Something blue

by Charlotte Armstrong; Internet Archive

  "Good idea to be sure," said Dorothy cheerfully.

  "You can stop talking hke that," Nan said, "Or you can get out of this car. And go home."

  Dorothy looked at her white profile.

  "I'm going right straight to Dick and tell him what that sickening woman is saying," Nan cried.

  "Good idea," said Dorothy gently.

  Nan roared up the Bartee's private road and into the half-circle among the trees. Brakes screamed. Nan tumbled out.

  Dick Bartee popped out of the front door. "What's the matter?" Nan raced up the wooden steps into his arms. "Now, hush." He held her and stroked her hair, and looked at Dorothy.

  As Dorothy came slowly up, Blanche came out of the house. "What is it?" Blanche asked nervously.

  Nan was sobbing. "Johnny and some horrible woman-saying you killed Christy."

  "I knew this would happen," said Dick with a heavy sigh, "I wanted to tell you last night but your boy friend talked me out of it. Love, love, this is an old story." He held her a httle away smiling down.

  "You—you knew about it?"

  "Of course, I knew about it. People on McCauley's side, fighting to save him. Love, this was said about me, tested and settled, years ago."

  "Oh," said Nan weakly.

  Blanche said tensely, "We just must forget the whole thing."

  But Dorothy said, "If there's a man in prison who says he didn't do it . . ."

  "All men in prison say they didn't do it," snapped Blanche. "But he did. For heaven's sakes, come inside."

  They went in as far as the hall.

  Dick still held Nan in his arms. "I asked John Sims, last night, if he had heard this story about me. He said he had. I wish I'd done what I wanted to do. Told you about it. Don't be upset, love."

  Nan wept, and it seemed as if she wept for herself, now. Dick, over her head, smiled at Dorothy.

  "They proved you didn't do it, eh?" asked Dorothy brightly.

  Blanche said stiffly, "Clinton McCauley did it. Will you please—"

  "There must have been a to-do about you, though," said Dorothy to Dick. "Aunt Emily had heard this story."

  Nan half turned; Dick shifted her within his arms. His gray eyes rested on Dorothy's face.

  Dorothy said boldly, "Jo^^^^y did go to the hospital, the night he was called."

  Nan took her head from Dick's breast.

  "What did Aunt Emily tell him?" Dick asked in a cool, hght voice.

  "Why, I suppose she remembered from the newspapers. She certainly knew your name had been connected with a murder. That's why she flew home. She really didn't Hke the idea of Nan marrying a murder suspect." Dorothy smiled. Tou can't exactly blame her."

  He didn't move. He just looked at her.

  "Why didn't Johnny say sol" Nan stormed. "Why is Johnny acting the way he is! I despise it!'

  "Johnny got this job," said Dorothy, "to—well, natin-ally, since it isn't Dick who went to jail, I mean, Johnny isn't saying Dick is guilty—"

  "Damned white of him," Dick said dryly.

  "It was," said Dorothy staunchly, "white of him to try and see how much there was to the story before he spilled it out and upset Nan."

  Nan wept.

  Dick said, "Don't cry, love." He looked at Dorothy, "Somebody upset her. It wasn't I."

  Blanche made an abrupt gestiure. "The Callahan woman— completely bad. A liar. You can't beheve a thing she'd say. You shouldn't have been taken anywhere near her." Blanche was furioiis.

  "Now, Blanche," said Dick soothingly, "no harm." He kissed Nan's hair. "I only wash I'd saved you the shock." Then he said to Dorothy, in that cool hght voice, "What did Aunt Emily say to Sims in the hospital?"

  "I told you," said Dorothy shortly. "Aunt Eimily loved Nan. Didn't want her hurt. And Johnny feels the same."

  "Does he, though?" said Dick, with a suggestion of a smile. (Nan raised her head.) "I think he wouldn't mind getting rid of me, if he could. Don't blame him too much, love. Fact, he admitted as much last night. I told him to go ahead and have a try."

  Nan's eyes began to shine. "Oh, Dick!" she said.

  "I'm going to change," he said, "and take you girls to

  lunch. Wash your face, sweetheart. I have a thought, Blanche. Ask John Sims to come to dinner."

  "No," said Blanche flatly.

  "What's this?" Bart Bartee had come into the wide hall from the back of the house. "We're due in the village, Dick. We're late."

  "It's Sims checking whether I killed Christy,'' said Dick easily.

