Boyd and Burnet Winter waved and cried, “Good luck!”
George swerved to miss Creeby’s man, flapping his arms at them and crying, “Stop!”
He swerved out on the highway, swung the wheel eastward, and accelerated in second gear. The roar of the motor drowned out the scandalized voice still crying, “Stop...Stop!”
“I hadn’t the faintest hope of getting away with it,” George told her. “I’m amazed. Utterly amazed.”
“I’m out of breath a little myself.”
Barely out of sight of Migler’s, he braked, turned the car about in the road, and drew to a halt facing west on the margin. The branches of the saplings brushed gently at Katheren’s window. The motor ticked over quietly. In the sudden comparative silence, Woar drew out a pair of pliers and studied his watch.
Then he explained, “As a sporting gesture, I asked Boyd or Burnet to take their Ford keys back to Creeby’s man and say they weren’t the right set. The Winters go in for sporting gestures. Creeby’s man doesn’t know Ford keys from Buick keys. He fell for it like a lamb. He took back one leather key container, gave them the other—and here we are.”
“How will the Winters start their car?”
“Don’t look sporting gestures in the teeth, Katheren.”
“I didn’t know. I shan’t do it again. What are we waiting for?”
“For three minutes, while Creeby’s man calls up Creeby to tell him we escaped to the east. They’ll notify St. Clairsville or Wheeling to stop us. When that’s arranged, I’ll cut Migler’s telephone line and we’ll be on our way to Zanesville, Columbus and all points west.”
“Three minutes ought to be about up.”
“Yes,” he said, and climbed out with the pliers in hand. He disappeared among the saplings. When he returned, he looked very pleased with himself.
“A lovely afternoon,” he said, starting the car again. “A lovely, lovely afternoon.”
They passed Migler’s, and the figure of Creeby’s assistant ran after them for a way, shouting “Stop!” at them out of a red face. Katheren thought the exercise might, on the whole, be good for him. With the line cut, he certainly couldn’t harm them.
Passing Hendrysburg, the next town west, would be ticklish. Creeby’s passion for red tape might conceivably take the form of blocking the road there as well as to the east.
Hendrysburg, happily enough, was sunning its clapboard and old brick as if only the warm weather mattered—and westbound Buicks were beneath its notice. Beyond the village, Katheren took a deep breath of relief. Two and a half miles further, they stopped at a smaller village, Fairview, and acquired for a steep price a pair of Ohio license plates by way of disguise.
Then George too took a deep breath and put the top down, and drove on at loafing speed through the irregular, hilly countryside to Zanesville.
It was almost as if (unfamiliar words on signboards, new brands of beer advertised, new ways of pitching a barn roof) they really were tourists with nothing on their minds.
“How far is Columbus?”
“We should be there by five.”
“If only there’s a wire from Gaillard waiting for us,” said Katheren wistfully.
Technically, George had no legal right to be in the United States of America.
Gaillard Brady, Katheren’s cousin conveniently attached to the State Department, had pledged himself to wangle Woar a visitor’s permit or a place on the immigrant quota from Britain. The latter would entail a run up to Canada so that George could re-enter the United States with an absolutely clean nose; a pleasure, though, compared to his present existence, fleeing the wrath of a little politician named Hellenberger, whose self-esteem had been ruffled by Woar’s interference in the Princeton Junction mystery. [See The Body That Wasn’t Uncle, William Morrow & Company, 1939.]
Otherwise, Katheren could only imagine a future as the itinerant Mrs. Woar, blown about the world by ill winds with her slightly disreputable and entirely homeless husband. Exiled from America, exiled from England, warned out of Spain, France and the Federated Malay States...
They cleared Zanesville, sped over the bridge across the Muskingum. Naked boys were diving from the bank. A row-boat lay in placid, dappled water beneath a tree.
The row-boat, possibly, made Katheren say, “George, you must take out citizenship papers. We’ll rent that little Georgian house in Forest Hills. With your experience, you ought to be able to write. Would that interest you—writing?”
“Not in the least. Memoirs of Scotland Yard, by H. G. B. Woar? No, thanks.”
