“What was her name, Mrs. Norris?”
“Elizabeth Benning. Doctor called her Bess. I don’t know her maiden name. He married her in the war, when he was a medical officer in the United States Navy. That was before we moved here from the North.”
“And how long ago did she leave him?”
“Nearly two years, it was. He was better off without her, though I never dared tell him so.”
“She seems to have come back.”
“Now? In his house?”
I nodded.
Her mouth pursed up tight again. Her whole face closed against me. Distrust of white men lay deep and solid in her like stone strata deposited through generations of time. “You won’t repeat that which I have been saying? I have an evil tongue and I’ve still not learned to curb it.”
“I’m trying to get you out of trouble, not deeper in.”
She answered slowly, after a time: “I do believe you. And it’s true, she returned to him?”
“She’s there in the house. Didn’t Lucy mention her at all? She went to the doctor three times, and Mrs. Benning has been working as his receptionist.”
She answered positively: “Lucy never did.”
“The doctor told me you’ve had nursing experience. Did Lucy show any signs of illness, physical or mental?”
“She seemed a well woman to me, apart from her eating habits. Of course when they drink, often they don’t eat.”
“She drank?”
“I learned to my sorrow and shame she was a drinker. And now that you ask me about her health, Mr. Archer, there is this thing has been puzzling me.”
She opened the clasp of her black purse and groped for something inside. It turned out to be a clinical thermometer in a black leatherette carrying case, which she handed to me.
“I found this after she left, in the medicine cabinet over the sink in her room. Don’t shake it down now. I want you to look at the temperature.”
I opened the case and turned the narrow glass stem until I could see the column of mercury. It registered 107°F.
“Are you sure this was Lucy’s?”
She pointed to the initials, L.C., inked on the case. “Certainly it belonged to her. She was a nurse.”
“She couldn’t have had a temperature like that, could she? I thought 107 was fatal.”
“It is, for adults. I don’t understand it myself. Do you think I should show it to the police?”
“I will, if you like. In the meantime, can you tell me anything more about her habits? You say she was quiet and shy?”
“Very much so, at first, keeping herself to herself. Most of her evenings she just plain sat in her room with a little portable gramaphone she brought along with her. I thought it was a peculiar way for a young woman to spend her vacation, and I said so. She laughed at that, but not in a humorous way. She became hysterical, and that was when I realized the strain that she was under. I began to feel the strain in the atmosphere when she was in the house. She was in the house twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, it seemed like.”
“Did she have any visitors?”
She hesitated. “No, she had never a one. She sat in her room and kept that jazzy music playing on the radio. Then I discovered her drinking. I was cleaning her room one day when she was out to buy her lunch downtown. I opened up a drawer to put fresh paper in the bottom, and it had whisky bottles in it, three or four empty pint bottles.” Her voice was hushed with outrage.
“Maybe it helped her nerves.”
She looked at me shrewdly: “Alex said just those words to me when I mentioned it to him. He defended her, which set me to thinking about the two of them living together in the same house. That was the end of last week. Then the middle of this week, late Wednesday night it was, I heard her tromping around in her room. I knocked on her door, and she responded in silk pajamas and there was Alex with her in her room. He said she was teaching him to dance. To all appearances, she was teaching my son the wicked ways of the world, in red silk pajamas, and I told her that to her face.”
Her bosom heaved with remembered anger, like the aftershock of an earthquake:
“I told her she was degenerating my God-fearing household into a dance-hall, she must let my son alone. She said it was Alex’s choice and he backed her up, he said he loved her. Then I was harsh with her. The red silk pajamas over her insolent flesh, they blinded my eyes to charity. My evil anger rose up and I said she must let Alex alone or leave my house in her nightclothes as she was. I said that I was planning better things for my son than she could give him. Alex spoke up then, saying if Lucy Champion went he would go along with her.”
Now in a sense, he had. His mother’s gaze seemed to be following his image into the shadows where Lucy had preceded him.
“You let her stay, though,” I said.
“Yes. My son’s wish is powerful with me. Lucy herself went away next morning, but she left her things behind. I don’t know where she spent the day. I know she took a bus somewhere because she complained about the service that night when she came back. She was very excited in her manner.”
“Thursday night?”
“Yes, it was Thursday night. All day Friday she was quiet and meek, though worried under the surface. I guessed she was planning something, and I was fearful she intended to run away with Alex. That night there was more trouble. I saw there was going to be trouble on top of trouble if she stayed.”
“What was the Friday night trouble?”
“I’m ashamed to speak of it.”
“It may be important.” Casting back over the quarrel I had eavesdropped on, I guessed what Mrs. Norris was holding back: “She did have a visitor, didn’t she?”
