Generous Death

  I didn’t stick around to watch her last kick or to see him toss her body onto the flames. It wasn’t possible for me to get past them to the exit and fire blocked my path to the telephone with its button that automatically summoned the police. So I bent down and unzipped my boots as quickly as my shaking fingers allowed and then slipped the boots off so I could run quietly if I had to. I turned from the wrestlers and ran away from them, back down the long dark corridor toward the museum offices. I’d break a window in one of those offices and yell for help, I’d find another door and run for help, I’d …

  “Jenny!” It was Simon, free of Allison, shouting at me. “Come back! Help me put out the fire! Please! Jenny!”

  Then came his pounding footsteps after me. I wouldn’t be able to crash a window or find a door in time, not before he caught up with me. I’d have to hide somewhere in the museum, then wait for a chance to sneak back downstairs to some route of escape.

  He, who knew the building even better than I, found a light switch. And for a blinding moment, predator and prey were illuminated so that when I whirled around he could surely see the fear in my eyes. I saw the killer in his.

  His bloodied left hand hung limp, but probably not useless. He didn’t seem to have her gun; had it fallen into the fire? At least that afforded me the safety of distance—I would have liked to put plenty of distance between us.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he lied. “Stop, Jenny, you’ve got to help me!” He wasn’t In as good physical shape as I’d thought—already he was breathing hard. I felt a sudden fondness for those foul French cigarettes he smoked.

  He started toward me again. I knew I’d never be able to escape him in the light. I was paralyzed; I didn’t know what to do, though falling to the floor and weeping appealed to me a great deal.

  The problem was solved for me by the fire. It reached the fuse box and the central wiring. The corridor shut down to black once more. As I took off running again, I wasn’t entirely grateful for my reprieve, however, for in shutting off the electricity the fire had, also disarmed every single alarm, in the museum.

  I took the steps to the first floor and then to the second floor two at a time. All the rooms on the second floor opened into each other, so there were no dead ends where I could get boxed. There we could play endless cat and mouse until I guessed wrong or he guessed right. As for the squeaky old floor beneath us, we shared its hazards equally; at any given moment it might betray him to me, or it might whisper to Simon, “Psst, she’s over here.”

  The upper floors of the museum were dark as the inside of a temple on a moonless night. The original windows of Martha Paul’s house had been boarded up to provide more wall space for the display of paintings. In my stocking feet, I fled by memory into the cold gallery that was second on my right. Oriental sculpture. I prayed to all the Occidental and Oriental gods I could think of to help me remember the locations of all the sculptures that might teeter and topple if I crashed into them, of every bench that might trip me, of the red velvet ropes that were meant to cordon off visitors, but which might catch me at the waist and throw me violently, to the floor.

  From that gallery, I passed silently into the Persian Gallery and crouched down beside a wood and glass display case to listen.

  I didn’t hear a sound from Simon.

  I did hear sirens! And then shouting. What the alarms and I had failed, to do, the neighbors had accomplished. I blessed them for having looked out their windows and seen the smoke or fire. I almost relaxed, thinking that with the arrival of the police and firemen, I’d be safe.

  The wooden floor creaked.

  I knew that creak. It told me Simon was in the Sculpture Gallery near the entrance to the Persian Gallery where I crouched. Fool, I called myself, idiot. If my situation had momentarily looked more hopeful with the coming of help, Simon’s looked more desperate. He’d find me now because he had to. Somehow, he had to kill me and get my body into the fire before anyone knew we were there. Only then could he escape from the building. Once out, he could run up with the rest of the crowd and no one would question his presence. Of course he was there, they’d say, he was the museum director.

  I stood up.

  The floor did not creak, but unfortunately my knees did.

  “Jenny, love.”

  I ran for the outer door and didn’t give a damn how much noise I made. In fact, I began screaming. With people arriving downstairs, it seemed the sensible thing to do.

