The Man Who Slept All Day

8 a.m.

In all the house no one was awake, except in that one room. It was a large room, with wide windows, yet curiously gloomy. The furniture was big and dark and heavy, the walls a cheerless gray. Even at this hour, when the sun had already risen, it seemed to be full of shadows.

The pajama-clad man standing in the center of the room was listening intently. No, there was not a sound anywhere in the house. No one was stirring. Assured of that, he turned back the cuffs of his sleeves and went on with what he had still to do.

First he went into the bathroom, from which came the sounds of a cabinet opened and closed, bottles moved about and opened, and running water. Then, returning to the bedroom, he had to make certain curious arrangements with the furniture, the curtains, and a few other objects. He paid particularly careful attention to the bed coverings.

At last, confident that everything had been done, he stood again in the center of the room, and laughed, a long, muffled, almost whispering laugh. It was not pleasant sound.

Then he opened the door, noiselessly.

9 a.m.

The worst thing about waking up in a strange place was always that for a minute you didn’t remember where you were, or how you’d got there. If Tom weren’t here, Marilee Dixon thought, if I couldn’t see Tom’s mussed-up, sandy hair on the pillow of the other twin bed, I’d die. That’s exactly what I’d do, I’d die, and someone would come in and find me and pull the sheet over my face.

She glanced at the sheet as she thought of it, pale green, printed with an all-over design of crimson strawberries with dark green leaves, and giggled. Nobody in the world but Frank Faulkner would own that sheet, and use it in his guest room.

Marilee Dixon yawned, and stretched, and wished she hadn’t waked up; or that she knew whether or not to stay awake. The little painted clock, held up by gilt cupids, on the dressing table, said nine. Darn weekends, anyway. Darn waking up in a strange room at nine o’clock Sunday. Should she try to go to sleep again? Or should she bathe and dress and go downstairs, and if she did, would she find everyone else already up and having breakfast?

This was going to be a miserable Sunday, she told herself, one of the most miserable in her lifetime, with a house full of ill-assorted people, all more or less strangers to one another, and all suffering to some degree from the night before. If we were only home, she thought unhappily. Maybe the little apartment on Horatio Street didn’t have printed bed linen and ornamental clocks and a butler named Bletsom, but she and Tom could loll around all day in pajamas, and cook an enormous breakfast, and sprawl on the carpet with the Sunday papers.

Instead, she was going to have to try and like the Rawlinsons, and the ex-chorus girl, Kitten Riley, and Reno Brown, with his ugly, glowering face, and that funny little Melville Fairr, when she knew perfectly well she would never see any of them again. One thing, though, she wasn’t even going to try to like George Faulkner. She didn’t think anyone else would, either.

The muscles tightened over her jaw. How could a really nice person like Frank Faulkner have such a brother? Making nasty cracks to everybody, and trying to stir up quarrels! Marilee shuddered. Thank goodness Tom hadn’t lost his temper last night at that remark about her marrying her father’s secretary.

Forget it, Marilee, she told herself. The day had to be got through somehow.

Perhaps if she went down the hall to the bathroom, she could tell if anyone else in the household was up and stirring. Though after all, she decided, she didn’t really care what time it was, or what the rest of Frank Faulkner’s house guests were doing. At least Tom was still asleep. There was something wonderfully reassuring about that.

In a few minutes, though, she resolved, she’d get up and tiptoe down the hall to the bathroom and comb her hair, and wash the sleep from her eyes, and do a few odd jobs with powder and lipstick. It always seemed to her that she looked downright frightful when she first woke up in the morning, and the thought of Tom’s having his first sight of her before something had been done about her face and hair was just plain unendurable. At first she’d thought that when they’d been married a really long time she wouldn’t worry about it any more. But now they’d been married for nearly four months. Maybe she’d always feel that way.

Tom, she whispered under her breath, I want to go home. That was the trouble with her, she was homesick.

She hadn’t wanted to spend the weekend at Ravensmoor in the first place. Something about the two Faulkner brothers had always made her a little uneasy. Frank was too charming, too amusing, too whimsical. George was just a nasty he-gossip, with a vitriolic tongue and a passion for unpleasant practical jokes. But Tom had pointed out that Frank Faulkner’s friendship was going to be useful to a struggling young lawyer—well, a rising young lawyer. It would mean something to handle the legal business for the Faulkner estate. Besides, he’d told her, anyone—even a girl who’d been brought up on a magnificent Long Island estate—ought to jump at the chance to visit the almost fabulous Ravensmoor.

