Harry Dolan by Bad Things Happen Page B

Would you jump through it?”
    “Why not?”
    “That’s the spirit,” said Elizabeth. “Why not? But it’s not an ideal window for jumping. You throw up the sash, and the opening is—what?—two feet square? You can fit through, but it’s going to be awkward. How do you go about it?”
    Shan studied the window. “I don’t know. Headfirst or feetfirst—I suppose it wouldn’t matter much. I’d want to get it over with.”
    “Would you?”
    He looked thoughtful. “No, you’re right. I’d want to put it off a little. Get used to the idea.” He bent to open the deep drawer of the desk. There were two tumblers and a bottle inside. “I’d want a drink,” he said.
    Elizabeth touched the glass beads at her neck. “Yes. You’re a man who’s fond enough of Scotch to keep a bottle in your desk—you’re going to want a taste.”
    “Maybe he took a hit from the bottle, and put it back when he was done.”
    “Maybe he did. Eakins’ll be able to tell us.” Lillian Eakins was the medical examiner. “So you’ve had your drink, or not, and the window’s still beckoning. You didn’t answer me. How do you go through?”
    “Not headfirst,” Shan said. “It’s too scary that way. You’d want to go feetfirst. You’d sit on the windowsill with your legs dangling out and then sort of lean back and slide through—No, that’s too awkward. What you’d really want to do is climb out onto the ledge and stand there for a minute to get your bearings. But there’s no ledge out there.”
    “No,” Elizabeth said.
    “If he wanted to jump, he wouldn’t have jumped out this window. He’d want a place where he could stand.”
    “Yes.”
    “He would’ve gone to the roof,” Shan said. “But maybe he couldn’t. Maybe there’s no way to get up to the roof. You’re smiling. That’s your inscrutable smile. You’ve been up there.”
    “The stairs at the north end of the building go all the way up,” Elizabeth said. “There’s a door with a lock, but the lock is broken. People go up there and smoke. There’s a low wall. You could stand on it and work up your nerve. If you wanted to jump, that’s where you’d go.”
    “Suppose that’s where he went,” said Shan. “He decides he’s going to jump, opens this window, sees that it’s no good. He leaves the window open and goes up to the roof.”
    “And jumps from a spot that happens to be directly above this window.”
    “Why not?” Shan said.
    “You haven’t been up there. The wall at the front of the building comes to a peak. It’s part of the design. The wall at the rear of the building is level—much better for jumping.”
    Elizabeth paused, shaking her head. “He didn’t go from the roof. He went through this window. But if I’m right, he was pushed. Killed first, or rendered unconscious. You’d have a rough time getting him through if he was awake and resisting. You’d hit him on the head and hope that the damage from the fall would conceal it. With any luck, it would pass for a suicide.”
    The two of them stood quietly. Street sounds came up through the open window. The cool air turned colder. Shan said, “Who is he?”
    Elizabeth looked up. She had been staring at the tumblers in the drawer. “You know as much as I do. He’s the publisher of a magazine.”
    “Not Kristoll. The man who killed him. Assuming it’s a man, because a woman would have a harder time wrestling him through the window. You’ve got the M.O. worked out; I thought you might have a suspect in mind too.”
    “No,” she said. “I haven’t got that far.”
    “I might be able to tell you something about him. I think he’s a fan of Shakespeare.” Shan pointed to a book on the desk. “That’s The Collected Works. It’s open to the final scene of Hamlet —the one where everybody dies. Before you got here, I assumed Kristoll was reading it before he jumped. But if he was murdered, the killer might have put it there, open to that page.”
    Elizabeth leaned over