The long Saturday night Page 4

  “You mean I could be charged with murder just on the strength of a poison telephone call and the fact I happened to be out at Grossman Slough when he was killed?”

  “It’s not likely, without some kind of proof, unless you keep insisting on giving the impression you’ve got something to hide. But there are a couple of other factors you’ve apparently overlooked. In the first place, Scanlon can make it very tough for you if you don’t cooperate. Legally, too, and there’s nothing I could do for you. With the weekend coming up, he could hold you without any charge at all until Monday. And in the second place, hindering the investigation by fighting him just makes it that much harder for him to find out who did kill Roberts, which—if you’re under suspicion—is as much in your interest as it is in his. So stop acting like an adolescent and answer his questions; you have to, anyway, so you might as well do it gracefully. And for God’s sake, stop riding Mulholland.”

  “What’s he got to do with it?”

  He sighed. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that sending Mulholland to pick you up could have been deliberate? Scanlon’s a smooth operator, and as brainy as they come, and the chances are he was trying to capitalize on that low flash-point of yours. A man who loses his temper is always more likely to say too much, or trip himself. Also, what Scanlon is trying to check is this hypothetical motive of jealousy; so behaving as if you were capable of unreasoning jealousy certainly isn’t helping you much.”

  “Wait a minute!” I stared at him. “You mean, of Mulholland? Why would I be jealous of that posturing nitwit?”

  “Face it, Duke; you’ve never liked him since he and Frances were in that Little Theatre play last spring. It’s ridiculous, naturally, but you’ve gone out of your way to insult him.”

  “Nuts! I’d forgotten all about it.”

  He smiled and held up a hand. “All right, all right. Don’t bite my head off. Just take my advice and cooperate with Scanlon. I’ll stick around and drive you home.”

  “Should I say anything about the telephone call?”

  “No. It’s his problem; let him cope with it.” He smiled, and you could see the well-oiled legal mind at work.

  “Never deny an accusation that hasn’t been made.” We went back to where Scanlon was waiting. Jealous of Mulholland, I thought scornfully. I hadn’t even thought of that play for months.

  4

  It took less than an hour, and was a very relaxed interrogation. It was, in fact, too relaxed now; it was obvious he had realized this other approach was a mistake and was only going through the motions in order to justify getting me down here. He was marking time until he could get some proof or verification of that girl’s story; when he had that, he’d land on me like a brick wall. I had to repeat the story of the whole morning, from my arrival at Crossman Slough and the blinds until the time I was back on the highway again on the way home, sometime around ten, and answer a lot of questions that were slanted to give the impression that what he was after was some detail I might have overlooked before, which would point to the third person who obviously had to be out there. Had I heard a car at any time? No. Had I heard anybody wading out to the blind where Roberts was? No. It was too far away, at least 150 yards. George sat at another desk, quietly smoking and taking no part in it.

  At last, Scanlon rubbed a hand wearily across his face, and said, “Well, that’s all, I guess.” Then, as we were leaving, he tossed me a parting shot. “Looks as if the only lead to this is going to be the motive; we’re not going to get anywhere until we find out why he was killed.”

  We went out and got into George’s car. As we pulled away from the curb, he said, “Forget that telephone call, Duke. There’s always at least one psycho in every town.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He turned into the cold desolation of Clebourne Street where the tinsel swayed and rustled in the wind. There was something reptilian about it. I had a splitting headache from the whiskey I’d drunk, and I was thinking of Frances again. She’d be gone now, and nobody knew she’d come home, but inevitably there was going to be talk when it was learned we were separated and being divorced. Scanlon would take a long hard look at it, but he couldn’t prove it had been because of Roberts—not with what he had now. George turned right where the traffic light was blinking amber at the corner of Montrose, and drove the five blocks to the house in silence. When he pulled into the circular drive and stopped, he asked, “When will Frances be home?”

  Not even George, I thought. “Sunday,” I said. “Unless she changes her mind again.”

  “Fleurelle will be back Saturday.” She was in Scottsdale, Arizona, visiting her sister. “We’d like to have you over for bridge next week.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks, counselor.”

  “Don’t let this thing worry you. Scanlon’ll clear it up eventually; the chances are a thousand to one it wasn’t anybody from Carthage at all. Some enemy he made a long time ago, before he came here—which, incidentally, may have been the reason he was here, in the first place. He was quite a ladies’ man, I understand, and he might have made himself very unpopular with some husband or male relative somewhere.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, and got out. “Good night, George.”

  “Good night.” He swung on around the drive, and the red taillights disappeared in the direction we’d come. He lived in a big house on Clebourne on the east edge of town. I unlocked the front door, and went down the hallway to the living room. She’d left the light on. The suitcase and her purse were gone. I stood for a moment looking at the place where they had lain, feeling sick and empty as I had a mental picture of her grabbing them up and fleeing. It was a hell of a way for something to end. I could see her now, tearing the night apart with the Mercedes, like the ripping of cloth. To where? Back to New Orleans, and then to Nevada? More likely to Miami, I thought; that was where she was from, and Florida was as good a place as any to get a divorce. Well, I’d hear from her, or from her lawyer. I shrugged wearily and went out in the kitchen.

