Beardsley materialized out of the darkness like an untimely ghost. He stopped them by the simple expedient of getting in their way.
“Something we have to get straight with you, Brendan,” he said. Katheren noticed oddness in his voice, hostility or a note of warning. She didn’t like it.
“We?” asked George.
With a short jerk of his head towards the far side of the road, Beardsley pointed out a glimmering lantern surrounded by legs. Migler’s legs and Tozer’s, and two other pairs, as yet anonymous.
“Right,” said George. “You don’t mind, Katheren? I shan’t be long.”
In mystification and uneasiness, Katheren walked the rest of the way to Migler’s alone.
Mrs. Migler waited for her on the porch of the store, and beckoned her with a ledger.
“You folks didn’t register,” she whispered, and by way of explanation waved a pencil stub towards the windows. Through them, Katheren could see two strangers, obviously the police, drinking coffee at the lunch counter.
Katheren wrote, “Mr. and Mrs. George Brendan, New York City,” in the space after Number Five.
She glanced at the other names:
Number One: Mr. & Mrs. Alden Beardsley, Chicago.
Number Two: Mr. & Mrs. Milton J. Smalnick, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Number Three: Nick Leeds, L. A., Calif.
Number Four: Boyd & Burnet Winter, Oyster Bay,
L. I.—Ray Kemp, Stanford U., Palo Alto, Cal.
Number Six: Ruth & Rex Shanley, New York City.
Trailer Park: Mr. and Mrs. Henry Tozer and daughter Constance, Pittsburgh, Pa.
“All kinds, from all over,” sighed Mrs. Migler, and took the ledger away.
Including a murderer, red-handed; though Katheren saw no virtue in going into that with Mrs. Migler.
She trudged through the mud to Number Five. Caligula wriggled his screw-tail to cheer her up. In vain. She looked in the teapot for something to warm her. Likewise in vain. The tea was cold.
Beardsley and those other men—what could they want with George?
Minutes ticked by heavily on her wrist-watch. She sat on the bed to take off her shoes and stockings. It seemed hardly worth the bother. She might be walking out again at any moment, firmly attached to a policeman.
No two ways about it: a murder investigation would mean checking up on all the people in the camp; checking up on the Brendans would quickly dispose of that flimsy alias; and where would they be then?
Katheren knew without being told.
Three
WHAT Katheren didn’t know without being told was that Shanley’s death would never officially become a murder case.
Grinning at her and filling his pipe, George popped the news to her as she emerged bewildered from an uneasy doze.
“Nothing to it, my dear,” he said, and made himself comfortable beside her on the bed. “We have an understanding. Beardsley and I will neglect to mention the little accident on Lady Bend Hill. Nobody is to bring up the fire in Shanley’s car. We all keep our mouths shut except when asked about the truck collision; and then we let rip in a convincing chorus—Shanley got stinko, Shanley made himself a beastly nuisance, Shanley drove out of here alone in his car. Isn’t it beautiful?” Katheren raised her head and rested it on one hand. She blinked at her husband and asked him, “But why?”
“Oh, we mustn’t distract the police from the neat pattern of a drunk-driving accident. They might get perplexed and keep us here for days.”
“Whose bright idea?”
“I don’t know. Spontaneous inspiration, probably.”
“I’m amazed.”
“You do look a bit addled.”
“Ass!”
“It all comes of hob-nobbing with the Great. Milton J. Smalnick of Hollywood linked arms with me and confided what it means to be a cinema producer. As he so neatly phrases it, he’s kind of incognito just now. Traveling to Hollywood from England, where he keeps a production unit. A production unit is a luxury, I gather, like a stable of blooded horses. Milton Smalnick has his reasons for not wanting the police to raise an unnecessary fuss, like all of us. He’s in a hurry. Beardsley has his financial interests, and the embarrassment of it all. Tozer—there’s a chap after my own heart—simply doesn’t want the police prying all night. He and a boy in bandages named Ray Kemp are thick as thieves and in it up to the neck, whatever it is. Nick Leeds thinks Least Said, Soonest Mended, particularly when dealing with accident insurance companies. And there we are, all of a mind together. Migler took twenty-five dollars and promised to help all he could.”
