“Let’s recapitulate for a minute, Mr. Van Eyck. This discussion about your sister’s new will took place in a room with the windows open and music playing so loud that you had to shout in order to be heard.”
“Yes.”
“Did the possibility of an eavesdropper occur to you?”
“Certainly. I’m sure it occurred to her, too. I’d say she probably depended on it to get her message across.”
“By that you mean she expected and wanted to be overheard?”
“I think so.”
“You may step down now, Mr. Van Eyck. Thank you very much.”
“It was no trouble, not a bit. I didn’t have anything else to do anyway.”
Once again Van Eyck shook hands with the District Attorney and bowed to the members of the jury. Then the District Attorney sat back in his chair and watched the members while they watched the old man leave. They looked a little uneasy, as though they’d just caught the first real scent of blood in the air.
It was time to call in the police.
Sergeant Reuben Orr of the sheriff’s department testified that in the early hours of July the fifth—“as soon as we could wake up the judge”—he had obtained a search warrant to enter the premises at 1220 Camino Grande.
“And did you search the premises, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. I and my partner, Ernesto Salazar, spent the next two days going through the house room by room except for the burned area, which was left to an arson specialist.”
“Did you find anything which has a particular bearing on this case?”
“Yes, sir, several items.”
“Are they in this courtroom now?”
“Yes, sir, on the table with the other exhibits. They’ve been marked 15 A, 15 B, 15 C, and 16.”
“Let’s consider 15 A first. Would you go over and pick it up and show it to the jury?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now describe it, please.”
“It’s a piece of pale blue notepaper which has been crumpled and then straightened out and placed between sheets of heavy plastic for safekeeping. The paper is of good quality, made of rags instead of wood pulp, and there are words on it written with a felt-tipped black pen.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In a trash bin outside the door of the main kitchen.”
“What condition was it in at that time?”
“Crumpled.”
“What is it?”
“A letter or note, at least the beginning of one.”
“We’ll return to that in a moment. I direct your attention to exhibit 15 B. What is it, Sergeant?”
“A half-empty box of pale blue stationery.”
“Could the sheet of paper marked 15 A have come from this box?”
“Not only could, it did.”
“Where was the box found?”
“In the room occupied by Mrs. Miranda Shaw.”
“What about exhibit 15 C?”
“I found that in the same place, on the desk in her room. It’s an address book bound in blue leather which has faded and turned greenish from overexposure to light. There are gold initials on the front, M.W.S.”
“What does the book contain?”
“Names, addresses and phone numbers, dates of anniversaries and birthdays, and a Christmas card list going back several years.”
“All in what appears to be the same handwriting?”
“Yes, sir, even though the entries were made at different times with different writing instruments—pencil, metal nib and ballpoint pens, and in the case of the most recent entries, a black felt-tipped pen.”
“Was this handwriting similar in any way to that of the unfinished letter or note found in the trash bin?”
“It was similar in all ways, including the instrument used, a black felt-tipped pen.”
“So 15 A was written on a sheet of paper from 15 B, the box of stationery found in Miranda Shaw’s room, in the same handwriting as in 15 C, Miranda Shaw’s address book.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you read to the jury the words written on 15 A?”
“Yes, sir . . . ‘Dearly Beloved: I don’t expect you to approve of my plan. It must seem drastic to you but please, please realise that it is the only way we can be together. This is the important thing, being together, you and I, now and always . . .’ The word realise, spelled with an S, has been stroked out and realize, spelled with a Z, written above it. Possibly on this account the note was crumpled up and thrown away.”
“Does the phrase ‘dearly beloved’ have any connotation in your mind?”
“Those are the words that usually begin a marriage ceremony.”
“A marriage ceremony?”
“Yes, sir.”
At the back of the room the fan, as if it had been waiting for the right moment, made a few gasping noises and expired. The District Attorney poured himself another glass of water.
“Sergeant Orr, which of the exhibits 15 A, B and C did you find first?”
“We started our search on the ground floor, so we found the note in the trash bin first, 15 A. It sounded peculiar in view of what had happened, so I was on the lookout for any clue as to who wrote it. When I found the box of stationery and then the address book containing the same handwriting, I became interested in everything else in Mrs. Shaw’s room which might possibly have some bearing on the case.”
“Such as exhibit 16?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show it to the jury and explain what it is and where you found it.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a bottle of red and ivory capsules prescribed by Dr. Michael Lane for Mrs. Miranda Shaw on June the twentieth of this year. I found it in the medicine cabinet of
Mrs. Shaw’s bathroom. Each capsule contains thirty milligrams of Dalmane, which is a
fast-acting sedative. The dosage on the bottle is given as one capsule at bedtime for sleep.”
