From the Daily Gazette, July 17, 2070:
WIDOW, 112, FOUND HANGED
Accident, Not Suicide, Police Say
Mrs. Callie Prescott, aged 112, was found hanged yesterday afternoon in her home at 561 Culver Avenue, where she had lived alone since the death of her husband, Dr. Burton Prescott. From a note left on a table by Mrs. Prescott and other evidence found on the scene, police have concluded that she had not committed suicide but had been the victim of a bizarre accident.
Dr. Prescott had been Chief of Cardiology at Forbes Hospital until his retirement in 2049 at the age of 93 and had lived with his wife at the Culver Avenue address until his death in 2069.
"Murphy!" came Captain Frisell's voice from his private office at the rear of the squad room. "Get in here and bring Dante with you -- I've got a case for you two to cover."
Detective First Class Jeff Murphy and Detective Second Class Mona Dante, in addition to being highly competent investigators, were known in the squad to be an "item," but Frisell had never found their private relationship to impair their professional work, and he had no objection to partnering them on a case.
"This looks like the usual suicide story," he told them. "Hundred-twelve-year-old woman, husband died last year, probably got tired of living alone and decided to go out with a noose around her neck. But even so, you've got to look into it carefully, especially considering that her husband used to be a prominent doctor. The medical examiner's office says they don't have anybody available for at least a couple of hours, so you'll have to wait around a while."
"I've never seen anything like the mess we had this morning," Mona remarked as she made the turn onto the riverfront highway. "I thought blackouts were ancient history by now, something that only happened back in the nineteen-hundreds."
"Oh, no," said Jeff. "I'll admit they're extremely rare now, but I've seen a couple in my years on the force. When I was a rookie back in '35, we had one that cut off the power to the whole city, and some of the suburbs too, until half-past two in the morning. Today's was nothing in comparison. It lasted only an hour and three minutes, in broad daylight, it was limited to a small part of the city -- even though that small part was unfortunately centered near our precinct house -- there were no major traffic accidents, and certainly nobody got killed because of it. But to a spring chicken like you, of course, it must have been a great novelty."
"If that 'spring chicken' was meant to belittle my professional experience, I ought to resent it," Mona retorted. "But if it was meant as a compliment to my looks, I'll accept it gladly, kind sir. Anyhow, you're not exactly a grizzled old veteran yourself, you're only sixty. That's another thing I heard about the nineteen-hundreds, they made you retire from the force when you hit sixty -- isn't that ridiculous!"
"Well, of course nobody's old at sixty nowadays. I've got another twenty years before they'd let me take a pension even if I wanted to, and I certainly don't think I will until I'm ninety -- there's still plenty of life left to enjoy. Even people born in 1960 or so, who were adults by the time the Anti-Age shot was developed and can't get the full benefit from it that you and I can, are living longer and healthier than people did in the 1900's. But I know my grandpa retired from the force at sixty in the year 2000, and that was considered normal. Doctors didn't know as much then as they know today. Still, there is a difference between sixty and forty even now -- you're likely to be a widow for about twenty years after I disappear from the scene."
"Whoa there, cowboy!" said Mona. "You can a be lot of fun to fool around with, but I'm not making any lifelong commitments just yet, thank you very much, so cut out that 'widow' stuff."
"OK, OK," Jeff agreed, "we can let that slide for a while. But I want you to understand, you can get irresistibly attached to me before you realize it. Anyway, here we are at the building, so let's park the car and get on with that professional experience you're so sensitive about."
The uniformed officer at the door of Apartment 25G filled them in on the facts he had collected. "Mrs. Prescott was supposed to meet a friend for lunch at a restaurant, and when she hadn't shown up or telephoned an hour later, the friend put in an emergency call, insisting that Mrs. Prescott was never late for anything in her life and that something terrible must have happened if she didn't show up. We had to force the door, and I guess she was right about the something terrible."
"Did Mrs. Prescott leave a note?" Jeff asked.
"Yeah, there was a note addressed to the police on a table, but the rule is we're supposed to leave that for the detectives, so we didn't open it. It's still there waiting for you. Now that you're here, I guess Walters and I can go back on patrol."
"Sure, we'll take over now," said Jeff. "Come on, Mona, let's take a look at the body -- and at that note."
The twenty-fifth floor commanded a view high over every other building in the neighborhood, and afternoon sunlight poured in through the uncurtained windows as they walked into the spacious living room of the Prescott apartment. The sight that met their eyes was not what they would have thought of as the usual suicide scene.
