Killing Cousins

by Flora, Fletcher

  “Marv hates his guts.”

  “So did Howard.”

  “Where does he get off, being so conceited? The bastard thinks if he died all the girls would wear their pants at half-mast.”

  Willie thought this was funny, and began to laugh. Having started laughing, she had trouble stopping, and Gwen was so pleased by the success of her remark that she began at once to regain her good humor. By the time she pulled into her drive across the hedge from Willie’s, she was her usual congenial self.

  “Hadn’t you ever heard that before?” she said. “About the girls wearing their pants at half-mast?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard it.”

  “Oh, it’s an old one. I didn’t make it up.”

  “It certainly fits Evan, anyhow. That’s just what he’d think.”

  “He’s unsure of himself, that’s his trouble. Men who are unsure of themselves are forever trying to lay every woman they meet in an effort to prove their competence. I happen to know someone who got tight and let him lay her, and this person says he’s absolutely no good at all.”

  Willie could have contributed something on this point, but she did, of course, nothing of the sort.

  “Well,” she said, “I think I’d better get on home. Thanks for the game.”

  “Won’t you come in and have another drink?”

  “I don’t think I’d better. I’ll see you later, Gwen.”

  She got her clubs out of the back of Gwen’s car and went around the hedge and into the house. It was, she noticed, even later than she’d thought. It was, in fact, about five-thirty, and she had forgotten to give Mrs. Tweedy any instructions about dinner—whether there should be any and what time, if any, it should be—and Mrs. Tweedy, whose sympathy could be imposed on only so far, had gone away early in a huff instead of waiting to find out. She had, however, left a note propped against the telephone in the hall, and the note, after stating Mrs. Tweedy’s rather bitter assumption that Willie must not have planned to eat in, since she hadn’t bothered to say, said further that there had been a telephone call from a Lieutenant Elgin Necessary at police headquarters, and Lieutenant Necessary would appreciate it if Willie would call him back just as soon as she got home, and it gave the number to dial.

  It was perfectly apparent what had happened. Gertrude Haversack, the bitch, had gone to the police after all, in spite of Quincy’s feeling that she might not, and now it would be necessary to answer more questions and explain things that Willie had hoped would not need explaining. What she could not quite understand was why Necessary had waited so long to contact her after talking with Gertrude Haversack. But perhaps he hadn’t; perhaps Gertrude had not gone to him as soon as she’d threatened, perhaps only today, and anyhow, now that she had obviously gone, the essential thing was to keep calm and decide deliberately what attitude to take regarding what Gertrude had surely told. On the whole, Willie thought, it would be best to take the attitude that Gertrude was probably a liar, although possibly not, and that she, Willie, in the latter event, could hardly be expected to grieve because Howard had deceived his mistress, as well as his wife, in a miserable little affair that was a complete surprise to almost everyone. Having decided this, she dialed the number and got a Sergeant Muller, who put Necessary on.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Hogan,” Necessary said. “I’ve been waiting for your call.”

  “I’ve just gotten home. I was out at the Country Club playing golf this afternoon.”

  “So I was told, but I thought there was no need to interrupt your game.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, I’m sure. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I wonder if you’ll do me the favor of coming down here for a little talk.”

  “This evening?”

  “I’d appreciate it very much.”

  “Isn’t it rather late?”

  “It is, rather, but something important has come up that we should discuss as soon as possible.” “What has come up?”

  “I’d prefer not to discuss it on the telephone, if you’ll excuse me. If you wish, I’ll have you picked up in a police car.”

  Necessary spoke softly and courteously, signifying by inflection his regret of being compelled by duty to intrude, but Willie did not misunderstand, nevertheless, the true meaning of his offer to have her picked up and delivered. He meant that he would do so if she declined to come voluntarily by her own means. He had in kindness permitted her to finish her golf game, but that, apparently, was the limit of his concession.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,” Willie said. “I’ll drive myself down.”

  “I hope you’ll be able to come right away,” he said.

