The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder

  From the pocket of her loose coat, Jane produced a banana, its partly opened peel limp and blackening. Eddie gave a squeak of thanks, ripped the rest of the peel off and handed it back to Jane, who pocketed it. Jane was already walking towards the back of the house, towards the kitchen and dining room.

  She opened a drawer in the dining room, then a second before she found what she wanted, and at once began loading her reticule with handfuls of silver spoons, forks and knives. She took a silver salt and pepper set from the dining room table. Then she went into the living room, went at once to the telephone table, where a silver-framed photograph stood. This she put into her bag, and also a handsome paper knife which had what looked like a jade handle. By now barely three minutes had passed, Eddie had finished his banana, Jane whispered his name, opened her coat, and Eddie leapt. He clung to her big sweatered bosom with his twenty fingers and toes, aided also by his long tail, as he had clung to his mother when he was small.

  They were out of the house. To Eddie, the hum of the car grew louder, then they were inside the car, Jane sat down with a thump, and the car moved off. The women talked.

  “Easy, very easy, that one,” Jane said, getting her breath back. “But I didn’t bother with the bedrooms.”

  “Silver?”

  “You bet! Ha-ha!—Ah, a nice whiskey’ll taste good!”

  Rose, younger than Jane, drove prudently. This was their seventh or eighth robbery this summer. Rose was twenty-one, divorced from a first marriage, and she’d fallen out with her boyfriend two months ago. Someone like Jane, a little crazy excitement, had been just what she needed. But she had no intention of doing a stretch in prison, as Jane had done, if she could help it. “So? The Ponsonby place now?”

  “Yep,” said Jane, enjoying a cigarette. For two weeks, they had made telephone calls now and then to the Ponsonby house, and no one had ever answered. Two or three times in the last week, Jane and Rose had cruised past the big house, and had not seen any sign of life. Tommy, their fence, hadn’t watched the house, hadn’t had the time, he said. Jane thought the people were away on vacation. It was July. Lots of people were away, with only one neighbor or maybe a cleaning woman coming in to water the plants. But had the Ponsonbys a burglar alarm, for instance? It was a very swank section. “Maybe we ought to phone one more time,” Jane said. “Got the number handy?”

  Rose had. She stopped the car in the parking area of a roadside bar-and-steakhouse.

  “You stay here, Eddie,” Jane said, sticking Eddie under a disorder of plastic shopping bags and a raincoat on the back seat. She gave him a rap with her heavily ringed fingers to let him know she meant it.

  The rap caught Eddie on the top of the head. He was only slightly annoyed. The two women were back before long, before it became unpleasantly hot in the car, and they drove on for a while, then stopped again. Eddie was still sitting on the back seat, hardly conspicuous in the debris except for the white cap of fur on the crown of his head. He watched as Rose got out. This was the way things always went when he had a job to do: Rose got out first, came back, then Jane put him under her coat and took him out of the car.

  Jane hummed a tune to herself and smoked a cigarette.

  Rose came back and said, “No window open and the ones in back are locked. Nobody home, because I rang the bell and knocked front and back.—What a house!” Rose meant that it looked rich. “Maybe breaking a back window is best. Let Eddie in that way.”

  The neighborhood was residential and expensive, the lawns generous, the trees tall. Rose and Jane were parked, as usual, around the corner from the house they were interested in.

  “Any sign of life in the garage?” Jane asked. They had thought that there might be a servant sleeping there without a telephone, or with a different telephone from the Ponsonbys’.

  “Of course not or I’d have told you,” said Rose. “Have you emptied the tapestry bag yet?”

  Jane and Rose did this, using the old gray raincoat to wrap the lot of silverware and the other objects up in, and this they put on the back seat, without themselves leaving the front seat.

  “Why don’t we try Eddie down a chimney?” Jane asked. “It’s so quiet here, I don’t like the idea of breaking a window.”

  “But he doesn’t like chimneys,” Rose said. “This house has three storys. Pretty long chimneys.”

  Jane thought for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell? If he doesn’t like going all the way down, he can come up again.”