Katheren fell silent. She remained so for a long way. When George noticed, she was staring hard at the horizon, a woman as remote and mysterious as ever an unworthy bridegroom found himself up against.
“I must have said the wrong thing,” he concluded.
“It isn’t that at all.”
“What, then?”
“I,” said Katheren in a nervous voice, “just realized what a narrow squeak we had. Now it’s over, I’m getting scared. I also just realized that some devil deliberately told on us to Creeby, and I’m furious. I’d like to know which one of them did it.”
“Since it was done to dispose of us, to keep us out of the running, we’d better thank the murderer.”
“Yes. I thought of that too.”
“Well?”
“Well, which one was the murderer?”
Woar made a wry face at her, but then he smiled:
“Ordinary, friendly American tourists, caught in a tourist camp in a storm, the sort we’ll meet tonight and tomorrow night wherever we stop—which do you like? Henry Tozer? He doctored the symptoms of Shanley’s strangulation for the benefit of the medical examiner. ‘Death Ray’ Kemp, All-American fullback, a fine lad—warned me in no uncertain way to keep my mouth shut about it. A jolly pair.
“The Winter twins. You heard Burnet say he was almost killed by Shanley. Do you know the peculiarly vicious, murdering wrath that comes over a man when his body’s been damaged?
“Nick Leeds, who neither knew nor loved Ruth Shanley last night. This morning he knew her well and loved her ardently. Love at first sight? Have it that way, or call it the old, sordid pattern of the insurance crime—Nick in love with Ruth, rids her of an objectionable husband and provides her with a forty thousand dollar dowry.
“Smalnick? He’d like us to believe he’s looking up locations for an epic film, The Great American Way. Do Hollywood producers usually take time for research and transcontinental motor trips? He doesn’t ring true, Katheren. He asks for some research himself. An old, dishonorable relation between the eminent Milton and the ignominious Rex, a joint secret in their pasts—If I were still a detective, I’d look into that.
“Our friends the Beardsleys, for all their charm, have a curiously shy and casual attitude towards the police. You noticed? There’s also the far-fetched coincidence of our little collision near Migler’s, and their overwhelming fondness for you and me. They smack a bit of fish, my dear. More research!
“They’ve gone west, Leeds went east, the Tozers north, Kemp and the Winter twins turn off presumably for San Francisco...It’s a puzzle no one will ever put together. The pieces are scattered all over a fairly enormous country, some of them possibly changed into new identities and lost forever. Who killed Rex Shanley? How many angels can play ring-around-a-rosy on the head of a pin? Sorry, darling, but we’ll never know.”
“And probably just as well.”
“Why?”
“We couldn’t do anything about it if we did.”
“Right,” said George, with overtones of regret. Then he pointed out signs of a big city ahead. “We’re coming into Bexley, we should be near Columbus. Look us up in Gouchard’s, will you?”
“We turn right at the Lutheran school.”
Katheren battled with Gouchard’s, which flapped like a wild hawk in the wind. She pinned its pages and caged it in the glove compartment. She tidied her windblown hair, then her mind. The Tozers, Leeds, R
uth and the haunted look in her eyes; the Winters, Ray Kemp, Milton and Cicely Smalnick, the Beardsleys—she cleared them out to make room for the future.
She would never see any of them again.
2
Columbus, Ohio.
Woar parked on Broad Street, left Katheren in the car and went in search of a telegram from Gaillard Brady.
The early homeward rush of traffic had begun. Shoppers and office workers elbowed themselves dexterously along the sidewalk. Katheren was regarding the hub-
bub in detachment and tranquility when—like someone whispering in her ear—the left rear tire said, “Hist!” and went flat.
Three times along the way they’d had to stop to put air in it.
Now Katheren could think of nothing brighter to do than to get out and look at it with personal loathing. Pedestrians paused, or grinned like zanies without pausing.
Katheren was still looking at it, and letting Caligula reconnoiter a lamp-post, when a familiar voice called to her. Connie Tozer. Not aware of being an unpleasant shock to anybody, she skipped through a covey of shoppers.
“Mrs. Brendan!”
“But I thought you were going up north?”
