Finally Herrick jerked his head in an almost imperceptible nod and came in, closing the door carefully behind him. He sat down. Then he scowled at Gray.
With an effort he said, “Well?”
“I’ve just been talking to Quine. He told me Mrs. Herrick called him a few hours ago. She wants a divorce. It’s the first ’I’ve heard about all this. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Like hell it’s the first you’ve heard! You double-crossing—”
Gray pushed back his chair, rose, crossed to the door. He held it open. “All right. Make up your mind and stick to it Either we talk like adults or you get out, now. Which is it?”
Herrick half rose, his face going almost purple. He breathed out noisily through pinched nostrils. Then he sat back, the muscles of his jaw working hard.
When he spoke, there was a new note in his voice. For the first time it sounded almost apologetic.
“If you knew what this meant to me…If you think I’ve ever so much as raised my voice to Zoe—she’s the only person in the world I’d never yell at. And now you—this thing’s happened—God damn it, I love her.”
Gray came back to the desk.
“Ever dream she was dead?” he asked.
“For Christ’s sake! Of course I’ve never…” Herrick’s voice died away. They looked at each other for a long time.
Gray pulled out his chair and sank into it. He said quietly, “I didn’t send Chris Bond to your wife. But he was out to raise money any way he could, and I can guess what happened. As far as I know your relation with Beverly Bond is still confidential. Quine and I know about it. So do the police. That’s all. But Chris Bond must have known, too. If he saw your wife, I can guess what it was he told her. Can’t you?”
Herrick was staring at him, moving his head from side to side in little, anxious shakes. Suddenly all the hostility in the man seemed to collapse in the deep sigh he gave as he sank back in his chair, his shoulders sagging. When the bluff was gone, you could see the panic that had bolstered it up from below.
“I can’t stand it, Gray,” he said in a voice like an old man’s—or a child’s —thin and breathless. “If she leaves me I’m done for. She’s all I’ve ever—She’s been everything to me for—” He gestured with an unsteady hand. “Those girls—they didn’t amount to that. Someone to go to bed with. Nothing. But if Zoe leaves me…” He leaned forward suddenly, his eyes burning upon Gray. “You’ve got to help me! You’ve got to change her mind!”
Gray shook his head. “I can’t work miracles. I wouldn’t know—”
“You helped Eileen,” Herrick said feverishly. “I know, I know, I acted like a bastard about that, but you did help. I knew you were getting her better. I guess, in a way, I was a little jealous…And now everything’s falling apart at once. First Eileen, now Zoe—I can’t stand it, I tell you! You’ve got to do something!”
Gray shook a cigarette from its pack and shoved the pack across the desk to Herrick. He held the match for them both, and blew smoke thoughtfully.
“If I do what I can to help you,” he said, “will you do something for me?”
“Anything I can,” Herrick said. “What?”
“I think it would do a lot to clarify things,” Gray said, watching him carefully, “if everybody involved in Beverly Bond’s killing would take some psychological tests. Will you?”
Herrick looked perfectly blank for a moment. Then a spasm of visible alarm crossed his face.
“No,” he said. “No, don’t ask me. I can’t.”
Gray searched his face intently. Pollard’s reaction had been instantaneous. Herrick’s was considered. But both said no. It didn’t mean either of them was trying to hide the guilt of murder, of course. There are many reasons why people dread tests that may bring out into the open conflicts they fear to face.
Herrick said almost pleadingly, “I’m sorry, Gray. I just can’t. But if there’s anything else I could do—” He coughed self-consciously. “About Zoe…” he said.
Gray sighed. “Well, I’ll see what I can do. How bad is it? What did Bond tell your wife?”
Herrick scrubbed a shaking hand across his face.
“There are pictures. He claimed he had letters, too, but I never wrote any letters. I was always so careful. So God damned careful! And all along they had these pictures.”
“Did Mrs. Herrick actually see any pictures?” Gray asked.
“No. Thank God for that, anyhow.” Herrick gave Gray a quick glance. “What do you mean? You think—by God, do’ you think that bastard was bluffing?”
