The Smiling Tiger

by Lenore Glen Offord

  “That may have been in his mind,” said Chloe, with no diminution of her dignity. “He was not under interrogation, however. I think it is his privilege to say what he believes.”

  “Quite. But I should—” Nelsing caught himself. “I imagine that Mr. McKinnon has been wondering why the mention of certain names always calls forth certain reactions, none of them strictly truthful—in the world sense.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Mrs. Majendie, “I’ll put an end to this right now. Ask me anything you like and I will answer it, in the world sense.”

  Her hawk-like old face looked craggier than ever, and her mouth was set in a formidable line. “Anything you like,” she repeated.

  “Mac,” said Howard Nelsing with a faint smile, “it’s all yours.” And as Todd half rose in his seat and directed an anguished look toward him, he added softly, “I owe you something.” The memory of that betrayal to Mr. Burke was evidently still with him.

  “Oh, if you insist I’ll ask the questions,” said Todd, giving way suddenly to the demon of imprudence. “Mrs. Majendie—is this a racket?”

  “A racket? The Beyond-Truth?” For two seconds her eyes blazed; then she leaned back still erect, in the straight chair. “It may have been, at the beginning. My husband was a clever man, as well as a magnetic one. He had no money of his own. I brought him some when we were married; it was my chief attraction, probably.” There was no change in her expression, no bitterness in her tone. “I am glad that I had it, because I loved him deeply and no matter what happened, it was worth it to me. You must consider, too, that no one has ever lost anything through being a member of our group. Nikko took their money, it’s true, he invested it, but when the investments paid—and the great proportion of them did—the group was enriched as much as he was. Or very nearly as much,” she corrected herself with a slight smile. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Not quite all,” said Todd. He had drawn into himself, in a sort of trance of concentration, and spoke softly as if not to mar it. “How much of what he taught did he believe?”

  “Yes, that’s a fair question,” said old Chloe, and sighed. “Very little of it, I’m afraid. And yet—it is a philosophy that was made for these old innocents; a vow of celibacy would have been easy for any of them, and for the rest it teaches kindness, self-denial, a few bizarre rules that don’t do anyone harm. It has never done anyone harm, gentlemen.”

  “Never?” said Todd, still softly.

  “Look around you.” Mrs. Majendie gestured, taking in all the wide sweep of the Colony. McKinnon nodded slowly, thinking of the placid, innocent faces he had seen; if they were empty, too, it was from their own inclination. “If the premises of Beyond-Truth were false to begin with, these people have made something fine of them. I am not the one, Mr. McKinnon, to tell them that it was made up out of whole cloth. They confuse the faith with the founder to some extent; now they look to me as their leader, and I am not going to shatter the foundation of decent and happy lives.” She eyed Todd again. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” he said, and drew himself together for the crucial question. “Dr. Majendie died just in time, didn’t he?”

  “Not from my standpoint, Mr. McKinnon,’ said the old lady gently.

  Todd willed himself to stay relaxed in appearance. He was not used to examining witnesses, only to listening sympathetically while they told him as much as they chose, and the necessity of thinking up questions in this case was going to be too much for him—unless Chloe Majendie would loosen up a little and give him some kind of a lead. He sat negligently in his wicker chair, his inner being a core of concentration that seemed almost to burn.

  He was aware of Nelsing, absolutely silent but somehow conveying amusement, a few feet away; of the spotless chintzes and white woodwork of this small house, and of the square of sky enameled with green leaves, framed by the window behind the old lady’s head. It was very quiet, the wind had dropped to a breeze that did not lash and howl but only scraped the vines lightly against the house and uttered small sounds like sighs, like breathing. Within these walls he could hear the ticking of his wrist-watch.

  After a moment or two of silence, Mrs. Majendie added, “It was a true marriage.” Her penetrating gaze did not move from Todd’s eyes. “It was within the letter of the Beyond-Truth, because I had been rendered sterile when I was seventeen, by an accident. I’ve already told you that I loved my husband deeply, and nothing that happened could have made any difference in that feeling.”

  Todd said in a barely audible murmur, “Something— happened?”

