by Basil Copper
‘That’s the funny part,’ she said. ‘He was genuinely attached to me. It wasn’t that I hated him. He was always most kind where I was concerned. It was just that being an honest person I was forced to face the defects in his character. And they were many, I’m afraid.’
I got out my scratch pad and put it on the desk.
‘The house is called Salamanca Heights,’ she said. ‘Anyone in Knoxtown would tell you. There’s a caretaker to look after the place. That’s where Uncle died.’
I took a note of the address while she sipped her drink.
‘That’s another point,’ I said. ‘I take it the Sunset deal was all fixed up before he died?’
She nodded. ‘They had an ambulance and freezer unit standing by at the Heights. He’d been ill for some weeks. As soon as he was pronounced dead they took over. There wasn’t even a memorial service.’
‘This was all with your approval?’ I asked.
She smoothed her hair with her free hand. ‘It was nothing to do with me how Uncle disposed of his body,’ she said. ‘Naturally, I hadn’t much faith in the idea but I respected his wishes. I didn’t find out about the will until afterwards.’
‘What about the lawyer?’ I said.
‘An old family friend in Knoxtown. The will had been drawn up some months before Uncle Jenson died.’
‘Witnesses?’ I asked.
She frowned again. ‘His own doctor in Knoxtown and my cousin Rex Beale.’
‘I thought you were his only relative,’ I said.
‘Close relative,’ she said. ‘Rex doesn’t count. You’ll know what I mean when you meet him.’
I picked up my drink again and studied the ice in the glass. It looked remote and opaque the way ice cubes in liquor always look and it didn’t help me in my problems at all.
‘How was the will made out?’ I said. ‘What I mean is, were you present?’
Merna Freeman shook her head. ‘It was all done one weekend while I was away. Mr Wheeler — that’s Uncle’s lawyer — told me. He brought the papers out one Saturday.’
I put down the glass on the desk and got back to my note-taking. The tick of the clock was nibbling at the edges of the silence now. ‘So the will was signed in the lawyer’s presence and that of the doctor and your cousin?’
The girl shook her head again. ‘Mr Wheeler left the papers for Uncle to sign. I remember him telling me that distinctly. Uncle wasn’t feeling well. Mr Wheeler came back for the papers on the Monday.’
‘Did he?’ I said. Merna Freeman got my point.
‘You quite sure about the lawyer?’ I asked gently.
‘Boston and Harvard. Uncle had Mr Wheeler for more than forty years.’
‘So we can rule him out,’ I said. ‘That leaves the doctor and your cousin.’
‘Dr Hauser’s well-known in Knoxtown. He’s practised there for some years. He’s liked and respected. An Austrian by birth, I believe.’
‘That leaves your cousin,’ I said. ‘Assuming we eliminate the doctor. Which is assuming a lot.’
‘I’d rather not say anything about Rex at this stage,’ she said.
‘Meaning water is thicker than blood when it comes to a billion dollars,’ I said.
She chuckled throatily. ‘You’re a disgracefully cynical character, Mike.’ She opened one of the cardboard folders and started taking stuff out of it.
‘So nobody saw the will signed or witnessed except Hauser and Cousin Rex,’ I said. ‘Leaving aside Wheeler and Uncle, who’s in deep freeze and can’t help us, you’ve only the word of those two that he ever signed. Which doesn’t rule out collusion.’
She stared at me without saying anything. I picked up the first piece of paper she gave me. It contained Dr Hauser’s address in Knoxtown. I copied that out and also the cousin’s. I saw the latter was at Salamanca Heights.
‘Rex used to live with us on and off when he was around Knoxtown,’ she explained.
The death certificate was more interesting. It was dated last year, signed by Dr Hauser and gave the cause of death as pneumonia and resulting complications leading to heart failure. It gave the old man’s age as 73.
I lit a cigarette and sat back when I got to the will. It was a long document and Merna Freeman got up while I studied it. I heard her go back next door and pour herself another drink. I tried comparing the signature on the will with that on other documents. It would need a handwriting expert to detect any difference. The signature on the will seemed a little thicker and the ink was different, of course, but that could have been explained by the old man’s illness which might have necessitated the pen being steadied by someone else.
