by Keene, Day
Ames compared her, mentally, with the body he’d seen on the floor of Rupert’s Fish House. The dead maid was young and shapely. Her wet flesh was white and firm. Alive, she had been very pretty. He wondered what had happened to Coroner Gilmore’s theory of a possible affair between Mr. Camden and Celeste.
The middle-aged fat woman scratched the seat of her tight shorts. “Shameful,” she said. “Shameful.”
Mary Lou continued to sob.
“You’d better go change into something more comfortable, honey,” Ames said.
“No,” Mary Lou sobbed. “I want to stay with you.”
Ames knew how she felt. The rising sun was making his head ache. The reflected glare hurt his eyes. His weariness returned in a sodden wave of heat. Coroner Gilmore’s theory had sounded fine in the back room of the station. Between it and Sheriff White’s resentment at being called a small-town sheriff, he had been almost hopeful. But that had been before this new angle had developed. If Camden and Celeste had been having an affair and Camden had killed Helene to keep his hold on the Camden money, it seemed ridiculous to assume the cosmetic executive had also murdered the girl for whom he had killed his wife.
The crowd on the pier moved shoreward, keeping pace with the deputy in the boat.
State’s Attorney Keely pushed away from the rail.
“Okay. Let’s go, Charlie,” White said.
Mary Lou and Ames moved back down the pier with the crowd. Mary Lou wiped her eyes on the skirt of her borrowed white terry cloth robe as she walked. “As soon as I change into a dress, I’ll go into town and get a lawyer,” she said. “With the seven hundred in the bank in town, the nine hundred in the elephant bank and the fifteen hundred I got from Ben, we have around thirty-one hundred dollars. We ought to get a good lawyer for that.”
Sweat beaded on Ames’s face and plastered his shirt to his body. A lot of fishing charters, a lot of songs, a lot of work and self-denial had gone into the gathering of their small bank account. It was to have bought The Boat. Now even the boat they’d had was gone. He wanted to tell Mary Lou to skip hiring a lawyer, that she might need the money later on and his fear was a lump in his throat.
“You do that,” Ames said. “Go to Judge Barker. I’ve had him out on fishing trips. He likes me. He’ll recommend a good lawyer.”
“Judge Barker,” Mary Lou repeated.
As he waited for Sayers to beach the boat and the body he was towing, Ames studied Camden’s face. Camden was no more concerned, at least externally, with Celeste Montigny’s death than he had been with the death of his wife. He didn’t look either grief-stricken or worried. He looked like a man with a hangover. Mr. Ferris was much more concerned.
The lawyer waded out thigh deep to meet the boat and made the dead girl decent by straightening her skirt. “I have her, deputy,” he said. “You’d better get back and recover the knife if you can. It may be important.”
Sayers looked at White. White nodded. “But best strip to your shorts first Ken. No sense in wetting your uniform. You cut your hand bad?”
“Not bad,” the deputy said.
He took off his uniform shirt and undershirt and laid them on the pier. He laid his gun and gun belt and hat on top of them. He took off his boots and trousers. Then gripping the oar with both hands, he sculled back toward the buoy rope on which the dead girl had been balanced.
Ferris waded ashore with Celeste and laid the limp body on the dry sand.
“Poor kid,” the lawyer said. “She got a bang out of life. A shame this had to happen to her.”
Chapter Ten
CORONER GILMORE knelt beside the body and felt the wet flesh. “I’d say she’s been dead for some hours. I haven’t the least idea how many. I’ll be glad when we have a Medical Examiner. Being a Justice of the Peace is enough of a job for one man.”
Sheriff White squatted beside him. “Could you estimate the time, John?”
“Oh, anyway, three or four hours.”
“Say between two and three o’clock this mornin’?”
“Yes. Somewhere along there.”
White located Phillips with his eyes. “What time did you say it was when you thought you heard a scream?”
“Between two-thirty and three o’clock, sir.”
“Did it seem to come from the direction of the pier?”
“I really couldn’t say, sir. As I said before, it was more of a sound than a scream.”
