Slack Tide

by George Harmon Coxe

  He led her down the hall and past the staircase to Carla Lewis’s room. When they were inside and he had closed the door, he said: “Let’s see what we can find.”

  “But—what are we supposed to be looking for?”

  “I’m not even sure myself,” MacLaren said. “Maybe that stock certificate you lost. Maybe some money, preferably in new fifty-dollar bills.”

  He turned to the low chest in front of the Chippendale mirror and Ruth moved over to the vanity table; then he had opened the top drawer and was pawing through handkerchiefs and scarves and gloves and a box that was filled with costume jewelry. The second drawer yielded underwear—bras and panties and slips and half slips—and he had about finished with this when he heard Ruth call to him.

  “Donald … Look!”

  She was still at the vanity, her lips parted and three fingers of her left hand pressed against her cheek. He saw as he stepped to her side that the vanity had five drawers, a wide one in the center and two narrow but deeper drawers on either side. The drawer she was staring at was the bottom one on the right-hand side, and now MacLaren saw why.

  Neil Ackerman had said that there was a paper strap around the ten thousand dollars in new fifties that Kingsley had picked up at the New York bank. There was no strap now, but the pile of bills was thick, and after a moment MacLaren reached for them.

  He started to withdraw them and then he stopped. He ran his fingers along the topmost bill and was instantly aware that it had an odd feeling of dampness about it. He tried the bill below that, and the one below that, and now an explanation came to him.

  The money had obviously been stolen the night Kingsley was killed. At least some of it had been taken to Sam Willis’s room to pay for the man’s silence. And since the state police had searched the house earlier, it seemed safe to assume that the bills had been buried in the sand somewhere on the island. These things flashed through his mind as he hesitated, and now he withdrew the bundle. It was then that he saw the gun which had been hidden beneath them.

  He knew that Ruth had seen the gun, too, because he heard some murmured comment that seemed more unconscious than deliberate. He had read somewhere that it was difficult to get any worthwhile fingerprints from a gun, but because he did not want to add his own to any that might already be there, he used his handkerchief when he withdrew the short-barreled .38 revolver. Handling it no more than he had to, he flipped out the cylinder and glanced at the six shells. He had put the gun back and was considering what his next move should be when he heard the shot.

  Ruth heard it too.

  She said: “What was that?” And he said: “It sounded like a shot.”

  The sound was not loud, but it was distinctive. He was sure that it had come from somewhere outside the house. He also had an idea of its direction, but that was as far as his speculation went. He did not know why there should be a shot or what it meant, but one thing was clear: This was no time to be playing amateur detective. This was a police job. And the sooner they got here the better.

  “Where’s the telephone?” he asked.

  “There’s one in Oliver’s room and one in the hall. There’s a little table just beyond the landing.”

  MacLaren replaced the bills on top of the gun, closed the drawer. He asked the girl to wait here and said that he would only be a minute. Then he was moving across the room, and opening the door, and striding down the hall.

  He picked up the telephone, started to dial, and then stopped to wait for the dial tone. When he could not hear it, he jiggled the receiver arm and listened again. There was no sound in his ear, but he tried once more before he replaced the instrument, certain now that the wires had been cut.

  He stood where he was, not wondering why anyone should cut the wires, but considering what he should do next. He was not worried about himself. The pressure of some new excitement had begun to work on him and he was tempted to find out more about that shot—until he remembered Ruth. The only safe thing to do was to get off the island the way he had come and pack her off to the Inn until the police had moved in.

  This was what he thought, and this is what he would have done had he not heard the faint sound of a door opening on the floor below.

  Because he felt quite certain of this, he stood very still as his ears strained for some new sound. It came presently, the metallic click of a latch as the door was closed. For another three or four seconds he waited, hearing nothing more and not sure just what he should do. It was the creak of a stair tread somewhere below that decided him.

  The door of Oliver Kingsley’s room was closest and he tiptoed to it, opened it silently, and slipped into the darkness beyond. He did not close it, but left a one-inch crack and squinted one eye through the opening.

  It was an odd procession that mounted the stairs a moment later. Harry Danaher led the way. MacLaren saw the top of his head first, then his shoulders and back. When his hips became level with the floor, the top of Carla Lewis’s head came into view.

  Danaher was carrying something. MacLaren did not know what it was at first, but he saw that the man’s left arm was crooked at the elbow to form a sort of cradle, and whatever he was carrying was balanced in the angle of his arm. His right arm hung limply at his side, and there was a stain on the white shirt that started just below the shoulder. MacLaren understood why when he saw the .22 Woodsman in Carla Lewis’s hand.

  She was two steps behind Danaher and she whispered something MacLaren did not understand. Whatever it was, Danaher came round the staircase and started toward the rear. By then MacLaren knew what he had to do and he wasted no more time.

  Carla’s back was toward him again and she was less than four paces away when he inched the door open and stepped out on the hall carpet. His weight on his toes, he took those three quick steps. He saw her start to turn as some small sound gave him away. The gun swung with her, but by then it was too late.