True enough, there was a corpse hanging at the end of a rope that was fastened at the wall and passed over a hook screwed into the ceiling, and there was a chair lying on its side a short distance behind the dead woman's feet, which were dangling about twenty inches above the floor. Her head was tilted down toward her left shoulder by the rope, and her facial expression was serene and peaceful -- one might almost think she had a satisfied smile on her face -- and this too was in keeping with scenes that Jeff and Mona had seen in the past. But the differences from the ordinary pattern were noticeable. The rope that went from the wall over the hook was not tied around Mrs. Prescott's neck; instead, it ended at a metal ring about three inches in diameter, and the noose that encircled her neck had been tied to the bottom of the ring. The wall end of the rope was not attached to a hook or bracket but passed downward through a hole in the top of a black metal box that was affixed to the wall and had a dial on its front face, with its pointer standing straight up at zero. About fifteen feet of rope extended below the box and lay extended loosely on the floor. At the top of the box stood a two-inch lever tilted toward the hanging body, with a hole near its upper end, and a thin but strong string tied through the hole extended down to the floor, with its other end placed between two of the slats that formed the chair back and firmly tied to its top. A video camera on a tripod, a few feet farther from the wall, was aimed at the hook and everything under it, and on the wall opposite the black box was a large mirror that reflected everything the camera could see.
One more feature, not entirely unknown in Jeff and Mona's experience but certainly the most conspicuous and striking part of the scene, was that the woman hanging from the rope was completely nude. A dark patterned polyester robe with a silky corded belt threaded through its loops was lying bunched on the floor, close to the spot directly under the dead lady's dangling bare feet and a little to her left.
"She's quite a looker for her age, isn't she?" said Mona in a subdued voice, staring at the hanging figure.
"Sure does look well preserved," replied Jeff, deeply impressed. "I wouldn't put her in the spring chicken category, of course, but I've seen women of seventy that didn't look this good -- and I mean when they were alive."
"You'd better not have seen them in the last six months, wise guy!" snapped Mona.
"No, sweetie, once I found you, I had no need to look elsewhere," Jeff answered. "Now what's this black-box setup supposed to do?"
"Let's look at the note on the table," Mona suggested. "Maybe she explains something in it."
"When you stick to business, you make a lot of sense. Let's do that," Jeff agreed. He walked to the side table, opened the envelope that lay on top of a photograph album, and, with Mona eagerly looking over his shoulder, began to read the surprising contents:
"August 8, 2069
"This is not a suicide note.
"If you as a police officer are reading these lines, I suppose that means I've killed myself after all, but that wasn't the purpose of the exercise -- merely an unintended side effect. But it's one I really ought to expect to happen sooner or later. That's why I'm writing this note for you, just in case."
Jeff looked at Mona quizzically.
"We've seen enough suicide notes on the job," he said, "but a just-in-case note is something new, isn't it?"
"It isn't one I've seen before," Mona said. "Let's go on and read the rest."
Jeff turned back to the letter, and they continued reading.
"My husband Burton finally vanished from my earthly life a few weeks ago. I miss him terribly, but after ninety-two wonderful years I really have no right to be greedy. I still see him in my dreams, whether sleeping or waking. I miss his gentle voice, his cheerful laugh, his tender little touch at any moment of the day or night -- and of course all the wonderful sex we had even to the very last days. Since his death I've been trying some little adventures that definitely rank as only the second-best thing but that I've always thought of doing some day. I never did it while Burton was with me because there was the high risk that if it turned out wrong, it could put an end to the very best thing -- not merely life, but life with a husband who loved me dearly and whom I loved equally well. Now that such a life has become forever impossible, I no longer feel I've got that much to lose. People were risking their lives even when we two were young, with such dangerous pastimes as mountain climbing, auto racing, skydiving, or bungee jumping They died sometimes, but most of the time they survived to try again, and they counted the risk worth taking for the sake of the thrill. So do I -- now.
"The idea started many years ago, before the turn of the century. I had always liked to read mystery stories, and so did Burton -- it was one of the many interests we shared. One of the things that fascinated me was the description of hanging scenes, and especially the notion that people could actually find great pleasure in hanging at the end of a rope, a concept that several of our favorite mystery writers used in their books. I had no trouble at all believing that this could be true -- just imagining it gave me a lovely shivery-yet-warm feeling inside. But I never mentioned this to anyone, not even to Burton, because it seemed much too weird to admit.
"One evening in the 1990's, after I had just finished some ironing, I pulled the cord out of the iron and walked into our bedroom, where Burton was sitting at his desk. I can't remember what I went to talk to him about, but he was deep in one of his medical journals and said something like 'Not right now, Callie, I've got to finish reading this article.' I was standing behind him, holding the electric iron cord, and on a sudden whim I dropped the middle of the cord in front of his neck and started pulling gently upward with both hands.
