Moment of Violence

by George Harmon Coxe

  “The room was dark at the time?” Fleming interrupted.

  “Yes. It was dark but I had no reason to turn on the light, so I didn’t.”

  “Please continue.”

  “I heard the motor stop and the car door close and then someone came up the steps. Mike said something about did the man get it? The man said yes and they walked down the hall and I could hear the door close at the end.”

  “You didn’t actually see this man at any time?”

  “No, but when he left I looked out the back window and saw the license number on his car. It was short and not very hard to remember—XY 115.”

  “Yes,” Fleming said, directing his gaze toward the small man in the immaculate tan suit. “That is your car, is it not, Mr. Eustis?”

  Eustis took a visible breath and his chest sagged a little as he let it out. “Yes,” he said with some reluctance. “It’s mine, all right.”

  “Then perhaps before you leave you’ll want to reconsider the statement you made.” Fleming looked back at the girl. “What else did you see, Miss Allison?”

  “Well—I saw a woman.”

  “Where?”

  “The moon had come up by then and I was looking out the side window when I saw her coming diagonally through the trees.”

  “She was coming from the direction of the Dunning house?”

  “That’s right. I only actually saw her face once. I mean clearly. She seemed to be heading toward the front of the bungalow, but I don’t actually know whether she came up on the veranda or not.”

  “Is that woman in the room now?”

  “Yes,” the girl said and nodded toward Alice Dunning.

  Fleming made no comment on the statement and neither did Alice Dunning. Her smooth tanned face was composed. The full-lipped mouth was still and her green eyes seemed disinterested as they focused on some spot on the wall above the major’s head. She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and her knees were crossed so that her rounded thighs and the well-shaped calves were much in evidence. Beside her, her husband’s thin, ascetic face was impassive, his jaw was tight, and his manner suggested that he was tolerating the proceedings only because he had no alternative.

  Fleming shuffled some papers in his desk and said: “Did you see anyone else, Miss Allison?”

  “Just the man I told you about.”

  “Please tell us again where you saw him. Describe him if you will.”

  “Well—it was later. After I’d heard the car go. He was out by that shack behind the bungalow and I only saw him clearly once when he passed the window. He was about his size”—she indicated Eustis—“only darker.”

  “A black man?”

  “He could have been but I didn’t think so at the time. His skin was dark but somehow he didn’t look like a Negro. He had a dark suit on and a hat that was shaped like a Panama, only it wasn’t. I mean, the straw was a darker color.”

  “Does that description mean anything to any of you?” Fleming considered his audience individually. “Did any of you see such a man last night at any time?” When there was no reply he said: “Miss Allison may have heard the shot that killed Ludlow. The door at the end of the hall was closed and the radio—the rediffusion—was playing and sometime later she did hear something that could have been a shot although she did not identify it as such at the time. As far as she can remember this happened about nine fifteen or perhaps a bit earlier. By then she had been in the back room for a considerable time and she decided she’d had enough of it so she left. She came down the hall and opened the door and found the room was dark. She called out and found a lamp and turned it on and then she saw Ludlow on the floor.”

  All this had been said to the room at large and now he looked at the girl. “You went over to Ludlow and saw the bloodstain and the sight of him so frightened and shocked you that you dropped your bag. You didn’t see the box that had the money in it? … Did you look for it?”

  “Not really.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “When I dropped the bag everything spilled out of it and I picked everything up and put it back in the bag and grabbed my shoes and ran.”

  “Your shoes?”

  “I’d come up the beach and it’s not easy to walk in sand in high heels. I carried my shoes under my arm and I put them down when I came into the living room.”

  “Then you were barefoot all the time you were in the bungalow?”

  “I was barefoot all the way back to my cottage.”

  Fleming nodded and cleared his throat. “What Miss Allison did was very foolish indeed,” he said judiciously. “To run like that, I mean, instead of calling the authorities. I’m sure she agrees with me now, but under the stress of the moment one doesn’t always act as one should. Be that as it may, you have heard her story. Now would any of you like to change or rephrase the statements you have signed? … Mr. Crawford?”

  “Not me,” Crawford said. “There’s nothing to change.”

  “In that case we won’t detain you any longer this morning.”

  Crawford got up in a hurry. He was wearing light-weight slacks and another fancy sport shirt, and the sandal-type shoes he wore creaked slightly as he left.

  “Mr. Eustis?”

  “I went there last night to lend Ludlow ten thousand dollars,” Eustis said. “I was there maybe five or ten minutes and then I left. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Did you see that metal box with the money in it while you were there?”

  “Yes. He put the notes I brought on top of the others, closed the box, and put it on the sideboard.”

  “You were Ludlow’s attorney, were you not?”

  “I was.”

  “What will his estate amount to? That is, in your opinion.”

  Eustis did not seem disturbed by the fine of questioning. He took an English cigarette from a flat cardboard box and when he replied, his Bajan accent seemed even thicker to Dave than that of some of the colored men he had listened to.

