If A Body

by George Worthing Yates

  The Woars were last to take leave of the State Line Short Order pavilion and Holly, and George watched the two cars of the wedding party vanish up the road.

  He too had a speculative, unhappy glint in his eye.

  2

  All that afternoon they climbed gradually through the alfalfa and beet farms of the Arkansas River valley. In Las Animas, they overtook the Tozers.

  Shortly after sunset—the sky turned flaming red and the moon came out and the red earth turned an effulgent purple all about them—they came upon La Junta.

  Beardsley’s Chrysler and Leeds’s Mercury stood nuzzling each other outside the Kit Carson.

  Woar, for reasons of his own, asked the way to the Harvey House.

  The Harvey House stands next to the railroad tracks. After all, why shouldn’t it? Those two invaluable institutions of the Great Southwest, the Harvey hotel chain and the Santa Fe Railway, grew up together in the era before travelers became snooty about coal smoke and the thunder of rolling stock.

  However, as Katheren mentioned, “It’s not the engines. There’s nothing I like better than the sound of a train whistle far away at night. But why you have to choose a playground for switch engines and freight cars when both of us so badly need a good long sleep, I don’t quite see.”

  George forbore to point out their room was on the south side, away from the tracks. He took Caligula for a walk, leaving Katheren to wash her hair.

  He walked Caligula on the station platform, particularly in the vicinity of the telegraph office. Not because it was the place for strolling in La Junta, but because telegraph offices interested him. People had a way of turning up at them in times of stress.

  He bought tobacco from the newsstand and picture postcards to send his sister in England (after all, it was some three years since he’d written last) before he had any luck. Then Lefty turned up.

  He leaned over the counter, scribbled a short message, and offered a five-dollar bill from a well-filled note case. He seemed nervous, even furtive. Woar saw the reason, even before he could see the amount of change spread out on the counter by the telegraphist. The amount of change would give George a basis for computing how far away, and so to what city, the telegram was sent. The reason for Lefty’s nervousness gave him another kind of advantage.

  It was Agatha Tozer.

  With Connie in tow, she had been looking for Lefty, and not too patiently. She burst in upon him, and Woar, from the semi-darkness of the station outside, saw the man flinch.

  He caught some of the tirade:

  “...And tell me frankly if you don’t think she deserves the chance. Gifted...Beautiful...Connie, just recite that piece from Hamlet for Mr. Smalnick...”

  Connie would not oblige. She made a wry face, applied herself to an ice-cream cone and drifted out to the platform. Her mother seized Lefty’s sleeve, as if afraid he too might run away...

  It was an opportunity. George, almost despairing of a Connie without Agatha or Ray Kemp attached, seized it. He came to her elbow and asked her, “You loathe the idea of Hollywood, don’t you?”

  After a long look at him, Connie nodded.

  “I wish before people made sacrifices,” she said, “they’d consult me.”

  “I’d like to consult you, Connie, but your ice-cream wants licking.”

  “Did it drip on me?”

  “You caught it in time. Let’s walk along the platform. I wonder. Are you going to want to tell me about that night at Migler’s?”

  “No.”

  “Um. Of course. More or less,” Woar admitted, “what I expected.”

  They walked on in silence under a sky of clear, luminous blue. The station lights made little islands of pale yellow. A train came in magnificently, a long row of brilliant windows over their heads and an engine panting gently.

  Woar understood that he was playing God with the Tozers. One of the occupational risks in his profession. He knew that Henry’s dream, the trailer and the roving life, had been sacrificed forever, and that Agatha’s ambition for Connie was equally and hopelessly lost by now. The little family in their Nash were running headlong towards a further sacrifice, for which Connie would be paying; that is, unless Woar prevented it.

  How?

  Well, he couldn’t brood on it forever. Connie had finished her cone.

  “Your mother doesn’t know?”

  “About what? Oh, the thing at Migler’s. No, she doesn’t. Daddy wouldn’t let me tell her.”

  Connie hesitated, gave indications of wanting to turn back.

