Megan Abbott - The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

“Every book he gave me showed how much he understood me. He gave me many things and never asked for anything. That was when my mother was dying from Bright’s, her face puffed up like a carnival balloon. Nasty woman.”

“Mrs. Stahl,” Penny started, her fingers tingling unbearably, the smell so strong, Mrs. Stahl’s plants, her strong perfume — sandalwood?

“He just liked everyone. You’d think it was just you. The care he took. Once he brought me a brass rouge pot from Paramount studios. He told me it belonged to Paulette Goddard. I still have it.”

“Mrs. Stahl,” Penny tried again, bolder now, “were you in love with him?”

The woman looked at her, and Penny felt her focus loosen, like in those old detective movies, right before the screen went black.

“He really only wanted the stars,” Mrs. Stahl said, running her fingers across her décolletage, the satin of her dressing robe, a dragon painted up the front. “He said their skin felt different. They smelled different. He was strange about smells. Sounds. Light. He was very sensitive.”

“But you loved him, didn’t you?” Penny’s voice more insistent now.

Her eyes narrowed. “Everyone loved him. Everyone. He said yes to everybody. He gave himself to everybody.”

“But why did he do it, Mrs. Stahl?”

“He put his head in the oven and died,” she said, straightening her back ever so slightly. “He was mad in a way only southerners and artistic souls are mad. And he was both. You’re too young, too simple, to understand.”

“Mrs. Stahl, did you do something to Larry?” This is what Penny was trying to say, but the words weren’t coming. And Mrs. Stahl kept growing larger and larger, the dragon on her robe, it seemed, somehow, to be speaking to Penny, whispering things to her.

“What’s in this tea?”

“What do you mean, dear?”

But the woman’s face had gone strange, stretched out. There was a scurrying sound from somewhere, like little paws, animal claws, the sharp feet of sharp-footed men. A gold watch chain swinging and that neighbor hanging from the pear tree.

She woke to the purple creep of dawn. Slumped in the same rattan chair in Mrs. Stahl’s living room. Her finger still crooked in the teacup handle, her arm hanging to one side.

“Mrs. Stahl,” she whispered.

But the woman was no longer on the sofa across from her.

Somehow Penny was on her feet, inching across the room.

The bedroom door was ajar, Mrs. Stahl sprawled on the mattress, the painted dragon on her robe sprawled on top of her.

On the bed beside her was the book she’d been reading in the courtyard. Scarlet red, with a lurid title.

Gaudy Night, it was called.

Opening it with great care, Penny saw the inscription:

To Mrs. Stahl, my dirty murderess.

Love, Lawrence.

She took the book, and the teacup.

She slept for a few hours in her living room, curled on the zebra-print sofa.

She had stopped going into the kitchen two days ago, tacking an old bath towel over the doorway so she couldn’t even see inside. The gleaming porcelain of the oven.

She was sure she smelled gas radiating from it. Spotted blue light flickering behind the towel.

But still she didn’t go inside.

And now she was afraid the smell was coming through the walls.

It was all connected, you see, and Mrs. Stahl was behind all of it. The light spots, the shadows on the baseboard, the noises in the walls, and now the hiss of the gas.

Mr. Flant looked at the inscription, shaking his head.

“My god, is it possible? He wasn’t making much sense those final days. Holed up in Number Four. Maybe he was hiding from her. Because he knew.”

“It was found on his body,” Penny said, voice trembling. “That’s what she told me.”

“Then this inscription,” he said, reaching out for Penny’s wrist, “was meant to be our clue. Like pointing a finger from beyond the grave.”

Penny nodded. She knew what she had to do.

“I know how it sounds. But someone needs to do something.”

The police detective nodded, drinking from his Coca-Cola, his white shirt bright. He had gray hair at the temples and he said his name was Noble, which seemed impossible.

“Well, miss, let’s see what we can do. That was a long time ago. After you called, I had to get the case file from the crypt. I can’t say I even remember it.” Licking his index finger, he flicked open the file folder, then began turning pages. “A gas job, right? We got a lot of them back then. Those months before the war.”

“Yes. In the kitchen. My kitchen now.”

Looking through the slim folder, he pursed his lips a moment, then came a grim smile. “Ah, I remember. I remember. The little men.”

“The little men?” Penny felt her spine tighten.

“One of our patrolmen had been out there the week before on a noise complaint. Your bookseller was screaming in the courtyard. Claimed there were little men coming out of the walls to kill him.”

Penny didn’t say anything at all. Something deep inside herself seemed to be screaming and it took all her effort just to sit there and listen.

“DTs. Said he’d been trying to kick the sauce,” he said, reading the report. “He was a drunk, miss. Sounds like it was a whole courtyard full of ’em.”

“No,” Penny said, head shaking back and forth. “That’s not it. Larry wasn’t like that.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you what Larry was like. In his bedside table we found a half-dozen catcher’s mitts.” He stopped himself, looked at her. “Pardon. Female contraceptive devices. Each one with the name of a different woman. A few big stars. At least they were big then. I can’t remember now.”

Penny was still thinking about the wall. The little men. And her mice on their hind feet. Pixies, dancing fairies.

“There you go,” the detective said, closing the folder. “Guy’s a dipso, one of his high-class affairs turned sour. Suicide. Pretty clear-cut.”

“No,” Penny said.

“No?” Eyebrows raised. “He was in that oven waist deep, miss. He even had a hunting knife in his hand for good measure.”

“A knife?” Penny said, her fingers pressing her forehead. “Of course. Don’t you see? He was trying to protect himself. I told you on the phone, detective. It’s imperative that you look into Mrs. Stahl.”

“The landlady. Your landlady?”

“She was in love with him. And he rejected her, you see.”

“A woman scorned, eh?” he said, leaning back. “Once saw a jilted lady over on Cheremoya take a clothes iron to her fellow’s face while he slept.”

“Look at this,” Penny said, pulling Mrs. Stahl’s little red book from her purse.

“ Gaudy Night, ” he said, pronouncing the first word in a funny way.

“I think it’s a dirty book.”

He looked at her, squinting. “My wife owns this book.”

Penny didn’t say anything.

“Have you even read it?” he asked wearily.

Opening the front to the inscription, she held it in front of him.

“ ‘Dirty murderess.’ ” He shrugged. “So you’re saying this fella knew she was going to kill him, and instead of going to, say, the police, he writes this little inscription, then lets himself get killed?”

Everything sounded so different when he said it aloud, different from the way everything joined in perfect and horrible symmetry in her head.

“I don’t know how it happened. Maybe he was going to go to the police and she beat him to it. And I don’t know how she did it,” Penny said. “But she’s dangerous, don’t you get it?”

It was clear he did not.

“I’m telling you, I see her out there at night, doing things,” Penny said, her breath coming faster and faster. “She’s doing something with the natural gas. If you check the gas jets maybe you can figure it out.”