Say It with Murder

by Edward S. Aarons

“Are you ready to tell us now?” Monte said softly.

  “No.”

  “But you know where the girls are, don’t you?”

  “You’re wasting precious time. You’d better start looking for them yourselves.”

  “Robbie,” Monte said,

  Robbie came forward and Carmody picked up the heavy crystal inkwell on the desk and threw it at him and yelled and hit Robbie in the stomach and in the face and Robbie’s great arms knocked his fists down as if they were on straws. The next thing he knew he was sprawled face up on the deep-piled carpet and Robbie stood over him and Monte was poking at his chest with the black walking stick

  “Enough, Bill?”

  Carmody felt blood spilling sluggishly over his chin and got his hands under him and kicked at Monte’s kneecap and rolled over and saw Sam Link before him. Sam’s face was momentarily terrified. He had a gun in his hand. Carmody hit him and the gun made a metallic flickering before his eyes and then the vast, soaring pain came and swallowed him up in a deep, soft, velvety, infinite darkness…

  He became aware of light and shadow gradually, like the slow lifting of a curtain. When he tried to move, he found it was impossible. Fear touched him and he writhed and fought against the bonds that held him. He couldn’t move. He tried to yell and call for help, and so sound came from him. There was a numbness and stiffness to his mouth and lips. He realized he was bound and gagged, sitting in a dark closet, cramped in a corner beside the door, and the dim light he saw came through the crack at the bottom of the door.

  He wondered what time it was. He wondered where Monte and Siam and Robbie had gone. He thought of Martha, waiting for him at Harry’s place. Then his fear came back in a violent spasm which brought his heels up against the panel of the closet door and he kicked at it awkwardly, not very successfully, but enough to make a dull thumping sound that was like the hopeless, frantic beating of his heart. There was no answer. The need for time, for freedom in which to do what he had to do, closed in on him with relentless pressure. You had to play it smart, he told himself. You knew the answers, but you had to come here to make sure, to look at their faces, to measure what they said against the things you knew to be true. You’re stupid, Carmody. You’ve thrown away the whole game. When they come back, they’ll kill you. First they’ll kill Lila, and then they’ll hook Martha, and they’ll either kill you or make you their boy for good and all, for all the rest of your life.

  You’ve got to get out of here, he told himself.

  But there was no way out.

  He tried to work at the clothesline that bound his wrists behind him, but he only succeeded in rubbing the skin raw. He drummed his heels against the closet door again and again, until he lay exhausted and cramped on the closet floor, struggling for breath through the gag. He couldn’t get loose. Panic extended dark pseudopods into the crevices of his mind. He saw time as a river cascading away from him while he tried to stop it with his fingers. All the mistakes he had made and all the folly of his confidence in believing he could control what happened here came back to boomerang on his conscience when he thought of the danger reaching out for Martha and Lila. He would be too late. He could never help them. And the worst of his mistakes was in looking out for himself by delaying his talk to the police until he was assured about Lou Cannon’s confession. Now everything was lost, himself most of all. Then he told himself not to despair and, lying on his back, he got his feet up against the closet door and kicked and kicked again at the panel.

  This time he heard a voice reply to his drumming from beyond the dark closet. For a moment part of the light seeping under the door was blocked out. The voice called to him again and he kicked at the door once more and then a key turned in the lock and the door was opened.

  Harry Corio stood in the dim light, staring at him with his mouth open.

  “Bill? For crissake, is that you, Bill?”

  The fat man kneeled, wheezing, and began to loosen the gag. Carmody looked beyond him and saw that Monte Bachore’s office was empty. He saw the watch on Harry’s thick wrist. It was after ten o’clock. He had been in the closet for more than half an hour. Anything could have happened in half an hour. And yet, perhaps it wasn’t too late.

  “Martha got worried about you, Billy-o. She said she’d come after you herself to see what was happening to you. So I told her I’d come look around to see where you were.”

