A Kiss Before Dying Read Online Free PDF

was a heart scratched into the black paint of the railing, with initials on either side of the arrow that pierced it. He concentrated on the design, picking at it with his fingernail, trying to blank his mind of what had finally welled to the surface. The scratches had exposed cross-sections of paint layers: black, orange, black, orange, black, orange. It reminded him of the pictures of rock strata in a geology text. Records of dead ages.
    Dead.
    After a while he picked up his books and slowly walked from the bridge. Cars flew towards him and passed with a rushing sound.
       
    He went into a dingy riverside restaurant and ordered a ham sandwich and coffee. He ate the sandwich at a little corner table. While sipping the coffee, he took out his memorandum book and fountain pen.
    The first thing that had entered his mind was the Colt .45 he had taken on leaving the army. Bullets could be obtained with little difficulty. But assuming he wanted to do it, a gun would be no good. It would have to look like an accident, or suicide. The gun would complicate matters too much.
    He thought of poison. But where would he get it? Hermy Godsen? No. Maybe the Pharmacy Building. The supply room there shouldn’t be too hard to get into. He would have to do some research at the library, to see which poison …
    It would have to look like an accident or suicide, because if it looked like anything else, he would be the first one the police would suspect.
    There were so many details – assuming he wanted to do it. Today was Tuesday; the marriage could be postponed no later than Friday or she might get worried and call Ellen. Friday would be the deadline. It would require a great deal of fast, careful planning.
    He looked at the notes he had written:
       
    1. Gun (n.g.)
    2. Poison
        (a) Selection
        (b) Obtaining
        (c) Administering
        (d) Appearance of (1) accident, or (2) suicide
       
    Assuming, of course, that he wanted to do it. At present it was all purely speculative: he would explore the details a little. A mental exercise.
    But his stride, when he left the restaurant and headed back through town, was relaxed and sure and steady.

FIVE
    He reached the campus at three o’clock and went directly to the library. In the card catalogue he found listed six books likely to contain the information he wanted; four of them were general works on toxicology; the other two, manuals of criminal investigation whose file cards indexed chapters on poisons. Rather than have a librarian get the books for him, he registered at the desk and went into the stacks himself.
    He had never been in the stacks before. There were three floors filled with bookshelves, a metal staircase spiralling up through them. One of the books on his list was out. He found the other five without difficulty on the shelves on the third floor. Seating himself at one of the small study tables that flanked a wall of the room, he turned on the lamp, arranged his pen and memorandum book in readiness, and began to read.
    At the end of an hour, he had a list of five toxic chemicals likely to be found in the Pharmacy supply room, any one of which, by virtue of its reaction time and the symptoms it produced prior to death, would be suitable for the plan whose rudimentary outline he had already formulated during the walk from the river.
       
    He left the library and the campus, and walked in the direction of the house where he roomed. When he had gone two blocks he came upon a dress shop whose windows were plastered with big-lettered sale signs. One of the signs had a sketch of an hourglass with the legend Last Days of Sale.
    He looked at the hourglass for a moment. Then he turned around and walked back towards the campus.
    He went to the University Bookstore. After consulting the mimeographed booklist tacked to the bulletin board, he asked the clerk for a copy of Pharmaceutical Techniques , the laboratory manual used by the advanced pharmacy students. ‘Pretty late