“I doubt that Cal would think so.”
“Oh, nonsense. Cal doesn’t think about it one way or another. While you are sitting here making yourself miserable, he is at home this instant as happy as can be, digging in the flower gardens and mowing the grass.”
“You make everything sound so simple and acceptable.”
“Because it is. You must learn to accept things as they are and without complicating them in your mind.”
“Well, it’s not so easy to accept your going on indefinitely as Cal’s wife.”
“You must be patient, darling. Something will work out for us eventually—perhaps sooner than you think. In the meanwhile, let’s have another Martini before I go.”
“Why must you go so soon?”
“Something to do at home—but it’s really too tiresome to talk about.”
Her second Martini, which was consumed slowly to the sound of strings, proved a considerable challenge to her resolution to go home; but she went, nevertheless, about 4:30. The traffic was heavy on the streets, crippling the Jaguar, which could not get free to run until the last few miles--so that it was five when she pulled into the driveway behind a car which sat there, blocking the way to the garage.
Mrs. Dearly, mildly annoyed by the trespasser, got out of the Jaguar and walked around the house to the rear; but there was no sign of Cal or anyone else. She went into the house through the kitchen, and there in the hall which ran forward from the kitchen to the front entrance was a short man in a dark blue suit, a stranger with an odd little potbelly like a melon held in position by his belt; and this man had obviously come out of the living room to meet her, as if he had become, by some strange trickery in her absence, the master of the house and she the stranger.
“Mrs. Dearly?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Dickson. Police.”
“Police? What on earth are you doing here? Where is my husband?”
“You had better talk with Lieutenant Hardy about that. He’s waiting for you in the living room.”
He half turned and gestured toward a doorway, still with that curious implication of inviting her to be his guest. She walked past him into the living room, where another man was standing in the middle of the room with his back to a bank of windows bright with the late afternoon sun. He was even shorter than the man who had called himself Dickson—a thin, consumptive-looking man of indeterminate age in a wilted seersucker suit.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Dearly,” he said. His voice was as wilted as his suit, and perfectly supplemented by a languid, hesitant gesture of his right hand, its middle and index fingers stained by the smoke of countless cigarettes. “I’m Lieutenant Hardy. Sorry to intrude.”
The apology was hollow, a mere concession to form. For a moment Mrs. Dearly had a terrifying feeling of helplessness, of being swept into a play of forces she could not control, and at whatever cost she was compelled to assert herself in a way that would restore her position and assurance.
“Your car is blocking the drive,” she said. “Please be good enough to move it.”
“Certainly.” His right hand moved again, seeming to gather in Dickson. “Go move the car, Dickson, and drive Mrs. Dearly’s back to the garage.”
“The key is in the ignition,” Mrs. Dearly said. “Have you ever driven a Jaguar?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Dickson said.
He went out, and Mrs. Dearly turned back to Hardy.
“Perhaps now, Lieutenant, you’ll explain why you are here. And I would like to see my husband, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. He isn’t here.”
“Where is he? Has something happened to him? Tell me at once.”
“I had hoped to break it to you a little more gently, but I see that I can’t. The fact is, your husband is dead.”
“Dead? Did you say—dead?”
She moved to a chair and sat down with an effect of excessive care, as if moving and sitting had become all of a sudden a precarious business. She sat erect in the chair, her back unsupported, her eyes staring past Hardy through a bright pane of glass behind him into the side yard beyond the drive.
She was oddly sensitive in that moment to the details of sight and sound, and she noticed that the yard had been partly mowed, the power mower standing at rest on the clean line dividing the clipped and shaggy grass. She heard the rich roar, quickly reduced, of the Jaguar in the drive.
“Are you all right?” Hardy said.
“Yes, thank you. I’m quite all right.”
“Would you like me to tell you about it?”
“I think you had better.”
“Well, there isn’t much to tell, when you come right down to it. Our only witness is your neighbor on the west, Mr. Winslow, and he didn’t really see anything much. He was upstairs in a room on the second floor of his house this afternoon about two or two thirty, he couldn’t be exact, and he looked out the window and saw your husband reclining in one of those canvas sling chairs on your rear terrace. He said your husband had been mowing the grass, and Winslow assumed, naturally, that he had merely taken a break to rest and cool off, which was probably true. It’s been a pretty hot day, as you know.
“Anyhow, Winslow happened to look out the window again about twenty minutes later, and your husband was no longer in the sling chair. He was lying on his face on the terrace. Apparently he had stood up, taken a step or two, and collapsed. Winslow was alarmed, as you might expect, and he hurried over. To put it bluntly, if you will excuse me, your husband was dead. Before dying, he had been very ill. To his stomach, I mean.”
Hardy stopped, watching Mrs. Dearly, and Mrs. Dearly continued to stare through the bright glass into the bright yard. Her face in profile was beautiful and composed. It was almost, Hardy thought, serene. Being basically an old-fashioned man, he found an old-fashioned simile in his head: she has a face like a cameo, he thought.