  “Let me ask a few more questions.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “Did your father kill Rex Shanley?”

  “That’s not a question, it’s a—a lie.”

  “Did Ray kill him?”

  “I’m not going to say a word.”

  “Naturally. However, if it comes to a choice between one or the other, which would you prefer to take the blame?”

  She looked up into the sky, and her face was superbly miserable. Woar felt the same way about it.

  “Connie, I shan’t hurt any of you unless in sheer ignorance. Your father can’t tell me anything, Ray can’t tell me anything, because they’re shielding you. It may cost both of them their freedom, even their lives. If you really want to help them, out with it—now.”

  She took a moment to think about it. Agatha and Lefty stood talking together outside the telegraph office, and Connie glanced at them once. Then she said: “Daddy thinks you’re a wormy gent. I think he’s wrong. I’ll get the dickens for this—but I never could see what’s so grim about it, anyhow. All that happened was that Shanley was terribly drunk that night at Migler’s, and he tried to grab me when I was coming out of the ladies’ wash room. I couldn’t get away from him, so I yelled. Ray came, and Daddy came too. By the time he got there, Ray finished up Shanley with a beautiful crack on the jaw—and that was about all. Daddy has ideas about smirching a young girl’s honor and all that, so we promised not to say anything.”

  “And Shanley?”

  “He was flat on his back in the mud, out like a light. He couldn’t promise anything.”

  “What did they do with him?”

  “Daddy was all for killing him on the spot, and so was Ray, which was like men, wasn’t it? Ray picked him up, I think, and carried him over to the Shanley cabin. Ruth wouldn’t have him inside, so I think they stuck him in his car to sleep it off. I don’t know exactly. Daddy made me go back to the trailer.”

  “Ray hurt his hand?”

  “He cut it on poor Shanley’s teeth.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “I did go back and explain to Ruth that her husband had been in a fight. I thought she ought to know. She was too upset already, I guess, to upset any more. There’s mother looking for me, Mr. Brendan. Except that Daddy and Ray weren’t silly enough really to hurt Mr. Shanley—you can understand that, can’t you?—that’s all I know. We’re staying at the Tourist Court tonight, if you want to talk to Daddy. Darn mother, she’ll think I’m kidnapped or something if I don’t catch her...”

  3

  George was upstairs peacefully shaving when the consequence occurred. He had drawn a hot bath. The long train had hooted and begun to pull out of the station. Katheren was drying her hair at the window, finding that it dried miraculously at that altitude, when there was an imperative knock at the door.

  She wasn’t dressed to receive visitors, and she told Henry Tozer so through a narrow opening in the door. He was in no mood to listen, though. He shouldered his way in.

  “Where’s your husband?” he demanded. His face was dark with wrath.

  When Woar, naked but for a bath towel round his waist, appeared in the bathroom door, Tozer charged.

  He swung his fists wildly, like a man not in the habit of brawls. He made up his lack of skill in passion, intense concentration on the job of hurting Woar. When Katheren got over her surprise, the two were waltzing and grunting in a clinch. Suddenly they both
fell to the floor.

  George fell on top. He squatted on Henry’s legs and pinned his arms to the carpet in a wrestler’s hold. They both panted for breath.

  Then George said, “If you’ve worked it off...”

  “Sneaky, dirty Englishman!” Henry spat the words like a damp firework. “Snooping into what don’t concern you—”

  “Oh? We’d better wait.”

  He kneeled on Henry till all the bitterness came out, a matter of several minutes. Tozer’s face gradually lost its flush, his eyes their fight. Woar got up from him, knotted the towel tighter, and helped his enemy to his feet.

  “Care for a drink of water?”

  “No.”

  “Do you mind coming in the bathroom while I finish shaving? We might as well get this straight, now we’re started on the subject.”

  Woar shut the bathroom door after them, and Katheren heard no more. Henry sat on the edge of the tub in a tired way. He gazed at Woar as if he were a scorpion come to light in his bedroom slippers.