"If I had racked my brains all day long for a way to get his attention away from that journal, I could never have thought of anything more effective. He turned around and looked at me for a long time with a strange expression on his face. Finally he said: 'You know, I'm beginning to get some idea of what those people in the mystery novels might be talking about. When you did that, it gave me a kind of tingling sensation, first in my neck, but then in a very different place -- surprisingly sexy.'
"I was pleased at his reaction. This seemed to be the ideal time for me to tell him at last about the hanging fantasies that had been running through my head for quite a long time. And under these circumstances his response, as I had hoped, was not shock, disbelief, or even revulsion, but interest -- an even livelier interest than I could have expected.
"He rose from his chair and took the cord from my hands. 'Let's just see how you like this on your own neck,' he said. When he lifted the cord under my jaw, I thought he was going to try the same gentle two-handed pull that I'd used on him, but he had something different in mind. In just five seconds he had tied a slipknot behind my head (they teach you a lot about knot-tying in medical school) and was pulling the other end of the cord upward with one hand. The cord was stiff and the knot didn't slide with the slight force he was using, but the fact remained: I was standing with a noose around my neck, and the touch of it under my jaw was giving me the same kind of tingling sensation he had described -- in both places.
"'You look absolutely lovely wearing that noose,' he said, staring at me intently. 'Come on with me into the bathroom. Right now!' And he began to half-push, half-pull me the few steps to the bathroom door. Propelling me inside, he closed the door behind me, pushed me up against it, put the cord over the bathrobe hook on the back of the door, and pulled down on the other end. That's when I suddenly started to get frightened.
"'Wait a minute!' I cried. 'What -- what are you trying to do?'
"'Don't worry, my dear,' he replied, 'I'm not about to string you up. I just want you to see how interesting you look this way. Take a good look at that mirror above the sink.'
I looked, and I had to admit that the sight of myself with the noose around my neck was one that excited me in a way I hadn't known before. The knot was under my right ear, and the vertical cord, even though it wasn't pulled tight at all, was forcing my head to tilt down toward my left shoulder, and I had to smile to see this novel view of myself.
"'I'm not going to pull the noose tight, Callie,' Burton said. 'In fact, I'm not going to pull it at all right now. I'll just put the end of the cord in your hand and let you pull as much or as little as you feel comfortable with --- so long as you don't pull it TOO tight. I've got other things to do with my hands.'
"I took the cord in my right hand and started to pull it slowly. The knot moved a little closer to my neck, but I had to use my left hand too in order to make it more snug -- and then it began to slide more easily. A little additional force was enough to make the noose tighter, a little lessening of the force released it. Back and forth, looser and tighter -- it was almost like doing a sort of dance. When I tightened the noose, I found it a little more difficult to breathe, but certainly not impossible, and I started feeling mildly dizzy, but I had no trouble staying on my feet. Besides the strange new way I felt, the sight of my face in the mirror as these changes happened with a tiny movement of my right hand made it even more fascinating.
"All this was so engrossing that at first I didn't quite realize just what Burton had found for his hands to do. But it became clear very quickly. While I had my hand at the control end of the cord and my neck was encircled by the business end, so to speak, Burton was kneeling in front of me and his hands were making their way slowly but persistently upward under my skirt, from my calves to my knees to my thighs and then even higher. I had always found this highly enjoyable, but now that it was combined with the play of the noose on my neck, it was more thrilling than ever. When Burton's hands reached my waistline, he worked them over to my skirt zipper and opened it; a moment later he had extracted his hands, and both skirt and half-slip were sliding steadily down to my feet. My husband's hands and lips were wandering all over my body, caressing me softly, kissing me hotly at my waist, my navel, the triangle of fuzz between my thighs, as he pushed my panties down to join the other garments.
"And I realized that now I was finally experiencing in reality the fantasy I had thought about for a long time and had never mentioned to anyone, not even to Burton a few moments ago -- how it would feel not only to hang myself by the neck but to have an intense sexual experience while I was hanging myself. Now here I was, standing with a noose around my neck, pulling it tight again and again, tingling and giddy, while a lecherous man was touching me everywhere with salacious intentions. And when his fingers wandered down to the point of the triangle and started exploring me even more intimately, I found myself totally overwhelmed with excitement and burst out with an irresistible urge to tell him about the magic he was working on me.
"'Oh, Burton, darling, this is absolute heaven, I've never felt it so completely in all my life!' I cried aloud.
"That was when I got my first big surprise. I wasn't crying aloud at all. My voice was faint, squeaky and high-pitched, like someone who had taken a mouthful of helium, and that made me still more amazed and excited; it had never occurred to me that a tight noose could have this kind of effect.
"But the surprise that followed wasn't a pleasant one. Burton suddenly stopped doing the wonderful things he had been engaged in and shouted, 'Callie, STOP! For heaven's sake stop pulling the cord this instant!'
