Will you see a psychiatrist, Vick? For Angie’s sake, will you see a psychiatrist? Will you see a psychiatrist see a psychiatrist see a psychiatrist...
Vickers rose and locked the door of the den. He poured himself another drink and sat down again. He did not drink. He put the glass down and put his head in his hands.
Outside, the plainclothesman took up his post again.
Chapter Sixteen
Joe Trehearne examined the housecoat. It was early morning. There was a heavy fog outside his office windows, and the warning call of the foghorn down by the yacht harbor came faint and mournful through the nearer sounds of traffic. The pale fabric looked cold and dead in the gray light.
Joan Merrill sat erect and composed in a straight chair, watching him. She did not speak. Trehearne touched the brown stains very lightly with his finger. Then he flipped the annunciator switch and said a few words into it. Presently a man came in and took the housecoat away.
Trehearne sat down behind his desk. He left the annunciator open. “All right,” he said gently. “Let’s have it.”
Without so much as shifting in her chair, Joan Merrill began to talk. Her voice sounded mechanical, as though she were a child in school reciting something she had memorized.
“Michael’s return was a great shock to me. I knew that it was going to be much more of a shock to Angie. If he had sent word, if we had had any sort of warning... He should have known how cruel it was not to let us know. And when he forbade me to call Angie, I knew what he had in mind. He was hoping to catch her in some disloyalty, some indiscretion. He had left her for four years, without word, but he was hoping to find her guilty.”
She stopped and took a long uneven breath. Trehearne was aware that the apparent calmness of her manner was as forced as it was false. He hoped that she could hang onto it. He disliked emotional demonstrations, not because they embarrassed or affected him, but because the application of soothing-syrup and restoratives was such a stupid waste of time. He liked people who could say what they had to say and then go away quietly and collapse somewhere else.
She was talking again.
She said, “It made me angry.”
You wouldn’t think she had it in her, Trehearne said to himself. She looks the perfect social factotum, sleek, efficient, and nothing inside her but skimmed milk. How you can be fooled.
“I love Angie, and I know what sort of person she is, and I knew that all the gossip was just that. I knew that no man had touched her since Michael went away. I knew that she had stayed close to Harry and Job and Bill partly because they had been Michael’s friends, and partly because she thought one of them might know what had really happened. But Michael never loved anyone but himself. He wouldn’t know about things like that, or care. He’d only think of his own vanity, his own pride, the picture of himself in other people’s minds. He wouldn’t like being laughed at, or talked about. I didn’t want it to be any worse than it had to be-his coming back. I thought Angie had a right to know.
“He stopped me phoning, and told me to go to bed. But I didn’t. While he was in his room I got out of the house and took my car. The drive slopes downward from the garage. You don’t have to start the engine if you don’t want to. I didn’t. I somehow didn’t want him to know I’d gone. I think I was afraid he could run out and stop me. I don’t know. I was upset, and Michael – well, it was like having a ghost in the house.
“I don’t know how long it took me to get to the beach. I went the long way, I know, because it’s a light, well-traveled road, and the short cut is across the flats. It’s dark and lonely, and I’ve never dared to drive it alone. And I’m not a fast driver. I was in rather a bad smash once, and I’ve never quite got over it.”
Trehearne interrupted quietly. “What you mean is that if Vickers took the short road and drove fast, he could have got there well ahead of you.”
“Yes. Yes, he could have done, I know. It seemed hours before I got there. When I did, I saw the lights in the cabana and decided to go down there before I went to the house. I knew that Angie went down there a lot to get away from people she didn’t like, and from the look of the party, I didn’t think she would be enjoying herself. I hoped she’d be there, alone. So I went on down and crossed the beach. I had on that housecoat – I hadn’t even thought of a wrap, the night was warm – and this.” She touched the soft jersey draped over her head. “I wear something like this driving, to keep my hair in place.
