His pig eyes opened wide. “Who says so?”
“I says so!” she mocked.
“Were you with Gavano, Lester?”
He set his lips stubbornly. “No!”
“Where did you walk?”
“Down the road. Toward Woodstock.”
“Why did you go to Woodstock?”
“Probably for beer,” chirped Minnie. “Catch him walking that far for anything else!”
“Did you go for a beer?” Homer asked.
“I went for a walk, I tell ya.”
“What time did you get back?”
“Around eleven.”
“Did you enter any store in town?”
“I didn’t get to Woodstock,” he muttered. “Got far as that Apple Rock; then I came back.”
It was possible. The Apple Rock sat on the edge of town, about a quarter of a mile away from the shops. A fast walker could make it in under two hours.
“What did you do, after you returned?”
“Cleaned up ashtrays in the living room. When I come back to the kitchen, I see Minnie and we have coffee.”
“Can you remember who was in the living room when you got there?”
“Everybody. No—Mr. Nevin was reading in the library.”
“You sure, now, that Gavano was with them?” Homer asked sharply. “Remember, it’s an easy matter for me to ask inside about Gavano. He isn’t the sort of person they would forget seeing, Lester.”
There was a long pause while Lester remembered.
“I ain’t sure.”
Minnie snorted. “He ain’t sure. Foosh!”
Homer thanked them, and we left.
Downstairs, the big clock bonged once in the quiet of the hall. The sound died slowly in the shadows, the death knell of Tuesday’s first hour. Somewhere over the hills a hoarse dog yelped into the night. I shivered and followed Homer up the stairs.
At Grace’s door he knocked gently.
Grace managed a cheery grin and made us comfortable. She had on a silk lounging gown that fell in a broad flare from her well rounded hips, where the red bodice played hob with her torso. Grace was getting on. Her brittle manikin’s figure had given in to the way of all flesh. This was no longer a figure to be snapped in tight-fitting clothes, or the statuesque poses of Vanity Fair. But it looked well in a bedroom. Very.
She lit a cigarette and faced Homer nervously.
“Like old times, isn’t it, honey?”
“Almost,” smiled Homer.
She inhaled a long drag. “I know what you’re thinking, Homer. You’ve got it all figured, about me and Trum.”
“Have I?”
“But you’re wrong. It’s not what you think.”
She looked at him hopefully. There was a long silence, then:
“Is that what you wanted to tell me, Grace?”
I got up and said: “Maybe I’d better scram, and leave you two love birds to twitter alone.”
“Better stay,” said Homer. “If old man Trum should ever find me in here alone, the fat’ll fly!”
Grace was hurt. “Please stay, Hank. And don’t be so funny, Homer. Trum won’t come in here at this hour. Trum is—oh hell, will you listen to me? Will you?”
Homer caught the sob in her voice and apologized.
“I came up here for a reason, Homer, but Trum was only—well, it was because of those Shipley drawings that I came here.”
“I heard about them.”
“I met Trum through Cunningham,” she went on. “I’d known Cunningham through the agency work I used to do. He cooked up the idea of a series of pictures to rival the Petty girls—you know, the Old Gold ads. Cunningham introduced me to Trum at a party. Naturally I was anxious to tie up with the idea—it would have made swell publicity for me. I met Cunningham last week. He told me that he didn’t think Shipley would go for the idea. He received an invitation for this weekend party soon after I saw him. Then Trum called me and suggested that I come up here with them.”
“That sounds perfectly all right to me,” said Homer. “Perfectly straight.”
“It is straight,” she almost pleaded. “I don’t want you to think that Trum—good Lord, Homer, I haven’t sunk that low. The old boy is sweet on me, I’ll admit. I didn’t mind him—he was harmless. Matter of fact, he’s the original schoolboy type—he’s proposed marriage to me already.”
“A good catch.”
“Good?” I said. “Five or six dames have already thrown him back!”
Grace wasn’t done.
“Let me finish, Hank. I drove up here alone, and Shipley was very nice to me. But—I don’t know—from the very first night I felt funny about things—about the whole party, I mean. Shipley told me that he had asked you up here. I tried to find out why, but he wouldn’t tell me. He seemed to have something up his sleeve, some joke I couldn’t quite understand.”
Homer came alive. “What do you mean, Grace?”
“I wish I could put it in words. It reminded me of a surprise party. You know how they do—everybody hides until the victim arrives, and then they all jump out from behind the furniture and yell: ‘Surprise.’ That was sort of the feeling I had, except that I felt all along that Shipley would be the man to jump out and yell. It was his choice of guests that got me, I guess.”
“I’ve heard that before, from Swink. Did anything happen to bear out your suspicions?”
“Nothing—and everything. Why should a group of people make me feel afraid? Yes, I was afraid. I liked hardly any of them. I couldn’t stand Nicky English. He seemed hell bent on raising trouble—always teasing Shipley and Trum, and even Cunningham.”
“Teasing?”
She struggled for the right word. “Oh!—not teasing, exactly. There seemed to be an undercurrent of spite and hate and bad feeling between all these people. It was the sort of thing you could sense, somehow.”
