Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

Toward dawn he fell asleep, yielding to the shaking roar of the motors that seemed bent on tearing the plane apart, tearing his mind apart, and scattering the pieces in the sky. He awakened to a gray overcast morning, and a new thought: Miriam’s lover had killed her. It was so obvious, so likely. He had killed her in a quarrel. One read such cases so often in the newspapers, the victims so often women like Miriam. There was a front-page story about a girl’s murder in the tabloid El Grafico he had bought at the airport—he hadn’t been able to find an American paper, though he had almost missed the plane looking for one—and a picture of her grinning Mexican lover holding the knife with which he had killed her, and Guy started to read it, becoming bored in the second paragraph.

A plainclothesman met him at the Metcalf airport and asked if he would mind answering a few questions. They got into a taxi together.

“Have they found the murderer?” Guy asked him.

“No.”

The plainclothesman looked tired, as if he had been up all night, like the rest of the reporters and clerks and police in the old North Side courthouse. Guy glanced around the big wooden room, looking for Bruno before he was aware of doing so. When he lighted a cigarette, the man next to him asked him what kind it was, and accepted the one Guy offered him. They were Anne’s Belmonts that he had pocketed when he was packing.

“Guy Daniel Haines, 717 Ambrose Street, Metcalf….When did you leave Metcalf?… And when did you get to Mexico City?”

Chairs scraped. A noiseless typewriter started bumping after them.

Another plainclothesman with a badge, with his jacket open and a swagbelly protruding, strolled closer. “Why did you go to Mexico?”

“To visit some friends.”

“Who?”

“The Faulkners. Alex Faulkner of New York.”

“Why didn’t you tell your mother where you were going?”

“I did tell her.”

“She didn’t know where you were staying in Mexico City,” the plainclothesman informed him blandly, and referred to his notes. “You sent your wife a letter Sunday asking for a divorce. What did she reply?”

“That she wanted to talk with me.”

“But you didn’t care to talk with her anymore, did you?” asked a clear tenor voice.

Guy looked at the young police officer, and said nothing.

“Was her child to be yours?”

He started to answer, but was interrupted.

“Why did you come to Texas last week to see your wife?”

“Didn’t you want a divorce pretty badly, Mr. Haines?”

“Are you in love with Anne Faulkner?”

Laughter.

“You know your wife had a lover, Mr. Haines. Were you jealous?”

“You were depending on that child for your divorce, weren’t you?”

“That’s all!” someone said.

A photograph was thrust in front of him, and the image spun with his anger before it straightened to a long dark head, handsome and stupid brown eyes, a cleft, manly chin—a face that might have been a movie actor’s, and no one had to tell him this was Miriam’s lover, because this was the kind of face she had liked three years ago.

“No,” Guy said.

“Haven’t you and he had some talks together?”

“That’s all!”

A bitter smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, yet he felt he might have cried, too, like a child. He hailed a taxi in front of the courthouse. On the ride home, he read the double column on the front page of the Metcalf Star.

QUEST CONTINUES FOR GIRL’S SLAYER

June 12—The quest continues for the slayer of Mrs. Miriam Joyce Haines of this city, victim of strangulation by an unknown assailant on Metcalf Island Sunday night.

Two fingerprint experts arrive today who will endeavor to establish classifications of fingerprints taken from several oars and rowboats of the Lake Metcalf rowboat docks. But police and detectives fear that obtainable fingerprints are hazy. Authorities yesterday afternoon expressed the opinion that the crime might have been the act of a maniac. Apart from dubious fingerprints and several heelprints around the scene of the attack, police officials have not yet uncovered any vital clue.

Most important testimony at the inquest, it is believed, will come from Owen Markman, 30, longshoreman of Houston, and a close friend of the murdered woman.

Interment of Mrs. Haines’ body will take place today at Remington Cemetery. The cortege departs from Howell Funeral Home on College Avenue at 2:00 P.M. this afternoon.

Guy lighted a cigarette from the end of another. His hands were still shaking, but he felt vaguely better. He hadn’t thought of the possibility of a maniac. A maniac reduced it to a kind of horrible accident.

His mother sat in her rocker in the living room with a handkerchief pressed to her temple, waiting for him, though she did not get up when he came in. Guy embraced her and kissed her cheek, relieved to see she hadn’t been crying.

“I spent yesterday with Mrs. Joyce,” she said, “but I just can’t go to the funeral.”

“There isn’t any need to, Mama.” He glanced at his watch and saw it was already past 2. For an instant, he felt that Miriam might have been buried alive, that she might awaken and scream in protest. He turned, and passed his hand across his forehead.

“Mrs. Joyce,” his mother said softly, “asked me if you might know something.”

Guy faced her again. Mrs. Joyce resented him, he knew. He hated her now for what she might have said to his mother. “Don’t see them again, Mama. You don’t have to, do you?”

“No.”

“And thank you for going over.”

Upstairs on his bureau, he found three letters and a small square package with a Santa Fe store label. The package contained a narrow belt of braided lizard skin with a silver buckle formed like an H. A note enclosed said:

Lost your Plato book on way to post office. I hope this will help make up.

Charley

Guy picked up the penciled envelope from the Santa Fe hotel. There was only a small card inside. On the card’s back was printed: NICE TOWN METCALF Turning the card, he read mechanically: 24 HOUR DONOVAN TAXI SERVICE RAIN OR SHINE CALL 2-3333 SAFE FAST COURTEOUS Something had been erased beneath the message on the back. Guy held the card to the light and made out one word: Ginnie. It was a Metcalf taxi company’s card, but it had been mailed from Santa Fe. It doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t prove anything, he thought. But he crushed the card and the envelope and the package wrappings into his wastebasket. He loathed Bruno, he realized. He opened the box in the wastebasket and put the belt in, too. It was a handsome belt, but he happened also to loathe lizard and snake skin.

Anne telephoned him that night from Mexico City. She wanted to know everything that had happened, and he told her what he knew.

“They don’t have any suspicion who did it?” she asked.

“They don’t seem to.”

“You don’t sound well, Guy. Did you get any rest?”

“Not yet.” He couldn’t tell her now about Bruno. His mother had said that a man had called twice, wanting to talk to him, and Guy had no doubt who it was. But he knew he could not tell Anne about Bruno until he was sure. He could not begin.

“We’ve just sent those affidavits, darling. You know, about your being here with us?”

He had wired her for them after talking to one of the police detectives. “Everything’ll be all right after the inquest,” he said.

But it troubled him the rest of the night that he had not told Anne about Bruno. It was not the horror that he wished to spare her. He felt it was some sense of personal guilt that he himself could not bear.

There was a report going about that Owen Markman had not wanted to marry Miriam after the loss of the child, and that she had started a breach-of-promise action against him. Miriam really had lost the child accidentally, Guy’s mother said. Mrs. Joyce had told her that Miriam had tripped on a black silk nightgown that she particularly liked, that Owen had given her, and had fallen downstairs in her house. Guy believed the story implicitly. A compassion and remorse he had never before felt for Miriam had entered his heart. Now she seemed pitiably illfated and entirely innocent.