  Carmody made a spitting sound against the gum on his lips. “How is Martha?”

  “She’s all right. You look like you poked your face into a few fists, Billy-o.”

  Carmody wondered what was different about the fat man’s appearance and then realized it was the first time he had seen Harry without his bartender’s apron spread over his big belly. Harry wore a black pullover sweater and black pants and dark blue sneakers. His white hair looked thick and disheveled, Carmody caught his hand and stood up, feeling the pins and needles stab his cramped legs. He leaned on a chair and shook his head and then straightened up.

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  “What did they do to you, boy?”

  “It’s not important. Let’s get out of here.”

  “That might not be so easy,” Harry said. “The state cops are all over. Looking for that Lila girl. They’ve been to your place and mine, too. They’re hungry for you, Billy-o.”

  “Why me?”

  “That Chief Hallowell,” Harry said. His pale eyes were hooded. “I guess he got scared when the state cops showed up and he spilled his mush all over the place. All about Paul Sloade and all about how you killed him.”

  Carmody looked at the fat man and heard the clicking of the roulette wheels and the calling of the croupiers from beyond the office door and the hum of conversation went around and around in a spiral inside his head, amplifying into noises that screeched and tore at his thinking. He tried to read Harry’s thoughts on his fat, bland face, but he could find nothing there.

  “How did you get in here?” he asked.

  “The back stairs.”

  “Let’s use them.”

  There was a side door to the office and it led into a dimly lighted corridor that traversed the width of the ballroom and ended in a musty, gray-carpeted stairway going down. Carmody felt his legs tremble with the urge for speed. Harry, for all his elephantine appearance, moved with a swift and silent grace. They came out on the first floor and at the end of a short hallway was the door to the hotel kitchens. The door was open and as they paused momentarily at the foot of the stairs Carmody could see into the spotless, stainless-steel kitchen and he saw the broad gray-clad back and Sam Browne belt of a trooper, talking to one of the chefs. Jimmy, the bartender, was standing there, too.

  “This way, Billy,” Harry breathed.

  They drifted silently out through a back door and down the steps of a small stoop and the refuse area where the kitchen waste was kept in neat cans stacked in precise rows. Carmody rubbed his face and felt the dried crusted blood on his cheek and under one eye. Two state police cruisers were in the parking lot at one side of the hotel. One of the cops was standing beside the nearest car. Carmody shivered. If the trooper saw him, it would all be over. It was almost over, anyway. And yet he had to make sure of Martha before he gave himself up. He wondered why he was ready to quit now, at last to face the police even if accused by Hallowell, and he wondered what would be gained by taking himself out of it now. Nothing, he told himself. You know who killed Paul and Irene Sloade and you’ve got to keep Lila from getting killed, too. Don’t be a fool, he thought. Stop thinking about giving yourself up.

  They had to go the long way around the inlet in order to reach Harry’s place, and the precious minutes slid by as they waded through the marsh grass inshore of the boardwalk to reach the dunes by the back way. Music drifted across the inlet from the yacht club and the hotel. Harry’s wheezing breath made a steady rhythmic sound against the low murmuring of the surf at low tide. When they reached the beach, Harry went ahead and looked into the veranda and the bar
of his inn and then signaled for Carmody to join him. They met at the foot of the outside stairway to Harry’s rooms above.

  Carmody looked up and saw that the door at the upper landing stood open and dark against the cool wind that swept in from the sea,

  “Go on up. She’s all right,” Harry said.

  Carmody took the steps two and three at a time. The screen door hadn’t been latched, and it bumped and banged as he reached it and pulled it open.

  “Martha?” he called.

  There was no answer.

  He plunged inside, careless of danger, and snapped on the lights. The comfortable living room, with its record player and tiers of books, stood empty. He paused, then ran across the room to the bedroom, and then looked in the bath. The emptiness was all around him. He didn’t call for Martha again. He stood still, aware of a great exhaustion in him, of a hopelessness in the odds he faced. She was gone. She wasn’t here. He was too late. His legs trembled and he wanted to sit down, but he didn’t sit down. He walked heavily back to the stair landing and saw Harry coming up the steps toward him. Harry had a gun in his hand and he saw it was the one he had given him when Harry insisted on having it.