“Did you feel it with Olympe?”
She nodded. “All of them, I said. Even Nevin, the college boy. He’s too quiet. He sat in a corner, well out of all the conversation, never saying a word, just watching. And then, of course, that awful pug, Gavano!” She snubbed her cigarette. “I was actually going to leave on Sunday afternoon—it got me that bad.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I’m sorry I stayed. Trum insisted that he would talk it out with Shipley that evening. I was anxious to find out whether I’d get the job. It meant a lot to me.”
“But all this time, nothing happened?”
“I’m getting to that,” she said. “Shipley started it. I had heard stories about his queer parties, so I wasn’t really surprised to see Gavano among us. Shipley introduced him as ‘his best friend.’ I thought it was a gag, at first. I remember that Cunningham did laugh at the introduction. But Shipley was serious. Gavano ate with us. Shipley had him at his side up until—”
“The suicide?”
“Yes. Until that night.”
“Can you remember what Shipley actually said about Gavano?”
“Actually, he said nothing. Nothing but the fact that Gavano was ‘his friend.’ He said that often. He made a point of repeating it. Smugly.”
“Perhaps he meant it.”
Grace laughed softly. “You don’t know Shipley. He meant something else, I’m sure. You knew it by the way he smirked when he said it. There was something evil about it all, I tell you. But that isn’t the worst. It was after Shipley had—on the day after, it seemed to me, things began to happen.”
“I think I know what follows,” said Homer. “You’re coming to the business about the book, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Let’s go back a bit,” said Homer. “You knew about the book all along, of course?”
“I couldn’t help but know. Trum talked about it whenever we met Eilee
n. He made a point of asking her cute little questions about the damn book. And he would sometimes talk about it with me. It seemed to bother him.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No. It was all very casual. But this morning—”
“Monday morning?”
“Yes—it was after breakfast that I noticed for the first time that Trum had changed. As a matter of fact, the whole guest list seemed gayer after Shipley died. It’s a cruel thing to say, but it’s true.”
“You’ll have to explain that one, Grace.”
“I’ll try. The first thing I noticed was that Gavano suddenly became a part of the group. Cunningham, Trum and English no longer shied away from him. It seemed odd to me. But I thought it might be the result of the suicide—you know how people get after a death.”
Homer had finally taken out his book. “You mean that Trum, Cunningham and English hadn’t spoken to Gavano at all before Monday morning?”
“Only a word, at most. But it was different on Monday. I saw each one of them talking to Gavano at different times. Once I saw Nicky English on the terrace. I didn’t hear what was said. But they were talking earnestly—at least Nicky was. Another time it was Cunningham. And finally—”
“Trum, of course.”
She got up and moved close to Homer. “That’s why I wanted to see you tonight. I might have saved you that beating in the studio. If I’d had any brains, I’d have spoken to you sooner. But I didn’t realize—you see, it began after you spoke to all of us in the living room yesterday afternoon. When the little party broke up, Trum and I walked out on the porch for a while. He kept looking over toward the Tucker place. He said: ‘I wonder if Bull will have her retype those stolen notes.’ He said it casually, as though he were playing at being a detective. Then he said: ‘I’d give a lot to know what Shipley was writing about’.”
“That was all?”
“Not exactly. I—well, I teased him a bit about his past. He froze up completely after that. Then I promptly forgot about our little conversation. But later on, I was reminded of it again. I should have warned you. It was after dinner. I had gone to my room. I came out after a while and started down the hall. Just as I left my door, I saw a man going into Trum’s room. It was Gavano!”
“He didn’t see you?”
“He was almost through the door, and he didn’t turn my way. I should have known then what might happen. But it never occurred to me that Trum would use Gavano to get those notes from you, Homer. If I had thought quickly—perhaps all this might easily have been avoided.”
Homer rose and patted her cheek. “I always said you had a heart of gold beneath that frosted face, Grace. It’s nice to know that you still worry about me.”
She smiled a sad smile. “Why don’t you quit this business up here, Homer? I’m afraid, really I am.”
“Not much further to worry,” he chuckled. “I have a feeling we’ll be leaving here tomorrow night.”
“Before the inquest?” I asked. “I thought you were having an inquest on Wednesday.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind, Hank.”
She stood in the doorway touching Homer’s arm, and the bedroom eyes were burning high voltage.
“Good night, Grace. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
When he turned, halfway down the hall, she was still in the doorway. I caught the gesture of a slowly blown kiss.
Homer shrugged at the rug.
“Dames is peculiar,” he said.
CHAPTER 16
A Crumb from Trum
Homer pecked away at his noiseless portable. I dragged slowly on my cigarette, waiting for him to knock off and let me sleep.
“More notes?” I asked. “Notes seem to be the vogue up here. You think it was Gavano who conked us?”
