by Dell Shannon
Still, it all helped a little. Though the suitcases didn't matter, weren't important. But at least it gave him an illusion of working at it.
It was nearly four o'clock, and he remembered he hadn't had any lunch. He had a sandwich in a drugstore, and started back downtown, aimlessly.
He was on North Broadway, stopped at a light and looking around idly, when he saw the sign. It was an old movie house, newly refurbished in the desperate hope of better business, and for the same reason running a new gimmick to compete with TV. Like the fad for foreign films, there was a little boom these days in silent movies; maybe it made the middle-aged feel young again, and the kids superior; a lot of people seemed to get a kick out of saying, Did we ever think that was good? This house featured them once a week, so the sign said, and the one running now was called The Girlhood of Laura Kent-the name leaped at him from below the title-with Mona Ferne.
He turned into the next parking lot and walked back. On the way he suddenly found himself thinking about that gun. It had been lying on top of the bureau, Kingman said; so Twelvetrees had taken it out of the drawer, where Pickering had seen it, to pack. His visitor presumably had not (was that a fair deduction?) come with the idea of killing him, or he or she would have been prepared with a weapon. It was surprising how tough the human body was: you couldn't be sure of killing someone with a bang on the head-when it happened like that it was usually the sudden violent impulse and the blow landing just right at random. But if a suddenly enraged visitor snatched up that gun, why in hell hadn't he or she used the other end of it? A much surer way. The noise, yes: but that was the last thing anyone in a sudden violent rage would remember… So, the gun hadn't been loaded.
Yes, it was, he thought the next second. Or the cartridges for it were there. Because a while later it was used on Bartlett.
He stopped under the theater marquee, and in absent surprise he thought, Well, well: so he had come round to Mendoza's viewpoint on that, Walsh's thing.
He went up to the ticket window, past the resurrected poster where Mona Ferne's young, insipidly pretty face smiled. "This Laura Kent thing, when does it go on?"
"You're lucky, just starting now."
Hackett gave up his ticket stub to the door attendant and groped his way down the aisle. Even in the dark there was an empty feel to the house, and when his eyes were adjusted and he looked around, he saw that there were only about twenty people in the place. Wouldn't think it'd pay them to stay open…
As he watched the opening scenes of what could never have been a good picture (even allowing for changes in style) he thought of what Stanley Horwitz had said. Couldn't act-just took direction. Too true. And the kind of thing she had done: this was probably a fair sample. It must have been one of the earliest pictures she'd starred in, by the date: it was thirty-four years old. A year older than he was: but when his memory started, a few years later-well, it was hard to say, you remembered childhood backgrounds distorted, sometimes, but he'd have said that even then audiences would have been a trifle too sophisticated to go for this. But they must have: she'd done this kind of thing another nine or ten years and it had gone over pretty well.
It was supposed to be funny and what the posters still called heart-warming at the same time. The tired old plot of the tomboy who hates being a girl and goes swaggering about in jeans playing baseball (or riding broncs or driving racing cars or flying airplanes) until Love Enters Her Life and overnight she becomes a demure clinging vine
… Of course the photography wasn't so good, but it was interesting to see what she had been: he had an idea, now, of the goal she was aiming for with all the effort put out. This vapidly pretty girl with blond curls and spontaneous adolescent giggles.
The dramatic action was jerky, everything drearily spelled out. She waded in a stream, casting a line with what even Hackett could see was inept awkwardness. She rode in a horse show, smart and boyish in jodphurs. She went skeet-shooting with her distinguished sportsman father, in-
Suddenly he heard his own voice, loud and shocking in that place,
"My God!"-and found he was standing up. It couldn't be-but it was, he'd swear it was!
He sidestepped out to the aisle and ran up it. And as he ran, a few pieces fitted themselves together in his mind, and he thought, So that was it. The coat, the damned coat-but-
"Telephone?" he gasped to the doorman, who gaped at him and pointed out the public booth in the lobby. Hackett fumbled for a dime, slammed it into the slot… "Jimmy," he said when he got Sergeant Lake, "let me talk to him-I don't care if he's in conference with the Chief, I've got-"
"He isn't here, Art, you just missed him."
