One Hour to Kill

by George Harmon Coxe

  “I did. The same way you did.”

  “The police acted as if they didn't believe me. How could she be there—'

  Wallace interrupted her. “Because neither of us opened the door far enough. Whoever killed her put her in a chair that was off to one side away from the bed.”

  “On purpose?”

  Wallace said he did not know; then asked if Shirley had mentioned to the police the fact that she knew he had been seeing another woman.

  “What woman? . . . Oh,” she added as her mind made the necessary adjustment. “You mean what I told you last night? No. They didn't ask—”

  “How did you know about Ann? Did you ever see us?”

  “No. I don't know who told me.” She hesitated again, brow furrowing. “It was somebody I know but I can't remember now just who it was.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Something about seeing you with some young dark-haired girl. They didn't know who she was either, said she was a knockout and I said I was glad. I said it was time you got rid of Fay and got someone else, that you deserved something better.”

  Wallace thought it over and came now to the question that had brought him here. “Did Fay ever come in here with Joe Anderson?”

  “Plenty of times. Not so much recently but for a while there—”

  “How did they act? I mean, when they were together. Were they pretty friendly?”

  “It looked that way.”

  “As if they had something going between them?”

  “I thought so at the time, but it didn't look that way the last time I saw them.”

  She pointed at one of the semicircular banquettes in the corner. “They were sitting over there. Because this room is air-conditioned it’s pretty soundproof. From outside you can see people but you cant hear anything. I was outside talking to some tourist and from the way Fay was waving her arms around I got the idea they were arguing about something. I do know that Anderson walked out on her. He must have been burned about something because he went right by and didn't even see me.”

  “One more question, Shirley,” Wallace said. “I know I'm reaching, but there’s not much that goes' on around here that you don't know about, and I wondered if you'd know of any reason why Fay would be walking around with five hundred dollars in cash in her wallet?”

  Shirley hesitated before she replied. Her glance slid toward the door and stayed there and for the first time there seemed to be a definite evasiveness in her reaction before she spoke.

  “Five hundred in cash? I haven't seen that much money in years.”

  “Five new one-hundred-dollar bills,” Wallace said. “The police found it when they went through her things.”

  Shirley shook her head. “Sorry, David. I don't know anything about that. All I know,” she added disgustedly, “is that if I had even an idiot’s measure of common sense I never would have gone to your place at all last night. . . .”

  The local name for the new Hillside was the Upside-Down Hotel. Constructed on the side of a steep hill which overlooked the Savannah and the race course, its balconied guest rooms stretched upward for seven floors, with the lobby, public rooms, and promenades at the so-called entrance level. To Wallace the architecture was somehow a mixture of Caribbean and Oriental and the open-air terrace and swimming pool, which had been fashioned in the shape of the island, were one floor down from the lobby.

  It was a very short drive from the Brittany and he left his car in the main parking area away from the entrance and walked up the asphalt drive. He had no great hope that he would learn anything here that would help him but he was determined to explore every possibility no matter how remote and his quest for information took him to the gift shop where Fay had worked three hours each afternoon. The interior had a cluttered look, its wares designed for the most part to intrigue the woman tourist. There were straw bags, some of them from as far as Dominica, of every size and shape; straw hats, scarves, smocks, albogates, beaded trinkets; silver bracelets, necklaces, and pins, most of which were handmade locally.

  The proprietress was plump and fiftyish, with carefully waved hair of a dark-red shade that Wallace, as an artist, had never seen before. She wore too much make-up for her age and the rainbow-striped skirt was too full, the Sea Island cotton blouse too snug. Sandals that exposed painted toenails added to the over-all impression of dumpiness but she gave him a quick welcoming smile that was practiced and automatic as she asked if there was anything she could do for him. He returned the smile and said that he was not a customer.

  “I came in to ask about my wife,” he said. “I’m Mr. Wallace.”

  “Oh?” There was no warmth in the word and the blue-shadowed eyes were instantly hostile.

  “She works here, doesn’t she?”

  “I’m not so sure now.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve been more than lenient,” the woman said, “in letting her choose her own time. It was understood that she would work three hours every afternoon but Sunday. I arranged my schedule to fit hers whether she came at one and worked until four or whether she came at two and worked until five.”

  “What about yesterday afternoon?”

  “I was coming to that, Mr. Wallace.” The mouth compressed a little more and animosity grew in the cadence of her voice. “She arrived shortly after one. We were quite busy at the time but twice during the next hour the telephone rang. The calls were for her, even though I had explicitly told her that she was not to receive personal calls while she was working.”

  “Did anyone come to see her?”

  “No. And I suppose I should be grateful for that. No, just the two calls and then a little after two, after the second call, she announced that she was leaving for the day. I told her if she did she needn’t come back.”

  “She won’t be back, Mrs.—”

  “Atkins,” the woman said and cleared her throat. “I don’t want to seem harsh or unreasonable—”

  “That’s all right,” Wallace said.

