Or did I? Perhaps I never knew her at all. Perhaps I was just beginning to discover her.
“Jeff,” she said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Did I do something?”
That was sort of a leading question.
“Jeff—” She paused, a significant pause that was pregnant with meaning, and waited for me to unburden my alleged mind.
I said: “How come you killed her with the knife?”
The silence was strikingly loud.
Her face never cracked but there was just the merest twitch of her right eye and the slightest trembling of one shoulder. That was enough. Then she was calm and relaxed and said things that didn’t mean anything to me because I did not hear them. I sat there mute and deaf with rage and self-pity and hate and every emotion in the catalogue except happiness, and finally I asked her to start over at the beginning because I hadn’t heard one goddamn word that came out of her mouth.
“The knife was right there,” she said. “You cut her throat with it. What are you talking about?”
“I never saw any knife.”
“But it was there! Jeff, are you sure? Because … because if you didn’t then somebody else must have done it and you’re in the clear. Of course we’ll still have to go to Mexico because there’s no way to prove it and you did rape her, but—”
“Candy.” I had just remembered something, something that made Mr. Nobody nobody at all. I had thought that Mr. Nobody had already died within my mind, but evidently he hadn’t because this present realization was sufficiently crushing to keep me speechless for a second or two. It was all I could do to get her name out in a flat two syllables devoid of any intonation whatsoever. That was enough—the tone of my voice must have combined with the expression on her face to silence her because her mouth snapped shut and she didn’t say another word.
“She died in your arms,” I said. “She talked to you and told you all about it and died in your arms.”
She looked at me, puzzled.
“That’s how you knew I had been there,” I went on. I was talking very easily now—it seemed almost as though someone else was talking with my mouth and some other brain moving my lips, it was that simple.
“You went to her and she told you I had been there. And then she died in your arms. Right?”
She nodded.
“Quite a lot of talking,” I said. “Quite a speech from a woman with her throat cut from ear to ear.”
The color drained out of her. It was the first time I had seen her genuinely shaken and the sight did something to me. It was as though I was getting my first real indication that Candy Cain was a human being like the rest of us, a person who was not wholly invulnerable.
But she recovered quickly. She didn’t say anything at first but the color seeped back into her flesh as suddenly as it had left it and she lay there keen-eyed, waiting for me to say something else.
“This is unnecessary,” I said. “You already know what you did but I’m going to tell you, anyway. You walked in on Caroline, saw I was an obvious patsy for a play like this and killed her. I don’t have the slightest idea why you did it but I don’t suppose that makes much difference.”
There was a touch of humour in those eyes of hers now and I hated her for it.
I pushed on. “Then you cleaned out the apartment, beat it to the Astor and phoned me. You managed to convince me that I had killed her—how could I figure it for anything else? You were always careful never to say a word about how she got it. You never mentioned any knife. As soon as you did it would have been all over. Because I did a lot of things in that apartment without knowing just what I was doing, but I know damned well I never had my hands on a knife.”
I fumbled for a cigarette and got one going. I didn’t offer her one and she didn’t ask for one. I smoked and took a few breaths.
“Never played the radio,” I said. “I should have noticed how nervous you were when that one newscast was on, but I was so nervous myself that it sailed right past me. Now it makes sense. But how in God’s name did you expect to get away with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Good God! I couldn’t go the rest of my life without stumbling across a newspaper story. What kind of world do you think this is? Even in Mexico there would have been some mention somewhere and someday I would have hit it and the jig would have been up. How did you figure to get clean?”
She smiled. I didn’t particularly care for that smile.
“Jeff,” she said, softly and clearly, “I did get away with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“You got away with it this far. But now you’re not getting away with it any further. I know damn well I didn’t kill the Christie bitch and that you did.”
“So what?”
I just looked at her.
“Can you prove it, Jeff?”
I stammered something quite meaningless.
“You can’t prove a thing, Jeff. You know and I know that I killed Caroline. After you left she decided that I wasn’t worth the agony you had just put her through. She wanted me to leave, Jeff. She was going to throw me into the street.”
“That’s where you belong.”
“She was going to throw me out on the street,” she repeated, and she didn’t act as though she had heard a word I said. “I had to kill her. She had all that money lying around the apartment, money and jewels and all, and all I had to do was kill her and it would be mine and we could run away together. You and me.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I like you, Jeff, and because—”
“Cut the crap.”
“That’s part of it,” she said, her eyes level. “I’d rather live with you than anybody else, I guess. But running away with you made it safe for me.”
I was baffled and it must have shown on my face because my expression got a tiny laugh out of her.
“If you didn’t come away with me,” she said, “they might not have proved you killed her. You could have taken one of those lie detector tests or something and wormed your way out. But you’re not safe now, Jeff. You ran off and nobody outside of you and me is ever going to believe you didn’t kill Caroline. Nobody in the world.”
“But you ran off with me—”
“I know. That makes me an accessory after the fact. And I stole all the money and jewels and that makes me a thief. But it doesn’t make me a murderer, Jeff, and that’s what it makes you. They may send me to prison for a while, but they’ll send you to the electric chair.”
I couldn’t say a word.
“Now do you see what I mean? You found out about me killing Caroline, but that doesn’t change a damn thing. You still have to get out of the country and I’m still going with you. We can live good in Mexico, Jeff. We can have each other just the same, and we couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t killed Caroline. We can have each other and we can be happy and—”
I couldn’t believe it. I looked at her there, all naked and all unashamed, confessing a murder and trying to make it appear both rational and blameless, confessing a frame-up and propositioning the guy she’d just framed in the same breath.
It made no sense. No—it made sense if you could believe in Candy. Candy was the part of the equation that made no sense at all. Candy’s reasoning fit neatly with Candy, but Candy herself did not fit in with anything in the entire world. She was a species all her own.
“Look,” she said. “I know you’re mad at me right now but you might as well be practical. If you want to see me punished for murdering Caroline you’re crazy. I couldn’t possibly be convicted. There’s not a chance in the world.”