Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“He passed the drinks,” Dorothea Trill remembered. “So that’s how she got the rat poison.”

“I certainly didn’t poison her,” Jenks whined. “Nor did I shoot her or stab her or hit her over the head or—”

Haig held up a hand. There was a pipe stem in it, but it still silenced everybody. “You all had motives,” he said. “None of you intended to act on them. None of you planned to make an attempt on Miss Mallory’s life. Yet thought is creative and Mavis Mallory’s thoughts were powerful. Some people attract money to them, or love, or fame. Miss Mallory attracted violent death.”

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Gregorio said. “You’re saying she wanted to die, and that’s fine, but it’s still a crime to give her a hand with it, and that’s what every single one of them did. What’s that movie, something about the Orient Express, and they all stab the guy? That’s what we got here, and I think what I gotta do is book ’em all on a conspiracy charge.”

“That would be the act of a witling,” Haig said. “First of all, there was no conspiracy. Perhaps more important, there was no murder.”

“Just a suicide.”

“Precisely,” said Haig. Huff. “In a real sense, all death is suicide. As long as a man’s life urge is stronger than his death urge, he is immortal and invulnerable. Once the balance shifts, he has an unbreakable appointment in Samarra. But Miss Mallory’s death is suicide in a much stricter sense of the word. No one else tried to kill her, and no one else succeeded. She unquestionably created her own death.”

“And shot herself?” Gregorio demanded. “And stuck knives in herself, and bopped herself over the head? And—”

“No,” Haig said. Huff. “I could tell you that she drew the bullets and knives to herself by the force of her thoughts, but I would be wasting my—” huff! “—breath. The point is metaphysical, and in the present context immaterial. The bullets were not aimed at her, nor did they kill her. Neither did the stabbings, the blow to the head, the poison.”

“Then what did?”

“The stopping of her heart.”

“Well, that’s what kills everyone,” Gregorio said, as if explaining something to a child. “That’s how you know someone’s dead. The heart stops.”

Haig sighed heavily, and I don’t know if it was circular breathing or resignation. Then he started telling them how it happened.

“Miss Mallory’s death urge created a powerful impulse toward violence,” he said. “All seven of you, the six panelists and Mr. Jenks, had motives for killing the woman. But you are not murderous people, and you had no intention of committing acts of violence. Quite without conscious intent, you found yourselves bringing weapons to the Town Hall event. Perhaps you thought to display them to an audience of mystery fans. Perhaps you felt a need for a self-defense capability. It hardly matters what went through your minds.

“All of you, as I said, had reason to hate Miss Mallory. In addition, each of you had reason to hate one or more of your fellow panel members. Miss Benzler and Mr. Crenna are rival booksellers; their cordial loathing for one another is legendary. Mr. Halloran was romantically involved with the panel’s female members, while Mr. Porterfield and Mr. Jenks were briefly, uh, closeted together in friendship. Miss Trill had been very harshly dealt with in some writings of Mr. Porterfield. Miss Cowan had bought books by Mr. Halloran and Miss Trill, then left the books stranded when she moved on to another employer. I could go on, but what’s the point? Each and every one of you may be said to have had a sound desire to murder each and every one of your fellows, but in the ordinary course of things nothing would have come of any of these desires. We all commit dozens of mental murders a day, yet few of us ever dream of acting on any of them.”

“I’m sure there’s a point to this,” Austin Porterfield said.

“Indeed there is, sir, and I am fast approaching it. Miss Mallory leaned forward, grasping her microphone, pausing for full dramatic value, and the lights went out. And it was then that knives and guns and blunt instruments and poison came into play.”

The office lights dimmed as Wong Fat operated a wall switch. There was a sharp intake of breath, although the room didn’t get all that dark, and there was a balancing huff from Haig. “The room went dark,” he said. “That was Miss Mallory’s doing. She chose the moment, not just unconsciously, but with knowing purpose. She wanted to make a dramatic point, and she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

“As soon as those lights went out, everyone’s murderous impulses, already stirred up by Mavis Mallory’s death urge, were immeasurably augmented. Mr. Crenna drew a Malayan kris and moved to stab it into the heart of his competitor, Miss Benzler. At the same time, Miss Benzler drew a poniard of her own and circled around to direct it at Mr. Crenna’s back. Neither could see. Neither was well oriented. And Mavis Mallory’s unconscious death urge drew both blades to her own body, even as it drew the bullet Mr. Porterfield meant for Mr. Jenks, the deadly blow Mr. Halloran meant for Cowan, the bullet Miss Cowan intended for Miss Trill, and the curare Miss Trill had meant to place in Mr. Halloran’s glass.

“Curare, incidentally, works only if introduced into the bloodstream; it would have been quite ineffective if ingested. The rat poison Miss Mallory did ingest was warfarin, which would ultimately have caused her death by internal bleeding; it was in the glass when Abner Jenks served it to her.”

“Then Jenks tried to kill her,” Gregorio said.

Haig shook his head. “Jenks did not put the poison in the glass,” he said. “Miss Lotte Benzler had placed the poison in the glass before Miss Mallory picked it up.”

“Then Miss Benzler—”

“Was not trying to kill Miss Mallory either,” Haig said, “because she placed the poison in the glass she intended to take for herself. She had previously ingested a massive dose of Vitamin K, a coagulant which is the standard antidote for warfarin, and intended to survive a phony murder attempt on stage, both to publicize The Murder Store and to discredit her competitor, Mr. Crenna. At the time, of course, she’d had no conscious intention of sticking a poniard into the same Mr. Crenna, the very poniard that wound up in Miss Mallory.”

“You’re saying they all tried to kill each other,” Gregorio said. “And they all killed her instead.”

“But they didn’t succeed.”

“They didn’t? How do you figure that? She’s dead as a bent doornail.”

“She was already dead.”

“How?”

“Dead of electrocution,” Haig told him. “Mavis Mallory put out all the lights in Town Hall by short-circuiting the microphone. She got more than she bargained for, although in a sense it was precisely what she’d bargained for. In the course of shorting out the building’s electrical system, she herself was subjected to an electrical charge that induced immediate and permanent cardiac arrest. The warfarin had not yet had time to begin inducing fatal internal bleeding. The knives and bullets pierced the skin of a woman who was already dead. The bludgeon crushed a dead woman’s skull. Miss Mallory killed herself.”

Wong Fat brought the lights up. Gregorio blinked at the brightness. “That’s a pretty uncertain way to do yourself in,” he said. “It’s not like she had her foot in a pail of water. You don’t necessarily get a shock shorting out a line that way, and the shock’s not necessarily a fatal one.”

“The woman did not consciously plan her own death,” Haig told him. “An official verdict of suicide would be of dubious validity. Accidental death, I suppose, is what the certificate would properly read.” He huffed mightily. “Accidental death! As that Texas sheriff would say, it’s quite the worst case of accidental death I’ve ever witnessed.”