  For a few desperate minutes, we wound in and out of the labyrinth of galleries like art devotees gone mad—past the knowing eyes of Buddha and Rama Krishna, through the reconstructed Shinto Shrine, back and forth, racing through thousands of years of culture like broken time machines.

  I stopped screaming. I didn’t have the breath for it any longer. Outside, the sirens were louder and closer; unintelligible yelling mingled with the wails. They’d never be able to distinguish my screams from all the others anyway, so I gave it up as a lost cause and crossed silently in my stocking feet, into the Chinese Furniture Gallery.

  Trembling, exhausted, I decided to crawl up onto the Testered Bed With an Alcove to hide. Once on the bed, I closed the thin silk curtains that surrounded me and it on all four sides. The bed itself, that fine old piece of furniture, centuries old, did not creak. They don’t, I thought wildly, make them like they used to. I almost laughed hysterically, out loud.

  I clamped my hands across my nose and mouth to stifle the noise of my breathing. I heard Simon follow me into the gallery. Then I heard nothing at all.

  I waited.

  He waited.

  And then he walked over to the bed so quietly that I would not have been able to hear him if I hadn’t been absolutely still myself. I tensed my exhausted muscles, ready to roll through the curtains and off the bed if he reached for me.

  He stepped up on the platform.

  He stepped into the little alcove that was attached to the bed, the alcove where a Chinese aristocrat might have entertained a friend with tea and conversation.

  He sat down on one of the two facing benches in the alcove, just a thin silk curtain and about four feet away from me. Obviously, he didn’t know I was there. Now I could hear the breathing he was trying to quiet—harsh gasps dredged up from deep in his unhealthy, equally exhausted lungs. I knew he’d never be able to hear my small movements over the noise of his own breathing in his ears. For a crazy moment. I wanted to speak up suddenly and say, “Now aren’t you sorry you didn’t stop smoking?” It was momentarily hard to remember that the man in the alcove was not my old friend Simon but my deadly enemy who had already killed two people and tried to kill a third.

  With that chilling reminder, my moment of hysterical craziness passed, leaving in its place a cold clear fear that focused my mind wonderfully on one object—the question of how to disable Simon so I could escape.

  I crouched silently on my haunches on the bed and wondered what in hell I was going to do next. My right foot went abruptly to sleep. Wonderful, I thought. If I made a rolling dive, I’d fall down again the minute I stood up. My left nostril started to run; I’d have given anything to blow my nose or sniff. The middle of my back ached, as did the inside of one ear. I didn’t dare swallow for fear he’d hear me. And, naturally, I felt a tickle in my throat that made me desperately want to cough.

  I had two choices: I could think about my misery or think about getting out of there. I forgot the various bodily complaints, I stopped listening to the sirens and shouting because they were not likely to he of any help to me. It was a case of help thyself, or never need help again.

  A weapon. I would have killed for a weapon. More to the point, I would have killed with a weapon. Did Simon have Allison’s little gun? Like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, he certainly had bigger legs with which to trip me and stronger arms with which to grab me and more massive hands with which to strangle me. I had only a penknife tucked away in a pocket of my purse in Simon’s office. And a winter scarf, draped helpfull
y across the back of the chair in his office.

  There was nothing at hand with which to knock him out, nothing with which to stab him. I couldn’t tackle him with my bare hands because he was at least eighty pounds heavier than I and not so terribly out of shape that he couldn’t throw me about as he pleased.

  What I needed was to catch him off balance and somehow restrain him just long enough for me to drag my painfully tingling feet to the exit. And from there tumble if I had to down the stairs to the first floor where there were windows I could crash open and shout out of.

  My legs reported to my brain that they didn’t like being bent for so long in so awkward a position. My brain told them to shut up and cooperate or we’d all be in trouble.

