Tinkerbell turned to me. “Well, I am relieved to hear that, Carlton. You didn’t kill your father.”
“No, sir.”
“Just these other chaps. One of them is D.D.; what does that mean?”
“Doctor of Divinity.”
“Eh?”
Once more, the Crown attorney intervened, poor sap.
“Doctor,” he bellowed.
The judge frowned. “You want a doctor, Mr. Spencer? Are you ill?”
“No, Your Honour.”
“Then why do you want a doctor?”
“I DON’T,” yammered The Slammer.
“Then why ask for one?” snapped Tinkerbell, with the air of one who has pinned a witness in cross-examination. “Silly fellow,” he explained to me, “asks for a doctor in court. Then says he doesn’t want one after all.”
The clerk got up and wrote something for the judge.
“Ah, I see,” he said, “this fellow you killed, Carlton, the second one, he was a minister.”
“Sir, I didn’t kill anyone.” I was looking straight at him, so I guess he could read my lips.
A look of real cunning came over the old buzzard’s face. “But one of the ones you didn’t kill, Carlton, was a minister.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’m glad we’ve got that straight. All this talk of doctors, just a waste of the court’s time. So, your position, Carlton, is that you didn’t kill anyone?”
“Yes, sir.”
He was puzzled. “But it says here that you did.”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“But these chaps are dead?”
“Yes, sir, they’re dead all right.”
“Well, that’s that, then. Carlton, you be sure to give your father my best.”
There was no suitable reply to that one.
At this point, Spencer decided to try, once more, to take charge. He explained, in outraged bellows, that this was a bail hearing, and that the Crown’s position was that the accused—he glared at me—was charged with a Most Serious Crime, to wit, murder, and it was the Crown’s view that he should be held in jail, without bail, until his trial.
“We have no objection to that,” said Parker Whitney. Thank you, Tommy Macklin, I told myself, and added, aloud, “Well, I have an objection, Your Honour.”
“Well, in that case, accused will remain in custody until. . . . You do?”
Apparently, he had heard me.
Tinkerbell looked down at the lawyers. “He doesn’t want to stay in jail,” he told them.
“They seldom do, Your Honour,” The Slammer explained.
There was a bit of a hubbub at the lawyers’ bench, as the two cops huddled with The Slammer. Filling him in, no doubt, on the incriminating tape recording.
So it proved; Jeff produced his little tape player from his pocket, and there was much whispering to and fro. Tinkerbell didn’t seem to mind, just sat in his throne and picked his nose for a bit, until The Slammer got up and announced that he had a bit of tape he thought His Honour might wish to hear in the privacy of His Chambers.
This brought a raised eyebrow from Tinkerbell. “Tape, what sort of tape? Nothing salacious, I hope?”
“No, sir, but the Crown takes the position that this tape, while not admissible in court, might be heard by Your Honour, off the record, as to the question of bail.”
Well, you couldn’t do that, even I knew that, so I looked down at Parker Whitney, who smiled and said, “We have no objection, Your Honour.”
Of course, it didn’t work. They all went to the judge’s office and came back about five minutes later. Tinkerbell looked more befuddled than ever.
“Played some music, Carlton,” he told me in a loud whisper that bounced off the back wall of the courtroom, when we got settled down again. “Michael Jackson, of all things.” The judge was obviously more up-to-date than I thought. Then he peered over his glasses and laid down the law.
“The Crown’s position in this matter is that the accused, Carlton Withers, ought to be bound over without bail until his trial on a charge of the murder of . . . what were those fellows’ names, Clerk? One of them was a doctor, I remember. Say, this other one, Ernest Charleston Struthers . . . that isn’t Ernie Struthers, down at the hardware store, is it? It is? Well, I guess it was bound to happen one day. You know what he charged me for three nails the other week? However, that is neither here nor there. In any event, the Crown believes this is a case for the utmost caution, and defence counsel does not object.
“However, the prisoner does object, and I must say, I see his point. Filthy jail, you know, gentlemen. The Court is personally acquainted with the accused, who is a friend of my daughter Amelia.”
By golly, I’d forgotten about that. Amelia Tinker, as homely a bird as roams uncaged, used to help me with my algebra, and I took her to the junior prom one year, when it was clear that it was me or nobody, and I took a lot of kidding for it, at the time. The truth is, we both had a nice evening, and here I was, years later, receiving a second benison for that night.
“It is the Court’s view,” Tinkerbell went on, “that the accused is not likely to leave the jurisdiction, and is not a public danger, and I am accordingly binding him over on a recognizance of twenty-five thousand dollars, to await his trial.”
And he glared down at the lawyers, and banged his gavel.
It was a show of faith, I guess, but not much use. Where was I going to find twenty-five thousand dollars? I waved a sad farewell to Hanna and Hanson, and Jail-Pail slapped the handcuffs back on my wrists, and led me back to the jail.