“That’s all changed,” panted Connie, frowning her hazel eyes and losing some of the freshness from her lovely face. “Look, I’m trying to let a friend know. Ray Kemp, if you should see him. We’re going to Hollywood, not to the lakes. Will you tell him?”
“If I see him.”
“He’ll be along,” said Connie. “He said he would. You’ll probably be here a little while yourself.”
Connie glanced at the tire. Katheren said yes, she probably would.
Connie hesitated, as if she felt some further explanation due. She wrinkled her faintly freckled nose. She said, “I guess I have to go now. Everything’s in an awful upset, because mother made father sell the trailer so we could go to Hollywood and start me out in a career. Honestly, Mrs. Brendan—can you tell me what I’d do with a career?”
In the light of Connie’s unspoiled naturalness, Katheren could only say, “No, I can’t.”
“It’s tragic, really it is,” said Connie fiercely. Then: “Thanks so much, and have a nice trip, and so long.” Two long, lithe strides took Connie Tozer out of sight in another flush of pedestrians.
An elderly, skeletal passer-by in a pork-pie hat stopped to ask, “A flat tire, may I ask?”
“Yes. Where will I find a garage?”
“A what?”
“A garage.”
“I see.”
“Can you tell me?”
“I cannot. I—“ and he bowed—“happen to be a stranger here myself. Good day.”
“That,” said Katheren to her husband as he reappeared, “was my daily exercise in Beginners’ English. Now let’s see what Gouchard’s Guide says about flat tires in Columbus...
It said Fanley’s, Main and Third. Adams 2191. Fanley’s sent a tow car, removed the Buick to their garage and got to work on it. The trouble was a leaky valve.
While waiting, Katheren read the telegram over Woar’s shoulder:
NOT MUCH HOPE FOR MARY. DON’T WORRY. WIRE YOU INDIANAPOLIS TONIGHT. HAVE NICE TRIP AND REGARDS.
GAILLARD
The news was depressing, too much so for either of them to make conversation about it. Even Caligula felt the depression, and pocketed his tail.
In the cool gloom of the depths of the garage loomed the blimp-like silvery bulk of Henry Tozer’s trailer. George, smoking his pipe, led Katheren to one of its triplex windows. They looked in. The guns and the fishing rods had been removed, but nothing else.
“Like to buy it, folks?” a man who was obviously a salesman asked them.
“No, thanks.”
“A steal at two thousand. Fellow made it all himself, hardly gone a hundred miles, look inside...”
“Sorry, no sale. How much did you give Tozer for it?”
“Can’t tell you that, brother!”
“Five hundred, four hundred, three hundred?”
“Three seventy-five,” said the salesman, and smirked at his own shrewdness. “Keep it to yourself, though. Tomorrow she goes on my used trailer lot—two thousand, terms, no trade, and I bet you I get it.”
They strolled back to their unlucky tire. Katheren murmured, “For some reason, George, I feel as if all the tides had gone out, everywhere!”
He nodded.
He paid for the repair. Above the throb of traffic along Main came a volley of sharp reports, and the cough of a four-cylinder motor fighting for life.
“Ignition trouble,” said the repairman unhappily. “This outfit gets all the grief on wheels. Change—and your receipt.”
“The Winters,” Katheren told her husband. “And Ray Kemp. I think they’ve stalled.”
“Good. We’ll be out of here before they come unstalled.”
“Just a moment,” said Katheren, and wrote Tozers going Hollywood on the back of the receipt.
“Give it to the biggest one,” she told the repairman.
“You can just see the part of him that isn’t under the hood...”
The backfiring resumed. The Winters’ Ford leaped another desperate leap towards the garage. The repairman signaled that he understood.
The Woars slammed the Buick doors and were on their way—never to see any of the people from Migler’s again.
It was still a good hope, if a little tarnished...
3
“It’s one hundred seventy-two point seven miles to Indianapolis,” Katheren computed on the margin of Gouchard’s Guide. “Say four hours to drive if you keep it up like this. We ought to be in at a little after nine.”
“A little after eight.”
“You’re a very good driver, George. But not that good.”