Merna Freeman had come into the room again. She took my glass up silently and went out to refresh it. There was another will attached to the photostat copy of the last, whose main bequests went to Eternity Inc., with Dr Heinz Krug as Medical Director. He was the only person mentioned by name, which would have been enough to get the girl’s own L.A. lawyers busy.
The second will was in favour of Merna Freeman and dated three years previously. I flipped through it quickly but as it wasn’t in dispute I didn’t give it much attention.
‘I should keep these under wraps if I were you,’ I said, handing her the copies of the two wills and the death certificate. She put them in a small brown envelope. She went and swung long, lovely legs as she sat on the edge of the desk.
‘Have you been to see Krug about all this?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I handled it through lawyers. Krug and Uncle met a year or two back when Uncle got in touch with Eternity Inc. Apparently he’d seen their preliminary announcements in the press. They met quite frequently, I’ve since discovered, but Krug handled it real smoothly. If I had gotten wind of it … ’
She laughed lightly. ‘The world’s full of small words like if and but. Let’s leave it for tonight.’
She went round the desk and I got up too. I helped her put the documents back into the cases. I picked up a square piece of linen-weave paper. It was an elaborately printed document headed: CERTIFICATE OF IMMORTALITY. It went on, with many a flourish and arabesque, to state that Jenson P. Whipfuddle III, hereinafter referred to as the patient, had been taken into the care of Eternity Inc. Apparently he was due to re-surface in the year 2064. I wished him luck. The certificate was signed by Krug and someone else whose signature I couldn’t make out. When I looked at the signatures I was sure that Uncle Jenson was going to need all the luck he could get.
Merna Freeman took the briefcase and the cardboard folders and disappeared with them round the bookstacks. I waited and finished off my drink. She came back with a clittering of heels. She ran soft fingers along the angle of my jaw.
‘You look a tough character, Mike Faraday,’ she said gently. ‘Looks like I’m going to need a tough character in this business.’
‘I always try to give satisfaction,’ I said. I hadn’t kissed behind the bookstacks since I was in High School, but I didn’t mind going back to childhood. She was the real thing. She held my jacket lapels with spread fingers as her mouth met mine with fierce hunger. Her eyes were open and brimming.
So it took me quite a few moments before I noticed something odd about the library. I was facing over her shoulder and when I opened my eyes. I found I could see right through the bookstacks. Someone had taken out the books on both sides in one place and there was a gap clear into the next aisle. A big man was sitting in an armchair. The bottom half of a newspaper covered the upper part of his body.
He made no movement and the paper didn’t even rustle. He just sat there. Queerest thing of all was that he was wearing blue velvet shoes. I figured I would know him again.
Merna Freeman didn’t remark on it then or at any time. She just gave a little groan and pushed me gently away from her. She smiled shyly into my face and then we were walking to the door.
‘I’ll have a look up at Knoxtown just as soon as I get the chance,’ I said as we got into the big room. The white poodle was sit
ting back on the divan but it got up and started barking shrilly again as soon as we came through the door. It went and scowled to itself behind the table leg.
‘Did you get up to Sunset Gardens?’ Merna Freeman asked, holding out her hand formally as I got ready to leave.
‘Sure,’ I said again. ‘But I’m paid for digging out facts. I’ll let you know if I come up with something.’
I left her standing looking into the fire. She’d picked up the poodle and was stroking its stiff body with sharp, brittle movements. She didn’t move as I glanced back. The negro houseboy came to guide me out. He saw me through the front door in well-trained silence and bowed me down the steps. I heard the bolts click behind me. I got to the bottom of the steps before the porch lights went out. It had started to rain again. I found water had drifted into the driving seat when I reached the Buick. I sponged it off and then got my torch out of the dash cubby.
I put on my raincoat and went pussy-footing back in the rain to where the other two cars were parked. It was way below the level of the house so I didn’t have to shield the light. The first car was a white Mercedes with emerald green leather upholstery. I looked at the licence particulars on the windshield and found it was registered to the girl. It was unlocked.