  “Not that I blame you greatly,” Woar admitted as he lathered his chin with fresh soap. “I’ve been a worry to you from the beginning. Well, shall we let down our hair?”

  “All I came here for is to see you leave Connie alone.”

  “Granted.”

  “You’ve been pumping her, tricking her—”

  “Granted, granted. Let’s get on.”

  Henry’s wrath had entirely cooled now, and he cocked a sharp eye at Woar’s shoulder blades.

  “Tell me something, Brendan—just how much do you think you know about us?”

  “I think I know you and Kemp had a strong inclination to murder Rex Shanley, if not strong reason. Well, perhaps a chivalrous reason, though not a logical one. He attacked Connie. You and Ray lugged him off the field of battle. Later, you repaired Ray’s wounds, and between the two of you swore the Winter twins to secrecy. Subsequently the lot of you took pains to hide Shanley’s murder from the police—and from me. Do I know enough?”

  Henry leaned his elbows on his knees, thought deeply and forgot to answer.

  “If you’d like more, I submit that the necktie with which Shanley was finally strangled was removed from the corpse—”

  “I didn’t do that, I told you!”

  “And later given to me in Plainfield, Indiana, by none other than yourself.”

  “I told you, somebody put it in my car!”

  “Why?”

  “To make trouble for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Maybe it was—how do I know?”

  Woar scraped at his beard and watched Tozer’s reflection in the mirror. Then he ran water over his razor, dried it and pointed it at him:

  “Lame, that bit about somebody making trouble for you. Not a story that would convince the police. Shall we put it up to them, just as it stands, or do you want to confide the rest in me?”

  “What would the police do to me?”

  “That’s their affair, not mine.”

  “I’m Connie’s father. They’d take that into consideration, wouldn’t they?”

  “Probably.”

  “Justifiable homicide, they call it, don’t they, when a man takes justice in his own hands in trouble like that?”

  “I think so.”

  “All right, if you want to know, I did kill Rex Shanley. I choked him with his necktie, and I ran him off in his car and left it in gear and jumped out so it would look like an accident. There you are, there’s my confession. Go ahead and use it.”

  “Thanks. But why did you have to kill Cicely?”

  “I—she—I didn’t kill her. She drowned herself.”

  “Tozer, Tozer, don’t be such an ass!”

  “Huh?”

  “You assume it’s a choice between you and Ray Kemp. You like the boy. You think he’s the murderer. You want to save him from conviction. So you confess. Don’t you see, man, that you’re telling me you don’t know who killed Shanley, but you believe it’s Ray?”

  “A confession is a confession, Brendan!”

  “Not at all. It’s merely more evidence.”

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Send you home to your tourist court before you make any more of your atrocious sacrifices. In Heaven’s name, don’t confess to anybody else, or Ray’s as good as hanged. Now let me in my bath. I need it...” And so another suspect was eliminated from the Shanley case.

  Fifteen

  NEXT on his list were Nick Leeds, trouble-shooter for a trucking line, and Ray Kemp, fairly celebrated as a football player. If either chose to be as tough with Woar as Henry Tozer...

  He decided on Nick Leeds and rummaged for a shirt. “Even a brilliant criminal investigator,” he told Katheren, “must some day run up against the insoluble problem of clean linen on a trip like this.”

  She wasn’t amused. They went down to dinner in a silence that might not be called strained so much as gritty. After all, a comparative stranger breaking in on a woman when she’s trying to dry her hair!

  Her head was done up in a scarf. Since this was the Wild West—she had noticed a piebald pony tethered in front of a saloon on the outskirts of La Junta that evening—she wore linen culottes, a sweater and a tweed jacket. She was to wear them for a long time to come, as a matter of fact.

  George stepped out into the street to get the maps from the car. With several others, it stood parked in front of the hotel.

  “Do we leave Hilda out all night?”

  “Seems customary,” said Woar. “The garage idea may be considered effete in Colorado, for all we know. Let’s not do anything to make a show of ourselves.”

