In her face for a moment was an amused expression that did not disturb the basic serenity, and I wondered if it was prompted by the trite compliment or the impertinent question. At any rate, she ignored the first and answered the second simply.
“Yes. I’m quite alone here. I like living alone.”
“Have you lived in Amity long?”
“Many years. I came here as a student in the college and never left. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
“Forgive my asking, but don’t you find it difficult to live by giving private music lessons?”
“I’m certain that I should if I tried it. I give private lessons only in my off hours. Evenings and weekends. I’m also an instructor in the Amity Conservatory. A private school.” She hesitated, looking at me levelly across the short space between us, and I thought that she was now slightly disturbed, for the first time, by my irrelevant questions. “I understand that you should want to make inquiries of a teacher you are considering for your child, Mr. Hand, but yours don’t seem very pertinent. Would you like to know something about my training and qualifications?”
“No, thanks. I’m sure you’re very competent, Miss Salem. I’m sorry if my questions seemed out of line. The truth is, I know so little about music myself that I hardly know what to talk about.”
“Do you mind telling me who sent you to me, Mr. Hand?”
“As a matter of fact, it was the Conservatory. They recommended you highly, but they didn’t mention that you were an instructor there.”
“I see. Many students are directed to me that way. The ones who are unable to attend the Conservatory itself, that is.”
I looked down at my hat, turning it slowly in my hands, and I didn’t like the way I was beginning to feel. No one could accuse me fairly of being a particularly sensitive guy, and ordinarily I am conscious of no corruption in the dubious practices of my trade, dubious practices being by no means restricted to the trade I happen to follow. By now I was beginning to feel somehow unclean, and every little lie was assuming in my mind the character of a monstrous deception. I was suddenly sick of it and wanted to be finished with it, the whole phony case. I had been hired for twenty-five and expenses to find a woman who had disappeared two years ago, and here she was in a town called Amity, living quietly under the name of Faith Salem, which was the name of the woman who had hired me to find her, and it had all been so fantastically quick and easy, a coincidence and an itch and a classified ad, and now there seemed to be nothing more to be done that I had been hired to do.
But where was Regis Lawler? Here was Constance, but where was Regis? Well, I had not been hired to find Regis. I had been hired to find Constance, and I had found her, and that was all of it. Almost all of it, anyhow. All that was left to do for my money to get up and get away quietly with my unclean feeling after my necessary deceptions. Tomorrow I would drive back where I had come from, and I would report what I had learned to the woman who was paying me, and then she would know as much as I did, and what she wanted to do with it was her business and not mine.
There were still, however, so many loose ends. So many mental itches I couldn’t scratch. I did not know why Constance had come to Amity. Nor why she had assumed the name of Faith Salem. Nor certainly why, for that matter, the real Faith Salem wanted her found. Nor why Silas Lawler did not. Nor where in the world was Regis Lawler. Nor if, in fact, he was. In the world, that is.
Suddenly I looked up and said, “Mrs. Markley, where is Regis Lawler?”
Her expression was queer. It was an expression I remembered for a long time afterward and sometimes saw in the black shag end of the kind of night when a man is vulnerable and cannot sleep. She stared at me for a minute with wide eyes in which there was a creeping dumb pain, and then, in an instant, there was a counter expression which seemed to be a denial of the pain and the pain’s cause. Her lids dropped slowly, as if she were all at once very tired. Sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, she looked as if she were praying, and when she opened her eyes again, the expressions of pain and its denial were gone, and there was nothing where they had been but puzzlement.
“What did you call me?” she said.
“Mrs. Markley. Constance Markley.”
“If this is a joke, Mr. Hand, it’s in very bad taste.”
“It’s no joke. Your name is Constance Markley, and I asked you where Regis Lawler is.”
“I don’t know Constance Markley. Nor Regis Lawler.” She unfolded her hands and stood up, and she was not angry and apparently no longer puzzled. She had withdrawn behind an impenetrable defense of serenity. “I don’t know you either, Mr. Hand. Whoever you are and whatever you came here for, you are obviously not what you represented yourself to be, and you didn’t come for the purpose you claimed.”
“True. I’m not, and I didn’t.”
“In that case, we have nothing more to discuss. If you will leave quietly, I’ll be happy to forget that you ever came.”
I did as she suggested. I left quietly. She had said that I was in bad taste, and I guess I was, for the taste was in my mouth, and it was bad.
I turned left at the street toward the drug store on the corner, and I had walked about fifty feet in that direction when a man got out of a parked car and crossed the parking to intercept me, and the car was a Caddy I had ridden in before, and the man was Silas Lawler.
“Surprised?” he said amiably.
“Not especially,” I said. “I heard you’ve been coming out here pretty regularly the last couple years.”
“I was afraid that might have been one of the things you heard. Robin has a bad habit of knowing things she’s not supposed to. Not that it matters much. You’ve just made me make an extra trip, that’s all. Darcy’s really annoyed, though. He’s the one who’s had to tail you since you got into this business, and Darcy doesn’t like that kind of work. He figures it’s degrading.”