It seemed too silly for words to tell him that she had an unpleasant premonition that the weekend was going to be, well, ghastly. Instead, she convinced herself that it was only her usual nervousness at the prospect of going to a strange house, and meeting new people. For a girl who started life as an heiress, and got as far as being a debutante before her old man lost his dough, Tom had told her once, you certainly do a good job of being a shy little creature.

Marilee sighed, and snuggled down into the covers. The weekend had proved to be every bit as terrible as she’d expected. At least, so far. And today didn’t promise to be much better.

Maybe, with a different assortment of house guests, a weekend at Ravensmoor could be hilarious fun. The house itself was ideal for it. Everything imaginable was provided for comfort and for entertainment. But last night they’d all sat around looking at one another, too uncomfortable to be really bored, and then George Faulkner had got a little tight and started insulting everybody.

How on earth had Frank Faulkner rounded up such an assortment of people, and, if he’d done it deliberately, what had been the idea? Individually they weren’t so bad. The Rawlinsons, for instance. A bit dull, but nice, agreeable people. Professional house guests. George had made some unpleasant crack to that effect. And Kitten Riley. Taken by herself or among the right people, Marilee suspected, Kitten could be fun, a lot of fun. But the big, boisterous ex-chorus girl, and the almost incredibly reserved Rawlinsons—Marilee smothered a giggle in her pillow. And Reno Brown would cast a pall over anybody’s house party. There might be worse dispositions in the world than his, but she doubted it. All he did was sit in a corner and scowl. Glulking, Tom called it, a combination of glower and sulk. Then there was that funny little Melville Fairr. Nobody seemed to know anything about him. He spent the evening a little detached from the others, hardly saying a word. Not exactly an addition to an amusing evening.

Frank Faulkner hadn’t seemed to be making any attempts to improve matters, either. It was as though he’d thrown them all together and was sitting back to see what would happen. And George …

Marilee wrinkled her nose at the ceiling. Once in a while George Faulkner managed something funny. Like the dinner party where he’d confided, falsely, to everyone that the guest of honor was almost stone deaf, with loud and devastating results. But usually George’s practical jokes were unpleasant, or unkind, or both.

Ought she to try to go to sleep again? First, though, she’d do something about her hair and complexion, so she’d look sufficiently glamorous when Tom woke. And at the same time maybe she could get some idea of what the rest of the household was doing. She yawned, brushed the hair back from her face, swung her feet down to the floor and began searching for her little Chinese slippers.

They’d been there last night, she could have sworn it. Was it possible she hadn’t unpacked them, or even hadn’t brought them? No, she was sure they had been there. She knelt down on the floor and looked under the bed. Oh, well, she’d get along without them. Walking on Frank’s pale taupe carpet was like walking through unmowed grass anyway. At home she was always running around barefooted in the morning, and Tom was always scolding her for it. Some day, he said, she’d step on a live cobra, and then she’d be sorry.

She slipped into her robe, tiptoed to the door and opened it quietly. There didn’t seem to be a sound coming from anywhere. Marilee closed the door behind her and stood for a moment, listening. There should be voices, or movement of some kind, coming from downstairs if the others were up and dressed. George Faulkner’s door across the hall was open. George was still in bed. He must have forgotten and left his door open. She wondered if she ought to close it.

Her Chinese slippers!

Marilee Dixon gasped twice, first with amazement and then with rage. There they were, on the rug beside George’s bed, as though she’d just casually stepped out of them and left them there. Of all the stupid practical jokes!

It must have been George himself, of course. No one else had quite as mean and nasty a mind. Her cheeks flaming, she darted into the room to rescue the slippers. She slipped her feet into them quickly, and then glanced around, to make sure nothing else had been planted where it would accidentally be found later.

No, there was nothing.

Then she saw the man in the bed.

For a moment she stood there, paralyzed, the color draining slowly out of her cheeks, her stomach turning into a little ball of ice. Thank God I didn’t scream, she whispered almost soundlessly. Again she listened. No, no one was stirring.

It had been done with a knife, she could see. At first glance she’d thought George Faulkner was sleeping, his face half-buried in the pillow. Then she’d seen that great dark stain on the under sheet, and the wound in his throat.

She must rouse all the household, call the police, tell them that during the night someone had murdered George Faulkner.

It’s a wonder no one ever did it before, her lips formed silently. Only last night Tom had said—

Tom had said—

Tom. His violent temper. That crack George had made last night. One of these days, Tom had said later, between clenched teeth, I’m going to kill that guy, even if he is Frank’s brother, unless someone else does it first. The half-hour during the night when Tom had been out of the room, and she hadn’t known where he had gone. It wasn’t just what he said, sweetheart. I’ve plenty of other good reasons for hating George Faulkner.

