“May I ask you one question, Doreen?”
“Make it a bargain. One apiece. Something I want to say to you, too …You first.”
“Has he … has he talked to you about insurance?”
“Of course. It’s sensible, isn’t it? He’s better off than you seem to think, you know, and I’m young and healthy so the premiums are low. He’s paid the first premium on a policy for me. One hundred grand. And now that your worst fears are confirmed—”
“Oh, Doreen! How can you?”
“I’ve a favor to ask of you. Don’t go back to the seagulls and the Tabernacle yet. Stick around a while. We’ll find you a job if you want; I’ve got contacts.”
“Then you do think you need somebody to—”
“I said I believed him, didn’t I? It’s just … Well … Oh, skip it! Go home if you want to. Go marry a Fundamentalist and run off to the Arizona Strip. Luther marries ’em only one at a time—and when he marries me, he’s going to stay married.”
“I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay, Doreen. But oh … You’re not just my cousin. You’ve always been my best friend. And now … I just don’t understand you at all.”
“That is news?” Doreen asked, and switched off the light.
It was a small tasteful wedding, held in the Sma’ Kirk O’ the Braes, and chiefly distinguished by the fact that the maid of honor never met the eyes of the bridegroom.
Throughout the service Marie could not help thinking of what marriage meant to her, or rather what she hoped it might mean. And here were Doreen and Luther. …
“Why? Why?” She was almost in tears as MacDonald helped her into his car after the bridal couple had left for a Palm Springs weekend.
“We’re going,” MacDonald said, “to see the best man on Whys in L.A. You’ve met him, though it wasn’t one of his more brilliant appearances. That’s the second time Luther Peabody’s bested him, and if I thought Nick was capable of such a human reaction, I’d say it rankles.”
“Who is he, Mac? That whole scene was so strange …”
As they drove to downtown Los Angeles, MacDonald sketched a little of the career of Nicholas Joffe Noble, ex-Lieutenant, L.A.P.D. How the brightest Homicide man in Los Angeles had been framed to take the rap for a crooked Captain under investigation; how the sudden loss of job and reputation at the beginning of the depression had meant no money for an operation for his wife; how her death had broken him until he wound up on Skid Row living on sherry … and puzzles.
“Ten years ago,” MacDonald said, “on my first case, one of the old-line Homicide boys steered me to him. Called him the Screwball Division, L.A.P.D. If a case makes no sense at all—and Lord knows that one didn’t!—feed the facts to Nick Noble. His eyes sort of glaze over and something goes tick inside … and then the facts make a pattern.
“I’ve told him a lot about Doreen. He’s been looking up some more stuff on Peabody, especially the Seattle case. Way I see it, we’ve got two problems here: Why is Doreen deliberately marrying a presumable mass murderer, and how in God’s name are we going to prevent another ‘accident’? And if those questions have an answer, we’ll find it in the Chula Negra café, third booth on the left.”
The little Mexican café was on North Main Street, near the new Federal Building, and the old Plaza and the medium-new Union Station, and the old Mexican Church and the new freeway which had brought them downtown. It had a new jukebox with some very old records and cheap new sherry in cracked old glasses.
In the third booth on the left the white little man sat, a half-full glass before him. He said “Mac” to MacDonald and “Miss Arlen” to Marie and then he brushed his white hand across his sharp-pointed white nose. “Fly,” he said. “Stays there.”
There was no fly. Marie looked down, embarrassed, and said, “Lieutenant MacDonald thought maybe you could—”
“Heard Mac’s story,” Mr. Noble interrupted. “Need yours. Talk.”
And while MacDonald beckoned the plump young Mexican waitress and ordered more sherry, Marie talked. When she had finished, she watched the bright blue eyes expectantly. But they didn’t glaze. Instead Mr. Noble shook his head, half in annoyance, half perhaps to dislodge the persistent if invisible fly.
“Not enough,” he said. “No pattern.”
“A whodunit’s one thing,” said MacDonald. “This is a whydunit. Why should a girl deliberately marry a Bluebeard? F. Tennyson Jesse works out quite an elaborate and convincing theory of murderees, people who deliberately invite being murdered.”
