Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

“The lookout?”

“Yeah. Not our side… but now that you mention it, Chief, what about that island?”

“With the cottage?” Savard said. He hadn’t mentioned anything, only thought it; Carbonneau was far from perfect, but there were advantages in having worked together for a long time.

“Yeah. Whose side is that on?”

“I don’t know,” Savard said. “What’s up?”

“This guy-I’ll have the name in a minute-saw lights on in the cottage. All lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“So?”

“That’s what I said. It’s Christmas, right? The thing is, this guy goes out on the river every winter, year after year, like. And he’s never seen lights on in there, not once.”

“Sounds like kids.” Cottage break-ins weren’t common on Savard’s side of the river, at least not ones committed by local boys; local boys knew that Savard was strict about cottage break-ins-he’d dealt summarily with one or two cases in his early years, and that had been enough.

“That’s what I thought, ” said Carbonneau. “Maybe still out there, Chief.”

“Send Berry,” Savard said.

“Berry’s back down at the three-way. More bumper cars. And Lisa called in sick.”

So it was him. Savard turned from the darkened house, walked down to the street. As he got in the cruiser, the cat made a screeching sound that ended on a high, keening note. A cold night, but cats could take care of themselves; this one would find its way back to the barn, wait for Dot Truax there. Savard put the cruiser in gear and headed for the river.

Francie slept a troubled sleep, caught in one of those partially controllable dreams where the real and the fantastic were all mixed up. Outside, the city was quiet, except for the rumble of the plows she half heard, muted by sleep, muffled by snow. In her dream, she wrestled with a problem: oh garden, my garden was back under her bed, the bed she was sleeping in, and she had to get rid of it at once, but what explanation would she give to Anne, two-stories-tall Anne, watching through the window? She had to come up with some scheme to make Anne go away, but what?

The phone started ringing. Maybe that would work, maybe Anne would answer it, giving her time to grab the painting and run from the room. But Anne couldn’t be distracted that easily; the phone rang and rang until finally Francie reached out of her dream and answered it.

“Francie?”

“Brenda?” The glowing red numbers on the bedside alarm read 4:37. Perhaps Brenda had made some mistake with the time difference.

“Oh, Francie, thank God you’re there.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Thank God it’s you. I was going out of my mind. Something awful’s happened. At the cottage.”

“At the cottage?”

“There’s been a murder, a horrible killing, Francie. Some policeman, the chief, I think, just called me-my number’s on the tax roll, of course. And I thought it might be you. An unidentified woman, he said. They must have assumed it was me, I guess. A local-type policeman, he wasn’t very clear. Are you sure you’re all right, Francie?”

“Yes. You’re positive he-”

“Wait-I’ve got another call.”

Francie, on her feet beside the bed, phone clutched in both hands, waited. You’re positive he said a woman? That was the question she’d begun. What if Ned had gone to the cottage anyway, had changed his mind, changed his schedule because he hadn’t believed she was still in the city, had felt guilty in consequence, or had simply worried about her out there in the storm? What if it was Ned?

“Francie? Sorry. It was-”

“Are they sure it was a woman, Brenda?”

“Yes. That was the policeman again. They’ve made an identification. It’s some poor woman from Dedham.”

“Dedham?”

“Yes. I have no idea what she was doing there-her name wasn’t familiar to me at all. Franklin, I think he said. Anne Franklin.”

On the edge of frenzy, mental and physical, she tried the number, Anne and Ned’s number, in Dedham, almost incapable of hitting the right buttons. Busy. She tried again and again and again. Busy, busy, busy. She snapped on lights, ran down to the kitchen, threw open the door to the basement-more light, more light-ran down those stairs, too, burst into Roger’s room.

Roger: not sleeping on his couch but sitting in front of the computer, face silvery in its light, bent over a sheet of paper covered with a pattern of connected boxes, pen moving rapidly. He swung around, startled, as she came in.

“Oh, Roger, something terrible’s happened.”

“What would that be?” he said, rising, pocketing the sheet of paper.

“Anne. She’s been killed, Roger. Murdered.”

Francie went to him, almost staggering, clung to him, began to shake. She buried her face in his chest. He patted her back.

Peter Abrahams

A Perfect Crime

In the kitchen, Francie tried the Dedham number, over and over, getting a busy signal every time. Murdered. In the cottage? Had there been an arrest? How? When? Why? Brenda had told her almost nothing. She called Rome, heard Brenda in Italian: “Questa e la segretaria telefonica di…” She left a message, ran upstairs, threw on some clothes. When she came back down, Roger was waiting in his crimson robe with a package wrapped in foil.

“What’s this?” she said.

“I made tuna sandwiches. Isn’t it customary to bring food?”

“Are you coming?” she said.

He spread his arms, like great red wings. “It wouldn’t be right,” he said. “My relationship was peripheral.”

But he walked her down to the garage. Their cars sat side by side, both in pools of wintertime snowmelt. Francie saw that his rear window was shattered.

“Oh, that,” said Roger, although she hadn’t said anything. “Some smash-and-grabber, it would seem, but nothing was taken. The alarm must have scared him off.” He handed her the sandwiches. “Don’t forget to offer my condolences.”

Francie drove west on Storrow. Not yet dawn, but incoming commuters were already on the road, a yellow stream of headlights paralleling the dark one of the Charles. Their world was no longer hers. Murder: all those questions and many others roiled in her mind, including the one she most wanted to avoid-what had Anne been doing at the cottage in the first place? Wasn’t there only one thing she could have been doing? And didn’t that mean she must have found out about what went on in that cottage? But how? Had Ned confessed? Something’s come up, he’d said. She’d asked, Something about Anne? And he’d said, Nothing like that. Work related. Therefore? Francie had no idea. And murder? Francie was lost.

She parked in front of the house in Dedham. The downstairs lights were on, silhouetting the stocky form of a snowman in the front lawn, a ski pole over one shoulder like a sentry’s rifle. Francie walked up the path, unshoveled but packed down by many footsteps going in both directions. Worse than lost, Francie, because at that moment, standing at the door with its Christmas wreath, she had the most unworthy thought of her whole life: Perhaps there would now be some future for her and Ned after all. Even with Anne’s wreath hanging there, Francie had that thought. What was she made of? She knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” said a woman almost at once, as though she’d been waiting by the door. Francie didn’t recognize her voice.

“Francie Cullingwood,” she said, and added, “a friend of the family.”

The door opened. A gray-haired woman in a quilted housecoat stared out at Francie with big dark eyes: Ned’s eyes. The woman didn’t have to tell Francie who she was.

“I’m Ned’s mother. You’ve heard?”

“Yes.”