by Craig Rice
It evidently took more than a murder in town to break up a bridge club, Helene reflected. She remembered what Tom Burrows had said about Jackson County society. The men all went down to the Odd Fellows hall and played pinochle, or went out fishing, and the women met at each other’s houses and played bridge. After the initial business of courtship was out of the way, they didn’t bother with each other’s public company.
She wondered how Philomen Ma. Smith felt about his wife’s bridge club meeting on schedule, on the night after he’d almost been blown to bits. Probably it didn’t surprise him. Turning back for one last glance, as she went up Third Street, she caught a glimpse of the front upstairs bedroom, one post of a four-poster bed, another bookcase, and a reading lamp. Suddenly she remembered what Tom Burrows had said. “The gentlest man alive … everyone in town loves him.” Probably everyone in town borrowed his books, too.
At the corner of McClellan Street was a great wooden house, all dark now, and beyond it a smaller, rather shabby one with a screened porch. A little car suddenly came around the corner and parked quietly in the shade of an elm. As Helene walked by it a young male voice was saying, “You don’t have to go in yet, do you?”
In the next instant a window opened on the second floor of the shabby house, and a stern female voice called, “Is that you, Geraldine?”
Helene called back, “No it isn’t, it’s me,” in her most lilting accents. The window closed hurriedly and the stern voice was heard no more. Helene strolled on up the street, with a feeling that her good deed for the day was accounted for. The little car started up and drove a block down the street, to park beyond the range of the window.
That would be Henry Peveley’s house, on the corner of Third and Maple. It seemed even smaller and more unassuming now in the dark than when it had been pointed out to her by day. Still, it had a far more comfortable air to it than the Senator’s mansion, up on the hill, an effect created largely by the fact that it was so pleasantly neglected and run-down. Helene remembered suddenly that Henry Peveley was a widower, and childless. That was fortunate for him. A wife or children might have tried to argue him out of his delightful conviction that it was the year 1929 and would go on being the year 1929. A conviction like that gave a person something to live for.
In one of the windows of Henry Peveley’s house hung a poster of a once-famous committee which had demanded the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.
Perhaps Jake was back at the hotel now. Surely he must have arrived by this time. Helene paused for a moment, then doggedly resolved to go on to the end of the street. The longer she was away, the better the chances were of his being there when she returned.
Third Street ended at the top of the hill, and for a few minutes Helene stood regarding the late Senator’s mansion. She couldn’t imagine any ghost wanting to come back to it. Through its windows she could see Florence Peveley moving from one room to another, her flaming red hair bright in the lamplight, apparently doing nothing, just aimlessly moving around the house.
A car parked just around the corner, and Helene drew back into the shadows. A man emerged from the car, crossed the street, and stopped in front of the Peveley mansion. As he passed near a street light, Helene recognized Jerry Luckstone.
He seemed to be deciding whether or not to go up on the porch and ring the bell. He walked halfway up to the steps a few times, pausing each time to look up at the house, and then returned to the curb. At last Helene began moving quietly down High Street, keeping in the shadows. She was halfway down the block when she saw Jerry Luckstone’s car go by, and knew he had made up his mind.
The Goudge house was, she knew, just below the corner of High and Second. It was a little too much for a curious person to resist. She walked on slowly to the corner and paused there a moment. Jerry Luckstone’s car was parked across the street from the house; as she came to the corner he sounded a peculiar series of long and short notes on its horn. She waited there in the shadows, reluctant to go on past the car in the glare of its headlight, until at last a slim young figure came around the corner of the house, darted across the street and into the car. In the next moment the car was down Second Street and out of sight.
Well, there was the makings of a murder, Helene reflected. The Senator’s daughter, and the young district attorney keeping surreptitious dates with another girl. It was a situation that might have had something to do with the sudden death of ex-Senator Peveley. But there wasn’t much connection with the blowing up of the Farmers’ Bank.
The Goudge house was large and neat and freshly painted, set in a large square of perfectly clipped lawn and restrained beds of petunias. Anyone could tell at a glance it was a house where house-cleaning was done twice yearly, beginning the first day of March and the first Tuesday in September, where the lawn was raked and mowed every Saturday, and the washing was on the line by every Monday noon. It was likewise the house of a man who had done well in all his business transactions and was proud of it.
The blinds were all open, as though to proclaim to the world that the Goudge family had nothing to hide, and through the big front window Helene could see the thin, bald Mr. Goudge rocking by the fumed-oak library table, reading aloud to a pale, plump woman with a lined, unhappy face who sat mending socks on the table’s other side. Suddenly Helene remembered, for no particular reason, what Tom Burrows had confided to her about Mr. Goudge, that his particular pride was in the fact that his tomato plants were invariably the first in Jackson to produce tomatoes. Suddenly she felt a pang of pity for the small people who were forced to attend the schools of which he was superintendent. Also she hoped Arlene Goudge had had the foresight to stuff pillows in her bed before she slipped out the back door to meet Jerry Luckstone.
Surely Jake was back at the hotel now! She must have been away for hours.
