The Zebra-Striped Hearse

by Ross Macdonald

  “Why didn’t you tell them where you’d spent the night? You had an alibi of sorts.”

  “It didn’t look as if I’d have to use it They questioned me and let me go. As soon as I was free, I got in touch with Harriet at Tahoe. She said I mustn’t on any account drag her or her family into it. She was protecting her father, obviously, though she didn’t say so. She sold me the idea of hiding out after they indicted me, and I spent a bad couple of weeks shut up in their beach house. I wanted to go on to Mexico—Ralph lent me his birth certificate with that in mind—but I had no money.

  “Harriet finally gave me the money for the flight. She said that she would join me in Mexico later, and we could pretend to be strangers, and pick up where we’d left off. We could stay in Mexico or go further down into South America.” He turned from the window—his face had been opened by the light. “I suppose she saw her chance to sew me up for life. And I was tempted, again. I’m a very ambivalent guy.”

  “I’m wondering about Harriet’s motive. You suggested she was protecting her father. Did she know, at that time, that he had murdered Dolly?”

  “I don’t see how she could have.” He fingered the scratches on his face. “Look how she reacted when I told her about my suspicions the other night.”

  “Just when did you develop those suspicions?”

  “It happened over a period of time. Ralph Simpson brought up the name before I left Luna Bay. He’d seen Dolly with Blackwell last summer. Ralph fancied himself as a detective, and he was very interested in a leather button that was found at the scene of the crime. The police mentioned it, too. Do you know anything about that button?”

  “Too much.” I summarized the history of the wandering topcoat.

  “So Blackwell killed Ralph.”

  “He confessed the murder this morning, along with the others.”

  “Poor old Ralph.” Campion lowered himself into a chair and sat for a while in blank-eyed silence. “Ralph should never have got mixed up with me. I’m a moral typhoid carrier.”

  “It’s a thought,” I said. “But you were telling me about your suspicions of Blackwell and how they grew.”

  After another silence he went on: “Ralph started me thinking about Blackwell. Bits and pieces, associations, began to gather, and eventually I had a sort of Gestalt. Some of the things that went into it were Harriet’s interest in the baby, and the slip she made, if it was a slip, about her little brother. Then Dolly started getting money from somewhere, about the time that Harriet turned up at our house. I didn’t understand the relationship between Dolly and Harriet. It was pleasant enough on the surface, but there was a good deal of hostility under it.”

  “That would be natural enough, if Dolly knew you were making love to Harriet.”

  “She didn’t. Anyway, the relationship didn’t change from the first afternoon Harriet came to the house. They greeted each other like two sisters who hated each other but refused to admit it. I can see now why that would be: Harriet knew about Dolly’s fling with her father, and Dolly knew she knew.”

  “You still haven’t told me when you found out.”

  “I got my Gestalt one night in Mexico, after Harriet came. We were talking in my studio, and the subject of her father’s lodge at Tahoe came up, I don’t know how.” He turned his head to one side, as though he had overheard a distant voice. “Yes, I do know. She was hot on the marriage trail again, in spite of the fact that I was wanted for murder. She was fantasying about going back to the States where we could settle down in the lodge and live happily ever after. She got quite lyrical in her descriptions of the place. Oddly enough, I’d heard it all before.”

  “From Harriet?”

  “From Dolly. Dolly used to tell me stories about the sweet old lady who befriended her when she was on her uppers in State Line last summer. She gave me detailed descriptions of the sweet old lady’s house—the beamed ceilings, the lake view, the layout of the rooms. It suddenly hit me that it was Black-well’s house and that Blackwell was the sweet old lady and probably the father of my”—he swallowed the word—“the father of Dolly’s child. I didn’t say a word to Harriet at the time, but I decided to go back to the States with her. I wanted to find out more about the sweet old lady. Well, I have.”

  A complex grief controlled the lines of his face like a magnetic field.

  chapter 31

  GETTING OUT OF my cab at the San Francisco airport, I saw a woman I vaguely recognized standing with a suitcase in front of the main terminal building. She was wearing a tailored suit whose skirt was a little too long for the current fashion. It was Anne Castle, minus her earrings and with the addition of a rakish hat.

  I took the suitcase out of her hand. “May I carry this, Miss Castle?”

  She looked up at my face. Her own was so deeply shadowed by trouble that her vision seemed clouded. Slowly her brow cleared.

  “Mr. Archer! I intended to look you up, and here you are. Surely you didn’t follow me from Los Angeles?”

  “You seem to have followed me. I imagine we both came here for the same reason. Bruce Campion, alias Burke Damis.”

  She nodded gravely. “I heard a report yesterday on the Guadalajara radio. I decided to drop everything and come here. I want to help him even if he did kill his wife. There must be mitigating circumstances.”

  Her upward look was steady and pure. I caught myself on the point of envying Campion, wondering how the careless ones got women like her to care for them so deeply. I said: “Your friend is innocent. His wife was murdered by another man.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  Tears started in her eyes. She stood blind and smiling.

  “We need to talk, Anne. Let’s go some place we can sit down.”

  “But I’m on my way to see him.”

