The Faceless Adversary

by Frances

  He stood up. Before he could speak, Barbara came across the room to him. She was smiling, but there was a kind of intentness in her eyes. She walked into his arms and held her face up and he kissed her. She drew back.

  “You’re sweet,” she said. “Sweet—and foolish.” The words were light, spoken lightly. The voice was Barbara’s, but she did not speak like Barbara. And the intentness remained in her eyes. Again he was about to speak, and again she spoke before him.

  “Did you think I’d let you?” she said. “Did you really think that, darling? To do a thing like that. To tell them a—”

  “Wait,” Miller said. “Wait just a minute, Miss Phillips.”

  She turned to him, surprise and question apparent in her face.

  “But—” Barbara said, and Miller said, again, “Wait just a minute, Miss Phillips. Mr. Hayward.”

  John waited.

  “You told us,” Miller said, “that you got home last night about eleven. Went up the stairs.” Again John started to speak. “Never mind about the stairs,” Miller said. “You said you got home about eleven. You agree you said that?”

  John was sharply conscious, although he looked at Miller, that Barbara had turned back to face him. He felt, intensely, her being there, her looking at him. There was a kind of vibrancy about her, emanating from her.

  “Of course,” John said. “That’s what I told you.”

  He did not, fully, know why he selected that word—said “what I ‘told’ you.”

  “John,” Barbara said. “How—foolish. How sweet, but how foolish!”

  “Miss Phillips,” Miller said, “I keep asking you.”

  “But how can I?” Barbara said, and there seemed to be bewilderment in her voice. “Just stand here and let him—it’s all so ridiculous.”

  (But it’s not the way she talks, John thought. This—this hopping kind of speech.)

  He looked at her. Her eyes spoke. For an instant, but only for an instant, his bewilderment continued. Then, as if it were a balloon pricked, bewilderment vanished.

  “All right,” John Hayward said, clearly, and, to his own ears, a little loudly, “I told you that.”

  “You stick to it? Or, do you want to change it?”

  “Of course he wants to change it,” Barbara said, speaking very quickly. “Of course he does. Don’t you, John?”

  He could feel them all around him waiting. Grady had turned from the window and was looking at him across the room. Then the sergeant turned, too. And Barbara looked up at him. It was as if her whole mind leaped the few physical feet between them. And, with his lips hardly moving, John smiled down at her.

  “All right,” he said. “I guess I made a mistake. I got the idea that—” He paused.

  “Well?” Miller said. “What do you say now.” He looked at John, then at Barbara Phillips.

  “I was with Miss Phillips,” John said. “I—I didn’t want to drag her into it. It was late and—well—”

  He hoped he was right. He was almost certain he was right. Then Barbara’s eyes, although there was no apparent movement of the muscles around them, told him he was right.

  “There,” Barbara said. “Didn’t I tell you? Why he thought—when we were just sitting in—” She seemed all confusion, this girl John had never really seen confused. She turned to John. By God, John thought, I’d swear she’s blushing. How she—

  “Sitting where, Mr. Hayward?” Miller said, and spoke very quickly, very sharply. “Where were you and Miss Phillips sitting at the time Mrs. Piermont was killed?” Just perceptibly, his voice underlined the word “sitting.”

  They waited again. Barbara did not try to speak. She’s done all she can, John thought. And he spoke hurriedly. There was only one thing to say, and it had to be said in a certain fashion.

  “In the library,” he said. “In their house in the—” He stopped, as if he had caught himself protesting too much, bringing too many details to bolster a story. He hoped he did it well. Barbara’s eyes were bright with the assurance he had done it well. Surely Grady, looking at her—surely Miller—would see that brightness in her eyes.

  “You see?” Barbara said. “He thought you might—misunderstand. Think—what stodgy people—that is …” Again she seemed confused. “We were just sitting in the library,” she said. “Talking about things. Trying to work things out. That’s really all we—” And again she stopped.

