Murder in the O.P.M.

by Leslie Ford

“Bowen Digges said Colton had been practically ruined by not being able to get promethium,” I said hastily.

  “So Duncan Scott told me. Now, if Colton had committed suicide, I could understand it. He’s on the spot, like a great many other small manufacturers of luxury items.”

  “Do you think Mr. Hilyard was really responsible for the shortage?”

  Colonel Primrose didn’t answer for a moment. “He’s got the blame for it, from people who don’t know the facts,” he answered then. “What his wife said about it is probably true, up to the point of his killing himself. What Folger said is right. There’s been no hoarding, and no bootlegging to favored customers. I went into that a month ago. There was a rumor they were holding out.”

  We’d crossed the bridge to the Virginia side. I turned right past the brewery, up the Potomac.

  “I ran that rumor down a couple of weeks ago,” he went on. “Or I think I did. It came originally from this Colton. He wouldn’t say where he’d picked it up, at any rate—if anywhere. I suppose it cropped up when the FBI found carloads of critical material that foreign agents had bought up, lying around in freight yards and warehouses. On the theory that if they couldn’t use them, it would be a good idea to keep us from using them. No promethium was found. The FBI, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Interstate Commerce Commission all checked it, and I took a hand for Army and Navy Intelligence. I can say with authority there’s nothing in it.”

  The big Folsom place on the river had been closed a long time. I’d heard that a couple of years ago they fixed up the tenant house, a hundred yards or so from the road off the main highway, and let groups of young men connected with the Government have it rent free, just to have some responsible people on the place. Mr. Bowen Digges was apparently one of the present lot.

  When we got there, a cleaner’s van was just stopping in front of the house, and a colored maid had just come out on the porch. We got out.

  “Is Mr. Digges in?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “Yes, sir, but he’s asleep,” the maid said. “They said nobody was to wake him. The phone’s been ringing all morning. I ain’t going to wake him for nobody.”

  “We’d like to wait, in that case,” Colonel Primrose said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  She went into the living room ahead of us, put the windows down and lighted the fire. I glanced around. It was an impersonal room, sparsely furnished, but fresh and clean. There were a lot of pipes in a rack on the mantel, and some enormous ash trays sitting about. Several suits waiting for the cleaner, I supposed, were lying across the arm of a sofa in front of the window.

  Colonel Primrose went over and sat down by them.

  “Goodness me,” he said.

  The surprised tone of his voice was about the falsest sound I’d ever heard. My heart sank. He’d picked up a pair of gray flannel trousers, and was examining the legs with as completely phony disinterest as I’ve ever seen him guilty of.

  The maid looked up from the fire. She smiled. “I don’t know if they’re ever going to look right again. Mr. Digges just bought them last week.”

  Colonel Primrose picked up the matching coat and vest.

  “Did Mr. Digges tell you to send these to the cleaner?”

  “No, sir. Some things I don’t need to be told.”

  Colonel Primrose put them down by him. “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep them for a while,” he said calmly. He took out his card case again. “Give this to Mr. Digges. Tell him I have to see him at once.”

  The colored woman’s face changed almost ludicrously. She stood there stupidly for a moment, took the card and went silently out.

  “That was rather . . . abrupt, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “Come have a look.”

  He picked up one trouser leg and held it toward me. One look was enough, and I didn’t even have to take a step toward him. The brown stains were horribly visible from where I was. The cuffs had been wet and were stiff and splotched with mud.

  “The trouble with you,” Colonel Primrose said, “is that you’re still letting your sympathies make hash of your thinking. You like Diane; Diane’s in love with Digges; Digges had nothing to do with the death of Lawrason Hilyard. It doesn’t matter at all how much blood there is on his trouser leg.”

  I didn’t say anything. Put that way, my position was not highly tenable.

  “If I’d known we were going to have a murder on our hands, I’d never have mentioned Hilyard to you,” he went on. “I don’t want to have you—once more—concealing evidence, let’s say, because nice people are involved. A lot of nice people have been hanged, my dear, and a lot more would have been if there weren’t people like you and Buck and Lamb who don’t think nice people can do not-nice nice things.”

