She heard Fogarty moving around the other room. He hadn’t put on the lights; perhaps he thought there was still danger here. She walked in after him, wanting to get away. The heaviness inside her purse reminded her of the gun. Well, if she had been the first one here instead of the secretary, she might be lying in there behind the bed.
She saw Fogarty standing over by the vigil light, looking at the crucifix on the wall. “Who killed her?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Why?”
He turned around to face her. There was just enough dim glow, reddish-colored and flickering, to outline him. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read the expression there. “It strikes me that there was no attempt made to tear up the floor in there. It might mean that the diary had already been found in its real hiding place. Or it could be that the girl wasn’t murdered because she was looking for Tzegeti’s book, but for something else entirely. For leaving that stocking here with the holes in it, for instance, which must have given the police a damned good hunch that Mrs. Tzegeti had seen her husband’s murderer before she died in that bed.”
He didn’t stay to talk or argue about this, just walked on outside and left the door swinging. Amy felt a flare of anger. He’d blamed her for the death of the girl in the other room, blamed her for telling the lie which had brought her here to die; and now he was walking out as if washing his hands of it all. Well, he was a newspaperman; he was schooled to be rude and callous. That’s the way you collect news in this modern world. You develop the hide of a rhinoceros and the sensitivity of a skunk. You ride roughshod over timid souls. You bully anybody who might get in your way. You——
Then she thought about Fogarty’s brief remarks, the thing that had happened to his wife and child. She ran for the door, jerked it back, stumbled through. Fogarty was on the porch. She caromed off him, sensing the flash of surprise that shook him. “Hey! Watch where you’re going! Damned if you aren’t trying to break both our necks.” He gripped her, steadied her headlong fall down the steps.
She clung to him, breathing hard, hearing her own heart pound under her ribs. After a minute he said slowly, “You thought I was leaving you in there, alone.”
She wanted to tell him that she didn’t give a damn what he did—ever. Maybe he got the idea anyway. He went on after a minute: “I guess I was, at that. Sometimes I get tired of trying to figure you out. Don’t you ever cry, by the way?”
She bit her lip, glad of the concealing dark.
“I thought once—that day we were here before, when your husband was going to be buried. I thought then I’d found something human in you. I gave you my handkerchief.” He laughed under his breath. “Well, let’s get back to business. I think we ought to call Raoul Schneider and tell him what’s happened here. If he kissed the girl in the lobby down there in Ensenada, he’d probably like to know what’s happened to her.”
Amy had drawn away. “Yes, I suppose he was infatuated with her.”
“Give him credit—it might be better than that.”
She ignored it. “We can call from my house. I want to make sure Elizabeth’s all right too.”
Fogarty put down the telephone. He didn’t look at Amy, but at a blank place on the wall, a spot that should have held a picture. “Raoul Schneider and Cunninghan’s secretary were married. He met her before his father’s murder. She came to the Picardy Club one night with some papers, income-tax stuff Cunninghan wanted the old man to sign, and Raoul was introduced to her, took her down to the office afterward. That was a year ago. They got married last month. She’s always been on Raoul’s side, and tipped him off about the deal being made to cheat him on his inheritance.”
Amy hadn’t taken off her hat and coat. She had looked in at Elizabeth, put the pup out for necessary business, brought him in again—while Fogarty used the phone. Now she sat down slowly on a chair across the room, trying to orient herself to this new information. The first shock of finding the girl dead in the Tzegeti bedroom had been masked at once by her anger at Fogarty, her resentment because he had blamed her for the girl going there. Now she was beginning to get the whole picture. Of course Raoul Schneider had not trusted her—perhaps he had intended from the beginning to get the diary, or perhaps her words about Mrs. Schneider’s offer had decided him on immediate action. He had sent the girl ahead; she could have reached Lomena while Amy waited there to have dinner with Raoul. The girl had gone to look for Tzegeti’s journal, and she’d been murdered. But the murderer either knew better than to look for the diary under the floor of the bedroom, or didn’t understand the girl’s errand there, or murdered her (as Fogarty had suggested) for some other reason entirely.