“But Doreen isn’t at all like that!” Marie protested.
“I know. Miss Jesse’d agree; Doreen doesn’t fit the type. Some women want morbid sensation and pick out low, often strange kinds of men.”
Marie said hesitatingly: “You read about people being hypnotized. Luther does have such queer eyes—”
“Tabloid stuff,” said Noble. “She knows what she’s doing. Not enough. No pattern.” He emptied his glass.
“And there’s no official action we can take to protect her,” said MacDonald. “That’s the frustrating part. We can’t go spending the taxpayer’s money without a complaint. The insurance company’s just as helpless. Dan Rafetti from Southwest National was in to see me today. He wanted some notes on Peabody to show Southwest’s lawyers, but he wasn’t hopeful. They can’t dictate the policyholder’s choice of beneficiary. All they can do is stop payment—when it’s too late.”
Slowly Marie rose from the table. “It was very nice of you to bring me here, Mr. MacDonald.” She hoped her voice seemed under control. “And it was very silly of me to think you and your friend could pass a miracle. I did think you, at least, as an officer, might protect her.”
“Wait a minute, Marie!” MacDonald was on his feet, too.
“It’s all right, Mr. MacDonald. I can get home. At least if—when Doreen gets back from Palm Springs, I’ll be there to—”
“You?” Noble’s voice was sharp and dry. “You staying there with them? After marriage?”
“Why, yes. Doreen asked me to.”
“Tell,” he commanded.
Hesitantly she sat down and told. The blue eyes faded and thought seemed to recede behind them. Suddenly he nodded and said to MacDonald, “Recap M.O.”
“Peabody’s modus operandi? It’s stayed the same as in your case. Apparently a mild dose of sleeping pills, then when the woman’s unconscious a sharp blow to the base of the skull with the edge of the hand. Defense is always a broken neck by accident while under the influence of a slight self-administered overdose: Almost impossible to disprove.”
The eyes glazed again. When their light returned it was almost painfully bright. “Pattern clear,” he said. “Obvious why. But proof … Now listen. Both of you.”
The cute plump waitress refilled the water glass uninstructed.
Doreen and Luther had been back from Palm Springs for two days now, and the honeymoon was figuratively as well as literally over.
How could she go on living here? Marie thought. Even to save Doreen. But Mac and Nick Noble said it would be only a matter of days … Marie squirmed back into the corner where Mac had first found her and tried to cut herself off from the quarrel that raged.
“But it’s only plain damn common horse sense, Luther!” Doreen was screaming. “We have the good luck that Marie’s going around with a cop and he lets it slip that they’re reopening that Seattle case. Are you just going to sit around and wait for them to extradite you?”
Luther Peabody’s tone was too imperturbable to be called a shout, but it matched Doreen’s in volume. “The Seattle D.A. would be an idiot to reopen the case. I was acquitted—”
“You weren’t! They were hung juries. They can try you again and I won’t let them!”
“Very well. I wasn’t acquitted. But I was released three times. They can’t convict me. I’m comfortable here, thank you, and I’m staying.”
“I won’t be the wife of a man on trial for murder! We’ll go some place—any pla
ce—slip away—use another name for just a little while—just to let it get cold again—”
“My dear Doreen, I am staying.”
“And I know why, too! That filthy-rich tin heiress from Bolivia we met at Palm Springs! I see myself getting you out of town while she’s here. You’d sooner stay and be indicted or extradited or whatever it is and have all the scandal! What about my career?”
“You won’t mind, my dear, if I ask, ‘What career?’”
And after that, Marie thought wryly, it began to get nasty. And the plan wasn’t working. The Seattle rumor was supposed to make Luther eager to get out, put time-pressure on him. Mac was taking a week’s vacation, switching schedules with some other Lieutenant, so that he could act privately. He and a detective he’d hired were taking turns watching the house. And if Marie observed the faintest sign of anything wrong, she was to make a signal … What was the signal? She was so sleepy …
The newlyweds had stormed off to separate rooms. They had even stopped shouting across the house to each other. She was so sleepy, but it was so much trouble to get to her bed …
Marie managed to dig her fingers into her thigh so viciously that her eyes opened. “The faintest sign of anything wrong…” Of course. The first thing he’d do would be to drug the watchdog. He’d brought her the cup of cocoa Doreen had fixed. She had to make the signal … the signal …
She would be black-and-blue for weeks, but she kept digging into her thigh. Doreen insisted on keeping the Venetian blinds throughout the house with their slats slanted up, so sunlight couldn’t come through to fade the carpeting. If MacDonald saw any window with the slats slanting down …
She heard the gratifying rattle of the shifting vanes as her hand slipped loosely from the cord and her eyes closed.
