The Longest Second (11 page)

“Yes.”

“You want us to find what room she is in?”

“Yes.”

“That shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Delton told me, his voice efficient. “I assume, though, this is not a matrimonial case. You assure me on that?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t handle matrimonial investigations,” he continued, “for financial reasons. Such investigations involve a great amount of time ... day, night, appearances in court to give testimony, and so on. It isn’t possible to make a profit from them. We stick to legal investigations—furnish plant and bank security, messengers and guards ... that type of work. I don’t want to get involved in anything complicated. Do you understand?”

I indicated that I did.

“Okay. I think we can locate this woman for you very easily, if she is still at the hotel. If it takes half a day it will cost you fifty dollars; if we spend a full day, the fee is one hundred.”

Between what little money I had left, and what Bianca had been able to pay me, all that I could afford was the fifty dollars. I decided to gamble it through. Delton appeared capable, and with any luck might quickly locate Rosemary Martin. I nodded my approval to his terms.

“Please sign here,” Delton said energetically, indicating a short half-form on which he had written, “Miss Rosemary Martin staying at Acton-Plaza. Locate room where living and assumed name.” I signed it, using the name Kenneth Sloan. “Thank you, Mr. Sloan,” said Delton. “Now do you care to give me a check?”

Naturally I did not care to do so. Instead I placed five ten-dollar bills on his desk. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything,” he told me. I shook my head, and again returned to my pad. I wrote that I would get back in touch with him. We parted with that understanding.

There were no follow-up stories in the papers regarding Merkle. I began to feel more easy, although in reality there was little for me to worry about. It was doubtful if the police could find a motive for the murder of Merkle. It had been an act of expediency, possibly even of accident. Merkle had no past which might have involved him with murder.

If the police should trace him to the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News,
they would question me. But even then, if I denied all connection with Merkle, other than a superficial acquaintanceship struck during our stay in the hospital, there was nothing that could be proved against me. It was not fear of the police which kept me out of the investigation; rather it was a desire to remain without surveillance or restraint to pursue my own affairs.

I told Bianca about my visit to Bell, Investigators and that evening asked her to call Delton. There was an answering service on the agency’s line at that time of night, and the operator offered to have Delton call back. I didn’t want him to know my number, so I shook my head and Bianca left a message that Mr. Sloan would call in the morning.

She called again the next day, and Delton told her that Rosemary Martin had been located; she was occupying room 944 in the Acton-Plaza, and was registered under the name Nell C. O’Hanstrom from St. Louis. After relaying this information to me, Bianca remarked thoughtfully, “What a peculiar name to use. Who ever heard of such a name as O’Hanstrom?” The name meant nothing to me; yet Rosemary Martin had expected me to recognize it, to remember it “I can’t imagine why Rosemary should want to hide,” Bianca continued. Taking a deep breath, she asked suddenly, “Vic, what
was
there between you two?”

I shook my head.

“You mean you don’t know? Or do you prefer not to talk about it?”

Both.

Bianca grasped my hand. I could feel the heat of her palms, the warmth of her skin as she pressed it, and the gesture made me uneasy. I attempted to draw away, but she clung to it saying, “There’s something wrong, something awful going on. I don’t know what it is—it’s all around us. I can feel it waiting to...” Abruptly she turned, then stepped away. More composedly she added, “Forget Rosemary, forget everything except that you’re starting a new life. I have a little money saved ... not much ... and I’ll lend it to you. Go away. Stay away from New York for a while. Then come back when you’ve completely regained your health.”

I attempted to tell her that I couldn’t leave.

“Why?” she asked. “Is it because you love me?”

I told her no—that I didn’t love her. That I didn’t love anyone. This was true and I believed that I should tell her the truth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after a moment of silence. Her voice was very low. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. But you see, I love you.” She turned her head; there was moistness around her eyes. “You don’t love me. You don’t love anyone,” she glanced around the kitchen as if seeing it for the first time. And it seemed to me that she was addressing her remarks to it. “I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist or anything, but I am a woman and I know just one thing. You’ve never loved anyone or anything in your whole life!”

There was nothing to say. I wanted to tell her that I was grateful for her help, that I appreciated her kindness, but she continued before I had an opportunity to order my thoughts. “It’s very funny,” she said, “because the time you came here from the hospital, I felt very sorry for you. I really believed you needed help.” Half a thread of laughter caught in her throat. “There was no one to help you, no place for you to go. I remember, you were terribly thin and looked so sick.” She shook her head, as if clearing it of the memory. “A man who is sick and thin and needs help is just sheer, downright irresistible to a woman who’s sentimental. Then, having you around, being with you…” She shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

I felt embarrassed, and a little angry, that Bianca had caused this scene. I had grown fond of her, and she had been of great help to me. By forcing a rather commonplace sentiment into our situation, she had made the position untenable and I must prepare new plans. I wrote on my pad that it would be a good idea if I found another place to live. Eventually, of course, I would have moved anyway, but to move at this time was inconvenient.

She agreed. “I suppose so,” she said slowly, “because now I know that you don’t really need help, at least, not my help. I don’t think you needed it ever. Within you there is an unbreakable will which protects you, a hardness which shields you from everything ... and everybody ... except yourself. Whatever it is that is driving you, whatever you’re looking for—you’ll find it without my help.”