Hackett said a few things about that. "Know where he's gone?"
"If you'll let me get a word in edgewise. He was just back from somewhere, looking like the dealer'd handed him a royal flush first time round, when that Miss Weir called and out he goes again in a hurry."
"Oh, O.K., thanks." Hackett hung up. It was twenty past five. He seemed to remember that that school of hers closed at three-thirty, four, around there: she was probably at home. Try, anyway. He found another dime, looked up the number.
"Miss Weir? Art Hackett. Is Luis there?… Luis, listen, I've got something, something so-"
"Well, wel1," said Mendoza, "have you limped up to the finish post, chico? Congratulations. You'd better come round, we've got something here too."
***
At about the same time that Hackett was brooding over his drugstore sandwich, Alison was saying helplessly, "Now drink your tea while it's hot," and wondering why it was that in the American mind, apparently, tea was connected with trouble. Could it be still reverberations from the Stamp Tax? When someone was in trouble, a little under the weather, or having a crying spell, automatically you made them a nice hot cup of tea.
She had found the girl outside her apartment door when she came home, a forlorn stranger who told her numbly, like a child repeating a lesson, "Sergeant Hackett said to come and see you. I'm sorry, I didn't know where else to come. I didn't know what to do. But I had to get out of that house. I had to. I'm Angel C-Carstairs."
She was shaking and cold, and she'd had some kind of bad shock, Alison saw. Having heard a little about this case from Mendoza, she recognized the girl's name; she made her come in and sit down, she made the tea and gave her soothing talk, and then all this began to come out. Incoherent at first.
"I didn't know-I thought I'd never seen it before, but it must be hers, because-because she kept saying- Like, you know, if you keep on telling a person he's stupid, he will be. She did that with me, I know it, I know it in my mind but I c-can't seem to do anything about it-telling me I'm too big and clumsy. You know. It was like that, about this-as if she thought, if she said it to me enough I'd begin to believe it-the way everybody else would. And it's not true, it's silly. That I could ever-be in love-with somebody like that! Like Brooke! I didn't even think he was handsome, I mean he was too good-looking-you know-"
"Yes."
"Oh, I don't know what I'm doing here-perfect stranger to you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I didn't know-I just had to get out of her house- You see, it was so funny, the way she kept insisting it was my coat, as if after a while I wouldn't be sure about that either, and say it was- and then after they'd g-gone, she got onto this, kept saying she understood how I'd loved him, felt jealous-and then I thought why it could be. I didn't believe it-I don't know if I believe it-but if she did-Oh, I've hated her, I've hated her so-you can't understand that, how anybody could-my own mother, but you don't know, you probably have a n-nice mother-"
"Drink your tea," said Alison. She was beginning to understand what this was all about, and automatically made quiet responses while she thought, I'd better call Luis. Persuade her to talk to him, if she will. "Actually I don't remember my mother at all, she died when I was two, and my father brought me up. Not much of a bringing-up, I expect, either, because he was an engineer and we lived in Mexico mostly, traveling around fro
m one godforsaken spot to another-construction camps, you know. But people are just people, no better or worse for being mothers or fathers. And hating doesn't do any harm except to you-"
"I know, I don't want to, I-I don't think I do, any more. It's all over, all of a sudden, and I don't know what to do-but I shouldn't be here, I'm sorry. I've g-got money, and in the bank too, I mean I'm all right. I expect I'd better go to a hotel. It just hit me all of a sudden, the reason. And I don't know-now-how I do feel about her. Doing that. Not him-but trying to-wanting to-"
"Yes. I think the only way to feel is sorry for her, don't you? Not resentful. It's just a thing you have to face up to."
"I-I guess I'm not very good at that."
"Then now's the time to start," said Alison firmly. Angel had calmed down a little; perhaps the kitten had helped, curled up beside her purring. "I always wanted a c-cat. She never- But I could be different, couldn't I? I could learn better. To cope, sort of, you know. You know what I always wanted to do? It's silly, I guess, she said… But I liked it better than anything else at school, even than poetry. I-1ike to cook… She kept on at it, until I suddenly saw, that was all. And they think it was me, that's what she wanted them to- Not Sergeant Hackett, he's nice, but the other one. That I was in love with Brooke. But does she think I'm c-crazy, not to know how I felt-and didn't feel? Oh, I don't understand-and-"
"You'd better tell Lieutenant Mendoza about this." And then Alison spent ten minutes persuading her.