  The Queen Mary hat, the unruly shock of white hair below it, moved in affirmation. “If you have any doubt of my good faith, I shall try to dispel it now,” said Chloe Majendie. Her voice rang louder for a moment. “Perhaps it will put an end to this nonsense of investigating! —There is only one person besides myself who knows the circumstances of my husband’s death, and you could not possibly learn them from her. I’m going to tell you gentlemen, in confidence.”

  Nelsing stirred in his seat, and Mrs. Majendie flashed him a glance. “It has no bearing on the death of Hugh Hartlein, I can assure you. —My husband died of pneumonia, as you’ve heard. I did not nurse him myself, nor see him alone while he was ill. What no one else knows—except this woman—is how he caught the original cold.”

  She moistened her lips, and gave a one-sided smile, rueful and entirely worldly. “In the vulgar phrase of the joke, he got it by getting up out of a warm bed and going home.”

  Todd’s eyelids contracted, but he made no other movement.

  “I think,” she added calmly, “that the woman was on the make from the beginning, when she came here and pretended to be converted to his philosophy. She was good-looking, and younger than I. No doubt she knew enough about men to see that my husband was susceptible, if the temptation were presented in just the right way; and no doubt she meant to blackmail him. He escaped that. In that way, he did die at the right time.”

  “He died—”

  Mrs. Majendie smiled. “Did you think I’d put the Evil Eye on her, Mr. McKinnon? No, indeed. She had to be sent away from the community, of course, but she didn’t die. I wonder if you can guess her name?”

  “Frances Sagers,” said Todd softly.

  “Quite right,” said Chloe Majendie. “I hope you realize how much I have told you.”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Todd in his most casual voice. “If we wanted to think of it that way, we could say that you had the Beyond-Truth so much on your mind that you did condemn all backsliders to death, even your beloved husband. And if anyone chose, he might think that you’d been completely frank throughout, hoping to disarm investigators of your latest—”

  The door to the hall was flung open, crashing back against the wall. “It’s a lie!” a high voice shrieked. “It’s all lies!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “JOAN!” MRS. MAJENDIE almost shouted, her habitual aplomb momentarily shattered. The two men sprang to their feet, and Joan Godfrey half fell into the room. Her face was sheet-white, and twisted until it was barely recognizable as hers; only the beads still clacked and tinkled in a horrid travesty of gaiety.

  “I heard, Chloe. Yes, yes, I heard everything, you didn’t think I was going to leave you alone with them? You were denying Truth, weren’t you, even world truth?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Majendie with infinite compassion.

  “I won’t have it!” Joan screamed. “You’ll—you—” Her breath caught and choked her, as she waved an arm at the two men. “You put—you put your own head in a noose, and with lies! I tell you, you can’t divert the Hand of God that way, it points to the guilty, to the Denier, it may be through the law that it comes—but you shan’t take that ray from the Cosmos on yourself—”

  “Hush, Joan my dear,” said old Chloe, still gently. She remained seated and uncompromisingly erect, but she stretched out a hand. Miss Godfrey looked at it and seemed to shudder into herself, crossing her arms over the
bead chains on her thin breast. “You’re talking very wildly. I don’t believe I have put my head in any noose. Mr. McKinnon had just begun to state a hypothetical case, to clarify matters for us all.”

  “A case,” Todd interposed, “which I meant to break down in a minute.”

  Miss Godfrey evidently did not hear him. Her sparrow eyes were fixed with a terrible brightness on Mrs. Majendie. She gulped again. “Chloe, in—in the name of everything we believe in, say that you had some reason—that the Cosmos distorted the vibrations, that it was not Truth about—about—”

  “About Dr. Nikko? Joan, I wouldn’t have had you hear that for the world, if I could have helped it; but it was true in all the senses we know.”

  “He—he didn’t believe? He was of the flesh and the world?”

  “Very much so, my dear Joan,” said the old lady with a little sigh.

  Miss Godfrey’s hands went up, shaking, to her mouth. “Then,” she stammered, “what’s—what’s left to—”

  “You can go on just as I did, Joan; as I’ve done all these years.”

  “No!” Joan Godfrey cried out. Her head jerked this way and that like a small trapped animal’s. “I won’t believe it, not of him. Men’s names have been blackened in the world before this, by unbelievers—I won’t be taken in by such wickedness, such—such—” She faltered and came to a dead stop with her eyes on Chloe’s.