“I don’t know,” Gray said. “What do you think?”
Herrick frowned with concentration. “It’s hard to say. I—It wasn’t like Beverly, I’ll say that much. I knew her pretty well. It isn’t the way she’d choose if she needed extra money. We got along fine together. I trusted her and she knew it. And if she was ever really pushed for money, she knew I’d give it to her. I never stinted them. They were both good, honest girls according to their lights. Oh, they’d swipe things now and then. I expected that. And maybe they weren’t above a little blackmail if they felt pushed. But—no, I don’t believe this story about the pictures. That’s not the way they did business. I knew them both too well.”
Gray, who had been holding his breath for the last several seconds, let it out now in a violent demand.
“What girls?” he said. “What two girls?”
Herrick turned a shocked face to him. He opened his mouth and shut it. For a moment his chin quivered. Then he made a gesture of resignation and covered his face with his hand.
Gray said gently, “You knew them both, didn’t you? You were keeping them both—Beverly and Melissa, too?” His voice was quietly marveling. He felt as if a light had been turned on in a dark room, showing him a sight he had fully expected to see without realizing how sure he really was.
Here was a link at last. A visible, living link between the deaths of the two sisters. Until this moment, only the McCreerys and Chris Bond had admitted to knowing them both. And the evidence of the earring ruled them out—for now, at least.
But Herrick—
Gray said in his gentlest voice, “Tell me about Melissa.”
Herrick lifted his face slowly. “It hadn’t anything to do with Beverly’s death,” he said in a faltering voice. “I’d have come forward if it could help Eileen any. But it couldn’t. There was no connection at all.”
“Tell me about it,” Gray said again.
Herrick looked down at his hands. “Melissa came first,” he said. “There’d been other girls before her, of course. Nothing very permanent. It’s just that—my wife’s been an invalid so long, you know. And I’m a human being. I had to have somebody. And I thought Zoe’d never need to know.
“I met Melissa just by accident. There was something—oh, I don’t know—so fresh and cheerful about her. And she was so pretty! Both the girls were like that. Pretty and lazy, superstitious, maybe not very honest in some things. But good-hearted and generous to their friends. I can’t believe they’d hide with a camera and take the kind of pictures Bond claims they did. Besides”—here he looked up suddenly—“I’d have known, wouldn’t I? There’d be a flash. No, Bond was lying.” Herrick looked almost cheerful for a moment.
Then his shoulders sagged. “But Zoe knows. The harm’s done now.” He shot Gray a pleading look. “You don’t have to talk about this to anybody, do you? Zoe’s mad enough at me now about Beverly. If she knew Melissa came first—” He shuddered.
“I won’t talk unless I have to,” Gray said. “It could be important What do you know about Melissa’s death?”
“It was a burglar,” Herrick said. “They know it was a burglar. They got him red-handed, didn’t they? It was just coincidence that both girls—” He grimaced painfully and was silent.
Gray prodded him gently. “Do you really think it was coincidence?”
Herrick got up abruptly. The look of agonized tension was on his face again. He j
ammed his shaking hands into his raincoat pockets and took a pacing turn toward the window and back.
“I don’t know—I don’t know. Yes, of course it’s coincidence! It couldn’t be anything else. Could it?”
“Sometimes you must have wondered,” Gray said softly, “if someone wasn’t really after you. First one girl you were living with, then the other. Who would want to punish you, Mr. Herrick, by killing Melissa and then killing Beverly Bond?”
Herrick’s back was stiff, turned toward Gray. He didn’t move for a long moment. Then he turned and fell into the chair with a collapsing limpness, a deep sigh like a groan forcing itself up from his chest. He ran a shaking hand across his face, wet with sudden sweat.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said in a whisper.
‘I mean your daughter,” Gray said. “Or your wife.”
Sudden rage flared anew in Herrick’s face. “God damn you, I’ll—” But he couldn’t sustain the rage. He sagged again in the chair and said thinly, “Zoe couldn’t have done it. She can’t get around without her chair. And Eileen—I can’t let myself think about Eileen!”
Gray gazed at him with an effort at dispassion, wondering how good an actor the man was. He let the silence draw out between them.
