After a time he got to his feet, pressing both palms against the marble wall to steady himself. The movement made him sick and he retched once, but nothing happened. The retching hurt his ribs, his head, his back. He swallowed, and his throat hurt. He pushed himself away from the wall, and at the same time someone came towards him down the corridor.
It was Lieutenant Diffendorf. He looked smaller than he had in the apartment, a medium-sized, nondescript man in a Palm Beach suit that needed cleaning. He halted, appraised Clay briefly, incuriously, and then removed a tobacco pouch and his brier pipe from a pocket. He unzipped the pouch.
‘Nothing like a marble floor,’ he said, tapping tobacco into the pipe. ‘For resting, that is.’
Clay grinned feebly. ‘Not when you’re tired,’ he agreed.
‘You look real tired.’ The lieutenant’s eyes, rising from the pipe, were tinged with amusement. ‘Nose is leaking, too.’
Clay put a finger to his upper lip, felt a coating of warm, sticky fluid. He saw his coat and shirt front were bloody.
‘Want a handkerchief?’
‘I’ve got one.’
While Clay gingerly daubed at his nose, Diffendorf held a kitchen match to the pipe. He took his time lighting it, examining the bowl twice to make sure the tobacco was burning properly. He started to drop the burnt match on the corridor floor, then changed his mind and put it in his pocket. Finally he sighed, emitting a stream of blue smoke.
‘Know where I find a fellow named Charley Adair?’
‘You bet,’ Clay said. ‘Right through that door.’
Chapter 10
CUSHIONED by two doubled beach towels, a bottle of Old Taylor, corked against moisture, within arm’s reach, Clay sat in his shower stall, let steam and hot water soak his body. He had been there twenty minutes and the whisky and the heat, the steady rush of water and the swirling mist that dimmed the overhead light, all working together, had calmed his nerves, taken away most of the pain from the beating.
After an examination of his body, he had concluded that Adair was a boxer, not a puncher. Nothing was broken, not even his nose. The only really painful injury was below his temple where the metal arm had caught him, and it only hurt when he moved his jaw. Once that was well, he had decided, he would demand a return match. Thirty-first Floor title, free punches barred, winner take all.
Now, head bowed to the falling water, he tried to figure out why it had happened. If he’d ever done anything to Adair, stolen his girl or a record from his jazz collection, it would make sense. But he barely knew him. Yet there had been hatred there. Class A hatred. The one-armed hero had wanted to kill him. It couldn’t be because he’d discovered Charley was with the girl. That was bound to come out sooner or later. Then why? He didn’t know.
There were too many things he didn’t know. He felt he should be putting them in order, giving them their proper weight, analysing, eliminating, deducing, but instead they skittered around his brain like dry leaves in a windstorm. Cigarettes, the telephone call, blackmail, the dead girl’s strangely composed face, his hat, Charley Adair, the elevator boy, Laura Peterkins, the Angel of the Lord, the brandy bottle, Mrs Bruce, the wedding photograph …
He picked up the Old Taylor, took a long drink. For instance, he thought, take Laura Peterkins. Why, if she’d recognized his voice on the telephone, hadn’t she told the police? Or, at least, Standish? No answer. Then there was the mysterious voice in Washington. What was the explanation of that? Or of Standish’s attitude about the number?
He would have liked to stay in the shower, cloaked from the world by opaque door and swirling steam, but he forced himself to his feet. He turned off the water and began to towel his body. He was stepping into a clean pair of shorts when the phone rang in the living-room. He caught it on the fourth ring, lifted the receiver and listened without speaking.
‘Sam?’ Alice’s voice asked. ‘Is that you, Sam?’
He hung up. He didn’t want to hear anything Alice had to say. She was on her way to the Lake Forest house, the place in Bermuda, the society page photographs she had always wanted. Why couldn’t she leave it alone? He went back to the bedroom, kicked his bloody clothes into the closet and finished dressing. Briefly he thought of their parting after eight years of marriage. It had been accomplished with an economy of words Chekhov might have envied. He had come home one night and found her in the living-room, her bags packed.
‘Where are you going?’ he had asked.
‘Away.’
‘For how long?’
‘Forever.’
‘You want a cab?’
‘I’ve got one, thanks.’
