Judd walked around the block, working up his courage, feeling the nettles of conscience. The collisions of sport were familiar to him until his right eye was harmed when a friend flung a handful of seaside sand at his face and almost blinded him. And since then he could not recall even the hint of injury from anyone, let alone recall himself rousing a fanatical aggression for an ordinary man. The Henry Judd Gray he hoped to present to the world was affable and ingratiating; he ignored slights, forgave wrongs, sought always to make friends even of strangers; and he felt Ruth had misjudged him if she thought he was the type to lash out in fury, let alone kill.
Judd was not aware of how many times he walked the perimeter of the block the Snyders lived in, but others were, and a woman telephoned the police to say there was a burglar or Peeping Tom in the neighborhood and he’d just strolled by her house for the third time. But before a patrol car could get there, Judd had finally determined, I cannot, and at eleven o’clock when he passed 9327 a fourth time, he heard from inside the Snyder house a rapping on the kitchen window.
Ruth was at the kitchen stoop when he got there, holding a full glass of whisky. Judd took it and she asked with irritation, “Are you going to go through with it or not?”
“I’ll miss my train to New Jersey,” Judd said.
She glared at him for a half minute. But then she relented. “Shall I hold on to the things?” she asked.
“No. Just the sash weight. Hide it.”
“And then what?”
Judd shrugged. “I have sales calls upstate for the next two weeks.”
She frowned at him but heard a sound from the basement and hurried inside. Judd slunk into the darkness of Albert’s garage until she returned with the items in a grocery sack. She caustically asked, “Are you ever going to go through with it?” But she shut the kitchen door before he could answer.
SIX
THE MURDER OF ALBERT EDWARD SNYDER
Waking just before sunrise on March 19th, she gazed through a northern window at the yellow halo of the arc light across the street. Even as she watched, the glow was strangled and then snuffed. She softly rolled right and stared across the chasm between their beds that was not wide enough. Albert was sleeping on his side in his flannel nightshirt, too unfairly strong for her to handle by herself. She hated the gargled sighs as he inhaled and exhaled, hated the stink of his breathing, hated the hoarse shouts he’d use when he called her name to fetch or cook something.
She felt the ache of menstruation and went into the bathroom. But she was ending her period. She found just a spot of blood on the Kotex, and she took that as an affirming sign that she’d be rid of Albert soon. She wakened Lorraine to say they’d be shopping for Easter clothes in Manhattan, and then she hurried over to Kitty Kaufman’s house to have her hair bleached as blonde as Mae West’s.
Judd woke at eight in Syracuse and took a hot bath with Epsom salts. Soaked until his fingertips pruned. Shaved with a new razor blade. Each item of clothing he wore would have to last a full day and night, so he chose fresh skivvies, a new pair of knee-high black stockings, a starched white shirt, the gray wool suit and vest that were faintly threaded with blue, and a navy blue foulard necktie. Lacing up his shoes, he caught himself thinking, The killer wore black, high-grade Oxfords.
Carefully establishing himself in Syracuse, he went down to the Onondaga Hotel’s basement coffee shop and ordered waffles with whipped cream and cherries for breakfast. “After all, it’s Saturday,” he told the waitress. She regarded him strangely. Was he too loud? Each sentence, each gesture and glance, was thrilling to him. He signed for the bill in a florid hand and included a quarter tip.
Kitty drizzled hydrogen peroxide into a saucepan of bleaching powder with great seriousness and stirred until she’d concocted a perfect mixture. Ruth wrapped an old towel around her neck and stooped over the kitchen sink as Kitty tugged on rubber chemist’s gloves and then dabbed on the stinking mixture with a paintbrush.
“What’s the special occasion?” she asked.
Ruth was thinking there would soon be a candid rotogravure portrait of the grieving widow in the papers, but she instead said they were going to the Fidgeons’ house to play contract bridge.
“Oh,” Kitty said. “Them.”
“Albert seeks out friends who drink like he does.”
“He could always spit out the window. There’s plenty like him since Prohibition.”
And Ruth thought, Judd.
Kitty painted the wet hair forward, then back, and then handed Ruth a rubber bathing cap. “This stuff’s poison and nasty, so we can’t let it stay on your skin too long.” She glanced at a wall clock to get the time as Ruth put on the bathing cap and tucked her cooking hair inside.
Kitty snapped off the chemist’s gloves and they sat at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee. She flipped open the New York Daily Mirror and hunted a middle page. “Have you read Betty Clift today?” Seeing Ruth shake her head, Kitty scanned Clift’s column and then went back some sentences to read aloud: “‘Heed this advice, men. It is born in woman to long for your praise, for your attentions, for your demonstrations. When you withhold them she suffers an actual starvation. If she is a strong character, she worries along without them. If she is of lighter caliber, you suddenly find yourself without a sweetheart, or even a wife, for some other more accomplished adorer has circumvented you.’”
Ruth smiled. “When she says ‘lighter caliber’ she means bleached blonde, right?”
“Yep,” Kitty said. “Betty’s got you pegged.” She sipped from her mug and slyly grinned as she asked, “And speaking of adorers, how’s Judd?”
She’d hoped Kitty would mention him. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Upstate on his sales route, I guess.”
“Any action on that front?”
Seeking to lay out an alternate version of the night’s events in case things went awry, Ruth said, “Nah. I’m slowing it down. I have to make sure Judd stays far away from Al—he’s threatening to kill him.”
“Oh, guys are always saying stuff like that,” Kitty said.