Presently Herrick looked up. In a tired voice he said, “I want to change my mind. You know those tests you mentioned?” He sighed. “If it’ll help Eileen any—if it’ll do anything to clear this business up—well, I’ll take them.”
Gray gave him a quick, alert look. “Why did you change your mind?”
A wan smile crossed Herrick’s face briefly. “Why do you think? I was scared—before. Scared to death that somebody’d find out about Melissa, for one thing. Or that I’d be tricked into giving away—what we’ve just talked about. Hell, I don’t know how these tests work. I wasn’t taking any chances. But now”—he spread his hand in a resigned gesture—“what have I got to lose?”
19
Rain ran down the windowpane in red and yellow rivulets lighted by neons from the street below. Gray finished the last of a flabby drugstore sandwich and pried the top off a cardboard coffee container. It had flaps like ears that bent back to form a handle. Gray lit a cigarette, sipped coffee that tasted faintly of cardboard, and thought about the Herrick family.
Herrick had left an hour ago, a purged and shaken but dawningly hopeful man. What Gray thought about him as a possible killer Gray himself wasn’t sure. As for Zoe and the Herricks’ marital problem—that too would call for thought. Herrick had left perhaps a more hopeful man than the facts really warranted. Wearily Gray made a note on his calendar to see what he could do about Zoe.
Then he sat and stared into space until his cigarette dropped a long cylinder of ash to the desk top.
Was Herrick his man?
Was Pollard?
Herrick had—perhaps—a reason for killing Beverly Bond. But Pollard?
“God damn it,” Gray said suddenly in the quiet, “what was it hidden in Beverly’s apartment?”
If he knew that, he might have a motive for the killer. Money to burn? he thought. And then he thought, photographs? blackmail? He sat forward abruptly. How simple! If somebody set a fire to destroy blackmail evidence, then the arson made good sense at last.
What the answer might hinge on, then, was whether Chris Bond had been bluffing. If he really had pictures, were they pictures of Herrick?
Or Pollard?
Gray stubbed out his inch-long cigarette in the loaded ashtray and pulled the telephone toward him.
“Captain Zucker, please,” he said when the call came through.
A moment later Zucker’s weary “Yeah?” came over the wire.
“Still at it, Harry?” Gray asked.
“That you, Mike?” Zucker sounded too tired to care.
“It’s me. Harry, I’m getting some ideas on the Herrick case I may want to kick around with you soon. There’s something you might do for me if you would.”
“Why should I?” Zucker asked disagreeably. “The Herrick case is just about wrapped up.”
Gray ignored this. “I wish you’d see if your men could pick up Chris Bond anywhere. I don’t think he has any address or I’d try it myself.”
Zucker said dully, “Bond? Who’s—oh, yeah. Why?”
“Well, for one thing, he claims he’s got some photographs he got from Beverly. He’s trying to use them for blackmail. I’d like to know if he really has anything. And if so, what. There sure as hell was something in Beverly’s apartment we don’t know about If it was photographs—well, that’ll clear up that much, anyhow.”
Zucker said, “What do I pick Bond up for? Does somebody want to charge him with extortion?”
“No. If he’s really got photographs, we ought to keep as quiet as we can about it. Hell, I don’t know, Harry. You’ll think of something to charge him with.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Zucker said. “Never say I didn’t do you any favors.” He yawned noisily. “Why are you still nosing around the Herrick case?” he asked. “We’ve got the killer. Go on home and forget about it. You can go home,” he added bitterly.
“Maybe I’ll surprise you,” Gray said. “Well, if you find Bond—”
“Wait a minute,” Zucker said suddenly. “I just remembered something. Might be up your alley. This afternoon we were questioning a robbery suspect. It turns out he was on a job once with your boy Ferguson. And you know what, Mike? Turns out somebody else was with ’em on the same job. Yates.”
Gray echoed, “Yates?”
“Yeah—you remember. The ex-con who killed Beverly Bond’s sister, Melissa. Well? How do you like that?”
Gray said, “Yates!”
Zucker laughed. He sounded less tired now.
