by Jack Iams
“I’ll have the flapjacks ready,” went on Mrs. Barrelforth. “Put on plenty of warm clothes, Ludlow.”
A golden stack was waiting on the dining-room table’s blue and white checked cloth when they came downstairs. Also three bright glasses of tomato juice and a steaming pot of coffee.
“You can’t enjoy an inquest on an empty stomach,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.
“I suppose you’d like us to drop you at the station en route,” said Tim, settling himself at the table.
“Well, I’m in no great rush,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “I trust nobody will object if I attend the proceedings. Might be interesting. Especially in view of that spot of advice you got yesterday.”
“Gracious,” said Sybil. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Had you indeed?” murmured Mrs. Barrelforth. “Who wants syrup?”
They drove to Bankville under a sky that had grown lighter but remained dull and ominous. The rain had dwindled to a fineness that was invisible except where ii struck the windshield. The wind hovered sullenly in the pines. The town’s main street looked drab with its parked cars and neon signs, the latter looking cheap and garish in the gloomy daylight.
The room in the brick Borough Hall where the inquest was to be held was musty and bare and steamy and damp, typical of the rooms to which, for some reason, the processes of self-government are generally assigned, as distinct from the congenial and comfortable hotel suites where the same processes are frequently contravened.
The coroner, a middle-aged man with a bald head and a pince-nez, sat at a wooden table with a cuspidor beside him. The Police Chief and Dr. Medford, who looked solidly like a doctor, sat in straight-backed chairs on either side of him. The rest of the chairs in the room were of the folding, or funeral, variety and only about a third of them were filled. Half a dozen pine woods people, including the storekeeper and Mr. Whittlebait, were huddled together near the back. They all wore collars and ties and looked uncomfortable in them.
Such other spectators as were present were a seedy lot and looked as if they were only waiting for the rain to stop. A couple of those little gray men who float about courthouses and town halls, performing vague functions, completed the assemblage.
The entrance of Tim, Sybil and Mrs. Barrelforth created something of a stir but once they were seated, the atmosphere of listless boredom returned and didn’t lift perceptibly as the hearing got under way. The Chief read his report, beginning with a visit from Mr. Timothy Ludlow of Merry Point, covering his efforts to obtain identification—including a hint that he’d like more cooperation from the pine woods in future—and ending with consignment of the body and responsibility for same to Dr. Medford.
“Identifying witnesses,” said the coroner.
The Chief beckoned to two of the pine woods men, one the storekeeper, and they stood up in turn and each said much the same thing: that they had known the deceased by sight, that he lived in the woods back of Merry Point, and that, as far as they knew, he had no family.
“Doesn’t anybody know his name?” asked the coroner.
“Apparently not,” said the Chief.
The coroner looked mildly annoyed and wrote something on a pad in front of him.
Tim watched Sybil out of the corner of his eye. Her face, still slightly drawn after the night’s strain, Was composed but her fingers were twisted tightly together. Tim wondered if the writer of the note was in the courtroom, a thought which tinged the humdrum drone with menace.
“Let’s have your report, Doc,” said the coroner.
Dr. Medford cleared his throat. Death had been caused by a bullet which entered the right temple at such and such a point and embedded itself in the brain. It had been fired from close range, not more than six inches judging from burns and powder stains. The location of the wound and position of the body neither confirmed nor precluded the shot having been fired by the deceased. Rigor mortis had set in some time before he reached the scene and death had taken place six to twelve hours before.
“Can I go now?” he asked when he had finished. “I’ve got a baby due any minute.”
“You run along and tend to that baby, Doc,” said the coroner. “Let’s see, now. The folks that found the body—they here?”
He knew perfectly well they were and he peered over his pince-nez at Sybil. “You’re the lady that actually saw it first, eh? Got anything to add to what the Chief told us?”
“Nothing of any importance,” said Sybil calmly.