At that moment I felt that a door to another world stood before me, and by taking a single step through it, I would understand. Understand myself, the past, the present, the future. On my tongue were words and ideas which I could express and which would be understood. It was as if my brain had been thinking at a distance, translating other words and ideas for me, but not thinking as my own brain would perform. The words which I wanted to shout were no English or French or Arabic or words of an intemational language but words and phrases which to me were clear and clean, and as sharp as crystal, cutting as a razor’s edge, compact. The instant of attainment was gone, and I was back in the room with Bianca, and all that remained was the memory of a quotation from Schopenhauer: Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

It was agreed that I would move on the week end, which was still three days away, but events forced me to leave before that. I waited until seven o’clock that evening before going to the hotel to find Rosemary Martin. I believed that seven o’clock would be a logical time to find her in her room, at which hour she would probably be dressing for dinner. However, when I knocked at her door, there was no reply. As there was the possibility that she might be in the room and had refused to open the door, I stood silent before it for a long time. Although I listened intently, I could hear no rustle of movement within the room.

Returning to the main lobby, I remained uneasily by the bank of elevators which rose nearest to the location of room 944, hoping that I might see Rosemary Martin. This was by far the longest period of time that I had remained around the hotel, so after additional minutes passed I decided to return to the ninth floor and wait for her in her room. The corridor was vacant and shielding the Lock-Aid with my body, I released the spring, shooting the needle between the tumblers of the lock. On the third attempt, the lock opened, and I entered the room, closing the door behind me. The chamber was dark; in a moment my hand flicked the switch by the side of the door and the lights jumped on.

The bedroom was oblong with two windows at the far end of the room opposite the door. A large double bed made up, but with the spread mussed as from someone lying on it, was placed on one side of the room. Across from the bed stood a chest of drawers, and next to it a dressing table with winged mirrors. A chaise longue was placed before the windows, and a reading lamp on a small table rested beside it. A door, slightly ajar, opened into the bath in which the lights were out.

Still wearing my coat, I sat on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette. In a short time, I needed an ashtray and looked around for one. There were two—one each on the chest of drawers and the dressing table. Both of them were clean and unused, and unless Rosemary Martin had been out of the room all day, this fact seemed strange. She smoked and there should be evidence of ashes. On the other hand,

I told myself, she might have cleaned them herself, before going out.

As I was now standing by the chest of drawers, I opened them. They contained neat stacks of lingerie, stockings, nightgowns, and other usual items. In the bottom drawer were three handbags.

The bags had been emptied of their contents, or the contents had been transferred to the one currently being carried. They all contained scraps of old sales receipts, match folders, bobby pins, and one held a badly creased post card. It was a very cheap, highly colored scene of the New York skyline such as is sold in nearly every drugstore in the city. There was no address and no postmark on the back of it, and it obviously had not been sent through the mail. Written on it, however, were the words “Ten o’clock Tuesday morning.” I was returning the card to the bag, when I paused and stared at it a second time. There was something very familiar about the writing, and quite suddenly I realized why this was so. The sentence was in my own handwriting. I put the card in my pocket.

The dressing table disclosed nothing except a complete line of cosmetics. In the clothes closet, I again found something of importance. Another purse of Rosemary Martin’s was there; this one was evidently the one she was carrying. It held a compact, room key, billfold containing nearly six hundred dollars, comb, mirror, a cigarette case, lighter, and a number of receipts. Dumping the contents on the bed, I examined them carefully. Tucked into the billfold was a comer from a newspaper clipping which read:

… early college rowing races on Lake Quinsigamond near Worcester, Mass., and on Saratoga Lake, N. Y., but the Intercollegiate Rowing Association in 1895 settled on the Hudson at Pough …

That was all the clipping had contained, except that the date “1895” had been underlined in pencil. Rosemary Martin, to the best of my memory, had never mentioned collegiate rowing; I could not understand why she should carry a clipping concerning the sport in her billfold. However, I slipped the clipping into my pocket and returned the articles to her purse, placing it back in the closet.

As I left the closet, I heard the sound of scraping from the bathroom. Immediately the sound ceased, resumed after a moment, then lapsed into complete silence. Caution urged me to leave the bedroom, then I decided that whoever was in the bath had seen me and recognized me anyway. My knife found itself in my hand, and I approached the partly opened door warily. The sound resumed, and I thrust the door opens

Rosemary Martin was hanging by her neck in the shower stall.

The body rotated slowly, and the heel of one mule scraped gently against the side of the stall. I turned on the light and in the glare of the white tiles I was reminded of a morgue As she turned on the end of a leather belt, I could see that she had been dead for some time and her features were bloated and distorted with the disfigurations of strangulation,

Her neck had not been broken. This point, combined with another, troubled me. She had not tied her hands, and it is very difficult for a person to strangle herself to death deliberately. After losing consciousness, self-preservation causes a person to fight the rope, to tear free. I was sure that these points would not be overlooked by the police either.

I thought to myself, why did this have to happen now? I felt no particular sorrow that Rosemary Martin was dead. Whatever our relationship might have been in the past, I was sure that it had been one of convenience and selfishness for us both. I had lost precious time and information through her death; and the suspicion of her murder would bring the police to my door.

Returning to the bedroom, I examined the mussed bed, and it seemed to me a certainty that she had been strangled there, and then removed to the other room. In the closet found a pair of walking shoes, and I removed the laces and knotted them together. With this heavy cord, I tied her hands loosely behind her back, using a knot on one wrist and a slip knot on the other—such as a person tying it herself would be compelled to do.

My concern, an anxious one, was to escape from the hotel without being seen by anyone who might later tell the police. I carefully wiped away my fingerprints from both rooms with the aid of a bath towel. At the closet, I opened the purse again and removed five hundred dollars from it. I needed the money now, and I was convinced that Rosemary Martin needed it no longer. Deliberately, I took the time, forcing myself to check carefully that I had left nothing behind me. With the post card and clipping in my pocket, the dead cigarette flushed down the drain, I looked out into the corridor.

A couple was approaching down the hall, and I closed the door, waiting patiently for them to pass. After a few more minutes, there was no one in sight. Hurrying to a fire stairway, I descended to the sixth floor, where I returned to the main corridor and rang for the elevator.