The other car was a bigger job. When I put the torch over the bonnet I saw it was a scarlet Oldsmobile. The doors were locked. I felt the front of the radiator. The motor was still warm. I think I already knew who it belonged to before I looked at the windshield. The Olds was registered to Rex Beale. I put off the light and got back into my own car. I looked at my wrist watch. It was a quarter of eleven and there was just one other little job I wanted to do. I heard the house door slam in the dark above me. Footsteps sounded along the veranda. I didn’t wait to see who it was but started the motor and gunned the Buick down the drive and back towards L.A.
*
I drove across town and stopped at the nearest drug store. There was something I’d forgotten to ask Stan Alloway. He might have a list of contractors who’d worked on the freezers for Sunset Gardens. And one of them might come up with something useful. A woman’s voice answered when I rang Alloway’s house. It was his wife.
‘He’s rarely home before midnight these days, Mike,’ she said when I’d identified myself. ‘You’ll probably catch him at the office if you’d like to ring there.’
‘Don’t worry, Sylvia,’ I said. ‘It’s on my way home and I’ll look in.’
‘You might tell him I’m still waiting for those deepfreeze parts he promised,’ she said. ‘If we were customers and not the family the thing would have been fixed months ago.’ She chuckled.
‘Sure,’ I said. I rang off, bought a package of cigarettes from the weasel-eyed character behind the drug store counter and got back in the car. I drove across town and stopped outside Alloway’s business premises. The neon still burned redly in the night. The yard gates were shut but the door was ajar, the patent lock snubbed back. All the big truck bays were shuttered and locked but a single light on a steel stanchion shone at one side of the yard. Light also came from behind a Venetian blind in Alloway’s office window. I was surprised he didn’t employ a night watchman.
I went over and rapped on the window. Nothing moved in the yard except long shadows in the lamplight. I went round to the main office door. It was unlocked. A crack of light showed from under Alloway’s own office door. I fumbled for a switch and found one just alongside the counter. Bluish neons trembled into radiance. I walked through behind the counter and tapped on Alloway’s door.
I tried the handle but it was locked. The quiet was unnatural. I picked up an anglepoise lamp by its stem and using the heavy base as a hammer shattered the frosted glass in the upper panel. I put my hand in through the broken framework and found the lock. I went on in to Alloway’s office. The lights burned placidly on the pale blond walls and ceiling that had been temporarily transformed into a butcher’s shop. Crimson splotched the walls, the carpet, even the ceiling. The room was a nightmare. Filing cabinet drawers hung askew, papers were strewn about. Someone had used several sheets of draughtsman’s paper as a bath towel.
In the middle of it all lay Alloway. He wouldn’t be worrying about any more contracts. In fact he hadn’t a care in the world. Alloway looked like a dead Prussian General. He lay crucified on top of his own desk, his arms spread-eagled, his fingers crooked tightly in his death agony. The eyes were clouded with surprise and staring at the ceiling. The top of the skull was beaten in with great ferocity. The base of an anglepoise lamp had done this. Alloway had been attacked with such force that the metal uprights of the lamp had sheared off, leaving three jagged prongs.
The base, clotted carmine and looking like some obscene sculpture was lying some feet from the body. The metal part of the lamp, forming a rough trident, had been speared into Alloway’s belly with tremendous strength so that it had skewered him to the desk. One tine of the metal protruded from his back, half hidden by the torn material of his coat. Dark blood clotted in the corners of his mouth and on his shirt front.
I went over rather unsteadily into a corner of the office and opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet I was interested in. I knew it was pointless before I opened it but I had to make sure. The only thing left of the red folder was a small triangle of card which had caught in the edge of the cabinet as it had been torn away.
I walked out of the office very quietly, almost on tiptoe, as though I was afraid of waking the dead. I had to get some law in pretty quick and I knew enough about L.A. police methods not to use the phone in the office.