"I couldn't! Don't you see-even if-even if I don't feel anything-like that-for her, she is-! I couldn't-like t-telling tales-"
"Don't be childish," said Alison. "This is serious, you know it is. And I doubt very much if it'll come as a surprise to Luis, when-" even you know about it, she finished in her mind, but Angel was rushing on.
"And besides he's the one thinks I-! He looked at me when he left-I knew what he was thinking-"
“That I doubt too," said Alison. "If he looked at you one way, it probably meant the opposite. I'm told that's the secret of his success-experience at the poker table. Now you go and wash your face-you've been crying and it'll make you feel better-and you'd better take an aspirin too, and lie down on the bed and rest quiet until he gets here. You can trust Luis not to jump to any wrong conclusions, and it's much better in his hands."
Angel went meekly to do as she was bidden, and five minutes later Alison, looking in, found her sound asleep, curled up on the bed like the kitten.
She left her thoughtfully, shutting the door, and was sorry Mendoza arrived so soon. He listened to her rather incoherent account and said, "Awkward. I'm not quite ready to break this yet, I want a bit more information, and I hope her-mmh-precipitate flight doesn't scare Mona. No odds if it does, though, she'd only do something else damn silly. No finesse at all."
"But what an awful thing, Luis-her own mother-"
"Physical sense only. She's never had a thought in her head besides herself. In this case, anything expedient to get out from under. Now I wonder if that was why she took that laundry bag away? Just in case."
"Will Angel have to testify against her? She's just about at the end of her tether now-"
" Es poco probable, I don't think so. Not if we get a nice tight legal confession, which I'd like. She'll have a rough time for a little while, the publicity, but these things die down-something else'll come along to make gossip."
"There's good stuff in her, I think-she'll take it, and maybe be the better for it. My Lord, how I long to get at her and fix her up-she could be a good-looking girl, you know. And what a time to think of that… "
"Any time's the time to think of a good-looking woman, chica. You do just that, and earn Art Hackett's gratitude. I'd heard the one about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, but I never believed it before. Another good man gone wrong… Yes, I'm afraid so, lo siento en al alma, to my deep regret. Many a man ruined for life by marriage, I only hope he'll have better luck."
Alison said, "Yes?" She watched him relax on the couch, stroking the kitten.
"Well, where is this girl? I've got other irons in the fire-”
"Count five and start pretending to be a human being," said Alison dryly. "I'll get her."
And he gave her his one-sided smile, caught her hand as she passed and kissed it. "Sorry, querida, it's routine to me, sometimes I forget it isn't to everybody. I'll be nice to her."
But she hadn't taken another step before the phone rang, and it was Hackett…
Angel looked a little better for the rest, with her face scrubbed, her hair combed. She sat erect on the edge of the couch like a child in school, with Alison beside her, and only gradually relaxed under their quiet voices, their reassuring phrases.
"It was," said Hackett, "a picture made before you were born, so you wouldn't know anything about it. But what startled me was that there's a scene of her shooting-target-shooting-and the way it was taken, I don't see how it could have been faked. She was doing it, not someone doubling for her-and she wasn't missing a shot. Quite a little exhibition."
"I don't know anything about the picture. But I can tell you a little about that, I guess-" She stopped, looked stricken again, and again Mendoza was patient.
"Miss Carstairs, I'm not lying when I say we'd get all this elsewhere if not from you. There's only a few little things I want to ask you right now. I knew about your mother this morning, when I looked at that coat and saw it was brand-new, and heard her trying to convince us all that it was yours, and that you'd had it for some time. You're not betraying her in any sense, believe me-you're only filling in a little for us that we could learn from others."