  Mrs. Atkins lifted the points of her shoulders an inch and let them fall. “Well, in that case,” she said in a tone that suggested she was relieved that the matter could be settled so amicably. “I suppose I owe her an hour’s pay. She was given her salary in full on Saturday but she did work for an hour yesterday—”

  Wallace managed a polite smile and backed toward the door. He said that he couldn’t take the money and only hoped that it would make up for the inconvenience his wife had caused.

  The Guardian, which was the city’s leading newspaper, stood on a St. Vincent Street corner and Wallace was lucky to find a parking place not more than a block away. The business offices were on the first floor and he climbed to the second and turned left, past the information desk. This brought him to a sizeable high-ceilinged room with bare floors and calcimined walls. The man he sought was seated at a desk near the middle. He was an East Indian named Sims, a sports writer whose speciality was cricket, with horse racing as a secondary assignment. His age was indeterminate, but not old; he wore dark-rimmed glasses with wide sidebows and when he noticed Wallace approaching he stopped banging on the typewriter and leaned back in his chair.

  He said he had heard about Wallace’s wife and offered appropriate comments. He said if the managing editor knew Wallace was here he would probably want a statement. He said he understood the police had not yet made an arrest and would Wallace care to comment on that.

  “No,” Wallace said. “I just stopped in to ask a couple of questions about the horses.”

  Sims’s glance was quickly disapproving, as though he was justifiably shocked by the thought that a man whose wife had just been murdered could be concerned with such trifles. “If you mean do I have anything good, I haven’t.”

  “How have you been doing?”

  “Oh”—he tipped one hand—“I come up with a winner now and then. Had one yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

  “How’s Neil Benedict been doing?”

  “Ha
h! He’s the one who put me onto this one.”

  “A local horse?”

  “No, no. Of course he always follows the area meetings but he also has an account with a bookmaker in London. Neil’s a pretty smart handicapper,” he added. “He bets big but not often. He picks his spots and he came up with a good one yesterday. He had five hundred pounds on this horse and it came in at five to two. I went along for ten pounds myself, and, that’s a sizeable wager for me.”

  Wallace took a moment to translate the sum into local figures. Five hundred pounds would mean fourteen hundred American dollars and this in turn would be somewhere around two thousand West Indian dollars.

  “That’s around five thousand dollars,” he said.

  “Five thousand plus,” Sims said. “A tidy sum, wouldn’t you say?”

  “He won this yesterday?”

  “Got the word yesterday afternoon.”

  For the first time Wallace felt a glimmer of hope where none had been before. He had been proceeding on the slimmest of hunches and he had stopped here because he knew that the sports writer was an authority on any local happenings in the racing field. This information helped to give more substance to his original thought, and as he rose and glanced at his watch he was already formulating his next step.

  13

  The second-floor restaurant and bar called the Oasis was located to the east of the General Post Office but sufficiently near King’s Wharf and the Tourist Bureau to be convenient for thirsty tourists—both going and coming—who made up the bulk of the clientele during the winter months. Neil Benedict, who did not manage the place but was part owner, spent much of his free time there; he also knew many of the pursers on the regularly scheduled cruise ships that called at Port-of-Spain, so that the Oasis was high on the list of recommended places for passengers when in port.

  The corner overlooked Marine Square even though the entrance was on the intersecting street. A balcony on two sides was wide enough for a row of tables and made a convenient place to observe the unending bustle on the narrow sidewalks and the ever-changing traffic pattern on the streets below. For those who preferred air-conditioned atmosphere for their drinking, the main room offered modem decor, black walls decorated with drawings of native scenes, and a lack of illumination that had the effect of almost total blindness for anyone coming in from the sunlit streets.

  Dave Wallace had never been able to find the reason for the exaggerated lighting, and when he opened the heavy glass doors shortly before one o’clock and felt the cool blast of air he could have used a seeing-eye dog. He knew there were tables along three sides of the room but he did not know if they were occupied. He found the bar because he knew it was over on his right. Light from the counters and sinks underneath the bar reflected backward to reveal two barmen. The one nearest him was a genial colored man named Emil and the smile that accompanied his greeting told Wallace that the news of the murder had not yet reached the Oasis, and for this he was grateful.

  “ 'Morning, Mr. Wallace. How you feeling this morning?”

  “Good morning, Emil. Beer please.”

  “Local or—”

  “No. Tuborg or Heinekens.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Wallace put a cigarette between his lips. Emil put down the frosted bottle which he had not yet opened to supply a light. By the time the beer was served, Wallace’s eyes had made some adjustment and he could see the customers at the tables, most of them decked out in loud shirts or blouses; all of them wearing shorts that looked too baggy on the men and too tight on the women. Extra chairs were piled with cameras and straw hats and souvenirs, and for the most part the owners looked too tired—or bored—to enjoy their drinks.

  With his first swallow of beer, Wallace considered the information he had picked up at The Guardian, and as he decided to see if he could amplify it he got his first break of the day. He knew that Emil would be aware of Neil Benedict’s wager and good fortune, but what came after that was not only highly significant but, thanks to Emil’s friendly desire to please, offered voluntarily once Wallace steered the conversation into the proper channels.

  “I hear you had a big day around here yesterday, Emil.”

  “A big day, sir?”

  “I mean that horse that Mr. Benedict had in England.”

