Nothing More Than Murder

I'm going to hang one on you that you can't squirm out of.'

7

Our house, our residence, sits out on the edge of town, almost a hundred yards from the highway. It's all that's left of the old Barclay homestead, just the house and a couple acres of ground and the outbuildings.

It was a little after midnight when I got there. I parked the car in the yard, in back of Elizabeth's, locked it up, and went in the kitchen door. The coffee percolator was going, and there was some cheese and pickles and other stuff sitting out on the table. I went through the door to the dining-room and started up the stairs.

'Oh, there you are, darling!' called Elizabeth.

She was sitting in the living-room with a book in her lap, and the light turned low.

'Wasn't it nice of me to wait up for you?' she said. 'I've even fixed a lunch. I know you must be famished.' She had on a little gingham house dress, and she was smiling, and for a minute I was crazy enough to think she wasn't giving me a rib. Then I thought of all the times in the past she'd picked me up just to slap me down; and I went on upstairs without speaking. I washed, combed my hair, and went back down again.

'All right,' I said, 'spit it out. What's up?'

'Don't you want something to eat, Joe?'

'I've ate-eaten,' I said.

'Did you ate-eat-with Carol?'

'Pour it on me,' I said. 'I'm used to it. Hell, how could I eat with Carol? I left the city this morning.'

'I hope you weren't foolish enough to register in together, Joe.'

'No, we didn't. I don't know just when Carol registered. Just after the bus got there, I guess.'

She sat staring at me, not speaking; her head thrown back, her eyes half closed. I told her about the bonehead she'd pulled on the price of the ad; and she only shook her head a little, as if nothing I could say would be of any importance.

After a long time she said, kind of talking to herself, 'No, it's true. It is true.'

'What's true?'

She held out her hand. 'Let me see your date book, Joe.'

I tossed it to her. It fell on the floor and she picked it up. She turned the pages to the month's bookings.

'I see Playgrand has been consulting you again,' she said. 'I hope you received a suitable fee?'

'Those are good shorts,' I said. 'After all, we've got to buy from someone, don't we?'

'Now, what did we do at Utopian?' she said. 'Did we give him a third of our feature bookings because he's an old friend of ours? Or were we just a teeny weeny bit-ah-intoxicated?'

'All right,' I said. 'I do give my friends the breaks. What's the difference as long as it don't lose us any money? You never saw me lose money helping a friend, did you?'

'No, Joe, I never did. And you never lost any in striking back at any enemy. But tell me. What did they say to you at Superior? Didn't they know you were the great Joe Wilmot-sole proprietor of his wife's property?'

'They didn't say anything. That was all the dates I had open.'

'Really?'

'Yeah, rahlly,' I said. 'And I wouldn't push that wife's-property business too far. All you had when I met you was a run-down store building and a couple of hundred seats that weren't worth the chewing-gum that was stuck on them.'

She shook her head, smiling that set, funny smile.

'It's weird, isn't it? Positively fantastic.'

'Goddamit,' I said, 'if there's something there you don't like, say so. We can change it easy enough.'

'But I do like it, Joe! I like-I wasn't criticizing. I was only evaluating. Weighing things, I suppose you'd say.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' I said. 'And that's only half the story.'

'Stupid,' she said. 'Yes, actually stupid. That with everything else. Vain, vindictive, lying, dishonest, a philanderer. And stupid. And yet-'

'You've left out a couple,' I said. 'Repulsive and nauseating.'

She nodded. 'Yes, Joe. I left them out.'

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, sitting there smiling at me, her hands caressing the arms of the chair.

'You're slipping,' I said. 'I'm going to eat something and go to bed.'

'Joe!'

I turned in the doorway. She was standing. It looked like she had started to follow me.

'Well, what?' I said.

'Nothing, Joe. I guess-nothing.'

I went on into the kitchen.

I fixed a sandwich and a cup of coffee. When I'd got away with about half of it the lights blinked, went dim, and came on full again.

It didn't register on me for a second. Then it was as if something was holding me back when I tried to move.

It seemed like I was about to see something; I mean I could almost see what it was. And it scared me so badly my stomach rolled and my scalp crawled. I came alive and stumbled to the door. I half fell down the back steps and ran for the garage. I raced up the outside stairs and threw myself against the door.

The room was lined with sheet metal. Floors, ceiling, walls. The projectors and sound tables I'd got from Bower were stashed in a corner. In the center of the room was the metal film table, with a reel at each end and a quarter-horse motor at one.

There was a metal stool in front of the table, and Elizabeth was seated on it, bent over. Her face wasn't six inches from the film that was traveling in front of her.

Two full reels were lying on the table next to the motor. They were partly unwound, and their ends dangled down into the open film can. There were seven more reels in it. It was a full-length feature, seven in the can, two on the table, and one in the rewind. A can with a two- reel travelogue and one with a one-reel cartoon were under the table. Close to Elizabeth's feet. They were standing open, too.

The film was wet. As it passed through the reel it sent a fine spray over the motor. The spray formed a trickle that ran down the pear- shaped back of the motor.

The cord sparked.

The trickle of water seemed to catch fire.

There was a flash as if someone had tossed a barrel of yellow paint into the room.

I struck out with my hand, and something seemed to grab it and push my arm back into my shoulder. A streak of lightning shot across the table. There were a couple of pinwheels of fire at each end. Then, a loud pop and darkness; and the sound of the broken film whipping against the table.

And Elizabeth crying.

I found the cord and jerked it loose. I fumbled along the wall until I found the circuit breaker, and the lights came on again.

I turned them off and opened the door. I picked up Elizabeth and carried her back to the house and into the kitchen. I put my foot up on a chair, and pulled her over my knee, and whaled the tar out of her.

She stopped crying and laughing, and really began to cry.

Some way she got turned around and put her arms around my neck.

8

You wouldn't think we'd have been hungry, but we were. We ate some sandwiches and coffee; and afterward she made me go upstairs to the bathroom with her to get my hand fixed up.

It wasn't a bad burn; it just looked bad. But she insisted on doping it all up, so I let her.

'What'd you want to do a crazy thing like that for?' I asked. I'd asked her about umpteen times already.

'You know why,' she said.

'No, I don't, either.'

'Well, you do,' she said. Like a little girl. And she did look like one then. Her skin was always so clear you