The girl had been married to Raoul, had been betraying her employer. Would Cunninghan have murdered her if he had known? Amy thought about it. Cunninghan was shrewd, versed in law; he wouldn’t go off half-cocked into violence. It seemed to Amy that the motive behind the murder of the secretary must be deeper than an employee’s treachery, must fit back into those other deaths, Schneider’s at the club, the murders on the train.
She glanced at Fogarty. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going after Cunninghan, of course.”
“She was betraying him,” Amy pointed out.
Fogarty shook his head. “No, I’m after that other story, the one about the money. I think I’ve got a chance, now, to scare the truth out of the lawyer.” He raked his hat toward him off the couch and stood up. He pulled at his coat, stretching his shoulders inside it. “God, but I’m tired.” He looked down at the couch reflectively. “I wish I had even fifteen minutes. But it’s got to be fast. Someone else will find that girl if I don’t move in a hurry.” He waited as if for Amy to say something. “Are you staying here? Going to read it in the newspaper?”
“No,” Amy said, “I’m coming along.”
He didn’t argue with her this time. He went over to the door and put his hand on the knob. “I’m kind of sorry for Raoul Schneider.”
She was standing. “Yes, I am too.” There was more that she wanted to say: that she knew how wrong she’d been in cheapening that scene in the lobby, and that there shouldn’t have been a lie to take the girl alone at night to the Tzegeti house. But she couldn’t say these things to Fogarty. It would be an admission of being wrong, of weakness. And she couldn’t be wrong or weak now. She had a job to do. It was a rough, mean job—she’d just begun to see its difficulty and how slim her chances were of completing it.
“Are you coming with me in my car?” he asked.
“No. I’ll drive, follow you.”
“Okay.” He walked out.
The dark was old and thin, getting sick around the edges. In an hour or so the east would be gray. Amy swung her car from the driveway, looked for the taillight, found the pin point of red bobbing through the fog. She followed for some blocks, turned when Fogarty did, and then realized that he was taking the road to town, to the business district, instead of the one to the section where Cunninghan had his home. Fogarty was playing a hunch. He thought he might find the lawyer in his office.
He was right—at least, Amy thought, someone was up there. Lights shone yellow in the inner room. Amy left the car, stole up the steps on Fogarty’s heels. He moved quietly and slowly. The outer door swung under his touch, and across his shoulder Amy saw the reception room. There was a crack of light from the inner door. Fogarty crossed the room silently, looked in through the narrow space, then jerked the door wide. “Hello, Cunninghan.”
Cunninghan straightened behind the desk. Amy got the impression that he had expected someone else, that for a moment he didn’t believe what his eyes told him. He saw her, recognized her; then his stare returned to Fogarty. “I’ve seen you somewhere, but I can’t place you.”
“Everybody has that trouble,” Fogarty assured him. He took in the papers Cunninghan had spread out on the desk. “Cleaning out the files? This would be a good time for it.”
Cunnin
ghan made a neat pile of some papers. “I’m sorry, I didn’t seem to catch your name or the nature of your business.” His glance swept past Fogarty coldly, settled on Amy. “Mrs. Luttrell, perhaps you can explain.”
“It’s—about your secretary,” she stammered.
Under the gray crew-cut hair his face seemed now more yellowish than tanned. And the big hands had a boniness that seemed unpleasant. It was as if, since she’d seen him last, some inner decay, a withering, had set in. “What about Bernice?” he asked, watching them both. “I missed her today. I—frankly, I’d like to know what she did with herself.”
“There’s been a slight accident,” Fogarty said.
“An auto accident?” Cunninghan said quickly.
“Not exactly. Could you come with us? We’ll take you to her.”
Nothing in Fogarty’s manner indicated the shock he had in store for the other man. He seemed mildly worried, a reporter on a routine investigation. Cunninghan studied the papers on his desk for another moment, then came around from behind the desk. “What has she said?”
