Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich Read Free Book Online Page B

  I got it finally.   The fifth-floor flat, the one over his, that they're still working on.   The cement kitchen floor, raised above the level of the other rooms.   They wanted to comply with the fire laws and also obtain a dropped living room effect, as cheaply as possible.   Dig it up——"
      He went right over then and there, down through the basement and over the fences, to save time.   The electricity wasn't turned on yet in that one, they had to use their torches.   It didn't take them long at that, once they'd got started.   In about half an hour he came to the window and wigwagged over for my benefit.   It meant yes.
      He didn't come over until nearly eight in the morning; after they'd tidied up and taken them away.   Both away, the hot dead and the cold dead.   He said: "Jeff, I take it all back.   That damn fool that I sent up there about the trunk — well, it wasn't his fault, in a way.   I'm to blame.   He didn't have orders to check on the woman's description, only on the contents of the trunk.   He came back and touched on it in a general way.   I go home and I'm in bed already, and suddenly pop!   into my brain — one of the tenants I questioned two whole days ago had given us a few details and they didn't tally with his on several important points.   Talk about being slow to catch on!"
      "I've had that all the way through this damn thing," I admitted ruefully.   "I called it delayed action.   It nearly killed me."
      "I'm a police officer and you're not."
      "That how you happened to shine at the right time?"
      "Sure.   We came over to pick him up for questioning.   I left them planted there when we saw he wasn't in, and came on over here by myself to square it up with you while we were waiting.   How did you happen to hit on that cement floor?"
      I told him about the freak synchronization.   "The renting agent showed up taller at the kitchen window in proportion to Thorwald, than he had been a moment before when both were at the living room windows together.   It was no secret that they were putting in cement floors, topped by a cork composition, and raising them considerably.   But it took on new meaning.   Since the top floor one has been finished for some time, it had to be the fifth.   Here's the way I have it lined up, just in theory.   She's been in ill health for years, and he's been out of work, and he got sick of that and of her both.   Met this other——"
      "She'll be here later today, they're bringing her down under arrest"
      "He probably insured her for all he could get, and then started to poison her slowly, trying not to leave any trace.   I imagine — and remember, this is pure conjecture — she caught him at it that night the light was on all night.   Caught on in some way, or caught him in the act.   He lost his head, and did the very thing he had wanted all along to avoid doing.   Killed her by violence — strangulation or a blow.   The rest had to be hastily improvised.   He got a better break than he deserved at that.   He thought of the apartment upstairs, went up and looked around.   They'd just finished laying the floor, the cement hadn't hardened yet, and the materials were still around.   He gouged a trough out of it just wide enough to take her body, put her in it, mixed fresh cement and recemented over her, possibly raising the general level of the floor an inch or two so that she'd be safely covered.   A permanent, odorless coffin.   Next day the workmen came back, laid down the cork surfacing on top of it without noticing anything, I suppose he'd used one of their own trowels to smooth it.   Then he sent his accessory upstate fast, near where his wife had been several summers before, but to a different farmhouse where she wouldn't be recognized, along with the trunk keys.   Sent the trunk up after her, and dropped himself an already used post card into his mailbox, with the year-date blurred.   In a week or two