“How many capsules are left in this bottle?”
“Six.”
“How many were in it originally?”
“According to the pharmacist’s label, thirty.”
“Now, if Mrs. Shaw took one every night as prescribed, beginning June the twentieth until July the fourth when you picked this up in her medicine cabinet, how many should there be left in the bottle?”
“Fifteen.”
“Are there fifteen left?”
“No, sir. As I said before, there are six.”
“So nine are unaccounted for.”
“They’re missing, yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all.”
It was enough.
On October the fourteenth the grand jury of the county of Santa Felicia returned an indictment of willful homicide against Miranda Waring Shaw in the death of Iris Van Eyck Young, a human being.
Part VII
Shortly after Miranda Shaw was arrested Aragon went out to the county jail to see her. He was escorted to one of the consulting rooms, which was the size of a shoebox and smelled of disinfectant flowing in through the air conditioner along with cold dry air and the inescapable noises of an institution.
A policewoman brought Miranda as far as the door and then left, or appeared to leave. Aragon had the feeling she was standing just outside in the corridor.
He said, “Hello, Mrs. Shaw,” but she didn’t answer or even glance at him.
She had changed during the weeks since he’d talked to her in the cabana at the Penguin Club. The makeup around her eyes only emphasized their dullness and her face seemed frozen under its layers of pink and ivory. She’d been allowed to wear her own clothes instead of the cotton dress which was the women’s uniform. She had on a blue faille suit that made her look as if she were on her way to a cocktail party and had j
ust dropped in at the jail for a visit with some erring relative.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”
“Are you. Well, that doesn’t change a thing, does it?”
“I thought you’d like to be told anyway.”
“Thanks.”
They sat down on steel and plastic chairs riveted to the floor.
“Smedler sent me,” he said. “He wanted you to know that Admiral Young is arranging bail for you. It’s taking time because of the amount of money involved, a hundred thousand dollars. Though that’s much too high under the circumstances, there’s nothing we can do about it, the judge has an ulcer and quotes Scripture. However, you should be out of here by tomorrow morning.”
“Then what?”
“A trial date will be set, which won’t be definite because there’ll probably be a number of postponements. You can figure on three or four months minimum.”
“And where do I spend these three or four months?”
“Not here, that’s the important thing.”
“I have nowhere to go. I can’t very well return to the Admiral’s house. It wouldn’t look right and I wouldn’t feel right with those girls following me around, spying on me. They’d enjoy that, it would be like a new game to them.”
“Or not so new.”
She clutched the steel arms of the chair. He noticed that most of the coral polish on her nails had been chipped or peeled off and the nails themselves bitten. “Did they say evil things about me to the grand jury?”
“Evil? No.”
“Why does Cooper want to bail me out?”
“He thinks you’re innocent. A lot of people do.”
“It’s too bad some of them weren’t on the grand jury.”
“Some of them were,” Aragon said. “The vote of fourteen to five means that five people were against the indictment. After going over the transcript, Smedler agrees with them and so do I. Not only is the D.A.’s case weak, he broke half the rules of evidence in presenting it. He won’t be able to get away with that kind of stuff when the actual trial comes up . . . Do you feel like answering some questions?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Suppose we find out.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you ever buy the Admiral any presents?”
“Of course not.”
“Both the girls claim they overheard him thanking you.”
“They’re mistaken. Surely nobody believed them. Why should I, living on a pitifully small salary, buy presents for Cooper with all his money? It’s ridiculous.”
“People do ridiculous things.”
“In this case two people heard ridiculous things. Surely nobody believed them,” she said again.
“The fact that both girls claim to have overheard it may make it twice as believable.”
“But the two of them are always in cahoots about everything.”
“I think we can find ways to establish that when the time comes.” He consulted the page of notes Smedler had made when he read the transcript of the hearing. “One of the points brought up was that you refused an invitation to go to a fireworks display
at the club on the grounds that you didn’t want to leave Mrs. Young alone. Yet you left her alone anyway.”
“I walked the dog.”
“A couple of hours earlier than usual.”
“Yes. She asked me to. She said Alouette was acting sick. Heaven knows, that was nothing unusual. She fed the poor creature absurd things like chocolate éclairs and cheesecake.”
“At dinner that night you removed the candlesticks from the table because the flickering lights were giving Mrs. Young a migraine. Where did you put them?”
“On the buffet.”
“Then at that time both candlesticks would have had your fingerprints on them. Did you handle either of them again?”
“No. I had no reason to.”
Aragon felt encouraged. Though she couldn’t, under the circumstances, have been enjoying herself, at least she was coming to life. Her eyes were getting brighter and a trace of animation showed on her face.
