The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  “The atomizer?”

  “What atomizer?” Brainard said.

  Rick described it for him and explained how Tom Ashley had found it and taken it with him without meaning to.

  “There was a date on it,” he said. “August 9, 1956. Sam Crombie, a detective who is helping me, said the date didn’t have to mean much. He said a man in love could find plenty of excuses to give a woman a present and that such a date might be important only to them.

  “He checked on the atomizer this afternoon,” he said, “and found it came from Asbury’s. It was purchased three days before that date—August 6—and paid for in cash. The police can find out who bought it but we had to make our own assumptions. We figured it was Farrell,” he said and digressed to speak of the activities of Deegan and Lynch.

  “They searched Nancy Heath’s apartment. They searched my apartment and house but they took nothing. Crombie and I figured they were after the atomizer and we know they were working for Farrell. We thought the atomizer had spilled out of Frieda’s bag and Farrell wanted it so it could not be traced to him. Then I remembered something.”

  He digressed again to explain how he and Crombie had searched Frieda’s apartment the morning after she had been killed.

  “There were some carbons of letters she had written to the office when she was abroad. I happened to read one that was written exactly a year before on August 6th.”

  “The day the atomizer was bought,” Brainard said.

  “Right,” Rick said, “and I couldn’t figure why Farrell”—he glanced across the room—“would buy an atomizer for Frieda and have it marked August 9 when he couldn’t possibly hope to get it to her in time. She was in Geneva. She was going to Lake Como and Milan and Genoa. It made no sense. What did make some sense was the fact that I was doing a portrait of Elinor that had to be done tomorrow—the 9th—because of a very special occasion.”

  He looked at the woman. “According to the Bulletin you and Austin were married six years ago tomorrow. August 9, 1956 was your fifth wedding anniversary. Austin bought that atomizer for you. He had it marked. He paid in cash because he wanted to give you a present he had paid for himself and not something on a charge account the way he bought almost everything else.… That’s why you had to have that portrait tomorrow, isn’t it, Elinor?”

  When she made no reply he turned to Brainard. “They must have learned the police had found no atomizer. They couldn’t know Ashley had it, and that left Nancy and me. If either of us had it, or turned it over to the police, it might not be too hard to prove that the atomizer was not Frieda’s.

  “I tried to get Clyde Eastman before I came,” he said to the woman. “I wanted to see if he ever remembered having seen Frieda use such an atomizer, but that can wait. For now I have to assume it belonged to you and the fact that Ashley found it on the floor proves that you were there that night.… You must have dropped your bag, too.”

  She still had not moved and her self-control was quite remarkable. “Is that all you have, Rick? It isn’t very much, is it? Because you see, even assuming you are right about it, there could be only one person who could prove the atomizer had ever been on your living room floor.… And he’s dead.”

  Rick looked at her in amazement because what she said was so true. Her composure was almost unbelievable, but what bothered him most was the fact that she could think so clearly under pressure. He took a small breath and tried again, the sheen of perspiration coating his angular face and some new dryness in his throat.

  “The other day when Nancy and I were here the portrait bothered me. I’ve always been pretty good on likenesses but it seemed then that I’d missed. It was not the same face I had painted and I didn’t know why; neither did Nancy. It didn’t occur to me that there was a reason why the nice things I had once seen in your face were no longer there. What I saw was strain and fear and uncertainty and I wasn’t smart enough to sense it. But habit is a funny thing, Elinor, and you’ve always made it a point to be very gracious about shaking hands.”

  “Oh?”

  “Each time you came to my studio and each time you left you shook hands. You did it when you left on Monday afternoon and I thought about it at the time. But on Wednesday afternoon when we came you didn’t shake hands with me. You didn’t shake hands when I introduced you to Nancy. You gave her your left. You had a scarf in your lap just as you have now and you kept your right hand out of sight.

  “That telephone call I got earlier was from a lawyer. The police told me that there was a trace of blood in Frieda’s mouth. The lawyer checked with the medical examiner and there was no sign of a cut or wound inside Frieda’s mouth. Which means it was not her blood. She fought back when you tried to get her by the throat, didn’t she? Where did the blood come from, Elinor? Did she manage to bite your hand?”

  As he paused he saw the woman push the scarf aside and raise her right hand. She turned it over and from where he sat there was not much he could see.

  “It hardly shows now,” she said. “I doubt if the police could prove very much by that. It was clever of you to think of it, Rick, but it isn’t important, is it? And what about the motive? Exactly how did I happen to be at your place Monday night, or was that coincidence too?”

  “Look here,” said Brainard, who was never a patient man. “Let’s stop all this nonsense. I say it’s time the police took over and—”

  “Please.”

  It was the same cool, controlled voice that had cut him off before and it stopped him again.

  “We’re here to talk this over, aren’t we? I’d like to hear what else Rick has to say.”

  She looked back at him and all at once he felt a thrust of resentment where none had been before. Such calculated effrontery rubbed him the wrong way and he suddenly realized that this woman was no longer deserving of any sympathy. She had killed Frieda, probably in a fit of passionate anger rather than with premeditation, but she had shot Ashley down deliberately, and now Rick leaned forward again, his jaw tight and his voice curt.