“Perhaps it is best for me to tell you, if it will help Alex.” She hesitated. “Yes, Lucy had a visitor Friday night. I heard him go in by her side entrance and I watched for him and saw him when he left. She entertained a man in her room, a white man. I didn’t speak of it that night, mistrusting my anger so. I promised myself to sleep and pray on it, but I slept very little. Lucy slept late and then she went out for lunch when I was at the store. When she came back, she tempted my son. She kissed him in full sight on the public street. It was wanton and shameless. I said she had to go, and she went. My boy wanted to leave me and go with her. I had to tell him then about the man in her room.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I know it. I confess it. It was rash and scornful of me. And it failed to turn him from her. The same afternoon she telephoned for him and he went to her call. I asked him where he was going. He wouldn’t say. He took the car without asking for my permission. I knew then he was lost to me, whatever happened. He never before refused to do my bidding.”
She bowed suddenly, sobbing into her hands, a black Rachel lamenting the wrecked hopes of all mothers for their sons, black and white and tan. The desk sergeant appeared in his doorway and watched her in silence for a while before he spoke:
“Is she all right?”
“She’s worried about her son.”
“She has a right to be,” he said indifferently. “You Archer?”
I said I was.
“Lieutenant Brake will see you in his office now, if you’re waiting.”
I thanked him, and he retreated quickly.
Mrs. Norris’s fit of grief had subsided as suddenly as it rose. She said: “I’m truly sorry.”
“It’s all right. You’ve got to remember that Alex can still be decent, even if he did disobey you. He’s old enough to make decisions.”
“I can accept that,” she said. “But that he should leave me for a light, common woman, it was cruel and it was wrong. She led him straight into jail.”
“You shouldn’t have worked on his jealousy,” I said.
“Have you lost your faith in him because of that?”
“No, but it gives him a motive. Jealousy is dangerous stuff to fiddle with, especially when you’re not sure of your facts.”
“There was no doubt wha
t she was, with a white man with her late at night in her room.”
“She had only one room.”
“That’s true.”
“Where else could she have a visitor?”
“In my good front parlor,” she said. “I gave her free use of the parlor.”
“Maybe she wanted privacy.”
“Why, I’d like to know.” The question implied its own answer.
“There are plenty of reasons for a man to visit a woman. What did this man look like?”
“I saw him only a second, under the street light at the corner. He was an ordinary-looking man, middle size, middle age. At least he seemed slow in his movements. I didn’t lay eyes on his face, not to see it.”
“Did you notice his clothes?”
“I did. He wore a panama straw hat, and a light-colored jacket. His trousers were darker in color. He did not appear respectable to me.”
“He probably isn’t respectable, Mrs. Norris. But I can assure you he visited her for business purposes.”
“Do you know him?”
“His name is Max Heiss. He’s a private detective.”
“Like you?”
“Not exactly.” I rose to go.
She laid a detaining hand on my arm: “I said too much, Mr. Archer. You do still believe that Alex is innocent?”
I said: “Of course.” But I was bothered by the motive she had provided.
Mrs. Norris sensed my doubt, and thanked me sadly, withdrawing her hand.
CHAPTER 19: Brake’s office was a bare cubicle walled with the same green plaster as the corridor. Close up under the ceiling, heating-pipes like sections of iron viscera hung from metal supports. A single small window, high in the wall, flyspecked a square of sky.
Dr. Benning was sitting uncomfortably with his hat on his knees, in a straight chair against the wall. Brake, with his usual air of alert stolidity, was talking into the telephone on his desk:
“I’m busy or haven’t you heard. Let the HP handle it. I haven’t been a traffic cop for twenty years.”
He hung up, and ran a hand like a harrow through his dust-colored hair. Then he pretended to be noticing my presence in the doorway for the first time: “Oh. It’s you. You decided to favor us with a visit. Come in and sit down. The doc here tells me you’re taking a pretty active interest in this case.”
I sat beside Benning, who smiled deprecatingly and opened his mouth to speak. Before he had a chance to, Brake went on:
“Since that’s the situation, let’s get a couple of things straight. I’m no one-man team. I like help, from private cops or citizens or anybody. I’m glad you sent the doc in to fill me in on the stiff, for instance.”
“What do you think about suicide?”
Brake pawed my question away. “I’ll come to that, I got a point to make first. If you’re going to be in on this case, talking to my witnesses and messing around in general, I got to know where you stand and where your client stands.”
“My original client ran out on me.”
“So what’s your interest? The doc here tells me you think we’re trying to frame the Norris boy.”
“I didn’t put it so strongly,” Benning said. “I also happen to agree with Mr. Archer, that the lad is probably innocent.”
“Is that your opinion, Archer?”
“It is. I’d like to talk to Alex—”
“Sure you would. Did his mother hire you, by any chance? To cross me up, by any chance?”
“Having delusions of persecution, lieutenant?”
Hostility darkened his face for a slow instant, like a cloud-shadow crossing a hillside. “You admit it’s your opinion that Norris ain’t guilty. Before we do any talking, I want to know if you’re looking for evidence to hang an opinion on, like a bloody lawyer. Or looking for evidence period.”
“Evidence period. I was hired last night by a Miss Sylvia Treen. She’s Mrs. Charles Singleton’s companion.”
Benning leaned forward at the sound of the second name: “Isn’t she the woman whose son is missing?”