But how could you! she whispered. Tom, didn’t you realize—

Something had to be done, and quickly. Everything seemed to be in order. Tom wouldn’t be such a fool as to leave fingerprints.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She and Tom were going back to the city on that five o’clock train. In the meantime, she had to keep George Faulkner’s body from being discovered. Frank had said something about his brother often sleeping all day when he’d been up late, and drinking, the night before.

As she bent over to touch the sheet, for just one instant her head whirled. She closed her eyes, somehow managed to make the effort to keep calm. Then she pulled the upper sheet and the quilted comforter up over that dark stain and that ugly, gaping wound, and tucked it carefully and snugly around the murdered man’s ear and chin.

He seemed to be sleeping, quietly, peacefully.

Marilee walked slowly and silently to the door, and waited an instant to make sure no one was in the hall. Fingerprints. She must be careful about that. Picking up a corner of her padded robe, she wrapped it around the knob, and pulled the door shut soundlessly. Somehow—she never knew quite how—she resisted the impulse to run as fast as she could back to her own room.

The bed was warm and comforting. Marilee curled up in a little ball like a kitten, and pulled the covers up over her trembling limbs. She wanted to wake Tom. But he mustn’t ever find out that she knew. Not that Tom would fear she’d ever give him away. It was that the shadow would always keep rising up between them. Nothing would ever be the same…. Nothing was ever going to be quite the same anyway.

Tom, she thought, I’d love you even if you’d murdered fifty people, but why did you, why did you? There isn’t anything in the world worth murder.

If only the day were over, if only she didn’t have to go through all those hours of acting as though everything was all right. Perhaps she could pretend she had a headache, and stay in her room, or even take an earlier train. No, Tom would suspect something, and then when the body was found, and the police did come, someone would remember her actions, and the police would ask questions, and—

You’ve got to get through it, she told herself fiercely.

There would be questions enough anyway. But if she and Tom went through the day as though nothing had happened, and then just went on home, it was going to be easier, and safer.

The warmth of the bed was relaxing her tense muscles little by little, but her head seemed to be spinning like a top. It was getting very hard to think. Only one thing stayed in her mind, and it repeated itself over and over. George Faulkner was dead, Tom had murdered him, somehow she had to keep the police from ever finding out. If only she could sleep a little now. She’d need that sleep, to help her get through the day. And her head felt unbearably heavy. I’ll never be able to sleep again, though, she told herself; never as long as I live. Then her eyes closed.

Where was Tom! What had happened! Marilee sat up in bed, filled with a sudden terror. For a moment, she couldn’t remember. There was something—something strange and horrible—that had happened. Then she remembered.

Incredibly, she must have fallen asleep, after that. Yet she didn’t feel as though she had wakened from sleep, it was more like coming out from under ether. Was it possible she could have slept, while in that room down the hall—?

Where was Tom?

She scrambled out of bed and stood shivering in the middle of the room, her hands to her face.

The door opened suddenly behind her and she wheeled around. There was Tom, coming in through the door grinning as though he hadn’t a care in the world, as though that very night he hadn’t … Instinctively her eyes went to his hands, though she knew they would be scrubbed clean. The grin faded from his lean, homely, pleasant face, he kicked the door shut behind him and bounded into the room.

Marilee, sweetheart, what’s the matter? My darling girl, what frightened you?

For a moment she relaxed there, comforted in his arms.

I had a bad dream, she managed at last.

He laughed and gave her a gentle little shove. Scaring me to death, for a bad dream! I thought you’d seen a ghost. He took out a cigarette and lighted it. You must have had it after I left. When I got up you were sleeping as though someone had crowned you with a baseball bat.

She managed a shaky laugh. Give me a cigarette. I guess I can smoke before breakfast when I’ve had a bad dream. How long have you been up?

Oh, just a few minutes. I came to see if you were awake. Do you want me to bring you some coffee, or do you want to dress and come downstairs?

I’ll come downstairs, she declared. I wouldn’t miss seeing breakfast in this place for ten million dollars. Well—nine million dollars. If he could look and talk so gaily, she could manage too.

It’s worth it, he told her. The butler has a hangover.

She stared at him. That nice, fatherly old man?

That nice, fatherly old man, he mimicked her. Frank says he always has a hangover. That’s what makes him look so nice and old and fatherly. He opened the door. See you downstairs. And put on those pretty slacks, the yellow ones. Show these girls how an ex-heiress looks. He closed the door and was gone.

Marilee caught the edge of the dressing table and stared at herself in the mirror.