  “Oh, yes sir.” Emil’s grin was wide and spontaneous. “Mighty big day for Mr. Benedict. A fine day for Mrs. Wallace too.”

  “So I understand,” Wallace said, mentally crossing his fingers as he pursued his hunch. “Mr. Benedict had five hundred pounds riding on that horse, didn't he?”

  “Indeed he did, sir. Fifty pounds for your missus too.”

  “I saw those hundred-dollar bills.”

  “That’s how she wanted it.” Emil laughed. “Real fussy about how she got that money, sir. It was too late to get to the banks and Mr. Benedict had to send up to the Hillside Hotel to get that kind of money.” Emil chuckled again as his bar rag polished an already spotless bar. “Yes sir, there was a bit of celebrating going on here for a while yesterday afternoon.”

  “Has Mr. Benedict been in this morning?”

  “He’s sitting right back there now, sir,” Emil said and pointed.

  The answer surprised Wallace but as-he turned, his eyes fully adjusted to the darkness now, he saw Neil Benedict sitting alone at a table in the far corner of the room. Intent as Benedict was on the newspaper which was spread out on the tabletop, he did not glance up until Wallace pulled out a chair and, not waiting for an invitation, sat down opposite him.

  “Oh, hello, Wallace,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Congratulations.”

  “On what?”

  “I hear you made a big score.”

  “Score?” said Benedict who was not up on American vernacular.

  Wallace put his beer glass on the table. “Five hundred pounds at five to two—”

  “Quite.” Benedict’s broad sun-blackened face permitted itself a small smile. “A nice bit of business. Helps make up for a few that didn’t come in and puts my London account in a rather healthy shape for the moment. How did you know?”

  “Sims told me,” Wallace said. “You know, the sports writer at The Guardian. I wondered why Fay was so openly friendly with you last night at the Tavern.”

  Benedict’s amber eyes were suddenly watchful under the bushy brows. “What do you mean by that?”

  Wallace took a sip of beer. He lit a cigarette with some deliberation to give himself time to review the things he knew about the man, and once again the bits of gossip Fay had given him from time to time helped to round out the mental picture.

  The Benedicts were one of the older Trinidad families. Their original landholdings had been dissipated by one generation after the other so that now the only family left on the island was Neil and his seventy-year-old father. Wallace understood that there was a married sister in England and a brother in Canada, and he knew the original family holdings in sugar and rum had been reduced to a single sugar estate.

  Through accumulation over the years, the plantations and factories at Caroni and Usine St. Madeleine had become the two largest in the entire British commonwealth. There were still hundreds of small East Indian growers with an acre or so who worked for the big factories on a quota, but the Benedict estate was one of the few of any size left, even though this, by comparison, was small.

  If Neil Benedict gave much time to the managing of the estate it was not apparent, since his two hobbies—horse racing and golf—seemed to take a large part of his time. He was a member of a regular foursome that played nearly every afternoon at the St. Andrews course when he was in town. He did not own horses but he followed them, and not only at the various meets throughout the island. He also attended the meetings at Barbados, Tobago, and St. Vincent as well as the races in British Guiana at Portmourant and at Demerara Turf Club at Durvan Park. The bets he made in England were said to be sizeable, he was smart enough to wait for his spots, and apparently he did rather well
on an over-all basis. . . .

  He took a moment to consider his promise to Shirley Goddard that he would not tell Benedict about her call at the bungalow the previous night. Deciding it would serve no purpose, he filed it away for future reference and now he was ready to answer Benedicts question.

  “If anyone made a bet for me that resulted in a profit of five hundred odd dollars, I’d be grateful too.”

  Benedict put his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Get to the point, Wallace.”

  “You made a bet of fifty pounds for Fay.”

  “So?”

  “Why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Fifty pounds is a hundred and forty American dollars. Since when have you made a bet like that for any other woman?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “So why should you do it for Fay? Because you liked her? Because you owed her something? Or to buy something—like maybe a little silence?”

  The curt, direct questions brought a certain hardness to the angles of Benedict’s jaws and things were happening behind the amber eyes. Anger flared briefly and there was a threat of violence in his look; then, abruptly, the mood passed as his self-control asserted itself. He sat up and took a breath. He made an effort to be patient but there was an odd note of resignation in his voice as he replied.

  “I’ll tell you why,” he said. “To get her off my back once and for all.”

  “You were pretty friendly with her for a while.”

  “And what a mistake that was. I’ve been married before,” he said. “I ought to know something about women. Maybe I was fooled by a face and a figure but what I didn’t know was that she was a born troublemaker. Also I got the idea you didn’t give a damn one way or the other.”

  “I didn’t,” Wallace said. “I talked with Shirley. You had a fight about something and you both got on your high horses so you started taking Fay around.”

  “Something like that. I made a mistake the first time I got married and it cost me a packet. I intend to get married again and Shirley’s the girl. It’s just that I don’t want to be pushed. And it’s not only Shirley; it’s my old man. He wants grandchildren. If he doesn’t get them he’s as much as told me hell change his will. I’ll get a token bequest and my brother and sister, who couldn’t care less about this place, will sell the plantation to the first bidder.”