“I passed the landing. I heard a sound, a strange sort of grunting. I wasn’t frightened. The people up in the house were shrieking like idiots. When there’s a party like that going on, you’re apt to find anything. I supposed some drunk was being sick. Then I saw the shape of a man, lying in heavy shadow beside the storage locker. He seemed to be hurt. I was still not frightened. One doesn’t expect violence. I went to him. It was Harry.”
She stopped again. Trehearne watched the increasingly nervous motions of her mouth and hands, and prayed. Delayed reaction, he thought. She probably didn’t do anything when she found the guy – if she did find him – and has continued not to do anything since. Watch it hit her when she thinks about it again.
“I thought at first that he was merely drunk, that he had fallen and stunned himself. It would be the logical thing to think about Harry. Even when I saw that his face was bloody I only thought he had cut himself falling. I asked him if he was all right, and he took hold of me, and I knew he wanted to get up. My thought was to get him back to the house. I tried to help him up. I touched the back of his head.”
Look out – here it comes. Trehearne leaned forward slightly.
“I imagine,” she said, “that I screamed. I don’t remember precisely. If I did, it can’t have been loud enough to penetrate the din they were making up at the house. At any rate, nobody heard me. But I knew then that Harry had been killed deliberately. I say ‘had been,’ because I knew he was dying, that he was dying right under my hand.
“He got to his feet. I don’t know how. Maybe I lifted him. Something fell. It was heavy. It had been lying across some part of his body. A short iron bar. It fell between his feet. He was still half crouching, we both were, and I remember thinking that one of us was going to trip on the bar, and I moved it away. Harry straightened up. I think he was trying to say something, but he couldn’t. Suddenly he just fell and went over the edge into the water. I tried to hold him but he was too heavy. My hands were all bloody, there was blood on my skirt. The handkerchief in Harry’s breast pocket was half pulled out when he slid over the rough edge of the landing. I took it. Harry’s weight was pulling me in too. I had to let go.”
She was holding herself rigid now, breathing unevenly, speaking in short rapid jerks. But she was still, so to speak, all in one piece.
“I wiped my hands with the handkerchief. Then I remembered the bar. Fingerprints. I had touched it. I was beyond thinking clearly. I wiped off the bar and threw it as far as I could into the water. I weighted the handkerchief and threw that, too. Then I just turned and ran. I forgot about Angie. I forgot Michael. I only knew I wanted to get away and not be seen. I could feel Harry’s blood still on me. My skirt was wet with it. It was still warm. The people in the house were shrieking and laughing. I wanted to go home. I was afraid. I was afraid they’d think I had killed him. And I was afraid of something else. Much more afraid.”
It was a long pause this time. Her eyes were seeing things, remembering. They gave Trehearne the shivers.
“I was afraid of the murderer. If he had seen me with Harry... Perhaps he was close by, hiding. Perhaps he thought Harry had told me his name. I wanted to get away. I ran back to my car and went straight home. I bathed and took sleeping tablets and went to bed. Even then, with the sleeping tablets, I dreamed.”
She began to relax, to slump forward in the chair. Her voice was dull, and it came slowly now.
“I began to think no one had seen me. Then Job came, and I knew I would have to tell the truth sooner or later.” She loo
ked up at Trehearne. “You’ll let Angie go now.”
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Merrill.”
She straightened. “But...”
“In the first place, we have to check your story as far as possible. In the second place, even though your story is true – and I think it is – as far as it goes – it does not clear Mrs. Vickers. The actual killer is still unidentified.”
Joan got up. “How can you be so stupid?”
Trehearne didn’t try to answer that one. Joan approached him.
“Angie didn’t kill him. She couldn’t kill anybody. I should think you’d know that just by looking at her. Why don’t you arrest Michael? You know he did it. Why don’t you do something about it? Why do you go on persecuting Angie?”
Trehearne got up. He moved away from her. “I can’t arrest a man without evidence.”
“You fool! What more evidence do you need? Of course Michael killed him. Who else would have had any reason to?”