  “Very little, actually,” he said. “There’s a small insurance policy but this is payable to Mrs. Ludlow as the beneficiary. Aside from his personal effects, his car, things like that, he holds a note for seventeen hundred dollars from a man named Sam Brennan in Trinidad; whether it’s collectable or not I couldn’t say. I don’t know what his bank account amounts to, but I doubt if it’s much.”

  “Then he had no tangible assets that would warrant a ten thousand dollar loan?”

  “No.”

  “Would you say his credit is good anywhere?”

  “I would say he had no credit.”

  “In spite of this you did let him have ten thousand dollars last night.”

  Eustis got his cigarette going and glanced out the window. “Only because I knew I would get it back on Monday.”

  “As a lawyer,” Fleming said in a tone that suggested he did not entirely believe Eustis’s story, “I should have thought you might have preferred to produce the money on Monday rather than trust him over the week end.”

  Eustis waved his cigarette. “As I said, I didn’t think the risk was too great. How did I know that someone would kill him and run off with the money?”

  Fleming’s expression indicated that he was not happy with the lawyer’s answers, but he did not press him. He dismissed him with some comment about being in touch with him later and Eustis rose and pulled his chair back. When he had straightened his jacket he came over to Dave.

  “I would like to talk to you, Mr. Payne. I’ll wait for you outside.”

  “Now, Mrs. Dunning,” Fleming said when the door closed, “perhaps you’d care to change your statement. You did go to the Ludlow bungalow last night, didn’t you?”

  “Not actually.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I started to,” she said, and now that her voice was controlled her English accent came through. “I got as far as the side veranda but when I heard voices I knew Mike had someone with him, so I turned round and came back.”

&
nbsp; “You didn’t see Ludlow?”

  “But you could tell from these voices whether he was talking to a man or a woman.”

  “He was talking to a man.”

  “And would you mind telling me why you wanted to see Ludlow at that particular time?”

  “Of course she minds, Major,” Dunning said icily. “She’s told you what she did and that should be sufficient for now.”

  Fleming was still watching the woman. “You said last night that your husband started for the bungalow with a gun.”

  “Did I?” The green eyes examined him coolly. “I was very upset last night, Major. I may have said I thought Richard had a gun. But even that is an exaggeration. I didn’t exactly see it.”

  “You have nothing to add to that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And you, Mr. Dunning?”

  “I have already said all I intend to.”

  Fleming bunched his lips and looked at Gloria. “As a matter of routine, Mrs. Ludlow, we are checking your story about the party at the Carib Club. Have you thought of anything else that might help us?”

  When Gloria said she hadn’t, Fleming stood up. He said he might have to question them again but in any case they would be needed at the coroner’s inquest.

  They filed out then, the women first, and when Dave reached the anteroom Eustis and Gloria were waiting for him. Joan Allison stood a moment at the far door as though she expected him to join her, but when Eustis stopped him she turned quickly and left the room.

  “I don’t know whether you are aware of it, Mr. Payne,” Eustis said, “but Mike Ludlow named you as executor of his will. If you have the time—and it shouldn’t take long—I’d like you to come along to my office so we can go over things now. You too, Gloria,” he added with a glance at the woman.

  Eustis’s height was such that Dave could look right over his head at the door where Joan had left. He could still feel the pressure of the gun in his pocket. He wanted very much to follow her and question her further, but Eustis’s request was a reasonable one and demanded attention. He said he would be glad to go.

  8

  ROGER EUSTIS had his office on the third floor of a rather modern building at the upper end of Broad Street. It was a modest suite with a small outer office, presided over by a brown-skinned secretary, and a larger room beyond that overlooked the street. When Eustis had arranged chairs for his visitors, he unlocked a metal filing cabinet and took out a folder which he brought over to the desk.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much for you, Gloria,” he said as he sat down. “I’m sorry. If that deal on Monday had gone through with the Golf Syndicate—”

  “What difference would that have made? There was no alimony in the divorce and no mention of any payment. Even if he’d made his hundred and fifty thousand dollar profit I wouldn’t have got a penny of it.”

  “Yes”—Eustis sighed faintly as he opened the folder—“I suppose you’re right.”

  “Roger.” She leaned across the edge of the desk and put her hand on his arm to get his attention. “Did you actually see that fifty thousand dollars last night?”

  “I saw the box,” Eustis said. “There was a great deal of money in it. He said the ten thousand I gave him would make up the fifty. I had no reason to doubt him.”

  “And if that money should be found sometime?”

  “Well, I should think it would be yours—after payment of certain debts.… This is the will, Mr. Payne,” he added, taking a document from the top of the pile and unfolding it. “It’s really very simple. Gloria inherits anything there is after the customary expenses and certain debts. Among them is the five thousand dollar note he gave you a couple of years ago. Do you have that note?”

  “Yes,” Dave said.