  Meaning, she thought, that she damn well better. She said she would, and hung up. After hanging up, she immediately lifted the phone again and dialed Quincy’s number, to tell him where she was going and to ask his advice, but Quincy wasn’t home, or didn’t answer if he was, and she decided not to try the numbers of any of the other places he might be. She was not, anyhow, especially apprehensive. Nothing had happened except what she had been expecting to happen, and it was actually a relief that it finally had. As Quincy had said with his remarkable facility for going directly to the heart of a matter, nothing could be proven or done without Howard, and Howard was not available. Besides, Necessary had not seemed at all threatening. On the contrary, he had been, although determined, courteous and kind and apparently friendly.

  SEVENTEEN

  She drove downtown in the station wagon and parked in a small paved lot beside the City Hall, in which police headquarters were located. Inside, Sergeant Muller, who was waiting for her, escorted her to the desk of Lieutenant Necessary, who was also waiting for her. While Muller was retreating, relieved this time of the obligation to perform an introduction, Necessary unfolded upward from his chair and held out a hand. He resisted a desire to hold Willie’s overlong, and to hold it, for the brief time that he did, more tightly than was proper.

  “Thanks for coming so promptly, Mrs. Hogan,” he said. “Please sit down.”

  “I’m glad to cooperate in any way I can,” Willie said, “but I hope you won’t keep me too long.”

  “I’ll be as brief as I can.”

  Willie sat down in the chair beside the desk and crossed her legs, and Necessary was almost positive that the knee on top was dimpled. Dimpled knees, he thought, were rather rare and peculiarly seductive. He wished he could verify the dimple at his leisure, but he could allow himself only the first quick and insufficient look.

  “I have some information,” he said, looking at his hands, which he laid on his desk, “that I feel I should discuss with you.”

  “I know what it is,” she said. “You know?”

  “I think so. It’s about Gertrude Haversack.”

  “Have you known about Gertrude Haversack long?”

  “No. Only since Monday. She called me and asked me to come and see her, and I went.”

  “What did she want to see you about?”

  “She said that she and Howard had planned to leave town together last Saturday. She said she didn’t believe Howard would leave without her, after making plans and everything for them to leave together. She seemed to have some ridiculous notion that something had happened to Howard and that I was somehow responsible.”

  “I see. Well, granting the truth of what she claims about your husband and her making such plans, it does seem odd, to say the least, that he would suddenly abandon them.”

  “Do you think so? It all depends upon your point of view, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Frankly, after meeting Gertrude Haversack I don’t find it at all odd that a man should decide not to run away with her. I only find it odd that he should have considered it in the first place.”

  This was so precisely Necessary’s secret attitude that he felt for a moment a sense of communication with Willie that alleviated briefly the sour sickness of heart that was his basic feeling.


  “Nevertheless,” he said, “it seems certain that your husband maintained a relationship with Miss Haversack for some time, and it is not unlikely that they did have plans to leave town together.”

  “Perhaps it’s true. If you say so, I’m willing to concede it.”

  “You don’t seem particularly concerned.”

  “Should I be? He was deceptive and dishonest with me, taking all that money which was rightly half mine, and now it turns out that he was just as deceptive with Gertrude Haversack, and good enough for her.”

  “You think, then, that he deliberately lied to her?”

  “That seems apparent, doesn’t it? Probably he only made a lot of promises to get what he wanted from her before he left.”

  “She’s convinced that he didn’t.”

  “Are you sure? Naturally she’d say that. It’s humiliating to a woman to be discarded.”

  “I must say, Mrs. Hogan, that you don’t impress me as being humiliated.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t discarded. Not really. It was different with Howard and me.”

  “How different?”

  “I’d prefer not to go into it. It wouldn’t help you to know.”

  “Are you suggesting that you had, in effect, already discarded him, and that his action was only a kind of final acceptance of it?”

  “You may put it that way if you like.”

  “All right. Can you tell me why Miss Haversack discussed this business with you in the first place? Did she expect you to explain why your husband failed to carry out their plans?”