Chapter Five - Strike Two
Captain Dan Tucker’s leathery face creased up with a smile of pleasure. He sat in the old swing-back chair and crunched a small green apple and looked from me to the police cars filling the yard outside and then back again.
‘Well, well, Mike,’ he said for the third or fourth time. ‘Good to see you, boy. Long while since we worked together.’
I made a non-committal noise way down in my throat and fished in my pocket for a cigarette. It was now past three o’clock and the office was full of tobacco smoke.
‘You didn’t say what you were doing down here at Alloway’s,’ said Tucker.
‘I was having trouble with my toilet flush,’ I told him.
‘I’ll bet,’ he said in a pained voice. ‘Murder has a tendency to happen when you’re around. And that ain’t just coincidence. Leastways, not in my book.’
‘Don’t tell me you suspect murder,’ I said mildly.
Tucker snorted. He bit savagely on the remains of the apple.
‘Take the strain off your gallbladder, Dan,’ I said. ‘This time I’m levelling. How would I know who had it in for Stan Alloway? I was just doing a routine check on the cost of some plumbing installations for a client. Domestic litigation stuff.’
‘That don’t sound like your line of operation at all,’ said Dan. He still looked suspicious.
‘It’s hard graft this time of year,’ I said.
Tucker gazed moodily out of the window. He finished off the apple and slung the core into the wastebasket. There was a crackle as his strong teeth bit into another. Like always, his predilection for fruit was a bit trying to my nerves.
‘You didn’t touch his phone?’ he shot at me. ‘In the inner office, I mean?’
‘You know me better than that, Dan,’ I said. ‘I went down the corner and used a public booth.’
He nodded.
‘You’ll find my prints on the cigarette box,’ I told him. ‘That was when I was here this afternoon.’
Dan Tucker pushed his hat on to the back of his head and scratched reflectively at the thick roots of his hair.
‘Still ain’t clear why you had to come back,’ he said. ‘It runs to pattern though. Trouble always did follow you about.’
‘I forgot to ask Alloway for an address,’ I said. ‘Mind if I look around?’
Tucker bit slowly into the remains of his second apple. He eyes bli
nked sleepily. ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘So long as you don’t disturb any evidence.’
I got up and went back into the wreck of Alloway’s office. Light shone blue and harsh from unshaded lamps on to the blond walls. Flash bulbs winked as I got through the door. The cigarette haze could have been cut with a buzz-saw in here. A detective I knew nodded distantly. A print man dusted in a corner. The police surgeon was busy on a sheet down by the desk. I recognized him as a thin, frosty character called MacNamara, whom I’d come across once or twice before. He acted like lino was always burning under his nostrils but he was all right once you got to know him. He’d done me a good turn one time. Right now he was too busy to look up when I came in.
I went and stood at the back and made myself inconspicuous. All the action was around Alloway’s body. I edged my way out of the light and took in the rest of the room. I hadn’t had much time to look at the filing cabinet Alloway’s killer had been in such a hurry to go over. I saw they’d taken the files out of the cabinet when they were dusting. The drawers were stacked against the wall. I edged over quietly towards the cabinet and looked into the empty drawer spaces. The top one had something stuck in the back.
It was a small, loose piece of paper that looked like it had been torn off a sheet of stationery. I wouldn’t have given it a second glance except that it might have been ripped off by the edge of the cabinet when the killer pulled out the red-bound file. I reached my hand in the top of the cabinet, taking care not to touch the dusted surface. I lifted the paper between my finger tips and slipped it in my pocket. I had just got a yard or two away from the cabinet and was making with the interest in the scene in front of me, when I saw Tucker’s bulky figure in the doorway. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there. He looked at me sharply.
MacNamara straightened up and blew out his breath in a sigh of weary disgust.
‘That wraps it up for tonight,’ he said to a plainclothes man behind him. ‘You can tell the ambulance boys they can take him on down.’
He gave a little grimace when he caught sight of me standing in the shadows. ‘Faraday isn’t it?’ he said, peering forward over his spectacles. ‘You’ll excuse me not shaking hands.’