  He was still breathing noisily and trying to cover the sound. Any minute now he might lunge out of the alcove to search for me again. Did he think I’d already escaped down the steps? Maybe I should continue to crouch on the bed until he left it; maybe he wouldn’t detect my presence once he got the sound of his gasping under control.

  Maybe the moon is blue, too. I didn’t like those ideas; they depended too heavily on luck and this was a day on which luck hadn’t shown, any particular propensity to favor me. It was far more likely that any moment he would sense me kneeling so close to him. I had to act fast, before he did.

  I peered at the old silk curtains, wondering if they’d do as a weapon to strangle him with. But no, by the time I tore them down he’d have heard me and lunged at me.

  And then suddenly, I knew exactly what weapon to use and where to find it. I had it on me.

  Slowly, I reached up to unfasten the top four buttons of my blouse. Soft as the old silk was, it still made a faint swishing noise which very nearly gave me a heart attack which would have rendered the whole exercise unnecessary, I stopped my hands in mid-air, paralyzed. When he didn’t react, I knew he hadn’t heard. I moved faster, but it was harder because now my fingers were really trembling.

  I got the buttons undone.

  Then I unfastened the buttons at each wrist.

  I put my fingers between my breasts and touched the plastic clasp of my brassiere. Thank God I wore a front-opening variety. Pressing my fingers very tight against both sides of the clasp so my flesh would muffle the sound of the snap, I unhooked it.

  With my right hand, I reached inside my now-loose blouse and slowly, slowly pushed my brassiere strap down to the middle of my upper arm. With the same hand, I then reached up inside my blouse from the wrist and pulled the strap down. It caught at my elbow. My heart missed a few beats while I straightened my arm so I could slide the strap past the obstacle, over my wrist and then over my fist until the half inch width of tough white elastic hung loose below the waistband of my skirt.

  I would have breathed deeply if I dared.

  I performed the same gymnastics with the other arm and the other strap. And still, the rasp of his breathing deafened his ears to my small sounds. When both strap were draped at my waist, I held my breath and tugged the whole bra down, then slid it around me until it pulled out from under my blouse and lay free in my hands on my lap.

  Every woman knows the lazy way to remove her bra without having to take off her blouse and then go to the trouble of putting it back on again.

  I slid my shaking hands through the armholes and wrapped the strap tightly in my fingers. I held the bra stretched out in front of me and it glowed white in the complete darkness: a weapon for a woman. Or a transvestite.

  Well, Simon love, I thought, you’ve always wanted to get me out of my clothes and into a bed…

  I lunged through the silk curtains toward his head. My aching legs failed me so that I fell upon him rather than tacking him. But his reflexes were a second too slow. I threw the bra over his head, wrapped it around his throat and pulled backward with all my strength.

  The gun went off, a late reflexive shot like Allison’s, answering my question as to whether he’d taken it from her.

  Then I heard it drop on the floor and he threw both hands up to fight me off. By then I’d twisted the cotton and elastic several times behind his neck. I’d managed to knock him off balance so his upper body slammed painfully against the edge of the bed; his lower body twisted against the seat and floor of the alcove.

  I half stepped, half fell off the edge of the bed, dragging his big head and body with me until I had him where I wanted him. The blows he beat on me were bruising and they hurt like hell.

  I drew the straps around opposite sides of the thin post that supported the bed’s canopy and tied the tightest knots I could. He fought and twisted so hard I worried the bed might come down on both of us. I prayed my knots and the ancient wood would hold long enough for me to run away.

  I started to pull back from him.

  One of his flailing arms knocked me back toward him and with his other hand he grabbed blindly for my hair, catching an agonizing handful of it and then using it to pull me down across his face. I bit his cheek as hard as I could and tasted blood. In that instant of his pain and shock, his grip loosened and I pushed myself away.

  I rolled off him and the bed, missing the last vicious and desperate kick he aimed at me. I stumbled across the gallery floor while he thrashed like a beached and wounded whale.