  He came over to my chair. I hadn’t realized how guilty, or something, the expression on my face must have been.

  “Don’t look like that,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Go on being an obstructionist. I like it, really, or I’d have had you in jail years ago.” Then, surprisingly, he raised my hand and kissed it.

  “You’ve been seeing too much of Stanley Woland, Colonel Primrose,” I said.

  He chuckled. “There you go again. You’d just as soon hang that poor devil. He wouldn’t kill a fly. All he’s trying to do is get a maximum out of life with a minimum of work. Just put him out of that charming head of yours, Mrs. Latham.”

  I didn’t have time to protest. There was the sound of heavy feet on the flimsy stairs. Colonel Primrose went back to the sofa just as Bowen Digges came in. He was in his shirt sleeves, with his collar open and no tie.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know there was a la——Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Latham.”

  “This is Colonel Primrose, Mr. Digges,” I said.

  He strode across the room and held out his hand. “Glad you’re around, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you. You were investigating promethium, I understand.”

  Colonel Primrose’s manner was affable, for all his warning about the smiler with the knife under the cloak and the trousers with the blood on the leg. However, I knew he always was. Bowen Digges was not affable, exactly. He looked like a man who’d just stuck his head under the cold-water faucet, and I expect that’s exactly what he’d done. His thick crisp thatch was still wet, his face rosy, if unshaven. All the humor and good nature I’d thought so attractive Monday afternoon were gone. He looked haggard and not very happy. After the lecture I’d just got I knew I shouldn’t let myself feel sorry for him. But I did anyway.

  “I’m investigating something else just now,” Colonel Primrose said.

  “Do you mind if I get a cup of coffee, and I’ll be right with you?” His eyes fell then on the gray flannel suit. “I’m sorry. Let me get this thing out of sight.”

  “That’s what I’m investigating, I’m afraid,” Colonel Primrose said.

  Bowen Digges’ face changed. “Oh,” he said. “In that case, I’d better leave it, no doubt. Do you mind if I get the coffee just the same?”

  “Not at all.”

  Just then the maid appeared at the back door with a tray, and put it down by him.

  “Thanks,” he said. . . . “Would you like some, Mrs. Latham?”

  I shook my head. He turned to Colonel Primrose.

  “All right. Shoot.”

  My blood ran a little cold. It was the old association-of-words tests they used to give you in Psychology I.

  CHAPTER 10

  “I UNDERSTAND YOU WEREN’T AT YOUR OFFICE at all yesterday, Mr. Digges?”

  “That’s right. I’m not there today, and I don’t expect to be there tomorrow, or any time in the future, if you’re interested.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s my business, if you don’t mind, colonel. And so far as I know, it has nothing to do with that state of my pants.”

  “I’d like to be sure of it,” Colonel Primrose said equably. “When did you see Lawrason Hilyard last
?”

  “Last night.” Bowen Digges put down his cup. His gray eyes had a tinge of brimstone in them, and so did his voice. “Why?”

  “I was wondering. At what time, do you recall?”

  “Of course. From nine-thirty on.”

  “Until when?”

  “Around midnight. I don’t remember the minute. Again why?”

  The telephone jangled noisily out in the hall.

  “Excuse me,” Bowen Digges said. He came back in a minute and sat down on the sofa again.

  “All right, colonel. Go ahead,” he said. His face hadn’t changed, but he seemed harder and tighter than he’d been before.

  Colonel Primrose looked at him for some time. “Are you still leaving?” he asked quietly.

  A sardonic flicker lighted the young man’s eyes. He put his hand in his pocket and fished out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. It looked empty to me, but there was still one in it. When he had taken it out he twisted the pack and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  “Not right away, colonel,” he said.

  It doesn’t prove a thing, I told myself. Lots of people do that.