  “All right, Elinor,” he said. “I think you knew Austin was having an affair with Frieda and had been for some time.” He heard Brainard sputter some unintelligible sound but ignored him. “If I have to guess I’d say you already had Deegan and Lynch working for you. Austin got them in a hurry the morning after the murder, so I say you already knew about them—not that it matters. The point is, you were afraid that this time you’d lose your husband. This was not some attractive number who had been induced to spend the night with him. This was serious.

  “Until then you controlled Austin because you had the money and you knew how important it was to him. But Frieda had a nice income and in a few years she’d have the principal. You knew I was in love with Nancy. From other talks we’d had while you were sitting for me you knew Frieda had refused to give me a divorce. But Monday she phoned while you were there. You heard what I said about still wanting the divorce, which could only mean that Frieda had changed her mind and was willing to talk it over.”

  He turned to Brainard. “You had dinner with her that night. What did she say about a divorce? Are you the one who insisted she ask for custody of Ricky?”

  Brainard’s troubled gaze held for a moment and then he glanced down at his hands. He nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said.

  “But she decided she wanted one anyway, didn’t she?”

  Again the nod and now Rick continued to Elinor. “In your mind there could only be one reason why Frieda had changed her mind. Did you accuse Austin? Did he deny it?”

  He paused and said: “It doesn’t matter because deny it or not I say you forced him to drive to my place. There’s a little lane just down the road and there was a car in it that night when Nancy let me out in front of the house. You knew Frieda was coming at nine and you were there ahead of time. You didn’t expect me to come out after our talk but you knew Frieda would and you were ready to pull up alongside her car and have it out with her one way or another. Instead of that I came out
and stormed off down the road. When Frieda didn’t come out right away you had Austin drive across the road and help you out of the car while you went in alone.”

  As he hesitated his mind evolved a picture of what must have happened. He could almost see the woman’s movements as she made her labored way with her crutch and crippled leg. Pride made her avoid help when she could and she had gone into the living room to find a furious and thwarted Frieda, who by then had picked herself off the floor and was probably emotionally unable to listen to reason. He knew what Frieda would be like under such circumstances but he saw no point in guessing at details. He said so. He said he did not know what happened then.

  “She must have knocked your bag out of your hand,” he said, “and it spilled open. That’s the only way the atomizer could have skidded under the divan without your knowing it. You picked up your other things—did you have that gun with you then?—and when you left and realized what you had done you made Austin help you. Isn’t that the way it happened, Elinor?”

  He took a breath. “You had to tell him, didn’t you? You had to have help and he could give it or get cut off without a dime. You made him help you into your car. You got the idea of driving Frieda’s convertible off to confuse the police. You made Austin follow you to South Norwalk and park it near the station. Then when the police came you could tell them you and Austin were together all evening.”

  He stopped then because he had run out of words. He reached for a handkerchief to mop his face and dry his wet palms and the woman still sat there unmoved. The mask of her self-control remained intact and if her voice was no longer so steady it reflected no fear.

  “You make it sound very convincing, Rick,” she said. “I suppose it could have happened that way.… But you can’t prove it.” She paused. “Can you?”

  “No,” Rick said. “But I can prove you killed Tom Ashley and that should be enough.”

  For the first time then he saw the uncertainty in her dark-blue eyes. Her lower lip trembled and she caught it with her teeth. When she had mastered the spasm her head came up again.

  “Can you really? Hew, Rick?”

  “You were ready with that gun when Tom came out of his house last night. There was no longer any question in your mind about killing him. Whatever he had seen that first night was enough to convict you and he had run out of time. When he stepped up to the lowered window you shot him twice. But he didn’t fall, did he?”

  She turned back to Rick. “I told Austin we would have it out that night, the three of us. I made him come. I told him if he didn’t I not only would cut him off but I would kill Frieda, and I think I meant it.… I knew she was due at your place at nine and Austin parked the car in that little lane where you said he did. When Frieda came out I was going to have Austin crowd her to the side of the road. Out there in the country with no one to help her I knew I’d get the truth.

  “Only she didn’t come out,” she said. “You did. So I had Austin drive up beside her car. I made him help me out and I went inside with my crutch and when she saw me she started screaming at me. I don’t know what happened between you—”

  “She slapped me,” Rick said, admitting his shame aloud for the first time, “and I slapped her back and she fell. It was the first time I had ever touched her and that’s why I got out. I was afraid of what I might do.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Elinor said. “And what we said to each other I will never remember. We simply screamed at each other and I was standing by the divan and she pushed me—hard. I fell back,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper as her mind recreated the scene.

  “But as I went back on the divan I grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward me.” She glanced down. “I have a lot of strength in my hands now; even the left one though it is beginning to feel prickly at times. I hung on and twisted her wrist and she went to her knees in front of me.

  “That’s when she bit me,” she said. “She put her teeth in the back of my hand and that infuriated me even more and somehow I had her by the throat with one hand. I jerked the other one free and twisted it in that scarf. I hung on until she was quiet and when I finally let go she slumped down and lay still.… That’s how it happened. I hadn’t planned it that way. I had no plan at all except to protect what was mine.”

