Rather Cool for Mayhem, page 5
Bob Stewart took up the narrative. “That’s when I lost my temper,” he said. “I told him I’d meet force with force. I was so upset that I couldn’t see straight or think straight for hours. That’s when I phoned you, Grace, to bring out my gun. Of course, when I calmed down a little I knew I wouldn’t use it. After all, Joan and I are fairly civilized people and we don’t believe in settling differences by violence.”
“We love Tommy,” said Joan softly. “We want him to grow up with a decent chance in life. We thought he would have a better chance with us than with his own father.”
Then Grace Boyd spoke. I had seen it coming on for quite a while. All the sublimated mother-feelings that she had been wasting on guys like me and Norman and her own younger brother, a budding author whose talent for fiction had been largely unsuccessful except in writing checks, were suffering agony with the Stewarts.
“Joan, I somehow feel I’m partly responsible for bringing this on you and Bob,” Grace said. “Norman told me he had a child farmed out with some people and that he wanted to take the child back when he got married. He didn’t tell me it was Tommy and I couldn’t possibly have guessed it. I thought Tommy belonged to you. I did tell Norman I thought it wasn’t quite fair to take his child away from the people who had brought him up, but that didn’t have anything to do with my hesitation about marrying him. You see—”
“Tell me again, Mr. Stewart,” McKay broke in, “where you were between four and five o’clock yesterday afternoon.”
“But I told you,” Stewart insisted with a helpless gesture, “that I was trying to see my attorney in Blue Falls. I wanted to ask him if we couldn’t get an injunction or a restraining order to keep Dr. Norman from taking Tommy away until we could start formal proceedings to have Norman declared an unfit and irresponsible parent, and ask the court to appoint us legal guardians. My attorney wasn’t in. His office was locked. Nobody can vouch for me.”
“I can,” said Joan.
“I know, darling, but that’s not an alibi. I went down to the drug store and tried to phone Beaumont at home, at the country club, and at several other numbers where I thought I might reach him. No luck. So I started home.”
“Why did you phone the police, Mrs. Stewart?” McKay asked.
“I know why she phoned the police,” Stewart said. “On my way home I passed Dr. Norman leaving the inn. He was walking up the road toward Grace’s cabin, with a package under his arm.”
McKay leaned forward. “What kind of a package?” he asked.
“A flat package, like a large, thin book.”
“Go on.” McKay leaned back again.
“Well, I drove for a minute, then I went back to the inn and phoned Joan. I told her that I’d seen Norman and that I was going to the cabin and tackle him again. You see, when I lost my temper with Norman on Friday, I told him I’d kill him with my bare hands if he tried to take Tommy away from us. So when I phoned, Joan begged me not to go to the cabin. She begged me to come home and get her first. So I did.”
“But I was afraid he wouldn’t,” Joan said. “I was afraid he might lose his temper again and do something foolish. I wanted to keep him from doing anything violent. So I phoned the police.”
“And we got there too late,” said Captain McKay. We were sitting in a smelly booth, and the captain was absent-mindedly fingering the remote-control nickel slot of the juke box. “Too bad your lawyer wasn’t in, Mr. Stewart, to give you a steel-lined alibi for the time you say you were in Blue Falls. A jury might take a very dim view of the fact that your gun killed Dr. Norman, and that his death might make it possible for you to adopt Tommy…
“I know,” said Bob Stewart. He suddenly put his elbows on the glass-topped table and pressed his head into his hands.
“Captain,” said Joan Stewart, “if everything turns out all right … I mean, when you find out who really killed Dr. Norman, the fact that somebody may think right now that Bob did it … I mean, that won’t keep us from legally adopting Tommy, will it?”
“I don’t see why it should,” said McKay. “In this country the law presumes a man innocent until—Say, what is this? Grand Central Station?”
The door had opened and Betty Hurley flounced in. She giggled, and I wondered if she could be tight so early in the morning. “Captain, you’re a card,” she declared gaily.