“Poor Darcy. I’ll have to apologize the next time I see him.”
“That could be right now. Just turn your head a little. He’s sitting over there behind the wheel of the Caddy.”
“I’ll have to do it some other time. Right now I’m on my way to the corner to call a cab.”
“Forget it. Darcy and I wouldn’t think of letting you go to all that trouble. We’ve been waiting all this time just to give you a lift.”
“I hope you won’t be offended if I decline.”
“I’m afraid I would. I’m sensitive that way. I always take it personally if my hospitality’s refused. You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“That’s not very gracious of you. Hand. I offer you a lift, the least you can do is be courteous about it. What I mean is, get in the Caddy.”
“No, thanks. The last time we got together, you didn’t behave very well. I don’t think I want to associate with you any more.”
“It won’t be for long.”
He took a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at me casually in such a way that it would, if it fired, shoot me casually through the head. I could see, in a glimmer of light, the ugly projection of a silencer.
“Now who’s not being gracious?”
I said. “It seems to me a guy with any pride wouldn’t want to force an invitation on someone.”
“Oh, I won’t force it. You don’t want a lift, have it your own way. I’d just as soon kill you here.”
“Wouldn’t that be rather risky?”
“I don’t think so. Odds are no one will hear anything. You probably wouldn’t even be found for a while. Anyhow, I’m not here. I’m in my room at the restaurant. So’s Darcy. If it got to be necessary, which it probably wouldn’t, we could find a half dozen guests who are with us.”
I thought about it and decided that he could. Maybe even a fu
ll dozen. And so, after thinking, I conceded.
“I believe you could,” I said, “and I’ve decided to accept the lift after all.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
I crossed the parking to the Caddy, and while I was crossing, Darcy reached back from the front seat and unlatched the door, which swung open, and I got in like a paying passenger, with no effort, and Silas Lawler got in after me and closed the door behind him.
“Good evening, Mr. Hand,” Darcy said.
“I’m beginning to doubt it,” I said.
He laughed softly and politely and slid under the wheel of the Caddy and started the engine and occupied himself with driving. He drove at a moderate rate of speed, with careful consideration of traffic regulations, and where he drove was out of town on a highway and off the highway onto a country road. I admired the erect and reliable look of the back of his head. He looked from the rear exactly like a man whose vocabulary included virtuoso.
“You’re a very stubborn guy, Hand,” Silas Lawler said. “You simply won’t take advice.”
“It’s a fault,” I said. “All my life I’ve been getting into trouble because of it.”
“You’re through with that,” he said. “This is the last trouble you’ll ever get into.”
This was not merely something he was saying. It was something he meant. I began trying to think of some way to change his mind, but I couldn’t, and so I began trying then to think of some way to get out of the Caddy and off in some dark field with a sporting chance, but I couldn’t think of that either. In the meanwhile, Darcy drove most of another mile and down a slope and across a culvert, and it was pitch dark down there in the little hollow where the culvert was. Silas Lawler leaned forward slightly and told him to stop the Caddy and turn off its lights, and Darcy did. The window beside Darcy was down, and I could hear clearly the infinite variety of little night sounds in the hollow and fields and all around.
“It’s a nice night to die.” I said. Lawler sighed. He really did. A long soft sibilant sound with weariness in it.
“I’m sorry, Hand. I rather like you, as I’ve said before, and I wish you hadn’t made this necessary.”
“I fail to see the necessity,” I said.
“That’s because you don’t know enough about something you know too much about.”
“Is that supposed to make sense?”
“It is, and it does.”
“Excuse me for being obtuse. I don’t know much of anything about anything that I can see. I know that Constance Markley is alive, and to teach piano lessons, in Amity at two bucks per. I know she’s calling herself Faith Salem. So what? She’s got a right to be alive and teaching piano lessons and what she calls herself is her business. I was hired to find her, and I found her. That’s a capital offense?”
“Murder is. Murder’s capital almost everywhere.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy. I haven’t committed any murder.”
“I know you haven’t,” he said. “But Constance has.”
I sat and listened to the sounds of the night from the hollow and fields and all around. For a few moments they were thunderously amplified and gathered in my head, and then they faded in an instant to their proper dimensions and places.
So that’s where Regis is, I thought. Regis is where I almost am.
And I said, “I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t got a shred of evidence.”
“Sorry.” He shook his head and took his gun out of his pocket again. “You know where Constance is, and that’s enough. You’ll tell the client who hired you, and your client will tell others, and the cops will know. Everyone thinks she and Regis ran away together, and when they learn that Regis isn’t with her and hasn’t ever been, they’ll wonder where he is, and he’s dead. It wouldn’t take them long to find that out. She couldn’t hold out against them for an hour. So you see? So you know too much to be trusted. So you’ve got to die. I’m glad for your sake that it’s a nice night for it.”
