by Jim Thompson
He was a big fellow, not much over thirty, and he had a rather joking manner of speaking. When I came up he was bending over a sort of suitcase he had on the running-board of his coupe. One that opened at the top with a lot of vials and bottles and envelopes, and little racks and clips to hold them.
“I’m afraid there’s not much to work on,” I said, looking around.
“Oh, I’ve got everything I need already,” he said. “I cleaned up the last of it yesterday evening. Just making a final check this morning.”
“Did you—find anything to help you?” I asked.
“Don’t know yet.” He grinned. “I’ve got it all, though, up at the hotel. I’ve signed enough receipts for your county attorney to fill a bushel basket.”
“I’m glad you’ve had co-operation,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do let me know.”
“Swell,” he said, “just pass the word along to the C.A. and the sheriff and their cohorts that the quicker I’m satisifed the quicker you’ll get your dough.”
“I’m not in any particular hurry to get the money,” I said.
“Oh, hell,” he said, “we’re all in a hurry to get the money. What’s your opinion on the origin of the fire?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “According to the paper, rats—”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I’ll bet that tied you in knots, didn’t it? Would rats be in a metal-lined room? Wouldn’t your wife have known if there were rats? And would she have put herself within a hundred yards of them?”
“I’ve not had any experiences with fires,” I said. “What’s your idea?”
“I’ve got a couple. One is that it was incendiary.” He grinned, watching my face. “The other, that it was an accident.”
“Well—”
“Pretty good, huh? All I’ve got to do is get rid of one of ’em, and I can hand you a check or have you slapped in the jug.”
And before I could say anything, he laughed and clapped me on the back to show that he was joking.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wilmot,” he said. “I know how you must feel at a time like this, and I don’t mean to be flippant. I see so much tragedy that I’m a little hardened to it. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“That’s all right,” I said.
“I’ll be frank with you, Joe—Mr. Wilmot—”
“Joe’s okay.”
“I’m kind of puzzled, Joe. Now, you didn’t have any knob-and-tube wiring in here? It was all in conduit, right?”
“Sure. Just like it is in my show.”
“What about the cord on the rewind motor?”
“It was all right. So far as I know.”
He shook his head reproachfully. “You mean to say you’re not sure?”
“Well, of course I’m sure,” I said. “Mrs. Wilmot would have been sure, anyway. She’d been doing this for almost ten years. If there was anything wrong with the cord she’d have known it.”
“It looks like she would have, Joe,” he nodded. “She didn’t smoke, I understand?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Well, there you are,” said Appleton. “Apparently there wasn’t any cause for the fire. And yet there was a fire. You see why I’m puzzled, Joe?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I see.”
“How long did you say Mrs. Wilmot had been doing this sort of work?”
“Ten years or so. Almost ever since we were married.”
“Why did she do it? Don’t get me wrong. We’re not denying liability.”
“I suppose she did it because she wanted to.”
“Just like that, huh?” He laughed.
“Yes.”
“You screen your stuff before you play it, don’t you? Running it through the rewind here didn’t save any time or money.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Every once in a while she’d run across a reel that was wound backward or needed splicing, and—”
“But not very often. Not often enough to justify so much time and expense. It strikes me that this setup would have been more of a nuisance than anything else.”
Well, it was. I couldn’t deny it.
“Tell me. Did she do any other work connected with the show?”
“Yes. She did quite a bit. Worked on the books now and then. Made out the deposit slips. Things like that.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I said. But I knew what he meant.
“Sure. From what I’ve learned of you, Joe, you didn’t need that kind of help. You’re a first-rate businessman. I happen to know that Mrs. Wilmot was anything but an expert businesswoman.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with the fire.”
“Maybe it hasn’t got anything to do with it.” He was still grinning, but his eyes were hard. “For twenty-five thousand bucks I could even ask foolish questions.”
“I think I see what you’re driving at,” I said slowly. “You’re implying that my wife was butting in where she wasn’t wanted and that I resented it.”
“Well, Joe?”
I nodded. Something seemed to nod my head. And when I spoke it was as though someone were whispering the words to me. The right words.
“It’s probably pretty hard for you to understand,” I said. “You see, Mrs. Wilmot was quite a bit older than I was. We didn’t have any children. I think she felt from the beginning that she wasn’t pulling her weight in the partnership—”
He cleared his throat, sort of embarrassed like. I went on.
“Her work didn’t help me,” I said—I heard myself saying. “It was a nuisance. I’ve spent hours undoing some of the things she did; and I used to get impatient and bawl her out. But I guess I was always ashamed afterward. She was trying to make up for things—for the things she couldn’t give me and felt that she should—
“I wish she was back here, now. She could turn the show into a bathhouse and I’d never say a word. Anyway—well, that’s the way it was. She did butt in, and I resented it. But we understood each other in spite of everything. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Appleton blew his nose. “I think—I—I understand the situation, Joe. I’m sorry if I put the wrong interpretation on it.”
“You’ve got your job to do,” I said.
