Ira Levin - A Kiss Before Dying

He peered over the left side of the catwalk, his hands folded over the top of one of the waist-high stanchions. He looked down upon the six converters, the men scurrying between them...

His eyes shifted. To his right, twenty feet below and ten feet out from the catwalk, hung the vat of copper, a steel rimmed pool of green on its slow pro- cession towards the far end of the building. Ghosts of smoke rose from the liquid sheen of its surface.

He followed it, walking slowly, his left hand tracing over the dipping curves of the chain railing. He stayed far enough behind the vat so that he could just feel the fringe of its radiant heat. He heard Leo and Dettweiler following. His eyes climbed the vat's cables, six and six on either side of the block, up to the cab a dozen feet above him. He could see the shoulder of the operator inside. His eyes dropped back to the copper. How much is in there? How many tons? What was it worth? One thousand? Two thousand? Three? Four? Five?...

He was nearing the steel partition, and now he saw that the catwalk didn't end there after all; instead it branched six feet to right and left, following the partition to its edges like the head of a long-stemmed T. The vat of copper vanished beyond the partition. He turned onto the left wing of the T. A three foot chain swung across the catwalk's end. He put his left hand on the corner stanchion and his right on the edge of the partition, which was quite warm. He leaned forward a bit and peered around the partition at the receding vat. "Where does it go now?" he called out. Behind him Leo said, "Refining furnaces. Then it's poured into molds."

He turned around, Leo and Dettweiler faced him shoulder to shoulder, blocking the stem of the T. Their faces were oddly inflexible. He patted the partition on his left. "What's behind here?" he asked. "The refining furnaces," Leo said. "Any more questions?"

He shook his head, puzzled by the grimness of the two men.

"Then I've got one for you," Leo said. His eyes were like blue marbles behind his glasses. "How did you get Dorothy to write that suicide note?"

Everything fell away; the catwalk, the smelter, the whole world; everything melted away like sand castles sucked into the sea, leaving him suspended in emptiness with two blue marbles staring at him and the sound of Leo's question swelling and reverberating like being inside an iron bell.

Then Leo and Dettweiler confronted him again; the smelter's rumble welled up; the plates of the partition materialized slippery against his left hand, the knob of the stanchion damp under his right, the floor of the catwalk... but the floor didn't come back completely; it swayed anchorless and undulant beneath his feet, because his knees-Oh God!-were jelly, trembling and shaking. "What're you-" he started to say, but nothing came out. He swallowed air. "What're you... talking about..."

"Dorothy," Dettweiler told him. Slowly he said, "You wanted to marry her. For the money. But then she was pregnant. You knew you wouldn't get the money. You killed her."

He shook his head in confused protest. "No," he said, "No! She committed suicide! She sent a note to Ellen! You know that, Leo!"

"You tricked her into writing it," Leo said.

"How... Leo, how could I do that? How the hell could I do that?"

"That's what you're going to tell us," Dettweiler said.

"I hardly knew her!"

"You didn't know her at all," Leo said. "That's what you told Marion."

"That's right! I didn't know her at all!"

"You just said you hardly knew her."

"I didn't know her at all!"

Leo's fists clenched. "You sent for our publications in February nineteen hundred and fifty!"

Bud stared, his hand bracing tightly against the partition. "What publications?" It was a whisper; he had to say it again: "What publications?"

Dettweiler said, "The pamphlets I found in the strongbox in your room in Menasset"

The catwalk dipped crazily. The strongbox! Oh, Jesus Christ! The pamphlets and what else? The clippings?-he'd thrown them out, thank God! The pamphlets... and the list on Marion! Oh, Jesus! "Who are you?" he exploded. "Where the hell do you come off breaking into a person's-"

"Stay back!" Dettweiler warned. Withdrawing the single step he had advanced, Bud gripped the stanchion again. "Who are you?" he shouted.

"Gordon Gant," Dettweiler said. Gant! The one on the radio, the one who'd kept needling the police! How the hell did he- "I knew Ellen," Gant said. "I met her a few days before you killed her.'

"I-" He felt the sweat running. "Crazy!" he shouted. "You're crazy! Who else did I kill?" To Leo -"You listen to him? Then you're crazy too! I never killed anybody!"

Gant said, "You killed Dorothy and Ellen and Dwight Powell!"

"And almost killed Marion," Leo said. "When she saw that list..."

She saw the list! Oh God almighty! "I never killed anybody! Dorrie committed suicide and Ellen and Powell were killed by a burglar!"

"Dorrie?" Gant snapped.

"I- Everybody called her Dorrie! I... I never killed anybody! Only a Jap, and that was in the Army!"

"Then why are your legs shaking?" Gant asked. "Why is the sweat dripping down your cheek?"

He swiped at his check. Control! Self-control! He dragged a deep breath into his chest... Slow up, slow up... They can't prove a thing, not a goddamn thing! They know about the list, about Marion, about the pamphlets-okay-but they can't prove a thing about... He drew another breath...

"You can't prove a thing," he said. "Because there isn't anything to prove. You're crazy, both of you." His hands wiped against his thighs. "Okay," he said, "I knew Dorrie. So did a dozen other guys. And I've had my eyes on the money all along the way. Where's the law against that? So there's no wedding Saturday. Okay." He straightened his jacket with still fingers. 'I'm probably better off poor than having a bastard like you for a father-in-law. Now get out of the way and let me pass. I don't feel like standing around talking to a couple of crazy lunatics."

They didn't move. They stood shoulder to shoulder six feet away. "Move," he said.

'Touch the chain behind you," Leo said. "Get out of the way and let me pass!"

"Touch the chain behind you!" He looked at Leo's stonelike face for a moment and then turned slowly. He didn't have to touch the chain; he just had to look at it; the metal eye of the stanchion had been bent open into a loose C that barely engaged the first of the heavy links.

"We were up here when Otto was showing you around," Leo said. "Touch it."

His hand came forward, brushed the chain. It collapsed. The free end clanked to the floor; it slid rattlingly off and swung down, striking noisily against the partition.

Fifty feet below cement floor yawned, seemed to sway... "Not as much as Dorothy got," Gant was saying, "but enough."

He turned to face them, clutching the stanchion and the edge of the partition, trying not to think of the void behind hs heels. "You wouldn't... dare..." he heard himself saying.

"Don't I have reason enough?" Leo asked. "You killed my daughters!"

"I didn't, Leo! I swear to God I didn't!"

"Is that why you were sweating and shaking the minute I mentioned Dorothy's name? Is that why you didn't think it was a bad joke, react the way an innocent person would have reacted?"

"Leo, I swear on the soul of my dead father..."

Leo stared at him coldly.

He shifted his grip on the stanchion. It was slick with sweat. "You wouldn't do it..." he said. "You'd never get away with it..."

"Wouldn't I?" Leo said. "Do you think you're the only one who can plan something like this?" He pointed to the stanchion. "The jaws of the wrench were wrapped in cloth; there are no marks on that ring. An accident, a terrible accident; a piece of iron, old, continually subjected to intense heat, weakens and bends when a six foot man stumbles against the chain attached to it. A terrible accident. And how can you prevent it? Yell? no one will hear you over the noise. Wave your arms?; the men down there have jobs to attend to, and even if they should look up, there's the haze and the distance. Attack us?; one push and you're finished." He paused. "So tell me, why won't I get away with it? Why?