Лесли Чартерис - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 3, March, 1953

He looked down at Kathy Weston a full minute, his eyes covering every line and curve of her body. He stood wholly without movement, his face as devoid of expression as if it had been a wooden mask.

But, inside him, deep in the pit of his stomach, something tightened and drew into a hard, pulsing knot. And then, carefully, and with infinite gentleness, he drew the sheet back across Kathy’s body and left the bedroom.

He walked to the bathroom. The door was open, and George Weston was not inside. Malone went to the stairway and down the stairs to the living room.

The party was gay no longer. Everyone was in the living room, and all were watching George Weston at the telephone. A quick glance at their faces told Malone that they knew what had happened, that George had told them. George put the phone down and looked at Malone. “I’ve just called the police,” he said.

Malone nodded. He took a folder of matches from his pocket and lit his cigar. “Maybe it’s just as well, George. A few minutes more, either way, wouldn’t make any difference.”

“I got to thinking,” George said. “Up there in the bathroom. I guess you were right when you said I couldn’t think, before.” He glanced quickly toward a broad-shouldered man, in his middle thirties, with thinning blond hair and a pinched, sallow face. “And I guess you were right in saying there was something special about Les McJanet. It must have been him, Malone. He just got out of prison for doing almost the same thing he did to Kathy.”

The blond man lunged forward, but two of the other men caught his arms and held him. “What the hell is this?” Les McJanet shouted. “What are you trying to pull, Weston?”

Malone put his cigar down in a tray. If there was going to be action, he wanted no tobacco coals in the air.

“It wasn’t too difficult to kill Kathy,” Malone said. “With people going upstairs to the bathroom, and one thing and another, it wasn’t hard to get to Kathy and break her neck and get down again without being missed.”

“Goddam it I” Les McJanet yelled. “Let go of me!”

“In just a moment,” Malone said. “When you’re calmer.” He looked around at the others. No one moved or spoke. All eyes were upon him. He turned back toward George Weston. “You can’t go through with it, George, and you know it. You’re not made that way. I don’t know exactly when you decided to kill Kathy, but it must have been just a few seconds after you discovered she was going to have a baby.”

George’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “A... a baby?”

Malone nodded. This was hurting him; this was tearing his heart out. “Yes, George,” he said. “A baby. You couldn’t stand it. You really loved Kathy, George. You practically lived for her. You felt you had to kill her, and the child too.”

For the space of ten heartbeats, George Weston’s eyes stayed locked with Malone’s — and then George looked away. His whole body seemed to slump. His head drooped.

“You know you can’t go through with it, George,” Malone said. “You thought you could, but you can’t.”

George wet his lips, and now his face had gone slack and his eyes were sick again.

Malone stood very still, waiting.

“Yes,” George whispered. “Yes. That’s the way it was. I killed her... and I thought I could make it look like Les... but I can’t. The minute I knew Kathy was dead, I didn’t care about anything else. She’s dead.” His voice was slowly gaining strength. “And now I want to die, too. Do you hear? I want to.”

Malone nodded to the two men holding Les McJanet. “Let him go,” he said. McJanet took a step backward, gazing in stunned horror at his lifelong friend.

Out in the street, a car braked to a fast stop in front of the house.

“That would be the police,” Malone said.

“I want to die,” George Weston shouted. “I want to.”

“No, George,” Malone told him. “You do now, but time will change that. You wanted to die a long time ago, too, as I remember.” He looked away from George’s tortured face. “Don’t worry too much about dying. I’ve saved worse than you from the death house — and I can do it again. Things will be bad, George — but not that bad.”

There was a heavy knock on the door, a heavy, official knock.

Les McJanet suddenly found his voice. “But how — how’d you know Kathy was — was going to have a baby?”

“I saw her, McJanet. Her breasts, the slight swell of her stomach — not enough to show when she was dressed — but the signs were unmistakable. She was going to have a baby, all fight.”

“But why should George...? I mean... what’s wrong with a baby? Why should he kill...?”

“George used to ride a motorcycle in a big cage with a carnival,” Malone said softly. “One day he had an accident. It was a bad accident, the way it can be when a motorcycle almost rips you down the middle.”

Malone whirled and jerked open the door for the police.

“You see,” Malone went on, “being a father was one thing George Weston could never do.”

The store had given the redhead ten thousand dollars worth of jewelry, and now they wanted it returned, Scott Jordan had to take it from there.

On Fifth Avenue it’s Tiffany’s or Cartier’s. But they haven’t got all the carriage trade sewed up. There’s Sutro’s on Madison. Not quite as large, but just as elegant, with a liveried doorman at the entrance.

He bowed and smiled and pulled the heavy plate-glass door wide open.

A floorwalker in morning coat and oxford trousers showed me his teeth. “Can I help you, sir?”

“Mrs. Brownlee,” I said.

His deference expanded. You might think I had asked for the Duchess of Luxemburg. “The elevator on your left, sir. Third floor.”

He gave me a personal convoy past the blond wood display counters in front of which set gracefully carved chairs with black patent leather seats. The rose-colored broad-loom underfoot was soft as grass. The indirect lighting was subdued and easy on the eyes.

The sales personnel were distinguished-looking and impeccably garbed, supplied with smooth-writing fountain pens to facilitate the writing of checks, on the theory that few people carried enough cash to pay for the original designs executed by Sutro’s own artisans.

An angular female sat at a reception desk on the third floor. She raised an inquiring eyebrow as I approached.

“Mrs. Brownlee,” I said,

“Have you an appointment?”

“At two o’clock.”

She checked her wrist watch and looked up disapprovingly. “It’s five after.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s that Turkish ambassador. He always dawdles over his schnapps.”

She glared at me. “Your name, please.”

“Jordan,” I said. “Scott Jordan.”

She plugged into a small PBX and spoke my name, listened, got me the green light, and pointed to a door against the far wall.

It was quite an office, very sumptuous, with a wide expanse of desk fashioned out of English walnut and polished like a mirror. A woman stood up from behind the desk. “Scott Jordan,” she said warmly, and came around to greet me. “Hello, Eve.”

At forty, Eve Brownlee was a tall, sinewy, well-nourished woman with dark hair pulled severely back from a pale forehead. In a tailored suit, with the bloom of youth gone, she could still activate the hormones, and there was no doubt that she had a lot of enthusiastic mileage left.

She owned Sutro’s. She inherited the establishment when her first husband, Jacques Sutro, carelessly stepped out into the path of a Fifth Avenue bus. She had mourned briefly and then gone to work learning the business.