“Dearest. Central time. We set our watches back an hour. Faithfully yours, H. G. B. Woar.”
“I love all of you, George—except your nasty omniscience. Hold out your wrist.”
She unstrapped his watch and turned the hands back. She was fastening it on again when he said, “Rex Shanley wore a wrist-watch too.”
“Is that remarkable?”
“As Migler would say, ‘might could be.’ What would you think of a watch inscribed, ‘To Rex, from Ruth’? Platinum or white gold, smallish and pretty, metal wrist-band, tiny gold face and gold hands, and Swiss.”
“I doubt if I’d buy it for you.”
“Good. Why?”
“It sounds decorative, but a little hard to read and a little apt to be left home in the top bureau drawer.”
“Perhaps it was. Shanley had a clean brown wrist, bristling with hairs. Suggests he seldom wore it, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t blame him. I once had a metal strap-sister Maxine gave it to me—and even at pinching out my lady-like fuzz, it was remarkable. If Shanley was at all hairy—”
“He was.”
“Well, that about takes care of Shanley’s wrist-watch,” said Katheren. “What brought it up?”
George didn’t say.
For a long time they pounded westward, straight into the setting sun. Once they stopped for gas, oil and hamburgers. Otherwise the monotony of speed, rushing wind, and magnificent countryside that fled past untasted, stretched on in a repetitive dream.
They crossed the state line into Indiana. The sun vanished, and suddenly they were driving by headlights through intense darkness.
Having too lately seen a man appear in that path of light, Katheren shut her eyes.
She was, she admitted to herself, being terribly silly about it. Nevertheless nervousness, apprehension, foreboding, all climbed in and made room for themselves beside her original feeling of gloom. She prefers to forget that drive.
She does, usually, all but the sound of a bell, tolling dismally in the night. Straughn, Dunreith, Ogden...The name of the town has slipped her memory. What still makes ripples in her mind is an unspeakable alarm, a summons, an omen; the quick solemn strokes of an invisible bel
l passed by in a roar of wind.
“Eight-twenty-two,” said Woar with satisfaction. They were on Washington Street, Indianapolis.
Caligula stirred and stretched. Katheren sat up, collected her hair and touched up her lips. Traffic, lights, the clang of street-cars and the cries of newsboys revived her out of the speed trance.
“I look like a hag,” she told her husband. “This is a big city, isn’t it? How on earth do we know we won’t run into the Smalnicks or the Beardsleys?”
“Try a quiet, cheap hotel.”
“How do you know they won’t be trying a quiet, cheap hotel? I crave a soft bed, a hot bath, a marvelous dinner—”
“Fleshpots. Right. But inquire before you take a room.”
They tried the Lincoln first. Katheren, winding down her window, consulted the commissionaire. Had he seen a new Chrysler with Michigan plates? He thought so. A Lagonda with British and New York plates? He didn’t know what a Lagonda was, but he believed Katheren’s friends would be stopping at the Lincoln. Most everybody did.
“Thanks,” said Katheren. They tried the Claypool.
The coast seemed clear.
Katheren registered, arranged for the luggage and the car and Caligula, and beckoned George, who had waited in the car.
Attacked from the rear, she found herself heartily embraced by Mae Beardsley, complete with delighted twinkle and a sheaf of picture postcards, before she could throw up any sort of guard.
“Katheren darling, I can’t believe my eyes! Where’s George?”
“Oh, he’s going—we’re not stopping—”
George, Caligula and the luggage came through the door. The Buick was whisked away to the garage. Just like that.
“It’s perfect,” burbled Mae. “I was just going to register. We’ve got Ruth with us. We’ll all get rooms close together on the same floor, then she will think she’s among friends, won’t she? Let’s ask the desk clerk...” Trapped.
Making the best of it, Katheren let Mae arrange the rooms as she pleased. It was useless trying to dam that bubbling flood of affection and benevolence.
“What Katheren wants is a hot bath,” Mae decided. “I’ll take her and Ruth upstairs, George, and why don’t you go down to the bar and find Alden? You look like you need a drink bad. Then we’ll all get together and have a real nice dinner in the grill.”
If A Body Page 6