“A sound of distress?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Like how?”
“Well, like someone had started to call ‘Help’ and hadn’t time to finish the word.”
“Would you say it came from outside the house?”
“Definitely, sir,” Phillips said.
“How come you were up so late?”
The butler permitted himself a smug smile. “There was the inquest on Mrs. Camden, remember, sir? It was after one when we returned home. And by the time Celeste and I had set out sandwiches and whiskey for the gentlemen, it had reached the hour I mentioned.”
“Celeste helped you set out the night lunch, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You returned to the kitchen together?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you were the last one t’ see her alive?”
The butler’s smug smile grew smugger. “No, sir. Whoever killed her was the last to see her alive, sir. I do know this much. It was Celeste’s custom to walk out on the pier for a last cigarette before she retired. She said the Florida moon reminded her of the south of France.”
“Did she walk out on the pier last night?”
“I presume so.”
“And a few minutes later you heard an unfinished call for help but you didn’t bother to investigate.”
Phillips’ smile faded.
Camden said testily, “For God’s sake, stop picking on Phillips. He had no reason to kill Celeste.”
White turned his faded blue eyes on Camden. “Do you know anyone who did?”
“No.”
Gilmore finished his examination and washed his hands in the bay. “As far as I can tell without undressing her, she was stabbed only once. In the back. On the left side. About where her heart would be. But I’ll get Doc Hendry to do a post.”
“You do that, John,” White said. He continued to squat on the sand beside the dead girl, looking like a gaunt and guileless Buddha with long white drooping mustaches. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Camden. A-speakin’ of the inquest. Before I forget.”
“Yes — ?”
“Your wife was quite a wealthy woman, wasn’t she?”
“Very.”
“In her own right?”
Camden picked at the stubble of beard on his unshaven jowls. “Yes.”
“The money come to you?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
White stood up. “Why not?”
“Because I was fool enough to sign a pre-marital agreement. All I get is twenty-five thousand cash, her jewelry and the Florida property.”
All, Ames thought. He’d been watching Sayers dive for the knife. He turned and looked at the rambling beach house rising out of the palm tree studded lawn. It reminded him of a picture he’d once seen of Harry James’ and Betty Grable’s California ranch house. The house was worth at lease fifty thousand dollars. Camden claimed the ring imbedded in his dead wife’s flesh was worth eighteen thousand. Plus the cash he’d mentioned, Camden hadn’t done too badly. Even after taxes, ninety-three thousand dollars would buy a lot of Scotch and other things.
Mary Lou turned with him. “All.”
“A pity,” Sheriff White sympathized. “Who gits the rest of the money?”
Camden told him. “The stockholders.”
“The stockholders?”
“Of helene camden, incorporated.”
Ferris wrung water from the skirt of his robe. “You see, helene camden was her life. Helene started it on nothing and built it up to the multi-million dollar business that it is. And sh
e confided in me many times that even after her death she wanted the business to go on as a sort of monument to her.”
“I see.”
Ferris continued. “While Helene was very self-willed and at times impetuous and unconventional, she was a smart business woman. I know. I’ve been her personal lawyer for fifteen years. Even her insurance, some two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth, goes to the corporation.”
State’s Attorney Keely whistled. “There must be a lot of money in cosmetics.”
A wry smile tugged at Ferris’ wisp of a mustache. “There is. You know the old bit of doggerel, Mr. State’s Attorney. ‘Little pats of powder, little dabs of paint, make the homely girlies look like what they ain’t.’”
White had been studying the girl on the sand. He looked from her to Camden. “You didn’t happen to walk out on the pier last night, say between two an’ three, did you, Mr. Camden?”
Camden’s plump cheeks mottled with anger. The hands thrust into the pockets of his robe formed fists. “Oh, for God’s sake!”
Ferris said, suavely, “I’ll answer that question, Hal. I’ve been expecting this line of questioning to develop ever since the inquest last night, when I happened to notice Sheriff White comparing Celeste with Helene. I think I know what’s in his mind.”
“Mind?” Camden snorted.
