Ira Levin - A Kiss Before Dying

I credit what Marion says since it explains your wishful thinking, for I can only call it that, of last April, when you stubbornly refused to believe that Dorothy's death had been a suicide, despite the incontestable evidence of the note which you yourself received. You felt that if Dorothy had committed suicide you were in some way responsible, and so it was several weeks before you were able to accept her death for what it was, and accept also the burden of an imagined responsibility.

This letter from Miss Koch makes it clear that Dorothy went to the girl because, for some peculiar reason of her own, she did want her belt; she was not in desperate need of someone to whom she could talk. She had made up her mind to do what she was going to do, and there is absolutely no reason for you to believe that she would have come to see you first if you two had not had that argument the previous Christmas. (And don't forget it was she who was in a sullen mood and started the argument.) As for the initial coldness on Dorothy's part, remember that I agreed with you that she should go to Stoddard rather than Caldwell, where she would only have become more dependent on you. True, if she had followed you to the Caldwell the tragedy would not have happened, but "if' is the biggest word in the world. Dorothy's punishment may have been excessively severe, but she was the one who chose it. I am not responsible, you are not responsible; no one is but Dorothy herself.

The knowledge that Miss Koch's original interpretation of Dorothy's behavior was erroneous will, I hope, rid you of any feelings of self-recrimination that may remain.

Your loving,

Father

P. S. Please excuse my indecipherable handwriting. I thought this letter too personal to dictate to Miss Richardson.

Letter from Ellen Kingship to Bud Corliss:

March 12, 1951 8: 35 AM

Dear Bud,

Here I sit in the club car with a Coke (at this hour -ugh!) and a pen and paper, trying to keep my writing hand steady against the motion of the train and trying to give a "lucid if not brilliant' explanation-as Prof. Mulholland would say-of why I am making this trip to Blue River.

I'm sorry about tonights basketball game, but I'm sure Connie or Jane will be glad to go in my place, and you can think of me between the halves.

Now first of all, this trip is not impulsive; I thought about it all last night. You'd think 1 was running off to Cairo, Egypt! Second of all, I will not be missing work, because you are going to take complete notes in each class, and anyway I doubt if I'll be gone more than a week. And besides, since when do they flunk seniors for overcuts? Third of all, I won't be wasting my time, because I'll never know until I've tried, and until I try I'll never have a moment's peace.

Now that the objections are out of the way, let me explain why I am going. I'll fill m a little background first.

From the letter I received from my father Saturday morning, you know that Dorothy originally wanted to come to Caldwell and I opposed her for her own good, or so I convinced myself at the time. Since her death I've wondered whether it wasn't pure selfishness on my part. My life at home had been restrained both by my father's strictness and Dorothy's dependence on me, although I didn't realize it at the time. So when I got to Caldwell I really let go. During my first three years I was the rah-rah girl; beer parties, hanging around with the Big Wheels, etc. You wouldn't recognize me. So as 1 say, I'm not sure whether 1 prevented Dorothy from coming in order to encourage her independence or to avoid losing mine, Caldwell being the everybody-knows-what-everybody-else-is-doing-type place that it is.

My father's analysis (probably second-hand via Marion) of my reaction to Dorothy's death is absolutely right .1 didn't want to admit it was suicide because that meant that I was partly responsible. I thought I had other reasons for doubt besides emotional ones however. The note she sent me, for instance. It was her handwriting-I can't deny that- but it didn't sound like her. It sounded kind of stilted, and she addressed me as "Darling," when before it had always been "Dear Ellen' or "Dearest Ellen." I mentioned that to the police, but they said that naturally she was under a strain when she wrote the note and couldn't be expected to sound her usual self, which I had to admit seemed logical. The fact that she carried her birth certificate with her also bothered me, but they explained that away too. A suicide will often take pains to make sure he is immediately identified, they said. The fact that other things which she always carried in her wallet (Stoddard registration card, etc.) would have been sufficient identification didn't seem to make any impression on them. And when 1 told them that she just wasn't the suicidal type, they didn't even bother to answer me. They swept away every point I raised.

So there I was. Of course I finally had to accept the fact that Dorothy committed suicide-and that I was partly to blame. Annabelle Koch's story was only the clincher. The motive for Dorothy's suicide made me even more responsible, for rational girls today do not kill themselves if they become pregnant-not, I thought, unless they have been brought up to depend on someone else and then that someone else suddenly isn't there.

But Dorothy's pregnancy meant that another person had deserted her too,-the man. If I knew anything about Dorothy it was that she did not treat sex lightly. She wasn't the kind for quick flings. The fact that she was pregnant meant that there was one man whom she had loved and had intended to marry some day.

Now early in the December before her death, Dorothy had written me about a man she had met in her English class. She had been going out with him for quite some time, and this was the Real Thing. She said she would give me all the details over Christmas vacation. But we had an argument during Christmas, and after that she wouldn't even give me the right time. And when we returned to school our letters were almost like business letters. So I never even learned his name. All I knew about him was what she had mentioned in that letter; that he had been in her English class in the fall, and that he was handsome and somewhat like Len Vernon-he is the husband of a cousin of ours-which, meant that Dorothy's man was tall, blond, and blue-eyed.

1 told my father about this man, urging him to find out who he was and punish him somehow. He refused, saying that it would be impossible to prove he was the one who had gotten Dorothy into trouble, and futile even if we could prove it. She had punished herself for her sins; it was a closed case as far as he was concerned.

That's how things stood until Saturday, when 1 received my father's letter with the one from Annabelle Koch enclosed. Which brings us to my big scene. The letters did not have the effect my father had hoped for-not at first-because as I said, Annabelle Koch's story was far from the sole cause of my melancholy. But then 1 began to wonder; if Dorothy's belt was in perfect condition, why had she lied about it and taken Annabelle's instead? Why couldn't Dorothy wear her own belt? My father was content to let it pass, saying she had "some peculiar reason of her own," but 1 wanted to know what that reason was, because there were three other seemingly inconsequential things which Dorothy did on the day of her death that puzzled me then and that still puzzled me. Here they are: 1. At 10: 15 that morning she bought an inexpensive pair of white cloth gloves in a shop across the street from her dormitory. (The owner reported it to the police after seeing her picture in the papers.) First she asked for a pair of stockings, but because of a rush of business for the Spring Dance scheduled for the following night, they were out of her size. She then asked for gloves, and bought a pair for $1 .50. She was wearing them when she died, yet in the bureau in her room was a beautiful pair of hand-made white cloth gloves, perfectly spotless, that Marion had given her the previous Christmas. Why didn't she wear those?