“You, perhaps,” Trehearne said. “To protect Angie, perhaps from a threat of blackmail, perhaps from what is politely known as intimacy with a man. You’re very fond of Mrs. Vickers. Fond enough to do almost anything.”
Joan’s eyes narrowed. They blazed. “Just what are you trying to say?”
He shrugged. “Take it any way you want. From your attitude toward Vickers and your own ex-husband, you seem to have rather a low opinion of men. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. I have a fairly low opinion of just people in general. Not because they commit crimes, but because they’re either so damned stupid about it that catching them is no fun, or so damned clever that it gives me a headache figuring things out.’ Never just a happy medium.” He bent over the annunciator. “You can send the matron in now.”
Joan said, “Matron!”
“Yeah. We’re holding you as a material witness, Mrs. Merrill. Also, there will be further questioning.”
For a moment he didn’t know whether she was going to faint or spring at him. Then she said, “All right. I don’t care if you hold me. But you can’t hold Angie. You only have her because of what Job said, and now you know he saw me instead of Angie. You can’t hold her!”
“You would be surprised,” Trehearne said, “what I can do. I’ll have to check your story very carefully before I release Mrs. Vickers. It may take me a long time. A very long time.”
The matron came in. Nobody paid any attention to her. Trehearne and Joan Merrill were still glaring at each other.
Trehearne said softly, “I can’t solve this case on clues or evidence. I can’t even check time. The only way I can solve it is by getting the truth out of all the people concerned – which I have not been getting from any one of them. I am going to get it, and I don’t particularly care how I get it. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”
The matron took Joan’s arm. Joan didn’t budge. She looked Trehearne up and down.
“You’re like all men. None of you have any common sense or common decency. I can’t think why you were ever created.”
The matron, who was blonde, buxom, and still reasonably young, winked at Trehearne and said, “We could tell her!” She led Joan out and closed the door. Trehearne bent over the annunciator, listening. Sounds of strife and general unease came over the speaker, followed by the matron’s good-naturedly profane comment about dames that were always passing out. Trehearne nodded and grinned widely. He waited until the debris had been safely cleared away, then said into the transmitter,
“Bob Doyle.”
A voice said, “Yeah?”
“Send for Michael Vickers, for questioning. Then come in here and start making noises like an assistant.” Trehearne closed the switch and sat down. Presently Bob Doyle came in. He was a good-looking, good-natured, very tough young man with the physique of a medium-heavy army tank. He was considerably lighter on his feet and much more maneuverable mentally. He made himself comfortable with his feet on the corner of Trehearne’s desk. He said, “Well?”
“What did you think of that?”
“It sounded good. How did it look?”
“Even better. She’s telling the truth – as far as she’s telling anything.”
Doyle said, “Uh huh. Of course you know one thing.”
“What?”
“You can’t hold the Vickers dame. You can stall for a while, maybe, on the grounds that you’re still questioning her, but it won’t work very long. Sam Leiber went hightailing it up to the Vickers’ place last night, and he’s the best lawyer in town. He’ll have her out of here before noon. And you haven’t got a goddamn thing to go to the D.A. with. You ask for an indictment, and he’ll throw you right out on your can.”
Trehearne sighed. “How right you are.” He got up and went over to the window, to look out at the drifting mist. He yawned. His eyes were bloodshot and he had not shaved.
“I’ve put that gorgeous black-haired babe over the jumps,” he said. “I’ve questioned her up, down, and sideways. And I’ve found out two things. She didn’t kill Harry Bryce, and she loves her husband. I’ll bet my next week’s pay on it.”
Doyle examined Trehearne with a certain quizzical amusement. “You mean because she talks so straight, or because she looks so curved?”
“If I weren’t so sleepy,” Trehearne said, “I’d come over there and beat your ears down. I’m not through with her yet. Lawyers or no lawyers, I’m not through. Likewise that Merrill character. She’s got potentialities.”
“You can have ’em,” said Doyle. “I’ll take the pigeon.”
“You ought to take something for that,” said Trehearne sourly. “All you think of is sex.”
