The Zebra-Striped Hearse

by Ross Macdonald

  We were in her sitting room. The drapes were closed, and she had left the lights off. Perhaps she didn’t want me to see her face; perhaps she didn’t want to see mine. She sat in a long chair and peered at me through the artificial gloom as if I was as monstrous as the things I had had to tell her. The side-to-side movement of her head, the gesture of incomprehension and denial, was threatening to become habitual.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Blackwell. I thought you’d rather hear it from me than get it from the police or read it in the newspapers.”

  “Does it have to be in the newspapers?”

  “It will be. You don’t have to read them. After you’ve gathered yourself together, you ought to take a long trip, put all this behind you.” My suggestion sounded feeble in my own ears.

  “I couldn’t face a journey now.” After a pause, she said in a softer voice: “I thought horrors like this only occurred in Greek plays.”

  “The horrors will pass. Tragedy is like a sickness, and it passes. Even the horrors in the Greek plays are long since past.”

  “That’s not much comfort to me here and now.”

  “It’s something to think about.”

  “I don’t want to think.” But she sat locked in thought, as still as ancient marble, her mind transfixed by the Medusa fact: “How could he bring himself to kill Harriet? He loved her.”

  “In a sick way. Where girls were concerned, even his own, he was a mother’s boy playing with dolls in the attic. Love like that can change to hatred if it’s threatened. You cut off the doll’s head—”

  “He cut off her head?”

  “I was speaking figuratively. Apparently he cut her throat with an old razor blade. He used the same blade to slash Campion’s painting.”

  Her head had begun its sidewise movement again. “I can understand why Mark had to kill Dolly, or thought he had to. Once he’d used her, she threatened him by her very existence. Ralph Simpson was a threat, and even Ronald must have seemed to be. But Harriet was his own daughter.”

  “I suspect she was another threat to him, the most intimate one of all. Did Harriet know about his affair with Dolly?”

  “I’m afraid so. Mark had a horrible habit of confession. I don’t suppose he poured it all out, but he did say something to Harriet last spring. He may have felt it was bound to come out, and it was his duty to prepare her. It didn’t have the desired effect.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Harriet came to me with it. She said she had to talk to someone. She was greatly upset, much more deeply upset than I’d ever seen her. She regressed to a very low age level; she was literally bawling with her head in my lap. I didn’t think she should be encouraged to throw childish fits at her age. I told her she ought to be able to take it if I could.”

  “How did she handle that?”

  “She got up and left the room. We didn’t discuss the subject again. I felt that Mark had made a mistake in telling her. It didn’t improve the situation among the three of us.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Some time in March or April. I imagine Mark was concerned about the birth of the child, and that’s why he spoke to Harriet, though he never said a word about it to me. Looking back, it does throw some light on what Harriet was feeling. Dolly had displaced her in Mark’s affections, as she thought. A couple of months later she attached herself to Dolly’s widower. Do you suppose she was aware of what she was doing?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and Campion knew what he was doing, but neither of them told the other. I believe that Campion took up with her in Mexico precisely because she was Mark’s daughter. He suspected Mark of killing his wife, and cooked up an affair with Harriet in order to get close to him. He surely wouldn’t have come back from Mexico, with an indictment hanging over him, unless he hoped to clear himself.”

  “Why didn’t he ever say anything?”

  “He did, last Monday afternoon, when your husband turned a shotgun on him. I failed to get the message. He hasn’t talked since then because he knew he wouldn’t be believed. Campion’s a maverick, an authority-hater, with a certain pride of his own. But he’ll be talking now, and I want to be there when he spills over. You can pay my time and expenses if you like.”

  “I’ll be glad to.”

  “You’re a generous woman. After some of the things I said to you last night—”

  She cut me short with a movement of her head. “They helped me, Mr. Archer. You were cruel at the time, but actually you were preparing me—for this.”

  “I was doing more than that. I considered you a possible murder suspect.”

  “I know. The point is that you don’t any more. It’s over.”

  “Almost over. Campion’s testimony should wind up the case.”

  “What do you suppose he will have to say?”

  “He probably made the mistake of speaking out to Harriet at the lodge, accusing Mark of Dolly’s murder. She couldn’t take it; it completely destroyed her image of her father. It must have been a shock, too, to learn that Campion had been using her, that his interest in her was mainly on his dead wife’s account. They quarreled, violently. Campion got his face scratched, she was hit on the head, somehow her hat got knocked into the water. She couldn’t have been badly hurt—she was well enough to drive to Malibu—but Campion didn’t know that Judging by his attitude the other night, he may have thought he killed her, or injured her seriously.”

  “But she drove herself from Tahoe to Malibu?”

  “Apparently. It took her more than twenty-four hours. She may have had her head wound attended to on the way. She reached the beach house early yesterday morning and telephoned her father. Perhaps she accused him of murder over the phone, or asked him to deny it. He left you a note to put you off the track, went to the beach house, and killed her. He carried her body down to the beach and let it go out with the tide.

