The Crime of My Life, page 23
“I know. Reverend Mother. . .”
“Only Armandine and myself. . .”
“Who is Armandine, Reverend Mother?”
“Madame d’Hauterive. You must have heard of her. The rest have left town and we haven’t kept up with them. I have an idea. . .Just wait a minute. . .”
Perhaps a nun, too, enjoys a distraction from her usual routine. After an absence of only a few seconds she came back with a yellowed picture of two rows of young girls, all wearing the same uniform and the same ribbon with a medal attached to it around their necks. And pointing to a weakly looking figure, she said:
“There is Madame Labbé, the wife of the haberdasher. And this one, who’s slightly cross-eyed. . .”
Mother Saint Ursula was quite right. Besides the haberdasher’s wife there were only two members of the class still alive in the town; Mother Saint Ursula and Madame d’Hauterive.
“Madame Labbé is very ill. I must go call on her next Saturday. That is her birthday and a group of her old school friends have always met in her sickroom.”
“Thank you. Reverend Mother.”
The twenty thousand francs were his! Or at least they soon would be. Every one of the haberdasher’s victims was in the photograph. And the only two still alive, besides Madame Labbé, were obviously those whom the killer had announced as his next victims.
“Thank you again. Reverend Mother. I must go immediately. Someone is waiting for me. . .”
Perhaps his behavior wasn’t entirely correct; he wasn’t used to convent ways. If they took him for an oaf or a madman there wasn’t much he could do about it. He thanked the Mother Superior once more, bowed, backed his way out and started to run down the sidewalk outside so fast that he found it hard to slow up.
Twenty thousand francs! Twenty thousand francs they had promised for the killer, for the killer alone. Wasn’t he entitled to more if he brought them a complete list of the victims, both past and future? Thanks to him two of them would survive for some years to come.
“Prove your case. . .”
What if they were to say just that?
“Prove it! Prove that these two persons were to be the next victims. What right have you to claim that a man like Monsieur Labbé planned to murder Mother Saint Ursula? What? Speak up!”
And yet only a bit of understanding was necessary. An understanding of why the haberdasher had drawn up his list in the first place.
I must go call on her next Saturday, the Mother Superior had said, speaking of Madame Labbé. That is her birthday and a group of her old school friends have always met in her sickroom.
Twenty thousand francs. Perhaps fifty thousand, perhaps more. . .Madame d’Hauterive was rich and when she learned that she owed her life to a little tailor with a large family. . .
His wife was waiting at the front door.
“He’s upstairs.”
“Who’s upstairs?”
“The inspector.”
“Good!” he cried, with a self-assurance to which she was not accustomed. Never had he wondered whether every man has a chance of living one glorious hour, one hour when he can live up to the best that is in him. And yet just such an hour had come.
“Good evening, Inspector. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I’ve been very busy. . .”
That was the way! He had spoken in the easy-going tone of voice of the most affluent gentlemen of the Café de la Paix. He had not forgotten the gestures natural to his profession, but he performed them with such grace that he seemed to be juggling with the unattached pieces of the inspector’s suit.
“Tell me. . .The twenty thousand francs reward. . .There’s no catch to it, is there?”
“Have you a little theory of your own, too?”
A little theory! A little theory, the inspector called it! When Kachoudas had seen the killer at work with his own eyes! When he knew who the next victims would be and had just this minute left the company of one of them. . .Ha! Ha!. . .
“Listen, Inspector. . .If I were quite sure about the reward. . .”
“Well, I can tell you one thing. If you want to win it you’d better hurry up. . .”
They didn’t believe him. It was all a joke. They were making fun of him. The inspector added:
“There’s someone waiting for me right now in my office. . .A woman. . .Apparently she claims the reward. . .They called me just now at the café.”
“What’s her name?” Kachoudas asked distrustfully.
“Does it interest you?”
“It isn’t a nun, is it?”
“Why should it be a nun?”
“Does her last name have a de in it? Is her first name Armandine?”
He had no intention of letting his twenty thousand francs slip away from him.
“If she’s neither one of those two. Inspector, she can only be telling you fairy-tales. . .”
Then the inspector let drop: “You ought to know who she is. She works right across the street from you. . .”
Kachoudas listened intently with a hard expression on his face.
“She’s the cleaning woman of your friend the haberdasher. . .”
For at least two minutes the inspector was left trussed up in an unfinished suit, which had only one sleeve and no collar, while the little tailor strode nervously up and down the room, and every now and then his mouth was twisted into a sarcastic smile. It was impossible. It wasn’t right. He had thought of everything except that old cleaning woman. What credit did she deserve for the fact that she had access to the house and could spy on everything. She hadn’t thought of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, had she? She didn’t know the names of the next victims. Well, then. . .
“Look here. Inspector. . .Supposing I tell you right away. . .”
But what about proofs? Always that confounded matter of proofs! And to think that the cleaning woman might have proofs, even if they were only scraps of paper she had picked out of the garbage can.
