Ed McBain - Ten Plus One

“I’m Helen Vale,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Vale?” Carella said. “What can we do for you?”

“ Mrs. Vale,” she corrected.

“Yes, Mrs. Vale?”

“Helen Struthers Vale.”

She spoke in a normally deep voice that carried the unmistakable stamp of elocution lessons. She kept both hands on the slatted rail divider, clinging to it as if it were a lover. She waited patiently, as though embarrassed by her surroundings, and embarrassed, too, by the mature ripeness of her own body. And yet, her own awareness seemed to heighten the awareness of the observer. She was a potential rape victim expecting the worst, and inviting it through dire expectation. It took several seconds for the detectives to extract the maiden name “Struthers” from the names fore and aft, and then to separate it from the heavy miasma of sensuality that had suddenly smothered the room.

“Come in, Mrs. Vale,” Carella said, and he held open the gate in the railing for her.

“Thank you,” she said. She lowered her eyes as she passed him, like a novice nun who has reluctantly taken a belated vow of chastity. Meyer pulled a chair out from one of the desks and held it for her while she sat. She crossed her legs, her skirt was short, it rode up over splendid knees, she tugged at it but it refused to yield, she sat in bursting provocative awareness.

Meyer wiped his brow.

“We’ve been trying to locate you, Mrs. Vale,” Carella said. “You are the Helen Struthers who…”

“Yes,” she said.

“We assumed you were married, but we didn’t know to whom, and we had no idea where to begin looking because this is a very large city, and although we tried…” He abruptly stopped speaking, wondering why he was talking so rapidly and so much.

“Anyway, we’re glad you’re here,” Meyer said.

Carella wiped his brow.

“Yes, I thought I should come,” Helen said, “and now I’m glad I did.” She delivered these last words as if she were paying tribute to the two most handsome, charming, gallant, intelligent men in the world. Both detectives smiled unconsciously, and then, catching the smile on the other’s face, frowned and tried to become businesslike.

“Why did you come, Mrs. Vale?” Carella said.

“Well…because of the shootings,” Helen answered, opening her eyes wide.

“Yes, what about them?”

“He’s killing everyone in the play, don’t you see?” she said.

“ Who is, Mrs. Vale?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, and she lowered her eyes again, and again tugged at her skirt, but her skirt didn’t budge. “I thought so at first when I connected the names Forrest and Norden, but then I thought, ‘No, Helen, you’re imagining things.’ I have a very good imagination,” she explained, raising her eyes.

“Yes, Mrs. Vale, go on.”

“Then the girl got killed, I forget her name, and then Sal Palumbo, the nice Italian man who was studying English in night school, and then Andy Mulligan, and Rudy, and I knew for certain. I said to my husband: ‘Alec, somebody’s killing everyone who was in The Long Voyage Home in 1940 at Ramsey University.’ That’s what I said.”

“And what did your husband say?”

“He said, ‘You’re crazy, Helen.’ ”

“I see.”

“Crazy like a fox,” Helen said, her eyes narrowing. “So I decided to come up here.”

“Why? Do you have some information for us, Mrs. Vale?”

“No.” Helen wet her lips. “I’m an actress, you see.”

“I see.”

“Yes. Helen Vale. Do you think ‘Struthers’ would be better?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Helen Struthers. My maiden name. Does that sound better?”

“Well, no, this is fine.”

“Helen Vale sounds very good,” Meyer agreed, nodding.

“Pure,” she said. “Classical.”

“What?”

“Helen. It sounds pure and classical.”

“Yes, it does.”

“And Vale adds mystery, don’t you think? Vale. V-a-l-e. Which is my husband’s real name. But it can also be spelled V-e-i-l, which is what gives it the mystery. Helen Vale. A veil is very mysterious, you know.”

“It certainly is.”

“Being an actress, I decided I should come up here.”

“Why?”

“Well, what good is a dead actress?” Helen said. She shrugged and then spread her hands in utter simplicity.

“That’s true,” Meyer said.

“So here I am.”

“Yes,” Carella said.

Miscolo sauntered casually into the squadroom and said, “Anybody want some coffee? Oh, excuse me, I didn’t know you had a visitor.” He smiled graciously at Helen, and she returned the smile demurely and tugged at her skirt. “Would you like some coffee, miss?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” she said. “But thank you for asking.”

“Not at all,” Miscolo said, and he went out of the squadroom humming.

“I almost married a man named Leach,” Helen said. “Helen Leach, wouldn’t that have been terrible?”

“Awful,” Meyer agreed.

“Still, he was a nice fellow.”

“Miss Lea…Miss…uh…Mrs. Vale,” Carella said, “what do you remember about The Long Voyage Home ?”

“I played Kate,” she said. She smiled.

“What else do you remember about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“It was lousy, I think. I don’t remember.”

“What do you remember about the other people in the cast?”

“The boys were all very sweet.”

“And the girls?”

“I don’t remember them.”

“Would you happen to know whether Margaret Buff ever married?”

“Margaret who ?”

“Buff. She was in the play, too.”

“No. I don’t remember her.”

Two patrolmen wandered into the squadroom, went to the files, opened them, looked at Helen Vale where she sat with her legs crossed, and then went to the water cooler, where they drank three cups of water each while watching Helen Vale where she sat with her legs crossed. As they were leaving the squadroom, four more patrolmen wandered into the room. Carella frowned at them, but they all went about finding busywork that only happened to take Helen into their direct line of view.

“Have you been an actress ever since you got out of college, Mrs. Vale?” Carella asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you appeared on the stage here in this city?”

“Yes. I’m Equity, and AFTRA, and also SAG.”

“Mrs. Vale, has anyone ever made any threats on your life?”

“No.” Helen frowned. “That’s a very funny question. What’s this got to do with me alone, if the killer is after all of us?”

“Mrs. Vale, the wholesale slaughter may be just a smoke screen. He may be after one of you, and he may be killing the others to throw us off the track, to make it seem he has a different motive, other than what may be the real motive.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“I didn’t understand a word of that,” Helen said.

“Oh. Well, you see…”

“Besides, that’s not what interests me. I mean, his motives or anything.”

There were fourteen patrolmen in the room now, and the word was spreading throughout the building, and perhaps the entire precinct, very rapidly. Only once during his entire career as a detective could Carella remember seeing so many patrolmen in the squadroom at one time, and that was when the commissioner had issued his edict against moonlighting, and every uniformed cop in the precinct had come upstairs to bellyache about it in a sort of open forum.

“What does interest you, Mrs. Vale?” he asked, and five more patrolmen came down the corridor and into the room.

“I think I need protection,” she said, and she lowered her eyes at that moment, as if she were talking not about the sniper who was going around shooting people, but about the patrolmen who were crowding into the room like migrating sardines.