If A Body

by George Worthing Yates

  “If you what?” When he had nothing to say, she prompted him, “If you could get your teeth into this Shanley case?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What could I do, without authority or a Scotland Yard? Here, let me try.”

  The Buick’s starter whined. The motor refused to fire.

  “The garage had trouble too. They told me it must be the points.”

  “Rot. The points are perfect. I’ll look at the carburetor.”

  “This is no time,” said Katheren firmly, “for us to get under the hood and start looking at carburetors. I’m sure it’s the points, anyhow. See?”

  Katheren tried again, and luckily the motor started.

  She kept the wheel driving out Washington Street towards Terre Haute. Woar, stroking Caligula’s head, had assumed the slightly strained, profoundly patient smile of a husband being driven by his wife.

  During her lonely breakfast, she had thought it all over about husbands and their good intentions. She grudged Ruth nothing George could do in her behalf, but this detective business was rearing its ugly head again most obstinately. Twice in twelve hours, at the dinner last evening and now this morning, George Brendan had become the old, moody Hazlitt Woar.

  “Frankly,” she told him, “you can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “I try, sweet Katheren!”

  “We keep running into these people and their troubles, and they tempt you. The Shanley case is on your mind all the time. I can understand that.”

  “Which is more than I can,” he said uncomfortably.

  “If you won’t interrupt, I’ll be ever so reasonable and explain what I decided. We can’t change our route without missing Gaillard’s telegrams. We can’t wire him because he told us not to. But we’ve an early start, we’ll keep up a steady speed all day and all night if we have to, and get well ahead of everybody for the rest of the trip. That’s the sensible thing for us to do, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, rather,” but there was no conviction in his voice.

  “I detest nagging wives. I shan’t keep bringing this up all our lives, reproaching you and making an emotional issue of it, because I fully intend us to be happy together. I’m simply not going to mention crime again.”

  She put on speed, having settled that matter.

  The road away from it all was fast, smooth and exhilarating.

  Not to the Buick, though.

  By imperceptible gaggings and refusals on hills and turns, it tried to let them know what they were in for that day. Twice it stopped dead. That was near Plain-field, thirteen miles from Indianapolis. Each time it started again before Woar could get out and lift the hood.

  “What ails Hilda, anyhow?”

  “I’m beginning to suspect,” Woar hinted, “a spot of tampering.”

  But that brought them back to the Shanley case again, and Katheren steadfastly refused to consider it a possibility. Even though Woar, having nursed a sports M.G. through blind staggers and colic, professed to be a decent mechanic himself, she held out for professional ministrations—and defective points.

  “Besides,” she said, “I can imagine what your fingernails would look like.”

  “According to Gouchard’s,” said George resignedly, “we’re entering Plainfield, where ‘Sater’s Garage is reputed best.’”

  Aside from Hilda’s trouble, there were no omens of disaster. Sunlight deceptively gilded a soft morning mist and slanted down through autumnal trees. The broad peace of Indiana lay all about, even within the garage.

  “Look at the points, will you?” she asked the mechanic. While he looked at the points, George thrust a stick into the gas tank, tasted the stuff he brought out, and manifested gloom.

  “It isn’t the points, darling,” Woar broke the news to her after a conference with the mechanic, “it’s sugar. Sugar in our gas tank. Luck alone took us this far. Sugar has a devilish way of gumming up internal combustion motors.”

  “Sugar! Who on earth would put it in our gas?”

  “One of our friends, no doubt,” said Woar, smiling a cucumber-in-aspic smile.

  What they should have had done was a complete job, which required dismantling gas tank, fuel line, pump, strainer, carburetor, intake manifold, motor head and valves. What Katheren, in her urge to get on, prevailed on them to do was the least: cleaning the carburetor, draining the gas and replacing it with fresh. Thus Katheren made the bed they were to lie in.

  However, it was too early to think of beds.

  She, George and Caligula went for a walk to stretch their legs. Plainfield had a pleasant, friendly aspect, carried out in detail with another picture of Woar on a smudged handbill in the post office. Katheren bought more stamps while George good-humoredly tore it down.