Helene went on down Second Street, hurrying a little. There was a strange odor of grass and leaves and freshly watered garden flowers that came from all around her, once or twice a toad startled her as it hopped across the sidewalk, and the music of the crickets went on and on, through endless crescendos and diminuendos.
Suddenly she paused. That was Ellen McGowan’s house across the street. The blinds were up and the lights were on, and Helene could not resist one peek at its interior.
It was a small house, probably a very old one, but kept in flawless repair. There was a beautiful old mahogany highboy Helene could see through the window, and a pair of well-polished walnut oval picture frames. She crossed the street and walked by slowly.
More oval frames, a precious little cherry table, and a willow ware chocolate set. Wallpaper carefully chosen and curtains and hangings to correspond. Helene could close her eyes and hear the voices of gushing feminine visitors, praising “your beautiful, beautiful things!”
Helene walked on a few more steps, a burnished copper teapot came into view. Then suddenly she saw Miss McGowan herself, and stood stock-still there on the walk, unashamedly staring into the window.
The tall, gray-haired woman was standing, leaning on a table, her face dead white. There was a visitor in the room— who he was, Helene could not see—but the face of the middle-aged spinster was turned in his direction and, at the same time, toward the window.
Helene felt suddenly frozen to the spot. Whoever that visitor was, whatever the subject of his visit, she had never seen such horror on a human face as on Miss McGowan’s. And as she watched, the older woman spoke a few words, quickly and jerkily, waited a moment, then fell to her knees, her thin hands covering her bony face, abject and pleading.
It might have been a moment, or it might have been hours. Helene knew nothing of what was being said within that pleasantly decorated room. Yet suddenly she turned and, with a kind of desperate terror, ran, frantically, stumblingly, toward Main Street.
Chapter Seventeen
Helene caught herself halfway down the block and paused, leaning against a tree, breathing hard. The chirping of the crickets had become a perfect din
in her ears.
She shut her eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again.
“Well, what scared you?” she asked herself. “A mouse?”
She looked back up the street to where she could still see the lights of Ellen McGowan’s house through the foliage. Someone in that house was frightening Ellen McGowan, frightening her horribly. It might be the murderer.
Helene began walking very slowly back up the street, catching her breath with every step.
It wasn’t that she was scared, she told herself firmly. Jake, now, wouldn’t be scared at a time like this. It was just that she was being cautious.
Of course, a man desperate enough to blow up a bank full of people wouldn’t stop at much.
Still, she had to know who he was.
She passed the last house before Ellen McGowan’s and paused for a moment. The man, whoever he was, was still in there.
She left the sidewalk and crossed the lawn between the two houses. There was a cluster of lilac bushes beside the McGowan house; she stepped into the shelter it afforded from the street light and waited a moment.
The crickets seemed fairly deafening now.
Slowly, quietly, she moved up that last step to the window and looked in.
The beautiful little room was empty.
Helene waited a moment, wondering what to do. Then, still in the shelter of the bushes, she went on to the next window.
Through it she could see a corner of the entrance hall. Ellen McGowan stood there, one white-knuckled hand gripping the door jam. There was no one else in sight.
In the same instant she heard the front door close.
Without thinking, she ran swiftly to the corner of the house, caught herself there just in time, and stood waiting in the shadow the house made. A man was walking down those front steps, only a few feet to her left, taking slow, heavy, deliberate steps. He was only an indistinct shadow in the half-light.
There was an immense syringa bush in the exact center of the lawn. Helene covered the distance to it in one silent bound. A twig broke suddenly beneath her feet and she felt the breath die in her throat.
No, the man on the steps hadn’t heard. He was walking down to the sidewalk, his head bowed, his whole posture one of reflection and anxiety. At the juncture of the front walk and the main sidewalk he hesitated for one breathless moment. Then he turned right, toward Main Street, and for that instant the street light shone full on his face.
It was little Henry Peveley.
Helene crouched there in the shadow of the bush, her eyes closed, until the last echo of his footsteps on the harsh concrete had died away.
The only thought she had was that she had to tell somebody, quick. It had to be either Jake or Malone.
There was an alley running the length of the block between the two streets. She recrossed the McGowan lawn into it, and began walking down it. After a few steps the walk broke into a run. It wasn’t fright now, it was the urgent need to share the news of her discovery
The alley was unpaved, thick with pebbles. Several times she stumbled, swearing at the stones, once the crackling of a startled hen in an adjoining back yard gave her a bad moment. Finally, as she reached the next street, she realized that Jake had been perfect in his weather prediction of the late afternoon.
Jake had said it was going to rain like hell and damnation. He’d been right. In fact, he had even understated the case.
Helene reached the doorstep of the General Andrew Jackson House breathless, disheveled, and soaking wet. Her one thought was that Jake must have arrived by now.
The room was empty.
She stared at it for a heart-sinking moment, then went back into the corridor.
She could go and look for him, but she didn’t know where. Jerry Luckstone knew where he’d gone, but he was out somewhere in a parked car with Arlene Goudge.
As she stood there, undecided, she saw a local youth, who had suddenly become the hotel’s first bellhop in its history, come up the stairs with a bottle of beer in his hand and turn in the direction of Malone’s room. She ran after him.
