He had not attended many of the pep rallies before, but he attended this one. He walked the dark streets from his rooming house at a slow liturgic pace, bearing a carton in his arms.
In the afternoon he had emptied Dorothy’s valise, hiding her clothes under the mattress of his bed. Then, although it was a warm day, he had donned his trenchcoat, and after filling its pockets with the bottles and small containers of cosmetics that had been lodged among the clothes, he left the house with the valise, from which he had stripped the tags bearing Dorothy’s New York and Blue River addresses. He had gone downtown and checked the valise in a locker at the bus terminal. From there he had walked to the Morton Street Bridge, where he dropped the locker key and then the bottles, one by one, into the umber water, opening them first so that trapped air would not keep them afloat. Ghosts of pink lotion rode the water and thinned and faded. On his way home from the bridge he stopped at a grocery store, where he secured a tan corrugated carton that had once contained cans of pineapple juice.
He carried the carton to the rally and picked his way through the mass of squatting and reclining figures orange-sketched in the darkness. Stepping gingerly between blanket corners and bluejeaned legs, he advanced to the flaming centre of the field.
The heat and the glare were intense in the clearing that surrounded the roaring twelve-foot fire. He stood for a moment, staring at the flames. Suddenly the baseball manager and a cheerleader came dashing around from the other side of the clearing. ‘That’s it! That’s the boy!’ they cried, and seized the carton from his hands.
‘Hey,’ the manager said, hefting the box. ‘This isn’t empty.’
‘Books – old notebooks.’
‘Ah! Magnifico!’ The manager turned to the encircling crowd. ‘Attention! Attention! The burning of the books!’ A few people looked up from their conversations. The manager and the cheerleader took the carton between them, swinging it back and forth towards the rippling flames. ‘All the way to the top!’ the manager shouted.
‘Hey—’
‘Don’t worry, friend. We never miss! Book-burning a speciality!’ They swung the carton; one, two, three! It sailed up parallel to the cone-shaped pyre, arced over, and landed with a gush of sparks at the very top. It teetered a moment, then held. There was a spattering of applause from the on-lookers. ‘Hey, here comes Al with a packing-case!’ cried the cheerleader. He dashed around to the other side of the fire, the manager running after him.
He stood watching as the carton turned black, sheets of flame sliding up past its sides. Suddenly the foundation of the fire shifted, pushing out showers of sparks. A flaming brand hit his foot. He jumped back. Sparks glowed all over the front of his trousers. Nervously he slapped them out, his hands coppery in the fire’s glare.
When the last sparks were extinguished, he looked up to make certain that the carton was still secure. It was. Flames ripped up through its top. Its contents, he thought, were probably completely burned by now.
These had included the Pharmacy lab manual, the Kingship Copper pamphlets, the tags from the valise, and the few articles of clothing that Dorothy had prepared for their brief honeymoon: a cocktail dress of grey taffeta, a pair of black suede pumps, stockings, a half-slip, bra and panties, two handkerchiefs, a pair of pink satin mules, a pink negligee and a night-gown; silk and lace, delicate, scented, white …
FOURTEEN
From the Blue River Clarion-Ledger; Friday, 28 April 1950:
STODDARD CO-ED DIES IN PLUNGE
MUNICIPAL BUILDING TRAGEDY FATAL TO DAUGHTER OF COPPER MAGNATE
Dorothy Kingship, nineteen-year-old Stoddard University sophomore, was killed today when she fell or jumped from the roof of the fourteen-storey Blue River Municipal Building. The attractive blonde girl, whose home was in New York City, was a daughter of Leo Kingship,president of Kingship Copper Inc.
At 12.58 p.m., workers in the building were startled by a loud scream and a crashing sound from the wide airshaft which runs through the structure. Rushing to their windows, they saw the contorted figure of a young woman. Dr Harvey C. Hess, of 57 Woodbridge Circle, who was in the lobby at the time, reached the scene seconds later to pronounce the girl dead.