  “But he had killed once too often. This doll bled. It was his daughter’s blood, and it was real. He was so paralyzed he couldn’t clean up after his final murder. He sat in the back bedroom all day and all night trying to gather the strength to kill himself. Perhaps he had to talk to someone before he did. I happened to be the one.”

  “I’m glad it was you, Mr. Archer. And I’m glad he didn’t kill you. Truly glad.”

  She rose up in the ruins of her life and gave me her hand. I said I would be seeing her again. She didn’t deny it, even with a movement of her head.

  chapter 30

  CAMPION HAD BEEN MOVED to the San Mateo County jail. He still wasn’t talking. After some palaver with Captain Royal and his chief, and telephone calls to their opposite numbers in Los Angeles, I got permission to interview him alone. Royal brought him into the interrogation room and left us together, locking the steel-sheathed door behind him.

  Campion stood with his back to the door. He didn’t say hello or nod his head. Bad nights had left their nightmare tracks on his face, but he still had a kind of frayed intensity. He looked at me as though I might lunge at him with a rubber hose.

  “How are you, Bruce? Sit down.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s an invitation,” I said in a mollifying tone. “Mark Blackwell has confessed your wife’s murder. Did Royal tell you?”

  “He told me. It came a little late. I’m going to sue you all for false arrest.”

  “That doesn’t sound like such a wise idea. You’re pretty vulnerable.”

  “Then when are they going to let me out? I’ve got work to go on with.”

  “You’ve got some talking to do first. If you’d leveled with the cops, you wouldn’t be here—”

  “Don’t snow me. I know cops. They make patsies out of the little ones and let the big ones go.”

  “You made a patsy out of yourself. Think about it.”

  I left him standing and moved around the bright barred room. Campion’s eyes followed me warily. After a while he sat down at a metal table, resting his bandaged head on one hand.
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  I approached him and touched his shoulder. “Listen, Bruce—”

  He raised both arms to protect his head.

  “Relax. I’m not your enemy.”

  He twisted under my hand. “Then don’t stand over me. I’ve always hated people standing over me.”

  I sat down across the table from him. “I assume you’re a serious man in spite of the cop-hater nonsense. You’ve been through some rough experiences, and I respect that. You could have spared yourself some of the roughness by trusting other people.”

  “Who was there to trust?”

  “Me, for one. Royal can be trusted, too. He’s not a bad cop. Why didn’t you tell us the truth the night before last? You let us believe that Harriet was dead and you had drowned her.”

  “You would have gone on believing it no matter what I said.”

  “Rut you didn’t give us a chance. You didn’t give her a chance, either. You might have saved her life.”

  His right fist clenched on the table. “I tried. I tried to stop her. But I can’t swim too well. She got away from me in the dark.”

  “We seem to be talking past each other. When did she get away from you?”

  “That night at the lake, Tuesday night I think it was. She went berserk when I told her I suspected her father of killing Dolly. She came at me clawing—I had to hit her to get her off me. It was a bad scene, and it got worse. Before I knew what she was doing, she ran out of the lodge and down to the lake. I plunged in after her, but she was already gone, I’m afraid I panicked then.”

  “Is this the truth?”

  His eyes came up to mine. “I swear it is. I didn’t tell you and Royal because you would have taken any such admission as a confession of guilt.” He looked at his fist; slowly it came unclenched. “I still can’t prove I didn’t knock her out and drown her.”

  “You don’t have to. She didn’t drown in Tahoe. If suicide was in her mind that night, she changed her mind. Evidently she came out of the water after you’d gone.”

  “Then she’s still alive!”

  “She’s dead, but you didn’t kill her. Her father did. He confessed it along with his other murders before he shot himself.”

  “Why in the name of God did he do that?”

  “God only knows. She probably accused him to his face of murdering Dolly.”

  Emotions warred across Campion’s face: incredulity and relief and self-reproach. He tried to wipe them away with his hand.

  “I should never have told Harriet about her father,” he said. “I see now why I should have been honest with you. But I thought you were working for Blackwell, covering up for him.”

  “We were both mistaken about each other. Do you want to straighten me out about a few other matters?”

  “I suppose so. I seem to be on the truth kick.”

  “You were in serious trouble during the Korean War,” I said by way of testing him. “What was it?”

  “It was after the war. We were sitting around in Japan waiting for transport.” He made an impatient outward gesture with his arm. “To make a long story short, I hit the officer in charge of the staging point. I broke his nose. He was a Colonel.”

  “Did you have a reason, apart from the fact that you don’t like Colonels?”

  “My reason may sound foolish to you. He caught me sketching one day and thought it would be dandy if I painted his portrait. I told him I didn’t take orders about my work. We got into a battle of wills. He threatened to keep me over there till I painted him. I hit him. If he’d had a little less rank, or a little more, or if he’d belonged to our unit, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But face had to be saved and I got a year in a detention camp and a D.D. I didn’t paint him, though,” he added with bitter satisfaction.

  “You’re a pretty good hater. What do you like?”

  “The life of the imagination,” he said. “It’s all I’m good for. Every time I try to do something in the actual world I make a mess of it. I never should have married Dolly, for instance.”

  “Why did you?”