“I suppose you know it’s criminal conspiracy?”
“I do. And very welcome—under our circumstances.”
“It’s hushing up a murder, George. That’s what it amounts to.”
“An ugly word, murder. It wasn’t uttered.”
Katheren frowned and brooded. George regarded her inquiringly, so she confessed:
“I was thinking of poor Shanley. Three attempts. They were determined to get him out of the way, weren’t they?”
“Of necessity. If he’d lived to sober up, he might have remembered who pushed him. Awkward for the pusher.”
“I can think of so many better ways of killing a man.”
“I too. The murderer probably lacked our wide experience. Shrewd fellow, though, you must admit. The best murders always look like unavoidable accidents, and he knows it. He also profited by earlier mistakes and finished Shanley properly before the last accident.”
“He did?”
“Strangled him, I think; that or bashed in his head. After which, he put the dead man behind the wheel of his car, drove out on the highway, left it in gear with the motor racing and leaped out. He probably couldn’t count on the truck finishing his job so thoroughly unless he had Nick Leeds’s knowledge of freight schedules—but as you say, it was a third try. Luck runs in threes.”
“I liked Nick Leeds. He didn’t seem the kind, any more than Tozer or those twins. Could they all be in on it together, the whole camp, I mean?”
“Not being a detective today, I wouldn’t know.”
“Stop grinning at me, George! I asked a perfectly serious question.”
“Seriously—“ and he did stop the worst of his grinning—“it’s quite possible. I rather hoped you wouldn’t think of it.”
“Why?”
“You’ll worry. Not a comforting thought for either of us, blundering innocents in a nest of murderers, is it? But we’ll be out of it by morning, Katheren. Meanwhile, take courage—and due care. Accidents can happen to us, too, you know...”
2
They put on their best faces then, and made themselves useful. George wandered over to the store to see how the police were taking to the wool that was being pulled over their eyes, and Katheren joined the ladies in consoling Shanley’s widow.
What with the missing handbill and Woar’s unsociable warning to the Beardsleys, it seemed a little late to be masquerading as ordinary tourists. Anybody or everybody might know them for what they were. However...
Mrs. Shanley sat propped up with pillows on the Beardsley bed. She seemed pathetic and bewildered by the tragedy and by the fuss being made of her.
The spectacular blonde in the fox fur—Cicely Smalnick, she proved to be—was coaxing the bereaved woman to drink from a cup of hot coffee held to her lips. Mae Beardsley made motherly gestures and corroborated, “Do you lots of good, Ruthy dear. You don’t really know yet what a shock it’s been.”
Ruth Shanley’s eyes, wide, staring, on the verge of hysteria, looked at nobody, saw nothing. Quite unintentionally, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. It struck Katheren forcibly that the late Rex Shanley had got far the better of the marital bargain.
But Katheren found other things to think of. Ruth’s stockings were wet. Katheren slipped them off, and Constance Tozer quietly gave a hand.
“Her shoes are in the oven drying,” said Connie. “I’ll fix her up with my tennis
sneakers.”
She was the slim girl in the slacks and red waterproof Katheren had seen going into the Shanley cabin; but when asked if Mrs. Shanley might not have dry shoes of her own, Connie’s eyes flicked to her mother guiltily: “Maybe, but I don’t know which cabin to look in.”
That bit of deviousness seemed to be aimed at Mrs. Tozer and not at Katheren.
Mrs. Tozer wasn’t listening. An angular woman wrapped like a gift in a cellophane waterproof, she obviously knew what was best for everyone else, and got no appreciation for her pains.
“About the money,” she whispered to Katheren, holding her fast with a determined hand. “Poor thing hasn’t any of her own, and she doesn’t know if her husband had enough on him even for the funeral and—and expenses. Wouldn’t it be awful if...” Without stopping for breath, she raised her voice: “Ruth darling, do try and think. Car insurance? Or any, well, life insurance?”
Ruth’s mouth jerked away from the coffee. In a husky, startled voice, she said, “Forty thousand dollars.”