Fogarty rubbed his cheek. “I guess she’s out of her head a little.”
Cunninghan turned to Amy. “Mrs. Luttrell, I trust your judgment. Is Bernice talking rationally? Could she understand what I have to say to her?”
Amy evaded, “I suppose it all depends.”
“On what?”
“You’d better see her and decide for yourself.”
Cunninghan was standing between them; it seemed to Amy that he was like an animal, sensing danger, not quite sure where the danger is. “I’ve had a shock today concerning Bernice—she’s worked for me for a long while, and I considered her an efficient and faithful employee, a really superior girl, only——”
“You found out she was married to Raoul Schneider,” Fogarty put in.
Cunninghan started to deny it. Then he shrugged. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Who told you?”
As long as Cunninghan could wither somebody with a look like this, Amy thought, you weren’t going to disparage him as a hunchback. “Of course I can’t tell you that, Mr.——”
“Fogarty. Press.” He jerked his head toward the hall. “Are you interested enough in your employee to go see her when she’s hurt?”
“Of course.”
Cunninghan put on his hat, and a summer-weight overcoat which hid much of his deformity; they went down together to Fogarty’s car. Amy realized that Fogarty would drive fast, that she might lose him. She got into the back seat.
Settled in the front beside Fogarty, Cunninghan said in a gravelly voice, “I hope this is no trick on Bernice’s part.”
Amy couldn’t see Fogarty’s face, but she knew what expression would be on it: wry, cynical. “Oh, it’s no trick. She’s in dead earnest, Mr. Cunninghan.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“In times of stress people are apt to be pretty honest with everybody.”
Cunninghan appeared to examine the remark before answering. “I hope Bernice decides to be honest with me. Naturally I wouldn’t have retained her if I’d known she was married to Raoul Schneider and working in his interest. It wouldn’t have been ethical.”
“Mrs. Schneider wouldn’t have liked it, either,” Fogarty suggested.
“That would have been a normal reaction,” Cunninghan said stiffly.
“Of course you can’t blame the girl for seizing a good thing when she saw the chance,” Fogarty said above the screaming of the tires. “She must have thought old man Schneider would leave his son pretty well fixed. That would have been a normal reaction too—wouldn’t it?”
Cunninghan shot him a sidewise look.
“No harm in dreaming, anyway,” Fogarty mused.
Cunninghan said slowly, “If Bernice was married—as of course, she was—it had nothing to do with money.”
“Hmmmm,” Fogarty rejoined.
“One thing I’m sure of—her loyalty wasn’t for sale for cash.” Again in Cunninghan’s voice Amy caught the hint of bitter conviction. Of course he could be—probably was—acting. Here was a man filled with ambition and ability who had had to overcome a striking handicap, an almost unsurmountable drawback in physical repulsion. His only tools had been manners, shrewdness, personality. He had had to become so skillful in projecting himself that the deformity became minor, all but forgotten. But at the same time Amy would have bet all she had that some attempt, either by Cunninghan or the woman who was his client, to buy off the secretary had failed.
The car slid to a halt and Cunninghan peered from the car. “What place is this? I thought you said a hospital——”
“They can’t move her yet.”
Cunninghan got out and appeared to orient himself. “This is the Tzegeti neighborhood. But I don’t even see any lights, any sign of activity.”
“In here, Mr. Cunninghan.” Fogarty half led and half dragged the lawyer toward the opening in the hedge, on across the bare yard to the porch and into the house. Cunninghan wrenched free, turned, almost stepped on Amy’s toes. “I guess you’ll want some light.” Fogarty touched the switch; the globe in the middle of the ceiling blazed on, bald, bright.
“This is some sort of trick.” Cunninghan licked his lips.
“No it isn’t,” Fogarty insisted, dragging the lawyer toward the inner door. “I haven’t said a word that wasn’t the truth. Besides, consider Mrs. Luttrell. She’s with me, and she’s absolutely honest.” He ground out the last few words as he pushed the lawyer into the bedroom, toward that hidden gloomy space between the bed and the wall. An instant later he switched on the light.
