by Craig Rice
Helene and the lawyer sat down beside him.
“Beautiful day,” Malone said crossly. He lit a cigar. It tasted terrible.
Jake sighed, and was silent. Across the river a series of smooth green lawns ran up from the water’s edge, great, shadowy elm trees bent and swayed over them, and behind their foliage stood small white wooden or yellow brick houses, fringed with beds of orange marigolds, or lavender petunias. It was very peaceful and very still.
“Good God,” the little lawyer exploded, “can you imagine people actually living in a place like this!” He groaned loudly.
“People do,” Helene said. She drew her knees up to rest her chin. “People like us, and like Arlene Goudge, and Ellen McGowan, and Cora Belle Fromm, and the late Senator Peveley.”
“The late Senator Peveley lived in a mansion,” Jake said gloomily. “I’ve seen it. Dun-colored brick and decorative woodwork and three porches.”
Malone had been staring across the river at the little houses. “They hold all the potentialities,” he murmured. “The people in them love each other, and hate each other, and perhaps even murder each other, though they wait thirty-two years to get around to it. In a small town like this everything happens that happens everywhere else, except that it’s on a microcosmic scale.” He was silent for a moment, scowled heavily, and said, “Where in the hell is that damned gun?”
“Lost,” Jake told him.
Helene suggested helpfully, “Someone outside the courthouse shot the Senator through the window.”
“Not at that turn of the stairs,” Jake reminded her. “Besides, he was shot at close range.”
“The gun’s got to be somewhere,” Malone said. He relit his cigar. “Unless somebody could have carried it out of the courthouse.”
Jake shook his head. “You couldn’t have carried a tune out of that courthouse without one of those deputies stopping you.”
“Then it’s in the courthouse and nobody’s done a really good job of looking for it.”
Jake sighed again. “The courthouse was searched from top to bottom, crossways and sideways. The only things that turned up were a quart bottle of bourbon in the clerk of the court’s office and two pairs of loaded dice in the county judge’s desk.”
“Interesting,” Helene said, “but hardly cause for murder.”
Malone looked disgustedly at the cigar. “Loaded dice have caused almost as many murders as women,” he said crossly. “And I’ve seen slaughter over a drink of bourbon. let alone a quart of it.” He paused and added wistfully, “Was it good bourbon?”
Jake shook his head. “Very cheap bourbon.”
“Well, anyway,” the lawyer said, “there wasn’t any gun. Damnit, it must have gone somewhere.”
“It’s none of our business,” Helene reminded him, “or are you going to take up Florence Peveley’s offer?”
“I’m going back to Chicago,” Malone said doggedly. He rose, stretched, and brushed the dry grass off his pants. “But a guy can be curious, can’t he?”
They strolled back uptown in search of breakfast. It was still very early but Main Street was open for business, and already crowds were beginning to gather. The dining room of the General Andrew Jackson House looked like a Loop cafeteria at high noon. Malone felt a certain grim satisfaction in observing that the newspapermen had evidently also had a little trouble with the songs of the early birds.
Every chair at every table was occupied, and the nervous and harassed waitresses were racing back and forth to the overworked kitchen, occasionally dropping silverware or china with a horrendous clatter. The proprietor, a short, thin, potbellied man with wipsy gray hair, watched from the doorway, his face an engaging combination of cupidity and amazement.
Helene remarked afterward that they could only have made their entrance into the dining room more conspicuous if they had ridden in on giraffes. The hubbub of conversation had stopped entirely by the time they were two feet inside the door, and everyone in the room had put down his knife and fork to stare. The sudden silence seemed to be saying, “Here they are now.”
Helene thrust her hands into the pockets of her perfectly fitted white slacks and looked around the room with cool aplomb. She was, Jake observed, attracting the major share of the attention, and no wonder. It took more than the murder of a middle-aged ex-Senator and a sleepless night in a stuffy small-town hotel to impair Helene’s appearance. Her carefully made-up face gave the impression of having been freshly washed in the morning dew. In the dim light of the dining room her hair gleamed as though it had just been polished.