  Colonel Primrose’s face was as placid as Buddha’s. It was Bowen who broke the silence. “I hear it was suicide. I take it you don’t think so?”

  “I’ll have to be convinced, Digges.”

  Bowen nodded. “So will I.” He looked down at the pile of gray flannel on the sofa between them. “I’m the Number One Boy, then. Is that it?”

  He was so cool about it that I thought even Colonel Primrose was a little annoyed.

  “Did you wear a hat last night, by any chance?” he inquired.

  Bowen Digges looked puzzled. “I believe I did,” he said, after an instant. “Yes, I know I did. I thought I’d better dress up to go to the boss’ house. I went by invitation—to see a lawyer and his client who wants promethium.”

  “You had a luncheon engagement with them yesterday?”

  “Yes. It slipped my mind. I’d already told them there wasn’t a chance. A free lunch wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  “What happened?”

  “Last night? Nothing. I just told them again.”

  “They were annoyed, I suppose?” Colonel Primrose said.

  “I think you could say so. I don’t suppose anybody threatens to put you in the pen if they’re pleased about things.”

  “You, or Hilyard?”

  “Both of us. Hilyard first, of course. Me as an accessory, or cat’s-paw, or something.”

  “Where is your hat now, by the way?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  Bowen looked a little blank. “Upstairs, I guess. Or out in the car. I don’t wear one much, so I don’t keep track of it. Once more, why?”

  “Were you on the towing path of the Georgetown Canal last night?”

  “Yes. I took Mr. Hilyard down to M Street in my car, and walked along the path with him to give his dog a run. He said he wanted to talk to me. We walked about a mile, I guess, and came back.”

  Colonel Primrose hesitated an instant. “Did he have his hat?”

  Bowen Digges stared at him for a while. “Why——” he began, and stopped. “Of course,” he said. “He got his hat out of the closet when we left, and handed me mine.”

  “You took him back home, then, when you’d finished your walk?” Colonel Primrose suggested. There was no change in his face or voice.

  “No. I left him down on the path calling his dog. Just at the end of the little bridge.”

  “You came straight home then?”

  “After a while.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “When did you leave Hilyard?”

  “Midnight, or a little later.”

  Colonel Primrose looked steadily at him for an instant. “Well,” he said, “where did you pick these up?”

  He pointed to the brown stains on the trouser leg, on the sofa between them.

  “You’ve got me,” Bowen Digges said quietly. “I hadn’t noticed them until just now.”

  “Did you wear an overcoat too?”

  Bowen nodded.

  “Ask your maid to get it, please.”

  I was watching Colonel Primrose much more intently than I was Bowen Digges. I had the kind of dread you have in a dream where everything seems outwardly normal and yet you’re aware, when you wake, of a terrible anxiety that you can’t define. Though this was easily definable, outwardly at least. And when the maid brought down a heavy gray tweed overcoat it was more defined than ever.

  “I guess you’re still right, colonel,” Bowen said quietly.

  I’ve heard people talk about inanimate evidence, but I’d never seen it so clearly as I did then. The dark splotches of blood over the front of the soft tweed hadn’t got there passively. They had spurted out onto it. He hadn’t brushed against a bleeding wound; he’d been there when the wound was made. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The sleeves were stained too.

  I looked back at Colonel Primrose. His black eyes were snapping.

  “It’s time you did a little explaining, Digges,” he said curtly.

  It seemed to me that it was then for the first time that Bowen Digges realized something was happening. He stood looking down at the horrible mess on his overcoat, his face hardening slowly. Tiny white ridges came out along his jaw. His mouth closed into a thin hard line. And I leaned back in my chair with a kind of sense of relief. He was doing some serious thinking at last, and he’d say something. And he did, but not what I’d hoped he would.

  “I see,” he said. He met Colonel Primrose’s steady gaze with one just as steady. “I’m not doing any explaining. I’ve told you everything I’m going to. You’ll have to take it or leave it.”