  He looked down at the fat man and the gun and a number of different thoughts went spinning crazily through his mind. “Where is she, Harry?” he asked quietly.

  “Gone.”

  “Where has she gone?”

  “Anna doesn’t know. Anna is my cook. She says she heard somebody come up here just a few minutes after I left, and then two people came down and walked away across the beach. She didn’t see either of them.”

  “Harry, are you lying to me? I think you’re lying.”

  “No. It’s the truth. I thought she was still here.”

  Carmody went downstairs toward the fat man and the gun. “Give me the gun,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “I need it. Give it to me.”

  “Bill, I don’t think you understand.”

  “I want that gun.”

  “All right, Bill.”

  Harry reached up and handed him the gun.

  15

  THE WIND seemed to blow right through him. His teeth chattered and he was aware of a chill that crept up from his wet legs and shook his body as if with an ague. Sand rustled in the deep marsh grass and talked in soft voices all around him, answering the wind. The beach was dark and empty. He walked steadily, at a plodding gait, with the gun in his hand, away from Harry’s place. Then he heard someone call to him and he turned in the dark shadows of the dune and looked back and saw a man running after him, trying to overtake him. The man ran awkwardly, his feet clumsy in the thick, loose sand. Carmody stood still with the gun in his hand and saw it was Markham Dunning.

  Dunning caught up to him and stood there gasping and swallowing his breath and said at last, “Harry told me you went this way, Bill. Look, you can’t go to your house. The police might be there, and they’re looking for you and that Lila Griswold. It’s all over the place about that girl.”

  “I know,” Carmody said

  In the dimness, Dunning’s face looked puffy and agitated. “Where were you going, Bill?”

  “Looking for you. I had an idea you might be trying to find me.”

  “Well, that’s true, but—what made you think so?”

  “You know why,” Carmody said.

  Dunning touched his arm. “Let’s walk, shall we? And please don’t point that gun at me. You don’t have to, you know. I think we understand each other quite well now, don’t we?”

  “I think we do,” Carmody said.

  “Let’s walk, then.”

  “Any place in particular?”

  “Down the beach,” Dunning said

  There was another police cruiser parked on the dunes behind Carmody’s old Victorian beach house. Lights shone in several of the rooms, and Carmody could see the uniforms of the cops inside, but he didn’t think they had found anybody or anything there. With Dunning at his side, he plodded in a wide half-circle that crossed the grassy dunes, moving quietly and stolidly until they reached the beach again several hundred yards beyond the house. When he looked back he could see only a faint glow in the sky to indicate the yacht anchorage and the hotel. The beach grew narrower, extending into a narrow point with a shallow saltwater inlet on the right and vast, empty marshes beyond that to the main shore of Long Island. To his left the surf growled and boomed and chewed at the eroding sand dunes. There was enough starlight and moonlight to guide their way without difficulty. He listened to Dunning’s labored breathing at his side for several more minutes, and when they were about half a mile beyond his house, he slowed down and Dunning gasped with relief.

  “You act as if you know where you’re going.”

  “This is the right way, isn’t it?” Carmody asked.

  “Yes it is “

  “To where Lila is?”

  “What makes you think I know where Lila is?”

  “I don’t think that’s too difficult to figure out.”

  “Bill, listen to me. I’m in trouble and I’m scared. I think you know all about it now, don’t you? You and Martha both know the truth. I know you understand how it all happened, and I know you forgive me for it all.”

  “Is Lila dead?” Carmody asked.

  “I—yes.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “I—she did it herself.”