  “This may sound strange to you,” Katheren confessed, “but I’m beginning to enjoy this adventure. We seem to be getting away with it. We’re a couple of unknowns. The Beardsleys probably aren’t started yet, the Smalnicks must be still in bed, the Winter car will be having ignition trouble back in Ohio somewhere and the Tozers—”

  “What about the Tozers?”

  “I’d say they were up early and goggling at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Indianapolis about now. It’s a famous monument.”

  “What’s a monument, my dear, compared to a Hollywood producer?”

  In George’s opinion, tactfully kept to himself, the Smalnicks might well be as far as St. Louis by now, what with the Lagonda’s ability to do more than a hundred miles an hour, Milton’s arrogant style of driving, and the incentive of Agatha Tozer hard on his heels. The Tozers, pushing hard, could have made Plainfield last night.

  And they had.

  Up a side street, Woar caught a glimpse of a white lace mansion, weather-beaten but proud with the elegance of the jig-saw Gothic era. A sign in Gothic lettering described the place as Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Rooms, Antiques, No Dogs. Under the two old elms towering from the lawn stood two cars: the Nash with the Pennsylvania license, and the Winters’ Model “A.”

  Before Katheren could take alarm, George pointed across the street in the opposite direction and suggested, “A chemist’s. Open for business, too. Coffee?”

  “Drug store, not chemist’s, George. Coffee isn’t a bad idea, though...”

  Besides not liking dogs any better than Ye Cheese and not approving of customers who came before he had his shop cleaned out, the elderly proprietor didn’t run the kind of drug store that served coffee, and never would. Coca-Cola, lemon or orange phosphate, or soda water.

  The Woars had cokes. The proprietor resumed smearing his front windows with a white coating of Bon Ami.

  What happened next is still a matter for debate; was it, as George says, simply the result of those cursed smeary windows, or was it, as Katheren unalterably believes, the working out of another of George’s insidious little schemes?

  By way of overture, Agatha Tozer’s penetrating voice came through the open door: “...And none of that soda fountain truck, because when you eat it your complexion breaks out. I only want a bottle of wave-set for your hair. You want to look like Myrna Loy, don’t you—?”

  Sudden silence.

  Katheren beheld Agatha in the doorway, flanked by Connie and Ray Kemp. The three beheld Katheren and George. Three pairs of eyes widened, three astonished mouths opened and remained that way.

  Disconcerting, Katheren found it, to be stared at like Satan himself. She managed a smile and greeted them, “This is a pleasant surprise!”

  Connie Tozer nodded demurely. She murmured some sort of acknowledgment.

  Her mother, however, pursed her lips tightly.

  Ray scowled and visibly tensed his shoulders.

  Between them, they hustled Connie away. The three withdrew as if from a den of serpents.

  “What have I done to them?” Katheren wondered.

  “Not you,” said Woar. “Me.”

  He went to the door. From there he could see Agatha Tozer and her daughter moving briskly down the street, ap
parently looking for a less contaminated drug store. Ray Kemp loped in the other direction, up the side street to the Nash, into which Henry Tozer was stowing luggage. The Winter twins sauntered down from the porch of the tourist home to join what looked like a council of war, moving formidably in the direction of the Woars.

  “Not that I’m trying to get rid of you, Katheren, but—”

  “Very well. Where do you want me to go?”

  “On the trail of mother and daughter. If they visit the police station, use your own judgment.”

  Katheren saw point in that, and hurried. Unskilled in shadowing people, she decided to establish herself openly about twenty feet behind them, and stay there. When they found another drug store open and went in, she went in too. When they bought hair muck, she bought cigarettes and tooth paste.

  For her pains she drew a half dozen malefic glances from Agatha. She also overheard, thanks to Agatha’s piercing whispers, a good measure of intimate motherly advice:

  “...And no more fig newtons and pickle relish from now on. You’re a young lady, and you have to think of your figure...Not every mother and father makes sacrifices so their daughter can have a career...As for boy friends, you must learn to pick and choose. Kemp...college boys...don’t ever let it get serious.”