  “And suppose he just stays up there—on the roof?”

  “So—we’ve lost a good monkey,” said Jane.

  A few weeks ago, they had practiced with Eddie at a Long Island house which belonged to a friend of Jane’s. The chimney top had been only twelve feet from the ground because it was a one-story cottage. Eddie hadn’t liked going down the chimney, but he had done it two or three times, with Rose on a ladder encouraging him, and Jane waiting to give him raisins and peanuts when he unlocked the front door for her. Eddie had coughed and rubbed his eyes, and made a lot of chattering noises. They’d tried him again the next day, tossing him onto the roof and pointing to the chimney and talking to him, and he’d done it well then, had come down and opened the door. But Rose remembered the worry wrinkles around his brows that had made him look like a little old man, remembered how pleased he was when she’d given him a bath and a brushing afterward. Eddie had given her a most endearing smile and clasped her hands. So Rose hesitated, wondering about Eddie, worried about herself and Jane.

  “Well?” said Jane.

  “Chi-chi,” said Eddie, knowing something was up. He scratched an ear, and looked attentively from one to the other of the women. He preferred to listen to Rose, her voice being gentler, though he lived with Jane.

  Things got moving, but slowly.

  Jane and Rose maintained an air of calm. Rose, in case of any possible interference at the door, someone asking what was her business, was prepared to say she was offering her services as a cleaning woman for four dollars an hour. If anyone accepted, Rose gave a false name and made a date which she never kept. This had happened only once. It was Rose who kept track of the houses they had robbed, and of the one house where someone had come to the door to answer her knock, even though no one had answered the telephone in that house just five minutes before. After they had robbed a certain neighborhood, sometimes three houses in one hour, they never went back to it. In Rose’s car, they had gone as far as a hundred and fifty miles from their base, which was Jane’s apartment in Red Cliff, New Jersey. If they had to separate for any reason, they had a roadside café picked out or a drugstore somewhere, as a meeting place, the one who was carless (Jane) having to make her way there by taxi or bus or on foot. This had happened also only once so far in their two months of operations, one time when Rose had been perhaps unnecessarily anxious and had driven off. Today their rendezvous was the bar-and-steakhouse where they had just been to ring the Ponsonby house.

  Now Jane, with Eddie under her lightweight woolen coat, walked up the rather imposing front path of the Ponsonby mansion. Such goodies in there Jane could scarcely imagine. They’d certainly be more than she could carry away in the reticule she called her tapestry bag. Jane rang, waited, then knocked with the brass knocker, not at all expecting anyone to answer, but she had to go through the motions in case a neighbor was watching. Finally Jane went round by the driveway to the back door, with Eddie still clinging to her under her coat. She knocked again. Everything was as quiet as could be, including the garage with its one closed window over the closed doors.

  “Eddie, it’s the chimney again,” Jane whispered. “Chimney, understand? Now you go right up! See it?” She pointed. Great elm trees sheltered her from view from any side. There seemed to be at least four chimneys projecting from the roof. “Chimney and then the door! Right, Eddie? Good boy!” She released Eddie on to a drainpipe which went up o
ne corner of the house.

  Eddie managed well, slipping a few inches here and there, but he had no trouble in getting a hold on the somewhat rough exterior brick. Suddenly he was up, for a second silhouetted against the sky, leaping, and then he vanished.

  Jane saw him jump to a chimney pot, peer down, hesitate, then run to another. She was afraid to call encouragement. Were the chimneys stopped up? Well, wait and see. No use worrying yet. Jane stepped back to see better, did not see Eddie, and made her way to the front door again. She expected to hear Eddie sliding bolts, but she heard nothing at all. She rang halfheartedly, for appearance’s sake.

  Silence. Had Eddie got stuck in a chimney?

  A passerby on the sidewalk glanced at Jane and went on, a man of about thirty, carrying a package. A car went by. Rose, in the car, was out of sight around the corner. Eddie might be stuck, Jane supposed, might have been put out of commission by soot. And the minutes were passing. Should she play it safe and leave? On the other hand, Eddie was damned useful, and there were a good two more months of summer to operate in.