  (How, John wondered, can anybody—anybody—blush because they want to? He looked at Miller. And he saw that, as a little earlier—when he had himself suggested a possibility Miller could not dismiss—Miller’s eyes narrowed.)

  “And whatever you think,” Barbara said, “we’re engaged to be married and—” Once more she broke off. She moved to John’s side, and took his hand in hers. And, through her hand, he could feel what he could not see—what none of those looking at her could see. Ever so slightly, Barbara was trembling.

  “To protect you from this—implication,” Miller said, and spoke slowly. “To make sure that no one would know you two were sitting—and talking—in the library at your father’s house at two o’clock in the morning, Mr. Hayward was willing to take the risk of being charged with murder? Is that what you’re saying, Miss Phillips?”

  “It was foolish,” Barbara said. “He knows that now. But—can’t you see? It was—it was the sort of thing he’d do? Can’t you see that? Because you might think—”

  She stopped. This time, John thought, there was no calculation in the broken sentence. She stood quiet by John’s side, and Miller looked at both of them.

  “You expect us to believe this?” Miller said. “You both expect that?”

  It was John who answered.

  “I don’t see what else you can do,” John said. “Do you?”

  John looked blandly at Miller. Then he turned his head and looked at Grady. Grady was very red in the face. John knew the word he wanted to use, and couldn’t use with Barbara there. For an instant, John felt almost sorry for Detective Grady.

  “And I suppose now,” Miller said, “you both think we say sorry, and that you can go along?”

  “No,” John said. “I don’t suppose you go that far.”

  “No,” Miller said. “We don’t go that far. We’re not sorry. We think you killed them both, Mr. Hayward. But—you can go along.” They looked at him. They looked at him in astonishment. “For now,” Miller said. “Just for now. And—don’t bother to go too far, Mr. Hayward. Don’t plan to go far at all.”

  After the State Police sergeant had taken them out, Miller stood for some seconds looking at the door. Then he turned and looked at Detective Grady.

  “Did you,” Miller enquired, his voice heavy with imposed forbearance, “ever hear of a search warrant? You know—you go to a judge and you tell him things, and he signs a piece of paper. Ever hear of that?”

  Grady did not say anything. He was very red of face.

  “Because,” Miller said, “you do things that way, and you’ve got something. Something we can use. You use one of your pet keys and go into a guy’s apartment and take what you want—like a sports jacket with a hole in it—and where are you, Grady? Because the guy gets a lawyer. You know—l-a-w-y-e-r? And the lawyer says your evidence was illegally obtained. And the judge says it sure was. And where do you go then, Grady? Out on your tail is where you go.”

  Grady still did not say anything.

  “And then the guy turns up with an alibi, Grady,” Miller said. “Just to make it harder. A nice clean alibi.”

  “They’re lying,” Grady said.

  “Sure they’re lying,” Miller said. “And the girl is important people, Grady. And he went to Harvard and works in a bank—very nice important job in a nice important bank. And the jury looks at the pretty, important girl and the nice clean-cut young man who went to Harvard and—what, Grady?”

  “They’re lying,” Grady said, again. “Are we supposed to let them get away with it?”

  Miller was a man who suffered much. He s
hook his head, slowly, to show how much he suffered.

  XII

  John drove the Corvette around Hawthorne Circle and headed toward New York down the Saw Mill River Parkway.

  “They know we’re lying,” John said, with the car headed south, moving at the stipulated forty miles an hour.

  Barbara had been very quiet since they had left the barracks. Now she nodded. But then she turned to him. She grinned suddenly.

  “I hope,” she said, “they think only half of it was a lie. The part about—what we were doing.”

  “When your father hears of that,” John said. “Just wait until he hears of that!”

  “My father,” Barbara told him, “is a man of wisdom. Also, quick on the uptake. You weren’t so bad yourself, come down to it.”

  She had, John told her, what are known as speaking eyes. All he had done was listen.

  (For this moment, Barbara thought, we almost match the car, are almost what we look to be. This is seemly. But then she saw the smile on John’s lips at first become fixed there, as if forgotten, and then vanish. He looked very drawn, very tired.)