Chapter 21
I owed my freedom, when it came, and it was only temporary and on sufferance, to Loophole DeLeonardis, who represents Silvio Developments. He arrived on Monday morning with a bond for twenty-five thousand dollars. He came not a moment too soon for my liking. I had been playing cribbage with Jail-Pail Passenden for most of the weekend, and I was holding his IOUs for $1.65, which he was beginning to resent, with frequent references to the criminal element in games of chance. I had eaten seven of Belinda’s burnt offerings—I think some of them were hamburgers, it was hard to tell, and the rest fried-egg sandwiches, complete with cheering notes—and my stomach, even hardened as it was by my own cooking, was sending complaints up to head office.
Loophole suddenly appeared at my jail-cell door, right in the middle of a crib game, with Hanna Klovack frisking about him like a damn lamb.
“Here we are, Carlton,” she carolled. “The U.S. Marines have arrived. This is Mr. DeLeonardis.”
“We know each other,” said Loophole and, “Morning, Loophole,” I said.
“Your name is Loophole?” Hanna asked.
A steely smile from the lawyer. “It’s by way of a sobriquet, Miss Klovack,” he explained. “Actually, I take it as a compliment. My proper name is Anthony.”
“Well, be that as it may,” said Hanna, “Carlton, this nice man has just posted your bail, courtesy of Dominic Silvio. Which is too bad, in a way, since we both had Silvio marked down as a possibility for the murders, but I guess it wouldn’t make much sense to frame someone and then put up his bail money, would it?”
I said I didn’t think so.
“Actually, just between us,” and Hanna leaned up close to the cell bars, “I went to see Silvio when I realized what a hash that other mouthpiece was making of things, and told him that it would be a smart idea to raise your bail. I told him you might help him out later, by writing some nice things about his crummy development. We all know you won’t, don’t we, Carlton? But no need to blab that around right now. So,” she straightened up and resumed her normal voice, “here we all are. Isn’t this the place where they strike the leg irons off?”
Jail-Pail, once he had read the bits of paper Loophole showed him, drew out his key and opened the cell door, and I stepped out i
nto the hall, my debt to society paid, or, at least, translated into a mortgage. Hanna stuck her hand out.
“Congratulations, prisoner,” she said. “Decided to go straight, have you?”
I stepped inside the proffered hand and clasped her, as the saying goes, to my bosom. Which is not nearly as nice a bosom as her bosom.
“Phew, you stink,” she said, which is not one of the great love-lines of all time, but she didn’t baff me, as she had on the last occasion when I grabbed her.
Outside, we were accosted by Smiley and Thuggy. Smiley smiled; Thuggy told me all the unpleasant things he’d do to me if I tried to scarper. Furthest thing from my mind.
We went down to the Lancer, where I conferred, briefly, with Harry Hibbs, who had put together the week’s issue—most of which I had written long since—in my absence. Tommy Macklin was lurking in the background, and, the moment he was sure all the real work was done, he came stomping by the desk and, without stopping, or even looking up, grunted out of the corner of his mouth, “Oh, Withers, I’m glad to see you’re out of jail. I was just about to send down a messenger. You’re fired.”
Well, I guess I should have seen it coming. The staff of the Lancer does not get itself arrested, however blamelessly, and remain the staff. You get dumped. It makes the advertisers feel safe. Hanna went to bat for me, following Tommy back to his office to hector him—not noisily, but with a kind of quiet determination. When he remained unmoved, she handed in her own portfolio. She came back and told me what she had done, and I told her she was an idiot and she told me to mind my own damn business. Then she told me to move out of the way, sat down at my computer and typed in, all in capital letters, TOMMY MACKLIN IS A GOLD-PLATED ASSHOLE, and sent that as an internal memo to everyone on staff, even though, as I pointed out, everybody already knew.
When we came out of the office, Marchepas, which was still sitting beside the football field, started, the filthy thing, so there went my chance to get Hanna to drive me out to Bosky Dell, to take up the matter of where we went from here with her at—how shall I put it?—close quarters. I got out of the car, leaving it running—there was always the chance that it would stall and quit again—and I went around to where Hanna was waiting on the sidewalk, with her arms crossed—no trespassing, I recognized the sign. I put out one hand onto her arm and tugged it, gently, but it remained in place.
“I suppose you’ll be going back to the city,” I said.
“I suppose so.”
“Nothing to keep you here.”
“No. Nothing.”
“I should tell you that Tommy Macklin has fired me about twenty times in the last nine years. He usually gets over it and hires me back again.”
“He probably can’t find anybody else dumb enough to keep working for him.”
“There is that.”
“Just the same, I wouldn’t go back to work for him, even if you would. He’s a treacherous little creep.”
“Aren’t all managing editors?”
“Not all. Some of them are treacherous big creeps.”
“Wouldn’t you like to stay around and see how all this comes out?”
“Oh, I shall follow your future career with interest, Mr. Withers. If they get you on a double murder, no doubt I’ll read about it in the papers.”
“Not in the Silver Falls Lancer, you won’t.”
“I guess not.”
“Say,” I said, “why don’t you come out to Bosky Dell, and I’ll fix us some lunch? I’ll bet you’ve never tasted Bean-a-ghetti.”
“What’s that?”
“An old Bosky Dell recipe. One can of beans, one can of spaghetti, mix, heat, and serve.”
“Sounds lethal.”
“It is.”