  “Well, I’m afraid it’s an academic question anyway because there won’t be any five thousand dollars the way things look. As a matter of fact, there are only two tangible items that I can see. One is this five thousand dollar insurance policy naming Gloria as the beneficiary—there were several others at one time but he cashed them in when he needed money—and this note for seventeen hundred dollars from one Sam Brennan in Trinidad. I think it had to do with a boat or something Mike sold him when he left Trinidad.”

  He handed the insurance policy to the woman. “There’s nothing the creditors can do about that, Gloria,” he said. “That’s yours.” He glanced at Dave. “No reason why we shouldn’t give it to her now, is there? It’s not really part of the estate.… Why don’t you sit round here and then we can go over these things,” he added, not waiting for a reply.

  Dave moved his chair while Eustis opened the drawer and took out a long manila envelope. He put the will inside first and then added the note from Sam Brennan. He indicated another long envelope which had been sealed. “I don’t know what this is. It’s probably nothing of importance. He brought it in a couple of weeks ago. You can look it over at your convenience.”

  Dave turned the envelope over and saw the one word-Cruise—had been written across it. It had no great weight or bulk and he added it to the manila envelope as Eustis offered some other sheets held together by a paper clip.

  “This,” he said, “is the sad story of the taxi venture that Mike dreamed up. The agreements and notes and things are all there. And this,” he added, “has to do with the dry-cleaning chain which never really got off the ground.” He indicated a third set of papers, somewhat more bulky than the others. “This will give you the story on Villa Shores. This was supposed to be a real estate development up the coast, but the options ran out about the same time the money did. I doubt if it has any value now but it’s something you may want to look into.”

  He indicated the remaining papers. “The rest of these are business letters and carbons that you may want to look at.” He began to fold them so that they could be tucked into the manila envelope and said: “But I suggest you go see Mr. Worsham at Fahrson’s Bank. Mike has an account there and Mr. Worsham knows as much about his affairs as anyone. Also I think he was a friend of John Allison’s and he should be able to give you any background you need on that option business. By the way, the option is also here but, as I understand it, it’s worthless now anyway.”

  Dave took the envelope. “How long is the bank open?”

  “Today?” Eustis glanced at his watch. “You have about twenty minutes.” He stood up and then a new thought occurred to him. “Oh, there’s one more thing. What are we going to do about Mike’s body?” He glanced at Dave and then at Gloria. When she could not seem to find an answer he said: “Usually people are buried here within twenty-four hours and when possible even sooner. It’s customary to do a post-mortem on anyone who dies violently or under suspicious circumstances. If you like I can find out when the police will release it and get in touch with the undertaker. You may want to talk to your Consul, but you’ll have to decide whether Mike is to be buried here or whether you want his body shipped home.”

  “Will you handle it please, Roger?” Gloria asked. “I mean as far as you can? Mike has a brother somewhere, but I’m not sure I even know how to get in touch with him. If you can take care of things up to—well, I mean, you tell me who the undertaker is and I’ll let him know what to do when I’ve had a chance to think it over.”

  Eustis walked with them to the outer office and Dave asked if he would have his girl call Starr’s Garage and ask for Clarence Hayworth and his car. He said to ask Clarence to wait for him outside Fahrson’s Bank.…

  Down on the sidewalk they stood on the curb in the hot bright sunlight to get out of the way of the busy sidewalk traffic. In front of them the pavement was full of cars, trucks, out-sized diesel buses, and above all, bicycles. Native women hawked their fruit and vegetables in alley openings. Here and there a donkey cart moved jerkily on its way and right in front of them a pushcart loaded with lumber and manned by three barefooted Negros rattled past. From where he stood Dave could see the front of Fahrson’s Bank, and as he turned that way, with Gloria
beside him, she asked about lunch.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, a little embarrassed by his refusal when he saw the disappointment showing in her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. “I really ought to see Mr. Worsham as soon as I can. If he’s the one who knew John Allison I’d like to take him to lunch. He should be able to help me as much as anybody and I’d like to spend some time with him.” He squeezed her arm and smiled. “But dinner’s something else again.”

  “Dinner?”

  “By then I’ll be finished with this business, or most of it. We can relax and have a couple of drinks and get reacquainted.”

  “Oh, I’d like that.”

  “Shall I pick you up some place or—”

  “Why don’t I come to the bungalow?” she said. “We might have a swim first and then the drinks and then we can talk about where we want to eat.”

  “All right, what time?”

  “Well, the Bajans, I mean the fashionable ones, usually swim late when the heat is out of the sun. And besides, I’ve got to put in some time at the rediffusion studios anyway. I’ll try to make it by five thirty or so.”

  “Whenever you can,” Dave said. “I expect to be there anyway.”

  Mr. Worsham, who was the manager of the local branch of Fahrson’s Bank, was a plump, sandy-haired man with a round face and glasses. His office had a unit air-conditioner and proved to be a quiet sanctuary from the noisy bustle of the main banking room outside.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Payne,” he said, when he had offered Dave a chair.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I had a cable from John Allison. His niece was also in yesterday, but she didn’t say anything about you.”

  “She didn’t know I was coming.”