Murder Twice Told

by Donald Hamilton

  When the green Pontiac came up the drive, Phillips recognized it but could not remember to whom it belonged. A man was driving. Then a girl got out and stood in the drive a little irresolutely, looking toward the house. She had an abruptly upturned nose in a square, small, almost childish face; and her complexion was as clear as Christine Wells’s. Her body was all legs. It was the girl who had driven the other car; who had given him a lift from the courthouse after the inquest. She was wearing a black peasant skirt that had a band of bright embroidery near the hem, and a wide white patent-leather belt that made her waist seem very small. Her thin, short-sleeved white blouse looked just right for high school.

  She turned and told the man in the car to wait a minute, and came running across the lawn toward the house. Phillips liked the way she ran. Most girls ran cautiously and uneasily, as if they were put together with safety pins. He liked the way her short brown hair looked in the sunshine. He liked everything about her, in fact, except that he could not for the moment remember her name. Then it came to him: Shirley. Shirley Carlson. He went forward and opened the screen door.

  “Oh, I was afraid you weren’t…” Shirley Carlson caught her breath. “We were just driving into town and wondered if you’d…”

  He could not help laughing.

  “Did I say something?” the girl asked, flushing a little.

  “No, it’s swell of you, Miss Carlson,” he said hastily. “Really, it’s swell, it’s just that everybody…”

  She touched her hair and said, a little stiffly, “Yes, Dad said your friends would probably be taking care of you all right. I just thought… Well, Dad’s waiting in the car…”

  “Can’t you come in for a drink? Both of you?”

  “Oh, no, we’ve got to get to town before the banks close, Mr. Phillips.” She retreated down the steps. He could see it occur to her that he might think she was embarrassed or annoyed at finding that she had made her father drive several miles out of the way on a fruitless errand. “Come down to the car, why don’t you?” she asked, smiling quickly. “I’d like you to meet my father.”

  As he walked across the lawn beside her, he found himself thinking that even though his hands were not very large he could probably make them meet around her if she sucked in a little. He thought he would like to try it. A tall man in a gray summer worsted suit got out of the car as they approached.

  “Dad, this is Mr. Phillips,” the girl said, a little awkwardly.

  The tall man shook hands and pushed at Shirley Carlson’s hair. “I told the kid you’d be taken care of,” he said, grinning, to Phillips. “But she was all bothered you were starving to death out here…”

  Hugh Phillips watched them drive off. There was no reason why he should not have gone with them, he realized; he could have manufactured some excuse. He frowned, irritated with himself for not thinking of this in time. Then, walking slowly back to the house, he grinned, remembering the way the girl had flushed and ducked into the car, very annoyed with her father. He remembered the address she had told him earlier: the Brown place on Polling Creek. If he were to go sailing later in the day or, say, tomorrow, there would, he reflected, be nothing against putting into Polling Creek, sort of by accident.

  The mail and paper lay where he had put them on the living-room table. He took the paper across the room to the big chair by the radio. An editorial on the front page discussed the coming election for sheriff, but made no reference to a man named Holt.

  Hugh Phillips folded the paper carefully, wondering what would happen if he walked into the Herald’s office on Main Street and told his story, with emphasis on the strange behavior of Mr. Holt; but it struck him coldly that until he had discovered more about the picture, and Janice’s reasons for concealing it and the part of her life it represented, he was not in a position to demand publicity for the manner of her death.

  He walked to the table and sorted the mail through his hands, and read a letter from his mother asking how he was feeling and did he want her to come down. She was, his mother wrote, a little worried about his being down there all alone without a car…

  The house was very quiet. Outside there was sunshine and the steady bright chirping of the crickets; but the house only seemed darker and more silent by contrast. A car approached along the main road but did not turn in.

  There were so many things unexplained, he thought; there was the black-haired man and the truck-driver, and there was the small nagging question in Hugh Phillips’s mind of how a wound inflicted in the manner and with the weapon he had seen could have passed the doctor as the normal result of an automobile accident. (You knew what you had seen, but after a while the images became blurred with being looked at so often and so hard, and you began to wonder a little if you had really seen them like that.) There was the fact that the house had been searched, and that came back to the black-haired man, and to the picture he had not taken, or, if taken, returned. But always you came back to the triangle of the black-haired man, the picture, and the fact of murder. You came back to Janice, who had been murdered.

  There was Janice and her picture and her cigarette case; and there was what he had never questioned before, the money she had had to spend. I’ve got a couple of thousand in the bank in case we need it, honey, she had told him before they were married. It had seemed to him a large sum for her circumstances and salary, and he had said so. She had answered, laughing, that she had had along time to save it in, and he had never brought the subject of her money up again, because it embarrassed him a little. Once, later, he had protested mildly that a hundred and eighty dollar evening gown was hardly practical, considering the number of times they went out, and the kind of places they went to. But darling, what’s the use of having money if you don’t spend it? she had asked, and there had been a slight edge to her voice that told him to leave it alone. It was her money, as the car was her car. He had looked forward to the time when it would be gone, a little uneasily, wondering how she would adjust herself to the reality of his limited income.