The police, arriving shortly thereafter, found a purse resting on the three-and-a-half-foot wall that encircles the airshaft. In the purse were a birth certificate and a Stoddard University registration card which served to identify the girl. Police also found a fresh cigarette stub on the roof, stained with lipstick of the shade Miss Kingship wore, leading them to conclude that she had been on the roof for several minutes prior to the plunge which ended her life …
Rex Cargill, an elevator operator, told police that he took Miss Kingship to the sixth or seventh floor half an hour before the tragedy. Another operator, Andrew Vecci, believes he took a woman dressed similarly to Miss Kingship to the fourteenth floor shortly after 12.30, but is uncertain of the floor at which she entered his car.
According to Stoddard’s Dean of Students, Clark D. Welch, Miss Kingship was doing satisfactory work in all her studies. Shocked residents of the dormitory where she lived could offer no reason why she might have taken her own life. They described her as quiet and withdrawn. ‘Nobody knew her too well,’ said one girl.
From the Blue River Clarion-Ledger; Saturday, 29 April 1950:
CO-ED’S DEATH WAS SUICIDE
SISTER RECEIVES NOTE IN MAIL
The death of Dorothy Kingship, Stoddard co-ed who plunged from the roof of the Municipal Building yesterday afternoon, was a suicide, Chief of Police Eldon Chesser told reporters last night. An unsigned note in a handwriting definitely established to be that of the dead girl was received through the mail late yesterday afternoon by her sister, Ellen Kingship, a student in Caldwell, Wisconsin. Although the exact wording of the note has not been made public, Chief Chester characterized it as ‘a clear expression of suicidal intent’. The note was mailed from this city, postmarked yesterday at 6.30 a.m.
On receiving the note, Ellen Kingship attempted to reach her sister by telephone. The call was transferred to Stoddard’s Dean of Students, Clark D. Welch, who informed Miss Kingship of the nineteen-year-old girl’s death. Miss Kingship left immediately for Blue River, arriving here yesterday evening. Her father, Leo Kingship, president of Kingship Copper Inc., is expected to arrive some time today, his plane having been grounded in Chicago because of bad weather.
LAST PERSON TO SPEAK TO SUICIDE DESCRIBES HER AS TENSE, NERVOUS
by La Verne Breen
‘She laughed a lot and was smiling the whole time she was in my room. And she kept moving around. I thought at the time that she was very happy about something, but now I realize that those were all symptoms of the terrible nervous strain she was under. Her laughs were tense laughs, not happy ones. I should have recognized that right away, being a psychology major.’ Thus Annabelle Koch, Stoddard sophomore, describes the behaviour of Dorothy Kingship two hours before the latter’s suicide.
Miss Koch, a native of Boston, is a petite and charming young lady. Yesterday she was confined to her dormitory room because of a severe head cold. ‘Dorothy knocked on the door around a quarter past eleven,’ says Miss Koch. ‘I was in bed. She came in and I was a little surprised, because we hardly knew each other. As I said, she was smiling and moving around a great deal. She was wearing a bathrobe. She asked if I would loan her the belt to my green suit. I should mention that we both have the same green suit. I got mine in Boston and she got hers in New York, but they’re exactly the same. We both wore them to dinner last Saturday night, and it was really embarrassing. Anyway, she asked if I would loan her my belt because the buckle of hers was broken. I hesitated at first, because it’s my new spring suit, but she seemed to want it so badly that I finally told her which drawer it was in and she got it. She thanked me very much and left.’
Here Miss Koch paused and removed her glasses. ‘Now here’s the strange part. Later, when the police came and searched her room for a note, they found my belt
on her desk! I recognized it by the way the gold finish was rubbed off the tooth of the buckle. I had been very disappointed about that, because it was an expensive suit. The police kept the belt.
‘I was very puzzled by Dorothy’s actions. She had pretended to want my belt, but she hadn’t used it at all. She was wearing her green suit when – when it happened. The police checked and her belt buckle wasn’t the least bit broken. It all seemed very mysterious.