  He wound up the windows and locked the doors, which satisfied Katheren on that score, at least. He also locked the patent cap he had bought for the gas tank.

  The Lagonda had departed, probably intending to climb the eighty-four miles to Trinidad that night.

  That pleased her somewhat. By coincidence that looked like prearranged plan, or plan disguised as coincidence, all the cars from Migler’s had a way of coming together every so often. She dreaded that conjunction by this time, feared the night of horrors entailed. But tonight there wasn’t one of them in sight.

  She began to think the Woars might take in a movie, after a quiet dinner together, and go to bed early. They were both frazzled from lack of sleep.

  After dinner, which George snapped down like a famished hawk, he jumped to his feet. She hadn’t touched her dessert yet.

  “Are we in a hurry, George?”

  “I am. You aren’t. Finish your dinner in peace. And don’t wait up for me. I may be late.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the Kit Carson to see Nick Leeds.”

  She tried not to show her disappointment. She murmured a remote, “Oh.”

  But for all his impatience, he stood over the table, looking down at her with intensity.

  “Have I something on my chin?” she asked.

  “Oh, my aunt’s sacred hat!” With peculiar gravity he added, “Take care of yourself, will you? Don’t let yourself be surprised.”

  He turned on his heel and fled.

  2

  Alone, she ate her ice-cream slowly.

  Somewhere in the distance a siren screamed, gradually more remote till it died away. Always an eerie and alarming wail, it caused creepiness along her spine.

  She was a very sensible woman, however. She continued eating ice-cream, and even drank another cup of coffee. Probably someone’s barn on fire, or a motor accident somewhere. Such things happened.

  She paid for the dinner. She strolled out on the station platform, where she bought a tube of tooth-paste at the magazine stand, just before its lights darkened and it closed for the night. At the same time, a freight train rattled through on the east-bound line. The red lanterns and the bright window of the caboose dwindled into the dark hills, leaving in Katheren a feeling of utter desertion.

  The prospect of reading herself to sleep i
n a hotel bedroom did not appeal. Hotel bedrooms, even the most sumptuous, would remind her of the Excelsior in Elm Point for some time to come. A picture show, then, or a bout of window shopping?

  She decided on the last. She released Caligula from the linen closet allotted him by the management, and took him along for company.

  “If Mr. Brendan comes in before I do,” she told the clerk, “say I’ve just gone for a walk.”

  “Yes, mam. There’s a telegram for him, too.”

  “A telegram?”

  “Yes, mam.”

  “May I have it?”

  “If you’ll just sign for it.”

  She signed for it and tore it open, assuring herself that a telegram for a fictitious George Brendan was odd enough to justify the deed.

  She read:

  GEORGE BRENDAN

  HARVEY HOUSE

  LA JUNTA, COLO.

  RE YOUR INQUIRY MISSING PERSON NAMED CICELY CAN YOU FURTHER IDENTIFY? HEREBY AUTHORIZE ELZA WHITT TO TAKE YOUR DEPOSITION

  HAL G. ROARER

  SHERIFF CLARION COUNTY

  CLARION, KANSAS

  Unless he had gone completely out of his head, George would be the last man in the world to inquire about Cicely. Katheren suspected a new kind of trap.

  She made a fair guess at the truth while she stood there. Somebody had wired Kansas. That somebody had used George’s name to sign the wire. And with malice aforethought, to start exactly the chain of official action that would ultimately bind Hazlitt Woar to the murder back in Elm Point.

  The mildness of Hal G. Roarer’s message was probably intended not to frighten the Woars away—either that, or Roarer was ignorant of what the constable knew in Elm Point. In any case, it had an opposite effect. She was instantly inclined to run like the devil.

  “Who is Elza Whitt?” asked Katheren as she folded the telegram into her bag.

  The clerk said, “He’s our Chief of Police here.”

  “Oh.”

  “If there’s anything I can do for you, Mrs. Brendan...”

  “Not a thing, thanks just the same,” said Katheren with what she hoped would come out a friendly smile.

  She snapped the lead on Caligula and led him away.