There it was, in all its stark Russian simplicity. The parting of Dante and Beatrice, of Abelard and Heloise, of Darby and Joan. It was only later he learned she’d already made a deal with one Lucian B. Marsden, broker, clubman and stuffed shirt.
He glanced at himself in the mirror above the bureau. Outside of a certain puffiness and the welt under the temple, his face looked all right. Surprisingly, he felt all right, too. Probably because about everything had now happened to him that could. Divorce, murder, a beating. Turning from the bureau, he noticed the Sunday comics lying on the floor. The comics made him think of Gwen, and thinking of Gwen made him remember that she had babbled something about the bookcase over the telephone.
As he went into the living-room, he recalled another event: the presumed marriage to Mrs Bruce. Still more everything! Examining the bookcase, he noticed two volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary out of line on the second shelf. Everything, he thought, short of being nabbed by the police. But in bending to straighten the line, he suddenly saw he was wrong. More was coming. Between the two volumes, deep on the shelf, metal gleamed. He knew what it was instantly, feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach. Slowly he removed one volume, took out a pair of heavy shears, the long pointed blades stained with dried blood.
Chapter 11
IT was a hundred-year walk from the Bundy Agency reception room, with the blond furniture, the switchboard, the electric typewriter and the automatic water-cooler to the dim interior of Mr Bundy’s office. It was a change of centuries, a trip to a museum, a visit to a certain Spring field law office. Clay, seated in a huge, springless leather chair and watching Mr Bundy’s stub pen scratch the pages of a cloth-bound ledger, felt as though he had inadvertently wandered into the fourth dimension.
It was mostly the furnishing. The golden oak hat-rack, for instance, from which hung Mr Bundy’s umbrella, his black fedora and a plaid mackintosh. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen a hat-rack. Or a mackintosh, for that matter. Or a china cuspidor. Or green-glass-shaded oil lamps. Or lace antimacassars. Or a grandfather’s clock, the remembered ticking still inexorable and still too slow.
Mr Bundy had been writing a long time. He had made notes on pieces of paper while Clay, still unnerved by the scissors, had produced a jumbled resumé of everything that had happened since the discovery of the body. Now he was transferring the notes to the ledger. Finally finished, he put the pen with others in a pewter mug, closed the lid of the inkpot that had been made from a deer’s hoof.
‘I will review,’ he said, bending over the ledger. ‘And in so doing, present a theory.’
‘You’ve got a theory?’
‘I have.’ Reaching across the oak desk, Mr Bundy pressed the plunger on a silver bell, caused it to send out a musical note. ‘An extremely interesting one.’ A spinster lady appeared in the doorway. ‘Tea, please, Miss Dewhurst. Then telephone an establishment called the Love Nest. Either Mr or Mrs Nichols.’
‘At once,’ said Miss Dewhurst, disappearing.
‘Now,’ said Mr Bundy slowly, ‘we will reconstruct the murder.’
He pulled the ledger closer, peered down at it nearsightedly. Time: approximately 4.30 A.M., he read. Present. Mr Clay and the murderer. And of course Miss Trevor. How had the murderer got there? Quite easily. No elevator operator from midnight to 8 A.M. During these hours the murderer
could have gone up and down unobserved. (Parenthetically, Mr Bundy digressed, it was very possible he had been observed, was the ‘Angel of the Lord’ described by the janitor.) How did he get into the apartment? A key obtained from either Miss Trevor or her coloured maid. Why not from someone else? A Mr Robert Hill, the apartment manager, had supplied the answer to this. Two weeks ago Miss Trevor had arranged for a new lock on her door, asking specifically there be no pass key. Just two keys, one of which Miss Trevor had given to the maid in Hill’s presence.
‘Very significant,’ Mr Bundy said, looking up from the ledger. ‘Even then, apprehension.’
‘We’d better get hold of the maid.’
‘A man has been assigned.’
Mr Bundy was about to go on when Miss Dewhurst appeared with the tea. As she arranged cups and saucers, a plate of lemon slices and a large flowered teapot on the desk, she said, ‘I was unable to reach either Mr or Mrs Nichols.’
‘Had they been there?’ Mr Bundy asked.