  “It can wait. Hell be busy with the police for some time. They have a lot of questions to ask him, and this is the first day he’s been willing to answer.”

  “Why do they have to question him if he’s innocent?”

  “He’s a material witness. He also has a good deal of explaining to do.”

  “Because he used a false name to cross the border?”

  “That doesn’t concern the local police. It’s the business of the Justice Department. I’m hoping they won’t press charges. A man who’s been wrongly indicted for murder has certain arguments on his side—what you called mitigating circumstances.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ll fight it. Has he done anything else?”

  “I can’t think of anything that’s actionable. But there are some things you should know before you see him. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “I don’t think I’d better. I haven’t been sleeping too well, and I have to keep my wits about me. Could we have coffee?”

  We went upstairs to the restaurant, and over several cups of coffee I told her the whole story of the case. It made more sense in the telling than it had in the acting out. Reflected in her deep eyes, her subtle face, it seemed to be transformed from a raffish melodrama into a tragedy of errors in which Campion and the others had been caught. But I didn’t whitewash him. I thought she deserved to know the worst about him, including his sporadic designs on Harriet’s money and his partial responsibility for her death.

  She reached across the table and stopped me with her hand on my sleeve. “I saw Harriet last night.”

  I looked at her closely. Her eyes were definite, alive with candor.

  “Harriet isn’t dead. Her father must have been lying, or hallucinating. I know I wasn’t.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “In the Guadalajara airport, when I went in to make my reservation. It was about nine-thirty last night. She was waiting for her bag at the end of the ticket counter. I heard her call out that it was azul—blue—and I knew her voice. She’d evidently just come in on the Los Angeles plane.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “I tried to. She didn’t recognize me, or pretended not to. S
he turned away very brusquely and ran out to the taxi stands. I didn’t follow her.”

  “Why not?”

  She answered carefully: “I felt I had no right to interfere with her. I was a little frightened of her, too. She had that terribly bright-faced look. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but I’ve seen that look on other people who were far out.”

  chapter 32

  I FOUND HER late Monday afternoon in a village in Michoacán. The village had an Aztec name which I forget, and a church with Aztec figures carved in some of its ancient stones. A roughly cobbled road like the bed of a dry creek ran past the church.

  A beggar woman in widow’s black met me at the door and followed me into the nave reciting griefs I couldn’t understand, though I could see the scars they had left on her. Her face broke up in wrinkled smiles and blessings when I gave her money. She went out and left me alone in the church with Harriet.

  She was kneeling on the stone floor close to the chancel. She had a black rebozo over her head, and she was as still as the images of the saints along the walls.

  She scrambled to her feet when I said her name. Her mouth worked stiffly, but no words came out. The shawl covering her hair accentuated the stubborn boniness of her face.

  “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes.” Her small voice was made smaller by the cavernous space around us. “How did you know—?”

  “The posadero told me you’ve been here all day.”

  She moved her arm in an abrupt downward gesture. “I don’t mean that. How did you know I was in Mexico?”

  “You were seen—by other Americans.”

  “I don’t believe you. Father sent you to bring me back, didn’t he? He promised that he wouldn’t. But he never kept his promises to me, not once in my life.”

  “He kept this one.”

  “Then why have you followed me here?”

  “I didn’t make any promises, to you or anyone.”

  “But you’re supposed to be working for Father. He said when he put me on the plane that he would call off the dogs once and for all.”

  “He tried to. There isn’t anything more he can do for you now. Your father is dead, Harriet. He shot himself Friday morning.”

  “You’re lying! He can’t be dead!”

  The force of the words shook her body. She raised her hands to cover her face. I could see in her sleeves the flesh-colored tape securing the bandages at her wrists. I had seen such bandages before on would-be suicides.

  “I was there when he shot himself. Before he did, he confessed the murders of Ralph Simpson and Dolly. He also said that he had murdered you. Why would your father do that?”

  Her eyes glittered like wet stone between her fingers. “I have no idea.”

  “I have. He knew that you had committed those two murders. He tried to take the blame for them and arrange it so we wouldn’t press the search for you. Then he silenced himself. I don’t think he wanted to live in any case; he had too much guilt of his own. Ronald Jaimet’s death may have been something less than a murder, but it was something more than an accident. And he must have known that his affair with Dolly led indirectly to your murdering her and Ralph Simpson. He had nothing to look forward to but your trial and the end of the Blackwell name—the same prospect you’re facing now.”

  She removed her hands from her face. It had a queer glazed look, as if it had been fired like pottery. “I hate the Blackwell name. I wish my name was Smith or Jones or Gomez.”

  “It wouldn’t change you or the facts. You can’t lose what you’ve done.”

  “No.” She shook her head despondently. “There’s no hope for me. No deposit, no return, no nothing. I’ve been in here since early morning, trying to make contact. There is no contact.”

  “Are you a member of this Church?”

  “I’m not a member of anything. But I thought I could find peace here. The people seemed so happy yesterday coming out of Mass—so happy and peaceful.”

  “They’re not running away from another life.”