  "Why do you want to ask him to dinner?" Bart said.

  "Look," said Dick, "the poor guy's in love with my girl. So he's all over town. Better we talk to him."

  Blanche said, "Please, Bart, I don't like this. Stop this Sims. Tell him to go away."

  "I can't do that, Blanche," Bart said almost absentmind-edly.

  "Of course not," joined Dick. "But I agree with Blanche that it's nothing to like—all over town. Best we talk to him ourselves. Tell him everything we know and straighten him out."

  Blanche stared at him.

  Nan said primly, "If I could only make Johnny realize that I am going^:o marry you."

  Dorothy felt an impulse to hit her.

  Dick laughed. "He'U catch on." He started Nan toward the stairs.

  "What about our appointment?'' Bart said.

  "Another day. You don't mind?" Dick kept walking.

  Bart twitched his shoulders. A sardonic expression crossed his smooth face. Blanche's hands were twisting. Blanche's eyes seemed sunk deep into her head.

  "Bart, he cannot come to dinnerl I won't call himl"

  "I think it's not a bad idea." Bart's voice was quiet. "I'll call him."

  Blanche winced as if he had whipped her. "No, I will—" she murmured. She turned to go.

  Bart said, "You're not upset. Miss Dorothy?"

  Dorothy said slowly, "No, although I am beginning to think that Clinton McCauley may be innocent."

  "Are you?" said Bart with interest.

  "He was guilty!" cried Blanche. "Everyone knowsl And anyway, it was seventeen years ago."

  1 don't see," said Dorothy, "what difference the years make."

  "Neither do I," said Bart.

  Blanche put her head down and hurried away.

  Johnny Sims got back to his motel about five p.m. His legs were weary. He had been everywhere in the town of Hestia. Hunting for the bus driver. Gone. Trying to find out where the uncle's best friend, one Ruiz, was now. Nobody knew. Looking for Bartee servants. Somebody said the Bar-tees' old yardman now hved in a Httle crossroads settlement about eight miles to the south. This was all he had gleaned. Almost notliing. He had run into more doubt.

  Society, he reflected, punishes a man. The climate is against him. But after seventeen years, the climate has changed. Society wonders. Only evidence can stand up. Evidence is that which remains. In this case, there had not been enough, either way.

  He kicked off his shoes, and sat down by the phone. Called San Francisco. Copeland. Reported.

  "She knows, at least, that rumor was Dick Bartee did it," Johnny finished forlornly.

  "How did she react?" the lawyer asked.

  "She was angry."

  "McCauley's still in the hospital," the lawyer said gloomily.

  "No better?"

  "Not much. What's your opinion now on Dick Bartee?"

  "I'm getting the feeling he did it," said Johnny and exploded, "I've absolutely got to have more than just a feeling . . ." (He didn't trust his feelings.)

  "You tell Nan the rest of it," Copeland said severely. "Or I will. Have you talked to Grimes?"

  "Not today."

  "You talk to him youseff," said Copeland, "and tell that girl the whole business. Quick."

  "You're right," said Johnny. "I'll tell her. No later than tomorrow."

  Johnny hung up, called Roderick Grimes.

  Grimes was annoyed by Kate's story about housebreaking.

  "No sense to it," he fumed. "If Dick Bartee ki
lled Christy, then Dick Bartee got Christy's pin then and there out of the safe."

  "Supplied Nathaniel with it?"

  "Right. So why the housebreaking? What would he or anybody else be looking for in Kate's house?"

  "Nothing taken."

  "And that's helpful," Grimes snapped. "Well, I'll ponder it. Blood tests, eh? You watch the timing, lad. Looks like he'll rush the wedding. You don't want to prove he did it, afterwards."

  "Prove—" Johnny sent a groan the five-hundred-odd miles.

  "You been shot at or anything?" Grimes asked curiously.

  "Don't be ridiculous!"

  "You think a killer won't kill twice?"

  "In my case, he doesn't need to bother," said Johnny savagely. "I'm not getting anywhere."

  Grimes was silent.

  "Copeland said to call you," Johnny remembered. "What's up? Any ideas?"

  "A few," Grimes said. "By the way, do you own a hat?"

  "A whati"

  "Hat, I said."

  "I don't wear a hat," said Johnny. "What's that got to do with . . . ?" He :s^as in a state of sputtering frustration.