  Rick believed her. It was easy to visualize the step-by-step progression that led to murder and now he sat very still as she continued.

  “Nearly everything had spilled from my bag. I didn’t see the atomizer but my compact was open and some of the powder had spilled onto the rug. I thought the police might be able to trace it, so after I had picked up my things I opened Frieda’s bag so it would look as if it had been dropped that way. I sprinkled a little powder from her compact so it would mix with mine and left it open so the police would think it came from there. I made my way outside. Austin was pacing back and forth. He’d heard us screaming but he’d been afraid to come in—”

  “He didn’t have to help you,” Brainard cut in. “When he found out it was murder he—”

  This time she interrupted. “Oh, yes, he did have to help, Mr. Brainard. I told him exactly what I intended to do. I told him I was changing my will in the morning to cut him off. If I was convicted of murder and had to pay the penalty he wouldn’t get a penny. If he helped and I could get away with it I would then fix the will so he would inherit everything.

  “I never had much doubt about Austin,” she said. “Austin has a weakness, Mr. Brainard. All his life he has worshiped material things like fine cars and good clothes, and the right clubs and the best restaurants. I think he prizes that good life of his more than anything. When we got home and I missed the atomizer he was already involved too deeply to back out.”

  Rick cleared his throat as she finished. “Tom Ashley saw you,” he said. “He wanted to see Frieda that night, too.”

  “He saw us drive the cars away. When he went in and found Frieda he knew what must have happened.… He came to me the next day and told me what he knew. He did not blame me. I guess he felt sorry for me or—maybe he realized mat in a way I had done him a favor. But he was a friend of yours and he said you were in trouble. He said if you were indicted for murder he would have to tell the truth. I had to agree to what he said.”

  “Yes,” Rick said because it was the sort of thing Ashley would do. “And last night he telephoned you as soon as I left. He told you he couldn’t hold out any longer, that he would have to tell the police in the morning. You begged for a chance to talk to him again. You must have said you would drive right over.”

  “Yes.”

  “With that gun. Knowing exactly what you intended to do.”

  “Yes, I knew. I made myself look at Ashley not as a person but as a threat that had to be removed. Once you have killed you can never be the same. Your droughts are not normal thoughts. There is always the fear. With me it was not the fear of my life but the fear of spending what little time I have left in prison or a death cell.”

  Her left hand picked up the gun and she inspected it with care.

  “I have no excuse. I could say that I was temporarily insane—and perhaps I was—but all I know for sure is that I was glad it was dark, that I could not see his face. I pulled the trigger and the gun went off twice and he did not fall. I remember my terror when he grabbed for it before I could fire the third shot. I never knew where it went but I saw him stagger back and start to collapse. I do not remember driving back but if you had called a minute earlier I would not have been here to answer.… You were not bluffing about the third bullet, were you, Rick? You really did find it in the car?”

  “It’s there now,” Rick said.

  “All right.” Brainard stood up, his voice low but savage. “That’s enough. I’m phoning the police.”

  “Wait, Mr. Brainard. There’s a better way.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I think there is. If you try to call now I will have to shoot. You may be killed, and Rick, too. That I will also be killed is
no threat to me now. Must there be more killing?”

  “All you have to do is put down that gun and there won’t be any more killing.”

  “I’ve told you the truth. The bullet in the car will give the police the proof they need. I’m not asking for sympathy. I have no use for it. But I am still in a position to bargain.”

  “No bargains,” Brainard said.

  Rick eased himself off the divan. He watched Brainard back toward the telephone, the gun in his hand leveled. He saw the woman point the little automatic, and spoke quickly as some strange and shapeless fear took hold of him.

  “Hold it!” he snapped, wanting only to gain time enough to think. “What do you mean, bargain?”

  The woman looked at him. “I want your word that you will not go to the police until morning.”

  “No,” Brainard said.

  Farrell was on his feet now, his gaze bright with terror and uncertainty as it flicked from his wife to Brainard and back again.

  “Elinor—”

  “Be quiet, Austin!” Farrell appealed to Brainard. “Don’t be a fool. What difference does it make to you? You’ve got what you wanted.” He took a tortured breath. “She means it. Can’t you see that?”

  “Until midnight then, Mr. Brainard,” Elinor said. “Give me your word—”

  “So you can swallow a handful of sleeping pills and take the easy way out? No, by God! You killed my daughter and you’re going to pay for it just like any other murderer.”

  He was reaching behind him for the telephone now and Rick could feel the stiffness in the backs of his legs, the sharp tingling of his nerve ends. The enervating weakness that held him momentarily immobile came from the awful sense of helplessness as he understood what must inevitably happen.

  For he knew Brainard had made up his mind and the decision was not based on reason but on the stubborn, uncompromising, and vindictive traits that had so often motivated his actions. But there was courage here, too, and the threat of the other gun did not seem to bother him. His thoughts, if he had any, must have been centered on what happened to his daughter as his groping fingers found the telephone.