  He was standing there facing Colonel Primrose, his back to the hall door. I suppose I must have heard a footfall out there, though I wasn’t consciously aware of it, even when I turned and looked that way. I jumped in my chair. Diane Hilyard was there. Her hair was blown back from her face, her cheeks red from the cold. But the red was fading from them even then. She was staring across the room past Bowen, hej eyes fixed on that suit lying there on the sofa, the bloodstains horribly and cruelly displayed. Her hand moved slowly to the doorframe and clutched it. Her lips parted, she swayed a little and caught herself. Her face was colorless.

  “No,” Colonel Primrose said curtly. He hadn’t seen her y Bowen Digges was in his line of vision. “Not me. The district attorney . . . and twelve men on the jury.”

  “The district attorney and twelve men on the jury, then,” Bowen Digges said. He nodded down at the clothes. “You’ll want to take these. I’ll get you some paper to wrap them in.”

  “I’d like to ask you one more question first,” Colonel Primrose said, as equably and suavely as ever. “Was there ever any question about Lawrason Hilyard not being right-handed?”

  Bowen looked at him for an instant. “I never heard it questioned,” he said calmly. “I happen to know he was left-handed. I’ve known him most of my life. You know that already, I guess.”

  Colonel Primrose took a step toward him.

  “I know,” he said very deliberately, “that he paid you twenty-five hundred dollars to leave town and not marry his daughter.”

  I felt rather than heard the gasp that came from the hall doorway. Diane’s hand tightened on the doorframe. Bowen had started toward a table covered with newspapers. He stopped dead and turned slowly back.

  “Come again, colonel?” he asked very slowly.

  His face had gone quite white. I wished to heaven there was more space between them.

  “I said, I knew the Hilyards paid you twenty-five hundred dollars,” Colonel Primrose repeated, “to leave town and not marry Diane Hilyard.”

  Bowen stood there looking at him. “That’s what I thought you said, colonel. Would you mind telling me who told you that?”

  The atmosphere in the room was so charged that I thought everything was going to explode in our faces.
I saw Diane raise her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry, her eyes wide with alarm. Bowen Digges took a step forward. He was a hundred and eighty pounds or so of taut cold steel, his eyes shuttered and dangerous. I held my breath.

  “Is it true, Digges, or isn’t it?” Colonel Primrose said.

  The young man’s jaw went harder. “I asked who told you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s been told, and it’s generally believed. I’m asking you whether it’s a fact.”

  Bowen Digges relaxed slowly. Diane had let her hand fall and was waiting, holding her breath, her eyes bright and body tense.

  “It is not true,” Bowen said steadily. “It’s false. The Hilyards all know it.”

  Colonel Primrose turned a little. “Did you know it, Miss Hilyard?”

  I might have known all the time he knew she was there. I certainly ought to know by this time that he doesn’t have to look at things to see them.

  Digges whirled around and stared at her blankly. The muscles of his face contracted for an instant with something that looked so much like unbearable pain that I winced. Then a slow flush spread from his open collar to the roots of his hair. Diane hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Her face was still pale, but two spots of color burned slowly in her cheeks. Her eyes were burning too, like smoldering blue coals. She let go the doorframe and stood there erect, her chin up.

  “I know it is true,” she said. “I’ve seen the check. I . . . wouldn’t have believed it, ever, ever, till my father showed it to me. And that’s why he didn’t tell . . . anybody you were here. He didn’t lie. You wouldn’t dare say it if he were . . . still alive.”

  Bowen Digges’ face had gone hard and flat again. “Okay,” he said shortly. “If that’s what you want to believe, you can.” He turned to Colonel Primrose. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get dressed.”

  CHAPTER 11

  DIANE’S VOICE CAME FROM DOWN IN A miserable little huddle of brown fur beside me on the car seat, sounding tragically small and lost: “Why did I do that?”

  I was taking her to town. Colonel Primrose was waiting to take Bowen in to see Captain Lamb, and Diane had come in a taxi to avoid another scene with her brother-in-law, Carey Eaton, who’d put her car keys in his pocket to keep her from leaving the house.