doorway behind them. Hands sought paper bags, and the first few swirls of rice began to mist the steps. The bride threw up her arm to ward off" the bombardment, huddled closer to the room. Squeals of glee were emitted, the air whitened with the falling grains.