“You was supposed to relieve me an hour ago,” said the man from the O’Breen Agency reproachfully.
“I know,” MacDonald snapped. “I’m on vacation, but that doesn’t stop a Homicide Captain from calling me down to Headquarters for more details on a report I filed last month—What’s that!”
“Yeah, I was just gonna tell you, Lieutenant. That blind switched damn near an hour ago. I didn’t phone you because I figured you was on your way here, and you don’t see me risking my license trying to break in—”
But MacDonald was already at the door. He had no more authority to break in than the operative; but he had self-confidence, a marked lack of desire to warn the murderer by ringing a bell, and a lock-gun. The operative followed hesitantly at his heels. They both stopped short at the archway from hall to living room.
With the blinds as Doreen liked them, the room would have been dark, but the moon shone down through the reversed slats of the warning-blind onto the body. It was chicly dressed, as any starlet should be, in a fur-trimmed dressing gown. Its face was painted to starlet-mannequin perfection and the moon gleamed back from a starlet’s overpainted fingernails. But one item differed from starlet standards: the coiffure.
The hair was so close-cropped that the head seemed almost bald.
MacDonald had switched the lights on and was bending over the body. “She’s breathing!” he yelled. “We got a break! Phone—” And in a moment he was through to Homicide, arranging for official reinforcements, an immediate ambulance, and the nearest patrol car in the meantime.
He set back the phone and looked up at a strange tableau. In the front arch stood the private operative, gun drawn, face questioning. In the other arch, leading to the bedrooms, stood Luther Peabody, staring at the unconscious girl on the floor.
“All right, lover-boy,” MacDonald began, not unglad that his position was, at the moment, unofficial. “My man has you covered. You’re not trying a thing—not any more. And before the regulars get here, you’re going to tell me a few fascinating items—starting with ‘Where’s Marie?’”
“I don’t understand,” Peabody faltered. “I heard all this noise …” His eyes never left the body.
MacDonald hesitated. The man worried him. He did look as if he had just awakened from a sound sleep. And what was stranger: the gaze he fixed on the body seemed (unless he were the world’s leading non-professional actor) to be one of absolute incredulous surprise.
Then a moan came from the floor that sounded almost like words, almost like “Did I …” MacDonald knelt and bent closer, still eying Peabody. “Did I… did I fix the slats right, Mac?” said the preposterous starlet-lips.
“Marie!” MacDonald gasped. “Then who—” Abruptly he rose as he saw a uniformed patrol-car man looming behind the operative. “MacDonald, Homicide,” he said, moving forward with his open wallet extended. “The girl’s alive—ambulance on the way.”
The patrol-car man said, “We spotted a dame high-tailing it away from here, took a chance on picking her up. Bring her in, Clarence!”
And 200 pounds of Clarence brought in a scratching, biting fury who was unmistakably Doreen Arlen Peabody.
“Didn’t mean to be cryptic. Honest,” said Nick Noble, brushing away that fly. “Thought you saw pattern. Seattle time-pressure wouldn’t pressure Peabody. Be less apt to act when under observation. Would pressure Doreen. Had to act while she still had him around.”
“The hospital says Marie’ll be out tomorrow. Nothing serious. Doreen was a failure even at learning judo blows out of handbooks. But if I’m going to shine as Marie’s savior, I’d better at least get completely straight what the devil happened. Want to help me sort it out?”
“No sorting. Straight pattern. Clear as soon as I knew Marie was staying on with them. Then all fell into place: Only possible why. Failure. Insurance. Family. Judo. Hair. Above all, hair.”
