The Ring of Truth

by George Harmon Coxe

  Standish came to his feet, his angular face grave and the dark-blue eyes thoughtful under the straight brows. Keeping his thoughts on the financial information he now had, he realized that only in Flemming had he any support for his theory. Flemming had obviously come into some money, and at the proper time. He could have been hired to run down Robert Tremaine. But by whom? . . .

  “What?” he said, aware that Cheney had spoken.

  “I just asked you if that would wrap it up for you?”

  “It helps,” he said, “and thanks. I’d like to keep you working a little longer. Could you, or one of your men, keep an eye on Donald Tremaine?”

  “Well”—Cheney shrugged and looked doubtful—“I suppose so. That’s what we’re in business for. What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m going around to Tremaine’s place after dinner and have a talk with him,” Standish said. “I’d like to have somebody watch the place after I leave.”

  “In case our mysterious brunette shows up again?”

  “Something like that. From what I’ve been able to get he’s never had a reputation as a ladies’ man. I’m curious to know whether someone came along to change his attitude.”

  “You’ll be seeing him around maybe eight-thirty or nine?”

  “Probably. If he’s in.”

  “Okay.” Cheney slipped on his coat and reached for his hat. “Around nine or so I’ll have someone there. Suppose the brunette shows?”

  “Just stay with it.”

  “Until she comes out?”

  “Right.”

  “And after that,” Cheney said, grinning now as he backed toward the door, “you want us to tail her and find out who she is.”

  “If you can.”

  “Will do. Do you want me to call you in the morning or will you get in touch with me?”

  Standish, a little uncertain of his plans and quite possibly influenced by his thoughts of Mary Hayward, said he would call Cheney.

  14

  IT WAS after nine when Paul Standish parked his car in the quiet tree-lined street where Donald Tremaine lived. The address he sought was, as Lou Cheney had described it, in the middle of the block, a narrow-front stone-and-brick building that looked as if it had been there at least fifty years. Light glowed behind curtains of the front windows on all four floors and the wood-and-glass door giving on the vestibule was unlocked. There were four mailboxes recessed in the right-hand wall and enough illumination came through the frosted-glass panel of the second door to tell him that Tremaine occupied the second floor.

  There was a pushbutton and a voice tube over each mailbox but as Standish glanced round he saw that the edge of the inner door had been warped or swollen by the weather and no longer fitted properly. This made the lock inoperative and a push got him inside without difficulty. A single round fixture dangled from a high ceiling to fight the squarish foyer with a front-to-back hallway and stairs mounting straight ahead on the left.

  Donald Tremaine had a highball glass in his hand when he opened the door and his bespectacled glance showed momentary surprise as recognition came to him. He smiled politely and there was nothing reluctant about the gesture he made by opening the door wider and stepping back.

  “Well, hello, Doctor. Come in.”

  “Your front door was ajar,” Standish said. “So I didn’t bother to ring.”

  “Perfectly all right. It’s been that way for over a month. Warped, I guess. The landlord is always going to fix it but never does. . . . Toss your coat anywhere. Let me fix you a drink.”

  Standish put his hat aside but he kept his coat on, saying he wouldn’t be long. He said he thought he’d skip the drink. “It hasn’t been too long since I finished dinner.”

  “Same with me,” Tremaine said. “But I seem to have developed a habit of having a brandy and soda afterward when I’m home. Seems to settle my stomach and help the digestive processes.”

  He waved a hand in a gesture that took in all of the room. “Sit down.”

  It was a nice room, Standish decided. Different, colorful, not exactly masculine but not feminine either. The carpet was pastel gray, the antique maple pieces—the kneehole desk, the highboy, the occasional tables—were well cared for. Birch logs stood on brass andirons in the blackened fireplace; there were two overstuffed wing chairs done in some maroon material, and the divan with its matching pillows was covered in an off-white, rough-textured fabric that looked expensive. Standish sat down here and was faced again with the problem of what to say or where to start. To get a little time he reached for a cigarette. Tremaine stepped forward and snapped flame from a lighter on the coffee table.

  “Thanks,” Standish said. “I talked to Mrs. Choate and your sister-in-law this afternoon.”

  “Oh?” Tremaine’s brows climbed above the metal-rimmed spectacles. “About what?”

  “Several things, including you.”

  “Me?” The brows stayed high. “For heaven’s sake why?” Standish ducked the direct question. “I hadn’t known about the trust fund your father left. Didn’t it bother you to have your brother in control until you were thirty-five?”

  “Certainly it bothered me.”

  “He could have handed over your half before that, couldn’t he?”

  “Of course he could.”

  Tremaine, standing in front of the fireplace, propped one elbow on the mantelpiece. He was wearing slacks, a white woolen shirt, open at the throat and topped by a knotted foulard scarf. His brown hair was carefully combed. Smallboned but well proportioned, he had about him an air that was immaculate and fastidious, and Standish had the impression that this was a man who would make it a point to look proper and well groomed under any and all circumstances.

