Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  Gray paused. Zucker said, “Well, go on.”

  “Let’s skip about ten years,” Gray said. “Now it’s just before Easter of this year. Ann had made Eddie her protégé, got him a job, given him her key and the sapphire ring. Well, one night Blanche turns up at the Avery apartment. Remember, Blanche has now been without her pension for six months—the same length of time Eddie’s been away from her. It looks as if the pension stopped as soon as Eddie moved out.”

  Gray paused again, thinking back. “According to Stella,” he said, “that night Blanche complained that somebody had thrown her over after ‘all these years.’ Mrs. Avery was saying something—maybe the throwing over—was all Blanche’s fault. Then suddenly Ann Avery began to scream and laugh.” Gray looked at Zucker intently.

  “Does that sound like Ann Avery? I don’t think so. If it’s true, then Blanche must have told her something that shocked her very much. And yet she laughed, too. It might have been hysteria. But at the end of what Stella heard, Ann seems to have said, ‘I want the truth to come out.’

  “Well, the next thing we can be pretty sure of is that Ann sat down and wrote Eddie a letter. She says several things in it, but what they all add up to is that the truth is about to come out and that now Ann is free. She can tell Eddie something now that she should have told him long ago. He may hate her for it, but she has to tell him.

  “I think it’s pretty clear what she has to say. According to Quentin, Ann was a very passionate woman who had had all her emotions locked up inside her for years. Remember Blanche had no baby pictures of Eddie. And remember that Eddie was deeply shocked and violently disturbed when he thought Ann was making a pass at him. Yet Eddie’s not sexually shy.”

  Zucker said with conviction, “This time you’ve flipped. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Eddie connects the sapphire ring with a loving mother whom he remembers from his early childhood. He knows his mother was affectionate toward him long ago. But Blanche has been indifferent as far back as he can remember. And when he thinks Ann is making a pass, he freezes.”

  Zucker said impatiently, “So he freezes. Why not? Sure, she was a nice-looking woman. But she was old enough to be his mother.”

  Gray said, “Harry, she was his mother.”

  Zucker said in a flat voice, “Mike, you’re crazy.”

  “That’s one theory,” Gray said. “I think I can prove what I’m saying. I think we got some confirmation right here today, half an hour ago.”

  “What was that?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Right now, look at it this way. Eighteen, nineteen, years ago, we were on the edge of war. Fighting started in Europe in 1939. The draft was due to begin soon, a lot of men were in uniform already. Ann Avery was a wild young kid. A very passionate one, remember. There were a good many girls sleeping with soldiers then who wouldn’t have been quite so promiscuous without a war hysteria to encourage them. Ann and Blanche went around together a lot, and a lot of the time they were both out with soldiers.

  “Quentin tells me Ann married Avery partly because he was comparatively a rich man. She thought it was sophisticated to marry for money. Presumably her own family wasn’t very well off. And maybe Ann had had a disappointment in love. Some soldier who shipped out, maybe. Or maybe he was already married. The point is, Avery was the man she chose. And then Ann found she was pregnant.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “Well, let me guess a little more. How would Avery react if he found his fiancée was pregnant?”

  Zucker laughed shortly.

  Gray smiled. “Yes. He doesn’t impress me as a very tolerant man. Well, what could Ann do? I think what she did do was go away somewhere long enough to have her baby and give him to Blanche to bring up. Once she was married to Avery she could get enough money to subsidize Blanche and pay for Eddie’s keep. I don’t know how she did it, but Eddie’s a bright boy and his mother doesn’t impress me as a stupid woman. She could have found a way.”

  “But why would Blanche play along with a thing like that?”

  Gray said, “I don’t know. She never married. Eventually she turned to narcotics and prostitution. Something was evidently pretty fouled up in her life. Maybe the chance at a regular pay-off for pretending to be Eddie’s mother looked like an easy living. And at first things did go along well. Ann could see her baby whenever she wanted to. Avery didn’t suspect anything. Blanche was provided for. Everybody was happy.