"I was startled out of my ecstasy, confused and disappointed, but I did as he told me. 'What is it, Burton? What's wrong?' I asked, and I noticed that with the relaxing of the noose my voice had come back to more or less normal.
"'Oh, Callie, darling, I'm so sorry! I should have realized that saying "pull as much or as little as you feel comfortable with" wouldn't be clear enough, that you could get carried away by your sensations, not understanding the danger. But I let myself get carried away too, and that's inexcusable. I'll explain it to you later, but for now we've got to stop doing this particular trick. You needn't worry, though -- let's just go back into the bedroom, and I might find a way to make it up to you.
"Truer words were never spoken. A very short time later I found myself lying on our king- sized bed, and not only had Burton managed to divest me of what little he had left me wearing in the bathroom -- except the noose, which he left loosely on my neck -- but he had quickly caught up with me in the matter of undressing. And a short time after that, I was transported again into wonderland, but whatever danger Burton had been worried about was evidently gone, because he too let himself get carried away with the excitement; we were doing the marvelous things we had been doing for years, but this time it was even more overwhelming than before, something I would never have believed possible.
"The next morning I awoke feeling rested and with a sense of deep satisfaction. Burton was bending over me tenderly and smiling.
"'Did you sleep well, darling?' he asked. 'How do you feel?'
"'Absolutely wonderful,' I answered. 'And you?'
"'I feel marvelous -- I can't even put into words. But now that we're both a little calmer, I have to apologize for giving you that awful scare last night, and explain why it was necessary. If I hadn't stopped you from what you were doing at that moment, no matter how much you were enjoying it, something terrible could have happened.
"'There wasn't anything wrong,' I said. 'I was able to breathe and talk, and it felt so good.'
"'Yes, darling, but when I heard your voice sounding faint and squeaky, I suddenly realized that you were pulling the noose too tight. There are risks that you don't know about -- you can do yourself deadly harm in an instant.'
"'But people don't die by hanging in an instant. There are all those stories we've read about people actually hanging for maybe a minute and being rescued. Evelyn Piper wrote about that in "The Innocent," and Charlotte Armstrong in "Something Blue," and John Saul" in Punish the Sinners," and Arthur Laurents in "A Clearing in the Woods," and -- do you mean that such things can't happen, that their stories are impossible?'
"'Oh, they can happen all right -- if you're lucky. It might even be true that most of the time people can be rescued after a minute of hanging and recover completely. But not every time. Sometimes there can be vagal inhibition. The vagus nerve is called that because it wanders all over like a vagrant, to more parts of the body than any other nerve in your skull, and of course it passes through your neck. If the noose tightens at just the wrong moment of your heart cycle, the resulting signal from the vagus nerve can inhibit your heartbeat -- stop it permanently. The chance is a relatively small one, but it's real, and it's something I must not allow to happen. Not only am I a doctor -- I'm the guy who loves you more than anyone or anything else on earth, and I'm not about to have you disappear forever for just a moment of pleasure, no matter how intense.
"There's another risk too -- if someone does this trick often, then even if he doesn't die outright, he's going to lose a certain number of brain cells after a while, and once brain cells are gone, they're gone forever. You wouldn't want to deteriorate and lose your real personality little by little. And I certainly wouldn't want that -- you're so perfect exactly as you are."
"(Of course, you're reading this note in 2069, or if I'm lucky, in the 2070's, when brain-cell regeneration is a routine procedure, so this may seem ridiculous to you, but remember that in the 1990's every word of what Burton said was true. I've been going for regeneration sessions regularly for years, and if I seem to be coming a little more frequently nowadays, my young neurologist -- he's only 57 -- will no doubt attribute it merely to the increasing rate of deterioration in an old lady's brain.)
"''But just the same,' Burton continued, 'even if we can't do any tricks with a tight noose, we can play some very pleasant games quite safely. I would simply love to take photographs of you in the delightful pose you saw in the mirror -- and I think between us we can figure out some others that may be even more interesting.'
"And that's how it began. In the years that followed that epoch-making discovery, we gradually accumulated a fine collection of photographs that show me doing things that look highly risky, and sometimes even deadly, but are in fact quite safe. Appearances can fool the viewer, and we have always loved looking at my seemingly dangerous and fatal antics. If you look on the side table, you can see some of them in our first album, the one on which I have placed this note."
At this point Mona stopped Jeff from going further with the reading.
"I think we ought to do what she suggests," Mona said. "If we see what she did that wasn't dangerous. we could get some idea of what she did that turned out to be fatal."
."That sounds reasonable," replied Jeff. "Somehow, though, I get the feeling that you'd also like to look at those photos simply because you're intrigued by the idea."