  “But he didn’t.”

  “If you knew Robert you’d know why. He was his father’s son. He measured up and toed the line. He was a lot older than I was and he set an example I didn’t care to follow.”

  Standish nodded, dark gaze speculative as he waited out the pause that followed. He remembered what the two women had said, not the exact words but reasonable synonyms. Shy. Moody, naive, a loner. A boy who never quite conformed.

  “I was the only one who gave my father any trouble,” Tremaine went on, distance in his voice now. “Somehow I was a reflection on the rugged, he-man tradition that had been established. . . . I suppose it was my refusal to start in as an office boy in the family business that really tore it. I’d taken some accounting courses in college. I like figures and I was fairly good at math. So I took some more courses on my own and got my own job. That’s when father made the will.”

  “You and your brother didn’t get along?” Standish said, wanting to keep the other talking.

  “We had very little in common if that’s what you mean. Robert was aggressive in his living, in business, with women and, later, with his drinking. He liked the hold he had on me, the feeling of power if you like. He could be pretty damn patronizing when he wanted to be and with me at least he got to be rather hard to take.”

  There had been a rising and resentful inflection in his tone as he spoke, and, as though finally aware of this, Tremaine digressed.

  “Look. You’re sure you won’t change your mind about a drink?” He held up his own glass to show that it was empty. “I’m afraid I need a refill. Will you excuse me?”

  He disappeared down the hallway and Standish stood up and moved to the mantelpiece. A large silver-framed photograph stood at each end. One showed a pleasant-faced, graying woman that he assumed to be Tremaine’s mother; the other was a photograph of a handsome, robust-looking man flanked by the two Tremaine boys. Taken some years ago, it showed the difference in the two brothers, and it was when Standish moved it slightly to cut down the reflection of light on the glass that he saw the gold-and-enamel object which had been left behind the frame.

  It looked like a small cigarette lighter until he lifted the arm on top and pressed it. The misty spray that the plunger expelled had a strong, spicy smell which f
ell on the front of his coat and he realized too late that he had activated a perfume atomizer.

  He put it back, the strong scent still in the back of his throat. He moved to the divan again, a faint frown working around his eyes now and his mind busy. It may have been the knowledge that a woman had been here that made him more alert. More probably it was the off-white background of the fabric and some trick of light that enabled him to see a glistening strand of hair that had been caught by the rough fabric of one pillow.

  He could see, as he looked closer, that the hair was black and as he lifted it carefully between thumb and forefinger he knew it was about a foot long. Thinking hard now and brows warped, he acted not on any specific conclusion but simply as a matter of habit. Taking his notebook from his coat pocket, he opened it to two clean facing pages. He lowered the hair carefully. It curled somewhat of its own accord and against the whiteness of the paper he was reassured that the strand was black.

  He said, unconsciously and half aloud: “Hmmm,” and as his mind went on it seemed now that he had conclusive proof that Donald Tremaine was not quite the character the two women had pictured that afternoon. To believe them now was to assume that they were mistaken in their conviction that Tremaine was naive and ingenuous with women and had no luck with them.

  Lou Cheney’s talk with the landlord and the weekly woman visitor had dispelled the original impression and here was additional corroboration. Already his mind had come up with a rough idea of what he might do with the hair, but before he could dwell on the subject Tremaine came back with his refill. It was instantly apparent from his manner that something had happened in the kitchen and he proceeded to explain what it was.

  “I got to thinking out in the kitchen,” he said, not impolitely but with a cool and studied skepticism. “You didn’t come here to talk about my father’s will or that trust fund. Did you?”

  “Well—no.”

  “You’re a very easy man to talk to, Doctor. Or maybe it’s just that I’m one of those trusting souls who like to be pleasant to everyone. It’s about that man Flemming and the suicide of the trumpet player, isn’t it?”

  “Estey hadn’t been found when I talked to you yesterday afternoon,” Standish said. “But I guess you know what happened to him?”

  “The police seem to think he shot himself. Don’t you agree?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Standish thought it over and, seeing no easy out, decided to be frank.

  “That’s a hard question to answer. I could say that in my opinion, both as a man and as a physician, I don’t think Estey would kill himself that way. I knew him fairly well. I thought I understood what made him tick, but that’s only a personal opinion and to give it any validity I’d have to go back a little and say I don’t think Estey shot Flemming Monday night. I could be more specific in a medical way but I don’t know why you should be interested in the details. Let’s just say that as a medical examiner I discovered certain irregularities that seem suspicious.”

  He hesitated, choosing his words with care. “You can call it a theory if you like. Call it idle speculation if you want to, but either way the idea is based on the remote possibility that Flemming’s murder was no coincidence and did not come as a result of a quarrel between him and Estey but instead was planned that way.”

  “Planned?” Some new tension showed in Tremaine’s good-looking face. Behind the glasses his eyes were narrowed and intent. “By whom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “For what reason?”