“It’s only fair, when all’s said and done, that the first-comer should have the reward, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
The light was on across the street, as it always was at this hour. It made only a vague circle behind the lace curtains, but one could guess at the shape of Madame Labbé’s chair and her motionless white face.
“Saturday is her birthday. . .”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind. . .Saturday the sixty-three to sixty-five year old survivors are scheduled to meet in her sickroom and. . .”
This was not Kachoudas’ hour of glory, it was his exact minute. He must hurry, on account of the cleaning woman.
“Listen, my man. . .”
“Twenty thousand francs, then?”
“Yes, if you. . .”
If he could prove it, of course.
“Look here. . .”
Kachoudas picked up the heavy scissors with which he had cut the cloth that was now draped so strangely around the inspector. He opened the window and made a desperate gesture, hurling the scissors straight at the window on the other side of the street.
Then he stood perfectly still, quivering inside. The glass had shattered with a tremendous noise. He had to catch his breath before a smile came over his face, a triumphant smile that a little tailor of his kind can afford only once in a lifetime. Across the street he and the inspector could see in the chair of the haberdasher’s invalid wife only a wooden head on top of a pile of rags.
“Tell me, Madame. . .”
“Mademoiselle, if you please. . .”
A sour old thing. Monsieur Labbé’s cleaning woman! They had brought her over from the police station and as soon as she saw her employer in handcuffs she knew that she was too late.
“You knew that Madame Labbé was dead, did you?”
“I was sure of it.”
“For how long a time?”
“Months and months. I was sure, that is, without really knowing. . .”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, mostly on account of the fish. . .”
“What fish?”
“All kinds of fish, herrings, halibut, cod. . .She couldn’t eat fish.”
“Why not?”
“Fish upset her. Lots of people are like that. I had to be very brave, I can tell you. If I don’t get at least a share of the twenty thousand francs, then there’s no justice. . .”
Kachoudas stirred in his corner, but the inspector made a reassuring sign in his direction.
“What was that about the fish?”
“Well, one day when I had cooked some fish for him and I wanted to send up some meat to his wife, he told me that I needn’t bother. He took all her meals to her, you know, and kept her room in order. Then there was the string. . .”
“What string?”
“The string I found last week when I was cleaning up his workshop. He never wanted me to go in there, but I made up my mind to do it while he was away, because there was such a bad smell. Back of the hats I found a string hanging from the ceiling. He pulled on that to make the same noise that his wife used to make when she tapped with her cane on the floor. As for the twenty thousand francs, I’m going to see a lawyer. . .”
Kachoudas almost rose again. Monsieur Labbé gave a dignified smile.
“So first of all you killed your wife. . .”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You strangled her the same way you did the others. . .”
“Not the same way, Inspector. With my hands. She was suffering too much. . .”
“Or rather, you were tired of looking after her. . .”
“As you like. . .”
“Then you began to kill off your wife’s friends. Why? And why in such rapid successions?”
Kachoudas raised his hand as if he were at school.
“Because of the birthday!” he shouted.
“Quiet, please,” said the inspector. “Let Monsieur Labbé talk. . .”
Monsieur Labbé nodded approvingly at the little tailor.
“Exactly. He’s quite right. They all had to be killed by next Saturday. . .”
And he winked at Kachoudas. There was no doubt about it: he winked at him as if he were an accomplice. It was just as if he were saying:
“They’ll always blunder along. But we two—we understand each other. . .”
And the little tailor, who had just won his twenty thousand francs, could not help smiling back.
. . .for they shall inherit the earth.
I am especially fond of “The Purple Is Everything” for two reasons: It is a story of nonviolent violence and it was a gift. In the days when MWA headquartered on West Twenty-fourth Street, a group of us “girls” used to lunch at the long-passed Guffanti’s Restaurant on Sixth Avenue. We called it Guffy’s Tavern and we called ourselves The Literary Ladies’ Chowder and Marching Society. We met to eat, drink and make mysteries we hoped would sell. And some did.
On this day Margaret Manners, may she rest in peace, confided that she knew how a painting might have been stolen from the Museum of Modern Art. I fell in love with the idea. I no longer remember where Margaret’s idea ended and my extrapolations began. I do remember how strongly I argued that it must not be a crime story in the conventional sense: The violence committed should be against the heart. I don’t suppose I groveled, or slithered in the sawdust, but the moment came when Margaret said, “Ah, love, you take it. I’d only muck it up.” I knew she wouldn’t muck it up, splendid writer that she was, but I never looked back.
I do now. With enduring thanks.
—DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS
THE PURPLE IS EVERYTHING
DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS
You are likely to say, reading about Mary Gardner, that you knew her, or that you once knew someone like her. And well you may have, for while her kind is not legion it endures and sometimes against great popular odds.
You will see Mary Gardner—or someone like her—at the symphony, in the art galleries, at the theater, always well-dressed if not quite fashionable, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of other women all of whom have an aura, not of sameness, but of mutuality. Each of them has made—well, if not a good life for herself, at least the best possible life it was in her power to make.