I didn’t try to convince him that I’d swap silence for life. The risk in a deal like that would have been all his, and he was too good a gambler to consider it. I sat and listened some more to the sounds in the nice night to die, and I was thinking pretty clearly and understanding a number of things, but there were some other things I wanted to understand and didn’t, and they were things that Silas Lawler could explain. Moreover, the longer we talked, the longer I lived, and this was important to me, if not to him.
“All right,” I said. “Constance killed Regis, and for some reason you want her to get away with it. Why? After all, Regis was your brother.”
“Foster brother.”
“Okay. Foster brother. It’s still in the family.”
“Regis was no damn good. Dying was the best thing he ever did, and he had to have help to do that. He wasn’t fit to touch Constance, let alone sleep with her, and why she ever loved him is something I’ll never understand. But she did. She loved him, and she killed him.”
“It sounds paradoxical, but it’s possible. It wouldn’t make her the first woman to kill a man she loved. Anyhow, I’m beginning to get a picture. You’re on her side, maybe because you both play the piano, and you helped her get away after she killed Regis. I’m guessing that you disposed of the body too, and that poses a puzzle I’ve been trying to figure. No body, no murder. Why should Constance run? And why, since she did, only to Amity? With your collusion, which she had, why not to Shangri-La or somewhere?”
He stared past me out the window into the audible night, and he seemed to be considering carefully the questions I’d asked, and after a while he sighed again, the sibilant weariness with the job he had to do, or thought he had to do. Either way, unless I could prevent it, it would come to the same end for me.
“I guess it won’t hurt to tell you,” he said. “It’ll take a little time, but I’ve got plenty, and you’ve got practically none, and maybe it won’t hurt to allow you a little more.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s generous of you.”
“Don’t mention it. And you’d better listen close because I’m only going over it once lightly. The night it happened, I went up to Regis’s apartment to see him about something personal. I punched the bell a couple times, but no one answered, so I tried the door, and it wasn’t locked. I went in, and there they were. Regis on the floor and Constance in a chair. Regis was dead, and she was gone. What I mean, she was in a state of shock. She was paying no more attention to Regis than if he’d just lain down for a nap. She hardly seemed aware that I’d come into the room. I checked Regis and saw that he’d been shot neatly between the eyes. She just sat there and watched me without moving or saying a word, her eyes as big and bright and dry as the eyes of an owl. I asked her what had happened, but she only shook her head and said she didn’t understand. She said she was confused and couldn’t seem to get things clear in her mind. I wanted to help her, and I held her hands and kept talking to her, trying to get her to remember, but even a dumb guy like me could see pretty soon that it wasn’t any use. She was gone, not home, and it wasn’t any act. She kept insisting she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand where she was, or why, or who Regis was, or I was, or a damn thing about anything. She said her name was Faith Salem. She said she lived in Amity. She said she just wanted to go home.
“That’s the way it was. Whatever I did to help her, I had to do blind. So it was a big chance. So I was an accessory after the act. To hell with all that. What I finally did, I took her to my room at the restaurant and made her promise to stay there, and then I got Darcy and went back for Regis. Darcy’s a guy I trust. Maybe the only guy. We got the body out of the building the back way between us. I’ve got a place in the country I sometimes go to, and we took Regis there, and Darcy put him in a good deep hole in the ground with a lot of quick lime, and I went back
to the restaurant, and that was all for Regis. It was good enough. I haven’t lost any sleep because of Regis.”
He said all this quietly and easily, without the slightest trace of anger or excitement. He said it in exactly the same manner in which he would kill me in a little while, in his own time when he was good and ready, and I sat and waited for him to finish the story, whatever was left of it, and I had a strange and strong sense of revelation, a kind of gathering of loose ends in an obscure pattern.
“She wasn’t there,” he said. “She had simply walked out of the restaurant and was gone. I went looking for her. I beat the whole damn city, but I never found her. It was two weeks later before I saw her again. I remembered what she’d called herself: Faith Salem. I remembered where she’d said she lived: Amity. I went to Amity and tried to find her, but she wasn’t there, and so I waited and kept looking, and finally she came. About two weeks later. I don’t know where she’d been in the meanwhile, or how she got there, but she was dressed differently, in a plain suit, and she seemed to be in perfectly good condition. She’d had money in her purse the night she left. I know because I checked. Almost seven hundred dollars. Anyhow, I let her alone and kept watching after her, the same as I’ve done ever since, waiting to see what she’d do. What she did was rent that little house she lives in and start giving piano lessons.
“She advertised. She called herself Faith Salem. She got along all right, and finally she started teaching at a private conservatory. The point is, she wasn’t acting or consciously hiding. She really thought she was someone named Faith Salem. I’m pretty ignorant about such things, but I did some reading and fished a little information out of a medico who had a debt in the game rooms, and finally I got an understanding of it. She was in a kind of condition that’s called a fugue. Same name as a kind of musical composition. Unless something happened to shock her out of it, she might go on in this condition for years. Maybe the rest of her life. I figured it was safer for her to leave her as she was. As long as she was in the fugue state, she’d act perfectly normal in the identity she’d assumed and would never give herself away.
The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK Page 21