“I’ve warned him and warned him about it,” she said at last.
“About what, Mrs. Dearly?”
“Working so hard in the hot sun. He loved working in the yard, you know, and he insisted on spending practically every week-end at it. Sometimes, whenever he could, week days also. He was getting too old for such work, especially in the hot sun. He had a stroke, I guess. A heat stroke or something. Doesn’t someone with a heat stroke become violently ill to his stomach?”
“I think so. I’m not sure about it.”
“Where is my husband now? His body, I mean. And why are the police involved? Is it normal for the police to be involved in such a matter?”
“We were called by the doctor who was summoned by Mr. Winslow.”
“Why should the doctor call the police?”
“He thought it wise, considering the circumstances of the death. He was not prepared to certify the cause without an autopsy.”
“An autopsy? Is that where Cal is? Have you taken him away somewhere for an autopsy?”
“Yes. Sorry. We tried to locate you, but we couldn’t.”
“Can you perform an autopsy on my husband without my permission?”
“If you want to make an issue of it, we can get an order. But it would be much better if you would simply agree. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
“Since you will obviously do it in any event, I might just as well agree. You are right, anyway. There is no reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Thank you. The body will be returned to you as soon as possible.” He paused for a moment, apparently trying to put in order the words to express properly what needed to be said. “I must say that I admire the way you are taking this. I was afraid it might be all ordeal.”
She turned her face toward him then, lighted by the sun on one side and softened by shado
ws on the other. Her lips assumed the shape of the merest smile.
“I’m not the hysterical type, Lieutenant. I suppose I’m a bit numb, really. I can hardly believe that Cal is dead. It’s often that way when someone dies suddenly, isn’t it? Later it will strike me fully and all at once.”
“Will you be all right here alone? It’s a large house, but apparently there are no servants around.”
“We have a cook and a housekeeper, but they were given the week-end off. Cal and I were on our own for two days.”
“Too bad. If someone had been around, something might have been done in time to save him.”
“Yes. Poor Cal. Dying alone like that. I think, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, that I would like to go upstairs. Is there anything more you want of me?”
“No. I’m finished here. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we had to intrude this way.”
“Not at all. Under the circumstances, as you said, there was nothing else you could do.”
“You’re gracious to say so. Goodbye, Mrs. Dearly.”
“Goodbye, Lieutenant. Please find your own way out.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He looked thin and worn, almost ravaged, in his wilted seersucker. His right hand moved again in that hesitant gesture as he turned and went out of the room.
Standing quite still, listening, Mrs. Dearly heard his steps receding in the hall, then the front door closing behind him. She continued to stand there, listening intently. She had heard the movements of the police car and the Jaguar in the drive, and now, after several minutes, she heard the police car in the street, its engine starting and the swiftly diminishing sound of it as it sped away.
The silence of the house gathered around her, and she turned in silence and went through the hall into the kitchen and downstairs from the kitchen into the basement. She walked directly to the wall to her left, the wall toward the side yard where the power mower stood at rest between the clipped and shaggy grass; and she was just reaching overhead for the circular handle of a valve when someone spoke behind her.
“I don’t believe I’d do that if I were you, Mrs. Dearly,” the voice said.
How strange it was! she thought afterward. Following the first moment of terror, when her breath stopped and her heart withered, she was immediately calm and lucid and without any fear whatever. She thought clearly before turning around that Douglas must surely be kept a secret now, however difficult it might be, for he would be considered a motive at the very least, if not a conspirator—and the funny thing about it was that Douglas was not a motive at all, but only a kind of fringe benefit.
“I thought you had gone, Lieutenant,” she said.
“Dickson went,” he said. “As for me, I must confess to intruding again. I came in through the basement window there.”
He walked over and stood beside her, looking up at the valve she had intended to turn. To the right of the valve, slanting down toward the basement floor, were about six feet of pipe that made a right turn, by means of an elbow joint, and passed through the concrete foundation.
The Lieutenant began again. “While I was waiting for you to come home this afternoon from wherever you were, I got to wondering how your husband might have been poisoned—if he was poisoned, which was at least a possibility. In a container of something to drink, perhaps? In something he ate, perhaps? But that would have been dangerous, and foolishly so. The container to be analyzed. The remains of the food, ditto. Then I walked along the side of the house, and I noticed that the ground under the outside faucet was damp—and it came to me. What does the kind of man who loves working in the yard, as your husband did, almost invariably do when he gets hot and thirsty? He takes a drink from the outside faucet. Usually from his cupped hands. That’s what your husband did, Mrs. Dearly, and that’s what you knew he would do.”
The Lieutenant paused, still staring up at the valve with an expression of admiration, almost of wonder. Perhaps he was waiting for Mrs. Dearly to speak, but at the moment Mrs. Dearly did not feel like speaking.