Betty dragged a bar stool over to our table, hoisted her blond prettiness to its red-and-chromium summit, and carefully crossed her legs. They were well worth crossing. It struck me as positively obscene for a woman with such beautiful legs to have such a lame brain.
Betty opened her bag and took out a miniature camera.
“Is this it?” she asked. “Is this the camera you all are looking for?”
Grace pounced. She snatched the camera from Betty’s hands.
“This is my Leica,” she said. “This is the Leica I always carry in my car.”
Chapter Six
The fusty air of the Lakeside Inn Bar quivered with the imminence of a storm about to break. I could almost smell the ozone above the scent of bar towel. Everyone seemed waiting for the crash of thunder which never came. Captain McKay’s voice was as quiet as a zephyr when he asked:
“Where did you get this, Mrs. Hurley?”
“In my room,” said Betty simply.
“Come now, Mrs. Hurley. In your room?”
“In my room. I have no idea how it got there.”
“You mean you didn’t know the camera was in your room when I spoke about its loss just a short while ago?” There was doubt in the captain’s tone.
“It wasn’t there before breakfast,” Betty declared, making her blue eyes two sizes bigger. “At least I don’t think so. After breakfast I went to my room to powder my nose. I’d left my bag on my dresser, and when I picked up my bag, why there was this camera lying on the dresser. I hadn’t noticed it before. Really.”
“Has the film been taken out?” I asked.
Grace had been going over the Leica with her expert fingers. She said: “No, the film’s still in it.”
I must have made a face, because Captain McKay chuckled. “That sort of spoils your story, doesn’t it, Lawrence?” he said.
“Not necessarily,” I replied. “If I were running this investigation I’d have the film developed—in a hurry.”
“You took the words out of my mouth,” said McKay, reaching for the camera.
Grace did not give it to him. She said: “I think Jim’s theory is practically confirmed. You might have the film developed, Captain, just for the record. But you won’t find a thing on it. It will be black. Completely light-struck. Somebody has taken the back off the camera to let the light in—to fog the film, deliberately. The back hasn’t been replaced properly. The catch is sprung. See?”
“Okay, okay.” Captain McKay took the camera as though he were doing a great favor. He called a trooper and gave instructions to have the film developed. “You’re a good team, you two,” he said. “But this isn’t going to get your gluteus maximus out of a sling, Lawrence, unless there’s a picture of the murderer on the film.”
The captain gave me a look that I’m sure would have assayed ninety per cent arsenic. Then he switched to saccharine and swung his smile at Betty Hurley, who was powdering her nose again.
“By the way, Mrs. Hurley,” he said. “What did your husband say when you found the camera on your dresser?”
“Oh, Jerome doesn’t know about it yet. He’s still in the dining room. But I thought I’d better bring it right down here to you, because you seemed so anxious about it, with fine-combs and everything.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hurley. When you go upstairs, I wish you’d ask Mr. Pennington to come down here.”
“But I’m not going upstairs, Captain. I just came from there,” Betty Hurley said, lowering her powder puff so she could give McKay blinker signals with her eyes.
“Then why don’t you go for a walk along the lake,” McKay said. “I’d like to talk to Pennington alone here.”
“You mean you’d like us all to go jump in the lake?” I suggested.
“On the contrary. I’d like you all to keep your feet on the ground in this immediate vicinity so I can call you when I want you. It just happens I won’t want you for the next hour. I suggested the lake because this is Sunday so the bars are closed until midday. Go to church, if you want to.”
“I’ll get Henry for you,” Betty Hurley said. “I’d love to help, Captain. I just didn’t understand.”
“We’d better get back to Tommy,” Joan Stewart said. “Can we give you folks a lift somewhere?”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’re going for a walk.”
I took Grace’s arm and led her outside. The tang of the autumn morning was like the cool effervescence of sparkling wine after the flat, second-hand fetor of the Lakeside Inn Bar. Even the dilute gold of the sunshine, filtered through the morning haze, seemed invigorating.