"I see that," she whispered. "I-I don't like it, but you'd only-find out anyway, and I don't suppose-this'll be as bad as-if there's a trial and so on." She stiffened her shoulders, took a deep breath. "Mr. Horwitz could probably tell you more about it. I know I was awfully surprised when he mentioned it once-it was the first I'd ever heard of it-it must have been that picture he meant. He said everybody had been surprised to-to find she was a second Annie Oakley. You see, she was brought up on a farm, or anyway a very small town, I'm not sure which, in South Dakota, and she used to go out hunting with her father. She got to be quite a good shot. Later on she-I think she felt it was unwomanly, you know-she never mentioned it or did it any more. My father-I've heard Mr. Horwitz say-was a sportsman, he liked to hunt, and I don't know but maybe she used to go with him then. But that'd be twenty-five years ago, and so far as I know since then she's never- But Brooke wasn't shot, was he?"
"Not Brooke," said Mendoza. He took the old Winchester revolver out of his pocket and laid it on the coffee table. "Have you ever seen this before, Miss Carstairs?"
She looked at it for a long moment. "I-why, yes, I think-I think that's the gun Brooke stole… She wasn't really angry about it, just a little put out. She never could have refused him anything, you know," and faint contempt was in her tone. "She was terribly silly about him. I knew-even I knew-he just fawned on her, flattered her, because she-gave him presents, and I think she used to pay too, when they went to some awfully expensive place. I-it was shameful. I wouldn't have liked him anyway but when he did that-"
"Yes. He stole this gun?"
"He called it borrowed. He was going to be in some play where they had to have a gun," she said dully. "I said my f-father liked to hunt, he had some guns, and two or three of them she never sold. This was one of them. It's not the kind you hunt with, of course-the others are rifles-but she kept this on account of burglars. She said. He saw it one day, it was in the den with the others in a case, and he took it. She said he should have asked, of course she'd have lent it to him. He never gave it back-I don't know if she asked, or maybe gave it to him to keep. I do know it was loaded when he took it, she always kept it loaded. In case she needed it in a hurry, she said, if someone broke in."
"Twenty-five years," said Hackett to Mendoza, meditatively.
"I don't know, it's a thing you don't lose entirely. If you've
had a lot of practice. You'd get rusty, sure, but-in an emergency-you'd instinctively do what old experience told you."
"Probably. A great help, anyway-the old experience-in that particular target shot."
“ Claro estd. Miss Carstairs, I've got just two more questions to ask, and then we're going to see that you're settled in a hotel. Miss Weir'll go along and I expect lend you whatever you need, and we'll stop bothering you for a while. Can you tell me anything about Miss Janet Kent?"
Angel's eyes hardened a little. "Yes, I can," she said steadily. "She was a-a sort of nurse-supervisor for me for about ten years, from the time I was five. I don't think she meant to be-unkind, but she was awfully-oh, strict and old-fashioned, and crotchety. She was old then, and looking back now, I can see she used to-to fawn on her and pretend to admire her so much, because she was afraid of losing her job, not being able to get another. But-she-swallowed it all whole, you never can give her too much flattery, she never sees through it. And when I got too old for Miss Kent, she gave her a sort of pension, just because it makes her feel magnanimous to have someone dependent on her that way. I-I feel sorry for Miss Kent now-once in a while she'd get me to go with her there, you know, and it's just sickening-to me anyway-the way Miss Kent kowtows to her, you almost expect her to say ‘my lady' and curtsey-oh, you know what I mean-like a whipped dog-because she's old, nearly eighty, and she hasn't got anyone or any money, and if she ever stopped giving her this little bit to live on, Miss Kent'd have to go on the county. She just revels in it, of course, the funny thing is she thinks Miss Kent really means it-"
"Yes. Now I want you to take your time and think about this one," said Mendoza. "You know, of course, that your mother has made a very inept effort to cast suspicion on you. She didn't choose you deliberately, but when we found the body, you see-which hadn't been intended-and began finding out a few things close to home, she got nervous. She had a few things she hadn't got rid of, to link her with it, and now she was afraid to try to dispose of them, that we might see her doing that. So it had to be someone in the same house, in case of a search warrant. And that meant you. You know about the coat. There's something else. Something about two feet long or a bit more. Fairly heavy, but partly flexible. Is there anywhere in that house where she could put such a thing, where it would be definitely connected with you and still you wouldn't come across it right away‘?"