  "I brood," said Grimes. "I brood, you know. I got an idea."

  "What?" barked Johnny.

  Grimes said, after hesitating, "For a title."

  "Title!"

  "Yep. Pretty tricky. 'A Life for Two Pins.' How's that?"

  "Just ducky," said Johnny bitterly and slammed down the phone.

  Grimes in his armchair with his fiction-oriented mindl Johnny felt lonely and futile. Maybe he ought to take Kate Callahan's advice. Let people go. Nan was in love and that was her fate, her foUy, or her privilege, and there wouldn't ever be a way to prove that Dick Bartee had killed poor Christy. If he had. Too long ago. Too many people dead, or gone. If Nan did marry Dick Bartee, McCauley would just have to bear it. Well? He was a saint, wasn't he?

  Johnny Sims would have to bear it, too.

  In San Francisco, Copeland was saying on the telephone

  to Roderick Grimes, "You didn't tell him, then? Well, it's hopeless, anyhow."

  "Who says it's hopeless?" Grimes protested. "Sims doesn't wear a hat. I didn't think so."

  "Evidence," said Copeland. "What are you going to take to court? Six flower petals?"

  "You are confused," said Grimes cosily, "between evidence and clue. Six petals of ceanothus, caught in the trunk seam of a rented car—that is a clue. Who said it was evidence?"

  Copeland groaned.

  "Let me outline it for you," Grimes continued. "I sit and think. Occurs to me, a killer wHl kill again. I note that Dick Bartee was here, in this city, the night that Emily Padgett died. With—if he is the ring-tailed doozer we suspect—a fine fat motive to get rid of her. So, I query the good doctor. He turns out to be uneasy about that heart. Also, a patient of his across the court from Padgett's room saw a man in there. Doc thinks it was Johnny Sims. Man wore a hat, however. Did not take it off. Discourteous, you see? Sims has good manners, as we know."

  "That's evidence?" said Copeland bitterly.

  "That's a clue," said Grimes. "Who was the man with a hat on? Tripped the bhnds, he did. Well, I go poke around the airport on hypothesis. Very scientific. Bartee got off a plane close to seven that night, rented a car. Returned it on the Monday. Tuesday, I get there, and the car is in. Six flower petals in the trunk seam. Ceanothus. Even I can recognize. What else is blue?"

  "You couldn't count the ceanothus in Cahfomia," the lawyer said. "It's second name is California hlac."

  ", see?" Grimes went right on, "and tall enough to shed on the trunk of a car. I went—personally, mind you—to snoop around that hospital. Looking for a ceanothus in bloom, along the curb. Sure enough, there was one."

  "I can see the jury."

  "I can, too," said Grimes cheerfully, "when we produce this old chap, walking his dog last Friday night, who gets amused when the three letters on a license plate spell a word. He gives us the same three letters on that rented car, mider the ceanothus bush. Coincidence? Yahl"

  "Not proof."

  "Sometimes the human mind will jump the proof and reckon up the probability. Just as humans did when Mc-Cauley was convicted. You don't think this human world goes by logic, do you?"

  The lawyer was silenced.

  "Now, Grimes went on, "we've got Bartee's car near the hospital."

  "He wouldn't know that Emily was there."

  'I don't care about that," said Grimes bhthely. "If we can put him there, tlien we know that he knew. We'll find out how he knew some other time. You absolutely cannot prove that a man doesn't kjipw something. So don't worry about it. Now, for the leg-work. I've stiired up the police. Their legs are legion. Checking every patient in that wing. Who visited?"

  "Take weeks," groaned Copeland.

  "I don't think so. Two rooms to worry about/'

  "Two rooms?"

  "Padgett's room was second from the end of the wing. Nobody in the end room on her side. So, the two rooms on the opposite side of the corridor, between her and-lhe door. Bartee wd^ldn't walk through the hospital."

  "Listen," said Copeland, "I am willing to suspect . . . But even if he knew which hospital, how could he know which room?"

  "I'll tell you," said Grimes. "What about the florist who called and asked if Emily Padgett was in there and if so in which room? And what about nurses who say, 'No flowers for Padgett/ ever?"

  "Somebody goofed," said Copeland feebly.

  "You don't beheye that," said Grimes. "You're just as human as I am. We both know Bartee killed Emily Padgett."

  "If he did ..." Copeland raved.