  There was no hope of sleeping, so I filled the percolator, measured out the coffee, and plugged it in. When I went back to the living room I noticed idly that one of her gloves was lying on the sofa where she’d dropped it when I lunged at her. I’d seen it when I came in from the hall, but had paid no attention. The other was lying on the rug in front of the sofa. She’d been too scared and in too big a hurry to remember them when she’d gathered up the suitcase and purse. It was odd, though, that Mulholland hadn’t seen them; he’d thought the suitcase was mine. Curious, I stepped over to the hall doorway where he’d been standing, and looked again. The sofa was Danish teak with pearl-gray cushions, the glove was black, and he would have been looking straight at it. Well, he was too busy admiring himself to notice anything.

  I remembered then what George had said about my behaving as if I were jealous of him. Could people have actually believed that? I disliked him for the posing and arrogant jerk he was, but it went back a long time before the Little Theatre production of Detective Story, and had nothing to do with it. Anyway, there weren’t many love scenes in the play, at least between McLeod and Mary McLeod, the two parts they’d had. I’d objected to her being in it, but only because of the long hours of rehearsals, five nights a week for over a month.

  I paused, frowning. . . . No, hell—she hadn’t liked Mulholland herself; she thought he was a conceited ham, and I could remember her lying in bed laughing about the times he had blown up in his lines.

  My own feeling about him was the result of a number of things, none of them having to do with Frances or the play. A couple of years ago he’d beaten up a sawmill hand and sent him to the hospital for no particular reason except that the boy was drunk and making a nuisance of himself and he, Mulholland, had an audience of admiring young punks in front of the drugstore. Any other officer would merely have arrested him and got him out of sight, but not our hero. I’d witnessed part of it, and with my usual tact I’d chewed him out and threatened to report him to S
canlon, with the result there’d been bad feeling between us ever since. He was a master of the calculated insolence of standing almost in your way along the sidewalk, so you had a choice of taking a half step aside in order to get around him or of bumping into him with the appearance of having done it deliberately. But jealous of him? Hah!

  You don’t think he was the only one, do you?

  I cursed. Damn that girl, anyway! I tried to push the telephone call out of my mind, but it kept coming back. And I still didn’t know why Frances had suddenly decided to come back from New Orleans. Did it have something to do with Roberts’ death? But how could she have known of it? She hadn’t received a phone call from here. No, I corrected myself; she merely hadn’t received any at the hotel. She hadn’t called me from there, had she?

  I wished I could find out who the girl was. It was almost certain that I knew her. I stared at the telephone, wishing it would ring, and at the same time wondering why I thought she’d bother to call again; she’d gotten rid of her accumulation of poison for the day and was probably tucked cozily in bed sleeping the sleep of the just. She must be a girl friend of Roberts’. I tried to remember any I’d seen him with, but came up with a blank. Being over 30 and married, I was completely out of touch with any crowd a single man Roberts’ age would be likely to run around with. I suddenly thought of Barbara Ryan; she might know. As I reached for the telephone, I looked at my watch and saw with surprise it was 1:15. It was a sad time of night to wake anybody up, but maybe she wouldn’t mind. She lived alone, in a small efficiency apartment about a block off Clebourne in the west end of town.

  “Warren,” I said when she answered. “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t asleep,” she replied. “Just reading. And I’m glad you called. Is it really true, what they’re saying now, that Roberts was killed by somebody?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much doubt of it,” I replied, and told her about the different sized shot.

  “That’s what I heard, but I just couldn’t believe it. Who do they think did it?”

  “No idea so far. But here’s what I wanted to ask you—would you know anything about Roberts’ girl friends?”

  She appeared to hesitate. Then she said guardedly, “Well, I’m no authority on the subject. Just what do you mean, Duke?”

  “What girls he dated.”

  “Oh. Well, me for one. I’ve been out with him two or three times.”

  That was news to me. “What kind of guy was he?”

  “Pleasant enough, good dancer, a little on the too-smooth side. He gave me the impression he took pretty good care of Dan Roberts.”

  “What do you know about any other girls?”

  “Not much. I’ve seen him with one or two others at various times.”

  “Do you remember any of them?”

  “Hmmm . . . Nadine Wilder . . . Midge Carson . . . I can’t think of any others at the moment. Why?”

  “I had a weird telephone call from a girl who wouldn’t give her name, and I had a hunch she knew him pretty well.”

  “I see.” There was that barely perceptible pause again, and then she added cynically, “Well, she could, quite fast, if she didn’t watch her step.”

  “A wolf, then?”

  “Operator is the word. Oh—about the two I named—if that telephone call was the usual sort people don’t sign their names to, I doubt it was either of them. They’re both pretty good kids. Nadine works for the power company—”

  “And the Carson girl for Dr. Wyman,” I said. “I know them both, and I don’t think it was either. But if you remember any others, would you call me?”

  “Sure thing. And if there’s anything else I can do, just let me know.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I hung up, and stood there for a moment wondering how many other people had heard rumors about Frances and Roberts. Those pauses hadn’t been hard to read; she had a good idea what that girl had told me and was afraid of being backed into a position where she’d have to lie about it or confirm she’d heard the same thing.

