Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

When he got up to the car Larry let the body go for a minute and climbed up and got the rumble-seat open. It was capacious, but he had a hard time getting the stiffened form into it. He put her in feet first, and she stuck out like a jack-in-the-box. Then he climbed up after her, bent her over double, and shoved her down underneath. He dug the wrist-watch with her name on it out of his pocket and tossed it in after her. Then he closed the rumble-seat and she was gone.

“You’re set for your last joy-ride, Doris,” he muttered. He would have locked the rumble, to delay discovery as long as possible, if he had had the key. He took the powder-compact with her snapshot under the lid and dropped it on the ground in back of the car. Let him deny that he’d been here with her! Then he moved off under the trees and was lost to sight.

A few minutes later he showed up at the door of the inn, as though he’d just come out from inside. The doorman was just returning to his post, as though someone had called him out to the roadway to question him. Larry saw a figure moving down the road toward the clump of pines he’d just come from. “What was his grief?” he asked, as though he’d overheard the whole thing.

“Got stood up,” the doorman grinned. He went back inside and Larry went down to the edge of the road. The headlights suddenly flared out in the middle of the pines and an engine whined as it warmed up. A minute later the roadster came out into the open backwards, straightened itself. It stayed where it was a moment. A taxi came up to the inn and disgorged a party of six. Larry got in. “Back to town,” he said, “and slow up going past that car down there.”

The man in the roadster, as they came abreast of it, was tilting a whiskey bottle to his lips. Larry leaned out the window of the cab and called: “Need any help? Or are you too cheap to go in and buy yourself a chaser?”

The solitary drinker stopped long enough to give Larry a four-letter word describing what he could do with himself, then resumed. “Step on it,” Larry told the driver. “I’m expecting a phone call.”

When he let himself into the house once more, something stopped him before he was even over the threshold. Something was wrong here. He hadn’t left that many lights turned on, he’d only left one dim one burning, and now — He pulled himself together, closed the door, and went forward. Then as he turned into the living room he recoiled. He came face to face with his father, who’d just gotten up out of a chair.

Weeks looked very tired, all in, but not frightened any more. “I took the next train back,” he said quietly. “I’d come to my senses by the time I got there. What kind of a heel do you take me for anyway? I couldn’t go through with it, let you shoulder the blame that way.” Larry just hung his head. “My God, and I’ve been through all that,” he groaned, “for nothing!” Then he looked up quickly. “You haven’t phoned in yet, or anything — have you?”

“No. I was waiting for you to come back. I thought maybe you’d walk over to the station-house with me. I’m not much of a hero,” he admitted. Then he straightened up. “No use arguing about it, my mind’s made up. If you won’t come with me, then I’ll go alone.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Larry bitterly. “Might as well — I made a mess of it anyway. I see that now! It never would have held together. The whole thing came out wrong. I left the rug I carried her in, there under the trees. A dozen people saw me with it. I showed myself at the inn. I even told the taxi driver I was expecting a phone call. That alone would have damaged your alibi. How was I supposed to know you were going to call, if it wasn’t a set-up? And last of all my prints are all over her powder-compact and her wrist-watch. A big help I turned out to be!” He gave a crooked smile. “Let’s go. And do me a favor, kick me every step of the way getting there, will you?” When they got to the steps of the headquarters building, they stopped and looked at each other. Larry rested his hand on his father’s shoulder for a minute. “Wait here, why don’t you?” he said in a choked voice. “I’ll go in and break it for you. That’ll be the easiest way.” He went in alone.

The sergeant on duty looked across the desk. “Well, young feller, what’s your trouble?”

“The name is Weeks,” said Larry, “and it’s about Doris Weeks, my stepmother—”

The sergeant shook his head as though he pitied him. “Came to report her missing, is that it?” And before Larry could answer the mystifying question, “Recognize this?” He was looking at the wrist-watch he’d dropped into the rumble seat less than an hour ago.

Larry’s face froze. “That’s hers,” he managed to say.

“Yeah,” agreed the sergeant, “the name’s on it. That’s the only thing we had to go by.” He dropped his eyes. “She’s pretty badly hurt, young feller,” he said unwillingly.

“She’s dead!” Larry exclaimed, gripping the edge of the desk with both hands.

The sergeant seemed to mistake it for apprehension and not the statement of a known fact. “Yeah,” he sighed, “she is. I didn’t want to tell you too suddenly, but you may as well know. Car smash-up only half an hour ago. Guy with her must have been driving stewed or without lights. Anyway a truck hit them and they turned over. He was thrown clear but he died instantly of a broken neck. She was caught under the car, and it caught fire, and — well, there wasn’t very much to go by after it was over except this wrist-watch, which fell out on the roadway in some way—”

Larry said: “My father’s outside, I guess I’d better tell him what you told me—” and he went weaving crazily out the doorway.

“It sure must be tough,” thought the sergeant, “to come and find out a thing like that!”

It was the biscuits started it. How he wished, afterward, that she’d never made those biscuits! But she made them, and she was proud of them. Her first try. Typical bride-and-groom stuff. The gag everyone’s heard for years, so old it has whiskers down to here. So old it isn’t funny any more. No, it isn’t funny; listen while it’s told.

He wasn’t in the mood for playing house. He’d been working hard all day over his drafting-board. Even if they’d been good he probably would have grunted, “Not bad,” and let it go at that. But they weren’t good; they were atrocious. They were as hard as gravel; they tasted like lye. She’d put in too much of something and left out too much of something else, and life was too short to fool around with them.

“Well, I don’t hear you saying anything about them,” she pouted.

All he said was: “Take my advice, Smiles, and get ’em at the corner bakery after this.”

“That isn’t very appreciative,” she said. “If you think it was much fun bending over that hot oven—”

“If you think it’s much fun eating them — I’ve got a blueprint to do tomorrow; I can’t take punishment like this!”

One word led to another. By the time the meal was over, her fluffy golden head was down inside her folded arms on the table and she was making broken-hearted little noises.

Crying is an irritant to a tired man. He kept saying things he didn’t want to. “I could have had a meal in any restaurant without this. I’m tired. I came home to get a little rest, not the death scene from Camille across the table from me.”

She raised her head at that. She meant business now. “If I’m annoying you, that’s easily taken care of! You want it quiet; we’ll see that you get it quiet. No trouble at all about that.”

She stormed into the bedroom and he could hear drawers slamming in and out. So she was going to walk out on him, was she? For a minute he was going to jump up and go in there after her and put his arms around her and say: “I’m sorry, Smiles; I didn’t mean what I said.” And that probably would have ended the incident then and there.