‘Yes. The person to whom I spoke said Mrs Nichols had been gone for some time.’ She peeped into the pot, satisfied herself the tea was ready, and began to fill the cups. ‘Mr Nichols left later with someone named Cleo.’ She eyed Clay. ‘Lemon?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Q.’ Miss Dewhurst smiled faintly, put a slice on one of the saucers. She looked more like a governess than a secretary. ‘The person to whom I spoke added something I failed to understand.’
‘What was that?’ asked Mr Bundy.
She handed cup and saucer to Clay. ‘The person said, and I quote: “Seven passion fruits and zowie! They blew, Cleo zigging and the gent zagging.”’
Mr Bundy’s eyebrows arched.
‘A drink they serve there,’ Clay explained. ‘Powerful. Like a zombie.’
‘My goodness!’ said Miss Dewhurst. ‘Seven!’
‘Try the Nichols’ home,’ Mr Bundy directed. Miss Dewhurst went out, shaking her head.
‘Cleo’s the one the note was for,’ Clay said. ‘They must have gone to look for Mrs Bruce.’
‘The question is,’ said Mr Bundy dryly, ‘will they know when they find her?’ He tasted his tea, smacked appreciative lips. ‘Let us continue.’
Important clues, he declared, consulting the ledger again, had been unearthed in the apartment. One, the half-smoked cigarettes, indicated the killer had hidden in the closet, which in turn indicated he had arrived before Mr Clay and the girl, had waited for an opportune moment to commit the crime. Which was after Mr Clay had gone to sleep.
This was a new thought to Clay. It made sense, however. Nothing short of an atomic blast would have wakened him once he’d passed out. It was a grisly idea, though: murder being done while he lay there. He shivered, for the first time thinking of the killer as another person, a shadowy, dangerous antagonist.
Mr Bundy continued. Another clue was the peaceful expression of the dead girl. It could only mean that she was asleep, too, when the murder was committed. There were the ripped garments, of course, but they could have been torn after she was dead.
‘Why did he bother with the clothes?’ Clay asked.
‘To make it appear you had attempted to attack her.’
‘Why not rape her then? Make it airtight?’
‘I imagine he would have liked to, but couldn’t.’ Mr Bundy rang the bell. ‘And this very inability causes me to believe we are dealing with a sexually normal man, rather than a psychopath.’
Miss Dewhurst came into the room, put another flowered teapot on the desk. Bundy picked it up, asked, ‘Hot water?’
Clay shook his head, said, ‘Okay. I buy so far. But how do the scissors fit?’
Miss Dewhurst coughed delicately, and when they glanced at her, said, ‘I have Mrs Nichols.’
‘You may bring the phone in here.’ Mr Bundy turned to Clay. ‘If you would be so good—I distrust electricity.’
Dragging the extension cord behind her, Miss Dewhurst returned. Clay took the telephone, said, ‘Camille, this is Sam.’
‘What have you done?’ Camille demanded. ‘Taken refuge in the British Embassy?’
‘Not yet. Where’s Tom?’
‘An excellent question!’
‘He hasn’t called?’
‘Call?’ Her voice went up the scale. ‘When he can float around the city with the two largest chunks of foam rubber the Goodyear Company ever manufactured?’
‘Foam rubber?’
‘If they’re real,’ Camille said, ‘they’re going to have to revise the anatomy charts.’
‘Oh, Cleo!’
‘Yes, Cleo! Coy little red-headed Cleo. Cleo who knows something but won’t tell until she talks to Mrs Bruce. Cleo who doesn’t mind if she does have another. You know what?’
‘What?’
‘I bet that girl milks pure grain alcohol!’
‘I’d like to meet her.’ She was silent and he added, ‘Tell Tom to call Mr Bundy when you hear from him.’
‘If I ever do. And Sam——’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you getting anywhere?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You will. I know you will.’
She hung up. He gave the phone to Miss Dewhurst, then spoke to Mr Bundy. ‘No news.’
‘Scissors,’ Mr Bundy murmured. ‘Scissors and bracelet.’ Both fitted into the picture, he asserted, as plants to further implicate Mr Clay. He corrected himself. To implicate Mr Clay further. Bracelet, if he were caught in the girl’s apartment. Scissors, if he were caught anywhere. Fortunately the young lady—he glanced at the ledger—Miss Pearson, had discovered them, thus enabling Mr Clay to remove them in time.