  “It’s a hard question. I’ve been thinking about the answers to it ever since I got into this jam. The main thing was the money, of course—I’d be a hypocrite if I denied that. She had a little money, call it a dowry. I was trying to prepare a series of pictures for a show, and I needed money to do it. You always need money, at least I do, and so we struck a bargain.”

  “You knew about her pregnancy?”

  “It was one of the attractions, in a way.”

  “Most men would feel the opposite way.”

  “I’m not most men. I liked the idea of having a child but I didn’t want to be anybody’s father. I didn’t care who the father was, so long as it wasn’t me. Does that sound foolish? It may have something to do with the fact that my old man did the disappearing-father act when I was four years old.” There was a growl of resentment in his voice.

  “Did your father have trouble with the law?”

  He said with a sour mocking grin: “My father was the law. He was a lousy Chicago cop, with both front feet in the trough. A bad act I remember the last time I saw him. I was eighteen at the time, hacking my way through art school. He was helping a blonde into a Cadillac in front of an apartment hotel on the Gold Coast.” He cleared his throat. “Next question.”

  “Getting back to Dolly—I’m not quite clear how you felt about her.”

  “Neither am I. I started out feeling sorry for her. I thought it might develop into something real—that’s an old boyish dream of mine.” His mouth curled in self-irony. “It didn’t. You know the pity that chills the heart? Oddly enough I never went to bed with her. I loved to paint her, though. That’s my way of loving people. I’m not much good at the other ways.”

  “I thought you were a devil with the ladies.”

  He flushed. “I’ve done my share of rutting. A lot of them think it’s artistic to bed with an artist. But there was only one in my life I cared about—and that one didn’t last. I was too fouled up.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Does it matter? Her first name was Anne.”

  “Anne Castle.”

  He gave me a bright astonished look. “Who told you about her?”

  “She did. I was in Ajijic two or three nights ago. She spoke of you with great affection.”

  “Well,” he said. “That’s a fresh note for a change. Is Anne all right?”

  “She probably would be if she didn’t have you to worry about. It broke her heart when you decamped with Harriet. The least you can do is write her a letter.”

  He sat quiet for a time. I think he was composing the letter in his head. To judge by his frowning concentration, he was having a hard time with it.

  “If Anne was important to you,” I said, “why did you take up with Harriet?”

  “I’d already made a commitment.” His eyes were still turned inward on himself.

  “I don’t follow you, Campion.”

  “I didn’t meet Harriet in Mexico, as you seem to think. I met her in my own house in Luna Bay several weeks before I went to Mexico. She came to see Dolly and the baby. She and Dolly were old friends. But Dolly wasn’t there that afternoon—she’d taken the baby in for his monthly checkup. Harriet stood around watching me paint. She was an amateur painter herself, and she got very excited over what I was doing. She was quite an excitable girl.”

  “So?”

  Campion looked at me uneasily. “I couldn’t help thinking what she could do for me, with a little encouragement. I was broke, as usual, and she obviously wasn’t. I thought it would be pleasant to have a patroness. I could stop worrying about the light bill and simply do my work. I made a date with her before Dolly got back with the baby. I saw her that night, and before long we were spending nights together.

  “I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. Harriet acted as though she’d never been with a man. She fell so hard it scared me. She drove over from Tahoe a couple of times a week, and we were in and out
of the motels. I should have had the sense to pull out of the situation. I had a feeling that it would lead to trouble.” He drew in a deep breath.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I didn’t know. But she was a serious girl, too serious, and terribly passionate. I shouldn’t have led her on.”

  “Did you suspect that Blackwell was the baby’s father?”

  He hesitated. “I may have, more or less subconsciously. Harriet said something once, when she was holding the baby in her arms. She called him little brother. It stuck in my mind, though I didn’t realize she was speaking literally.”

  “And Dolly never told you?”

  “No. I didn’t press the point, while she was alive. I didn’t really want to know who the father was. I thought I could love the baby better if he was anonymous. But it turned out I couldn’t love him too well. Him or anybody. Then I messed the whole thing up when I tried to go into orbit with Harriet. I should have stayed home and looked after Dolly and the baby.”

  His voice was low, and I thought I heard the growl of manhood in it. He rose and struck his open left palm with his closed right fist. Shaking hands with himself in an embarrassed way, he went to the window.

  “I was with Harriet the night Dolly was killed,” he said with his back turned.

  “Harriet was the woman you slept with in the Travelers Motel?”

  “That’s right. Slept isn’t quite accurate. We had an argument, and she started back to Tahoe in the middle of the night. I stayed in the room and got drunk. She’d brought me a bottle of her father’s Scotch.” He seemed to take a painful pride in spelling out the details of his humiliation.

  “What was the argument about?”

  “Marriage. She wanted to buy me a Reno divorce. I won’t deny I was tempted, but when it came to a showdown I found I couldn’t do it. I didn’t love Harriet I didn’t love Dolly, either, but I had made a bargain with her to give the boy my name. I kept hoping if I stuck with it I’d learn to love the boy. But it was already too late. When I sobered up enough to drive myself home, Dolly was dead and the boy was gone and the cops were there.”