Home Sweet Homicide

by Craig Rice

  But if she did, she’d never find out anything about him!

  She walked on up the hill, trying not to look at the roadster, pretending to whistle.

  He might take just one shot, with a forty-five. He was a good shot. She wondered if it would hurt. She wondered how Mother and Dinah and Archie would act when the police broke the news to them. It was only about twenty feet to the roadster now, and she could see him watching her.

  Would they put her picture in the papers? Not that awful one with the hair ribbons, she hoped. Actually, she didn’t have a good picture. This was no time to be murdered.

  He was watching her, but not making any move. Maybe he intended to let her walk past the car, and then shoot. Well, she’d walk past the car, pretending not to notice him, and then duck, quick, behind that tree.

  “Hello there.”

  April jumped, gave a small scream, and stood frozen. Then she looked at him. He wasn’t going to murder her. He probably hadn’t murdered anybody. Not that nice young man, with the tanned face and blue eyes.

  She was all over being scared, but she was still mad. She said, “You startled me!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t mean to.” He was grinning at her.

  April determined not to grin back. She looked at him coldly and said, “Quite a coincidence, meeting you here!” It was a line she’d once heard Mother use to someone she didn’t like.

  “It’s no coincidence,” he said cheerfully. “I came up here to see you. I didn’t want to go ring your doorbell, under the circumstances. So I’ve been parked here, hoping you’d go past.”

  “How nice of you,” April said. She hoped her voice sounded steadier than it felt. She lifted her chin and said, “So you’re Rupert van Deusen!”

  “Quite right,” the young man said, grinning even more broadly. “And so you’re the—reliable witness! I suggest—let’s be friends!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pierre Desgranges put down his brush and looked gravely at his young companion. “Something is troubling you, yes?”

  “No,” Dinah said. “Nothing is troubling me, no.” She tried to put conviction into it but she knew, as she heard her own voice, that she’d failed. She felt worried and thoroughly miserable. What the heck was she going to ask nice Mr. Desgranges?

  April should have handled this. Or even Archie. Faced with the situation, she suddenly realized that, as Mother had said more than once, she definitely wasn’t the tactful type.

  She glanced at Mr. Desgranges, who was squinting at his easel. He looked gentle and friendly. Certainly not like a murderer. His funny little brown beard wagged up and down as he looked from his easel to the ocean and back again.

  Oh, golly, she didn’t know what to say to him! So, she said nothing. She sat, silent and uphappy, and watched him paint.

  And Pierre Desgranges glanced at her several times out of the corner of his eye.

  Just engage him in conversation, April had said. And bring the subject around to what you want to find out. It sounded easy! April would have known just what to do. Where was April, anyway? What was she up to? Dinah opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Oh, darn everything, anyway!

  She had to say something, and not just sit here like a gook.

  Oh, Mr. Desgranges—”

  He went on painting, carefully avoiding looking at her. “Yes, my young friend?”

  “Tell me—” she gulped. “Why do you always paint pictures just of the ocean?”

  He squinted thoughtfully at his easel. “Why do you make pictures of houses and people and horses?”

  “Well,” Dinah said, “because I like houses and people and horses.”

  “There you are,” he said. “I like the ocean.”

  “Oh,” she said. And then, “Why?” You sound just like Archie, she told herself furiously, only not so bright.

  “Because,” he said simply, “it is beautiful.”

  She wanted to get up, say “G’by, I’ve gotta get home now,” and run home fast. And let April finish this. But if she did, April would never stop making fun of her.

  She said, “Oh,” again, and stopped. Think of something, she told herself. “Oh, I thought maybe it was because you wished you were on it.”

  He put down his brush for a moment. “On it?”

  Dinah nodded, feeling like a fool. “In a boat.”

  “Yes, of course, in a boat. Now, why should I wish to be on the ocean, in a boat?”

  “Well,” she said, “after all, your home is—I mean, well, if you were homesick, and you wished you were on a boat going back to your own country, then you might paint pictures of the ocean.” She drew a quick breath.