  Connie must have revealed a startling inclination at this juncture, for her mother halted in her tracks.

  “Marriage! My child, you must be out of your head!

  Please don’t ever let me or your father hear you say a thing like that again!”

  For a girl of eighteen or twenty, Connie had superb self-possession. She took her mother’s arm, led her across the street to the window of a dry-goods shop and so changed the subject, handling a bothersome parent without letting her suspect she was being handled. Whatever the secret that linked Connie and Ray, it apparently couldn’t be divulged to Agatha...

  At that moment, on the street corner nearest the tourist home, George completed an indolent inspection of Henry Tozer, Ray Kemp and the Winter twins, and remarked, “Well, it’s a nice morning.”

  “Can you prove it?” said Burnet Winter, and the four men frowned solemnly at Woar.

  “It’s a big country, Mr. Brendan,” Ray growled. “You’d think we could miss each other in it.”

  “In other words,” said Henry, “you’re hounding us. We want to know what’s the game, Brendan, and whose side you’re on.”

  “The game is investigation, and I seem to be referee. I’m a private detective named Woar,” and Woar waited to see how they would take it. Each of the four in his own way was obviously taken aback. A little surprised himself, Woar drew out his pipe: “Sorry; I thought you knew.”

  “Insurance detective?”

  “No.”

  “Then who are you working for?”

  “Freelance, at present, with particular interest in person or persons who put sugar in my gas tank last night.”

  This overshot the mark. All four looked exquisitely blank. Woar duly noted the blankness, and continued:

  “Otherwise, I’ll gladly accept a commission. Fee, five hundred and all expenses.”

  Boyd Winter said, “A shake-down!”

  “You won’t get any money out of us, Brendan—or whatever your name is,” said Henry Tozer. He was doubtfully trying to bluff it out. “And we don’t want you for nothing either.”

  “How did you hurt your hand?” George asked Kemp. The young man thrust his bandaged hand in his pocket. “Why so eager to hush up murder? What caused your singular hatred for Shanley, Mr. Tozer? If you’re criminally involved, you’re all of you asking to be found out. If you’re innocent, I’d be glad of an explanation. I’m reasonable, discreet, inclined to be helpful—and let’s forget about the fee.”

  But Hazlitt Woar’s disarming smile caught no fish that day. Four frowns deepened.

  Henry abruptly drew from his pocket the seven-fold silk tie and the death’s head ring. He forced them into Woar’s hand. Woar noticed how the man trembled.

  “You can’t plant evidence on me, Mr. Detective! You keep what belongs to you!”

  “Where did you find them?”

  “Not on Shanley, in case you want to know! Right where you put ‘em, in my bed in the trailer! From now on, you keep clear of us or we’ll find a way to make you. Do you understand plain English?” Henry lowered his voice, “Come on, boys!”

  They turned on their heels, the four of them. Angry men getting possession of their angers, they strode back to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, leaving Woar to stare at the utterly unexpected and unaccountable objects in his hand.

  Nothing could have been more puzzling.

  Nothing could have better tempted the inquiring mind of H. G. B. Woar.

  He put the tie and ring in his pocket and went back to the garage.

  3

  Agatha Tozer and her daughter hadn’t gone to the police station. Katheren thought, and she said so as she drove the Buick out into the highway again, that it was silly to suspect either of the two women of taking the handbill.

  She reasoned from general appearances and the fact that neither had been in Migler’s store during the minutes of its vanishing. More, she rather liked the Tozers. A kind of logic Woar called, “Warm-hearted, but inconclusive.”

  Both Nash and Model “A” were gone from in front of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese as the Woars passed the corner. The house peered in lonely dignity through its elms like an old lady hoping for more friends to drop in.

  One notable thing about the Shanley case: it never stayed in one place very long.

  Another, Woar had begun to be evasive about it. He referred to the encounter with an offhand, “Oh, that? Silly misunderstanding...”