  Carmody paused on the beach only a few feet from where the sea came hissing and licking up on the dark sand. He saw that Mark Dunning shook and trembled, and now he himself felt better; he felt fine. He decided it might not be too late, after all. A few dozen feet ahead of them a dark geometrical line of old pilings made a jetty that barred their way out on the point of sand they were traveling, reaching out into the water and forming a shelter for a kind of lagoon beyond. He saw the pencil-thin masts of Martha’s sloop swaying against the disc of the moon and the pattern of the stars in the sky. He did not wonder about its presence here so far from the yacht anchorage where he had last seen it. He looked beyond Dunning to the infinite peace and depth of the moonlit ocean and Dunning looked at it with him, standing quietly at his side. He tried to guess what thoughts were going through the other man’s mind, but found it impossible. He put the gun away in his pocket.

  “Thank you,” Dunning whispered.

  “You understand, I’m ready to use it if I have to.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “And I won’t help you if Lila is really dead.”

  “But I couldn’t avoid that.”

  “She had nothing to do with your mistakes, Mark.”

  “I know that. But I was frightened. She saw what happened.”

  Carmody said: “You know she saw it because you noticed her slipper that I picked up at Martha’s cottage and you knew it belonged to her. Nobody else but you and me and Martha saw that slipper where it was. You knew she had witnessed Paul’s murder and followed Robbie and Robbie took Paul’s body from Monte Bachore’s room.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did it all start Mark? Will you tell me?”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Dunning whispered. His voice was tormented. “It was all such a cruel mistake, that first accident.”

  “You mean Irene’s death.”

  “Yes.”

  “You caused it,” Carmody said. “It had to be you. Nobody else fitted the picture, when you came to think about it. Martha and I both had the same idea tonight about the whole thing. Irene’s death was an accident. It was Paul who was meant to die, of course, and Paul figured it out when he was drunk today and babbled about it in the bar and you knew you had to finish what you had started or it would all come out. And you also knew that Martha had been trying to get the truth out of Paul, too. You went back to Harry’s place after I left there and asked her about it, didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t stand the uncertainty any more.”

  “Did she know the truth?”

  Dunning c
losed his eyes. “Not at first. But I was too anxious. I kept pressing her about what she had learned from Paul Sloade. I thought he might have hinted to her what he knew this afternoon. And I asked so many questions that Martha suddenly understood the whole thing.”

  “Where is Martha now?”

  “On her boat over there.”

  “What were you going to do with her?”

  “I don’t know. I—I’m confused.”

  “Were you going to kill her?”

  “Bill, please.”

  “But you were going to kill Lila. I think you did.”

  “No.”

  “All right,” Carmody said. “It couldn’t have been Monte or Sam or Robbie who killed Irene. I thought it might have been, but they had another axe to grind with Paul, and the whole gimmick was the open gate on that gallery was designed to kill Paul, and not Irene. Right?”

  Dunning made an anguished sound in his throat. “I loved Irene.”

  “I know you did. And when you saw what Paul Sloade was doing to her after their marriage, you thought you could help Irene by killing him. But you knew Irene loved Paul anyway, didn’t you?”

  “She was enamored of him. Infatuated. He was tormenting her every day of her life.”

  “So you took it upon yourself to get rid of Paul,” Carmody said. “You unlocked the gate on the gallery over that sea cliff and waited there in the dark for Paul to come home that night he was over at my place. But he didn’t step outside, or he didn’t get back to his cottage first, did he? It was Irene who found you there.”

  “Yes,” Dunning whispered.

  “And she saw at once what you were planning to do. You knew that in any kind of a struggle, Paul Sloade could handle two men as slight as you. You knew you would have to kill him by stratagem, and you wanted to make it look like an accident. That’s how you came to unlock the gate. It doesn’t take much strength to push a man off balance. You were going to surprise him on the gallery and push him backward, through the open gate to the rocks below. But Irene came out there instead, and she saw you and realized what you were planning to do.”

  Dunning shuddered. “It was horrible. I don’t want to remember it.”