Agatha Tozer gasped. Cicely Smalnick threw her a reproving look, and quite forgot the cultured accent in snapping, “It’s all right, ain’t it? Mrs. Shanley, maybe you’d find it quieter over in my cabin where there ain’t so many people.”
Mrs. Shanley closed her eyes and dropped her head back upon the pillow.
Agatha Tozer crackled her cellophane: “If anybody thinks we’re going to let the poor girl want for anything, they’re mistaken!”
Which nicely expressed the general attitude towards poor, fateful Ruth.
3
Over the way, and unaware of being spied on, Henry Tozer leaned directly under the strong light that hung above the grocery counter. Tired shadows sloped down his whimsical features. They were no longer whimsical.
One of the two police officers sat with his back to Henry and his ear to the music from the juke-box. This had been turned down to a murmur, probably in deference to the dead—since Rex Shanley’s body lay stretched on the grocery counter, waiting for the undertaker.
Ray Kemp, his athlete’s shoulders doubled over his knees, sat on a box before the post office wicket, watching Tozer and the door to the Migler quarters. He nodded to Tozer that it was safe, the coast clear.
Tozer lifted one of the limp hands of the dead man. He let it fall again. He deftly fingered wrists and ankles. He ran his hands up the chest to the throat, and quickly inspected the dead man’s tongue.
Hazlitt Woar swung open the door in time to catch Tozer at it. He had been looking in at the window for some time. He was bored with spying.
Ray Kemp got up quickly, sat down again.
Tozer was closely examining an underclad Indian maiden on a large calendar, but the back of his short neck looked guilty.
“Cyanosis?” Woar inquired politely.
Tozer would have none of it. He stuck to his Indian maiden.
Woar, smiling pleasantly, ran his hands also over the corpse. He took pains with the wrist-watch, even unstrapping it to look at the skin beneath. He slipped back a sleeve as far as the elbow. He felt the man’s silk necktie and scrutinized a very dirty neck.
“Ancient Madder, a seven-fold.”
“What say?”
“Neckwear. Silk and very strong. A noose, in fact. That and the cyanosis—”
Tozer looked aghast in the direction of the policeman, who was enraptured by the music.
Woar ignored both. He ransacked the pockets. A silver cigarette case, floridly carved, inscribed “To R. S.”; a union card of the American Guild of Variety Artists, made out to Rex Shanley, Hotel Astor, New York City; and an empty envelope, much scribbled over, addressed to Rex Shanley, Hotel Niblock, West Forty-third Street, New York City, and postmarked Hollywood.
Last of all, Woar bent over the plain gold wedding ring on the third finger of Shanley’s left hand.
He straightened up, nodded to Tozer and suggested a walk.
“I guess so,” Tozer said, and beckoned Kemp to follow them.
Woar stopped on the porch to light his pipe. He was extremely conscious of Kemp’s bulk looming behind him. However good-natured, the young man could break Woar into bits if required. Woar thought it wise to say, “I’m only being helpful, you know.”
Tozer looked as if he doubted it.
“Strangled?”
Tozer grunted: “How do you know?”
“Bruise marks, which may pass as a dirty neck. Cyanosis, though very slight. You loosened the tie and restored the tongue to its place. Good work, but not enough.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brendan.”
“No, of course not. Left fore-arm tattooed with hearts entwined and the name ‘Sadie.’ Oh, well, you can’t help that. But the tie, a seven-fold tie of handprinted silk! Would you say Shanley looks the sort to indulge in ten-dollar ties? Get rid of it, if you can.”
Tozer fingered his own tie. A Christmas gift, probably, from Agatha. Ray Kemp’s muscular neck went naked into a sweater.
The door of Cabin Two opened. A shaft of light and half a dozen men came out, led by a policeman, the one not in uniform. He was a burly and phlegmatic official with a habit of trying to button his double-breasted coat where a button had come off; Creeby was his name, and he constituted brains and authority combined.
They walked in single file and silent. They seemed worried.
“If you know what’s good for you,” Tozer advised Woar in a low voice, “you’ll keep your nose clean.”
“That’s final,” Kemp warned him as Creeby came stamping up the porch.