  “But after a while, Eddie began to grow up. The affectionate mother who wore the sapphire ring and gave him so much love and attention began to be too recognizable. He was getting old enough to remember her. And for some reason, Ann had to stop seeing him. We don’t know why. Maybe Avery got suspicious. Maybe Ann herself began to change. All we can really say is that Ann stopped seeing Eddie when he was still too young to remember her as a person. So he got her mixed up with Blanche. And he thought, somehow, that Blanche was a loving mother when she wore the sapphire ring, and a cold, indifferent, rejecting mother when she didn’t. Because Blanche herself never did give a damn about the boy.”

  “And your theory is that Eddie remembered her anyhow? Enough to freeze up when he thought she was making passes?”

  “I think so. We don’t know how far back memories go. Often a patient of mine will think he remembers something that happened when he was an infant, but when we dig further we find it was something his parents told him about years later. Those early memories get awfully blurred. But I think Ann went on seeing Eddie until he was five or six years old.

  “He wouldn’t consciously remember. But buried in his mind were all the very early experiences he’d had with Ann, the way she moved and talked, the whole pattern of her personality. He remembered something, I think. It wasn’t conscious.”

  Gray paused for a moment, thinking.

  “When I first talked to Eddie, he kept saying that he had never touched Ann, hadn’t even wanted to touch her. He kept saying it. It meant a lot to him to believe that. I thought then he meant he hadn’t killed her. What it could equally mean was that he found her sexually attractive, and yet somehow had to deny it even to himself. He had to believe he’d never even wanted to touch her—because he unconsciously remembered who his mother really was. And it scared the devil out of him, though he didn’t know why.”

  Zucker rubbed his chin.

  “That isn’t evidence,” he said. “And it cuts both ways, anyhow. If the kid got scared enough, he could have killed her. Things like that happen. If he thought his own mother was—” But here Zucker suddenly tossed up his hands and laughed harshly.

  “Oh, hell, Mike, you’ve got me hypnotized. For a minute I was really going along with you.”

  “You mean you don’t believe my little theory?”

  “Where’s your evidence? A ring the kid probably lied about? The fact Blanche rejected him? That doesn’t even—”

  “Harry, have you still got those photographs of Blanche’s? The one with the two soldiers and the girls?”

  Zucker rummaged in his desk.

  “Here it is. Why?”

  “Look at the soldier with the hair like Eddie’s. Whose shoulder is he leaning over?”

  Zucker looked. He scowled. “Is that supposed to prove anything?” he demanded. “Just because he happened to be standing behind Ann right then—”

  “If he’d been Blanche’s boyfriend and the father of her child, I don’t think this would have been the picture she’d have picked out to save. But I’ve got better proof than that—I think. Have you heard yet on what Eddie’s blood type is?”

  Looking at Gray narrowly, Zucker reached for the phone.

  Five minutes later, scowling and shaking his head, he laid down the phone again.

  “You rigged it,” he said accusingly to Gray. “Somehow you rigged it.”

  Gray laughed. “Eddie is Type B.”

  Zucker heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t believe a word you’ve said. It’s too wild. The whole thing’s
a coincidence.”

  “Type B blood is fairly rare in this country,” Gray reminded him. “Something like ten per cent of the population, isn’t it? One of Eddie’s parents had to have Type B blood or he couldn’t have it. I don’t suppose anyone tested Blanche, but that wouldn’t prove anything. Even if her type was incompatible, the missing father could have been Type B. It’s the presence of Type B in Ann, not its possible absence in Blanche, that ties in with Eddie’s type.”

  “It still doesn’t prove relationship,” Zucker said.

  “No. One thing it does prove, though. The blood on Eddie’s knife could have been from his own cut, not from Ann.”

  Zucker made an impatient gesture. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. Get on with it. What’s the rest of your evidence about who Eddie’s mother was?”

  “Quentin’s reaction to my suggestion about Eddie and Ann,” Gray said. “Avery’s reaction compared to Quentin’s. You noticed how differently they acted?”