“That’s right,” Brake said. “We got a routine circular on him last week. Then we find this clipping about him in Champion’s things. I been trying to figure how a missing high-lifer like Singleton fits in with a dinge cutting in the valley here. You got any ideas on the subject, doc?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.” He thought about it. “At first glance it does appear that the connections may be accidental. I know some of my patients carry all sorts of unconnected things around with them, clippings and whatnot. Women who are emotionally disturbed often identify themselves with people in the newspapers.”
Brake turned to me impatiently: “What about you, Archer? You got any opinions?”
I glanced at Benning’s long conscientious face, wondering how much he knew about his wife. It wasn’t my job to fill him in on her background.
“None that you couldn’t shoot full of holes with a peashooter.”
“I favor a .45 myself,” Brake said. “What about your client? Miss Treen, is that her name?”
“Miss Treen gave me some of the details of Singleton’s disappearance.” I passed them on to Brake, or at least enough of them to hold his co-operation in Bella City without being embarrassed by it in Arroyo Beach. I left the blonde woman out of it entirely.
Bored with my expurgated version, Brake snapped his metal armbands and fiddled with the papers in his “In” basket. Benning listened with close and nervous attention.
When I finished, the doctor rose abruptly, turning his hat in his hand: “If you’ll excuse me, men, I should look in at the hospital before church.”
“Appreciate you coming in,” Brake said. “Give the stiff a once-over if you like, but I don’t think you’ll find any hesitation marks. I never seen a suicide with a cut throat that didn’t have hesitation marks. Or one that was cut so deep.”
“Is she in the hospital morgue?”
“Yeah, waiting for autopsy. Just go right in and tell the guard I sent you.”
“I’m on the staff of the hospital,” Benning said with his sour private smile. He jammed his hat on his head and moved sideways to the door, his long legs scissoring awkwardly.
“Just a minute, doctor.” I stood up and handed him the thermometer Mrs. Norris had given me. “This belonged to Lucy Champion. I’d like to see what you make of it.”
He took the thermometer out of its case and held it to the light. “A hundred and seven, that’s quite a temperature.”
“Did Lucy have a fever yesterday?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Isn’t it standard practice to take a patient’s temperature?”
He answered after a pause: “Yes, I remember now, I took Miss Champion’s. It was in the normal range. She wouldn’t have lasted long with a temperature of 107.”
“She didn’t last long.”
Brake came around his desk and took the thermometer from Benning’s hand. “Where did you get this, Archer?”
“From Mrs. Norris. She found it in Lucy’s room.”
“She could of hotted it up with a lighted match. Eh, doc?”
Benning looked puzzled. “That wouldn’t make much sense.”
“It does to me. She might of been trying to prove that Champion was delirious, killed herself when she was out of her head.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Wait a minute. Hold it.” Brake banged his desk with a gavel-heavy palm. “Didn’t Champion come here around the first of the month?”
“Two weeks ago today.”
“That’s what I thought. You know what the heat was here in the valley weekend before last? A hundred and seven. It wasn’t Champion who had the fever, it was this bloody town.”
“Is that right, doctor?” I said. “Does a mercury thermometer hold a reading like that?”
“If it’s not disturbed. It happens to mine all the time, I should have remembered.”
“There goes your clue,” Brake said
.
“And here go I,” Benning added with lame whimsy.
When the door had closed behind him, Brake leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. “You think there’s anything in the doc’s idea that Champion had a phobia?”
“He seems to know his psychology.”
“Sure he does. He told me he wanted to specialize in it at one time, only he couldn’t afford another five years of training. If he tells me the girl was psycho, I’m willing to take his word for it. He knows what he’s talking about. The trouble is I don’t.” He blew a smoke ring and speared it with an obscene middle finger. “I’m all for physical evidence myself.”
“Have you got much in that line?”
“Enough. You keep it under your hat and not go running to the defense?”
I caught him up on the word. “Aren’t you jumping ahead of yourself a little?”
“I learned in this job to look a long way ahead.”
He lifted a black-steel evidence case from the bottom drawer of his desk, and raised the lid. It contained the bolo knife with the carved black wooden handle. The bloodstains on the curved blade had dried dark brown.
“I’ve seen that.”
“You don’t know who it belongs to, though.”
“Do you?”
“I showed this bolo to Mrs. Norris last night, before she knew how Champion got killed. She identified it right off. Her husband sent it to Alex from the Philippines, about seven years ago. It’s been in the kid’s possession ever since. He had it mounted on his bedroom wall, and she saw it every morning when she went in to make his bed, right up to yesterday morning.”
“Did she say that?”
“She did. So maybe Champion had hot psychological flashes like the doc said. Maybe there’s a tie-up with the Singleton case that we don’t know about. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I got enough right here to arraign and convict.” He shut the lid of the evidence box, relocked it and replaced it in the drawer.
I had been trying to decide all morning whether to give Brake everything I knew. I decided not to. The frayed ends of several lives, Singleton’s and his blonde’s, Lucy’s, and Una’s, were braided into the case. The pattern I was picking out strand by strand was too complicated to be explained in the language of physical evidence. Brake’s understanding was an evidence box holding the kinds of facts that could be hammered through the skulls of a back-country jury. It wasn’t a back-country case.
The Ivory Grin Page 13