  “It’s only a reprieve,” John said. “Sooner or later, they’ll pick me up again. Harder next time. They’ll—” He paused. He looked only at the road, with bleak eyes. “Townsend was up when we got there,” he said. “He knows when it was. He knows I didn’t go in with you.”

  “The trouble with being a banker’s daughter,” Barbara said, “is butlers. I grant you that.”

  He smiled faintly, but did not take his eyes from the road.

  “Actually,” she said, “it was more than the alibi. I overheard them talking. After I’d said we were together. Miller and the man who got so red in the face—”

  “Grady,” John told her abstractedly.

  “—and another man—a square sort of man, who seemed to belong to the State Police, not the city police. He said, ‘Now, Miller. If you want to, naturally. We don’t. Not on the kind of evidence you’ve got.’ Grady said something I couldn’t hear. The square man said, ‘You can’t take the jacket into court. Because, you’re not supposed to have the jacket. And, on this one, the jacket’s all you’ve got.’”

  John nodded.

  “John,” Barbara said. “I’ve found out some things. One thing, really, but other things seem to grow out of it. Stop some place so—wait. Have you had anything to eat?”

  “No,” he said.

  “So we can talk, then,” she said. “The place by the lake.”

  Shapiro had told Miller what had been found out—from Ebenezer Titus, from Mrs. Piermont’s “local” lawyer in Brewster, from the bank in Brewster. Most of it had been found out by the State Police, and by men from the county detective’s office, and by an assistant district attorney from Carmel. For the most part, Shapiro had gone along to listen. Shapiro gave details without comment; watching Miller’s face. When he told Miller about the will which had been found in Mrs. Piermont’s desk, Shapiro was interested to notice that Miller’s eyes narrowed.

  “And you followed the girl from this preacher’s place?” Miller said, and was told that that was right. “Find out what she wanted there?”

  Mildly, Shapiro pointed out the obvious—that if he had stayed to ask the preacher what the girl wanted, he would have lost the girl. He had thought the girl might lead him to the man. He didn’t know they already had the man.

  “All right,” Miller said. “I’ll take Grady back with me. You come along after us. Let them work this one out, seeing they’re so keen on regulations.” He paused, briefly. “Not that you and Grady didn’t pull a prize one,” he said. Shapiro could have told him that that idea had been Grady’s. Shapiro did not. He merely looked sadder than before. He went to the washroom.

  When he came out, Miller and Grady were gone. He started past the booking desk to the door, and the sergeant said, into a telephone, “That’s right, sir,” replaced the receiver and said, “Hey. You.” Shapiro walked over, his face sad.

  “Hayward’s lawyer,” the sergeant said, indicating the telephone. “Heard we had his man locked up. Was all set to come out and unlock him. I told him he needn’t bother.”

  “All right,” Shapiro said.

  “Told him we merely wanted Mr. Hayward to clear up a couple of points,” the sergeant said. “That after he had, we turned him loose. All in nice smooth talk, of course.”

  “All right,” Shapiro said.

  “A man named Still,” the sergeant said. “Richard Still. That the right man?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “That’s—” He stopped. “Only thing,” he said, “is how he knew we had Hayward here?” He stopped again. “Probably,” he said, “the girl called him. Hayward didn’t call himself?”

  He had not, that the sergeant knew of.

  Shapiro started on again. Near the door, he stopped and looked, as if in reproach, at a telephone booth. He sighed deeply, went back to the desk, and borrowed the Manhattan telephone book. He noted a number down and went back to the booth and called the number.

  “Laughton, Murphy and Wahlstein good afternoon,” a girl said, purring slightly. Shapiro asked for Mr. Still—Mr. Richard Still. “One moment please,” the girl said, still purring.

  He waited the moment. Another voice, still purring, still female, said, “Laughton, Murphy and Wahlstein Miss Norby speaking.”

  “Mr. Still?” Shapiro said, with patience.

  “I’m very sorry Mr. Still is out of town. Will anyone else do?” Miss Norby said.