"Well, that's true too -- and don't tell me the thought doesn't appeal a little bit to you also. Anyhow, it isn't often that we can conduct a serious investigation like this and include something pleasant as well as plain hard work."
They opened the album and started looking through the 1990's Polaroid photos. The date under the first picture was March 27, 1993, almost eighty years in the past. It showed a nude woman, much younger but unmistakably Callie Prescott, standing under the horizontal part of a ceiling chain whose vertical part held a suspended light fixture. A half-inch rope passing through one of the links of the chain was noosed around her neck, and she was smiling a happy smile at the camera as she pulled downward on the other end with her right hand, seemingly with all her might.
"Well, she certainly seems to be having fun," Mona remarked, "but I guess it's easy to look as if you were pulling hard without actually doing it. The noose does appear to be as tight on her neck as it can possibly be."
"Yes, that's an easy one to fake," sad Jeff. "But this one a few months later takes a bit more doing." He pointed to a set of photographs dated September 4, 1993. In the first picture Callie Prescott, wearing a floor-length pink nightgown and holding a noosed rope, was climbing up onto a chair under a ceiling pipe. The pictures that followed showed her happily putting the noose around her neck, pulling it snug, tying the upper end of the rope around the pipe so as to leave very little slack, easing her nightgown off to lie around her feet, lifting her right foot out and standing on the chair seat with it, and then stepping off the chair. In the next-to-the last picture she was suspended by the taut rope, almost but not quite nude, in front of the overturned chair, with her bare right foot kicking in mid-air and the left foot still partly covered by the pink nightgown that drooped down to the floor, not having been kicked off completely. The final shot showed her hanging quite still, with her feet fifteen inches or so above the floor and the nightgown still attached to her left foot.
"How did they do that?" Mona asked in a puzzled voice.
"Don't you see what they've done, Mona? There's got to be a small stool or a stack of books or something, hidden by that nightgown, and she's standing on it."
"Yes, but even so, if her husband is so worried about her safety, how could he let her step off that chair with the rope firmly tied to the pipe? See that knot? One wrong move, one slip, and she could end up really hanging, which is what he was so determined to avoid."
"Things are not always the way they seem, Mona. I'm sure that the knot is a fake, just taped to the pipe after Dr. Prescott took the picture that shows her putting the rope over the pipe and before the one that seems to show her tying the knot. The noose rope must be taped on separately behind the pipe, making it look as if it were tied on with that phony knot but actually leaving it ready to come loose at any real pull."
"Well, OK, I bow to your great analytic ability on that one. But how about this 1994 series showing her standing on the edge of a bathtub, making all the preparations with the rope and the shower curtain rod, and then hanging from the rod with her right foot hanging outside the tub and her left foot inside? The bottom of a bathtub is on the same level as the floor on the outside, so she must be really hanging in this last one."
"Sorry, Mona, but in my many years of staying at motels --"
"Never alone, I'll bet!" Mona interjected. "Now, Mona, you know a gentleman never tells. As I was saying, in my many years of staying at motels I have been in motel bathrooms where the inside bottom of the bathtub was six or eight inches higher than the floor outside. I don't know whether it's supposed to be a safety measure or they were just trying to save water, but it would make it easy for old Callie -- sorry, I shouldn't say that, she was young Callie then -- to look as if she were hanging when she was actually standing on one foot."
"All right, I'll give you that one too. And this series from 1996 where she steps off the chair backwards and seems to be hanging behind the chair, with the chair still standing sideways to the camera, it's obvious what they did, because they've got a towel covering the chair and hanging down in front, so that one of her feet can't be seen --"
'Oh, good, Mona, good! You're learning now!"
"None of your sarcasm, mister! But this one from 1997 is different, and I don't see how it can be faked. Look, after she finishes tying the noose, she steps off the chair with one foot, and then with the other foot too. Nothing hiding either foot, nothing under either foot to stand on -- she's got to be really hanging in front of the chair. They've broken their safety rules." "Well, this trick is really nice, I'll have to agree. Very convincing -- she looks just the way she does right now, when she's played her last game," Jeff said, looking back at Mrs. Prescott's body dangling just a few feet away. "But there's one significant difference you haven't taken into consideration. What time is it now?"