  He had a quick picture of the white, set face, the look of incredulity in the wide-open dark eyes. Before she could level the gun, he had his hand on it. He twisted and it came free, but he couldn’t hold it, and it thudded to the carpet. Then he was close, and reaching for her, and knocking aside the hand that clawed at his face.

  “All right,” he said as he grabbed her wrist. “Carla!” he yelled. “Take it easy.”

  If she heard him, she gave no sign. Her incredulity turned into an unreasoning fury that may have been born of panic or hysteria. The strength of her firm rounded body surprised him, and when she tried to kick at him, he grabbed her around the waist with his free arm and pushed his legs hard against hers.

  She was making throaty, animal sounds as his grip tightened about her. He could feel her torso bend, and he could hear the rush of breath as her rib cage contracted under the pressure of his arm. For another few seconds she struggled to free herself, and then, as suddenly as she had begun her attack, she stopped and her body went slack. He let go of her at once. When he had pushed her away, he stooped and retrieved the gun.

  During all of this, Harry Danaher had not moved. His jaw was slack and his amber eyes were sullen. His left arm was still bent, and in the crook of the elbow were piled three hand fire extinguishers. There was no doubt, either, about the limp right arm. The red stain was blood and the fabric was still damp.

  MacLaren glanced again at the woman. He was beginning to understand what must have happened, but, because he knew there was a lot more to be said, he gestured toward the room where Ruth Kingsley waited.

  “Inside, Carla. You too, Harry.”

  20

  THE FIRST THING that Danaher did after they were all in the room and MacLaren had closed the door was to walk over to the bed and dump the fire extinguishers. He stood there flexing his arm back and forth and glowering at Carla, who had dropped into the nearest chair. Ruth Kingsley had glanced anxiously from one to the other as they entered, and when MacLaren gave her a small reassuring nod, she turned to Danaher.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

/>   “A little,” Danaher said. “She shot me, the bitch!”

  Ruth was already moving. She pulled out the vanity bench and eased Danaher toward it. When he sat down, she said she would help him with his shirt, and he said he could get it off by himself.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  As she left the room, Danaher began to unbutton his shirt. There was an ottoman in front of the easy chair in the corner and MacLaren kicked it closer to the center of the room and sat down. He was still holding the Woodsman, and when he realized it, he placed it on the floor beside him.

  He watched Danaher shrug out of his shirt, and now he could see the small hole in the biceps that was slightly off center. The wound wasn’t bleeding very much now, and Danaher used his shirt to wipe it clean.

  Seconds later Ruth returned carrying some gauze pads, some adhesive, and a small bottle of Metaphen. Depositing these on the vanity, she went into the adjoining bath. There was the sound of running water, and when she came back, she had a soaking hand towel which she used to clean the bullet hole. As she continued to make a temporary bandage, MacLaren turned to Carla.

  “You listened in tonight,” he said.

  He waited. When there was no answer he tried again.

  “You heard what Ruth and Harry said, and it wasn’t too hard to add up, was it?”

  When there was still no answer he decided he might as well do a bit of talking on his own.

  “All right,” he said. “Suppose I do a little guessing—not about what happened that first night; that can come later—but about what happened tonight. You overheard Ruth and Harry on the telephone and you knew they had a deal. You realized that Harry knew you slugged Kingsley with a fire extinguisher. Later that first night when you got to thinking about it you decided you had to get rid of that extinguisher and you went back and took the one that was in the cockpit and threw it into the inlet. You were in the deckhouse when I walked in a little later, weren’t you? What were you waiting for?”

  She looked at him a long time and her mouth was compressed, and he thought her silence would be maintained. Then something happened inside her. She moistened her lips, and when she spoke her voice was dull and toneless.

  “I don’t know. I was just sitting there in the dark. I guess I was thinking, and wondering what was going to happen next. When I heard the boat coming, I stepped into the deckhouse. I wasn’t even sure who it was.”

  “What did you hit me with?”

  “My flashlight.”

  “And until tonight—until you heard that telephone conversation—you thought you had gotten rid of the extinguisher you used on Kingsley.” Again there was no answer, and he said: “You found out tonight that you’d thrown away the wrong extinguisher, but it never occurred to you, did it, that the right one might still be on the cruiser. You assumed that Harry had hidden it somewhere else, and the logical place was his room.”

  He paused, and said: “When Harry left to ferry Ruth across at a quarter after eight, you ransacked his room. You didn’t find the extinguisher and you went outside to see what would happen next. Or maybe you watched from some upstairs window. Whatever you did, you saw Harry go aboard the cruiser and Ruth start for the house. That gave you another idea. Ruth probably had the stock certificate with her, and you knew that if you could get hold of it you might get a break; because unless he got paid, Harry might not talk. There was a good chance that Ruth would come to Harry’s room, and at least it was worth a try. When you took care of her and got the certificate, you knew you had to do something about Harry.

  “You got your little Woodsman and started for the cruiser. You didn’t know which extinguisher you might have used, but you knew you had to do something about all of them. With that gun in your hand, you made Harry collect them and—” He stopped and a scowl began to work on his craggy face.