“What else did your suspect know?” Gray demanded.
“Not much. He said Yates and Ferguson used to work together sometimes. Mostly straight robberies. Said Ferguson would go along with anybody who talked fast enough, and Yates was a fast talker. They pulled five or six jobs together and never got caught on any of ’em.” Zucker paused. “Well?” he said again after a moment.
Incongruously, Gray was remembering the mousy-faced Utile man with the orange-stained fingers, brushing nervously at his nose as if it itched. And an item in a case history he had read once came back to him now. A man who complained of a constantly itching nose, and who finally interpreted the itch for himself as a feeling that he was constantly being led by the nose by a strong-willed associate. When he broke with the associate, the itching stopped.
Gray laughed a little and shook his head.
“Was Ferguson with Yates the night Melissa was killed?” he asked.
“Who knows? They’re all dead now.”
“Why did Ferguson confess to Beverly’s murder?”
“Because he was screwy?” Zucker asked sardonically.
“Because he—” Gray caught himself and stopped. He waited a moment and then said, “All right, Harry, you tell me.”
Zucker yawned again.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “Eileen killed Beverly. But Ferguson was—like you say—an obsessive-compulsive type. Was that it? I’m just a dumb cop, but I can put two and two together. I think the chances are Ferguson was with Yates the night of the Melissa kill. We haven’t got witnesses to say he wasn’t or he was. But why else would he confess to something we know he didn’t do? He wasn’t a professional killer. Neither was Yates. They were strictly burglary and robbery men. But once Yates killed Melissa, both men were technically murderers. If murder’s committed in the perpetration of a felony, all principals in the crime are equally guilty of the offense committed. So Ferguson felt guilty enough to make a phony confession. So there you are.”
“From Yates to Ferguson to Melissa to Beverly,” Gray murmured.
“And right to Eileen Herrick,” Zucker said grimly.
Gray lay sleepless in the dark, his thoughts winding into tighter and tighter spirals. He heard the clock strik
e eleven-thirty and then twelve. Finally, with an irritable heave, he sat up and reached for the bedside telephone. He dialed the Herrick number.
At the far end an anxious, hopeful voice said, “Hello? Hello?” before the ringing had sounded more than once.
“It’s Michael Gray, Herrick,” Gray said.
“Oh.” Heavy disappointment sounded over the wire. Then hope woke again and Herrick said, “What’s happened? Have you talked to Zoe? Will she—”
“No, not yet,” Gray said. “I wanted to ask you—”
“She’s moved out,” Herrick said, not hearing. “Left me. She’s gone to a nursing home and she won’t even talk to me on the phone. I hoped when I heard the ring…” His voice died.
“I’ve been thinking over what you told me,” Gray said. “I have a couple of questions for you. There’s something we haven’t gone into—the whole question of the affair between Beverly and Pollard. Was Eileen telling the truth about that?”
There was a brief silence while Herrick wrenched his attention around to the new subject. When he spoke he sounded wary.
“Pollard has told me the story wasn’t true. I believe him.”
“Why do you think Eileen accused him, then?”
“It seems obvious,” Herrick said, a little stiffly. “I’d hoped she didn’t know about Beverly and me. But she must have known. She was trying to protect her mother when she—did what she did. But naturally she wouldn’t have told the truth about her real reason. She said the first thing that came into her head. She said it was Pollard instead of me.”
Gray said, “Yes, I suppose so.” He thought briefly. “Did Pollard know Beverly at all before that night? Had they ever met?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Herrick told him.
“Well, then, did he know Melissa?” Gray pursued. “Was there any connection at all between the two sisters and Pollard?”
Herrick said, “No, of course not. They never—” He broke off suddenly. Gray waited.
“What is it?” Gray asked after a pause.
“I’m trying to remember. I never thought about this before. I—” Herrick was silent again. Finally he said in a strained voice, “I told you I met Melissa by accident. I didn’t say where. It was in the hall of an office building. I was coming out of a door and she spoke to me. Pretended she knew me. I was flattered at the time. I thought it was just a way of picking me up politely.” He stopped.
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