“I’ll be frank with you. We don’t like the looks of these fires where everything is so completely destroyed. Now, this Farmer girl—” He lowered his voice. “She was the last person to see Mrs. Wilmot alive. How did they get along together?”
“Why, all right, I believe,” I said. “I can tell you this much. If Elizabeth hadn’t wanted her here, she wouldn’t have stayed one minute.”
He nodded again. “That jibes with my information.”
“If I had the slightest idea that Carol—”
“Now, don’t let me put ideas into your head,” he said quickly. “I’m just groping in the dark.”
I glanced at my watch.
“I’ve got to be getting into town pretty quick,” I said. “I suppose you’ll be around for a while?”
“Oh, sure. You’ll be seeing a lot of me before we get this thing settled.”
I knew he meant just what he said, nothing more. I’d sold myself to him as much as I could be sold under the circumstances. He’d swallowed everything I’d said about Elizabeth.
Carol was fixing some breakfast when I went into the house. I sat down at the kitchen table and waited, and I think I said something about the coffee smelling good. She didn’t answer me or turn around. Pretty soon I saw her hand go up to her face.
I swore under my breath, and got up. The back door was closed and the shades were drawn. I went over and stood beside her.
“Now what?” I said.
“N-Nothing.”
“Come on, spit it out!”
I guess I sounded pretty harsh, but I was nervous. I had things to make me nervous. She whirled, her eyes flashing.
“I heard what you said to him!”
“What I said to him?”
“Yes.
About Elizabeth!”
I couldn’t figure out what she meant for a minute. Then I said, “Well, for God’s sake, what did you think I should say to him? That I hated her guts and was damned glad she was gone? That would have sounded good, wouldn’t it?”
“N-No— You didn’t really mean it, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t mean it.”
She wiped her eyes and tried to smile. I sat down on a chair and pulled her onto my lap.
“Look, Carol,” I said, “you’re going to have to get over this suspiciousness and jealousy. If you don’t it’ll crop up at the wrong time, and that’ll be just too bad. Don’t you see? If people thought there was anything between you and me it would give you a motive for Elizabeth’s—for this woman’s—death.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll behave, Joe.”
“You’ve got to, Carol,” I said. “If they ever get the idea that you or I wanted Elizabeth out of the way, they’ll do an autopsy on that—on the remains. They’ll do one to end all autopsies. They won’t know what to look for so they’ll look for everything. And they’ll find out it wasn’t Elizabeth.”
“But—well, there wasn’t anything left—”
“Oh, yes, there was. The teeth were left, and that’s all they’d need. The teeth would show that it wasn’t Elizabeth.”
She didn’t know about things like that. She sat looking at me, making sure I wasn’t kidding.
“Maybe— You don’t suppose they’ve already—”
“Not a chance,” I said. “If they had we wouldn’t be sitting here. Oh, sure, they’ve had an inquest. Decided she died by reason of fire and so on. But that’s all they’ve done, and we mustn’t give them any reason to do any more than that. You’d better clear out of here tomorrow, at the latest.”
“No!” She threw her arms around my neck. “Please don’t make me, Joe!”
“But you’ve got to, Carol. We planned it that way. It don’t look right for us to be staying here together.”
“No! I don’t care how we planned. It’s different now.”
“You’ll be all right. You can get you a little job of some kind here in town and go ahead to school. In six or seven months, when all this blows over, we can start seeing each other and—”
“But what if something should happen that I ought to know about? You wouldn’t be able to let me know until—until it was too late.”
“It’d be too late from the start,” I said. “This isn’t something we can run out on if things get hot. Anyway, if anything went wrong you’d know it as soon as I would.”
“No, I wouldn’t, Joe.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t you?”
“Elizabeth was your wife, and I was the last one to be seen with her. And you were out of town when it happened. They’d talk to you before they did anything.”
“Well,” I said, “what of it? You’re not going to be at the north pole. If talking to you would do any good after things had gone that far, I could reach you easily enough.”
She sat not looking at me. “They can’t prove anything against you, Joe,” she said in a funny voice. “Not what they can with me. If—if I took the blame—”
“Oh,” I said slowly. “I see.”
“Please, Joe—”
“Why don’t you say what you mean?” I said. “You think if I got the chance I’d throw everything on you. Is that it?”
I shoved her to her feet and got up, but before I could move away she had her arms around me. She began crying again, and her breasts shivered against me, and I patted her and finally held her close.
“You shouldn’t feel that way, Carol,” I said. “We’ve got to trust each other.”
“I d-do, Joe!” she said. “I trust you and love you so much that—and that wasn’t the reason I wanted to stay! I—I just want to be near you. It doesn’t seem like I’m living when I’m not with you.”
Well, hell. I was pretty sure she meant it, but even if she didn’t it sounded good. A woman can’t make a man sore talking like that.
“Well,” I said, “we’ll talk about it again. I guess it will be all right if you stay around a few days. Maybe something will turn up by that time.”
“That Mr. Chance. How long is he going to be in town?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wishing to God that I did. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on. He may be around helping me for quite a while.”
