James Chase - The Guilty Are Afraid

If the boyfriend had suddenly walked in on them it would explain why the girl had left her clothes in the cabin. While he was killing Sheppey she had probably run out and away. But why hadn’t she got help? Wouldn’t she have tried to get someone to stop this thug killing Sheppey? Or had it happened so fast that Sheppey was dead before she could get out and, seeing he was dead, she had just run?

I pushed my hat to the back of my head and wiped my forehead with my hand. Or had she killed him?

I moved into the hut and closed the door. I didn’t want any swimmer or someone in a boat to spot my light through the open door.

I went over to the first door leading into the dressing room, opened it and glanced inside. It was a cupboard of a room with a bench and four hooks for clothes and a small mirror. I swung my beam around as I wondered if this was the room Sheppey had used. I didn’t expect to find anything. The police had already been over it, and it was too small for them to miss anything: I didn’t find anything.

I stepped out, thinking I was wasting time. There was nothing here for me: not even atmosphere. Maybe I wouldn’t have bothered to have looked in the other little room, but suddenly I had a feeling I was no longer alone in the dark cabin. I stood motionless, listening, hearing my heart thumping. My finger eased on the button of the flashlight and thick darkness engulfed me.

For a long moment I heard nothing, then just as I was thinking my imagination was playing me tricks, I heard a sound that seemed close: the sound of a faint sigh: the sound someone makes when letting his breath out slowly through his open mouth.

It was a sound so slight that if I hadn’t been listening intently, and if there hadn’t been any other sound during that brief moment, I wouldn’t have heard it. I felt the hair on the nape of my neck move. I wished now I had brought a gun. Stepping back two steps brought me against the door of the changing room. I lifted the flashlight and pressed the button.

The white beam of the light made a meaningless circle on the floor boards. I swung it around, saw nothing, and listened again.

On the road a car went by with a roar and a woosh of someone in a hurry.

I turned the beam to the door of the second changing room, reached forward, turned the handle and gently pushed open the door.

I lifted the flashlight.

She was sitting on the floor, facing me, in a pale blue French swimsuit, her golden skin shiny with sweat. Her eyes were fixed in a vacant stare. Down her left shoulder was a long stream of dried blood.

She was a dark, good-looking girl with black silky hair; around twenty-four or five with the figure of a model. She was much too young to be dying.

She stared sightlessly into the beam of the flashlight. I stood transfixed, sweating ice, my heart hammering, my mouth dry.

Then, very slowly, she began to topple sideways.

I was unable to move. I just stood there, staring. It wasn’t until she slid with a horrible ghost-like silence to the floor that I moved forward to clutch at her.

But by then I was just that much too late.

II

She lay on her side, her dark hair covering her face. Looking down at her, I saw on the floor an icepick with a white plastic handle. It was a reminder that this girl had died the same way as Sheppey had died, although this time the killer’s hand had lost some of its cunning, for Sheppey had died instantaneously.

I bent over her, sweat running down my face and dripping off my chin. The spasm, completely unmistakable, that I had seen run through her as she had spread out on the floor told me the exact moment when she died. I didn’t have to feel for an artery nor lift her eyelid to know she was beyond any help I could give her.

I kept the beam of light on her. There was nothing to tell me who she was. All she had on was this swimsuit. The fact that she was well groomed, that her hair had been recently shampooed and set, that her nails were manicured and stained dark red and the costume itself was a good one told me nothing. She could have been rich or she could have been poor. She could have been a model; she could have been just one of the thousands of workers in St. Raphael City; she could have been anything.

There was one thing I was certain of: she was the girl who had called for Jack Sheppey at the hotel: the one Greaves had been so certain had been a blonde. Remembering he had thought she had either been wearing a wig or had dyed her hair, I held the torch closer to satisfy myself that he had been wrong, and I did satisfy myself.

She was neither wearing a wig nor had she dyed her hair.

There was no doubt about that and that proved just how wrong a trained house dick could be.

I turned the beam of light on to her arms. In the bright light, the soft down looked fair. It wouldn’t have been natural if it had been otherwise. She had been worshipping the sun for months to judge by her tan: the down on her arms would naturally be bleached.

I straightened up. Taking my handkerchief from my pocket, I wiped my face.

The heat in the tiny room was awful. I found I had sweated right through my clothes and I moved back into the larger room.

It was then that I noticed another door that obviously communicated with the next-door cabin. There was a bolt on the door, but it wasn’t pushed into its socket.

That gave me a jolt.

I realized it must have been through this door that the killer had come and gone. For all I knew he was still in the cabin next door, waiting for me to go away, and I wished even more that I had brought a gun with me.

Moving softly I crossed the room, snapped off my flashlight and put my ear to the panel of the door. I listened for a long moment, but heard nothing. I groped for the door handle, found it and, gripping it tightly, I slowly turned it. When it was as far back as it would go I put a little pressure on the door, but it didn’t move.

Someone had gone into the next cabin through this doorway but had bolted the door after him.

Was he still in there?

I stepped back, aware that my mouth was dry. He probably hadn’t a spare icepick with him, but it was possible he had a gun.

Then a sound came to me that made me stiffen and set my nerves crawling.

In the distance came the wail of a police siren; a sound that grew in volume and told me a police car was coming along the promenade at high speed.

I wasn’t kidding myself that those prowl boys were sounding off for the fun of it. They were on business and the most obvious place for them to be coming to was right here.

I turned on my flashlight, took out my handkerchief and wiped the door handles in the little cabin. Although I worked fast, I didn’t skimp the job: I knew how important it was not to leave a print that would bring Katchen after me. Finished, I jumped for the door, opened it and looked quickly to right and left.

The beach was still deserted, but apart from the shadows made by the group of palms, it was as bare of a hiding place as the back of my hand.

The note of the siren was much louder now and still coming fast. If I returned the way I had come I was certain to run right into them. There was no hope of hiding among the palms. They would be sure to spot me as they came down towards the cabins. That left me with the wide-open beach.

When I have to I can run. There was a time when I had won a couple of impressive-looking cups for the half mile: not Olympic stuff, but moving in that direction.

I didn’t hesitate. I started off across the sand at not perhaps my best speed, but close to it.

I heard the siren blasting its way along the promenade.

I didn’t look back. I had to put about a thousand yards or so between me and those boys or else they would start shooting at me. I didn’t kid myself they wouldn’t see me.