Sheriff White sucked at the end of one of his mustaches. “That’s right interestin’, Counsellor. What’s in my mind?”
Ferris said, “Celeste was a very pretty girl. She was young, vivacious. You resent the fact that you’ve had to arrest one of your own for Helene’s murder. You’d much rather pin Helene’s death on some damn Yankee who merely winters in Florida. Helene was a smart business woman but she’d been around a long time. She was beginning to sag here and there. So you’re wondering if it wasn’t possible that Hal had been having an affair with Celeste and if Helene hadn’t caught him at it and threatened to divorce him. In that case, it would be very possible for Hal to want to see Helene dead. It would also be possible theoretically, that, having killed Helene and knowing that Celeste knew, Hal would get the wind up and kill Celeste to make certain she couldn’t give evidence against him.” The lawyer lighted an expensive Turkish cigarette. “Unfortunately for your supposition, Hal was in Baltimore when Helene was murdered.”
“Yes,” White admitted blandly. “I know. I checked on both of you.”
Camden’s face became more mottled. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he repeated. “How stupid can you get? Sure, I made a play for Celeste. Helene lighted wherever her fancy struck. If she could play house with fishing guides and the like, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t hold hands with the maid. But I got as far with Celeste as you’re going to get with your nasty insinuations. She was a good kid, playing it straight. And all I got for the pass I made was my face slapped.”
Ferris’ lips formed a thin straight line, broken only by the oval cigarette. It was obvious he was keeping his temper with an effort. “And last night Hal was with me from the time we left the inquest until approximately four-thirty this morning, a full hour and a half after the elastic time limit your erudite Justice of the Peace, acting in a capacity for which he is not qualified, has set as the time of Celeste’s death.”
Gilmore dried his hands on his pocket handkerchief. “Well, I guess that tells me off.”
“So it would seem,” White said. He had trouble with the word. “What’s erudite mean, John?”
Gilmore said, “Well, when I graduated from Stetson, erudite was from the Latin eruditus, past participle of erudire, to free from rudeness; polish; instruct; e — out, plus rudis — rude. Characterized by wide knowledge of a bookish kind; learned.”
Ferris gave him a sour look.
Half of the crowd had remained on the beach. The other half had returned to the end of the pier to watch Deputy Sheriff Sayers dive for the knife that had been in the dead girl’s back. The group on the end of the pier cheered.
“Ken must have found the knife,” Keely said.
“He must have,” White agreed.
The deputy sculled his borrowed boat back to the beach.
“You got it, eh?” White asked.
“Yeah,” Sayers panted. He squeegeed water from his body. “But it took fourteen dives. There’s a soft marl bottom out there.” He picked a knife from the foreward thwart and handed it to White.
It was an open clasp knife with a yellow bone handle and a five inch blade, of the type known as Fisherman’s Luck.
“It wasn’t lucky for her,” Sayers said.
Ames wet his lips as he looked at the knife. Mary Lou felt his body stiffen. “What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“It’s my knife,” Ames whispered back. “The one I always keep in my tackle box.”
“How do you know?”
A lump formed in Ames’s stomach. “I filed my initials on the handle.”
Holding the knife by the tip of the blade, Sheriff White studied the bone handle. “C.A.,” he read aloud. “That would be Charles Ames or could be.” He looked at Ames.
“This your knife, Charlie?”
The lump in Ames’s stomach moved up into his throat. He was frightened and didn’t know why. He couldn’t have killed Celeste Montigny. He’d been in custody when she’d died. “It looks like my knife,” he said finally. “But anyone could have gotten at it. I seldom lock my tackle box.”
Still holding the knife by its tip, White laid it on the dead girl’s skirt. “Well, it’s a cinch you didn’t kill her.”
The curious crowded even closer to get a better look at the knife. Ferris lighted a cigarette from the stub of the one he was smoking. The pungent tobacco smelled heavy and somehow out of place in the clean crispness of the rising sun.
“No,” Ferris said softly. “That would seem to be an impossibility.” He studied Mary Lou’s face. “But if I may make a suggestion, Sheriff, an angle does occur to me.”