“Can’t be sure.” He flipped the sheet out of the machine and laid it away in his bag. “But whoever, it was must be mighty worried, Hank. More than that—he’s afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“The answer to that one will have to wait. This business of the notes has kept me up here, sonny. Why should anybody lay into us for Eileen’s transcribed version of the first chapter? It’s silly, because anybody knows that Eileen can do the same job for us again.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“It’s the key, it seems to me. Let’s assume that our mysterious mauler was the man or woman who stole the whole mess of stuff from Eileen’s house. This person knew that Eileen was retyping as much as she had done on the book originally. He wants to find out one important thing, Hank—did Eileen read all the notes, including the part that Shipley had handwritten? Was she going to give us a complete record of all these notes? Or would it be only the first chapter? Don’t forget—our thief has the first chapter in his possession. He knows that it is meaningless material. He then begins to worry. Maybe he worries this way: If Eileen has read the rest of the notes, he’d like to know about it! He’d like to know just how much of the handwritten stuff Eileen has remembered.”
“You mean that the real poison was written by Shipley in longhand?”
“Exactly. The fact that we were slugged in the studio proves this point. But can you think of any other reason for our man slugging us? There’s another one.”
I shook my head. “Keep it.”
“Not so fast, Hank—you’re not thinking it through. There is another angle—the angle that’s been gnawing at me ever since I spoke to Eileen. It’s this: Let’s assume that the entire batch of notes was stolen from the Tuckers by Trum. That leaves English, Cunningham, Nevin and Olympe still in the running. Of these four, suppose only English and Cunningham have a strong reason, I mean a reason as strong as Trum’s, for wanting to see that first chapter. Trum has the notes, remember. Thus, either Cunningham or English might be tempted to conk us for a glimpse at that first chapter. Do you follow me?”
“Vaguely. But isn’t that silly? I mean—doesn’t it seem more logical the first way?”
“It’s the obvious conclusion, yes. I’d like to let it go on that. But—”
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Omigod!” I snorted. “MacAndrew doesn’t sleep after all. Who the hell is that?”
“That would be Mr. Trum.”
And it was. The roly-poly cigarette mogul stood in the doorway, wrapped in a black and grey bathrobe that couldn’t quite hide his magenta-striped pajamas.
“You’ll excuse me, Bull,” he said falteringly. “But I, couldn’t sleep until I saw you. I’ve been waiting up for you, you know.”
Trum sat on the edge of his chair, playing with his hands. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He fumbled with a big black cigarette case and tremblingly lit a long one.
“I hardly know how to tell you what’s on my mind, Bull. I feel—well, damn it!—I feel actually frightened!”
Homer sat up. “What do you mean by that? Anybody threaten you?”
Trum shifted his rear. “Well, not exactly. And yet it was a threat. It’s made me afraid.” He mopped his brow. “Perhaps I’d better start from the beginning.”
“Good!” said Homer. “You’ll tell me why you came up this weekend, first, of course?”
That was a body blow. Trum wasn’t prepared for it. He shrugged finally. “Why not? It was the book.”
“Not the advertising drawings, then?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have to take weekend trips to get artwork, Bull. But I had heard stories from Cunningham about Shipley’s scandalous book. I say scandalous because Cunningham told me so. The book was to be filled with all sorts of ugly stories about people—about Shipley’s friends. I came up here to buy Hugo off, frankly. I had a good reason for stopping his reminiscences.”
“Marie Parrish?”
He nodded grimly.
“It was a most unfortunate affair.
Bull, believe me, I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my day—especially with the ladies. But this was an accident. You see I had been drinking that night, heavily. Marie was a very attractive girl. We were—well, we were both pretty tight, I guess. I—oh, you understand what happens in such cases. I thought she wouldn’t resent me. She—well, she fell overboard.”
“You didn’t push her?”
“Good heavens, no!”
“Why didn’t you call for help?”
“I would have, Bull, if I’d been sober. But I passed out. Passed out cold, I tell you. When I came to, Shipley and Cunningham told me what had happened. I wanted to avoid a scandal. People would certainly assume that I—well, they’d assume what you have, Bull. I decided to keep quiet about the whole affair. It was Cunningham’s idea. It worked pretty well, you’ll remember. The doctors found alcohol in her stomach, and the affair was written off as an accident. There was only one person who gave me any trouble about the thing—”
“Nicky English?”
“How did you know? Yes, it was English. Of course, he had no evidence. But that didn’t prevent him from publishing innuendoes in his column, nor from continually bothering me, thinking—”
“Blackmail, eh?”
“No, Nicky didn’t want any money. But it wasn’t long before members of my crew began to come to me with stories about Nicky. He had been around the boat, offering money for information. He tried each of the men in turn, but, of course, he got nothing out of them—they hadn’t seen the thing happen. Then he came to my office one day and tried to frighten me into telling him the truth about the thing.”
“During all this, was there any possibility of Nicky knowing what had happened on the boat?”
“Not by a long shot. Cunningham and Shipley were the only men who actually knew, and neither of them would tell Nicky. They both had a strong dislike for the man, as you know.”
“You were never threatened by either Shipley or Cunningham?”
He shook his head. “They were my friends.”
“Cunningham’s agency handles your cigarette advertising. Did he have the account before the Parrish affair?”
Death Paints the Picture Page 12
