Ira Levin - A Kiss Before Dying

In one of the vestibules, facing a dirt-smeared window, Gordon Gant occupied himself by counting codfish-cake billboards. It was, he reflected, a hell of a way to spend Christmas Day.

Shortly after six o'clock the train reached Providence.

In the station, Gant addressed several questions to the bored oracle of the information booth. Then, regarding his watch, he left the building. It was already dark outside. Crossing a wide and slushy thoroughfare, he entered an establishment which called itself a 'spa,' where he made quick work of a steak sandwich, mincemeat pie and coffee. Christmas dinner. He left the spa and went to a drugstore two doors away, where he purchased an inch-wide roll of Scotch Tape. He returned to the station. He sat on an uncomfortable bench and read a Boston tabloid. At ten minutes of seven he left the station again, proceeding to a nearby place where three busses stood waiting.

He boarded a blue and yellow one marked Menasset -Somerset-Fall River.

At twenty minutes past seven the bus paused midway down Menasset's four block Main Street, discharging several passengers, Gant among them. After a brief acclimatizing glance, he entered a 1910-looking pharmacy where he consulted a thin directory, from which he copied an address and telephone number. He tried the number in the phone booth and, when the phone on the other end of the line had rung ten times without answer, hung up.

The house was a shabby gray box, one story, the sills of its darkened windows furred with snow. Gant looked at it closely as he passed. It was set back only a few yards from the sidewalk; the snow between, door and sidewalk was undisturbed.

He walked to the end of the deserted block, turned and came back, passing the gray house again, this time paying more attention to the houses on either side of it In one, framed in the window's homemade Christmas wreath, a Spanish-looking family was dining in an atmosphere of magazine cover warmth. In the house on the other side of the gray one, a solitary man was holding a globe of the world in his lap, looking to see which country his finger had chosen. Gant passed, walked to the other end of the block, turned and came back. This time, as he passed the gray house, he turned sharply, cutting between it and the Spanish-family house. He went around to the back.

There was a small porch. Facing it, across a little yard laced with stiff clotheslines, was a high board fence. Gant went up on the porch. There were a door and a window, a garbage can and a basket of clothespins. He tried the door; it was locked. The window was locked also. Propped on the sill within was an ice company sign, a square placard with 5, 10, 25, and X printed around the four sides. The X side was uppermost. Gant took the roll of Scotch Tape from his pocket. Tearing off a ten inch length, he pressed it across one of the window's dozen panes, the one below the central latch. He fitted the ends of the tape over the pane's molding and tore off another ten inch strip.

In a few minutes he had crosshatched the rectangular pane with cellophane strips. He struck it with his gloved fist. There was a cracking sound; the broken glass sagged, held in place by the tape. Gant began to pull the tape ends from the molding. When that was done he drew the rectangle of cellophane and broken glass from the window and lowered it noiselessly to the bottom of the garbage can. Reaching through the window, he unfastened the latch and raised the lower section. The ice placard fell back into the darkness.

He took a pencil flashlight from his pocket and leaned through the open window. There was a chair piled with folded newspapers before it. He pushed the chair aside and climbed in, closing the window after him.

The flashlight's disc of pallid light glided swiftly over a cramped and shabby kitchen. Gant moved forward, treading softly on worn-through linoleum.

He came to a living room. The chairs were fat and velvet, rubbed bald at the arms. Cream colored shades were drawn down over the windows, flanked by floral-patterned paper drapes. There were pictures of Bud all over; Bud as a child in short pants, Bud at high school graduation, Bud in a private's uniform, Bud in a dark suit, smiling. Snapshots were tucked in the frames of the portraits, surrounding the large smiling faces with smaller faces also smiling. Gant went through the living room to a hallway.

The first room off the hallway was a bedroom; a bottle of lotion on the dresser, an empty dress box and tissue paper on the bed, a wedding picture and a picture of Bud on the night table. The second room was the bathroom; the flashlight caught decals of swans on moisture-faded walls.

The third room was Bud's. It might have been a room in a second class hotel; aside from the high school diploma over the bed, it was barren of anything suggesting the occupant's individuality. Gant went in.

He inspected the titles of some books on a shelf; they were mainly college texts and a few classic novels. No diaries, no engagement books. He sat behind the desk and went through the drawers one at a time. There were stationery and blank scratch pads, back issues of Life and the New Yorker, term papers from college, road maps of New England. No letters, no calendars with appointments written in, no address books with names crossed out. He rose from the desk and went to the dresser. Half the drawers were empty. The others contained summer shirts and swimming trunks, a couple of pairs of argyle socks, underwear, tarnished cufflinks, celluloid collar stays, bow ties with broken clips. No papers lost in corners, no forgotten pictures.

Perfunctorily he opened the closet. On the floor in the corner there was a small gray strongbox.

He took it out and put in on the desk. It was locked. He lifted and shook it. Its contents shifted, sounding like packets of paper. He put the box down again and picked at its lock with the blade of a small knife he carried on his keychain. Then he took it into the kitchen. He found a screwdriver in one of the drawers and tried that. Finally he wrapped the box in newspaper, hoping that it didn't contain Mrs. Corliss' life's savings.

He opened the window, took the ice placard from the floor, and climbed out onto the porch. When he had closed and locked the window, he tore the placard to size and fitted it in the open pane, blank side out. With the strongbox under his arm, he moved quietly between the houses to the sidewalk.

Leo Kingship returned to his apartment at ten o'clock on Wednesday night, having worked late in order to compensate for some of the lost hours Christmas had entailed. "Is Marion in?" he asked the butler, giving him his coat.

"Out with Mr. Corliss. She said she'd be in early though. There's a Mr. Dettweiler waiting in the living room."

"Dettweiler?"

"He said Miss Richardson sent him about the securities. He has a little strongbox with him."

"Dettweiler?" Kingship frowned.

He went into the living room.

Gordon Gant rose from a comfortable chair adjacent to the fireplace. "Hello," he said pleasantly.

Kingship looked at him for a moment. "Didn't Miss Richardson make it clear this afternoon that I don't want-" His hands fisted at his sides. "Get out of here," he said. "If Marion comes in..."

"Exhibit A," Gant pronounced, raising a pamphlet in each hand, "in the case against Bud Corliss."

"I don't want to-" The sentence hung unfinished. Apprehensively, Kingship came forward. He took the pamphlets from Gant's hands. "Our publications..."

"In the possession of Bud Corliss," Gant said.

"Kept in a strongbox which until last night resided in a closet in Menasset, Massachusetts." He gave a light kick to the strongbox on the floor beside him. The open lid was bent out of shape. There were four oblong Manila envelopes inside. "I stole it," Gant said.