She stood there looking as though she confidently expected someone to rise and offer them a table, and inevitably someone did.
The young reporter from the Milwaukee Journal shoved back his chair with a loud clatter and signaled to them. “We’re just finished.”
Helene’s grateful smile had made lifelong slaves of better men than he would ever be. Indeed he was halfway to the door before he remembered that his prime purpose in offering up the table had been to get in a few early questions. By that time it was too late.
“Mr. Justus,” a young woman from Chicago was asking, “when you saw Senator Peveley there on the floor, how did he look?”
“Dead,” Jake told her. He added to the waitress, “Ham and eggs and coffee for three and make it snappy. We’re going fishing.”
“Oh, but surely,” the man from the A. P. said, “you’re not going fishing today!”
Jake said pleasantly, “Why not? The fish haven’t heard about the murder yet.”
Someone murmured something about an inquest, and attention turned to Malone.
“Could you tell me who your client is?”
Malone, his mouth full of coffee, pointed to Jake and Helene.
“How long do you believe they’ll be held as material witnesses?”
“Not thirty seconds longer than when I lay my hands on that fathead sheriff,” Malone said, sputtering over his coffee, “and if you quote me, I’ll call you a liar.”
At that moment someone caught sight of Sheriff Kling going down the sidewalk, and the dining room was promptly deserted save for Jake, Helene, and Malone. Later, however, they were met at the door by a photographer for the Tribune, and when Malone reached the door of his room he found it barricaded by a plump, pretty little girl from a Madison daily sitting on the floor. She declared that she was not going to move until Malone told her his theory of the murder of Senator Peveley.
“I think it was a crime passionel,” he said, leering at her. “And if you’ll just step inside my room, I’ll show you what I mean—”
She gave a little scream and fled, leaving him in peace. Meanwhile Jake and Helene had reached their door in time to discover an enterprising photographer who had bribed the chambermaid to open it. He was preparing to take a picture of the country hotel room where Chicago’s most notable heiress and her night-club-owner husband had spent the night.
The town of Jackson, Wisconsin, had gone completely wild. Farm families were arriving in cars, trucks, and occasional wagons, and an enterprising church organization had already announced that a picnic lunch would be served in Wickett’s Grove, just back of the courthouse square, from twelve to three. The town’s one traffic cop was riding furiously up and down Main Street on his motorcycle, wondering what to do in case a traffic jam did develop. The son of a local druggist had hastily bought up the town’s supply of postcards and set himself up in business on the corner of Main and Third, offering souvenirs. And everyone in town who owned a childhood or early-youth picture of the late Senator was busily engaged in looking for a reporter who might buy it for cash.
Helene announced that she was not going to barricade herself in her hotel room. Everyone who had come to town wanted to get a look at her, she declared, and she intended to make it as easy for the visitors as possible by spending the time before the inquest strolling up and down Main Street. She emerged from her room looking cool and exquisite in an embroidered linen dress the
exact shade of the inside of a watermelon rind and carrying an immense pale violet hat which perfectly matched the shade of her small sandals.
“I’m not going to disappoint everyone who wants to see an heiress, and a leading figure in the Senator’s murder, by turning up in slacks,” she said firmly.
Jake shook his head sadly and agreed to accompany her on her stroll. Malone, meanwhile, donned a white linen suit and a Panama hat for his call on the sheriff. By the time he had pushed his way through the crowd to the courthouse and adjoining jail the suit looked as though it might have been borrowed from a beach comber, and the hat had been dropped in the dust four times.
