Ira Levin: A Kiss Before Dying

He looked at the notes he had printed:

1. Gun

2. Poison

a) Selection

b) Obtaining

c) Administering

d) Appearance of (1) accident or (2) suicide

Assuming, of course, that he wanted to do it. At present it was all purely speculative; he would explore the details a little. A mental exercise.

But his stride, when he left the restaurant and headed back through town, was relaxed and sure and steady.

He reached the campus at three o'clock and went directly to the library. In the card catalogue he found listed six books likely to contain the information he wanted; four of them were general works on toxicology; the other two, manuals of criminal investigation whose file cards indexed chapters on poisons. Rather than have a librarian get the books for him, he registered at the desk and went into the stacks himself.

He had never been in the stacks before. There were three floors filled with bookshelves, a metal staircase spiraling up through them. One of the books on his list was out. He found the other five without difficulty on the shelves on the third floor. Seating himself at one of the small study tables that flanked a wall of the room, he turned on the lamp, arranged his pen and memorandum book in readiness, and began to read.

At the end of an hour, he had a list of five toxic chemicals likely to be found in the Pharmacy supply room, any one of which, by virtue of its reaction time and the symptoms it produced prior to death, would be suitable for the plan whose rudimentary outline he had already formulated during the walk from the river.

He left the library and the campus, and walked in the direction of the house where he roomed. When he had gone two blocks he came upon a dress shop whose windows were plastered with big-lettered sale signs. One of the signs had a sketch of an hourglass with the legend Last Days of Sale.

He looked at the hourglass for a moment. Then he turned around and walked back towards the campus.

He went to the University Bookstore. After consulting the mimeographed booklist tacked to the bulletin board, he asked the clerk for a copy of Pharmaceutical Techniques, the laboratory manual used by the advanced pharmacy students. "Pretty late in the semester," clerk commented, returning from the rear of the store with the manual in his hand. It was a large thin book with a distinctive green paper cover. "Lose yours?"

"No. It was stolen."

"Oh. Anything else?"

"Yes. I'd like some envelopes, please."

"What size?"

"Regular envelopes. For letters."

The clerk put a pack of white envelopes on the book. "That's a dollar-fifty and twenty-five. Plus tax -a dollar seventy-nine."

The College of Pharmacy was housed in one of Stoddard's old buildings, three stories of ivy-masked brick. Its front had broad stone steps that led up the main entrance. At either side of the building were steps leading down to a long corridor which cut straight through the basement, where the supply room was located. There was a Yale lock on the supply room door. Keys to this lock were in the possession of the usual university functionaries, the entire faculty of the College of Pharmacy, and those advanced students who had received permission to work without supervision. This was the regular arrangement followed in all departments of the university which used enough equipment to necessitate the maintenance of a supply room. It was an arrangement familiar to almost everyone on campus.

He came in at the main entrance and crossed the hall to the lounge. Two bridge games were in session and some other students sat around, reading and talking. A few of them glanced up when he entered. He went directly to the long clothes rack in the corner and put his books on the shelf above it. Removing his corduroy jacket, he hung it on one of the hooks. He took the pack of envelopes from among his books, removed three of them and folded them into his hip pocket. He put the rest of the envelopes back with the books, took the lab manual, and left the room. He went downstairs to the basement corridor. There was a men's room to the right of the stairwell. He entered it and after looking under the doors to make sure the booths were empty, dropped the manual on the floor. He stepped on it a few times and then kicked it all the way across the tiled floor. When he picked it up it had lost its blatant newness. He put it on the ledge of a sink. Watching himself in the mirror, he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled the sleeves halfway up his arms. He unfastened his collar and lowered the knot of his tie. Tucking the manual under his arm, he stepped out into the corridor.

The door to the supply room was midway between the central stairwell and one end of the corridor. On the wall a few feet beyond it was a bulletin board. He walked down to the board and stood before it, looking at the notices tacked there. He stood with his back turned slightly towards the end of the corridor, so that from the corner of his eye he could see the stairwell. He held the manual under his left arm. His right arm was at his side, fingers by his keychain. A girl came out of the supply room, closing the door behind her. She carried one of the green manuals and a beaker half full of a milky fluid. He watched her as she went down the corridor and turned to climb the stairs.

Some people entered from the door behind him. They walked past, talking. Three men. They went straight down the corridor and out the door at the other end. He kept looking at the bulletin board.

At five o'clock bells rang, and for a few minutes there was a great deal of activity in the hallway. It subsided quickly though, and he was alone again. One of the notices on the board was an illustrated folder about summer sessions at the University of Zurich. He began to read it.

A bald-headed man emerged from the stairwell. He had no manual, but it was apparent from the angle at which he approached and the movement of his hand towards his keychain that he was coming to the supply room. There was, however, the look of an instructor.... Putting his back toward the approaching man, he turned a page of the Zurich pamphlet. He heard the sound of a key in the door, and then the door opening and closing. A minute later, it opened and closed again, and the sound of the man's footsteps diminished and then changed to a stair-climbing rhythm.

He resumed his former position and lighted a cigarette. After one puff he dropped it and ground it under his foot; a girl had appeared, coming towards him. There was a lab manual in her hand. She had lanky brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. She was taking a brass key from the pocket of her smock. He lessened the pressure on the manual under his arm, letting it drop down into his left hand, conspicuous with its green cover. With a last casual finger-flick at the Zurich folder, he moved to the supply room door, not looking at the approaching girl. He fumbled wife his keychain as though the keys had caught in the pocket's lining. When he finally brought out. the bunch of keys the girl was already at the door. His attention was on the keys, shuffling through them, apparently looking for a certain one. It seemed as though he didn't become conscious of the girl's presence until she had inserted her key in the lock, turned it and pushed the door partially open, smiling up at him. "Oh... thanks," he said, reaching over her to push the door wide, his other hand rucking the keys back in his pocket. He followed the girl in and closed the door behind them.

It was a small room with counters and shelves filled with labeled bottles and boxes and odd-looking apparatuses. The girl touched a wall switch, making fluorescent tubes wink to life, incongruous among the room's old-fashioned fittings. She went to the side of the room and opened her manual on a counter there. "Are you in Aberson's class?" she asked.