‘Then I realized that the belt must have been just a pretext to talk to me. Laying out the suit probably reminded her of me, and everyone knew I was incapacitated with a cold, so she came in and pretended she needed the belt. She must have been desperate for someone to talk with. If only I’d recognized the signs at the time. I can’t help feeling that if I had got her to talk out her troubles, whatever they might have been, maybe all this wouldn’t have happened.’
… As we left Annabelle Koch’s room, she added a final word. ‘Even when the police return the belt to me,’ she said, ‘I know I won’t be able to wear my green suit again.’
FIFTEEN
He found the last six weeks of the school year disappointingly flat. He had expected the excitement created by Dorothy’s death to linger in the air like the glow of a rocket; instead it had faded almost immediately. He had anticipated more campus conversations and newspaper articles, allowing him the luxuriant superiority of the omniscient; instead – nothing. Three days after Dorothy died campus gossip veered away to pounce on a dozen marijuana cigarettes that had been discovered in one of the smaller dormitories. As for the newspapers, a short paragraph announcing Leo Kingship’s arrival in Blue River marked the last time the Kingship name appeared in the Clarion-Ledger. No word of an autopsy nor of her pregnancy, although surely when an unmarried girl committed suicide without stating a reason, that must be the first thing they looked for. Keeping it out of the papers must have cost Kingship plenty.
He told himself he should be rejoicing. If there had been any kind of inquiry he certainly would have been sought for questioning. But there had been no questions, no suspicion – hence no investigation. Everything had fallen into place perfectly. Except that business of the belt. That puzzled him. Why on earth had Dorothy taken that Koch girl’s belt when she hadn’t wanted to wear it? Maybe she really did want to talk to someone – about the wedding – and then had thought better of it. Thank God for that. Or maybe the buckle of her belt had really been broken, but she had managed to fix it after she had already taken Koch’s. Either way, though, it was an unimportant incident. Koch’s interpretation of it only strengthened the picture of a suicide, added to the flawless success of his plans. He should be walking on air, smiling at strangers, toasting himself with secret champagne. Instead there was this dull, leaden, let-down feeling. He couldn’t understand it.
His depression became worse when he returned to Menasset early in June. Here he was, right where he’d been last summer after the daughter of the farm equipment concern had told him about the boy back home, and the summer before, after he had left the widow. Dorothy’s death had been a defensive measure; all his planning hadn’t advanced him in the slightest.
He became impatient with his mother. His correspondence from school had been limited to a weekly postcard, and now she badgered him for details; did he have pictures of the girls he’d gone out with? – expecting them to be the most beautiful, the most sought after – Did he belong to this club, to that club? – expecting him to be the president of each – What was his standing in philosophy, in English, in Spanish? – expecting him to be the leader in all. One day he lost his temper. ‘It’s about time you realized I’m not the king of the world!’ he shouted, storming from the room.
He took a job for the summer; partly because he needed money, partly because being in the house with his mother all day made him uneasy. The job didn’t do any good towards taking his mind off things though; it was in a haberdashery shop whose fixtures were of angular modern design; the glass display counters were bound with inch-wide strips of burnished copper.
Towards the middle of July, however, he began to slough off his dejection. He still had the newspaper clippings about Dorothy’s death, locked in a small grey strongbox he kept in his bedroom closet. He began taking them out once in a while, skimming through them, smiling at the officious certainty of Chief of Police Eldon Chesser and the half-baked theorizing of Annabelle Koch.
He dug up his old library card, had it renewed, and began withdrawing books regularly: Pearson’s Studies in Murder, Bolitho’s Murder for Profit, volumes in the Regional Murder Series. He read about Landru, Smith, Pritchard, Crippen; men who had failed where he had succeeded. Of course it was only the failures whose stories got written – God knows how many successful ones there were. Still, it was flattering to consider how many had failed.
Until now he had always thought of what happened at the Municipal Building as ‘Dorrie’s death’. Now he began to think of it as ‘Dorrie’s murder’.
Sometimes, when he had lain in bed and read several accounts in one of the books, the enormous daring of what he had done would overwhelm him. He would get up and look at himself in the mirror over the dresser. I got away with murder, he would think. Once he whispered it aloud: ‘I got away with murder!’