He said, “A bottle of Dalmane was found in your medicine cabinet. Do you take it regularly?”
“No. Hardly ever. I’ve been afraid of drugs ever since that clinic in Mexico.”
“There were only six capsules left.”
“Six? That’s impossible. The bottle was nearly full the last time I noticed it.”
“And you don’t know what happened to the rest?”
“No.”
“Did anyone have access to your room?”
“It was cleaned twice a week by one of the day staff. Otherwise I kept it locked. I’m not positive, but I suspect the girls had learned some method of unlocking it. Occasionally items would be in a slightly different place from where I’d left them, or a drawer would be partly open.”
“They picked the lock with a credit card,” he said. “That’s how they knew about the lingerie from the bridal shop.”
“I see.”
“You bought it on June the sixth.”
“Around then, yes.”
“Why?”
“For my marriage to Cooper. I had to have a decent trousseau.”
“Mrs. Young was still alive at the time.”
“Yes, but she didn’t stay alive. Wasn’t it a nice coincidence that she—”
“Be quiet. I mean, for God’s sake, don’t say things like that. It wasn’t nice and a lot of people think it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so mean about it. I see things from my standpoint and you see them from yours.”
“For the next few months we’re going to be sharing a standpoint. Mine.” In spite of the air conditioning he had begun to sweat. He loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. “In fact, from now on you’ve got to consider yourself on trial. Watch what you say, what you do. Be careful where you go and with whom.”
“It would be simpler if I just stayed here in jail,” she said bitterly. “I might as well if I have no rights left, if I can’t even see the people I want to.”
“That depends on what people you want to see.”
“I won’t tell you. You’ll only get mean again if I do.”
“Grady Keaton. Is he one of them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because we love each other. And I must explain to him that whatever I did was for the two of us, so we could be together.”
“I think we should avoid bringing Grady into the case if we can,” Aragon said.
“What difference does it make?”
“It may seem peculiar in this day and age, but juries are more likely to vote for a conviction if sexual misconduct is involved. The events leading up to and down from Pasoloma—or down to and up from if you want to be geographical—can do you a lot of harm.”
“I want to see Grady.”
“I’m advising you not to, for the time being anyway. If you have a message for him, let me deliver it.”
She was silent for a long time, staring at the blank grey wall as though it were her window on the world.
“I love him,” she said finally. “Tell him I love him and when all this silly fuss is over we’ll be together again.”
The front doors of the club were propped open with rubber wedges and taped with Fresh Paint signs. There was no one in the office. Aragon walked in unchallenged.
Under a shroud of late-summer fog the terrace was deserted and in the pool only one swimmer was visible, a large woman moving slowly through the water like an overloaded barge.
In the corridor Walter Henderson, the manager, was occupied at the bulletin board tacking up some of the pictures from the last party, a backgammon and bingo tournament. By Hend
erson’s standards it had been a dull affair, with a great deal of confusion about who was playing what, and he was trying to plan something more dynamic for the next theme party, which would fall on Halloween. Since the social-events committee had vetoed any more money for decorations, he was working on a clever way to use the life-sized plastic skeletons from the previous Halloween. A Gallows Gala might be effective, with each of the
skeletons dressed as a famous murderer or murderee and strategically placed throughout the club and its grounds, hanging from the diving tower and from a limb of the cypress tree (very effective if there was a decent wind), peeking into the ballroom windows from the oleander hedge, even sitting on one of the toilets in the ladies’ powder room. (What delicious screams—he could hear them now: Help, help!)
“. . . could help me,” Aragon said.
Henderson was jolted back to reality as the skeletons fell from the diving tower and out of the tree and off the toilet. “Oh, damn. What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Ellen Brewster.”
“She’s in the office.”
“No.”
“Well, she’s supposed to be in the office. But of course, that doesn’t mean a thing around here. Try the snack bar. She’s been drinking coffee by the gallon lately.”
“Thanks.”
Aragon went down the corridor to the snack bar. A couple of the tables were occupied by boys and girls in tennis costume. Little Frederic Quinn was among them, his tennis racket stuck in the back of his sweater in order to leave his hands free for shooting straws out of their paper sheaths. He acknowledged Aragon’s presence by shooting a straw at him. It missed.
Ellen was sitting at a corner table with a pot of tea in front of her and a doughnut with a bite taken out of it. She looked cold.
He said, “May I sit down?”
“I guess.”
“Anything the matter?”
“I hate the summer fogs. They depress me. Winter fogs are natural, you expect them and you’re depressed anyway and—Oh hell, the fog has nothing to do with it. I feel lousy, that’s all.”
“Sorry.”
“Why did you come here?”
The Murder of Miranda Page 23
