'Good night, darling,' she said softly. 'Sleep well.'
She washed the coffee things and the brandy glasses. She swallowed down a salt tablet, assorted vitamins and minerals, drank a small bottle of club soda. After debating a moment, she took a Tuinal.
She went into the bathroom to shower, her third that day. The wound on her thigh was now just a red line, and she soaped it carefully. She lathered the rest of her body thickly, wanting to cleanse away-what?
She dried, powdered, used spray cologne on neck, bosom, armpits, the insides of her thighs. She pulled on a long nightgown of white batiste with modest inserts of lace at the neckline.
She crawled into bed cautiously, not wanting to disturb Ernie. But he was dead to the world, breathing deeply and steadily. She thought she saw a smile on his lips, but couldn't be sure.
Maddie had instructed her to determine Ernest's attitude toward marriage, and she had done it. She thought that if she were a more positive woman, more aggressive, she might easily lead him to a proposal. But at the moment that did not concern her.
What was a puzzlement was her automatic response to Maddie's advice. She had obeyed without question, although she was the one intimately involved, not Maddie. Yet she had let the other woman dictate her conduct.
It had always been like that-other people pushing her this way and that, imposing their wills. Her mother's conversation had been almost totally command, molding Zoe to an image of the woman she wanted her daughter to be.
Even her father, by his booming physical presence, had shoved her into emotions and prejudices she felt foreign to her true nature.
And her husband! Hadn't he sought, always, to remake her into something she could not be? He had never been satisfied with what she was. He had never accepted her.
Everyone, all her life, had tried to change her. Ernest Mittle, apparently, was content with Zoe Kohler. But could she be certain he would remain content? Or would the day come when he, too, would begin to push, pull, haul, and tug?
It came to her almost as a revelation that this was the reason she sought adventures. They were her only opportunity to try out and to display her will.
She knew that others-like the Son of Sam-had blamed their misdeeds on 'voices,' on hallucinatory commands that overrode their inclinations and volition.
But her adventures were the only time in Zoe Kohler's life when she listened to her own voice.
She turned onto her side, moved closer to Ernie. She smelled his sweet, innocent scent. She put one arm about him, pulled him to her. And that's how she fell asleep.
During the following week, she had cause to remember her reflections on how, all her life, she had been manipulated.
The newspapers continued their heavy coverage of the Hotel Ripper investigation. Almost every day the police revealed new discoveries and new leads being pursued.
Zoe Kohler began to think of the police as a single intelligence, a single person. She saw him as a tall, thin individual, sour and righteous. He resembled the old cartoon character 'Prohibition,' with top hat, rusty tailcoat, furled umbrella. He wore an expression of malicious discontent.
This man, this 'police,' was juiceless and without mercy. He was intelligent (frighteningly so) and implacable. By his deductive brilliance, he was pushing Zoe Kohler in ways she did not want to go. He was maneuvering her, just like everyone else, and she resented it-resented that anyone would tamper with her adventures, the only truly private thing in her life.
For instance, the newspapers reported widened surveillance of all public places in midtown Manhattan hotels by uniformed officers and plainclothesmen.
Then a partial description of the Hotel Ripper was published. She was alleged to be five-seven to five-eight in very high heels, was slender, wore a shoulder-length wig, and carried a trenchcoat.
She also wore a gold link bracelet with the legend: why not? Her last costume was described as a tightly fitted dress of bottle- green silk with spaghetti straps.
These details flummoxed Zoe Kohler. She could not imagine how 'police' had guessed all that about her- particularly the gold bracelet. She began to wonder if he had some undisclosed means of reading her secret thoughts, or perhaps reconstructing the past from the aura at the scene of the crime.
That dour, not to be appeased individual, who came shuffling after her told the newspaper and television reporters that the Hotel Ripper probably dressed flashily, in revealing gowns. He said her makeup and perfume would probably be heavy. He said that, although she was not a professional prostitute, she deliber- ately gave the impression of being sexually available.
He revealed that the weapon used in the first four crimes was a Swiss Army Knife, but it was possible a different knife was used in the fifth killing. He mentioned, almost casually, that it was believed the woman involved was connected, somehow, with the hotel business in Manhattan.
It was astounding! Where was 'police' getting this information? For the first time she felt quivers of fear. That dried-up, icily determined old man with his sunken cheeks and maniacs glare would give her no rest until she did what he wanted.
Die.
She thought it through carefully. Her panic ebbed as she began to see ways to defeat her nemesis.
On the night of June 24th, a Tuesday, Zoe Kohler was awakened by a phone call at about 2:15 a.m.
At first she thought the caller, a male, was Ernest Mittle since he was sniffling and weeping; she had witnessed Ernie's tears several times. But the caller, between chokes and wails, identified himself as Harold Kurnitz.
She was finally able to understand what he was saying: Maddie Kurnitz had attempted to commit suicide by ingesting an overdose of sleeping pills. She was presently in the Intensive Care Unit of Soames-Phillips-and could Zoe come at once?
She showered before dressing, for reasons she could not comprehend. She told herself that she was not thinking straight because of the shocking news. She gave the night doorman a dollar to hail a cab for her. She was at the hospital less than an hour after Harry called.
He met her in the hallway on the fifth floor, rushing to her with open arms, his face wrenched.
'She's going to make it!' he cried, his voice thin and quavery. 'She's going to make it!'
She got him seated on a wooden bench in the brightly lighted corridor. Slowly, gradually, with murmurs and pattings, she calmed him down. He sat hunched over, deflated, clutching trembling hands between his knees. He told her what had happened…
He said he had returned to the Kurnitz apartment a little before 1:30 a.m.
'I had to work late at the office,' he mumbled.
He had started to undress, and then for some reason he couldn't explain, he decided to look in on Maddie.
'We were sleeping in different bedrooms,' he explained. 'When I work late… Anyway, it was just luck. Or maybe God. But if I hadn't looked in, the doc says she would have been gone.'
He had found her crumpled on the floor in her shortie pajamas. Lying in a pool of vomit. He thought at first she had drunk too much and had passed out. But then, when he couldn't rouse her, he became frightened.
'I panicked,' he said. 'I admit it. I thought she was gone. I couldn't see her breathing. I mean, her chest wasn't going up and down or anything.'
So he had called 911, and while he was waiting, he attempted to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But he didn't know how to do it and was afraid he might be harming her.
'I just sort of blew in her mouth,' he said, 'but the guy in the ambulance said I didn't hurt her. He was the one who found the empty pill bottle in the bathroom. Phenobarbital. And there was an empty Scotch bottle that had rolled under the bed. The doc said if she hadn't vomited, she'd have been gone. It was that close.'
Harry had ridden in the ambulance to Soames-Phillips, watching the attendant administer oxygen and inject stimulants.
'I kept repeating, 'Don't do this to me, Maddie.'' he said. 'That's all I remember saying: 'Please don't do this to me.' Wasn't that a stupid, selfish thing to say? Listen, Zoe, I guess you know Maddie and I are separating. Maybe