"Two-fifty-two," said Mona after glancing at the electric clock on the wall. "No, it isn't," Jeff corrected her, looking at his watch. "That clock must be slow. It's five minutes to four. But anyway, the point is that it's daytime, and you can see everything under the lady's feet. You can see the wall behind the chair legs, and you can see that there's nothing either behind her or under her feet. In the photograph, though, it's nighttime. Notice, the rope is set up in a doorway. The camera is in a well-lit room, but the room behind the doorway is dark, and everything under Callie's feet is dark. You don't see anything under her feet, but that doesn't prove that there really isn't anything there. I'm sure that the darkness under the chair legs is a black cloth spread out on the floor, and the darkness under Callie's feet is another black cloth covering a stool, or something of the sort, that she's standing on. It's a very effective illusion -- you can see everything else in the room, not just a body surrounded by total darkness everywhere, and it's obvious she isn't using a body harness or any similar device -- but it is an illusion just the same."
"It's positively uncanny how familiar you are with every trick that can be used to fake a lady's hanging," Mona said. "Until this minute it hadn't occurred to me that you must be quite experienced in games of this kind, but I'm not going to believe that you deduced all this right now from the pictures Callie set out for us to see. You knew all the answers from the word go -- and you never said a word to me about it in all these months!"
"Ah well," sighed Jeff, "I should have realized you can't fool a Detective Second Class with long years of professional experience. There are some things, after all, that you don't yet know about me, and I was saving this particular bit of information for some convenient time when you might be receptive to the idea."
"You couldn't possibly have found a more convenient time than today, so I suppose I shouldn't get too mad at you for holding out this long. We still have a job to finish here, but when that's done, you're going to talk, and talk plenty!"
"As far as the case is concerned," Jeff replied, "it's just dawned on me exactly what happened. I should have seen it right away, but there was one important fact I didn't realize, and I suddenly became aware of it during this little conversation. I think it's time to stop looking at the photo album and read the last part of Callie's just-in-case note."
Returning to the note, Jeff and Mona read the conclusion of what Mrs. Prescott had written: "After I finish typing this, print it up, sign it, and put it in an envelope for you, on top of the album, this is what I'm going to do:
"I'm going to take a five-foot length of rope (or a slinky belt from one of my dresses, or the velvety belt from my winter robe, or one of my late husband's narrow silky neckties, or whatever else might be suitable for the purpose) and climb up on a chair with it;
"I'm going to tie a noose and put it around my neck -- not a multi-coil hangman's noose that could get stuck but a much simpler one, with an eyelet tied at one end and the free end of the line passed loosely through it.
"I'm going to put the free end through a ring firmly fixed to the ceiling above my head (in a way that you've already seen) and pull it down on the other side;
"I'm going to move the eyelet around to the right side of my jaw and pull the free end until the noose feels nice and snug. All this time I'll be happily watching the wall mirror to see just how I look doing this, running the video camera to record the whole process, and talking to my darling Burton about what I'm doing and what I'm feeling -- I know he'll be able to see and hear me somehow, wherever he is;
"I'm going to stand up on tiptoe and pull the noose even closer, so that it feels not just snug but pleasantly tight, until I can hear my voice shift from its normal tone to that helium falsetto I remember so well; "When the noose is good and tight, I'm going to tie the free end of the line securely to the metal ring, and then settle back on my heels again, making the noose even tighter, so that I can breathe just enough to stay conscious but I can't talk at all, not even in a falsetto. My mouth will move, but no sound will come out (yes, I've experimented with this, and I know);
"The next step will be to untie the belt of my robe -- assuming, of course, that I haven't already got it tied around my neck -- take the robe off, and drop it to the floor. I'll stand there naked for a little while, smiling my happiest smile at the mirror and the camera, enjoying the way I look, and imagine Burton standing before me, caressing me everywhere with his hands and his lips like that night long ago;
"And then, wearing nothing but a noose and a wedding ring, I'll take the final step (oh, I know that's a bad pun, but I feel like making at least a little effort at humor in this): I'm going to step forward into empty space beyond the edge of the chair, kicking the chair away behind me, so that I remain hanging by my neck, pulling the noose completely tight with the whole weight of my body, and start to dance on air.
"That's when the best part will begin. I'll swing back and forth, I'll spin around, I'll kick my legs in a lovely dance, with my feet instinctively searching for a spot to stand on even though I will really be happy not to find it, I'll be waving my arms wildly, reaching up toward my throat, trying in a reflex action to loosen the rope even though I'll be enjoying every thrilling second of it. But the noose will be in full control, and nothing I can do will release the welcome tightness around my neck. Gradually I'll stop spinning and hang vertically, facing the mirror because that's the direction in which I was looking when the rope was in its untwisted position, and then the rapid spin, the real spin, will be replaced by a different kind of spin that will be there only in what I feel and see, but it will be very real to me: the oxygen deprivation will make me light-headed and dizzy and will make the room spin slowly and gently around me. The old tingling sensation will start at my neck and head but then travel all through my body, with the delicious feeling rising in my groin, pulsing and vibrating as though Burton were there again working his magic. As my vision narrows and dims and my hearing slowly fades, the feeling of sexual delight will grow more intense and build to a marvelous climax while the room grows black and I lose all awareness of the external world and surrender myself to the enchanting, wondrous sensations inside that overwhelm me.