  “They’re different kinds of men. Sure they reacted differently.”

  “It was more than that.” Gray paused a moment. “Now, understand this, Harry—I haven’t got any real proof that Ann was Eddie’s mother. Unless she told someone who’s willing to confirm what she said, there can’t be any proof. Only Blanche and Ann knew, as far as we know now, and Blanche and Ann are dead. But I think Ann did tell somebody. I think what happened in here this morning shows she did.”

  Zucker said impatiently, “All right, go on. Show me.”

  “I suggested to Jim Quentin that Eddie might have been sleeping with Ann Avery. First it made him mad. He was shocked and angry. The idea must have occurred to him before, of course, but knowing Ann he didn’t believe it. And yet, for a moment, he was shaken. You noticed that? He thought it might be possible, and his normal reaction was jealousy.”

  “Okay,” Zucker said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Not a thing. But when I made the same suggestion to Avery, you saw how he reacted. Contempt—for me. He was saying to himself, ‘This guy likes to dig in the dirt. Well, this time he’s making a fool of himself and I could prove it if I wanted to.’ Is that sensible? Ann was an attractive woman, Eddie’s a normally developed young man. The two were together a lot. There’s no reason for Avery to know what their relation was unless he had evidence that convinced him it wasn’t sexual. Unless Ann had told him the truth.”

  Zucker said slowly, “Maybe. But I still don’t see—”

  “Look how Avery reacted when I suggested Eddie was Ann’s lover—disbelief and contempt. But look how he acted when I suggested Quentin.”

  Zucker stared at him. Then he nodded. “Maybe you’ve got something there,” he admitted. “Avery took that idea hard. It really hit him.”

  “Because in one case he knew a sex relationship was impossible for Ann, being the kind of woman she was. And in the other case I think he already knew the truth. The first thing I noticed when I came into the outer office here this morning was how Avery kept his head turned so he wouldn’t have to look at Quentin. I think Ann told him more than one secret that was hard to take. I think she told him right after her talk with Blanche, right after she mailed her letter to Eddie.” Gray paused. He looked at Zucker intently.

  “Right before she was killed,” he said in a careful voice.

  Zucker leaned forward.

  “Eddie Udall killed the Avery woman,” he said flatly. “Okay, maybe she was his mother. Maybe she did telephone him and ask him over. Maybe he didn’t break in and steal the ring the way we thought. But she says in her letter she has something to tell him that will make him hate her. Even want to kill her, maybe.” Zucker rubbed his face abruptly.

  “After all, if he was her son and she turned him over to a woman like Blanche and forgot about him, he had a right to hate her,” Gray pointed out.

  “But not to kill her.”

  “He didn’t kill her,” Gray said. “I think Eddie told the exact truth about what happened that night. We know Ann was in a state of hysteria. She’d found out something that blew her whole scale of values sky-high. She was ready to acknowledge her love for Quentin and her relationship to Eddie, finally, after all those years. Why? What was it Blanche told her?”

  “You tell me,” Zucker said.

  “Whatever it was, I think she blew off at the first person to come in the door that night. She was all set and ready. She was expecting Eddie. She was braced to tell him everything. She heard a key in the lock and she ran to the door…”

  “And?” Zucker said.

  “And after she said what she had to say—screamed it out, more likely—her murderer killed her.”

  “Go on,” Zucker said. “Give him a name.”

  “Avery,” Gray told him. “It had to be Avery.”

  20

  Zucker got up and swung away from Gray, stamped to the window, snorted a time or two, and came back.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t buy it. What was it she said? ‘I’m in love with Jim Quentin—I’m going to leave you—Eddie Udall is my son’? Where’s your motive? Would that make the woman’s husband kill her?”

  “It might,” Gray said. “Husbands have killed wives before now on less motivation than that.”

  “But not Avery. He’s not the emotional type. Not that emotional, anyhow.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, Harry. Avery’s repressing a lot of very powerful feelings—about something. All I know of him suggests he’s a very narrow-minded, conservative, compulsive kind of person with strong emotions pushed down out of sight.”