“Is Mr. Malone awake?”
“I guess you’d call it that,” the young man said. “At least, he’s got his light on and he’s speaking. I been bringing his beer up to him every fifteen minutes, just like he told me.”
“I’ll take this one in to him,” she announced, taking the bottle. “And next time, bring up two.”
She tapped lightly on Malone’s door, heard the lawyer’s voice roaring, “Come in.”
Malone was still in bed, surrounded by a litter of empty beer bottles, cigar wrappers, and mussed-up newspapers. He stared at her, outraged.
“You can’t come in here.”
“I am in here,” she announced coolly. She set the bottle down on his table. “Malone—”
He was still staring at her. “What the hell has happened to you?”
She glanced down at the ruins of her organdy dress, felt of her disheveled and streaming hair. “It looks like rain outside. Never mind me. Malone, it was Henry Peveley.”
He blinked, reached for the beer bottle, and said, “What did he do, turn the garden hose on you?”
“He didn’t do anything to me. It’s Ellen McGowan. And it wasn’t a garden hose, it was the rain.” She added in a burst of exasperation, “Malone, pay attention. It’s murder.”
He looked at her and went on pouring his beer with meticulous care, letting it run slowly down the inside of the glass. “Did she murder him, or did he murder her, and how can you murder anybody with rain?” He added, “There’s a dry bath towel on the chair by the dresser, and you’d better pour yourself a drink of that stuff Henry Peveley left me before you get pneumonia.”
She took a drink and shuddered. “It’s probably poisoned.”
“We’ll soon know,” Malone said cheerfully. “Now go on with what happened to you.”
She sat down, began rubbing her hair with the bath towel, and told him the whole story. When she had finished he sat up in bed, staring at her.
“I don’t believe it. Not him.”
“It was with my own eyes,” Helene declared.
He lay back again, his forehead deeply furrowed. “But it doesn’t fit. Henry Peveley couldn’t have done either of the murders, because he wasn’t on the premises. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it, because he’s such a nice old duck.”
Helene sniffed. “That’s a hell of a reason. Some of your best friends have been murderers.”
“It’s probably something entirely personal between them and hasn’t anything to do with either of the crimes.” He scowled at her. “Shame on you, spying on people’s private lives.”
“At their age?” Helene said incredulously.
“They may have been engaged for twenty-five years and he just decided to break the engagement.”
“If you’re right,” Helene said, “I hope it was more than a mere engagement. Twenty-five years is a long time.”
Malone sighed. “Ah, ’tis better to have loved and lust than never to have loved at all.”
The towel she threw at him missed his face by inches.
“Malone, it had something to do with the murder. She was present when the Senator was murdered, and she’s the cashier of the bank he owned, and she was there when it was blown up. And he was the Senator’s brother.”
Malone was silent for a while. “Go to bed, like a good girl, and don’t bother me. I’ll dream of the answer and tell you in the morning.” Suddenly he raised up on one elbow. “Where the devil is Jake?”
“Out somewhere,” Helene said gloomily. “He wouldn’t tell me where.”
Malone started to bound out of bed, wrapping the sheet around him. “Why didn’t you tell me so in the first place?”
“Because you were asleep,” Helene said, “and because I didn’t know where to look for him anyway, and because he made it very plain this was an excursion of his own.”
The little lawyer frowned, finally sank back on the pil
lows.
“Malone, you don’t think anything’s going to happen to him?”
“He’s probably breaking his way back into jail right now,” Malone growled. He stole a quick look at her and added hastily, “Hell no, he probably took advantage of a chance to visit some local dive. He’s probably out tripping the light fermented.”
She rose, shook out her damp hair, and walked over to the door. “I hope you’re right.”
“Go to bed,” he said again. “Leave me alone. I’m a very sick man.”
“You deserve to be,” she said, looking at the beer bottles. Suddenly she paused, one hand on the doorknob. “Malone, this whole town. Jake was brought up in a place like this, he knows how it ticks. But it puzzles me.”
“I know what you mean,” Malone said slowly. “I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but there’s a difference. The girls wear the same dresses you see on State Street, but there’s a difference.”
“It’s like living in a different age,” she said.
‘That’s it,” he said in a thoughtful voice. He paused, and added, “Yes, that’s exactly it. Here they’re still living in the age of innocence.” He paused again. “And in Chicago, we’re living in the age of consent.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I suppose you find this all very different from what you’re used to,” Cora Belle Fromm said coyly.
“Somewhat,” Jake said, glancing around the Den. It was a large, gloomy, el-shaped room, lined with varnished brown booths, and decorated with posters advertising Drewry’s Ale. There was a juke box at the turn of the el, and just beyond it a door led to the minute but crowded bar. “Yes,” he told her, “it’s quite different. I find it very interesting.” Hell, a cheap saloon was a cheap saloon any place, city or country.
She giggled. “It’s very quiet tonight.”
“I’ve noticed,” Jake said, smothering a yawn. They were the only inhabitants of the big room, save for an occasional couple that drifted out from the bar for a dance.
The bar itself had looked a little more promising. But Cora Belle had suggested that the “lounge” would be more cozy.