  “My poor Joan,” said the old lady, “if you must pin your faith on a person, you’d better choose me. I’m alive.”

  “But you said—you told—” Again Joan choked on an indrawn breath, and buried her face in her hands. When she uncovered it she was calmer. She looked around, her mouth sagging a little open in infinite desolation. “There’s nothing left,” she said in a tired voice. “I must—I can’t stand it, you won’t ask me to—to stay.”

  “We’ll talk about it when we’re home again,” said Chloe gently.

  “I’m going now,” Joan cried out. “Not another minute—I can’t—I can’t—” She whirled about suddenly and scuttled out, down the porch steps, across the velvet lawn, into a screen of trees. Todd and Nelsing looked at each other, and then at Mrs. Majendie, who had risen and seemed deeply troubled.

  “I should go after her, and I mustn’t,” she said, compressing her lips. Then she added, “There is the meeting at the hall, in twenty minutes. This is the one day I must be here until after sundown.” She stepped to the window and looked out. A faint smile appeared on her weathered face as a car shot out from behind the trees. “She’s taken my car. Well, one of the others will drive me home. If you gentlemen would be interested, you are welcome to attend the meeting.”

  “Thank you,” said Nelsing, “but we must go—unless you intend to make any revelations to the members?”

  “There will be no revelations,” said the old lady, slowly turning. “None of any kind. There have been too many already.” Her lids dropped, and as they hid the youthful alert eyes she looked really old, and very tired. “I should have looked behind that door. I should have looked—or said less.”

  “Will she be all right?” Todd inquired with concern.

  “Oh, yes. It may take her a little time to get over it; on one or two other occasions she’s—well, no matter.”

  “And—may I ask—will you be safe?”

  “I shall be safe,” said Mrs. Majendie with a look of benign amusement. “Poor Joan is the type one finds in every religious group, intense to the point of—eccentricity, let us say; but she has never been anything but harmless. And now, Mr. McKinnon and Inspector Nelsing, are you quite satisfied?”

  Todd looked sideways at Nelsing. The Inspector said, “One or two more questions, if you will be so kind.” The old lady nodded, meeting his eyes with undiminished good humor. He drew breath and rattled out his questions like a drill sergeant giving orders.

  “Who attended your husband in his last illness?”

  “Dr. John Barnes,” old Chloe shot back at him.

  “Practicing now?”

  “Yes. In Martinez.”

  “You said you did not nurse him. Who did?”

  For the first time Mrs. Majendie hesitated. “We can find out from someone else,” Nelsing reminded her.

  “Very well. Joan nursed him, until the last two days.”

  “This Frances Sagers. You say she’s alive?”

  “She is.”

  “Will you tell me where, Mrs. Majendie?”

  “No, I will not,” said the old lady.

  “I take it you could produce her?”

  “If necessary, I could. But I can’t see that it’s necessary unless I am to be accused of murdering her. Is that the case?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Nelsing politely. “Thank you, Mrs. Majendie.”

  “Good night—gentlemen,” said Chloe with the hint of a smile, and walked off into the late-afternoon wind.

  The two men followed more slowly, retrieved Todd’s car from the circle, and drove away in silence. In silence they retraced the winding road to the west; they were within a few miles of Walnut Creek before either spoke, although for some time past Todd had been monotonously whistling a theme by Beethoven.

  (Beautiful, he was thinking—beautiful; a Repeater who’s clever about it, and changes the method each time; a Repeater who’s caught by the circumstances of her first crime rather than the last; and the first crime not only the one that sets the motive for the rest of them, but is the one that drives the murderer insane. There’s a nice combination, the Repeater and the Maniac-Sane-on-the-Surface; makes sense, too; but this maniac goes farther, she’s mildly loony on the surface—so much so that she can tell any lies she likes and they’re put down not to guilt but to eccentricity.)

  “Well, Nelse,” he said at last, “aren’t you going to thank me for that nice li’le party I put on for you?”

  “Hah,” Nelsing said on a kind of snort.