  He looked at her in surprise. “But this is my home,” he said. “This is my country. I have no desire ever to go away.”

  Dinah said, “Oh” for the third time, and was silent. That hadn’t gotten her anywhere.

  Engage him in conversation, April had said! She’d fix April, when she got home!

  It was a long silence. Finally Dinah said, “Have you been painting pictures a long time?”

  He nodded. “A very long time,” he said gravely.

  Whatever you do, Dinah thought, don’t say “Oh” again. She said at last, “Where did you paint pictures before you came here?”

  “In Paris,” Pierre Desgranges said, picking up another brush.

  “But you couldn’t paint the ocean there,” Dinah said.

  “No,” he agreed.

  “Then what did you paint?”

  “Houses and people and horses. And occasionally trees.”

  She caught back another “Oh” just in time. “But you like the ocean better?”

  “Much better,” he said.

  She darn near asked “Why?” again. The conversation had gone in a complete circle and come back to its starting point. She glanced unhappily at the clock up on the lifeguard station. It had been nearly half an hour, and she hadn’t learned anything except that Mr. Desgranges used to live in Paris, and that he painted the ocean because he liked it.

  She tried to think of questions. Like, Where were you between four and five Wednesday afternoon? Or, did you ever hear of a man named Armand von Hoehne? Maybe, Did you know Mrs. Sanford very well? None of them seemed either tactful or particularly useful.

  “Mr. Desgranges—”

  This time he put down his brush, turned around, and looked at her. “Yes, my child? What is it?” He said it almost sharply, she thought.

  “Did you murder Mrs. Sanford because she’d found out you weren’t really Mr. Desgranges, that you were really Armand von Hoehne?”

  Immediately, she realized what she’d done. But those had been the only words that came to her mind. How many times in her life had she heard Mother—and April—say, “Dinah, don’t say whatever you happen to think.” Now, she’d done it again—this time, with probably disastrous results. April would never forgive her for the way she’d muffed this. And—if Mr. Desgranges was the murderer—he might—

  Pierre Desgranges stared at her, speechless. Then he began, slowly and methodically, to put away his paints and brushes and to fold up his easel. Dinah felt panicked. Not a running-away panic, but a frozen-to-the-spot panic.

  Finally he stared at her again. This time he said, “Great God in heaven!” Dinah by then, was too terrified to notice that he’d spoken without the funny little accent the three young Carstairs had admired and tried to imitate.

  Maybe he was going to murder her. Maybe there was a gun, a forty-five, in his pocket. Maybe he’d shoot her, and then hide her in an abandoned swimming pool. She couldn’t run away, there wasn’t any place to run to, on this wide stretch of sand. And there was nobody in sight, in case she should scream. One thought ran crazily through her head, “He mustn’t murder me, because there won’t be anyone to cook the dinner. Mother’s writing, and April doesn’t know how to fry chicken, and nobody knows where I hid the watermelon I got for a surprise.”

  “Please,” she
said, in a tight little voice, “please don’t. Because nobody knows about it but us kids, and we certainly wouldn’t tell anybody because we don’t care if you are Armand von Hoehne, and Mother says Mrs. Sanford was an evil woman, and so if you did murder her, honest, we don’t mind and we won’t tell. But if you do have to, please call up the house and tell April there’s a watermelon hidden behind the potatoes in the cooler, because it won’t keep.”

  “If I do have to what?” he said, a trifle dazed.

  “Sh-sh-shoot me!” Dinah said closing her eyes tight and screwing up her face.

  He dropped the paint kit and began to laugh. He laughed until tears ran down his brown face. “Oh, Lord!” he gasped, “oh, Lord!” He sat down hard on the sand, buried his face in his hands, and went on laughing. Then suddenly Dinah began to laugh with him, tremulously at first, then heartily.

  “Of all the silly things,” Dinah said at last, catching her breath. “But—my gosh!”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing again, so loudly that a pair of gulls, circling near by, swooped away hastily and fled, terrified, out to sea.