  He put down his mother’s letter and walked quickly into the bedroom. The room was very still and, with the windows closed, rather warm and stuffy, although the sun was off the drawn blinds. He groped among the jewelry and gloves and handkerchiefs in the top dresser drawer, knowing now what he was looking for, but Janice’s bank book was not there; neither was it in any of her purses. The middle drawer of the dresser was empty; he had put the contents into a suitcase the day before. The lower drawer was half full as he had left it after discovering the picture. He found the bank book at the rear, and as he freed it from something black and very sheer that clung to his fingers like cobwebs and reminded him sharply and poignantly of Janice, he knew that he was frightened.

  For most of the past six months, ever since she had started buying things, the little book in its dog-eared envelope had lain in the drawer with her jewelry, when it was not on top of the dresser, or on the mantelpiece, or in some other conspicuous place where she had put it to remind herself not to forget it. There had never been any secret about it. If he had wanted to examine it, he had had a thousand chances. But shortly before her death she had apparently begun to hide it, as if there were now something in it that he should not see… He discarded the envelope and opened the book.

  She had started the account a couple of years before, in the fall, with a single entry of thirty-three hundred dollars; early the next spring she had withdrawn eight hundred, presumably for the car. Then in September of the same year she had withdrawn four hundred, and he knew that this had been spent for her trousseau. Five months had passed without change; they were married now, living in the little apartment in Baltimore. Right after Christmas she had seen a fur coat she liked, and that had been the beginning. At the bottom of the page there were only a hundred and twenty dollars left in the account.

  He turned the page: on the fifteenth of May she had withdrawn the rest. They were moving to Sand Point and she needed clothes for the country. She had left one dollar
to hold the account open. A little more than two months later, on the twenty-second of July, she had made a single deposit, the last entry in the book, of five thousand dollars.

  July 22—5000.00

  There was a faint, rather stale smell of face powder and cologne in the room. He found himself taking the stopper out of one of the little cut-glass bottles on the glass-topped dresser; replacing it quickly when he realized what he was doing, but the rich sweet odor of her perfume seemed to burst into the room; and he went out quickly, closing the door behind him. He had a headache again. He took aspirin for it and went into the study and sat down on the studio couch.

  July 22—5000.00

  Not fifty, or five hundred, or even a thousand—that she could conceivably have borrowed on something they owned—but five thousand. Even his parents could not readily have raised such a sum; and if they had given it to her, whatever her pretext for wanting it, he would have known something was wrong from their attitude, even if she had sworn them to secrecy. And if she had got it from an account in another bank, or from war bonds, why had she hidden the little book after making the deposit?

  July 22—5000.00

  He sat looking at the preposterous figure, almost twice his yearly salary, facing the slow reluctant knowledge that her money had, after all, run out, but it had not changed anything. She had not faced the reality of living on what he had had to offer her: it had not been enough. She had merely got more, somewhere.

  Somewhere.

  VII

  Chris’s voice over the telephone sounded concerned and a little puzzled.

  “Is anything wrong, Hugh? Your leg…?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said. “I just want to talk to you. If you’re busy, skip it.”

  He knew two things instinctively: that she did not want to come and that there was someone with her.

  “Never mind,” he said as she hesitated. “It wasn’t important.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ll be right over.”

  He put down the receiver gently and made himself a drink, trying not to admit to himself that, in spite of everything else he had to think about, it hurt to know that Chris did not want to see him. Of course she was right. You could not go back a year and start over again; and you could not really play comfortably at being friends with a girl whom you had left, so to speak, waiting at the church. There was nothing in it for either of them any more. But she was the only person his own age that he could consider discussing Janice with; and she had been the only person Janice had talked to; and he had already told her part of the story.

  She drove up in Frank Hartshorne’s car, as if to answer his question of who her company had been. The big maroon coupé turned in the drive and headed out; and Chris came up to the porch.

  “Mother took the car to town,” she said. “Frank drove me over.”

  “He could have stuck around for a drink,” Phillips said.

  Chris smiled, and he knew that the smile was for both of them: herself for finding it necessary to explain why Frank had brought her, and Hugh Phillips for pretending he had wanted the other man to stay.

  She was wearing the same, or another, white playsuit with a skirt belted over the pleated shorts but not buttoned down the front. Her hair was loose today, held back from her face by a wide black velvet band; but the trouble with Chris Wells was that she was too tall to look cute. She was too conservative to look truly smart, and she was too nice to look sexy. She looked fine on the beach, but the more clothes she put on the more she looked like just a nice wholesome girl that you would be delighted to have your best friend going around with.

  This manner of thinking, he realized abruptly, was brought on by jealousy because she had not wanted to come and had arrived with Frank Hartshorne.

  “Well…” Chris said a little uncertainly.

  “Come on in,” he said. He could feel the drink he had just finished and, looking at his watch, he saw with surprise that it read five minutes of three; and he had not eaten lunch. “How about the kitchen?” he asked. “I haven’t had lunch yet.”