  Todd clicked his tongue sorrowfully. “No gratitude. You ought to be paying taxes to keep me in a job. I give you suspects on a platter—I won’t say silver, the budget won’t run to that just now, but I give ’em to you anyway—and what do I get?”

  “You get some kind of a story, I presume,” said Nelsing. “And the more I see of your sources, the less I think of detective fiction. Couldn’t be farther removed from life.”

  “No?” Todd said with a faint chuckle. “You mean you’ve absolved everyone concerned of crime?”

  “Oh, I’ve passed no judgment on what we heard today,” said Nelsing, unruffled.

  “Why not? No opinion one way or the other?”

  “You see, it all happened in Contra Costa County. We’ve no authority over here.”

  “For God’s sake,” Todd murmured, awestricken. “They don’t even give you freedom of thought in Contra Costa County?”

  “We don’t exercise it unless it has some bearing on a matter in hand.”

  “Nelse, old boy,” said Todd almost tenderly, “don’t ask me to swallow that.”

  “I know how your mind works, Mac. Lord knows I’ve listened to enough of your tall stories. Everything’s got to fit in, if somebody’s third cousin by marriage dies of stomach ulcers in 1920, it’s a prelude to somebody’s murder in 1948. Now, you know it doesn’t really come out that way. All this stuff has nothing to do with Hugh Hartlein.”

  “Then why did he die?”

  “Oh, I’ll make a guess, if you want guesses. Old Mrs. Majendie reminds him of his dominating mother. He takes out on her all the subconscious hatred he’s felt for the mother while he thought of himself as a loving and dutiful son. He wants to die, but he has to do it in the way that will spite Mrs. Majendie most.”

  “Nice going,” said Todd. “I’d thought of that myself. But in that case why didn’t he leave a suicide note?”

  “Insurance, Mac, insurance,” said Nelsing patiently. “He couldn’t cheat his mother out of all that dough. And he spited the old lady plenty, planting those inhalers in her rubbish heap, taking care to
die right after he’d been to her house… Mind you, that’s theory; your sort of thing, but that ought to make it easy to take.”

  “What, no fingerprints, no chemical analysis, no moulage?”

  “You’re not convinced, are you? Still trying to fix up a link somewhere?”

  “There’s a link, all right,” said Todd thoughtfully. He swung his car to the curb in front of the Walnut Creek Coffee Shop, cut the engine and sat for a moment pondering. “Hartlein told me a lot of lies, but the one true thing was that he believed there was murder somewhere; and I’ll swear that belief led up, somehow, to his death… And since you’re off duty today, how’s about a li’le drink to Theory?”

  ***

  Georgine McKinnon, slicing potatoes into a casserole dish in the soft light of late afternoon, seemed a picture of placid housewifery; but there was an absent look in her eyes, and her hands moved as if they were independent of her brain. She looked toward the kitchen door when she heard Todd’s footsteps on the porch, but did not stop work.

  Todd kissed her and sat down beside the kitchen table. She said, “Tough sledding?” and after a moment’s thought he replied, “Well, yes and no. I’ll tell you…”

  She listened, still automatically slicing, scattering dabs of butter, measuring salt. “So that’s what it was,” she said when he had finished, and turned to face him, leaning back against the drainboard. “Joan Godfrey was here this afternoon, Todd.”

  “Here? What time?”

  “She must have come straight from the Colony.” Georgine drew a long breath. “You never saw anyone in a worse state. It scared me, but now I can understand it better.”

  Todd said that she’d better sit down, and she dropped into a chair. “I’d been over to the Manfreds’, using their ironer. I unlocked our kitchen door and lugged the basket in and—I heard something clicking and rattling in the living-room—just that, no voice or movement or anything. So when I could get my knees to hold me up, I tottered in, and there she was standing in the middle of the floor. We’ve got to get that door fixed, Todd,” Georgine interrupted herself to say vigorously. “It’s warped or shrunk or something, in the dry weather. It locks—but the latch doesn’t catch right and if you shake the door it comes undone. That’s how she’d got in. —Really, I thought she’d gone clean batty. She had to talk to me, it seemed, because ‘those men’—that’s you and Nelse, I suppose?—wouldn’t listen; you thought she was crazy.”