‘Then I didn’t go to my apartment last night?’
‘It was the killer, using your keys. And with your address, if not already known, obtained from your wallet.’
‘But Gwen said——’ Clay began.
‘A most interesting point. What Miss—Miss Pearson saw was a figure wrapped in something she described as a cloak. Naturally, she assumed it was you.’ He paused impressively. ‘I am quite certain it was the janitor’s “Angel of the Lord”.’
Clay had an eerie conviction that Mr Bundy had suddenly gone mad. ‘The Angel’s nonsense!’
‘I wonder.’ Mr Bundy’s voice was reflective. ‘How would a cloaked figure, coming and going in the dead of night, be rationalized by an addled religious fanatic?’
‘But even so!’ Clay exclaimed. ‘Would a killer wander around the city in an opera cloak?’
Mr Bundy frowned thoughtfully. ‘We must find an explanation.’
Clay shook his head dubiously. It had sounded fine up to the Angel angle, but that was completely cockeyed. Something right out of left field. He felt a momentary loss of faith in Mr Bundy and then he realized the theory was still good, better in fact, without the Angel. He felt relieved.
Mr Bundy was eyeing him speculatively. ‘You realize, of course, there is still one major question.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Why didn’t the killer notify the police after he left for the second time—after returning your keys? So they would be certain to find you?’
Clay shook his head again. It was a major question, and he had no answer. Before he could say so, Miss Dewhurst appeared at the door. ‘A Mr Ellenstein,’ she announced.
Bundy said, ‘Ask him to wait,’ and went on. ‘In the answer to why he did not lies the crux of our problem.’
The crux, he repeated with satisfaction. And very possibly the flawed link in the chain the killer had attempted to fasten around Mr Clay’s neck. It concerned the alibi, or rather, Mr Bundy corrected himself, the lack of an alibi. Was this clear? No? Then he would put it another way. The killer had not called the police because he had needed time to establish the alibi. An hour, two hours, perhaps more. To reach a summer cottage in the Indiana dunes. Or a house in the suburbs. Or to type a column that should have been completed earlier. Or for some equally valid reason. There were many possibilities. But all
of them, Mr Bundy declared, led to one conclusion: he had to be where he should be when the murder was discovered.
‘Since he would be notified,’ Mr Bundy added as an afterthought.
‘Why would he be notified? Unless he was a cop or a newspaperman?’
‘A newspaperman,’ said Mr Bundy, ‘is what I believe him to be.’
Clay felt his spine tingle. His own theory! It was possible, all right. More than possible. With the girl and half the staff from Fort Worth, it almost had to be. That is, if the business went back to 1952 when she’d changed her name, suddenly began to spend money. Blackmail, Mr Bundy had said on Walton Place. Blackmail started in Fort Worth and continued in Chicago. That was why she’d come to the Globe, worked for a salary that meant nothing to her. She’d wanted to keep an eye on her victim.
Mr Bundy was watching his face. ‘You do not entirely reject my theory?’
‘No,’ Clay said. ‘Except I don’t see how I fit.’
‘You are chance. The ragged stranger. The blind man in the square.’ Mr Bundy tried the teapot. It was empty. ‘You were there, so the murderer made certain alterations in his plan. Improvements, so he thought.’
‘How could he have guessed I’d black out?’
‘He couldn’t. I don’t imagine he even considered the possibility. He wasn’t concerned with your mental processes. It was enough that you be incriminated so completely it would make no difference whether you protested innocence or not.’
‘He arranged that, all right.’
‘But,’ Mr Bundy countered, ‘in so doing he also arranged certain leads for us.’ He enumerated them slowly. ‘We now know what to look for in the way of an alibi; we know the period to be considerably longer than first supposed; we have the Angel of the Lord (I use this melodramatic term for lack of a better one); we have the key, the cigarettes, the testimony of the manager, the knowledge that the killer had been in contact with the girl and that she was frightened of him …’
He paused for breath, then added with satisfaction, ‘All in all, he would have done better to have selected another night.’
Sinners and Shrouds Page 9