"Somebody who does this can expect to die within a few minutes -- but I'm not going to die. (Yes, I know I'm already dead as you read this, but I mean I'm not going to die as long as I have reasonably good luck and everything goes as planned.) The one important move I didn't mention just now is that after dropping my robe, I'm going to pull the string tied to the back of the chair. When I hear that welcome loud "click!" which means the timer has started to run, THEN I'll step off the chair, secure in the knowledge that in exactly thirty seconds the rope will begin to move slowly up through the timer box and gently lower me to the floor. I may be unconscious by that time, but the way I made the noose, it will go loose immediately, and I'll gradually wake up good as new, ready to hang another time. I've done this several times already, and it works. "If it eventually happens that the timing turns out to be just exactly wrong and I'm carried away forever by the vagal inhibition, after being lucky all the previous times, then you'll finally find me -- well, you finally HAVE found me -- lying lifeless on the floor. But oh, it will have been so well worth it!
"Thank you for your attention, and I apologize for any trouble I've caused you."
At the bottom of the note was the signature: "Mrs. Callie Prescott."
Jeff put the note down and looked seriously at Mona.
"Yes, it's the way I thought it was," he said, "and I guess there is one thing I said a while ago that I'll have to retract. I could tell you just what happened, but it'll be best if we look at the video of her final adventure, and you'll probably recognize the crucial point yourself when we do." Suiting the action to the words, Jeff strode to the video camera, extracted the tape, and fitted it into the player under the 50-inch high-definition television set. He quickly found the right place on the tape and sat down on the couch with Mona to watch the drama unfold.
On the video screen, Callie Prescott pressed a button on the timer box and held it until the indicator pointed directly at the bottom of the large one-minute dial, showing thirty seconds. Holding the five feet of half-inch rope, she climbed up on the chair and then turned to face the camera. Mona knew exactly what to expect, since it had been described so fully in the note, and yet she found herself seized by strange emotions as she watched Mrs. Prescott tying the eyelet in the end of the rope, passing the free end through it, and carefully putting the resulting noose over her head to rest under her chin.
"She looks so happy to be doing all this," Mona whispered to Jeff as Mrs. Prescott adjusted the eyelet into position under her right ear and looked up with a smile to pass the free end through the ring. No one but Jeff was likely to hear her speak, neither the image of the woman on the screen adjusting the image of the rope nor the real woman hanging serenely at the end of the real rope a few feet away, so there was no need to whisper, but Jeff was careful not to break the mood by pointing out that fact. He put his right arm around Mona, holding her right arm, while the fingers of his left hand lightly caressed her right shoulder, but they both kept their eyes fixed on the screen.
"I think of you all the time, Burton, darling," Mrs. Prescott was saying, "but sometimes I feel that I'm closest to you at these moments. Maybe it's because so very few other women's memories of their husbands are like this When I lie in bed imagining that you're near me, it's wonderful -- I have a really powerful imagination when it comes to the two of us together. But it's still just imagination -- I can't stand the idea of using anything artificial as a substitute for you to make me feel good. A noose is different, though -- it's something real that you introduced me to and that still feels just as real as when you were putting it around my neck. I never made it really tight after that first time, because you were so concerned about my safety. Now that you're gone, darling, safety is less important than feeling that you're here with me, doing the wonderful things you did to me, transporting me with delight. And I'm not really afraid of what might happen if something goes wrong -- I hope and pray that at the end I'll be with you again. Suicide is a terrible sin, but you shouldn't be punished if you die by accident while having wonderful feelings and beautiful thoughts about the man you love, should you?" The last sentence had begun in Mrs. Prescott's normal warm and strong voice, but by the time she finished, the voice was weaker and squeaky as she stood on tiptoe and pulled the rope as taut as she could. Mona felt her fascination grow as she watched. She grasped Jeff's left hand and pulled it closer, making his wrist press tightly against her neck. Mrs. Prescott settled back on her heels, eyes radiant, and her lips continued to move, but no speech could be heard.
"I wonder just what she's saying now," Mona whispered.
"We'll have a lip-reader look at the tape when we bring it in as evidence," Jeff whispered back, making no effort to free his hand.
Mrs. Prescott pulled on the bow tied in the belt around her waist, and the robe fell open to the right and left; she shrugged it off her shoulders, letting it collapse on the chair seat, and eased it off the chair onto the floor. She gazed at the camera with an expression of joyful anticipation, like someone about to embark on a thrilling experience she had long yearned for. Her lips moved without making any audible sound, but Mona thought she could discern the words "It's time, darling -- here I go!"