“I think not. Carlton?”
“Uh-huh?”
“I can’t get involved again, you know. Not for quite a while.”
“I know.”
“You want to get involved, don’t you?”
“Well, I thought it might help to pass the time, before they put me back in the slammer.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” I smiled, my best Ronald Colman bitter smile. “Now, who’s going to help me with the mystery of the newspaper clipping?”
“Oh, that. That’s solved.”
“It is? You did it?”
“That’s what I was doing down in Toronto. I thought it might be useful to check out the rest of the newspaper that clipping came from, so I went down and did a quick search in the Toronto Star library.”
“You did? Did you find out anything new?”
“Well, I did and I didn’t.”
“Hanna, you’re driving me crazy.”
“Yes, I can see that. Sorry. What happened is that I thought I would learn something new about the clipping by looking in that day’s newspaper. I thought, you know, that maybe something had been cut off the bottom or something. But it wasn’t.”
“So, the whole thing was a waste of time?”
“No, not exactly.”
“You found out something else that wasn’t in the clipping?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, what was it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t? Why not?”
“State secret. Hey, don’t look so glum. I told the cops. It will all come out in the end, I promise.”
“Say,” I went on, “I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you bring your notes out to the cottage, and we can go over the whole thing together?”
She smiled. “I don’t think that would be such a wise idea, Carlton.”
And she turned and walked away.
I got into Marchepas, slammed it into gear—it just purred—and drove out to the Dell.
I knew I had to go and see Helen Wylie, Ephraim’s widow, to pay my condolences. It also occurred to me, I admit, that she might clear up the matter of her conversation with the police about Ephraim’s anxiety to see me, the morning of his death.
When I knocked on the cottage door, a pleasant voice sang out, “It’s open,” and I went in. I found Helen sitting in the living room of their cottage, with a photo album in her lap. A pleasant, handsome woman, she held her grief close. I could see she had been crying, but there were no tears now.
“Oh, Carlton, it’s you. How nice of you to come. Can I fix you a cup of tea?”
I looked around—the place was awash with teacups, recently used. Obviously, the neighbours had been in.
“No, no thanks. I just wanted to tell you how sorry . . . Ehpraim was such a decent man . . . How very sorry . . .”
If I didn’t watch it, I was going to be blubbering too.
“Thank you, Carlton. Yes, he was a decent man, wasn’t he? Some people thought him not very forceful, and no one ever called him brilliant, but he was kind and tolerant and, as you say, decent.”
“Well, I won’t trouble you further . . .”
“No, Carlton, don’t go.” She paused, and gave me a stern look. “There is something I must say to you.”
“There is?”
“Carlton, when the police came to see me about Ephraim, I told them this, and I think you ought to know, too.”
“Know what?”
“The reason Ephraim called and left a message for you to go and see him at the church, Carlton, is that he was very disturbed by something he saw at your place the other day and he was hoping you could explain it.”
“Something he saw at my place? What sort of something?”
“I hardly know how to put this, Carlton. When he came back here, he was most upset.”
“Upset? Why?”
“Friday morning, about ten o’clock, Carlton, Ephraim was out for a walk.”
“Thinking out a sermon, no doubt.”
“I daresay. Anyway
, he told me that, instead of going straight down Fourth Street to the public dock, the way he usually does, he took a shortcut, through the path between Third and Fourth. And that’s when he saw it.”
I didn’t want to rush the woman, but I was beginning to get impatient, and perhaps it showed in my voice. “Saw what?”
“Carlton, this is very embarrassing for me.”
“Mrs. Wylie, it’s maddening for me. What did he see?”
“He saw Nora Eberley, Carlton, sneaking—he said there was no mistaking the furtive way she was moving—sneaking out of your back door.”
“I see.”
“She looked around, he said, in a very furtive fashion, and just sort of scooted over to Fifth Street.”
“Mrs. Wylie, I can explain . . .”
“In the normal course of events, Carlton, this would not be anyone’s concern except yours and Nora Eberley’s.” Pause. “And, just possibly, Hanson Eberley’s.”
It was cool there, in the darkened cottage, with the curtains drawn. Why then was I sweating?
“Mrs. Wylie, I assure you, it was not what you must be thinking .”
“I’m sure that is the case, Carlton. And, in any event, it is not my concern, except as something that may throw a light on Ephraim’s death. That is my concern.”
“Mrs. Wylie, I give you my oath that I was not even in my place at 10 a.m. last Friday.”
“You weren’t?”
“I was not. I was down on the Third Street dock, swimming and sleeping.”
“Well, Carlton, I must say, that is a great relief to me. Then, what do you suppose Nora was doing at your place?”
“Perhaps she came to borrow a cup of sugar?”
Another small smile. “Now, Carlton, she would not go to your place for that, would she?”
“Mrs. Wylie, you say you have already told the police about this?”
“Yes, they came to see me, Friday morning, right after . . .”
She stopped.
“Have you mentioned it to Hanson?”
“No, should I?”
“I think you should. I have far more faith in Hanson than I do in the police, and this is something that not only involves his wife, but is bound to come out anyway.”
Right Church, Wrong Pew Page 16