  “But he still hasn’t got enough motive to make him kill his wife?” Zucker made the statement into a question, almost pleadingly.

  Gray shook his head and smiled. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’ve got to say it. Of course he had a motive. Blanche had told Ann something that changed Ann’s whole picture of life. When Avery found out what his wife knew about him—and I expect she threatened him with exposure—the lid blew off. All Avery’s repressed and suppressed violence burst free at once.” Gray sighed.

  “Of course he had to kill her,” he said.

  Zucker rubbed his hand across his eyes.

  “So you found out about that, too,” he said.

  “It had to be Avery you were after,” Gray told him. “The narcotics racket kept cropping up everywhere I looked in this case. Avery had hidden bank accounts he couldn’t have legitimately explained, didn’t he? He had the theater as a distribution center. My guess is Whitey identified him in your line-up this morning, right? Somehow Blanche managed to find out her supply of H came from Avery as distributor. When Eddie was taken out of Blanche’s custody, I think Ann stopped her payoff. And Blanche was in trouble right away. She had to have money or heroin. She took to prostitution as one way to get the money. But that wasn’t enough. So finally she went directly to Ann.”

  “And told Ann that Tod Avery was in the narcotics racket? Why would she do that?”

  “Why would Blanche do anything?” Gray said. “I talked to her—you didn’t. She was right on the edge of a crack-up. She’d try anything to get the dope she needed. We know she did go to Ann. We know Ann went into hysterics over what Blanche told her. I think Ann’s reaction was so strong because she now learned for the first time the kind of man she was married to.

  “Remember, all these years Ann had been keeping a very painful secret because Tod Avery was so righteous and unforgiving. She thought she had to live up to his moral standards. She felt guilty about deceiving him. When she found out the truth—” Gray shrugged.

  “So she said she’d expose him, and then he killed her,” Zucker said meditatively. “Well, it could be.”

  “It goes on from there,” Gray said. “I think Blanche knew what had happened. She knew Eddie was innocent and Tod Avery had killed Ann. But she needed her heroin, and now she had a way to get it free. Blackmailing Avery. She was going straight to Avery for her supply. I followed her to his office once myself. It worked for a couple of weeks. But t
hen Blanche went too far, and he had to kill her, too.”

  Zucker sat looking at Gray in silence.

  Finally he said, “Okay, it’s a theory. Where’s your proof?”

  “That’s the hell of it,” Gray said frankly. “I haven’t got any proof.”

  Zucker thought it over. “Just how convinced are you that Avery’s our man?”

  Gray shrugged. “I’m still looking for proof. So far it’s a theory. I really think he did it. I think Eddie’s innocent. But Eddie will still take the rap for the murder unless I can turn up something definite against another man as the killer.”

  “How long do you figure it would take to get something on Avery?”

  “If he’s the killer,” Gray reminded him. “Well, I don’t know. Eddie’s trial doesn’t come up until—”

  “Forget about the trial,” Zucker interrupted him. “We’ve got a closer deadline than that.” He moved uncomfortably, scratched his jaw, and apparently thought better of saying whatever it was he had begun.

  Gray looked at him curiously. “In a few days, maybe a week, maybe less, we might be able to track something down on the killer,” he said. “The trouble is, I don’t know where to look or what we’d be looking for. Proof that will stand up in court isn’t easy to find.”

  Zucker cleared his throat.

  “Listen, Mike. We haven’t got much time to snoop around in Avery’s tracks looking for evidence. I can’t talk about it and I don’t want you to. The best I can promise is to tell you as soon as I’m free to talk. In the meantime will you keep your mouth shut about the narcotics racket and everything connected with it?”

  Gray looked at him searchingly. “How long?”

  “Until this evening. Or until I call you. Keep in touch with your phone service today and I’ll get to you when I can. And for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut. Is that a promise?”

  “All right.” Gray stood up. “It’s a promise, until I hear from you again. In the meantime I’ll try to figure out some kind of trap that will get us what we want.”