Дональд Уэстлейк - Collected Stories

“I’m afraid not, ma’am. What’s our murderer planning to do with the rest of the body?”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know. Could — could be that that arm was the last part to go down. He’d thrown down all the rest of it earlier.”

“Could be, Mrs. Kelly,” Ryan said. “But frankly, I think you made an honest mistake. What you thought was an arm was really something else. Maybe a rolled-up newspaper.”

“I tell you, I saw the fingers!”

Ryan sighed, and got to his feet. “I tell you what, Mrs. Kelly,” he said. “What you got here isn’t enough for us to go on. But if a report comes in on somebody being missing in this building, that would kind of corroborate your story. If somebody’s been murdered, he or she will be reported missing before long, and—”

“It was a woman,” said Mrs. Kelly. “I saw the long fingernails.”

Ryan frowned again. “You saw long fingernails,” he asked, “in just a couple of seconds, in that dim incinerator shaft and without your glasses on?”

“I saw what I saw,” she insisted, “and I only need my glasses for reading .”

“Well,” said Ryan. He stood there, fidgeting with that awful crushed hat, obviously wanting to be done and away. “If we get word on anybody missing,” he said again.

Mrs. Kelly glared at him as he left. He didn’t believe her; he thought she was nothing but a foolish old woman with bad eyes. She could hear him now, once he got back to his precinct house: “Nothing to it, just an old crank not wearing her glasses.”

And then he was gone, and she was alone. And her irritated anger gradually gave way to something very close to fear. She looked up at the ceiling. Somewhere on the four floors above, someone had murdered a woman, and chopped her up, and thrown her forearm down the incinerator shaft. Mrs. Kelly looked up, realizing how close that terrible murderer was, and that there was to be no help from the police, and she shivered.

The next afternoon, that was a Friday, at just around four o’clock, Mrs. Kelly once more brought her rubbish bag to the incinerator. This wasn’t a coincidence. Having lived alone for five years, Mrs. Kelly had developed routines and habits of living that carried her smoothly through her solitary days. And at four o’clock each afternoon, she threw the rubbish away.

On this Friday afternoon, very much aware of the murderer lurking somewhere in the building, she peeked out into the hall before hurrying across to the incinerator door. Then she quickly dumped the rubbish, but someone had thrown something greasy away recently, and a piece of paper stuck to the ramp. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she reached in and freed it.

That’s when it happened again. This time, it was an upper arm, elbow to shoulder, and it didn’t pause at the sixth floor. It sailed right on by, elbow foremost, and left Mrs. Kelly staring at the blank brick walls of the shaft.

She was back in her own living room, the door locked and the chain attached, before she had time to think. And when she recovered sufficiently, she decided at once to call that smarty Detective Sean Ryan, because now she knew why there had only been the forearm disposed of yesterday.

Of course. The murderer was afraid to drop all of the body at once. It would take him half an hour or more, and someone on a lower floor would be bound to see something in that time. Besides, he might be afraid the whole body wouldn’t burn in just one day.

That’s why he dropped just one piece, each afternoon at four. The incinerator had been burning for an hour by that time, and so would be nice and hot. And it would have two more hours to burn before it was turned off.

Ah-hah, Detective Ryan, she thought, and reached for the phone. But then she stopped, her hand an inch from the phone, suddenly knowing exactly what Detective Ryan would have to say. “More arms, Mrs. Kelly? And this one didn’t even stop, just whizzed right by? Do you know how fast a falling arm would go, Mrs. Kelly?”

No. Mrs. Kelly wasn’t going to go through another humiliating interview like the one yesterday.

But what could she do? A murder had been committed, and what could she do if she couldn’t even call the police?

She fretted and fumed, half-afraid and half-annoyed, and then she remembered something Detective Ryan had said yesterday. Corroboration, that’s what he had said. Proof of murder, proof someone was missing from this building.

Very well, corroboration he would get. And then he’d have to swallow those smart-alecky remarks of his. How fast does a falling arm go indeed!

All she had to do was find proof.

Almost a full week went by, and no proof. Every afternoon at four, Mrs. Kelly stood by the incinerator door and in growing frustration watched another part sail by. Saturday, the left forearm. Sunday, the left upper arm. Monday, right foot, knee to toes. Tuesday, right leg, hip to knee. Lower half of the torso on Wednesday. Left foot, knee to toes on Thursday.

And Mrs. Kelly knew she had only three days left. The upper half of the torso, the left leg, and the head.

For the first time in her life, Mrs. Kelly disliked the automatic privacy that was a part of living in a New York City apartment. Twenty-seven years she had lived in this building, and she didn’t know a soul here, except for the superintendent on the first floor. But the people in the sixteen apartments on the four floors above her were total strangers. She could watch the front door forever, and never know who was missing.

On Tuesday (right leg), it occurred to her to watch the mailboxes. It seemed to her that this murderer, whoever he was, would be staying in his apartment as much as possible until the body had been completely eliminated. There was a possibility he wouldn’t even leave to pick up his mail. If there were a stuffed mailbox, it might be the clue she needed.

There wasn’t a stuffed mailbox.

On Wednesday (lower half of the torso), she thought to go back to the mailboxes again, this time to get the names of the occupants of the sixteen apartments up above. That afternoon, clutching her list, she watched the piece go by, and repaired furiously to her apartment.

It was all that Detective Sean Ryan’s fault, that rumpled man. He must be a widower, or a bachelor. No woman would let her man out of the house as rumpled as all that. Nor wearing a necktie as horrible as that wide orange thing Detective Ryan had had around his neck.

Not that it made any difference. Mrs. Kelly had had trouble enough for one lifetime with Bertram, rest his soul. Housebreaking a man was a life’s work, and a woman would be a fool to try to do the job on two men, one right after the other. And Mrs. Aileen Kelly was certainly no fool.

Though she was beginning to feel very much like a fool, as day after day the pieces of that poor murdered woman fell down the incinerator shaft, and Mrs. Kelly still without a shred of proof.

Thursday, she considered the possibility of hiding in a hallway, where she could watch the incinerator door. According to the way the pieces were falling, there were four parts left. If Mrs. Kelly were to spend each of the four days hidden in the hallway on each of the four floors above, sooner or later she would catch the murderer red-handed.

But, how to hide in the hallways? They were all bare and empty, without a single hiding place.

Except, perhaps, the elevator.

Of course, of course, the elevator. She rushed out of her apartment, got into the elevator, and peered through the round porthole in the elevator door. By pressing her nose against the metal of the door and peeking far to the left, she could just barely catch a glimpse of the incinerator door. It would work.

Accordingly, she was in the elevator at five of four, and pushing the button marked 7 . The elevator rose one flight and stopped. Mrs. Kelly took up her position, peering out at the incinerator door, and so she stood for three minutes.