by Craig Rice
Malone said, “Either love life in Jackson, Wisconsin, is incredibly complicated or I’m still suffering from that blow on the head.”
“It’s like this,” the newspaperman said. He scowled at a reflection in the river. “Arlene was so full of gratitude to any man who’d pay any attention to her that he could have his own way about anything. She wasn’t especially amorous, but she sure was grateful as hell. In a town like this it’s a terrible thing for an unmarried but marriageable girl of Arlene’s age not to have a boy friend and not to have dates.”
“Well, damn it all,” Malone said, “she ought to be attractive enough to suit any guy. What d’ya want here in Jackson anyway, little Venuses?”
“Arlene’s attractive enough,” Tom Burrows told him. “But it raises the devil with a girl’s popularity to have an old man who won’t let her go to school parties when she’s in high school, and won’t let her go to the movies, or go to dances, or have dates. Especially when there are so many other equally attractive girls who are a lot more accessible.”
Malone thought for a minute, and then said, “How about leaving home?”
“There’s no place to run to,” Tom Burrows said. “Not in Jackson, Wisconsin.” He tossed another beer-can top into the water. “But she did find out that she could make it down the back stairs after she was supposed to be in bed.” He scowled again. “I had an idea Jerry was crazy about her, from seeing them together. Then suddenly he turned up engaged to Florence Peveley. I took Arlene out about four or five times, first out of curiosity, then because there wasn’t anything better to do, and finally because I was so doggoned sorry for her. But then she began to act as though she was afraid I might get away from her, and I decided to call a halt.”
“And now?” Helene asked.
“Now,” Tom Burrows said, “she won’t marry me. She won’t even borrow any money from me.” He added, “I suppose I’ve acted like a son of a bitch, but I don’t see what else I could have done at the time.”
He threw one more beer-can top into the river with a sudden violence, rose, and was halfway up the wooden steps before he paused.
“The whole thing is just her imagination,” he said in an oddly cracked voice, and went on up to the Enterprise office.
Helene listened for his last footsteps to die away and then counted ten before she said, “A very pretty story, and how much of it do you suppose is true?”
“I’m a gentleman,” Malone snorted. “I’ll suppose it’s all true.”
“I’ll testify for part of it,” she said thoughtfully. “Old man Goudge wouldn’t let his little girl go out with the boys, or she wouldn’t have been sneaking out the back way when I saw her last night. I’ll also testify that a spot like that is a terrible handicap for a lively girl. But our young friend Mr. Burrows seems entirely too anxious to prove his innocence.”
“I’d do the same thing in the same situation,” Malone lied. He threw his cigar into the river. “What did he mean was just her imagination? Was she imagining he and she had a gr-r-r-eat bond between them, or was she imagining she was going to have a baby, or both?” He sighed, and said, “Frankly, I don’t give a hoot.”
Five minutes later Helene said, “You don’t think anyone could have murdered him, do you?”
“If you mean Jake,” Malone said, “no.”
Ten minutes later she said, “If he’s just gone out on a bender, I’ll massacre him when he gets back.”
“You can’t massacre just one person,” Malone told her. “One is a murder, two is a sex slaying, three is a massacre.”
“All right,” Helene said gloomily. “If he’s out on a bender, I’ll massacre all three of him.”
The afternoon dragged along. Helene slowly grew more colorless and silent, faint lavender shadows began to appear below her eyes. Malone tossed an endless succession of badly frayed cigar stubs into the placid and disinterested river. Tom Burrows came downstairs at intervals with what little news there was.
Jackson County had been thoroughly searched, according to Sheriff Marvin Kling. The county’s four highway policemen were out scouring the countryside for the missing man. The interstate-police radio was sending out descriptions at fifteen-minute intervals. And the Chicago police had rounded up eleven red-haired, freckled-faced men and asked Sheriff Kling to come down and take his pick of the lot.
Malone had met the last item with a hasty long-distance call to Chicago, and eleven innocent red-heads had gone back to their favorite bars.