Cunninghan screamed.
Amy gasped with a sense of shock. The sound was naked, indecent somehow, a raw, catlike screech. She saw the lawyer totter, catch at the bed, go down on his knees. He hung there, face averted, trying to gain control.
“That’s a pretty nasty league you’ve been playing in,” Fogarty said, lighting a cigarette idly.
Cunninghan must have heard the words. It took a moment for him to digest them. His hat had fallen aside. He reached for it, crushed it down on the stiff, short crew cut, then got to his feet. “We had nothing to do with this,” he said, echoing Amy’s words. “No. Not murder.”
“Oh, come on, Cunninghan,” Fogarty chided. “We’re all grown-up here. We know the score. You’ve got Schneider’s dough, the money he had with him when he was shot, and the girl knew it, knew you’d robbed her husband——”
Cunninghan had the look of a man who sees a chasm widening at his feet.
“—and of course you couldn’t afford to let it come out. You’d let Tzegeti go up for murder on the strength of that missing money and the holes in his shoes. These legal beagles—even they’d cut you down for that. You’d be through, all washed up. Disbarred. You’d need all that space around your house, up there in Palos Verdes, because nobody’d want to get very close. No, not with that smell.”
“I—I tell you, the money—the money wasn’t the motive.” He turned desperately to Amy. “Mrs. Luttrell knows. We showed her the evidence, the real evidence behind Tzegeti’s crime——”
“I hope for your sake you’ve still got it around.” Fogarty studied the tip of his cigarette. “And that the documents will stand the kind of working over they’ll get.”
Cunninghan made an inarticulate sound, as though he had something to put into words but couldn’t make his mouth work. Perhaps he was beginning to see the spot he was in. Perhaps he was remembering Neece’s clever remarks about publicity and about finding a real live leper at one of the center tables at the Picardy Club—playing cards with the healthy patrons.
In Cunninghan’s eyes horror wrestled with despair; as if, Amy thought, he’d just picked up his cards, then seen the leprous hand that held the deck.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CUNNINGHAN KEPT a hand beside his face to keep from seeing the girl’s body on the floor. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t stand this.”
Fogarty nodded.
“Okay. We’ll go into the kitchen. I’ve got to dig out some paper. I’m going to write out a statement for you to sign.”
Cunninghan flinched. “You’re crazy. I won’t do that.”
“Oh, it’s your funeral, then,” Fogarty told him. “I can write it up on available evidence. The paper will print the story. Raoul Schneider will back me up that his wife knew you had the old man’s money, that you kept still while Tzegeti was flirting with the gas chamber, and that obviously you protected your client—Mrs. Schneider—a little more thoroughly than the law or the legal profession thinks is advisable.”
Cunninghan’s features writhed and twitched.
“Then Mrs. Luttrell and I have our bit to add. Your secretary knew something quite intimate about the appearance of the murderer on the train. The logical assumption is that she found it out in the same way she’d found out about the money—by watching you.”
“I know—know nothing at all about the incident on the train.”
“Oh, I can’t buy that, Mr. Cunninghan, and neither will the press or the police.”
“Tzegeti was guilty of Schneider’s murder.” Cunninghan’s voice boomed out with the sudden, flashing conviction that Amy had noted before. He hung there on his heels, weaving, one hand on the bedpost, his face squeezed as if in torment. But his voice came from some inner depth, some reservoir of strength and belief. Even Fogarty seemed surprised.
“I’ll listen to your side of it. Make a statement I can give the paper.”
Cunninghan bent his head in a nod. Fogarty clicked out the light in the bedroom, came into the living room, paused to say almost inaudibly to Amy, “Keep an eye out, will you? I can’t have this broken up until I’m through with him.” He took Cunninghan on into the kitchen. Amy heard him rummaging in there, then chairs scraped as they sat down at the table. Fogarty had apparently found something to write on. He had Cunninghan where he wanted him at last.
Nets to Catch the Wind Page 15