  My head was throbbing again. I went down the hallway to get some aspirin from the medicine chest in the bathroom. As I turned the corner beyond the den I saw there was a light still on in the bedroom, and I suddenly remembered the shattered door-facing. I’d have to repair that before Malvina saw it; she’d wonder about it and talk. She was the colored girl who came in to do the housework twice a week, but she wouldn’t be in again until Saturday, I could repair it tomorrow. Or today, I thought, remembering suddenly that it was Friday now. Maybe I could glue back the strip the bolt had torn off. But as I came nearer I saw it was too badly splintered and gouged; I’d have to replace it with a whole new facing and paint it. I’d been intent on the doorway and hadn’t looked beyond it into the room itself, and now as I stepped inside I stopped in surprise. Her suitcase was on the bed. Beside it was another one, open, and a pile of dresses and underclothing.

  Hadn’t she taken anything with her? I looked stupidly around the room. The bed, a king-sized double over seven feet long, extended out from the right-hand wall, flanked on either side by closets, while directly opposite the doorway, in the rear wall, was the fireplace. The door to her dressing room and the bath, the one I’d failed to break in, was on the left, and open now, and just beyond it was a full-length mirror, opposite the foot of the bed. The only lights burning were the rose-shaded reading lamp on the far side and the one inside the dressing room, but as my glance swept across the mirror I caught the reflection of something dark on the floor on the other side of the bed. I came on into the room then, leaned over the corner of it, and looked squarely down into her face, or what was left of it.

  My knees melted under me and I slid down onto the foot of the bed, clutching at the spread to keep from going on over the corner of it and falling on top of her. I kept opening and closing my mouth and swallowing to hold back the oily ground-swell of nausea running up into my throat, and pressing my face into the bedspread as though I were convinced that if I could close my eyes tightly enough the picture would go away. Maybe it was the instrument itself that was the worst—or its position—the dirty, fire-blackened andiron lying across the column of her throat where he’d either dropped it or tossed it after he was through with it.

  I turned the other way and tried to get up, but slid down and sat on the floor, facing the mirror, and for a second when I first saw it, I didn’t even recognize my own face, greenish-white, staring, and shiny with sweat. My gaze started to slip downward to the reflected horror of what was on the other side of the bed, but I turned my head and tried again to get up. The telephone began to ring. There was an extension on the night table just beyond where she was lying, and the insistent clamor of it ran through my head like a white-hot saw. I made it to my feet this time and walked unsteadily into the bathroom. Pulling down a large towel, I came back and managed to get it spread across her head and the upper part of her body. The telephone went on ringing.

  She lay on her back, still fully clothed in the dark suit she’d worn when she came in except that her legs were twisted awkwardly and the skirt and slip were pulled halfway up her thighs, apparently from brushing against the bed as she fell. Still on my knees beside her, I caught the hem of the skirt and tried to pull it down without touching her, but when the leg moved and rearranged itself under the tugging, as if she were still alive, nausea hit me again and I had to turn away to keep from vomiting. It was the senseless brutality of it that was so sickening. Why had he beaten her in the face that way? I finally got the skirt pulled down, and stood up, still trembling, and wiped the sweat from my face.

  The closet door, between the night table and the rear wall, was open. Apparently she had been taking clothes from it, and when her back was turned he’d lifted the andiron from the fireplace and hit her the first tine, the blow that crushed the top of her skull. Her right hand and lower arm extended from under the edge of the towel; I knelt again and looked at them, and then raised the corner of the towel to examin
e the left. Neither was broken, and there were no bruises, or any soot, on them; she hadn’t raised her arms to try to protect herself, so definitely he’d hit her the first time from behind. That blow would have killed her instantly, and the rest of it was sheer sadism or some pathological hatred you could only guess at.

  But she must have let him in; I’d locked the front door when I left, and the others were already locked. I became aware then that something had changed in the room, but it was a second or two before I realized what it was. The telephone had finally quit ringing. I turned to it and picked up the receiver, still numb with shock, and started to dial the sheriff's office. With a nervous giggle that was near the borderline of hysteria, I was conscious of thinking it was lucky for me I was in the sheriff’s office, with witnesses, when it happened. Then I stopped, and let the receiver fall back on the cradle. I was staring with horror at the splintered door frame.

  Mr. Mulholland will please take the stand . . .

  I rang the doorbell for a long time . . . Yes, it was at least five minutes . . . When he finally did answer, he was all out of breath, and crazy-acting, and wild-eyed. I could smell the liquor on him . . . Yes, that’s the same suitcase. I just thought at the time it was his. . .

  Wait! The suitcase was in the living room when I left. He’d have to testify there was no chance I could have moved it, because I came out the door right behind him. So it would be obvious she was still alive then—I stopped. What a defense that would be! By now I’d already been here at least twenty minutes, alone, since George had let me off in front of the house.

  I’d told George she was still in New Orleans, when she was already dead here in the bedroom. Friend or not. he’d still have to testify.