“What?” Sheriff White asked.
Ferris continued to study Mary Lou’s face. “Mrs. Ames is obviously in love with her husband. Celeste was your best witness against him. Celeste testified at the inquest that Helene told her she had a date with a handsome young charter boat captain and they were under no circumstances to be disturbed. Celeste also placed Ames aboard the Sea Bird the morning Helene was killed. Without her testimony, all your other evidence against him is circumstantial.”
“So?”
Helene Camden’s lawyer continued. “So Celeste’s death is, to say the least, very providential for Ames.” Ferris’ wry smile appeared again. “Think it over, Sheriff. Ames admits the knife is his. He says he kept it in an unlocked tackle box aboard his own boat, I presume. That fact alone, coupled with Mrs. Ames’s fantastic story about diving for a cup and having been struck on the head by a mysterious someone who tried to murder her by rolling her into the pass, would lead me to believe that just possibly Mrs. Ames knows more about this than has been brought out so far.”
“I see what you mean,” White said.
“Now wait a minute,” Ames said. “Don’t try to involve Mary Lou in this.”
Ferris was smug about it. “I don’t think much effort is necessary. A knife is a woman’s weapon. Mrs. Ames had access to your knife. She knew Celeste’s testimony would send you to the chair.” Ferris’ voice turned cold. “So Mrs. Ames waylaid Celeste and stabbed her, then she invented this mythical someone who she claims attempted to kill her in the hope the local law would assume the same party killed Celeste.”
White tugged at his long mustaches. “Now, that’s a right interestin’ theory, Counsellor.” He turned his faded blue eyes on Mary Lou. “Women in love are hell. They do the damnedest things, also some mighty dumb ones.”
Mary Lou pressed against Ames. Her eyes were frightened. “No. Don’t believe him, Sheriff White. Someone did try to drown me. A woman. And I didn’t kill Celeste. I couldn’t. I couldn’t kill anyone.”
“That’s your story,” Camden said.
Ferris continued coldly. “Celeste is dead. If the knife hadn’t hung up in the rope, she’d be out in the pass by now, possibly following the same path Helene’s body took, possibly washed out into the Gulf where it would never have been discovered and the only actual witness against Ames would have mysteriously disappeared.”
“It sounds to me,” Camden said.
Mary Lou pressed even harder against Ames. “No!”
Ames wished he could comfort her.
Celeste wasn’t the only one who’d been stabbed. Someone had a knife in him, in Mary Lou and now they were beginning to twist the blade.
Ferris? Camden? Why?
He knew Mary Lou hadn’t killed Celeste. It would never occur to her. She was incapable of the physical act. Still, if Sheriff White followed Mr. Ferris’ line of reasoning, only one thing could happen. White would arrest Mary Lou on suspicion of murder. A coroner’s jury would find that the maid had come to her death at Mary Lou’s hands and would recommend she be held and tried for murder.
The sun was high now and hot. Sweat beaded on Ames’s face. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Not to Mary Lou. He wished he was smarter than he was. He wished his head would stop aching. His awakening in the cabin of the Sea Bird seemed a thousand years ago. Ames felt as if he’d been swimming though slime and seaweed ever since, and now, at the end of his swim, he was being forced to climb a glass wall.
Ames studied the faces of the two men. Ferris, he decided, was just being a lawyer. He was just shooting off his mouth showing how smart he was. But Camden’s utter lack of emotion was too casual. The widowed cosmetic executive was too unconcerned.
Ninety-three thousand dollars was a lot of money. Celeste had been a very beautiful girl. So Camden had been in Baltimore when his wife had died. He had been on the scene of the crime when Celeste had been stabbed. He said he’d found her body. Ames wished he could talk to Camden alone in a locked room for five minutes. So his wrists were manacled, he’d use his feet.
Without moving his head, the former trumpet player looked from Camden to the foot of the pier where Deputy Sayers’ gun was still sandwiched in between Sayers’ undershirt and uniform trousers.