Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

The detective’s chin thrust over his shoulder. “Who are they?”

“That’s evidently a snapshot of her and her mother, taken at a beach when she was a girl. I’ve never seen it before, but—”

“How do you know it’s her mother? It could be some other woman, a friend of the family’s.”

Bliss had turned it over right while he was speaking. On the back, in schoolgirlish handwriting, was the notation:

Mamma and I, at Sea Crest, 19—

Bliss reversed it again, right side forward.

“Well, what’re you acting so scared about?” Stillman demanded impatiently. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Because this woman on the snapshot isn’t the same woman I spoke to as her mother up at Denby tonight!”

“Now, wait a minute; hold your horses. You admit yourself you had never set eyes on her before until tonight; eight years is eight years. She’s in a bathing-suit in this snapshot. She may have dyed or bleached her hair since, or it may have turned gray on her.”

“That has nothing to do with it! I’m not looking at her hair or her clothes. The whole shape of her face is different. The bone structure is different. The features are different. This woman has a broad, round face. The one in Denby has a long, oval one. I tell you, it’s not the same woman at all!”

“Gimme that, and gimme those.” Stillman pocketed letters and snapshot. “Come on downstairs. I think I’ll smoke another cigarette.” His way of saying: “You’ve got yourself a reprieve.”

When they were below again, he sat down, with a misleading air of leisure. “Gimme your wife’s family background, as much of it as you can, as much of it as she told you.”

“Smiles was down here on her own when I met her. Her own father died when she was a kid, and left them comfortably well off, with their own house up in—”

“Denby?”

“No, it was some other place; I can’t think of it offhand. While she was still a youngster, her mother gave Smiles her whole time and attention. But when Smiles had finished her schooling, about two years ago, the mother was still an attractive woman, young for her years, lively, good-hearted. It was only natural that she should marry again. Smiles didn’t resent that; she’d expected her to. When the mother fell for this mason, Joe Alden, whom she first met when they were having some repairs made to the house, Smiles tried to like him. He’d been a good man in his line, too, but she couldn’t help noticing that after he married her mother, he stopped dead, never did a stroke of work from then on; pretending he couldn’t find any — when she knew for a fact that there was work to be had. That was the first thing she didn’t like. Maybe he sensed she was onto him, but anyway they didn’t rub well together. For her mother’s sake, to avoid trouble, she decided to clear out, so her mother wouldn’t have to choose between them. She was so diplomatic about it, though, that her mother never guessed what the real reason was.

“She came on down here, and not long ago Alden and her mother sold their own house and moved to a new one in Denby. Smiles said she supposed he did it to get away from the gossipy neighbors as much as anything else; they were probably beginning to criticize him for not at least making a stab at getting a job after he was once married.”

“Did they come down when you married Smiles?”

“No. Smiles didn’t notify them ahead; just sent a wire of announcement the day we were married. Her mother had been in poor health, and she was afraid the trip down would be more than she could stand. Well, there’s the background.”

“Nothing much there to dig into, at first sight.”

“There never is, anywhere — at first sight,” Bliss let him know. “Listen, Stillman. I’m going back up there again. Whatever’s wrong is up at that end, not at this.”

“I was detailed here to bring you in for questioning, you know.” But he didn’t move.

“Suppose I hadn’t gone up to you outside in the street just now. Suppose I hadn’t shown up around here for, say, another eight or ten hours. Can’t you give me those extra hours? Come up there with me, never leave me out of your sight, put the bracelet on me, do anything you want, but at least let me go up there once more and confront those people. If you lock me up down at this end, then I’ve lost her sure as anything. I’ll never find out what became of her — and you won’t either. Something bothered me up there. A whole lot of things bothered me up there, but I’ve only cleared up one of them so far. Let me take a crack at the rest.

“You don’t want much,” Stillman said grudgingly. “D’ya know what can happen to me for stepping out of line like that? D’ya know I can be broken for anything like that?”

“You mean you’re ready to ignore the discrepancy in handwriting in those two letters, and my assurance that there’s someone up there that doesn’t match the woman on that snapshot?”

“No, naturally not; I’m going to let my lieutenant know about both those things.”

“And by that time it’ll be too late. It’s already three days since she’s been gone.”

“Tell you what,” Stillman said. “I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll start out for headquarters now, and on the way we’ll stop in at that bus terminal. If I can find any evidence, the slightest shred, that she started for Denby that night, I’ll go up there with you. If not, we go over to headquarters.”

All Bliss said was: “I know you’ll find out she did leave.”

Stillman took him without handcuffing him, merely remarking, “If you try anything, you’ll be the loser, not me.”

The ticket-seller again went as far as he had with Bliss the time before, but still couldn’t go any further than that. “Yeah, she bought a ticket for as far as the money she had on her would take her, but I can’t remember where it was to.”

“Which don’t prove she ever hit Denby,” Stillman grunted.

“Tackle the bus driver,” Bliss pleaded. “No. 27. I know he was holding out on me. I could tell by the way he acted. She rode with him, all right, but for some reason he was cagey about saying so.”

But they were out of luck. No. 27 was up at the other end, due to bring the cityward bus in the following afternoon.

Stillman was already trying to steer his charge out of the place and on his way over to headquarters, but Bliss wouldn’t give up. “There must be someone around here that saw her get on that night. One of the attendants, one of the concessionaires that are around here every night. Maybe she checked her bag, maybe she drank a cup of coffee at the counter.”

She hadn’t checked her bag; the checkroom attendant couldn’t remember anyone like her. She hadn’t stopped at the lunch counter, either; neither could the counterman recall her. Nor the Negro that shined shoes. They even interrogated the matron of the restroom, when she happened to appear outside the door briefly. No, she hadn’t noticed anyone like that, either.

“All right, come on,” Stillman said, hooking his arm around Bliss’s.

“One more spin. How about him, over there, behind the magazine stand?”

Stillman only gave in because it happened to be near the exit; they had to pass it on their way out.

And it broke! The fog lifted, if only momentarily, for the first time since the previous Tuesday night. “Sure I do,” the vendor said readily. “How could I help remembering? She came up to me in such a funny way. She said, ‘I have exactly one dime left, which I overlooked when I was buying my ticket because it slipped to the bottom of my handbag. Let me have a magazine.’ Naturally, I asked her which one she wanted. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘so long as it lasts until I get off the bus. I want to be sure my mind is taken up.’ Well, I’ve been doing business here for years, and it’s gotten so I can clock the various stops. I mean, if they’re riding a long distance, I give them a good thick magazine; if they’re riding a short distance, I give them a skinny one. I gave her one for a medium distance — Denby; that was where she told me she was going.”