The Jackson, Wisconsin, police force (two men and one motorcycle) had quelled an incipient riot around an enterprising young man selling hastily made picture postcards of Cora Belle Fromm’s house.
Madison had offered to send over a ballistics expert. No one was sure why, inasmuch as Cora Belle Fromm had been strangled. By this time the murder of Senator Peveley and the bombing of the bank had paled into insignificance in the public eye.
Once, during the longest hour of the afternoon, Helene said sharply, “We’ll hear from him. Sooner or later we’ll get a postcard saying, ‘Wish you were here.’”
“With an ‘x’ marking the jail,” Malone said.
For the most part, Malone sat staring out over the river, lost in thought, going over and over the circumstances of the three crimes. Someone had murdered Senator Peveley, blown up the bank, and strangled Cora Belle Fromm. Phil Smith, the gentlest man in Jackson, had lost his position as a teacher of the classics, through Senator Peveley’s influence with the school board. That was a number of years ago. Ed Skindingsrude had quarreled with the Senator over a stock deal. That too had been several years ago. He had also been a director of the Farmers’ Bank, but had resigned in a huff. As far as anyone knew, Ellen McGowan had never had any trouble with the Senator. She had worked for the Farmers’ Bank for many years. Jerry Luckstone—the matter of the Senator’s daughter and Arlene Goudge. Malone sighed.
There was some all-important fact that he was over-looking, he knew. It was the one thing he needed, and he couldn’t find it.
Meantime, Jake might be anywhere, anything might have happened to him.
The murder of the Senator and the bombing of the bank had to be related. They simply couldn’t be two separate crimes. The Senator owned the bank, the same people were present at both crimes, everything fitted together. As for the murder of Cora Belle Fromm, she had known something that fitted her into the same set.
It was about four o’clock when high-heeled footsteps sounded on the wooden stairs. Helene and Malone looked around to see Florence Peveley descending the steps. It was the first time either of them had seen her in a skirt, and that alone called for a second look. She was wearing a chiffon afternoon dress, of what Helene later described as a violent violet, and carrying a wide-brimmed violet horsehair hat in one hand. Her blazing hair was blown to every point of the compass, and there was an ice-cream stain down the front of the dress.
“This is a screeching mess, isn’t it?” she said as she reached the last step. “I hope nothing’s happened to your husband, Helene. You don’t mind if I call you Helene, do you? I didn’t think so. He didn’t really rape Cora Belle, did he?”
“I don’t know,” Helene said pleasantly. “He never gives me their names. Have a bottle of beer?” Only Malone noticed that she was white around the lips.
“Thanks,” Florence Peveley said, sitting down on a packing box. She cracked open the beer bottle on a protruding nail, tore her skirt on another nail, exploded one surprising verb, and said, “Well, I hope he’s alive. How do you feel? I did this damn burg from end to end, looking for you.”
“He’s probably alive,” Helene said. “I feel wonderful. And you just looked in the wrong places first.”
Florence Peveley leaned her elbows on her outspread knees and grinned at Malone. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she? Is it any wonder I like her?” She tilted up the beer bottle and drank from it with a pleasantly gurgling noise. “I’d be something like her if I weren’t so damned homely and neurot
ic. It’s very bad to be both, you know. There was a doctor up at Rochester—” she interrupted herself with the beer bottle, lit a cigarette, and then said, “Can you imagine that dirty little bastard running out on me like that last night?”
“No,” Malone said, gasping for breath. “Who?”
“Jerry. He took out another girl. I can imagine why, too.” She finished with the beer bottle and tossed it into the river with a loud splash. “Will you get the hell out of here, Mister Malone? There are times when we women want to talk in private.”
Helene took a quick look at the girl’s face, and said, “I need cigarettes anyway, and you want a nice walk.”
Malone got up off the grass with difficulty, retied his tie, grunted, and started toward the stairs. Halfway up he paused and said, “You could have asked me anything you want to know and gotten detailed information on it,” and was out through the Enterprise office before either of them could say a word.