Mary Gardner was living at the time in a large East Coast city. In her late thirties, she was a tall lean woman, unmarried, quietly feminine, gentle, even a little hesitant in manner but definite in her tastes. Mary was a designer in a well-known wallpaper house. Her salary allowed her to buy good clothes, to live alone in a pleasant apartment within walking distance of her work, and to go regularly to the theater and the Philharmonic. As often as she went to the successful plays, she attended little theater and the experimental stage. She was not among those who believed that a play had to say something. She was interested in “the submerged values.” This taste prevailed also in her approach to the visual arts—a boon surely in the wallpaper business whose customers for the most part prefer their walls to be seen but not heard.
In those days Mary was in the habit of going during her lunch hour—or sometimes when she needed to get away from the drawing board—to the Institute of Modern Art which was less than a city block from her office. She had fallen in love with a small, early Monet titled “Trees Near L’Havre,” and when in love Mary was a person of searching devotion. Almost daily she discovered new voices in the woodland scene, trees and sky reflected in a shimmering pool—with more depths in the sky, she felt, than in the water.
The more she thought about this observation the more convinced she became that the gallery had hung the picture upside down. She evolved a theory about the signature: it was hastily done by the artist, she decided, long after he had finished the painting and perhaps at a time when the light of day was fading. She would have spoken to a museum authority about it—if she had known a museum authority.
Mary received permission from the Institute to sketch within its halls and often stood before the Monet for an hour, sketchbook in hand. By putting a few strokes on paper she felt herself conspicuously inconspicuous among the transient viewers and the guards. She would not for anything have presumed to copy the painting and she was fiercely resentful of the occasional art student who did.
So deep was Mary in her contemplation of Claude Monet’s wooded scene that on the morning of the famous museum fire, when she first smelled the smoke, she thought it came from inside the picture itself. She was instantly furious, and by an old association she indicted a whole genre of people—the careless American tourist in a foreign land. She was not so far away from reality, however, that she did not realize almost at once there was actually a fire in the building.
Voices cried out alarms in the corridors and men suddenly were running. Guards dragged limp hoses along the floor and dropped them—where they lay like great withered snakes over which people leaped as in some tribal rite. Blue smoke layered the ceiling and then began to fall in angled swatches—like theatrical scrims gone awry. In the far distance fire sirens wailed.
Mary Gardner watched, rooted and muted, as men and women, visitors like herself, hastened past bearing framed pictures in their arms; and in one case two men carried between them a huge Chagall night scene in which the little creatures seemed to be jumping on and off the canvas, having an uproarious time in transit. A woman took the Rouault from the wall beside the Monet and hurried with it after the bearers of the Chagall.
Still Mary hesitated. That duty should compel her to touch where conscience had so long forbidden it—this conflict increased her confusion. Another thrust of smoke into the room made the issue plainly the picture’s survival, if not indeed her own. In desperate haste she tried to lift the Monet from the wall, but it would not yield.
She strove, pulling with her full strength—such strength that when the wire broke, she was catapulted backward and fell over the viewer’s bench, crashing her head into the painting. Since the canvas was mounted on board, the only misfortune—aside from her bruised head which mattered not at all—was that the picture had jarred loose from its frame. By then Mary cared little for the frame. She caught up the painting, hugged it to her, and groped her way to the gallery door.
She reached the smoke-bogged corridor at the instant the water pressure brought the hoses violently to life. Jets of water spurted from every connection. Mary shielded the picture with her body until she could edge it within the raincoat she had worn against the morning drizzle.
She hurried along the corridor, the last apparently of the volunteer rescuers. The guards were sealing off the wing of the building, closing the fire prevention door. They showed little patience with her protests, shunting her down the stairs. By the time she reached the lobby the police had cordoned off civilians. Imperious as well as impervious, a policeman escorted her into the crowd, and in the crowd, having no use of her arms—they were still locked around the picture—she was shoved and jostled toward the door and there pitilessly jettisoned into the street. On the sidewalk she had no hope at all finding anyone in that surging, gaping mob on whom she could safely bestow her art treasure.
People screamed and shouted that they could see the flames. Mary did not look back. She hastened homeward, walking proud and fierce, thinking that the city was after all a jungle. She hugged the picture to her, her raincoat its only shield but her life a ready forfeit for its safety.
It had been in her mind to telephone the Institute office at once. But in her own apartment, the painting propped up against cushions on the sofa, she reasoned that until the fire was extinguished she had no hope of talking with anyone there. She called her own office and pleaded a sudden illness—something she had eaten at lunch though she had not had a bite since breakfast.
The walls of her apartment were hung with what she called her “potpourri”: costume prints and color lithographs—all, she had been proud to say, limited editions or artists’ prints. She had sometimes thought of buying paintings, but plainly she could not afford her own tastes.
On impulse now, she took down an Italian lithograph and removed the glass and mat from the wooden frame. The Monet fit quite well. And to her particular delight she could now hang it right side up. As though with a will of its own, the painting claimed the place on her wall most favored by the light of day.