  Shapiro said, conventionally, “Um-m.” Then he said, “Could you give me a number where I could reach him?”

  “I’m very sorry I’m afraid I do not have a number for Mr. Still,” Miss Norby said. “Can someone else help you?”

  Nobody could. Shapiro replaced the receiver and for some seconds looked at the wall telephone, without seeing it. Perhaps Miss Phillips had called before Mr. Still went out of town. Or, perhaps, since she was a very important young woman, she had received special treatment, information mixed with purring. Perhaps Mr. Still’s out-of-town trip had taken him into Westchester and Putnam counties and he had, in some fashion, acquired information on his own.

  And perhaps, of course, it had not been Mr. Still at all, but someone else who was keeping track of John Hayward.

  Well, Shapiro thought, perhaps it’s been too easy all along. He wondered if Miller had begun to think that too. Then he thought of Grady, and shook his head and sighed. He left the booth and the barracks, and drove the black sedan toward New York on the Saw Mill River Parkway.

  Just south of the circle, he was passed by a Jaguar. You did, Shapiro thought, see more and more of those foreign cars. He noted the numbers of the Jaguar’s license plate. Or, he thought, I seem to see a good deal of one of them. Not that it meant anything. But he picked up speed somewhat, so that—unless, of course, the Jaguar got in a hurry—he could keep the low, deep-throated car in sight.

  It gave them, Barbara said, a logical explanation. It gave them things you could add together, so that you came up with a sum. It brought things into order, however bizarre the order. You could start with a premise, and build on that. “As,” she said, “you like to do,” and then, quickly, “As everyone likes to do.”

  They sat at a table by a window, overlooking a lake. There were two swans on the lake. They were, she thought, very pompous swans. They had been too late for lunch; not too late for a drink, for sandwiches, for coffee. They sat, now, over coffee. She had told him about the will.

  “Which,” he said, as they went over it again, pinning it down, “now means nothing, if Father Higbee is right. It would be, I suppose, as if she had died intestate. We’ll have to ask a lawyer—if they give us time.”

  If Mrs. Piermont had died intestate, the surrogate’s court would take over. Relatives would present claims to the court; in time, the nearest, if one was clearly that, would inherit. “In the event of a tie,” Barbara said, “the prize will be divided equally.” And—final adjudication wou
ld take a long time. It always did. And that was part of it—part of the plan. They agreed on that. “Granting the premise,” John said. “Always granting the premise.”

  But John had changed, Barbara saw, and was glad. He looked tired no longer. It had been he, once they had started, who had done most to work it out—to backtrack on a plan which rested, in some part, on the slowness of procedure in surrogate’s courts everywhere.

  The man—“I’ve come to calling him the adversary,” John said. “To thinking of him as that”—had reason to know that, while distant in kinship from Angela Piermont, he was still nearer than others. Family records, presumably, had told him that. He knew, certainly, that Mrs. Piermont was wealthy. He decided to inherit her money. And—Julie Titus stood in his way.

  It was to be presumed he had found this out from the girl herself, during a kind of preliminary survey. He had been careful from the start. He had, presumably, arranged to meet Julie by apparent accident. It would not be hard in the country, if the girl took walks, if the man—the adversary—were patient. It should not have been difficult for him to advance the relationship with the girl to the point of confidence.

  “The poor thing,” Barbara said. “Cooped up, fenced in, like—like a kitten in a cage. And, we know he’s outwardly attractive, good-looking.” John raised his eyebrows. “He looks like you,” she said. “Enough, at any rate. A type Americanus. Or—Harvardianus.”

  John had said “all right” to that.

  The money went to the girl. He—the adversary—found that out. So, the thing was to kill the girl. Then, before Mrs. Piermont changed her will, to kill Mrs. Piermont. And then, merely to wait. In her first development of her theory, when she was bright with it, excited with it, Barbara had hesitated there and some of the brightness faded. “All the rest of it,” she said. “Involving you. It seems such a long way around. So—so improbably long a way around.”