Mrs. Prescott moved her right hand to the string attached to the back of the chair. There was a loud click from the video, followed immediately by an even louder thump as her feet moved forward, sliding off the edge of the chair and kicking it over. The rope went tight around Mrs. Prescott's neck, but it was Mona's sharp intake of breath that was heard in the room, and Mona's hand compulsively pressed Jeff's wrist even tighter on her own throat.
"Can you breathe all right that way?" Jeff asked a bit anxiously.
"Oh, yes," Mona answered. "I can even talk -- not too loud, but this feels just exactly right."
She watched with rapt attention as the woman on the video screen started her final dance. The description in the note had been accurate. Mrs. Prescott's legs kicked in mid-air, seeming to search for the support that wasn't there. Her hands wandered upward toward her neck for a few moments, seemingly trying to lessen the tightness of the noose, but then they stopped their upward movement and began waving in all directions, as if she were deliberately going through a dance pattern. The rope spun her body around to the right, and then back to the left. Her head leaned far down on her left shoulder. The pointer on the timer dial steadily ticked away the time, second after second. By the time it had traveled twenty seconds back toward zero, the spinning had decreased to only a few degrees in each direction, the dancing feet gradually slowed down, the waving arms hung down motionless, and the hanging woman's face looked steadily into the camera, with a peaceful smile. "She really does seem to be enjoying herself," whispered Mona, still looking fixedly at the screen. But suddenly she sat up straight and pushed Jeff's arm away.
"Look, Jeff, look!" she cried, her voice back to its normal strength. "The pointer's stopped!"
"That's right, Mona," Jeff said quietly, pressing the pause button on the video remote control. "I knew you'd recognize it as soon as you saw it. There were still seven seconds to go before completing the thirty seconds needed to release the rope -- but it never happened. That's when the power failure started, and everything electrical came to a stop. I had thought that it was limited to a few blocks from the precinct house, that Culver Avenue was too far away to be affected. But when you told me that the clock read two-fifty-two -- exactly one hour and three minutes slow -- it all became clear in my head. And so I was wrong when I said that the power failure hadn't caused anybody's death -- it killed Callie Prescott. Then, when the power came back on, the pointer ran back to zero, the way we saw it when we came in, but after an hour of no power the rope release mechanism didn't work the way it would have under normal conditions, and so we found her still hanging from the ring. We can look at the next couple of minutes of the video, but we both know what it's going to show."
He pressed the button again, and the two of them watched as Callie Prescott slowly stopped twisting left and right, her feet and hands relaxed, and her face lapsed into the peaceful unconsciousness from which she would never waken.
"All we can do now is wait for the medical examiner to get here and make it official," Jeff said. "It shouldn't take long."
"I'm kind of glad it happened this way," Mona said softly. "She seemed troubled by the idea that if she died from something she had reason to expect would happen sooner or later, that could still be considered suicide. But a power failure is something she couldn't have expected."
"She really was devoted to her husband," Jeff said. "Dr. Prescott was a very lucky man."
"From everything Callie said and wrote," Mona answered, "I think she felt lucky too. There's something beautiful about two people being able to concentrate on each other all their lives, not looking anywhere else."
"And that's how I feel about you, Mona girl," said Jeff. "That's what I was talking to you about, less than an hour ago. I would love to spend the next ninety-two years with you and nobody else. But we wouldn't have to imitate Dr. Prescott and his wife in their choice of favorite amusements too -- unless you want to, of course."
"You know, it might be nice to pose for some pictures like the ones Dr. Prescott took of Callie. Until today I never thought of it as something erotic, but the last couple of hours have started me thinking differently about several things -- including lifelong commitments. And who knows, maybe I could even try some of Callie's more dangerous adventures. I think you could be a much more reliable rescuer than any electrical device."
"But remember the danger Dr. Prescott warned about. I couldn't rescue you if that happened."
"Well, the likelihood of that isn't very high, is it? After all, Callie did this for about a year, and she died of something entirely different, something she could have been rescued from if another person had been with her. Let's face it -- in our business, both of us run a lot higher risks of getting killed in the line of duty, and we don't let that stop us."
"You do bring out some surprising arguments," Jeff said. "All right, Mona, tonight, when we're through with this case, I'll be glad to try the safe poses with you, and I promise to talk plenty and tell you anything I can about them. As for the other questions --"
The intercom on the wall near the entrance door began to buzz insistently.
"That'll be the medical examiner downstairs," Jeff said. "I'd better let him in. As for the
other questions -- well, we will talk seriously about that later, won't we?"
He walked to the wall button and pressed it, while Mona stood behind him, gazing
pensively and long at Callie Prescott's hanging form and smiling quietly to herself.
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