Benson said: “Here was the original equation. A wife in the middle, a man and a woman on the ends. She was in the way, but of which one of them? Vilma Lyons claimed it was Willis who had a pash on her. Willis didn’t claim anything; the man as a rule won’t.
“I watched them to see which would approach the other. Neither one did. The innocent party, because he had never cared in the first place; the guilty, because he or she had a guilty conscience, was not only afraid they were being watched by us, but also that the other might catch on in some way, connect the wife’s death with him or her, if they made a move too soon after.
“But still I couldn’t tell which was which — although my money was still on Willis, up to the very end.
“Here was the technique. When I saw neither of them was going to tip a hand, I tipped it, instead. There’s nothing like a shot of good, scalding jealousy in the arm for tipping the hand. I went to both of them alike, gave them the same buildup treatment. I was bitter and sore, because I’d muffed the job. It was a mark against me on my record, and so on. In Willis’ case, because we’d already held him for it once. I had to vary it a little, make him think I’d changed my mind, now thought it was Vilma, but couldn’t get her for it.
“In other words, I gave them both the same unofficial all-clear to go ahead and exact retribution personally. And I lit the same spark to both their fuses. I told Willis that Vilma had taken up with some other guy; I told her he had taken up with some other girl.
“One fuse fizzled out. The other flared and exploded. One of them didn’t give a damn, because he never had. The other, having already committed murder to gain the object of her affections, saw red, would have rather seen him dead than have somebody else get him.
“You see, Lieutenant, murder always comes easier the second time than the first. Given equal provocation, whichever one of those two had committed the murder the first time, I felt wouldn’t hesitate to commit it a second time. The one that hadn’t, probably couldn’t be incited to contemplate it, no matter what the circumstances. Willis had loved his wife. He smoldered with hate when I told him we had evidence Vilma had killed her, but he didn’t act on the hints I gave him. It never occurred to him to.
“Only one took advantage of the leeway I seemed to be giving them, and went ahead. That one was the real murderer. Having murdered once, she didn’t stop at murder a second time.
“It’s true,” he conceded, “that that’s not evidence that would have done us very much good by itself, in trying to prove the other case. But what it did manage to do was make a dent in the murderer’s armor. All we had to do was keep hacking away and she finally crumbled. Being caught in the act, the second time weakened her self-confidence in her immunity for what she’d done the first time, gave us a psychological upper-hand over her, and she finally came through.” He indicated the confession.
“Well,” pondered the lieutenant, stroking his chin, “it’s not a technique that I’d care to have you men make a habit of using very frequently. In fact, it’s a damn dangerous one to monkey around with, but it got results this time, and that’s the proof of any pudding.”
Afterword to “The Fatal Footlights”
“The Fatal Footlights” (Detective Fiction Weekly, June 14, 1941) seems to have been intended for Woolrich’s New York Landmarks series, and for a recluse he captures remarkably well the tawdry glitter of a cheap 42nd Street burlesque house. The early scenes set the stage and lead up to the discovery of the means of Gilda’s death, which is as bizarre as anything in the Woolrich canon of weird murder methods; but then the homicide detective Benson morphs into a psychotic sadist and the story into one of the most chilling of Woolrich’s Noir Cop thrillers. The murder-by-gilding gimmick seems somehow to have come to the attention of Ian Fleming, who used it almost twenty years later in his classic James Bond novel Goldfinger (1959).
3 Kills for 1
Chapter One
Come Along With Me
That night, just like on all the other nights before it, around a quarter to twelve Gary Severn took his hat off the hook nearest the door, turned and said to his pretty, docile little wife in the room behind him: “Guess I’ll go down to the corner a minute, bring in the midnight edition.”
“All right, dear,” she nodded, just as she had on all the other nights that had come before.
He opened the door, but then he stood there undecidedly on the threshold. “I feel kind of tired,” he yawned, backing a hand to his mouth. “Maybe I ought to skip it. It wouldn’t kill me to do without it one night. I usually fall asleep before I can turn to page two, anyway.”
“Then don’t bother getting it, dear, let it go if you feel that way,” she acquiesced. “Why put yourself out? After all, it’s not that important.”
“No it isn’t, is it?” he admitted. For a moment he seemed about to step inside again and close the door after him. Then he shrugged. “Oh well,” he said, “I may as well go now that I’ve got my hat on. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” He closed the door from the outside.
Who knows what is important, what isn’t important? Who is to recognize the turning-point that turns out to be a trifle, the trifle that turns out to be a turning-point?
A pause at the door, a yawn, a two-cent midnight paper that he wouldn’t have remained awake long enough to finish anyway.
He came out on the street. Just a man on his way to the corner for a newspaper, and then back again. It was the 181st day of the year, and on 180 other nights before this one he had come out at this same hour, for this same thing. No, one night there’d been a blizzard and he hadn’t. 179 nights, then.
He walked down to the corner, and turned it, and went one block over the long way, to where the concession was located. It was just a wooden trestle set up on the sidewalk, with the papers stacked on it. The tabs were always the first ones out, and they were on it already. But his was a standard size, and it came out the last of all of them, possibly due to complexities of make-up.
The man who kept the stand knew him by his paper, although he didn’t know his name or anything else about him. “Not up yet,” he greeted him. “Any minute now.”
Why is it, when a man has read one particular paper for any length of time, he will refuse to buy another in place of it, even though the same news is in both? Another trifle?
Gary Severn said, “I’ll take a turn around the block. It’ll probably be here by the time I get back.”
The delivery trucks left the plant downtown at 11:30, but the paper never hit the stands this far up much before twelve, due to a number of variables such as traffic-lights and weather which were never the same twice. It had often been a little delayed, just as it was tonight.
He went up the next street, the one behind his own, rounded the upper corner of that, then over, and back into his own again. He swung one hand, kept his other pocketed. He whistled a few inaccurate bars of Elmer’s Tune. Then a few even more inaccurate bars of Rose O’Day. Then he quit whistling. It had just been an expression of the untroubled vacancy of his mind, anyway. His thoughts went something like this: “Swell night. Wonder what star that is up there, that one just hitting the roof? Never did know much about them. That Colonna sure was funny on the air tonight.” With a grin of reminiscent appreciation. “Gee I’m sleepy. Wish I hadn’t come out just now.” Things like that.