Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 4. Whole No. 245, April 1964
The Needle Sharp As Ever
by Hugh Pentecost
One of Hugh Pentecost’s most interesting and unusual stories... Instead of telling you anything about the plot (even a “teaser”) suppose we list some of the titles considered by both the author and the editors (in effect, a group of “teasers”). The first title, suggested by the author, was “Poor Dear Consuela”; then, in more or less chronological order: “You Don’t Know George”; “Only the Good”; “We All Have To Learn”; “The Needle Man.” But finally your Editors decided on: “The Needle Sharp As Ever.”
It had been said of Sebastian Salazar, known as Sibby to his intimates, that he lived by the needle. The word needle, in this instance, had the verb-meaning — “to needle.” Sibby Salazar’s needle was, in fact, a venom-dipped tongue, used to inflame hidden wounds, to reveal dangerous secrets, to publicize private weaknesses, to inflate small disagreements into climax quarrels. The chief miracle of Sibby Salazar’s life, someone once remarked, was that he had managed to live to the age of 55 without being clobbered, or even murdered, by someone whose life he’d destroyed just “for fun.”
People who were not the victims of Sibby Salazar’s poisonous technique found him extremely amusing. He could tear to pieces a novel or a painting or a play or a public figure — like an actress or a politician — with a biting, oblique wit that was often shatteringly funny. He was a marvelous mimic, and the acid of his words was underlined by grotesque inflections and mannered imitations.
Sibby was handsome in a weak-mouthed way. At 55 his childish petulance was somehow amusing and winning, until the dark eyes narrowed and the needle was aimed directly at your insides — or at your heart. There was nothing amusing or winning about what happened then, except perhaps to a bystander whose sadism matched Sibby’s.
Luxury was an essential to living as far as Sibby Salazar was concerned. He liked silk against his skin. His underwear was silk and he carried his own silk sheets with him whenever he spent a week-end somewhere. His taste in foods and drink was exotic and expensive. His clothes were bright-colored, his maroon dinner jacket a sort of trademark. He wore an opera cloak lined with white satin when he went out in the evening. He had, he often remarked, “an allergy for the ordinary.”
His closest friends were women — young, rich women who were not altogether satisfied with their lives, their marriages, their romances. Sibby was the perfect escort because no man could, even for a moment, be seriously jealous of him. He was the perfect confidant. And in the end he usually managed to turn discontent into chaos.
Genuinely happy people couldn’t be bothered with Sibby because they had no need of him. Unhappy women found him amusing, sympathetic, and helpful, never realizing that he was actually a kind of sinister Peeping Tom greasing the runway to disaster for the sheer delight of witnessing the crackup. It was a sort of vindictive lifework with Sibby. No one must be allowed the kind of happiness which, psychologically and temperamentally, he couldn’t enjoy himself.
Sibby chose all his victims with an almost uncanny mediumistic ability to foresee the future — to foresee the tragic ending. The highway along which he had traveled his 55 years was marked by a number of suicides, near suicides, and an almost endless number of bloody fights. Violence, however, was only incidental to the wreckage of marriages, love affairs, businesses, and careers.
Sibby had never toyed with murder itself. But at 55 he was beginning to feel jaded, and he found himself in a situation which, if properly handled, could lead to that ultimate in sensation. He could, he foresaw, mastermind a killing, and with luck be a spectator to the actual deed. The fermenting ingredients of real violence were at hand. What Sibby’s internal crystal ball did not reveal to him was that, for once, he was being outmatched in evil, and that he was not, as he imagined, in full control of the “game.”
What Sibby Salazar privately called “my woman’s intuition” was not working on all cylinders that hot August morning. He had no premonition of calamity for himself, although he had an electric feeling that this could well be the day of climax in the lives of Consuela and George Conrad. It was a deliciously electric feeling, accompanied by something to which he wasn’t accustomed — a slight sensation of regret. It was altogether possible that something remotely like genuine affection for Consuela was what dulled Sibby’s perceptions.
He had never felt anything but contempt and distaste for the others; but he would miss Consuela. He had even considered the possibility of dropping the whole plan, but he knew he would never again be faced with so promising a situation. There was only one George Conrad, dark, brooding, violent, merciless. Poor, dear Consuela. She was, of course, asking for it. A few judicious proddings by Sibby, and George Conrad would explode like a hand grenade.
Yes, poor, dear Consuela...
However, Sibby thought, stretching his naked body sensuously on the silken sheets he’d brought with him to the Conrad country house, there would be the compensation of George’s death. Because George would die too, after a shaken and horrified Sibby gave his eyewitness account to the police. George’s death was the real bull’s-eye in the target — George, whom Sibby had overheard asking Consuela how long “is that crashing bore of a Sibby to be a member of the family?”
“Dear, dear Sibby,” Consuela had sighed a few days before when they had lunched together at the Colony. “Without your help I shall go out of my mind.”
Sibby’s luncheon consisted of a split of champagne and thinly sliced caviar sandwiches. He watched Consuela from under his heavy-lidded eyes, a faintly ironic smile moving the corners of his mouth. She was so very beautiful and so very helpless, he thought. She differed in one major respect from Sibby’s usual women friends. Consuela had not been a rich heiress rushed off her feet by a fortune hunter. Consuela had been lovely but penniless when she married George Conrad. Her determined mother had quietly died of relief shortly after the marriage — after Consuela had achieved her mother’s optimum hopes by making an alliance with the Conrad millions. Happiness and money had been synonymous in mama’s credo. The handsome, brooding George had been the catch of a generation, and for such a catch Consuela could be expected to put up with black tempers and sadistic outbursts of rage. Mama had been certain of that before she died.
But Consuela, Sibby realized, was not bearing up.
“It is two years now, Sibby dear,” Consuela said, “and I must find a way out.”
“You have found a way, if the current rumors are reliable,” Sibby said.
“Rumors?” Her blue eyes, bright as diamonds, seemed to mirror an inner terror.
“Greg Foster,” Sibby said. “Charming, but without any financial resources, my dear.”
“Who cares for money!” Consuela exclaimed lightly.
Sibby’s laughter was a rippling dissonance. His eyes moved over the sable jacket, the diamond earrings, the fabulous engagement and wedding ring combination on her left hand. He thought about the mansion on Fifth Avenue, the country estate in the Berkshires, the whole island in the West Indies, the Rolls Royce, the Mercedes, the Ferrari, the half dozen lesser cars, the horses, the power boats, the corps of servants in each establishment, the bottomless charge accounts with the most famous couturiers in the world. A few concealed bruises on that lovely body were not too much to bear, he thought. George Conrad paid a handsome price for his intimate privileges.