Then Creeby announced his ultimatum:
“Nobody leaves till I say so,” and he shouldered into the store. He nudged his assistant out of the reverie brought on by music and told him, “Round up all the car keys. There’s something fishy here.”
Creeby turned out the corpse’s pockets as Woar had done. He kept the cigarette case and the A.G.V.A. card.
“Where’s his wife?”
Beardsley said, “In my cabin. She’s being looked after.”
Beardsley, Nick Leeds, Tozer, the lot of them, with uneasy sidelong glances at each other, followed Creeby across the court to Number One. They watched through the open door as the women looked up, startled by the invariably unwelcome intruder, the law.
“Now if you’ll bring her over to the store,” Creeby commanded.
“I suppose we must,” said Cicely Smalnick. “Ruthy dear, get up now. It’s the police.”
“What does he want?”
Creeby helped Ruth to her feet. She stood a moment, looking at him anxiously.
“Come on,” he said, starting towards the door. He rubbed his face wearily. “You got to identify the body. Don’t try anything funny.”
What inspired that admonition, nobody ever knew. Katheren heard the gasp, jumped to catch Ruth, but too late.
Her cheeks turned white and she crumpled to the floor.
4
The only fact they had that night was Creeby’s concern about the identity of the dead man. He kept his reasons (and the keys of their cars) strictly to himself.
The fact was alarming enough by itself, however.
Tired and uncomfortable in wet clothes, Katheren felt not quite up to facing it, so George put her to bed. He gave her whisky and aspirin and a hot water bottle. He kissed her and told her to dream of brighter and better things.
He thrust his arms into his mackintosh.
“While you,” she supposed, “go meandering off, seeing life in the raw or something.”
“Death in the raw, rather. This cursed ring. You didn’t throw it away. I have to dispose of it before we’re searched, if it should come to that. I’m going to plant it on the body, where it belongs.”
She hadn’t quite fallen asleep when he returned, stepping quietly over Caligula who snored on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“Satisfied?” she asked without opening her eyes.
“Eminently, my dear. I satisfied myself about the ne
cktie too.”
“That’s nice. Whose necktie, and how?”
“Shanley’s, and by seeing it had mysteriously disappeared. Now who’s to doubt his lovely, accidental corpse? Nobody. Ahhhhh...I could do with a sleep, my love!...”
The room went dark and echoed with the rain pounding on their roof.
Four
WHEN Katheren woke, it was with a distinct impression of somebody moving about the room.
Her husband, in fact, trying not to waken her. Also it was high morning. He had drawn the blinds to let her sleep. He had bathed, shaved, dressed, and got well along into a search for a spoon with which to measure coffee.
“Been out detecting already?”
“My dear, you’re letting that come between us,” he said, and kissed her good morning. “I’m making coffee. If you don’t think up something better, I’ll open a coffee shop for a career. I’m supposed to be rather good at coffee.”
But she knew, as wives always know, that he had something on his mind; and as wives always do, she got it out of him one way or another. An emergency defense council had sat in the showers that morning, she learned.
The doctor had certified Shanley’s death during the night, and the body had gone off to the undertaker’s. Foul play hadn’t even occurred to Creeby as a remote possibility.
However, Nick Leeds, through shocking ignorance, had volunteered to identify the body.
Worse, he had identified it as that of one Nosy Joe, dipsomaniac hitch-hiker who supported himself with odd jobs up and down the highway between Zanesville and Union town. This was before Nick had heard the name Shanley or been informed of Ruth’s existence. Afterward, he recanted nobly and promptly, but too late; Creeby had already telephoned the report in to his headquarters.
Was Nosy Joe, vagrant, to stay dead? Was Rex Shanley, one-time master of ceremonies in a New York night club, to die now in his place? Creeby’s official soul revolted, sought refuge in a spontaneous secretion of red tape, and so snarled them all.
“But Nick doesn’t really believe the man was Nosy Joe, does he?”
“Between the two of us, I rather think he’s sorry he ever mentioned the name,” said Woar. “I bought some marmalade, but it doesn’t taste in the least like marmalade. What do I do?”
If A Body Page 4