  An indication of which way the wind would blow for the rest of the Woar honeymoon.

  Katheren tightened her jaw, took a fresh grip on her purpose and stepped on the gas.

  The Buick ran fitfully better, then worse.

  On the outskirts of Terre Haute, they overtook the Ford, recognizable at a distance with the three broad backs and shoulders fanning out of the narrow front seat.

  “I’m going to pass them, George.”

  “Can you?”

  “Don’t be mean. Of course I can.”

  She opened the throttle—they were on a stretch of comparatively deserted road in the residential district—and shortened the intervening distance.

  Ray Kemp, driving, caught Katheren’s eye in the rear view mirror. He waved her to pass. He pulled over, out of her way.

  Boyd and Burnet Winter stood up, turned, and bowed profoundly, indicating with a sweep of their arms that the whole road was hers.

  Katheren gave them a polite tootle on her horn as she pulled ahead of them.

  After these tokens of mutual esteem, it came as the keenest annoyance to Katheren that the Buick should gasp, balk, and suddenly slow down. By a sharp maneuver, Ray managed to swing out, and so avoid smashing the Buick’s rump. The two cars ran side by side.

  “Sorry,” said Katheren to George.

  “See if you can do it to music,” shouted one of the Winters.

  Ray glared, as men the world over glare at women drivers.

  The Buick spat wearily, then picked up and surged ahead. The Ford fell back in its wake.

  The Buick fell back and the Ford surged ahead.

  As Katheren observed while both cars waited neck and neck for a traffic signal to change, “This has long ceased to be funny.”

  “Quite,” said Woar.

  “But Hilda’s going to hold out till we put up for the night, or I’ll know why.”

  After West Terre Haute, on the open road again, Hilda settled down to her usual smooth stride. The Ford fell behind. The Winter brothers felt moved to take out handkerchiefs and wave satiric farewells.

  “She’s much better now, thank you,” Katheren gloated.

  “Mind the hills, though.”

  “They aren’t bothering her in the least.”

  Katheren speeded up to
pass a black sedan.

  It was the Nash, traveling fast.

  The road climbed to a crest. Katheren waited prudently to let a sedan coming in the opposite direction go by. Then the road was clear, and she pulled out. Well ahead a small tradesman’s delivery van came towards them down the grade, but slowly.

  Woar’s foot put on an imaginary brake. For no reason, either.

  The Buick flashed past the Nash. As the cars ran abreast for a moment, Katheren could see Henry at the wheel, and Connie squeezed between him and Agatha.

  It happened.

  The little delivery van picked up speed, the Buick gagged, Henry took time to express outrage. His frightened white face hung in the air at Woar’s elbow. Then he did the wrong thing, applied his brakes, just as Katheren applied hers.

  Katheren had to swerve right to miss the van. Tozer had to swerve into the ditch to miss Katheren. Tires squealed, something scraped on something somewhere, and the delivery van cavorted in panic, but just managed to scrape past.

  In a few seconds, it was all over. The delivery van ran down the hill with an angry red face and a clenched fist sprouting out of the driver’s window. Katheren drew up on the margin. But the Tozer Nash, with a scraped fender, righted itself on the road and vanished over the line into the State of Illinois as if all the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding on its tail.

  “It really wasn’t my fault,” said Katheren shakily. “I’d gladly pay him for that fender. Why didn’t he stop?”

  “Convinced,” said Woar, with inward emotion of some sort.

  “Convinced of what?”

  “That we meant to kill him. Oh, well. I shouldn’t laugh, but—“ and he laughed.

  Katheren made him take the wheel after that.

  Between Indiana and Missouri, the National Old Trails Route traverses the narrow end of Illinois for one hundred sixty-two miles; with any kind of luck, a trip of four hours.

  It took the Woars the rest of the day.

  Hilda picked up, languished, picked up and languished again, always promising to do better beyond the next town. Cars passed them with monotonous regularity; even Smalnick’s car, which George supposed somewhere ahead.