The damp hotness of the street struck him like a blow. He stood for a moment in the doorway, blinking at the sun. It was a big, round sun, blazing down on a big round world, and somewhere in that world was Jake.
A doorway marked DENTIST OFFICE ONE FLIGHT UP offered the only shelter he could see on the street. Malone moved into it, discovered the shade was, if anything, hotter than the sun, but decided to stay there anyway.
A lot of people went by, almost all strangers. Among them was the tall, thin Alvin Goudge, his bald head turned faintly pink in the sun. He saw Malone standing there, shuddered, and drew away as though someone had left a dead horse in the street. More people went by. Ten minutes later an old-model Buick leaped ten inches over the curb, bounded back into the street, rubbed the paint off an adjoining fender, and stood still. Ed Skindingsrude got out, and bellowed something indignant about the fatheaded town commissioners and the condition of the streets. He didn’t notice Malone, but went on down the street. Still later plump little Henry Peveley walked by briskly, casting occasional anxious glances to right and left as though he expected the revenue officers to be following him.
A nerve stirred in Malone at the sight of him; Helene’s report of her night wanderings came into his mind. The little lawyer stepped out into the thick stream of pedestrians and followed him. Henry Peveley was the murdered man’s brother. Henry Peveley was executor of the estate which included the blown-up bank. Henry Peveley had been threatening Ellen McGowan with heaven-knew-what. Malone had a sudden feeling that Henry Peveley might lead the way to a key to the murder.
At worst, he would lead the way to a place to buy a drink.
Malone followed him down Main Street to Milton Street, down Milton Street to Frederick Street, and half a block to a small, white, almost Colonial house with bright-blue blinds. The lawyer blinked at it for several minutes before he recognized it from its newspaper pictures. It was Cora Belle’s house, the house where she had been murdered.
There was a line of cars driving slowly past the house, their occupants peering out curiously. A traffic cop (borrowed from Delville) stood in the street to keep them moving. The pedestrian sight-seers were kept at their distance by a rope stretched between the elm trees. A deputy sheriff was smoking a pipe and dozing on the top step.
Henry Peveley turned up the alley. Malone followed him. There was a little garage a short way down the alley, behind it a path led to a neglected backyard and to the back steps of Cora Belle Fromm’s house (already named “the murder cottage” in the Milwaukee press).
Malone hesitated one moment in the shadow of the garage. Henry Peveley opened the back door of the cottage, which appeared to be unlocked, and went right on in.
The least that could happen, Malone told himself, was that he’d either be murdered or thrown in jail. He crossed the back lawn as though he owned it, slipped through the door, and began walking through a tiny entryway as silently as a nervous mouse.
Cora Belle’s house appeared to have been left deserted save for the front-steps guardian. Malone paused at a doorway and stood peering around its corner.
He could see a brightly decorated room, crammed with a collection of highly modernistic furniture and a few pieces of badly imitated early American. There were end tables and ash trays everywhere, and a cunning little glass-and-chromium bar in one corner. The rug in front of the davenport was mussed up a little.
Malone took all that in at a glance. Then he settled back in the shadow of the doorway and watched Henry Peveley go through a thorough search of the room. At the same time, the little lawyer searched it with his eyes.
There was the open secretary desk, with the topless ink bottle. It looked as though Cora Belle might have been writing a letter. Henry Peveley was going through the desk drawers methodically. There was a tiny spot of ink on the rug near the desk. She might have been interrupted at her writing. He saw a fountain pen under the chromium bar. There was another spot of ink on the davenport. But the letter she had been writing appeared to be gone.
Anyone in Jackson, Wisconsin, might have murdered Cora Belle Fromm, shortly before six that morning, he told himself. The little house was sufficiently secluded that no one, who was not deliberately watching, would notice that anyone entered or left.
No one questioned so far had offered any alibi. Everyone claimed to have been home in bed, but Malone knew from long experience, not only with the law, that that was no alibi.