A rustle of interest ran through the drowsy room. Feet scuffed and heads turned. For a moment Tim thought it was because she had been expected to say something else, then he decided it was merely the unfamiliar clipped accent. Certainly her clear voice freshened the proceedings much as Gladys Swarthout’s would have a suburban carol fest.
“How about you, Mr. Ludlow?” asked the coroner. “Anything to add?”
“I guess not,” said Tim.
“You guess not?” repeated the coroner with school-masterish reproof. “Either you do or you don’t, son.”
Tim flushed. “I don’t,” he said.
The coroner seemed loath to abandon the only witnesses who had aroused any interest. He turned again to Sybil. “You were walking on the beach and you see this fellow on the pier, is that it?”
“That’s it,” said Sybil.
“How could you tell he was dead?”
“I couldn’t. But I thought there must be something wrong with him. He didn’t move or change his expression.”
“And you figured he ought of taken more notice of a good-looking gal, eh?” The coroner chuckled and winked at the Chief.
“Yes,” said Sybil coolly. “Particularly as I hadn’t any clothes on.”
A delighted gasp rippled over the gathering, followed by sporadic titters. Tim shifted uncomfortably in his seat and felt his face getting red. The reporter for the local paper sat up straight for the first time that morning. He was an A.P. string man and he sensed a couple of bucks’ worth of space.
“Do tell,” said the coroner, looking happily shocked. “Where were your clothes? Hanging on a hickory limb, I suppose.”
Everybody laughed, including Tim, who didn’t want to act the outraged husband. The coroner beamed around.
“In a manner of speaking they were,” said Sybil, smiling impishly. “I’d gone out for a dip.”
“That a habit of yours?” asked the coroner.
Before Sybil could answer, the Police Chief rolled jovially to his feet. “I object,” he shouted. “If the young lady says it is, half the town’ll be hangin’ around that beach and the other half’ll be pesterin’ me to do somethin’ about it!”
The room broke into gales of hearty, bucolic guffaws. When order was finally restored and attention brought back to the subject of the hearing, the verdict of suicide was accepted as an anti-climactic matter of course.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Girl Friday
The Ludlows and Mrs. Barrelforth stood in the steaming vestibule of the Borough Hall, along with most of the others who had attended the inquest, and looked at the rain falling on the bare earth of the little yard in front. Two elm trees, with a few brown leaves still clinging to the black branches, quivered in the smoldering wind. Now and then somebody would make up his mind and dart into the rain, to a parked car, to the lunch wagon down the street, to the neon-lit bar and grill across the way.
Mr. Whittlebait came up to pay his respects. “Poorish weather,” he said, giving the bill of his cap a token tug.
“Very poorish,” said Sybil. “What brings you here on a day like this?”
“I come mostly for the ride,” said Mr. Whittlebait. “Kind of breaks the monotony, this time of year.”
“I can think of belter ways to break it.,” said Sybil.
“I’ll bet you mean cards,” said Mr. Whittlebait. “That�
��s what I was gonna ask you—whether you figured on playin’ this afternoon.”
“Afraid not,” said Sybil. “Mr. Squareless isn’t well.”
“That so?” Mr. Whittlebait looked surprised. “He acted fit as a fiddle yesterday. Hope it wasn’t losing his five bucks upset him.”
“I don’t think so,” smiled Sybil.
“He must of been took sort of sudden.”
“Sort of.”
“Too bad,” said Mr. Whittlebait. He glanced toward the street where the pine woods contingent was waving at him from an old and shabby sedan. “Guess I better be going, if I don’t want to walk.” He tugged at his cap again and scuttled off through the rain.
“He’s a funny little man,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Do you really think he delivered the mysterious warning?”
“This is no place to discuss it,” said Sybil.
“It’s no place to linger, either,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, shivering a little. “Especially with a train to catch.”