Doyle grinned. “Naturally. Can’t you remember before you were old and married?” He listened while Trehearne made a few observations. He sighed and shook his head. “And you have such a sweet face,” he said.
“Forget my face. Forget women, as such. Just concentrate quietly on murder, its causes and effects. It’s quite possible that Merrill lowered the boom on Harry himself.”
“Motive?”
“She’s in love with the girl herself.”
“Oh-oh!” said Doyle. “Not one of those!”
“Call it that. Call it mother-love, or just plain old unselfish devotion – if devotion is ever unselfish, which you’ll have to prove to me. Call it any damn thing you like. Fact remains, she doesn’t want anybody messing about with her little Angie. Not even Angie’s husband.”
He leaned his back against the wall and lighted a cigarette. He winced.
“Christ, my lips are sore! Smoking too much. You remember Bryce’s widow said he’d been hanging around Angie too much, and Angie admitted that herself. Said she wished he’d go away. All right. But he was there, and maybe somebody thought he was moving in too solid with the gal. Maybe that somebody was Joan. She had a husband who was just too much man for her to handle, and she doesn’t approve of sex, in the usual sense. Also, she’s jealous as hell. If Joan Merrill had happened to bump into Harry, and Harry was pretty drunk and bent on rape, little Joanie would have brained him and never turned a hair.”
Doyle thought that over, and grinned. “You think she’d think she had to protect Angie? Mrs. V. looks to me like a gal who could handle herself in the clinches.”
“There are times when no woman can handle herself, if the guy really means business.” Trehearne yawned until his jaws cracked. “Besides, horrible thought, maybe Angie wasn’t going to fight too hard for her virtue. Four years is a long time.”
He sat down. “The trouble is,” he said plaintively, “the same motive is just as good for a couple of guys named Vickers and Saul. Crandall’s out, of course. He’s tried hard enough, but he can’t seem to rack up anything worse against himself than assault with intent to kill.” He considered a moment, returning to an earlier train of thought. “The blackmail angle is only good, of course, if Angie had something to do with Vickers getting conked in Mexico and Bryce was the guy who did it.
For my money she didn’t, and she says he didn’t either. However, we will hold the thought.” He put his feet up on the desk. He said disconsolately, “So, here we are, right back where we started from. Suspects fall in every time you open the door, but they slip like water through your fingers. It’s all very sad.”
“You’re getting paid for it,” said Doyle. “What happens now?”
“I do a little more questioning, and I let them go.”
“Then what?”
“You really want to know?” said Joe Trehearne. “All right, I’ll tell you. Somebody will get killed.” His voice held a great bitterness. “This thing isn’t finished yet. No matter who killed Harry Bryce, his death didn’t solve anything. I’ll lay you six, two, and even it was Vickers who conked him, but it was still just a curtain raiser. So I will let go all these nice people who are telling the truth, or maybe only part of the truth, or maybe none of it at all. I will sit back, regretting the polite, sweet laws that prevent me from getting the truth out of people, and the social set-up that makes it possible for rich important bastards like Vickers to prevent me from getting around the laws that prevent me. And I will watch while somebody else gets killed, and the public will call me a corrupt and blundering incompetent because I didn’t prevent the crime, and the Department will take my pants down and cane me soundly, and after that, by Jesus, I will make an arrest and somebody will go to the gas chamber.”
He smiled vaguely at Doyle. He did not really see him.
“Yes,” he said softly. “A guy can’t be lucky like that again. There was a reason for Vickers driving everybody but his wife away – more reason than that crap about having to be alone to talk. The reason, whatever it is, is still here. Nothing’s changed. Something was scheduled to happen up there last night, when Brownie was slugged. That’s why he was slugged, so he wouldn’t interfere. Maybe it was Vickers used the brass knucks. Maybe it was Saul. But stealing Brownie’s wallet was just to make it look good.”
Doyle said quietly, “From what I hear, you were kind of rough on Brownie.”
Stranger At Home Page 15