  “To answer that,” Standish said. “I have to go back to your brother’s accident. On the face of it that’s all it was— an accident, pure and simple. I had no reason to doubt it until now. But vehicular homicide is a tricky thing,” he added. “I could give you chapter and verse and show you pieces written by more experienced and more learned men than me. My point is this:

  “Because of the circumstances and your brother’s condition, because of the testimony of his wife and the doorman at Hennessey’s, because of my tests for the percentage of blood alcohol both in Flemming and in your brother, he was let off lightly. On the other hand, Flemming, from what I’ve learned about him, is the sort who could be hired for such a job if someone was clever enough to recognize the possibilities of a traffic murder.”

  He put up a hand and spoke quickly to forestall an impending interruption. “For the sake of argument, let’s say someone did hire Flemming and pay him off. Suppose Flemming spent the money and then realized what a wonderful extortion setup he had. Under such circumstances the one who hired him might decide that the only way he could ever be free from the threat, the only way to avoid a possible lifetime of payments, was to murder the man who threatened him.”

  He stood up, aware that Tremaine was watching him. “Before you throw the theory away let me get the rest of it off my chest.”

  Tremaine remembered his drink and took a big swallow. He put the glass down on the mantelpiece and then, folding his arms, leaned against the edge of it.

  “Go ahead,” he said, his voice quietly contemptuous. “You’re my guest. You have the floor.”

  His sarcasm was wasted on Standish because he was thinking hard and wanted to get his thoughts in order.

  “To make it stand up—I mean the conclusion that Estey shot Flemming and then killed himself—the idea would have to be predicated on the known fact that Flemming and Estey had tangled over a girl named Sheila Keith, that Estey had been knocked out and had made the threat that he had a gun and intended to use it the next time Flemming got in his way.” He hesitated just a second and said: “You were a witness to that fight, weren’t you?”

  The question seemed to take Tremaine aback. The eyes blinked and were no longer so intent. It took him two or three seconds to frame an answer and it sounded more hesitant than emphatic.

  “Well—yes. I mean, when I got there Estey was on his back and you were tending to him. I didn’t know what happened or what went on before that.”

  “But you were there in time to hear the threat.”

  “All right, I heard what Estey said. What about it?”

  “When you went inside you joined your sister-in-law and Warren Choate. You told them what you saw.”

  He reached for his hat and got a whiff of his perfumed lapel. When Tremaine made no comment, he moved to the door.

  “What I’m saying, and it’s not an accusation or, at the moment, even an inference, is that at least three people and possibly four benefited greatly by your brother’s death. Three of you had sufficient knowledge to plan a murder and suicide the police would accept.”

  He waited before he turned the doorknob. Tremaine seemed not to have moved a muscle. He was still leaning back against the mantelpiece, arms folded across his chest. From that distance Standish could not tell what was going on behind the thin-rimmed glasses and when there was still no reply he opened the door and went out.

  Downstairs the main door was still stuck and unlatched. As he came out on the sidewalk and turned toward his car he remembered Lou Cheney and the assignment that had been given to him. There was no one else on the sidewalk, no shadows that moved. He counted ten parked cars in the block, all of them looking dark and empty. As he climbed into his own sedan he wondered again if Cheney or one of his men was watching the house, and whether the time would be wasted.

  15

  PAUL STANDISH spent three quarters of an hour trying to locate Warren Choate and then decided he could wait until morning. He did not expect the broker would offer any information but he hoped to find out if any of the people he was interested in had made a stock sale through the Choate office around the time of the accident.

  By the time he had given up on Choate, he wanted the drink he had refused from Donald Tremaine, and he went once more to Hennessey’s. Business was reasonably good and the band was in action. Hennessey had found a new trumpet man, a plump youth who hit the right notes and improvised well, but to Standish the group lac
ked the driving precision Ralph Estey had always been able to produce.

  It had been his original intention to have this drink at the bar but the sight of Sheila Keith, who was working with a plump and tinted redhead as her assistant, changed his mind. Even when he asked if she could sit with him and have a drink he did not realize the motivation behind his request. He was pleased when she said yes and led the way to this obscure table in the rear comer, but it was not until the drink came that he understood that what he really wanted was someone to talk to.

  He could not go to Ballard because he had nothing new to add to his earlier statement regarding his skepticism about the police theory. The talks he had had, the suspicion that to him seemed increasingly valid, meant nothing. It might not even sound convincing to his own ears when spoken aloud. Had it been earlier he might have called Mary Hayward, who had become his sounding board and sympathetic listener. Now, with Sheila Keith watching him and waiting for some clue as to what he had in mind, it suddenly seemed important that he make a case for himself and get her reaction.

  She was wearing her customary simple dark dress with a white collar, which was her Hennessey uniform. She had more makeup on than usual and he could understand why. The practiced smile which was her trademark was missing now that she was at ease, and the upward-slanting green eyes, shadowed and expertly lined, remained watchful and attentive.