  Finally he wiped his eyes with a bright bandanna handkerchief, blew his nose loudly, and took out his pipe. “So I look like a murderer,” he said.

  “No, you. don’t,” Dinah said. “That’s what makes it so funny that I was so scared.”

  His face grew very sober. “Dinah, my child,” he said, “this is a very serious business.”

  “You don’t have to bother with the accent,” Dinah said. “I’ve heard you without it, now. But I won’t give you away.”

  “I hope you won’t,” he said. “Because it is serious. Tell me—what made you think—”

  “Well, heck,” Dinah said. “You are Armand von Hoehne. And there were all those letters Mrs. Sanford had. And after all she’d blackmailed away all the money you got from selling the jewels—”

  “Dinah,” he said, and his voice was very grave. “Where did you get those letters, and where are they now?”

  “I—” She paused. “I can’t tell. It’s a secret between me and April and Archie.”

  “You’d better count me in on the secret,” he said, “if you want me, in return, to tell you about Armand von Hoehne.”

  “I can’t,” she said miserably. “Because maybe you wouldn’t keep it a secret. Maybe you’d tell the police, or Mother, or somebody.”

  “You can tell me,” he said. “Because if I gave away your secret, you could give away mine. You see, we’ve got to trust each other.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. She did trust him. And yet—

  “Well,” she said slowly, “it was only because we wanted Mother to solve Mrs. Sanford’s murder, for the publicity, so she wouldn’t have to work so hard. And so we got in and searched Mrs. Sanford’s house, and we found the letters. That’s all.” The other details, she decided, could be left out of the story.

  “You—searched the house—and—found the letters,” he said after her, incredulously.

  “Sure,” Dinah said. “For us, it was easy.”

  “I have no doubt,” he said, puffing at his pipe. “Dinah, where are the letters now?”

  “They—” She didn’t want to say they were hidden because he might try to find them. She didn’t want to say they were destroyed, because that would be an out-and-out lie. She said, “They will never see the light of day again!”

  He looked at her closely, recognized the light of truth in her eyes, and said, “Thank heavens!”

  “Now,” Dinah said, “you will explain to me about being Armand von Hoehne, or I will tell the police, so there.” That might not be engaging him tactfully in conversation, but she was willing to bet it would bring results.

  “Dinah,” he said. “This is a serious business. It isn’t a game. I’m not talking about Mrs. Sanford now, that has nothing to do with it. You’ve got me in a corner where I have to explain to you, but if I do—I think you’ll understand how important it is never to tell one single solitary soul.”

  “Except April,” Dinah said hastily. “I never could get away with trying to keep something from April. She always finds out.”

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll have to include April. Now, pay attention. I’m not Pierre Desgranges, and I’m not Armand von Hoehne. I’m just plain ordinary Peter Desmond, and I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.”

  Dinah gasped, and stared at him. The beret, the beard, the painting kit, everything. He didn’t look like any Peter Desmond from Cleveland. He looked—well, foreign. And even without the little accent, there was something—different—about his voice. Besides, he was a painter, and all painters were foreigners.

  “My father was in the consular service,” he said, “and I was brought up all over the world. I went to school in England, and France, and Switzerland, and Italy, and even Persia. But,” he said, “there was an Armand von Hoehne. The one who was described in those letters. He lived in Paris, just as I did. He died. At the time, it was considered expedient for me to assume his identity and be smuggled into this country as a refugee from the Gestapo. He would have assumed another name, had it been he who arrived here safely, and so I assumed one. Pierre Desgranges matched the initials on a cigarette case that was the last present my Mother, ever gave me.”

  “But why?” Dinah demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  He sighed. “From where I sit, making very bad paintings of the Pacific Ocean, I can see for miles up and down the beach. There might be enemy agents who would like to arrange signals, from these convenient locations. They might be frightened away, before they could be caught, by someone looking too official. But no one would distrust an eccentric, middle-aged French painter, who”—he grinned—“does not speak it very good, the English.”