  Instinctively, almost unconsciously, I fumbled with my buttons, managing to fasten them again. God only knows what ridiculous and inbred sense of modesty prevailed. I was just tucking in the last edge of the tail of my blouse when the outer door slammed and several people with flashlights came pouring into the gallery.

  The sudden light hurt my eyes so I put my forearm protectively over them.

  “Jenny!”

  I couldn’t see him, but I threw myself toward the sound of his voice. Immediately, I was in Geof’s arms and it was impossible to tell which of us was shaking more.

  From that safe haven, I watched Ailey Mason and two firemen weave their flashlights around the gallery. All three beams came to rest at once on Simon, illuminating his desperate, bug-eyed, purple face and the white fabric that choked him.

  Mason held a gun on him while the firemen cautiously untied him. Simon sank to the floor of the alcove, gasping painfully.

  One of the firemen held up the weapon I had used. It dangled absurdly from his fingers. Mason flashed his light on it, then on Simon, then on me. And finally, the hysterical laughter bubbled out of my throat.

  It must have seemed like a classic locked-room mystery to Ailey Mason: a man with a brassiere wrapped murderously around his throat, and the only woman in the room has her blouse neatly buttoned and tucked into her skirt.

  The expressions on the faces of the men were so funny I began to cry.

  Chapter 35

  We sprawled—Geof and I and a weary cohort of neighbors, firemen and police—on chairs and floor of the Port Frederick Community Center. It had been opened to the scores of people who’d poured out of their warm houses on this frigid night to help rescue the treasures in the Martha Paul.

  We drank gallons of coffee and munched dozens of doughnuts. We smiled companionably and virtuously at one another, sharing a communal pat on the back for our successful, efforts. Some people closed their eyes briefly, but most of us couldn’t sleep for the rushes of adrenaline surging through us.

  We’d just performed a Herculean task in miserable weather and dangerous conditions. We were proud of ourselves. And exhausted.

  By midnight, the old museum/house looked like an ice palace because as the firemen extinguished the blazes, they coated the mansion in ice. If the fire hadn’t rained it, the weight of the ice surely would—not to mention the water damage when all that ice melted, or the smoke damage.

  While the firemen sprayed and hacked in the lower south end of the museum where the fire started, we volunteers formed a human chain to remove the art to relative safety. It was hard, heavy work, and God only knows how many nicks we knocked in costly picture frames, but we got the job done. Everything was laid on huge tarps spread on the snow
y ground, then covered by other tarps. Now, armed police from neighboring towns guarded the several centuries of beauty and genius that lay on the lawns and in the parking lot of the museum. “Hell of a time of year for an outdoor art show,” one volunteer was heard to crack.

  We wouldn’t know until morning—or even later—about smoke damage to our treasures. At least none was destroyed by fire. Well, almost none. We did lose several, paintings in the storeroom, but they were there in the first place because they were examples of the occasional lapses of good artistic judgment on the part of certain curators. Nobody, especially those curators, would miss them. And we could use the insurance money from, them to purchase more worthwhile works of art. Thank you so much, Allison Parker.

  They thought they’d found her and the old guard among the icy ashes, but the fire had burned so hot and long at its source that identification of human remains was hard to make. Of Allison and the guard, only one was mourned.

  Simon was taken first to a hospital to repair the damage I’d inflicted on his throat, and then to jail. I hoped his throat was sore as hell. I hoped it hurt so bad he could hardly swallow, much less talk. I hoped he was painfully bruised from his battering against the bedpost.

  I was not in a forgiving mood. My head hurt where he’d yanked my hair and I had a few blue bruises of my own to nurse. I would have liked to have seen my teeth marks on his cheek; I hoped it got infected.

  Geof’s head hung off the back of the straight-backed chair where he had finally, wearily, slumped to a well-deserved rest. His arms hung limp at his sides and his eyes were closed. Without opening them, he said, “Your sister called the station to see if you are okay.”