Then there was always the possibility that the strangling of Cora Belle was a totally unrelated crime, and had nothing to do with the other two. A woman like Cora Belle usually had any number of people, male and female, who wanted to murder her. One murder in a community could set off other murders that had been smoldering for a long time. Malone had known such things to happen.
Yet Cora Belle did fit into the other picture. She had been in the courthouse at the time of the Senator’s death. She had claimed to Jake that she knew who had murdered the Senator and who had blown up the bank, and why. Jerry Luckstone, already pretty well involved with two other women, had had dates with her. Ellen McGowan had been afraid she would marry the former’s brother. And now, the late Senator’s brother was searching her house.
No, Malone decided, the three crimes were all part of a pattern. Though, he told himself, the murderer certainly showed a catholic taste in weapons. A gun, a bomb, and a bath towel.
Henry Peveley had completed a thorough, but amateurish search of the house, and now stood, puzzled and unhappy, in the middle of the living-room rug. Malone completely forgot he hadn’t been invited and stepped out into the room.
“From past experience,” he said, “I’d suggest trying behind the pictures and under the sofa pillows.”
Henry Peveley automatically looked behind the pictures and began picking up the cushions. From under the center one of the davenport he drew out a long white envelope. A happy light came into his mild blue eyes, then faded in a flash, replaced by a look of alarm.
“How did you get here?” he asked Malone. His voice was a little squeak.
“I came down the chimney, rehearsing for Christmas Eve,” Malone said wearily. “Don’t let me bother you. I’m just trying to help.”
Little Henry Peveley leaned against a chair for a moment. Slowly the terror faded from his face. “I have a feeling you’re someone I can trust. I hope I’m right, because I guess I have to anyway.”
“I’m trustworthy as the day is wide,” Malone told him in his most reassuring voice.
“This is it,” he announced. There were two papers in the envelope. He looked first at one and then at the other. “She wrote a letter last night after she came home. The date is at the top of it. This is it.”
Malone frowned. “Then she heard someone coming, and stuffed it under the sofa cushion. The someone turned out to be the murderer.”
Henry Peveley handed over the two papers. “You can see why I was anxious to find them,” he said.
The first was a letter, written in a round, childlike, and definitely staggering hand, addressed to Flore
nce Peveley:
DEAR FLO:
When we were kids in school you were the only one who treated me like a human and I never forgot it. I made your old man give me this because I was sore, but I’ve got all over being sore now. It isn’t what you think, I did him a favor and made him pay for it. But I don’t want the damn money, I got enough of my own. So the hell with it.
CORRIE
The other paper was a badly typed document, dated a week before. It was a will, signed by Senator Gerald Peveley and witnessed by Henry Peveley and Arlene Goudge.
Malone read it slowly and carefully. It directed that the Senator’s estate be divided equally between his daughter, Florence, and Cora Belle Fromm.
“You see?” Henry Peveley said brightly. “Now, do you see why I was so anxious to find it?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Malone took a cigar out of his pocket, put it back again unlighted, and finally said, “She wasn’t murdered because of the will. Or it would have been found and destroyed. It wasn’t really hidden, it was just slipped out of sight until her visitor left.”
“So it couldn’t have been Florence or myself,” Henry Peveley said. He looked searchingly at Malone. “You weren’t thinking it was either Florence or myself.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything of the kind,” Malone assured him. He started to sit down on the sofa, caught himself, and chose a gaspipe-and-pink-leather chair instead. “But you did know about this.”
“I knew about it, and I disapproved of it. Gerald brought it up to my office about a week ago. He said he wanted to sign a paper with Arlene—she’s my stenographer—and me for witnesses, without either of us looking to see what it was. Arlene put her name down all right, she never asks questions. But I insisted on seeing it and finally Gerald showed it to me.”
Malone was trying to accustom himself to hearing the late Senator referred to as Gerald. “Did he give you any reasons?”
“He said Cora Belle had done him a very important service. He didn’t tell me what it was. But I can tell you this, he was very angry. He was angry all week, and he was angry right up to the time of his death.”