  In the kitchen she helped him build a sandwich and gave herself a glass of milk. They sat down at the table. The refrigerator made a small whirring noise in the corner, and water dripped uneasily in the sink from a leaky faucet that he had never got around to fixing.

  “What did you want to talk about, Hugh?” Chris asked. There was a slight impatience in her voice, as if being with him made her uncomfortable, and she would like to get away quickly.

  “About Janice,” he said. “You said she used to talk to you.”

  Chris hesitated. “Yes.”

  He glanced at her, surprised by her hesitation, and saw that her eyes were suddenly watching him, too steadily. You would look at a person like that if you knew something about them that you did not want to have to talk about. He looked away.

  “Did she…” he said carefully “…did she ever tell you about singing with a band?”

  “Yes, Hugh.”

  He sat very still and did not look up from his sandwich, waiting for her to go on, but she did not go on. He took a deep bite of the sandwich, holding it away from him so that the mayonnaise would drip back to the plate instead of onto his slacks. This was Christine Wells, he told himself, Chris Wells whom he had known all his life, and why did they have to play games with each other? Even if he had not been very nice to her a year ago.

  “Did she tell you why she quit?” he asked, without looking up.

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t you say anything but yes, Chris?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “You might,” he said, “tell me about it.”

  “You don’t know?”

  He looked up, startled by something in her voice. “How the hell would I know?” he demanded. “If I knew would I be asking you? Do you think I’m talking for the fun of it?”

  Chris said gently, “I didn’t realize you were asking, Hugh. I thought you wanted to tell me something.”

  He glanced at her irritably and went to the sink to wash his hands. The faucet continued to drip, no matter how firmly he closed it. He came back to the table and she was still sitting there watching him, not having moved. He looked down at her and saw that she was holding herself very tightly against something; but whether against fear or anger or merely distaste for the conversation, he could not tell. Once he would have been able to tell, but he did not know her that well any longer.

  “Tell you what?” he asked. Something moved in her eyes as she looked at him, and he knew that it was fear. He tried to ignore it, because it did not make sense. “Come on into the study, Chris,” he said. “I’ll show you what I found.”

  He had forgotten about the gun. When he pulled the drawer open he heard her gasp to see the large blued-steel weapon lying there beside the pictures. He took it out deliberately and laid it on the desk. She had seen it before, she had shot it herself, so why, he asked himself irritably, should the damn thing frighten her now? He pulled out the studio photograph he had put away the first night, when he could not stand to look at it, and replaced it where it had been on the desk, setting it up on its easel. Then he drew the rolled print out and closed the drawer and turned.

  “This is all I know, Chris,” he said, holding it out. “This and her bank book. I found the picture yesterday.” She glanced at him and took the picture, and he watched her slip the string off and stretch it flat between her hands. She looked up, her eyes studying the soft, smiling studio photograph on the desk, comparing.

  “She was… very beautiful, Hugh.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Mona Lisa with a permanent wave. Sure. It’s her, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t really have to look at the other picture to tell, do you? What are you stalling for, Chris?”

  “I’m not…”

  “What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re acting as if…” Something about the way she stood there, almost as if she were afraid of him, made the room seem to close
in about him. He could feel his head throbbing, and he wished he could take time out for another aspirin. “Just tell me about it in your own words,” he said savagely. “What did she tell you, anyway?”

  Chris licked her lips and watched the photograph roll itself up in her hand. Then she spoke without looking away from it.

  “She didn’t really tell me, Hugh. You see, I recognized her. That night at the Hartshornes’ when she sang. You remember. She ran out right afterward and made you take her home, because she knew I had recognized her and didn’t want me to talk about it in front of you. The next day she came over and made me promise not to tell you. I wouldn’t have, anyway. It wasn’t… any of my business.”

  “Go on,” he said. He took the photograph out of her hand and put it on the desk.

  “Dad took us to the place,” Chris said. “You remember, I wrote you when Mother and I went out to be with him while the Asheville was in dry-dock in San Pedro.”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” she went on, “we went to this place in Hollywood, and she was singing there. It was called the Grotto. When I met her the first time after… after you were married, I was sure I had seen her somewhere, but I couldn’t remember, and after a while I forgot about it. Until she sang that night. I was shocked, I guess, and I kept staring at her to make sure, and she saw me and knew I had recognized her. So the next day she came over…”

  “… and made you promise not to tell,” he finished. “You’ve said that once.”

  “Yes,” Chris said with a small laugh. “I guess I have.”

  “Well,” he said, “what’s so terrible about that? She sang in a nightclub, so what? What’s all the mystery about?”

  Chris hesitated. “Don’t you really know?”

  “No,” he said sharply. “I don’t know.”

  “She was living with the man, Hugh.”

  He drew a deep breath. “All right,” he said after a while. “All right. Lots of women do it, I’ve heard.” He heard his own voice saying distantly, “What man?”