“OK. Let me try. Doreen’s not talking. We’re going to have to release her anyway. You can’t charge attempted murder when the victim won’t make a complaint; and Marie says think what it’d do to the family in Utah.”
“Step-family,” said Nick Noble.
“Yes, that’s a key-point. With all Doreen’s publicity, you think of this vast Family; but Marie’s her only blood-relative. That made the whole scheme possible. And the most cold-blooded—But let me try to reconstruct:
“Doreen meets Peabody. She remembers a little, checks up and learns more. Maybe she thinks, ‘He can’t get away with it forever’—and from that comes the thought: ‘If any murder happens with him around, he’s it.’”
“Why,” said Nick Noble.
“Exactly. The only possible why for deliberately marrying a mass murderer: to have the perfect scapegoat for the murder you’re about to commit. She brings her cousin out here. They used to look a lot alike; really the main differences, speech and action, aside, are Doreen’s elaborate starlet-makeup and Marie’s wavy hair. So Doreen insures herself for an enormous amount, or maybe just lets Peabody do it, if that’s what he has in mind. But Doreen’s not worrying—She’ll kill Marie, using Peabody’s M.O. and putting her own clothes and makeup on the body. There’s still the hair. Well, Peabody has a psychopathic quirk about hair. He’s clipped tresses from his victims before. This time she’ll make it seem he’s gone hog-wild and cut off too much … too much to tell if it was straight or wavy. Meanwhile she’ll scrub her face, use the lightest makeup, wear Marie’s clothes, and wave her hair. She’ll be the little cousin from Utah. It’s her background, too; she was once very like Marie even in actions—it’ll be a simple role.
“So Peabody is convicted of the murder of his wife. Maybe even as the Utah cousin she’s going to be an eyewitness. It doesn’t matter whether he’s gassed or found insane. In any case the insurance company won’t pay him. Policy reverts to the estate, which consists solely of the Utah cousin, who now has a hundred grand in cash and never goes back. Perfect!”
“She thinks.”
MacDonald nodded. “She thinks. … You know, Nick, unofficial head that you are of the Screwball Division, L.A.P.D., this was the ideally screwball case for you. Exact illustration of the difference between a professional and an amateur. If Peabody ha
d killed Doreen, the motive and what you call the pattern would have been completely obvious; and yet he’d probably have executed the details so well that the worst he’d get would be another hung jury. Now Doreen had worked out the damnedest most unlikely pattern conceivable; but if (God forbid!) she’d brought off her murder, I swear she’d have gone straight to the gas chamber. Doreen wasn’t really good at anything, from acting to murder. Somewhere along the line, pure ordinary police routine would’ve caught up with the identification—”
“Radiation Lab,” said Nick Noble.
“Of course. Marie’s prints would be on file if she’d worked on such a security job. Then the hair: Doreen was giving herself a quicky fingerwave when she heard me rampaging around and panicked. I suppose later she’d have had a pro job done—and that’d be one more witness. Fake identity plus good old cui bono? and she’s done for. All thought out in advance … except what happens next.”
“Rouse,” Nick Noble agreed.
“Exactly. The English ‘blazing car’ murderer back around the time of Peabody’s debut. Everything brilliantly worked out up through the murder … then chaos. Arrested the day after killing and executed four months later. Doreen would’ve gone that way too. But thanks to you—”
“What now?” Nick Noble asked as Rosario brought fresh glasses.
“Damned if I know. Maybe your pattern machine can figure it. She says she’s going back to Peabody if he’ll have her. Says she kind of likes him. Well, Marie didn’t! Marie hated him from the start—”
“—and didn’t hate you?” It was the first time MacDonald had ever seen a broad grin on that thin white face. “A little like Martha, Mac,” said Nick Noble. “A little.”
MacDonald remembered Martha Noble’s tragic operation. “Luckier,” he said. “Thanks to you.” He rose, embarrassed. “I’ll bring Marie around tomorrow. Want you to see her while she’s still all shaven and shorn. She’s lovely—it’s an experience. Well,” he concluded, “it’s been a hell of a murder case, hasn’t it? The murder case with no murder and no arrest. Files closed with nobody in prison and nobody dead.”
Exeunt Murderers Page 16