He paused on the steps leading to the sheriff’s office and looked over the courthouse square. A ring of deputies were protecting it against the curiosity seekers, and it seemed like an island of grass and trees in a sea of people. The courthouse especially fascinated him. Set far back in the square, and surrounded by elms, it managed to appear incredibly large. It was made of soiled and discolored yellow brick, stood three stories high, and was surmounted by a cupola whose pointed roof wore more iron lace than he had ever seen in any one place at any one time. The faded gilt hands of the cupola clock pointed, falsely, to half-past seven. Against the expanse of brick the long, narrow, arched windows were dark, almost sinister. At the top of a long flight of concrete steps were two blank wooden doors, painted gray.
Malone suddenly felt the flesh creep on his bones. The day was hot, yesterday’s rainfall had only added dampness to the air instead of cooling it. The sun was already high, but a thin mist darkened the sky. The atmosphere was oppressive, hard to breathe, almost suffocating. There was something about it Malone didn’t like.
The door behind him opened and a small, grinning, bald-headed man came out. Malone recognized Buttonholes from Jake’s description and introduced himself.
“I’m glad to see you got out of jail.”
Buttonholes spat neatly into a bed of geraniums. “Kep’ me locked up overnight just for showing a few folks through the courthouse.” He spat again. “That ain’t all. Son of a bitch made me give him half of what I took in.” He didn’t offer to identify the son of a bitch, but squinted at the courthouse square, his brow contracted.
“I knew it was going to happen,” he volunteered. “I guess Mr. Justus told you. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I felt like something was.” He added, “Y’know, my grandmother was a Welsh woman. It was just like she used to say. I didn’t know nothing, but I had a kind of a feeling.”
“I know what you mean,” Malone said. “My grandmother was an Irishwoman.”
Buttonholes regarded him thoughtfully. “’Course, there’s nothing can beat the Welsh for being gifted that way,” he said mildly. “But I guess you know what I felt.” He looked out over the town and frowned again. “I got it again today, too. Something’s happening.”
This time Malone shivered. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Buttonholes said sadly. “But something. I got exactly the same feeling I had yesterday. Only today, it’s worse.”
Chapter Eleven
Malone was disappointed in his first look at Sheriff Marvin Kling. This was his first experience with the small-town forces of law and order, and he had expected something very different. Just what, he wasn’t sure. Not quite the old village constable, but something more along that line.
Instead, he found a big, burly, slovenly man seated in a swivel chair, his feet on a table, with a disordered roll-top desk behind him. He wore a cheap, purplish-blue suit with no vest, a striped shirt, and a bright-green tie. A soiled gray felt hat was stuck far back on his head. His big-jowled, ugly face had been reddened by a combination of sun, wind, and whisky, and a heavy lock of greasy dark hair hung over his forehead.
Neither he nor the thin, worried young man who was sitting on one corner of the table made any move, other than to look up, as Malone came in.
“What the hell do you want?” Sheriff Kling demanded.
Malone caught himself on the verge of an appropriate reply and instead said, “I suppose you’re the sheriff. I’m John J. Malone.”
“Oh,” the sheriff said. “You’re those folks’ lawyer.” He lit a cigarette, tossing the match on the floor. “Well, what do you think you’re going to do?”
“In about two more minutes,” Malone said evenly, “I’m going to give you a bust in the puss.”
The sheriff swung his big legs off the table.
“Just a minute, Marv,” the young man said anxiously. He turned to Malone. “Mr. Kling isn’t feeling particularly well. He’s had a lot of people bothering him.”
“I don’t feel particularly well myself,” Malone said, “and I didn’t come all the way up to this Godforsaken hamlet to get pushed around by a hick sheriff. Who are you?”
“I’m the district attorney,” the young man said. “I’m Jerry Luckstone.”
Malone looked at him with interest. Any man who had three women trying to get him out of jail was worth a second glance. He wondered how Luckstone did it. The district attorney was a delicate-looking young man, with a narrow, handsome, almost fleshless face, and curly brown hair. Maybe it was that helpless look that turned the trick.
“I thought you were in jail,” the lawyer said at last.