  Jane went to the back of the house again. She looked up at the roof, but saw no sign of Eddie. Birds cheeped. A car shifted gears in the distance. Jane went to the kitchen window at the back, and at once the monkey leapt on to the long aluminium drainboard. He was black with soot, even the top of his head was dark gray, and he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He tapped on a pane and hopped from one foot to the other, wanting her to open a window.

  Why hadn’t they trained him for windows? Well, they’d have to get on to that. Just a matter of unscrewing—even from here, Jane could see the mechanism. “Door!” said Jane, pointing towards the kitchen door, because any door would have done, but Eddie had the habit of going to front doors.

  Eddie sprang down, and Jane heard him pulling bolts.

  But the door did not open. Jane tried it.

  Jane heard his “Chi-chi-chi!” which meant he was annoyed or frustrated. The bolts were stiff, Jane supposed, or it was a mortise lock, requiring a key from inside to open. And some bolts took strength beyond Eddie’s. Jane felt suddenly panicky. Ten or twelve minutes had passed, she thought. Rose would be worried. Maybe Rose had already gone off to the roadside steakhouse. Jane wanted to go back to Rose and the car. The alternative was breaking a window, and she was afraid to make that much noise and still get away with Eddie on foot.

  Again making an effort to appear unhurried, Jane went down the driveway to the sidewalk. Around the corner, Jane saw with relief that Rose was still waiting in the car.

  “Well,” said Jane, “Eddie can’t get a door open and I’m scared. Let’s take off.”

  “Oh? Where is he? He’s still in?”

  “In the kitchen in back.” Jane was whispering through the car’s open window. She opened the door on her side.

  “But we can’t just leave him there,” Rose said. “Did you see anybody—watching you?”

  Jane got in and closed the door. “No, but let’s get going.”

  Rose was thinking the police might connect a monkey with the robberies they’d done. How could anyone explain a monkey in a closed house? Of course, anyone who found Eddie might not at once telephone the police, might just give him to the S.P.C.A. or a zoo. Or mightn’t Eddie break a window and escape—and then what? Rose realized she wasn’t thinking logically, but it seemed to her that they ought to get Eddie out. “Can’t we break a back window?” Rose’s hand was already on the door handle.

  “No, don’t!” Jane made a negative gesture, but Rose was already gone. Jane sat rigid. She’d get the blame if someone saw Rose breaking in. Rose would talk, Jane thought. And Jane had the police record.

  Rose was forcing herself to walk slowly past a young man and a girl who were arm in arm, talking and laughing. The Ponsonby house. It was so grand, it had a name: Five Owls. Rose went into the driveway, still calm but not wanting to go through the motions of ringing the front doorbell, because she did not want to waste the time.

  Eddie was in the kitchen, squatting on a table (she saw him through a side window), shaking something that looked like a sugar bowl upside down, and she had a brief impression of something broken, like a platter, on the yellow linoleum floor. Eddie must be desperate. By the time Rose came round the corner of the house, Eddie was on the drainboard just behind the back windows. Rose made an effort to raise a window and gave it up. She extricated a cuff of her white trousers from a rosebush. Almost at her feet, she found a rock the size of her fist, and tapped it once against a rectangular pane. She struck again at some jagged pieces of glass at the edges, but Eddie was already through, chattering with joy.

  Rose gathered him quickly under her jacket, and walked into the driveway. She could feel Eddie trembling, maybe with relief. When Rose reached the corner, she saw that the car had gone. Her car. She’d have to find a taxi. Or walk to the roadhouse. No, that was too far. A taxi. And she’d left her handbag with her money in the car. Christ! She pressed Eddie’s body reassuringly, and walked on, looking for some promising intersection where a taxi might be cruising. Where was Jane? Back at her own apartment? At the roadside place? What was the taxi driver going to say if she had no money to pay him? Rose couldn’t tell the driver to go to the house of one of her friends, because she didn’t want any of her friends to know about Eddie, about Jane, about what she’d been doing for the last weeks.

