Эллери Куин - The Door Between

“Stop slapping me,” said Eva feebly, pushing his hand away and sitting up. “I’m not a child.”

He hauled her to her feet and held her close to his chest, gripping her elbows; he shook her. “Did you knife Karen Leith or didn’t you? Talk, will you!.. Fainting!”

He glowered down at her resentfully. Karen’s bedroom went dark again. Something like this had happened long ago. Long ago. There had been a boy in Nantasket with a quick brown face, like his, and hard gray eyes, like his; and she had once fallen from a tree and fainted and the boy had slapped her until she awoke screaming with the sting to slap back at him and call him names, red all over because she had fainted and he had seen her so. Her palms itched in the darkness, and she had to fight with herself to keep from slapping the brown man back. The fight dispelled the darkness.

“No,” said Eva, “I didn’t.”

His eyes were so suspicious, so puzzled, so like a little boy’s in their hardness and uncertainty, that Eva illogically felt sorry for him.

“If you did, tell me. I can keep my mouth shut if I want to. Talk!”

Eva MacClure, thought Eva — a girl engaged to be married, the envy of her friends, the center of a closed little universe of her own... caught in a trap. Caught in an enormous trap. She felt the bite of it. It cut clear through, shearing through everything with one snick of its jaws. Its painful teeth cut through the shadows, too. Karen... Karen was just a stiffening corpse, Dr. MacClure a man far away, Dick Scott a dangling delicacy never more to be tasted. Only she remained in this shut-in world of nasty reality — this frightening room with its corpse and blood and brown man... only she remained, and this bitter brown man holding fast to her elbows. Or no — it was she who was really holding fast to him. He was good to cling to. The grip of his hands was strong and warm and immediate.

“I didn’t kill Karen, I tell you.” She went limp against him.

“You’re the only one. Don’t try to kid me — I’ve been kidded by experts. No one else could have done it.”

“If you’re so sure, why do you ask me?”

He shook her again, pushing her back, looking down into her eyes.

Eva closed them, and opened them the next moment. “You’ll have to believe me,” she sighed. “I can only give you my word. You’ll have to believe me.”

He scowled, pushed her from him, and she fell back against the writing-desk. His mouth was a straight line.

“Damn fool,” he muttered. She knew he was talking about himself.

He began to look around with those quick animal movements which had such power to fascinate her.

“What are you going to do?” breathed Eva.

He jumped for the attic door, whipping out his handkerchief. He wrapped the linen around his right hand and went for the bolt on the attic door like a beast charging its prey. His swathed fingers grasped the little knob of the sliding bar and pushed. The bar did not move. He changed position and pulled. The bar refused to budge.

“Stuck.” He kept pulling. “That handkerchief. Get a move on. With the blood on it.”

“What?” said Eva dazedly.

“On the floor! Burn it. Quick.”

“Burn it,” repeated Eva. “Why? Where?”

“Fireplace in the sitting-room. Shut the door there first. Get a move on, will you!”

“But I have no—”

“My coat pocket. Damn it, jump!”

Eva jumped. Things had gone completely beyond her. Her brain was a blank, and she was grateful.

She fumbled in his pocket as he struggled with the stubborn bolt, feeling the writhing of his hips as he twisted and tugged. His lips were all but invisible and the tendons of his neck swollen and rigid. Then she found the matches, cool against her fingers.

She walked back, picked up the blood-smeared handkerchief by its monogrammed corner, and went slowly into the sitting-room. As she shut the sitting-room door to the hall she could hear the brown man panting in the bedroom over the bolt.

Then she was on her knees before the fireplace.

A fire had recently gone out in the grate; there were still a few ashes, debris. Eva found herself thinking mechanically that it had been cool the evening before and that Karen was always feeling chilly. Karen, with her thin blood. But it was Karen’s blood on Eva’s handkerchief. Karen’s blood .

The wisp of cambric fell into the grate and Eva found her fingers trembling so badly she had to strike three matches before she could achieve a flame. Some coils of half-charred old paper beneath the kerchief caught fire and the fire touched the edge of the cambric.

Karen’s blood, thought Eva. She was warming Karen’s blood... The kerchief blazed up with a little hiss.

Eva got to her feet and stumbled back into the bedroom. She did not want to see that bloody kerchief burn. She really did not. She wanted to forget that handkerchief, that thing on the floor that was not Karen any more, that choking around her own neck.

“I won’t stay here any more!” she screamed, bursting in on him. “I’m going to run away — hide! Take me away from here — Dick, home, anywhere!”

“Stop it.” He did not even turn around. The light cloth was strained across his shoulders.

“If I get out of here—”

“You’re through.”

“The police—”

“They’re late. It’s a break. Did you burn it?” His brown face was shiny with perspiration.

“But if they don’t find me here—”

“The Jap saw you, didn’t she? Damn — this — bolt.” He chopped at it with the edge of his wrapped hand, savagely.

“Oh, God,” moaned Eva. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t—”

“If you don’t pipe down — I’ll clout you one... Ah!”

The bolt gave suddenly with a scream. His wrapped hand yanked the door open. He disappeared into the gloom beyond.

Eva dragged herself to the open door and leaned against the jamb. It was a cramped space; there was a flight of narrow wooden steps leading up... To the room in the attic. The room. What was in the room?

Her own room in the apartment. Her bed, the lovely candlewick spread, yellow dots against the white crêpe; the third drawer from the top in her bureau, where she kept her stockings rolled into balls. The closet with her summer hats. The old suitcase with its torn labels. Her new black underwear that Susie Hotchkiss had said was worn only by kept women and actresses: how angry she’d been! The Bouguereau atrocity over her bed — it had bored her and scandalized Venetia and Dr. MacClure had liked it...

She heard the brown man swooping about overhead, heard the metallic click of a window-latch, the thin screech of a window being opened... She’d forgotten to put away the nail-polish. Venetia would scold her with all the good fury of her good black soul. She’d spilled a drop on the hooked rug...

Then he was bounding down the narrow staircase towards her, shoving her out of his way, leaving the door open. He looked around at the bedroom again, his chest rising and falling lightly.

“I don’t understand,” said Eva. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you an out.” He did not look at her. “What will I get for it — hey, gorgeous?”

She shrank against the jamb. So that was why—

“I’ll tell you,” he said bitterly. “A kick in the pants. Teach me to mind my own damned business.”

He lunged for the Japanese screen and set it carefully against the wall, out of the way.

“What are you doing?” asked Eva again.

“Giving the cops something to think about. The door was bolted from inside here, so I’ve opened it. They’ll figure the killer got in and out that way. They’ll figure he climbed from the garden to the ell-roof back there, up into the attic” He chuckled. “Two windows up there, both locked — from the inside, of course. Nobody could have got in. But I opened one of ’em. I ought to be in King’s Park.”