“Where are we going?” Grace asked.
“Anywhere, just so we can get away from here. The senator might start another filibuster, and in my delicate condition I’m not sure I could stand it.”
“Jim, you’re being catty. Shall we walk in the woods back of the cabin?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’d love a sentimental journey.”
Grace did not comment. She seemed a thousand miles away, although I still held her arm as we walked along in silence. I wondered if she remembered that the only other time I had come up to Blindman’s Lake with her, a century ago, we had walked in those woods. I let go of her arm. She seemed not to notice it.
When we started to climb the slope to her cabin, however, her hand groped for mine, and her fingers closed around my thumb. She was still silent as we crossed the clearing although she shivered slightly under the chill stare of the suspicious trooper sitting on her door step. Only the rustle of the dead leaves underfoot rippled through the stillness until we entered the woods. Then she spoke at last.
“Where are we going, Jim?” she asked.
“About half a mile further,” I said. “Just before the road reaches the top of the hill, there’s a little path that turns off to the right through the blueberry bushes. At the end of the path there’s a break in the trees where a big old oak got hit by lightning, and you can see the lake. There’s a huge, flat, moss-covered rock up there where we can sit and talk and look at the lake. Remember? A few years ago we sat on that rock, and I kissed you.”
“You always were given to understatement, Jim,” Grace said.
We walked on a hundred yards further. Then Grace stopped and her fingers tightened around mine. She leaned against me as though she was too tired to stand erect any longer, and her head ducked against my wishbone. I could feel her body tremble against me. I put one arm around her. With my free hand, I lifted her chin. There were tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Jim,” she said. “But I’ve been numb ever since last night. A girl is supposed to feel something when someone close to her dies, and I haven’t felt a thing except complete bewilderment—until now.”
She kept her face turned upward to mine, but I didn’t kiss her. I wanted to, Lord knows, and I was annoyed at myself for being suddenly jealous of a dead man. I wasn’t jealous of Pennington, who was going to marry Grace, but I felt a deep pang of resentment against Norman, who was dead.
“I guess Norman rates a few tears,” I said. “You really must have been a little bit in love with him.”
“It’s not that, Jim. It’s—just everything.” She dried her eyes and we started walking again.
“Maybe you’re just realizing you really don’t want to marry Pennington, and that you wouldn’t have, as long as Norman was around. Maybe you feel that now he’s dead you’re irrevocably committed to Pennington.”
“It’s not that either. My mind was pretty well made up. Whatever my feelings for Norman, I knew I couldn’t marry him. There was really something evil about him. You heard yourself what he tried to do to the Stewarts—and Tommy. I couldn’t take that sort of thing, Jim.”
“And you think you can take all that solid respectability you’re letting yourself in for?”
“Definitely. I’m hungry for it.”
We reached the big flat rock that I had remembered. It was still covered with a green-and-gold pattern of thick moss, but new saplings had grown up in place of the fallen oak, and we could scarcely see the lake. The moss was as soft as an Oriental rug when we sat down.
“I think your appetite needs re-education badly,” I said. “Maybe a liberal portion of Jim Lawrence would be your dish.”
“No, Jim.” She smiled wistfully and patted my hand. “That’s all over and you know it. I decided I couldn’t take it three years ago, and I’m certainly not going through all that again now. Incidentally, whatever became of that—What was her name?”
“Search me.”
“You know who I mean. That big, dark, curly-haired bitch we fought over.”
“Did we ever fight over the same woman?”
“Stop trying to evade the question. You know the gal I’m talking about. The shameless hussy who tried to snatch you from under my wing at the Press Club Party. She practically raped you in public. Josephine Something-or-other.”
“Oh, Josephine. She was crazy.”
“She was crazy about you,” Grace said.
“Can I help it if I’m irresistible to brazen, extraverted hussies?”
“You encouraged her.”
“No more than absolutely necessary,” I said. I had to be facetious to protect some old wounds that still twitched and ached when the weather turned to stormy memories.