“If he stayed here, too, it’d be all right for me to stay, wouldn’t it?”
I didn’t know how to get around that one. If I’d had my way Hap would be staying at the bottom of some good deep well.
“We’ll see,” I said.
16
I told Carol I wasn’t hungry yet and left the house without eating breakfast. If there was ever a time in my life that I needed to keep my mind clear this was it, so I got away before I could be caught up in another argument.
I stopped at the Elite Café and ordered ham an’; and while I was eating Web Clay came in for a cigar. He saw me and came back to my booth. He’d already eaten but I got him to take a cup of coffee.
“Web,” I said, after we’d talked for a while, “what do you think about the fire? About Elizabeth’s death?”
“I don’t think you need to ask me that, Joe,” he said. “She was an irreplaceable loss to the entire community. I grieved with you.”
“I appreciate that, Web,” I said. “What I’m asking is, do you think Elizabeth could have been murdered and that the fire was used to cover up the crime?”
A slow flush spread over his face. He lit his cigar and dropped the match into his coffee cup.
“You don’t think my investigation of the case was sufficiently thorough?”
“Now, Web—”
“You’re a friend, Joe. I knew—I believed—that you trusted me, and I wanted to spare you all the pain that I could. Now, I’ll tell you something; something that only Rufe and I have known up to now. Before that fire was cold, before that whippersnapper Appleton got here, I had a man here from the state bureau of criminal investigation. He went over the ground thoroughly, and found nothing of an incendiary character. It was his theory that the fire must have been started by rats.”
“But—”
“I know. We don’t see how it could have been. But if it wasn’t for the impossible and improbable we wouldn’t have any accidents. Do you recall reading, a few years back, about the hardware clerk who was killed while unpacking a shipment of rifles? The gun had never been out of the packing-case, but it was loaded. It couldn’t have happened at the factory. The chief inspector had examined it and sealed the breach with his tag. It couldn’t have happened at the store because it had never been out of the box. But it did happen, Joe.”
“I remember the case,” I said. “Well, suppose, then, that the fire was an accident—and I’ve felt like you that it must have been. But—”
“The two things go together, Joe. Elizabeth’s death was undoubtedly caused by the fire. It’s true that the post mortem, such as it was, was not very revealing. The body—excuse me, Joe—was pinned beneath the remains of that metal table and other wreckage. But we were able to ascertain that the fire and nothing but the fire caused her death. That’s all we need to know.”
“I see,” I said.
“She actually died of the fire, Joe. Therefore, in the absence of any incendiary materials or mechanism, we know that her death was an accident.”
“Yeah—yes,” I said.
He spread his hands. “Well, you see, Joe? I didn’t take the case as lightly as you seemed to think I did. I didn’t go around with a lot of fuss and bluster—”
“Now, Web,” I said. “I wasn’t criticizing.”
“That’s all right. I know this man Appleton has got you all stirred up. We may as well talk the thing out now that we’ve started. When I say that the fire caused Elizabeth’s death I’m not overlooking the possibility that she could have been stunned and left to die in the fire. You were going to a
sk me about that, weren’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “it did occur to me that—”
“But where is your motive, Joe? You’ve got to have a motive, haven’t you? Now, you—excuse me—profited by the death. But you weren’t there, and, as I’ve said, there was no trace of a delayed-mechanism device; tallow or anything of that kind. And there always is some trace where anything of the kind has been used. Could she have been the victim of robbery or assault by some person unknown? We know that she couldn’t. There wasn’t time for it. The fire broke out almost as soon as she got home.
“Then there’s—what’s her name?—Carol Farmer. She was the last to see Elizabeth alive, and she was on the grounds. But what do we find there? Why, she and Elizabeth were on the best of terms. Elizabeth had taken her in and given her work. She’d just treated her to a holiday. She’d driven all the way to Wheat City to bring her home.
“We’re friends, Joe, but I’ve always put duty ahead of friendship. I even considered the possibility—ha, ha—the impossibility, I should say, that you were attracted to Miss Farmer. Ha, ha. I’d hate to go before a jury with a theory of that kind. One look at her, and they’d lock me up. They’d send for a strait jacket—ha, ha, ha!”
I laughed right along with him. I think I’ve already said that no one saw in Carol what I saw. It suited me fine if they never did.
He went on talking while I ate, working himself into a good humor. As we were leaving the place we ran into Rufe Waters. Appleton had been in to needle him about something or other, and he was hopping mad. He was threatening to punch him in the nose if he came near him again.
I told Web and Rufe so-long, and drove over to the show. I parked in front of Bower’s old house, feeling fairly good. Appleton was getting nowhere fast. In a few days he’d probably decide to pay off and clear out.
I got out of the car and started across the street. Then something nailed to the box office of Bower’s old place caught my eye, and I turned around and went up on the sidewalk. It was one of Andy Taylor’s signs. It said:
FOR RENT
Taylor Inv. & Ins. Co.
I was standing there staring at it, not knowing whether to laugh or get sore, when Andy came up. I guess he must have been standing a few doors down the street, waiting for me.