Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)
- Автор: Reeves Robert, Champion D. L.
- Год: 1942
- Язык: английский
- Год: Fictioneers
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)». Краткое содержание книги:
The rest of that morning is still vague to me. The thought of arresting Julie Welch for something she obviously had no memory of was like a steel brace drawn tight around my chest. Of course, she was insane when she wielded the hatchet.
But that meant years of hell in an asylum — that fine girl, with her life, in every sense, just beginning. A homicidal mania is incurable — that much I knew.
I glanced across the room at Hi Fillmore. The reaction had set in. He was asleep. If I was a true friend to him, I thought, I’d step over and put a bullet through his head while he slept. What was there for him when he woke up? Gerald O’Moore, I thought with a shudder, was the lucky one.
I must have dozed off at this point. It was Doc Rennie who woke me. While I was still stretching the cramps out, he was over shaking Hi Fillmore. Hi came to with a start, wondering where he was. Then everything came back to him and he buried his face in his hands.
Doc Rennie sat down. He was about to say something that, from the set of his face and the wrinkles across his brow, was pretty important. My mind flew to Julie Welch and what I had to do, and I wondered what else there was in the world that could be important at this time.
“Let’s go over this case from the beginning,” he said.
Hi Fillmore looked up quickly, all the strain of the past twelve hours evident in the droop of his shoulders and the miserable down-curve of his mouth. I spoke for him.
“Forget it, Doc,” I said wearily. “I don’t think I can stand any masterminding just now — even from you.”
Doc Rennie’s eyes snapped at me. “Just omit the tragedy, will you, Ed?” His tone left me raw. “It’s just barely possible, you know, that certain phases of this situation have escaped you.”
I didn’t mean to bicker about it, but neither could I let him stuff Hi Fillmore with any false hope.
“What’s the use?” I flared. “If the jury decides Julie’s insane, she goes to the asylum. If she’s sane, she—” I didn’t bother to finish.
“Now that you’ve had the final word,” said Doc Rennie, too politely, “may I be permitted to talk a little?”
I gave up. “Hell,” I told him, “talk your head off.”
“Let’s dispose of Gerald O’Moore first,” said Doc Rennie, like he hadn’t heard me. “O’Moore’s case is painfully simple. A neurotic with a mother fixation. He idolizes, worships his mother. She dies — a terrible blow. He transfers all the inner violence of his affection for her to Julie Welch. He senses last night that he is about to lose Julie to Fillmore. He grows desperate. He gets off the bus, deciding to beg Julie to give him at least a chance. He cuts across country from Edmonds Corner to the Welch house and hesitates on the porch, afraid to go in and face Julie’s answer to his plea.
“Through the parlor window he can see into the kitchen. What does he see? He sees Julie Welch, in what appears to him to be a fit of temper, snatch up the hatchet and make that incredible attack on Johanna.
“He had been building his life around the thought of Julie. Now that dream is shattered forever. He goes to pieces, makes for his refuge — the shack. He would rather be dead than face the future with that horrible scene forever in his mind. So he starts that note, and then puts himself away with the bullet. In the light of suspicion, that note was a confession. In the light of fact we see it for what it is—
“Now,” — here everything in me cringed — “for Julie and Johanna Welch.”
Doc Rennie’s voice was very grave. Poor Hi — I could see him nerving himself to listen. But my mind and body had taken all they could take.
“Doc,” I said, “answer me one question and then we can let this drop. Was Julia Welch insane when she attacked Johanna? Of course she was. Then why go on with it?”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was shaking his head.
“No,” he said. The room was perfectly still. “No,” he repeated, “not in the sense you mean.”
I was disgusted. “If you’re going to split hairs—”
But Hi Fillmore was sitting up straight now, hands balled into fists, chunky body so taut he was shaking all over,
“She wasn’t insane,” said Doc Rennie. “But — and this is the horrid part — Johanna believed she was. And Julie knew there was something wrong with herself, and those two girls arranged their lives so as to hide Julie’s occasional ‘insanity.’ You see, they had never had confidence in doctors, so when Julie’s spells of extreme excitability began, all they could do was cover them up for fear Julie might be committed to an asylum.
“Johanna most certainly noticed that Julie had these spells only when subjected to some physical or emotional strain. Thus things were easier when they moved back to Essexville.
“In Essexville,” continued Doc Rennie calmly, “life is generally peaceful. Contacts are few. Johanna devoted herself entirely to protecting Julie from situations which might bring on her trouble. But the trouble was always just around the corner, as Mrs. Thoroughgood indicated with the incident in the Notion Shoppe.
“Then Gerald O’Moore and Fillmore began courting Julie. Johanna was worried, for Julie was plainly falling in love with you, Fillmore. There was no telling when the trouble might start up again.
“And now,” said Doc Rennie, “we come to tonight. I know what happened. It can never be proved, for Julie remembers nothing and Johanna is dead. But it is the only thing that could have happened.
“O’Moore was here and left. Fillmore proposed, was accepted. Julie was in love for the first time. When Fillmore left, Julie ran into the kitchen to tell Johanna.
“Johanna must have reminded Julie that marriage, for Julie, was out of the question, all the time believing, as Julie did, that Julie’s ‘insanity’ was incurable. She tried to make Julie promise to give up the idea of marriage.
“If an incident in a shop could upset Julie, imagine what this conversation did to her. One moment in the clouds, elated, feeling perhaps that with the happiness of marriage the spells might go away and not return. Her sister is forced to tear this rosy picture to pieces — a terrible shock to Julie. So terrible that Julie’s state of mind culminates in such a frenzy as she had never experienced before. She goes blind to everything, picks up the hatchet, and attacks the only human being present — her sister.
“The fit passes. Dazed, she throws the hatchet aside, wanders out of the kitchen through the house. All memory of the attack is gone.”
Doc Rennie shook his head.
“O’Moore, poor devil, has witnessed the attack without knowing the cause. He runs. Fillmore returns. He sees Julie wandering through the parlor and dining room into the kitchen. In the kitchen Julie comes upon her sister’s mutilated body. She flings herself hysterically upon it.
“Those screams we heard were pure hysterics. Their timing with the clock was, of course, pure coincidence. Garner runs in, Fillmore runs in. They pull her off. She has fainted — a normal faint. The faint passes into normal, exhausted sleep, as it sometimes does. While she sleeps, we hunt the murderer.”
Doc Rennie looked from Fillmore to me.
“O’Moore was such an obvious suspect,” he went on, “that he blinded me to certain medical indications in the case. Once he was eliminated, the picture of Julie as the hatchet-wielder appeared. I couldn’t be even partly positive, however, until I had talked with Tilling. I told him every detail and he agreed with me.”
Doc Rennie drew breath.
“Julie Welch is an epileptic,” he said.
“Epileptic!” I shouted. “But—”