  Dinah said, “Gee!” and gazed at him with awe. Why, he was almost a G-man. Then suddenly her practical nature got the best of her. She remembered how the detective always handled things in Mother’s books.

  “Just the same,” she said severely, “I think you ought to tell me exactly where you were Wednesday, when Mrs. Sanford was being murdered.”

  He looked at her, smiling. “I was here on the beach, of course, in full view of hundreds of people. It was so warm and pleasant a day that I spread out my blanket and took a nap on the sand.” He rose and began unfolding his easel. “The light is still good,” he said, “I think I will continue to paint.”

  Dinah drew a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you didn’t murder her,” she said. “But I sure wish I knew who did.”

  “Leave those problems to the police,” he advised her, opening his painting box. “They are experienced in these matters. At your age, you should be thinking of other things.”

  Dinah didn’t answer that one. She said, “Well, g’by. I gotta go home and start the dinner now. And thanks.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” he said, looking at his painting. “Remember now, not a word—-not one word.”

  “Except to April,” Dinah said.

  “Of course, except to April.”

  She said good-by again and raced across the beach to the sidewalk. Oh, golly, when she told April this! Maybe she wasn’t the tactful type, but this time she’d certainly done them both proud!

  She was halfway home when suddenly she remembered something. Anyone doing any offshore signaling would certainly do it at night, with lights and stuff. While Mr. Desgranges—Mr. Desmond, she meant—did his painting in the daytime.

  She was walking slower, and was about two blocks from the house, when she remembered something else. The real Armand von Hoehne could be identified by a dueling scar on his arm. And Mr. Desgranges-Desmond always kept his sleeves pulled down.

  She was walking very slowly and thoughtfully, a block from the house, when she remembered something else. It hadn’t been warm and pleasant on the beach that Wednesday and there hadn’t been hundreds of people. She remembered very well. Because the three of them had gone down with an idea of spending an hour or two.
It was warm and pleasant—almost hot—up on the hillside where they lived, but on the beach it had been damp and chilly and foggy, and there hadn’t been a soul in sight. That was how they’d happened to be at home in time to hear the shots that killed Flora Sanford.

  Maybe, she thought unhappily, April should have handled this, after all!

  Chapter Twenty

  “We can talk quite freely now,” the tanned, good-looking young man said, “because we’re friends.”

  “Purely an optical delusion,” April said haughtily. “I never felt less friendly in my life.”

  He shook his head sadly and said, “St-st-st-st! When we have so much in common. I wouldn’t have expected that of you, Miss Reliable Witness.”

  April stared at him coldly. “If it’s any of my business, how did you find out I was the reliable witness?”

  “Mm,” he said. “Curiosity does rise to the surface, doesn’t it? If you must know—and I think you must—it turns out I’d met the reporter who wrote that story. I looked him up and said, quote, who was that reliable witness, unquote. He described you. Quote. A beautiful blonde girl—”

  “I admit I’m beautiful,” April said, “but I’m not blonde. I’m tawny. Your reporter friend must be color-blind. It’s been very nice meeting you, and now if you’ll excuse me—” There! That ought to sound dignified enough to squelch him!

  “Oh, but I won’t excuse you,” he said, “until you answer a question that’s been bothering me.”

  “Yes?” April said.

  “Where did you find that wonderful, beautiful name, Rupert van Deusen?”

  She stared at him. Something Mother had said once came into her mind. If you ever have to bluff, be sure to bluff first. She lifted her eyebrows, tried to look unconcerned, and said, “Why, you ought to remember. When you were talking to Mrs. Sanford, and she was blackmailing you. You said, ‘As sure as my name is Rupert van Deusen—’ ”

  “Uh-uh,” he said reprovingly. “You’ve got it wrong, according to the newspaper account. ‘Rupert’ was used in one sentence, and ‘van Deusen’ in another.”