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
“Jim, you don’t have to lie to me. I may have been jealous of you three years ago, but not now, just when I’m about to get married and settled and respectable. What happened to Josephine?”
“I never did find out for sure. That’s the truth,” I said. It was.
“You are lying, Jim. When you went overseas, she joined the OWI and got sent to London—to be near you. Did she live with you in London?”
“No.”
“But you did see her there.”
“Yes, I saw her—once.”
“What’s become of her?”
“Three days after she got to London she started out for lunch and never came back. Nobody’s seen her since. She was working in Wardour Street which is a few blocks from Soho Square. The day she disappeared a buzz bomb dropped in Soho. That’s all I know.”
Grace said, “Oh.” Her eyes scanned my face, trying to read my thoughts and my feelings. If she had seen signs there of deep regret, of a pain that still throbbed, she would probably have said she was sorry. She said nothing. I looked at the lake for a while, until I began to feel like a specimen under observation. Then I stoked up the conversation again.
“Do you think Bob Stewart killed Norman to keep him from taking Tommy away?” I asked.
“I can’t imagine Bob Stewart killing anybody,” Grace replied.
“It’s hard to picture any of your own friends going in for homicide,” I said, “but one of them has. Tell me about the Westerfords.”
“They’re pretty much what they seem to be. Eddie is a frustrated man of the theatre. He considers himself a misunderstood Max Reinhardt. He’s tried everything—from writing, acting, and directing, down to painting scenery for a summer theatre. Even his failures have been unsensational. Everything just peters out. He’s been torturing some sort of a living out of radio, but nothing he touches ever lasts more than thirteen weeks.”
“And I suppose Conchita stays with him just out of sheer lethargy?”
Grace gave me a reproachful look. I could feel the frost forming on my ear lobes. “Did it ever occur to you that she might love him?” she said. “Eddie’s really a very sweet guy when you get to know him.”
“Some day when I have time I’ll check that,” I said. “Did you hear the crack Betty Hurley made at the breakfast table? About Hurley and her first husband?”
“That was a silly thing for Betty to say,” Grace said, “because her first husband was a patient of Dr. Hurley’s and he did die after an operation.”
“Performed by Dr. Hurley?”
“I think so,” Grace said.
“That explains why he married a gorgeous nitwit like Betty,” I said. “He probably removed one kidney too many and Betty blackmailed him into replacing her deceased husband. He looks like a guy with little resistance to blackmail by blondes.”
“Nonsense. It is a well-known fact that all brilliant men marry brainless beauties for purposes of complete relaxation when not cerebrating. Besides, that wouldn’t give either of them a reason for killing Norman.”
“Then that leaves only you and me and Henry Pennington as possible murderers, and I’m beginning to agree with you that Pennington is not the type to kill for love.” I looked at my watch. “Shall we go back and confess to Captain McKay before he sends a posse after us?”
I stood up. Grace held out her hand to be helped to her feet. “If you’ll give me a cup of coffee first,” she said. “I never confess unless I’m plied with strong coffee.”
We sauntered through the woods by a shortcut that led to the dirt road. The raucous, vixenish cries of two quarreling jays accompanied us as we walked down the slope. Their brilliant blue wings flashed in the sunlight as they swooped across the mosaic of autumn foliage; then silence again settled over the woods. The calm should have been idyllic, but it wasn’t. To me, it was sinister. Every rustle of the dead leaves underfoot recalled the whisper of the murderer’s footsteps I had heard while lighting the fire. It was here that he—or she—had parked his car while lying in wait for Dr. Norman in Grace’s cabin. It was here that he—or she—had ostentatiously left the gun that bore my fingerprints. It was here that the murderer retreated after banging me on the head while I was fumbling in Grace’s car. The glowing reds and yellows made warm patches on the hillside, but the morning chill that still lingered in the painted shadows seemed to turn to penetrating cold as I let my thoughts run to the macabre. Grace, too, must have shared my impression, for she took my arm and pressed close against me as we approached the old dirt road.