“It was clever,” he went on. “You’re a clever woman, Mrs. Dearly. Between that inside valve and the outside faucet there are six feet of one-inch pipe. It was almost perfect for your purpose, wasn’t it? A perfect container. First, you closed the inside valve and drained the six feet of pipe. This you did merely by opening the outside faucet, letting the water in the pipe flow out, then closing the faucet afterward. Then, with a wrench, you disconnected the six feet of pipe below the valve and put into the pipe, your perfect container, whatever you used to kill your husband. This done, you reconnected the pipe to the valve, opening the valve to let water run through and fill the pipe. By closing the valve after the pipe was filled, you had a deadly liquid ready to run from the outside faucet whenever it was opened.
“It wouldn’t run long or as freely as it would have run with the valve open, of course, for six feet of one-inch pipe will hold by my arithmetic only about one quart of water. But that was enough. It was sufficient to give your husband a long, fatal drink. And now you have come down here to open the valve again and to flush from the pipe what may be left of the poison. What kind of poison did you use, Mrs. Dearly? Well, never mind. I don’t expect you to tell me. Something nearly tasteless, of course, and soluble in water. We’ll find out.”
Mrs. Dearly sighed and dusted her hands by brushing them softly together. She was feeling positively exhilarated.
“It is not I who is clever, Lieutenant,” she said. “It’s you. What you have said is logical and rather convincing, I’m sure, but it is only a theory, and it will be quite exciting to see if you can prove it or not.”
But Mrs. Dearly’s exhilaration was only that of excitement, no more. The Lieutenant had no difficulty proving his theory—there was enough poison left in the pipe, and it wasn’t long before they found Douglas…
SIX REASONS FOR MURDER
Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1964.
Fanny Bauer had an idea how to kill Loren. It seemed like a good idea in the beginning, and the more she thought about it the better it looked. She got the idea from watching a late movie on television. This is not intended as a criticism of television, which already gets more than its share, but just shows you how simply a murder can sometimes begin.
If you have to blame someone, blame the Sioux—or the Cheyenne—or was it the Apaches? They were in the movie that Fanny saw, an old Western, and they took the hero, tied him up with wet rawhide thongs, and left him out in the sun. Wet rawhide shrinks as it dries, as almost everyone knows if he will only stop to think about it, and the idea was to make the rawhide cut into the flesh of the hero. It turned out that the hero was rescued by the United States Cavalry, but he was only tied by the wrists and ankles, anyhow, which would have been painful for a while, but not fatal.
What if a wet rawhide thong were tied around someone’s throat? Fanny thought.
She kept it impersonal to start with, sort of academic, and it wasn’t until later that the throat became Loren’s. She didn’t know if the Sioux—or Cheyenne or Apaches—had ever used this method to strangle a captive, for it wasn’t in the movie; but she did have a vague memory of having read about it in a mystery story sometime or other. The movie merely stirred up the memory of the story and so she couldn’t claim any originality for the idea—although it required, after all, a certain amount of cleverness to apply it.
And Loren Bauer was certainly an ideal subject. Or victim.
In the first place, as a retired political boss with a severe deficiency of ethics, he had made at least a hundred bitter enemies who would gladly strangle him if given the chance.
In the second place, he was now relatively vulnerable, having had a stroke that left him with legs that were practically useless.
In the third place, he was always taking some kind
of drug for the relief of his physical discomfort or his conscience or both, and it would be quite easy to give him enough to knock him out, although not enough actually to kill him, because of what might be discovered post mortem.
In the fourth place, he was rich.
In the fifth place, it was beginning to look as if he were going on indefinitely refusing to die naturally, for his heart was sound, in spite of the stroke, and he adhered rigidly to his low cholesterol diet and had given up smoking.
In the sixth place, he was too old for Fanny by some thirty years, and it was high time he was discarded, if not replaced.
Six reasons for murder. Fanny could probably have added a few more, if pressed, but surely six were enough. She decided, after much thought, that she would discuss the matter in general terms with Stuart, who was Loren’s nephew. As a matter of fact, Stuart might have been Fanny’s seventh reason.
“I’ve thought of a way to kill Loren,” she said to Stuart one day.
“Your rate of production is low,” he said. “I’ve thought of a dozen ways.”
“If you’re so clever, why haven’t you done something about it?”
“Thinking and doing are two different things, honey. Doing is far too risky.”
“Well, my way, if properly executed, is hardly risky at all.”
“I’m intrigued, to say the least. What way do you have in mind?”
“I don’t believe I’ll tell you. You’re rather weak, however charming, and you’d only be a handicap in a touchy project like this.”
This suited Stuart perfectly. He always preferred, if possible, to profit from the efforts of others. As for Fanny, the brief conversation had the effect of making a plan, and the very next time she was downtown she went to a small leather shop on a side street and bought a strip of rawhide to be used, she explained, as a lacing. A minimum of research had taught her that rawhide was frequently used as lacing, and the purchase was routine.
The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK Page 32