  “Why didn’t you just throw them into the inlet?”

  “Because Harry would tell the police, and when they found them, my fingerprints might still be on one of them. I was going to make him polish each one of them right there on the boat, but he tried to jump me.”

  As she spoke, Danaher swore under his breath. He was sitting there now in his undershirt, a temporary but neat bandage taped to his arm.

  “I almost made it,” he said bitterly.

  “You might have caught one in the heart too,” MacLaren said, and glanced at Carla. “You were going to clean them yourself, hunh? And after that what were you going to do about Harry and Ruth?”

  Carla had begun to slump in her chair. Her head was slightly bowed and there was a looseness in her pretty face, an air of complete dejection in the way the dark eyes looked at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said woodenly. “I thought of a lot of things, but maybe I wasn’t thinking very good at the time. I thought of taking a trip in the cruiser. I thought something might happen to it once we were out in the sound.”

  “You mean you’d make sure that something happened,” MacLaren said.

  “You’re always reading about some cruiser exploding, or catching fire,” she said as though she had not heard. “If that happened to Oliver’s boat and I was the only one able to swim ashore, no one could prove it wasn’t an accident.”

  “What about Lucille Baron? You knew she was in the house too, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, her.” Carla made a small disparaging sound deep in her throat. “I looked in her room after Harry left. She was taking a shower. She has a date tonight with Neil Ackerman and, knowing Lucille, I knew it would take her at least half an hour to dress; longer than that to put on her face the way she wants it. I didn’t have to worry about her.”

  MacLaren believed this. He also believed that Carla might have forced Ruth and Harry to go with her on the cruiser. Until this evening, until a few minutes ago, she had believed herself to be safe. The shock of learning that Harry Danaher knew her secret and that he intended to go to the police with it had forced her to take the attack in whatever way she could. There had been no time to reason things out or consider the odds, but there were other things MacLaren had to know and he spoke now of the night she had hit Kingsley.

  “You didn’t know that Harry was aboard the cruiser when Kingsley came back after he’d had the fight with me,” he said. “You had a row. It wasn’t the first time you had wanted to do something like that, was it?”

  “No.”

  “You came to Kingsley because you thought you were going to be the second Mrs. Kingsley. Instead, he married someone else. You told me you helped him get his divorce so he could marry you, but he didn’t. He married Ruth, and that didn’t work, and just when you got your hopes up again, Lucille Baron showed up with a diamond on her finger.”

  “No,” she said, anguish edging her words. “It wasn’t that at all. I may have loved him once and thought I was going to marry him but that was all over. I told you how it was. I told you about the army captain.”

  “Oh?” MacLaren said, as he recalled their conversation.

  “I was going to be married,” she continued. “In another two weeks I’d have been through with Oliver and his crazy ways. That’s where I made my mistake.”

  She fell silent, and the seconds dragged by. Finally she roused herself and continued.

  “I despised Oliver and sometimes myself for staying with him because it was always so easy. I did a lot of things I was ashamed of, but I guess I never realized how vindictive he could be. I should have known. I’ve seen him work on others. I shouldn’t have told him that I was going to be married, but I did. He laughed at me.”

  She sighed, and said: “No one could leave him until he said so. It was always that way and it was that way now. He didn’t want me for myself, he only wanted to see me squirm. He had this hold on me, and he said when he got through telling my fiancé what he knew about me and the things I had done, no decent man would marry me.”

  She broke off, her face white with strain.

  “He meant it, a
nd he was right. I knew he was right. I knew he’d do just what he said because that’s the way his warped mind worked. I was down by the catwalk that night when he swam back with the dinghy. He was in a frightful mood, but I hated him for what he was threatening to do to me and I told him it served him right. When he slapped me I reached for the extinguisher and I swung it as hard as I could.”

  “Sure you did,” Harry Danaher said. “I heard him fall. And after that you pushed him into the water.”

  “No,” Carla said, her voice shrill.

  “I say you did.”

  “No. He fell on the edge of the catwalk and I left him there. He may have tipped off into the water after that but I didn’t push him. I came back to the living-room. I didn’t know whether he was dead or not, but all the time we were playing bridge I was hoping he was. Then the police came and told us his body had been found. But I didn’t push him. I didn’t.”

  21

  THE PICTURE of what must have happened the night Oliver Kingsley was killed was now clear in MacLaren’s mind. The bits and pieces of information he had accumulated took shape but there was still much to be done and he was not sure quite how to go about it. As he tried to put his thoughts in order he glanced over at Ruth and found the green eyes watching him anxiously as she sat on the edge of the bed, her clasped hands tucked between her thighs. Carla’s body had slumped again in the chair and Danaher was motionless on the vanity bench, his left hand supporting his right forearm, as though the wound still pained him. MacLaren inspected the broad, weathered face before he spoke.

  “It looks like you wind up with a bum deal, Harry,” he said.

  “How do you figure it?”

  “That information you were going to sell for sixteen thousand dollars’ worth of stock isn’t worth a dime now that Carla’s confessed.”