Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“There’s nothing I can tell you that I haven’t already told you. She walked out of here Tuesday night at supper time. Said she was going to her mother’s. She never got there. I haven’t seen her since. Now you fellows find the things I saw her leave in, stuffed into the furnace in the basement.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and kept it pinched.

The detective took another slow pull at his cigarette. “You’ve been around to the morgue and the hospitals. So she hadn’t had any accident. Her things are back here again. So it isn’t just a straight disappearance, or amnesia, or anything like that. That means that whatever was done to her or with her, was done against her will. Since we’ve eliminated accident, suicide, voluntary and involuntary disappearance, that spells murder.”

“Don’t!” Bliss said.

“It’s got to be done.” The detective took another puff. “Let’s get down to motive. Now, you already have one, and a damned fine one. You’ll have to dig up one on the part of somebody else that’ll be stronger than yours, if you expect to cancel it out.”

“Who could want to hurt her? She was so lovely, she was so beautiful—”

“Sometimes it’s dangerous for a girl to be too lovely, too beautiful. It drives a man out of his mind; the man that can’t have her. Were there any?”

“You’re talking about Smiles now,” Bliss growled dangerously, tightening his fist.

“I’m talking about a case . A case of suspected murder. And to us cases aren’t beautiful, aren’t ugly, they’re just punishable.” He puffed again. “Did she turn anyone down to marry you?”

Bliss shook his head. “She once told me I was the first fellow she ever went with.”

The detective took another puff at his cigarette. He looked at it, shifted his fingers back a little, then looked at Bliss. “I seldom smoke that far down,” he warned him. “I’m giving you a break. There’s one more drag left in it. Anyone else stand to gain anything, financially, by her death, outside of yourself?”

“No one I know of.”

The detective took the last puff, dropped the buff, ground it out. “Well, let’s go,” he said. He fumbled under his coat, took out a pair of handcuffs. “Incidentally, what was her real name? I have to know when I bring you in.”

“Teresa.”

“Smiles was just your pet name for her, eh?” The detective seemed to be just talking aimlessly, to try to take the sting out of the pinch, keep Bliss’s mind off the handcuffs.

“Yeah,” Bliss said, holding out his wrist without being told to. “I was the first one called her that. She never liked to be called Teresa. Her mother was the one always stuck to that.”

He jerked his wrist back in again.

“C’mon, don’t get hard to handle,” the detective growled, reaching out after it.

“Wait a minute,” Bliss said excitedly, and stuck his hand behind his back. “Some things have been bothering me. You brought one of them back just then. I nearly had it. Let me look, before I lose it again. Let me look at that letter a minute that her mother sent her yesterday. It’s here in my pocket.”

He stripped it out of the envelope. Smiles, dear, it began.

He opened his mouth and looked at the other man. “That’s funny. Her mother never called her anything but Teresa. I know I’m right about that. How could she? It was my nickname. And I’d never seen her until last night and — and Smiles hadn’t been home since we were married.”

The detective, meanwhile, kept trying to snag his other hand — he was holding the letter in his left — and bring it around in front of him.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Bliss pleaded. “I’ve got one of those things now. There was like a hitch in the flow of conversation, an air pocket. She said, ‘I’m Smiles’ mother,’ and he said, ‘You’re Teresa’s mother,’ like he was reminding her what she always called Smiles. Why should he have to remind her of what she always called Smiles herself?”

“And that’s supposed to clear you of suspicion, because her mother picks up your nickname for your wife, after she’s been talking to you on the phone two or three days in a row? Anyone would be liable to do that. She did it to sort of accommodate you. Didn’t you ever hear of people doing that before? That’s how nicknames spread.”

“But she caught it ahead of time, before she heard me call it to her. This letter heading shows that. She didn’t know Smiles had disappeared yet, when she sent this letter. Therefore she hadn’t spoken to me yet.”

“Well, then, she got it from the husband, or from your wife’s own letters home.”

“But she never used it before; she disliked it until now. She wrote Smiles and told her openly it sounded too much like the nickname of a chorus girl. I can prove it to you. I can show you. Wait a minute, whatever your name is. Won’t you let me see if I can find some other letter from her, just to convince myself?”

My name is Stillman, and it’s too small a matter to make any difference one way or the other. Now, come on Bliss; I’ve tried to be fair with you until now—”

“Nothing is too small a matter to be important. You’re a detective; do I have to tell you that? It’s the little things in life that count, never the big ones. The little ones go to make up the big ones. Why should she suddenly call her by a nickname she never used before and disapproved of? Wait, let me show you. There must be one of her old letters upstairs yet, left around in one of the bureau drawers. Just let me go up and hunt for it. It’ll take just a minute.”

Stillman went up with him, but Bliss could tell he was slowly souring on him. He hadn’t changed over completely yet, but he was well under way. “I’ve taken all the stalling I’m going to from you,” he muttered tight-lipped. “If I’ve got to crack down on you to get you out of here with me, I’ll show you that I can do that, too.”

Bliss was pawing through his wife’s drawers meanwhile, head tensely lowered, knowing he had to beat his captor’s change of mood to the punch, that in another thirty seconds at the most the slow-to-anger detective was going to yank him flat on the floor by the slack of the collar and drag him bodily out of the room after him.

He found one at last, almost when he’d given up hope. The same medium-blue ink, the same note paper. They hadn’t corresponded with any great frequency, but they had corresponded regularly, about once every month or so.

“Here,” he said relievedly, “here, see?” And he spread it out flat on the dresser top. Then he spread the one from his pocket alongside it, to compare. “See? ‘Dearest Teresa.’ What did I tell—”

He never finished it. They both saw it at once. It would have been hard to miss, the way he’d put both missives edge to edge. Bliss looked at the detective, then back at the dresser again.

Stillman was the first to put it into words. An expression of sudden concentration had come over his face. He elbowed Bliss a little aside, to get a better look. “See if you can dig up some more samples of her writing,” he said slowly. “I’m not an expert, but, unless I miss my guess, these two letters weren’t written by the same person.”

Bliss didn’t need to be told twice. He was frantically going through everything of Smiles’ he could lay his hands on, all her keepsakes, mementos, accumulated belongings, scattering them around. He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, and Stillman saw him standing there staring fixedly at something in one of the trinket boxes he had been plumbing through.

“What’s the matter? Did you find some more?”

Bliss acted scared. His face was pale. “No, not writing,” he said in a bated voice. “Something even— Look.”