Kiss Your Elbow. Alan Handley

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      It was a sort of hammering with a couple of low moans thrown in, all kind of muffled. It would go on for a minute, then stop for a few, then start again. At first I thought it was only that I should have watered my drink, but when it came the third time I knew it wasn’t the Scotch and it wasn’t me—it was in Maggie’s bathroom. So I got brave by finishing off the Scotch and, making with a bookend, walked over to the bathroom door.

      As I was in this far, I might as well shoot the works. I grabbed the bookend even tighter and started to open the bathroom door, only there wasn’t any doorknob. It was lying on the floor right by the door. I picked it up and fit the square rod in the hole as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very, since I was holding the bookend at the same time. Softly I turned it and threw open the door.

      There was Maggie, nothing on but a nightgown, lying on the bathroom floor with her chin in one hand and languidly pounding on the pipes under the wash basin with a big empty mouthwash bottle in the other. She looked up from her pounding and after reeling in her eyes, she recognized me.

      “Angel,” she said, “for God’s sake bring me a drink.” She tossed the bottle in a corner where it shattered around a couple of times then lay still. I walked over to help her. My shoes crunched broken glass on the tile floor. “What happened to you?” I helped her to sit up. She yelped and, rolling over on one hip, looked at her behind. Blood was staining her sheer nightgown.

      “Now isn’t that maddening? A brand-new one, too. Well, don’t just stand there, darling. Get me out of here.” I picked her up, carried her into the bedroom and deposited her gently, stomach down, on the bed. The cut wasn’t very deep, but was bleeding quite a lot. I gave her a face towel to hold on it while I ransacked the medicine cabinet.

      “It was that damned doorknob coming off. I’ve been trapped in there for hours. I broke a couple of bottles pounding on the pipes, but no one would come. If you’re expecting to find bandages in that thing you’re wasting your time…. There’s nothing but sleeping pills.” She was right. “Call the superintendent. He’s very sweet. I don’t think it’s worth quite all this fuss, though I’m glad you came in when you did. I was running out of bottles. What about that drink?” I came back to the bed.

      “Maggie, how drunk are you?”

      “I’m not drunk, Timmy. Honestly I’m not. Well, maybe a little hungover, but I was in there for over two hours, and I do think I should be allowed to be just a little testy, if I want.”

      “Can you grapple with a horrid fact?”

      “Couldn’t it wait till I got bandaged up and had a real drink? It’ll keep that long, won’t it?”

      “Yes. I think it’ll keep that long.” I phoned the superintendent on the little house phone, and he promptly brought bandages, Mercurochrome and a screwdriver.

      He was most apologetic and fixed the doorknob in a few minutes. He could have done it even quicker if he had kept his eyes on his work instead of Maggie, who was still on the bed covered with a blanket trying to negotiate, while lying on her stomach, the drink I had mixed for her. I finally got him out and left Maggie to fix the bandage by herself and started pacing back and forth in the living room.

      The cut wasn’t at all serious, but I was still a little queasy from it. Bleeding women, two in the same hour, were rapidly getting me down.

      Maggie finally came out of the bedroom dressed in a blue housecoat with more stripes and brushing her hair.

      “I know I’m stuck with that adhesive tape for the rest of my life. I used practically the whole roll.”

      “At least you’ve got a cast-iron alibi.”

      “Whatever should I want an alibi for?”

      “Did you have any appointments this morning?”

      The brush stopped in midair. “Oh my God, Nellie! I forgot all about it. She called yesterday and told me to come in this morning for a job. I’d better phone her.”

      “You needn’t bother. She’s been murdered.”

      “What a pity. Oh, well, I don’t suppose I’d have gotten the job anyway.”

      “Maggie, I said that Nellie’s been murdered.”

      “I heard you, dear. And about time, too, if you ask me.”

      “What makes you say that?”

      “But, angel…she’s an agent.”

      “Maybe so, but sooner or later the police are going to want to know who killed her.”

      “What are you getting in such a tizzy about? It isn’t anybody we know, is it?”

      “Maybe it is.”

      “Oh, good. Who? Tell me.”

      “I thought perhaps you’d know something about it. That’s why I came here this morning.”

      “Believe me, Timmy, I’ve got something better to do than go around murdering Nellie Brant. I think I will now have another drink. No, you stay here, I’ll get them this time. Since I can’t sit down, I might as well be busy.” She went into the foyer to the bar and brought us back a couple of straight Scotches. “Would you like to play Gin Rummy? We could do it on the mantelpiece.”

      “No, I would not like to play Gin Rummy. Please, Maggie, I’m serious.”

      “I’m sorry, Timmy. I do mean to listen but that affair with the bathroom has made me rather jumpy. I wish I could sit down.” She pulled some pillows from the couch and lined them up on the floor and lay on her stomach. “There, that’s much better. Now tell me everything СКАЧАТЬ