  She had no luck spotting a taxi. But she did come to a shopping center—supermarket, dry cleaning shop, drugstore, all that—and she had some coins in her jacket pocket so she went into the drugstore. With Eddie holding on under her jacket, Rose looked up a taxi company and dialed. The shopping center was called Miracle Buy. She gave that name.

  In about five minutes, a taxi arrived. Rose had been standing on a little cement island in the parking area, keeping a lookout for the taxi, because taxis weren’t always painted in bright colors in neighborhoods like this.

  “Can you drive to Red Cliff, please? Corner of Jefferson Avenue and Mulhouse.”

  They were off. Seventeen miles at least, Rose supposed. She didn’t think Jane would have driven to the steakhouse, or have been able to find it. Jane wasn’t a good driver. But she could have found her way home, and probably had. Rose had a key to Jane’s apartment, but that was in her handbag too.

  The taxi reached Jefferson and Mulhouse.

  “Can you wait one minute? I want to speak to a friend, then I’ll be back.”

  “How soon?” asked the driver, looking around at Rose. His eyes moved over her, and Rose could see that he thought she had no pocketbook, therefore no money. “What you got there, a monkey?”

  Eddie had stuck an arm, then his head out of Rose’s jacket before she could push him back. “Friend’s pet,” Rose said. “I’m delivering him. Then I’ll be down and pay you.” Rose got out.

  Rose didn’t see her own car. There were lots of cars parked at the curbs. She rang Jane’s bell, one of four bells in the small apartment building. She rang again, three short rings, one long, which was her ring by agreement with Jane, and to Rose’s great relief, the release button sounded. Rose climbed the stairs, and knocked on a door on the third floor.

  “It’s Rose!” she said.

  Jane opened the door, looking a bit frightened, and Rose went in.

  “Here’s Eddie. Take him. I need some money for the taxi. Give me twenty or thirty—or hand me my bag.”

  “Anything happen? Anybody following you?”

  “No. Where’s some money? You brought my bag up?”

  Eddie had scampered on to the sofa, and was sitting on his haunches, scratching his sooty head.

  Rose went down with her handbag, and paid the driver. He said the fare was twenty-seven, though he had no meter, and Rose gave him three tens. “Thanks very much!” Rose said with a smile.

  “Right!” He drove off.

&n
bsp; Rose didn’t want to go back to Jane’s, but she felt she had to say something. Make a speech and end it, she thought, and now was as good a time as any, and thank God, the taxi driver hadn’t said anything more about Eddie. Rose gave her special ring again.

  “What happened with the silverware?” Rose asked.

  “Tommy just took it. I called him right away—I’m sorry I got scared back there, Rosey dear, but I did. Breaking a window is nuts!”

  Rose was relieved that Tommy had come and gone. He was a skinny, red-haired man with a stutter, inefficient looking, but so far he’d never made a mistake that Rose knew of. “Don’t forget to give Eddie a bath, will you?” Rose said.

  “You always like to do that. Go ahead—Don’t you want a coffee? It’s easy.”

  “I’m leaving.” Rose hadn’t sat down. “I’m sorry, Jane, but I think I’d better pull out. You said yourself—I did the wrong thing today, breaking a window.”

  Jane looked at Rose, braced her hands on her hips, and glanced at Eddie on the sofa.

  Eddie was nervously examining the nails of his nearly hairless left hand.

  “If something happened,” Jane said, “it’s better if you tell me. I’m the one who has to face it.”

  “Nothing happened. I just want to quit and—I don’t want any share of today’s, thanks. I’ll—You left the keys in my car? Where is the car?”

  “What happened with the taxi driver?”

  “Nothing! I paid him and that was that.”

  “He saw Eddie?”

  “Well, yes. I said he was a pet I was delivering. I’ll be off, Jane.—Bye, Eddie.” Rose felt compelled to cross the room and to touch Eddie’s head.

  Eddie glanced up sadly, as if he had understood every word, and began nibbling his nails.

  Rose moved towards the door. “Don’t forget to bathe him. He’ll be happier.”

  “To hell with him!” said Jane.