  “No. She had this ridiculous notion that something had happened to him that I was responsible for.”

  “In that case, why didn’t she come first to the police?”

  “Because she wanted to try to blackmail me for ten thousand dollars to get her to keep quiet.”

  Necessary had been looking alternately at her and at his hands, and now he looked up from his hands with a sharp jerk of his head and looked at her steadily for several seconds before speaking.

  “Do you understand what you’re saying?” he said.

  “Of course I understand. I’m quite capable of understanding myself, thank you.”

  “Then why didn’t you come to the police? Blackmail’s a crime.”

  “Because it was so perfectly silly. I’d done nothing wrong, and I simply decided to ignore it. I didn’t want a lot of unpleasantness. The truth is, I thought she was one of these crazy people you read about. After I left her, I didn’t expect to hear from her again.”

  “Well, she must have had some reason for trying such a thing. She must have had some reason for thinking you would be vulnerable.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? That’s why I decided she must be crazy. Crazy people don’t have reasons for thinking something. Only crazy reasons, anyhow “

  He spread the fingers of his hand on his desk, staring at them morosely, and his sour sickness of heart, he thought, was seeping from his pores into the close air of the room, so that he could smell himself, his sour sickness, and he did not like the smell. Suddenly he looked up again with that peculiar jerk of his head.

  “Mrs. Hogan,” he said, “do you know a young woman by the name of Stemple? Fidelity Stemple?”

  She knew at once that she knew no one of that name well, but she thought carefully before answering in an effort to remember if it might be someone she had known slightly at one time, if not now, but she could remember no one at all with either the first name or last name he mentioned. It was an unusual name, Fidelity, and she was certain that she would remember anyone she had ever known who was called that.

  “No,” she said, “but I didn’t know Gertrude Haversack, either, before Monday. I hope it’s not someone else Howard has been involved with.”

  “It’s not. This young woman is dead. She was killed last night in an automobile accident a couple of hundred miles from here.”

  “That’s very sad, I’m sure, but what has it to do with me? Why did you ask me if I knew her?”

  He stared at her and shook his head as if he was bewildered and did not know himself why he had asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought you might. Do you know a man named Fred Honeyburg?”

  This time there were echoes in her brain, elusive and disturbing. She was almost positive that she had heard the name before, but she could not remember where or when or in what connection, and it was in that instant, hearing the echoes, that she had the most terrible conviction that everything that had been going right had suddenly started going wrong and would get as bad as it could be. In unconscious resistance to the conviction, she straightened in her chair in a posture of prim rigidity, folding her hands in her lap.

  “I can’t remember anyone of that name,” she said, “and I wish you would tell me why you are asking me these strange questions about strange people.”

  “Possibly they’re strange questions about strange people because they’re related to a strange story,” he said. “As I told you, Fidelity Stemple was killed in an automobile accident last night. Fred Honeyburg was driving the car she was riding in. Honeyburg wasn’t hurt much. Bruises and abrasions, as the expression is. Funny thing is, the car he was driving was your husband’s. A check of the license proved that. And to make the story stranger still, he claims he was asked to steal the car early last Sunday morning from the KC Municipal Parking Lot, and the person who asked him to steal it was his own cousin, who was also the cousin of your husband on the other side of the family, and this cousin’s name is Quincy Hogan of Quivera. Do you know Quincy Hogan, Mrs. Hogan?”

  She sat there rigidly with her hands folded, and she was thinking with a kind of bitter clarity, as if a tiny thinking part of her brain were somehow detached from the stricken remainder, that even the most clever plans must certainly go wrong if you are deceived on every side by those you had thought reliable. She had been deceived by Howard, who had behaved in a way she hadn’t anticipated, and Quincy, clever as he was, had been deceived by his cousin on his mother’s side, who had failed to keep his agreement regarding the Buick. Such deception could not be predicted or dealt with. She sat alone in ruins, but to Necessary, watching her, she seemed so calm and demurely immune that his heart lifted in the hope that she was innocent, after all, of what he had begun to think her guilty.

