Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

I’d worked myself into a reasonably bleak mood by the time I got to Armstrong’s. I skipped the coffee and crawled straight into the bourbon bottle, and before long it began to do what it was supposed to do. It blurred the edges of thought so I couldn’t see the bad dark things that lurked there.

When Trina finished for the night, she joined me and I bought her a couple of drinks. I don’t remember what we talked about. Some but by no means all of our conversation touched upon Paula Wittlauer. Trina hadn’t known Paula terribly well — their contact had been largely limited to the two hours a day when their shifts overlapped — but she knew a little about the sort of life Paula had been leading. There had been a year or two when her own life had not been terribly different from Paula’s. Now she had things more or less under control, and maybe there would have come a time when Paula would have taken charge of her life, but that was something we’d never know.

I suppose it was close to three when I walked Trina home. Our conversation had turned thoughtful and reflective. On the street she said it was a lousy night for being alone. I thought of high windows and evil things on the edge of thought and took her hand in mine.

She lives on 56th between Ninth and Tenth. While we waited for the light to change at 57th Street I looked over at Paula’s building. We were far enough away to look at the high floors. Only a couple of windows were lighted.

That was when I got it.

I’ve never understood how people think of things, how little perceptions trigger greater insights. But I had it now, something clicked within me and a source of tension unwound itself.

I said something to that effect to Trina.

“You know who killed her?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But I know how to find out. And it can wait until tomorrow.”

The light changed and we crossed the street.

She was still sleeping when I left. I got out of bed and dressed in silence, then let myself out of her apartment. I had some coffee and a toasted English muffin at the Red Flame. Then I went across the street to Paula’s building. I started on the tenth floor and worked my way up, checking the three or four possible apartments on each floor. A lot of people weren’t home. I worked my way clear to the top floor, the twenty-fourth, and by the time I was done I had three possibles listed in my notebook and a list of over a dozen apartments I’d have to check that evening.

At eight thirty that night I rang the bell of Apartment 21-G. It was directly in line with Paula’s apartment and four flights above it. The man who answered the bell wore a pair of Lee corduroy slacks and a shirt with a blue vertical stripe on a white background. His socks were dark blue and he wasn’t wearing shoes.

I said, “I want to talk with you about Paula Wittlauer.”

His face fell apart and I forgot my three possibles forever because he was the man I wanted. He just stood there. I pushed the door open and stepped forward and he moved back automatically to make room for me. I drew the door shut after me and walked around him, crossing the room to the window. There wasn’t a speck of dust or soot on the sill. It was immaculate, as well scrubbed as Lady Macbeth’s hands.

I turned to him. His name was Lane Posmantur and I suppose he was around forty, thickening at the waist, his dark hair starting to go thin on top. His glasses were thick and it was hard to read his eyes through them but it didn’t matter, I didn’t need to see his eyes.

“She went out this window,” I said. “Didn’t she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you want to know what triggered it for me, Mr. Posmantur? I was thinking of all the things nobody noticed. No one saw her enter the building. Neither doorman remembered it because it wasn’t something they’d be likely to remember. Nobody saw her go out the window. The cops had to look for an open window in order to know who the hell she was. They backtracked her from the window she fell out of.

“And nobody saw the killer leave the building. Now that’s the one thing that would have been noticed. It wasn’t that significant by itself, but it made me dig a little deeper. It occurred to me that maybe the killer was still inside the building, and then I got the idea that she was killed by someone who lived in the building. From that point on, it was just a question of finding you.”

I told him about the clothes on the chair. “She didn’t take them off and pile them up like that. Her killer put her clothes like that, and he dumped them on the chair so that it would look as though she undressed in her apartment, and so that it would be assumed she’d gone out of her own window.

“But she went out of your window, didn’t she?”

He looked at me. After a moment, he said he thought he’d better sit down. He went over to an armchair and sat in it.

I said, “She came here. I guess she took off her clothes and you went to bed with her. Is that right?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“What made you decide to kill her?”

“I didn’t.”