  “You call it life, what I had?” She screwed up her face as though she was trying to cry, but no tears came. “I did my best to end my so-called life. The first time the water was too cold. The second time Father wouldn’t let me. He broke in the bathroom door and stopped me. He bandaged my wrists and sent me here; he said that Mother would look after me. But when I went to her house in Ajijic she wouldn’t even come out and talk to me. She sent Keith out to the gate to fob me off with a lie. He tried to tell me that she had gone away and taken the money with her.”

  “Keith Hatchen told you the truth. I’ve talked to him, and your mother as well. She went to California to try and help you. She’s waiting in Los Angeles.”

  “You’re a liar.” Her sense of grievance rose like a storm in her throat. “You’re all liars, liars and betrayers. Keith betrayed me to you, didn’t he?”

  “He said that you had been to his house.”

  “See!” She pointed a finger at my eyes. “Everybody betrayed me, including Father.”

  “I told you he didn’t. He did his best to cover up for you. Your father loved you, Harriet.”

  “Then why did he betray me with Dolly Stone?” She stabbed the air with her finger like a prosecutor.

  “Men get carried away sometimes. It wasn’t done against you.”

  “Wasn’t it? I know better. She turned him against me when we were just little kids. I wasn’t so little, but she was. She was so pretty, like a little doll. Once he bought her a doll that was almost as big as she was. He bought me a doll just like it to make it up to me. I didn’t want it. I was too old for dolls. I wanted my daddy.”

  Her voice had thinned to a childish treble. It sounded through the spaces of the old building like an archaic voice piping out of the crypts of the past.

  “Tell me about the murders, Harriet.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “You want to, though. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

  “I tried to tell the priest. My Spanish wasn’t good enough. But you’re no priest.”

  “No, I’m just a man. You can tell me, anyway. Why did you have to kill Dolly?”

  “At least you understand that I did have to. First she stole my father and then she stole my husband.”

  “I thought Bruce was her husband.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t a marriage. I could sense that it wasn’t a marriage as soon as I saw them with each other. They were just two people living together, facing in opposite directions. Bruce wanted out of it. He told me so himself, the very first day.”

  “Why did you go there that first day?”

  “Father asked me to. He was afraid to go near her himself, but he said that no one could criticize me if I paid her a visit and gave her a gift of money. I had to see the baby, anyway. My little brother. I believed that seeing him would make me feel—differently. I was so terribly torn asunder when Father told me about him.” She raised both fists beside her head and shook them, not at me. She said between her fists: “And there Bruce was. I fell in love with him as soon as I saw him. He loved me, too. He didn’t change till afterward.”

  “What changed him?”

  “She did, with her wiles and stratagems. He turned against me suddenly one night. We were in a motel on the other side of the Bay, and he sat there drinking my father’s whisky and said he wouldn’t leave her. He said he’d made a bargain he couldn’t break. So I broke it for him. I took it into my hands and broke it.”

  She brought her fists together and broke an invisible thing. Then her arms fell limp at her sides. Her eyes went sleepy. I thought for a minute she was going to fall, but she caught herself and faced me in a kind of shaky somnambulistic defiance.

  “After I killed her, I took the money back. I’d seen where she hid it, in the baby’s mattress. I had to move him to get at it, and he started crying. I took him in my arms to quiet him. Then I had an overmastering urge to take him out of that place and run
away with him. I started down the road with him, but suddenly I was overcome by fear. The darkness was so dense I could hardly move. Yet I could see myself, a dreadful woman walking in darkness with a little baby. I was afraid he’d be hurt.”

  “That you would hurt him?”

  Her chin pressed down onto her chest. “Yes. I put him in somebody else’s car for safekeeping. I gave him up, and I’m glad I did. At least my little brother is all right.” It was a question.

  “He’s all right. His grandmother is looking after him. I saw him in Citrus Junction the other day.”

  “I almost did,” she said, “the night I killed Ralph Simpson, It’s funny how these things keep following you. I thought I was past the sound barrier but I heard him crying that night, in Elizabeth Stone’s house. I wanted to knock on the door and visit him. I had my hand lifted to knock when I saw myself again, a dreadful woman in outer darkness, in outer space, driving a man’s dead body around in my car.”

  “You mean Ralph Simpson.”

  “Yes. He came to the house that night to talk to Father. I recognized the coat he was carrying and intercepted him. He agreed to go for a drive and discuss the situation. I told him Bruce was hiding in the beach house—he said any friend of Bruce was a friend of his, poor little man—and I drove him out to the place above the beach. I stabbed him with the icepick that Mrs. Stone gave my father.” Her clenched fist struck weakly at her breast. “I intended to throw his body in the sea, but I changed my mind. I was afraid that Bruce would find it before I got him out of there. I threw the coat in the sea instead and drove to Citrus Junction.”

  “Why did you pick Isobel’s yard to bury him in?”

  “It was a safe place. I knew there was nobody there.” Her eyes, her entire face, seemed to be groping blindly for a meaning. “It kept it in the family.”

  “Were you trying to throw the blame on Isobel?”

  “Maybe I was. I don’t always know why I do things, especially at night. I get the urge to do them and I do them.”