Tim went for the car and they drove to the station. The wet, windy platform was bare and the waiting-room was crowded and stuffy. A whistle sounded in the distance as Mrs. Barrelforth went to the ticket window and a moment later the near-by crossing gates banged down. Mrs. Barrelforth called to Tim, “Have you got three pennies? Otherwise I’ll have to break a bill.”
Tim walked over to her, holding his loose change in his hand and looking for pennies. Mrs. Barrelforth leaned toward him and whispered, “Don’t worry if that note’s missing when you get home. I’ve got it. Have faith in the Association.” Then she turned away and calmly bought her ticket as the train puffed in.
People were hurrying across the bleak platform. Mrs. Barrelforth rushed up to Sybil and said, “I’ll keep in touch with you, my dear. And if you must find any more bodies, try to be more suitably dressed. Chins up and cheerio!”
She sailed out of the waiting-room with a majestic confidence that no train would dare leave without the president of the New Jersey Chapter. Tim and Sybil followed in time to see her swing nimbly aboard just as it started to move. She stood at the top of the steps waving to them while her large, rawboned face beamed a dwindling farewell.
“I like that woman,” said Sybil, “but there’s something fishy about her. Deucedly fishy.”
“On the contrary,” said Tim, “she strikes me as the least fishy person I’ve been associating with lately.”
“Including me?”
“Definitely.”
Sybil raised her eyebrows and clucked. “Speaking of things being fishy,” she said, “I’d better lay in something for dinner while we’re here.”
“We’d better lay in some whisky, too,” said Tim, “if Mrs. Barrelforth’s going lo keep in touch with us.”
The dismal light of afternoon had begun to show signs of fading when they dumped their paper bags and parcels into the back of the car. The rain still slanted across the gray countryside as they drove out of town and entered the murky pine woods.
They had scarcely spoken during the shopping expedition and they remained silent now. It was a silence that grew strained and unnatural in the gloom of the interlaced trees. Tim broke it suddenly.
“Why the hell,” he asked, “did you have to tell the whole courtroom you didn’t have any clothes on?”
Sybil shrugged. “It brightened the proceedings, didn’t it?”
“I dare say it did. I dare say it also convinced a lot of people that I’ve married a trollop.”
“Do you think you have? Married a trollop?”
“I don’t know,” said Tim. “I don’t know what the hell I’ve married.”
Unexpectedly he jammed on the brakes, jolting Sybil forward. “Oy,” she exclaimed, “don’t do things like that.”
Tim didn’t answer. He stared at her with cold, brooding eyes. “What have I married, anyway?” he asked.
“What are you stopping for?”
“Because I can’t drive and look you in the eye.”
“Why look me in the eye?”
“Sybil,” he said, and his voice was harsh, “what did you marry me for?”
“The customary thing.”
“I’m not sure what the customary thing is in your circles.”
“Really!” exclaimed Sybil. “Stop acting like an idiot, Tim.”
“I’m not. I may be acting like a heavy husband but nobody would blame me for that.”
“I would.”
“Let’s not be flip. If you married me as a dodge to get into this country, I want to know about it. Right now.”
“I married you because I loved you. But I don’t love you when you talk like this.”
“A woman who loved a man,” said Tim, “would have shown a little interest, I should have thought, to hear he’d been slugged and damned near killed.”
“I tried to show an interest. I was worn out.”
“Would you have shown more interest if I’d mentioned the fact I saw you signaling out the window?”
“Me? Signaling? Arc you mad?”
“It was hardly a coincidence that someone was waiting in Squareless’s bayberry for a window to open and close.”
“Perhaps you think it was a lovers’ rendezvous.”
“I wouldn’t know. There usually is a lover in the offing, isn’t there, when people marry for ulterior motives?”
Sybil’s face was white in the car’s dusky interior and her breast heaved. Then she spoke, very quietly: “You don’t know what you’re saying, Tim. Please, I’d like to go home.”
“Back to Blighty?”