So what if he wasn’t rich yet! Hell, he was only twenty-four.
PART TWO
ELLEN
ONE
Letter from Annabelle Koch to Leo Kingship:
Girls’ Dormitory
Stoddard University
Blue River, Iowa
5 March 1951
Dear Mr Kingship,
I suppose you are wondering who I am, unless you remember my name from the newspapers. I am the young woman who loaned a belt to your daughter Dorothy last April. I was the last person to speak to her. I would not bring up this subject as I am sure it must be a very painful subject to you, except that I have a good reason.
As you may recall Dorothy and I had the same green suit. She came to my room and asked to borrow my belt. I loaned it to her and later the police found it (or what I thought was it) in her room. They kept it for over a month until they got around to returning it to me. By that time it was quite late in the season so I did not wear the green suit again last year.
Now spring is approaching again and last night I tried on my spring clothes. I tried on my green suit and it fitted perfectly. But when I put on the belt I found to my surprise that it was Dorothy’s belt all along. You see, the notch that is marked from the buckle is two notches too big for my waist. Dorothy was quite slender but I am even more so. In fact to be frank I am quite thin. I know that I certainly did not lose any weight because the suit still fits me perfectly, as I said above, so the belt must be Dorothy’s. When the police first showed it to me I thought it was mine because the gold finish on the tooth of the buckle was rubbed off. I should have realized that since both suits were made by the same manufacturer the finish would have come off both buckles.
So now it seems that Dorothy could not wear her own belt for some reason, even though it was not broken at all, and took mine instead. I cannot understand it. At the time I thought she only pretended to need my belt because she wanted to speak to me.
Now that I know the belt is Dorothy’s I would feel funny wearing it. I am not superstitious, but after all it does not belong to me and it did belong to poor Dorothy. I thought of throwing it away but I would feel funny doing that also, so I am sending it to you in a separate package and you can keep it or dispose of it as you see fit.
I can still wear the suit because all the girls here are wearing wide leather belts this year anyway.
Yours truly,
Annabelle Koch
Letter from Leo Kingship to Ellen Kingship:
8 March 1951
My dear Ellen,
I received your last letter and am sorry not to have replied sooner, but the demands of business have been especially pressing of late.
Yesterday being Wedne
sday, Marion came here to dinner. She is not looking too well. I showed her a letter which I received yesterday and she suggested that I send it on to you. You will find it enclosed. Read it now, and then continue with my letter.
Now that you have read Miss Koch’s letter, I will explain why I forwarded it.
Marion tells me that ever since Dorothy’s death you have been rebuking yourself for your imagined callousness to her. Miss Koch’s unfortunate story of Dorothy’s ‘desperate need for someone to talk with’ made you feel, according to Marion, that that someone should have been you and would have been you, had you not pushed Dorothy out on her own too soon. You believe, although this is something which Marion has only deduced from your letters, that had there been a difference in your attitude towards Dorothy, she might not have chosen the path she did.
I credit what Marion says since it explains your wishful thinking, for I can only call it that, of last April, when you stubbornly refused to believe that Dorothy’s death had been a suicide, despite the incontestable evidence of the note which you yourself received. You felt that if Dorothy had committed suicide you were in some way responsible, and so it was several weeks before you were able to accept her death for what it was, and accept also the burden of an imagined responsibility.
This letter from Miss Koch makes it clear that Dorothy went to the girl because, for some peculiar reason of her own, she did want her belt; she was not in desperate need of someone to whom she could talk. She had made up her mind to do what she was going to do, and there is absolutely no reason for you to believe that she would have come to you first if you two had not had that argument the previous Christmas. (And don’t forget it was she who was in a sullen mood and started the argument.) As for the initial coldness on Dorothy’s part, remember that I agreed with you that she should go to Stoddard rather than Caldwell, where she would only have become more dependent on you. True, if she had followed you to Caldwell the tragedy would not have happened, but ‘if’ is the biggest word in the world. Dorothy’s punishment may have been excessively severe, but she was the one who chose it. I am not responsible, you are not responsible; no one is but Dorothy herself.