“It was a mistake,” Jerry Luckstone told him. “Cora Belle came in this morning and told Marv here that she was talking with me, way off in the other corner of the courtroom, when the shot was fired. Marv had just about decided it was a mistake anyway by then.”
Malone told himself he hadn’t really wanted that fee Florence Peveley had held under his nose. Now he could go back to Chicago without any qualms.
“All right, it was a mistake,” the sheriff said angrily. “Everybody makes mistakes. This would be a hell of a world if people didn’t make mistakes now and then.”
“For you it would be torture,” Malone said politely.
The sheriff glared at him. “I found out Jerry here had a fight with the old man over being engaged to Florence, and the old man was threatening to cut her out of his will. That’s enough reason for murder. And he was up there where he could have done it.”
Malone said nothing. He was trying to decide which woman Jerry Luckstone had really been talking with when the shot was fired; Cora Belle Fromm, or Ellen McGowan. Or if he’d been talking to either of them. He cleared his throat.
“Now about Mr. and Mrs. Justus,” he began.
The young district attorney spoke up quickly. “I can see no reason why they shouldn’t leave after the inquest. They’ll be required to testify there, of course.”
“I can see we’re going to get along fine,” Malone told him. He heard Sheriff Kling muttering under his breath. “It’s obvious, of course, neither of them could have committed the murder.”
“I ain’t so sure,” the sheriff growled. “They been mixed up in murders before, and here they are up in the Jackson County Courthouse for the first time, and here we have the first murder in thirty-two years.”
“You’re talking in allergies,” Malone said smoothly. “But a competent officer of the law like yourself wouldn’t attempt to introduce that as evidence.”
The sheriff looked pleased though confused. “No, I guess you’re right there.”
Malone lit a cigar. “You’ve had no more luck finding the gun, I suppose.” He drew an indignant glare by way of answer and added, “My only interest in this is idle curiosity, but if it’s permitted, I would like to take a look at the scene of the crime.”
The sheriff and the district attorney exchanged glances. “Why not?” the latter said. He managed a sick laugh. “Maybe you can give us some ideas.”
“It’s just possible,” Malone said politely.
He followed the two men across the lawn and into the big, shadowy courthouse, more tomblike than ever now with all its typewriters and telephones silenced. Jerry Luckstone informed him that the offices had been closed for the day.
Malone took a quick look at the courtroom, and looked away just as quickly. Buttonholes, busy with a broom and dustpan, looked up to grin at him.
“Now here,” Jerry Luckstone said. “Everybody was milling around in here. To be perfectly honest, I don’t recall exactly where I was. The Senator came up and told me he wanted to see me. He was sore about something. I told him I was going back in my office and he grunted something about going downstairs to fetch someone—he didn’t say who—and started for the stairs. That’s the last I saw of him.”
Malone nodded. “You didn’t notice where anyone else was?”
“No. I have a dim picture of Ed Skindingsrude over there by the jury box talking to somebody—Miss McGowan, I think—but I couldn’t swear to it.”
Malone walked over to the head of the tiny staircase and peered into the two rooms beyond. “Was anybody in either of these rooms?”
Luckstone shook his head. “Nobody. I’m positive of that.”
“Who got to the head of the stairs first?”
“As a matter of fact,” the district attorney said, “I did.”
The little lawyer sighed. There was a minute hall at the top of the staircase, hardly large enough for a man to turn around in, beyond it a slightly larger hall led to the two rooms. Between them and the courtroom, at the head of the stairs, was a door.
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing but a little broom closet,” Jerry Luckstone told him. He tried the door, it was locked. “Hey, Buttonholes, come over and unlock this.”
“It ain’t locked,” the janitor called.
“It sure as hell is locked.” He rattled it again.
Buttonholes picked up an enormous ring of keys and started over. “It ain’t never been locked, and it ain’t supposed to be locked,” he complained. “I ain’t even sure I got keys to fit it.”
Malone examined the keyhole. “Try an ordinary dimestore passkey,” he suggested.