“Don’t, Tim. You’re not yourself.”
“Not by choice,” said Tim bitterly and slammed the car into gear.
In the dying light, the house on the point looked empty and desolate as they rattled across the bridge and turned into their driveway. A couple of sea gulls flapped lazily past it like birds of evil omen. Tim felt as Hansel might have if he’d had a quarrel with Gretel just before they met the witch.
Then, as they emerged from the dunes with the thud of the sea loud in their ears, the whole bleak mood was shattered by the vehicle that stood under the porte-cochere. It was a snappy red convertible coupé, a gay and saucy job designed for visits to shady roadhouses and subsequent violations of the Mann Act.
Its occupant, Tim discovered after parking behind it and getting out for a look, was exactly what the coupé called for—a vivid redhead who happened at the moment to be sound asleep. She had stretched her legs out on the front seat and the consequent disarrangement of her skirt was reminiscent of those photographs in the more lurid confession magazines of heroines who have come within an inch of losing honor and fourth-class mailing privileges.
Tim reached through the half-open window and tapped her on the shoulder. She wiggled drowsily, blinked, started to yawn, then suddenly sat up straight and stared at him with wide blue eyes. They were eyes that seemed to say that surely this good, kind gentleman wouldn’t do a girl any harm.
She had the same kind of voice, too, complete with a trace of Southern accent. “I do declare,” she said. “I must have fallen asleep.”
She looked at Tim with amused wonder and her extremely red lips parted in a smile that made him a partner in the great joke of her having fallen asleep. She was a very pretty girl, no doubt of that, but a second glance suggested that she wasn’t quite as young or as dewy as the wide eyes and naïve voice would have indicated.
Sybil had come up behind Tim. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Don’t know yet,” said Tim.
The girl took a look at Sybil and pulled down her skirt which, up to that point, she had only patted at in a desultory way. “You all must be Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow,” she said. “I’m Millie Marsden. Girl Friday for Ruth Royce Rollick.”
“What for who?” asked Sybil.
�
�Girl Friday,” repeated the redhead, enunciating distinctly, “for Ruth Royce Rollick. You all must know who Ruth Royce Rollick is.”
“I don’t,” said Sybil.
“I do,” said Tim. “She runs some kind of woman’s radio program. Recipes and interviews and stuff. I’ve never actually heard her.”
“Good,” said Sybil. “I was beginning to wonder.”
Tim didn’t smile. He was still nursing his bitterness and he didn’t propose to abandon it just because there was company. “Well, what can we do for you, Miss—Martin was it?” he asked.
“Marsden. Millie Marsden. For a start, you might ask me in and get me warm. I’ve been sitting here goodness knows how long.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Sybil. “Do come in.”
The girl climbed stiffly out of the red coupé and walked with Sybil up the porch steps. Tim, following, noticed that she was a bit shorter and plumper than he had supposed, but she wasn’t unbecomingly short and as for her plumpness, it was distributed in an interesting manner that became downright fascinating when she took off her reversible plaid coat. She was wearing what Webster defines as “originally, a woolen garment worn to induce sweating” but which has acquired a richer significance in recent years. Miss Marsden’s sweater, which was bright yellow, helped to explain this semantic phenomenon.
She sat down gratefully in one of the easy chairs beside the fire and crossed her legs. “Might as well come straight to the point,” she said. “Ruth Royce is doing a show on war brides and she’d like Mrs. Ludlow to appear on it.”
“A show?” queried Sybil.
“A program. She’s rounded up half a dozen of the gals who landed the other day and she particularly wants you. For variety, you might say, you being the only title in the bunch.”
“Oh, dear,” said Sybil, “that wretched title again. You know, in twenty-odd years of living in England, I haven’t been reminded as often of the jolly old title as I have in three days in the States.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” said Millie. “We eat ’em up.”
“What would I have to do on this program?” asked Sybil. “Rattle my coronet?”