  "The rest is leg-work. Find some witnesses. If any visitor saw him and can identify. Let's short-cut this thing. You take room 409. I'll take 411. BeHeve me, they are the ones that count."

  "Why didn't you tell John Sims?" asked the lawyer.

  "Because," said Grimes, "better he get nowhere. Bartee must be pretty confident that nobody will ever prove he killed a woman seventeen years ago. But if he killed a woman

  last Friday night, that's difiFerent. Sims knew the Padgett woman well. He couldn't hide that suspicion. Bartee could get nervous. And a killer may as well kill three times as twice."

  "Poor Emily," mourned Copeland. "Poor Nan. Poor httle Nan."

  "Everybody's going to be safer," said Grimes, "if we assume this Dick Bartee is mighty dangerous."

  The phone rang in Johnny's room in the motel. Blanche Bartee seemed to be inviting him to dinner.

  "I'd hke very much to come, Mrs. Bartee," Johimy's manners concealed his astonishment. "Thank you."

  "Seven o'clock, Mr. Sims?" Blanche said in a hostess' voice, with no human warmth in it.

  He agreed, hung up, breathed deeply in.

  Maybe Nan needed him! He could see a vision of her in his mind. Nan subdued, shrunk back into her shy shell, forlorn, lost, wondering, feeling the doubt. The Bartees would be concerned about her. They would ask him to come to the house and they would want things clarified. They would want to know what Johnny had done to her.

  Poor little Nan.

  CHAPTER 13

  The dining room, which lay back of the long parlor, was red and white. There was a red carpet and red damask hangings at the several long windows. The walls were white. The chandeher was crystal. At the oval table, Johnny sat on the left of his hostess, who, in white with peals, was discoursing on the subject of the climate here.

  To his left sat the old lady, in black, attacking with greed and relish her cake.

  Bart, at the head of the table, bent to Dorothy on his left.

  Dorothy wore a soft apricot-colored dress and had her blonde hair swept high.

  Nan (poor httle Nanl) was wearing red. A red velvet band held her dark hair back from her sparkhng face. Bonds, spun in the air, but almost visible, held Nan hugged close, allied in loving faith, to Dick Bartee, who sat between the two pretty girls, being charming.

  In the parlor, before dinner, under the shock of finding his vision of Nan to ha
ve been about as inaccurate as it could be, Johnny had rallied. Well, then? Here he was. What was to be accomplished?

  The old lady had not been in the parlor and he had been afraid she would not appear. For, he reflected, the old lady hked him. Maybe he could try again with her. Glean all he could before the politeness and the charm broke open and he was told why he had been asked. Or asked what he had been told. Or told to stop asking.

  Now the old lady was here. But Blanche did the talking.

  Bart was telling Dorothy something about the process of turning grapes to wine, as was done in a complex of buildings about two miles from the house.

  "Some of ourjnechanical equipment is pretty old," he iSid. 'We are going to have to^replace it."

  Nan said brightly, "Dick and I are going to replace it. We want to, don't we, Dick?" We. We—showing Johnny for the hundredth time that she was part of this family, belonged here, was gone from Johnny's reach.

  Dick said, "Right. I seem to be marrying a peck of money. We could do the whole thing at one whack. Grandma is going to sell us her interest, cheap. Aren't you. Grandma?"

  The old lady sucked coffee. "It would have gone to your papa," she said. "I'll give it to you."

  "I never did see," said Dick, "why a wife shouldn't put her money into her husband's business."

  He didn't send this as a question to Johnny directly. But Johnny answered.

  "I don't eitlier," he said amiably. "That is, of course, if the business has been impartially analyzed by some reliable party. As an investment." Johnny smiled.

  Johrmy had charm, if that was what was wanted.

  "Naturally," Dick said. "And of course, the investment safeguarded with the usual rights."

  ''Of course," Bart said somewhat dryly. But Johnny saw a look of desolation cross his face. He turned to Blanche, "Before I forget," he said suddenly, "could you and would you tell me, Mrs. Bar tee, the names of the servants here seventeen years ago?"

  Blanche brought her wits slowly to his question. She said, "I can't tell you. I wasn't hving here, then."

  "Mr. Bartee?" Johnny leaned to ask his host.

  "I was stationed East at that time," said Bart, "in the army." His reply was mild, unresentful.

  So Johnny looked into the gray eyes across the table. "Dick?" he said easily.

  "I doubt if I can remember," Dick said. "They came and went."