Eight Perfect Murders (Malcolm Kershaw, #1)

by Peter Swanson

Books are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don’t just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself.

Emily had written a quick blurb on Dorothy B. Hughes’s In a Lonely Place.

My pick had been Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. I hadn’t read it, of course, but I’d read enough reviews and summaries to feel as though I had; also, I was fond of the title.

The last entry before that event had been a list I’d written called “Mysteries for a Cold Winter Night,” posted on December 22, 2009. My wife died in the early morning hours of January 1, 2010; she’d been in a car accident, sliding off an overpass on Route 2 while inebriated.

I read the list of mysteries I’d selected, all ones that took place in wintertime or during a storm. At this point in my blog-writing career I was happy to just list books, and not describe them. This was my post: The Sittaford Mystery (1931) by Agatha Christie The Nine Tailors (1934) by Dorothy L. Sayers The Corpse in the Snowman (1941) by Nicholas Blake Tied Up in Tinsel (1972) by Ngaio Marsh The Shining (1977) by Stephen King Gorky Park (1981) by Martin Cruz Smith

Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1992) by Peter Høeg A Simple Plan (1993) by Scott Smith The Ice Harvest (2000) by Scott Phillips Raven Black (2006) by Ann Cleeves

The latest comment was posted less than twenty-four hours earlier, at three A.M., from a user named Doctor Sheppard, and read, I am halfway through your list. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, done. THE ABC MURDERS, finally finished. DOUBLE INDEMNITY, kaput. DEATHTRAP, saw the film. When I’m finished with the list (it won’t be long now) I’ll get in touch. Or do you already know who I am?

If these words are ever read, then I am sure that the reader might have already guessed that I have more to do with these crimes than I’ve been letting on. It’s not as though there haven’t been clues. For instance, why did my heart beat faster when Gwen Mulvey first began interviewing me? Why didn’t I immediately tell her that I knew who Elaine Johnson was? Why did I only eat two bites of my sandwich the night after I was visited by the FBI agent? Why do I dream of being chased? Why did I not immediately tell Gwen about the comment from Doctor Sheppard? And a really astute reader might even have noticed that my name, shortened, is Mal—French, of course, for bad. That’s taking it too far, though, because that really is my name. I’ve changed some names for the purposes of this narrative, but not my own.

All poems—all works of art, really, seem like cries of help to me, but especially poetry. When they are good, and I do believe there are very few good poems, reading them is like having a long-dead stranger whisper in your ear, trying to be heard.

“Winter Nightfall” by Sir John Squire. I could probably recite it by heart, but I wanted to see the words. When I found a poem I loved, I would read it again and again. For one entire year I must have read Sylvia Plath’s “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”

We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet someone, before words are ever spoken, there are already lies and half-truths. The clothes we wear cover the truth of our bodies, but they also present who we want to be to the world. They are fabrications, figuratively and literally.

I was not innocent, even though sometimes I allowed myself the luxury of thinking that I was. And if Gwen Mulvey discovered the truth, then I would have to accept it.

A ginger cat was making its way slowly toward me, its unclipped nails clicking on the hardwood floor. The cat stopped and sniffed at Chaney’s body, then looked again at me and meowed loudly, taking two steps closer, then flopping onto its side and stretching out to show its white tufted stomach. A wave of almost paralyzing cold swept through my body, a premonition that for the rest of my life this one image, this cat asking for love while its owner lay murdered on the floor, would haunt me forever. Without thinking, I bent down and scooped up the cat, bringing it with me out to my car, and driving away.

. I named the cat Nero.

“Winter Nightfall,” of course, by Sir John Squire, “Aubade” by Philip Larkin, “Crossing the Water” by Sylvia Plath, and at least half the stanzas from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray.

He said he’d read a poem that he thought I’d like. I did like it, maybe even loved it. It’s a Bill Knott and I’m going to copy it down here so I will never forget. It’s called “Goodbye.” If you are still alive when you read this, close your eyes. I am under their lids, growing black.