Killer in Silk. H. Vernor Dixon
“Not any more. I am a widow.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s quite all right. It happened ten years ago.”
He swung his head on the pillow and watched her as she left the room and closed the door. Ten years? But she couldn’t be over thirty-two. That would mean her husband had died when she was only twenty-two. But a woman that young and that attractive and obviously possessing considerable wealth would certainly have married again. What the devil was the matter with her?
His imagination was titillated and he forgot his own problems and lay there thinking about her. When the door opened again he thought she was returning, but it was a stranger, a dark, little man with frog eyes who was carrying Morgan’s jacket and slacks. He grinned at Morgan and held up the clothes for him to see.
“These belong to you?”
Morgan nodded. Whoever had worked them over had done a very good job.
The cleaner noticed his look of approval and his smile deepened. “Fortunate for you,” he said, “we got a good tailor in the joint and there’s a guy here in the city that specializes in suede. When I first seen the stuff I threw up my hands. I told Mrs. Wilson to chuck ’em in the garbage can. But now look at ’em. It’s a miracle, believe me.”
“And cost plenty?”
The cleaner chuckled slyly and winked at him. “No worry for you. Mrs. Wilson paid. I know what goes on here, chum. You’re the third guy I seen in this apartment the past couple years.” He walked to the other end of the room, put the clothes in the dressing room, and started toward the door.
Morgan called after him, “Wait a minute. Have you been doing business here very long?”
“Twelve years.”
“Good. Then maybe you can satisfy my curiosity. Was the man Mrs. Wilson was married to a very old man?”
“Naw. Jay Wilson was a young squirt, maybe three-four years older’n his wife.”
“Really? But to die so young—”
“He didn’t die, chum. He was killed, right here in this house.” The little man paused, enjoying the moment to the utmost. Then he said, “It was Mrs. Wilson who shot him to death.”
TWO
AS SOON as the cleaner had gone, Morgan got out of bed and stood unsteadily on the floor until he felt some strength in his legs. He went to his suitcase, opened it and saw that the contents were undisturbed. He got out a pair of yellow slippers and slid his arms into a light pongee robe. He found a bowl of fruit in the kitchen and selected a red apple to munch on. The slight exercise of moving about tired him, so he dropped into a leather chair by one of the windows.
He thought of what the cleaner had told him about Mrs. Wilson. Murder was dramatic and suspenseful and highly entertaining—especially when a woman such as Mrs. Wilson had played the leading role on the spotlighted stage of death.
Morgan chuckled and leaned back in the chair with his eyes half closed. His writer’s imagination began immediately to hatch plots and counterplots. Because he knew virtually nothing about the principals involved, he was able to do as he pleased with what he was already calling the Wilson affair. His mind raced with all sorts of conjectures and theories. He was having a splendid time and thoroughly enjoying himself.
Morgan had the capacity to entertain himself without moving a muscle. He could lose himself in a daydream for hours on end, complete with dialogue, Technicolor, three dimensions and a story line on which he was able to hang fantastic situations and incidents and characters. Sometimes his dreaming took on such a sharpness and clarity that he was forced to drop the pose of dreamer and become a writer and critically assess the idea for book material. A large percentage of his stories was derived in such a manner. His dreams, however, were not for that purpose alone. He enjoyed them also for the passing pleasure they afforded him.
His life was composed as much of dreams as it was of solid substance. Rarely did he ever know where one left off and the other began. Though never having played the game himself, he had once written a story about a great tennis star. For the purpose of information and factual background, he had haunted tennis courts, studied rules and regulations and interviewed hundreds of players. In the end, he knew more about the game than most of the champions and so began using bits and pieces of tennis lore in dinner-table and barroom conversations. Ultimately, it was he, himself, who had been the great tennis star and could have been a champion except for an unfortunate fracture of the right ankle just before he was to play at Wimbledon. Whenever his audience was unusually sympathetic he felt such a twinge in his right ankle that he actually limped.
As a child he had learned to lie so plausibly that he was rarely challenged. He had always been the biggest liar in whatever school he attended, and during recess and lunch hours never failed to be surrounded by a gaping audience. Quite often his junior audience knew he was lying and he knew that they knew, but their pleasure in his tales was not lessened because of the fact.
The transition from free and easy amateur lying into professional writing had been so easy that he was hardly aware of having made a change. The great difference was principally in the larger audience. He was forced to become more critical and selective in the tales he put together. He was also forced to broaden his understanding of human nature, and had a better idea of what made people tick than a conference of psychiatrists. The ability to analyze, appraise and judge became instinctive with him. It was a talent that was never at rest and was always at work during his every waking moment.
Ordinarily, when he was convalescing from one of his binges, he suffered a state of depression so low that he walked on the brink of suicide. He had never made the attempt, he had never held a gun to his temple and he had never stood on the edge of a cliff, but mentally he had been so close so often that a grain of sand could have tilted the scales into the abyss.
On this occasion, however, a new element was introduced into his convalescence that shoved the old problem of self into the background. His creative faculties wrested depression from his shoulders and settled excitedly on the questions posed by Irene Wilson. It was undoubtedly the best medicine that could have been given to him.
When Dr. Rigsby arrived, just before the dinner hour, he was amazed to find his patient in far better spirits than he had anticipated. He suspected that Morgan had started drinking again, but found that not to be true and was more puzzled than ever.
He gave Morgan a hasty examination and said, “You’ve snapped out of it all right, but there’s a lot of damage to be repaired. You need sleep—”
“I need sleep like I need a hole in the head. Rest, yes, but all I’ve been doing is sleeping.”
“But not quite the sort of sleep you need. The main thing is food. You can eat solids from now on. Also drink a lot of milk and fruit juices between meals. I’ll tell Carl what to prepare for you.” He snapped his bag closed, studied Morgan, and said, “Mrs. Wilson tells me your name is O’Keefe and that you’re a writer.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of you.”
“Don’t get snobbish about it. You’re only one small unit of the largest organization in the world, the hundreds of millions who have never heard of O’Keefe.”
The doctor chuckled and said, “I see you have a sense of humor.”
“Don’t kid yourself, my friend. What passes for humor has its source in my bile. But I’ll bet you’re quite a card when it comes to flipping butter pats around at the Rotary luncheons.”
The doctor’s amiability vanished. He remembered having flipped butter pats at a Rotary luncheon and his face reddened. “Well,” he grumbled, “you’re getting along. A few more days and you’ll be out of here.”
“I’ll hate to leave. This place has such