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course I know him. How could I help it when he lives right here in town?”

  “Do you know how he got hold of your husband’s car?”

  “No. I can’t imagine.”

  “Or why he left it in a certain place by arrangement to be stolen?”

  “No. What can it possibly mean?” “That’s what I’m wondering.” “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.” “No idea at all?”

  “It seems so senseless, doesn’t it? Do you think Howard and Quincy could have met after Howard left home last Friday night?”

  “Possibly. Are you suggesting that Quincy may have done away with your husband and then disposed of the car in this way? It sounds pretty devious.”

  “Well, Quincy’s clever, but he’s very odd. No one ever knows quite what he’s thinking or what he will do next.”

  “What reason could he have had for harming your husband?”

  “None that I know of. Could it have been for the money Howard had?”

  “The twenty thousand, you mean? That’s a lot of money, all right. How would you explain the letter from Dallas?”

  “Perhaps it was a trick to get everyone to quit wondering about Howard. Do you think it could have been?”

  “I think it could. I think it was. However, I’m positive that Quincy did not meet your husband and kill him after he left your home on Friday night.” “Are you? Why?”

  “There’s the car, for one thing. It wasn’t left in the lot in KC until early Sunday morning. Where was it in the meanwhile?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t you, Mrs. Hogan? I do. I have an idea it was in the garage at your home o
n Ouichita Road.”

  She sat quietly again, her hands folded and her head bowed, and she looked so small and forlorn that he wanted to lean forward and touch her and tell her that he was only guessing, after all, and that probably none of what he said was true, or at least he hoped it wasn’t. She sat unmoving for quite a long while in a silence that became oppressive, and she seemed to be thinking or praying or searching for something within herself, but what she was actually doing, in the ruins of her hope, was making a last desperate canvass of possible positions, the evasion or the truth or the lie that would help her most when help in fact seemed gone. After a while, she looked up with a sigh and a sad little smile that trembled on her lips.

  “I see I must tell you the truth,” she said.

  “I think you must,” he said.

  “I had hoped to save him, but now I see that I can’t.”

  “Save who, Mrs. Hogan?”

  “Cousin Quincy.”

  “What about Cousin Quincy?”

  “In order to make you understand, I’ll have to tell you some personal matters that I had rather not have to tell.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll treat whatever you tell me as confidentially as possible.”

  “Well, to begin with, Howard had this idea that Quincy and I were in love with each other, or were having a kind of affair at least, and the truth is, I am very fond of Quincy, who is clever and charming when you get to know him. There was nothing in it, though, that should have upset Howard and made him so absolutely unreasonable. He was simply furious and kept accusing me of things, and then there was this party at the Club last Friday night. Howard and I were there, and Quincy was there, and about midnight I went outside for some fresh air, and I met Quincy, who had gone out ahead of me. We talked and took a little walk and then came back to the Club, and Howard had gone home without me. There was nothing for Quincy to do but take me home in his car, which he did, and when we got there he decided that he had better come in and try to explain to Howard and see to it, anyhow, that Howard didn’t abuse me or beat me, which he had done before. It was a mistake for him to go in, as it turned out, for Howard was in a perfect rage, practically out of his mind, and he had this little gun he was going to shoot me with. When Quincy came in, however, he was determined to shoot Quincy first, but Quincy leaped on him suddenly and took the gun away. Perhaps you wouldn’t think Quincy would be capable, he’s so small, but he was actually incredibly fierce and quick. Howard, for his part, was a lunatic. He shouted and charged at Quincy and grabbed him by the throat with the intention of strangling him, and so Quincy shot him, naturally, in order to save himself. Afterward he took Howard away and disposed of him. I tried to convince him that he should call the police and tell exactly what had happened, that it was self-defense and all, but he said No, that no one would believe it, and because he had been so brave and had saved my life from Howard, who would have killed me, I agreed to keep quiet, and I have, up till now, and that’s the way it was and how it happened.”