“You don’t like Fabro much, do you?”
“You hang it on Fabro, Captain, and I’ll buy two tickets for the next police benefit.”
A grin made Walsh seem more human. “I’m one for selling tickets, but that poor old lady …”
“Mrs. Grumpert,” Sergeant Grimsby said.
“Nuttier than a Christmas fruit cake. Kept calling me Al! And the time’s wrong. Fabro was in a conference. Been there for ten, fifteen minutes. Six witnesses.”
“All relatives of his wife,” Gordon said.
Walsh looked interested. “You think they could be lying?”
“Fabro swings enough weight.”
“Gavin and I talked to all six, Captain,” Grimsby said. “They aren’t relatives. They don’t like Fabro any better than Mr. Gordon.”
“I’ll buy four tickets,” Gordon said.
The script banged against Walsh’s knees. “I said no yak-king!” He leaned towards Gordon and Blake. “Look. I’m trying to level with you, which is an unusual thing for a cop. Letting you know a little we know. And I’m about to do another unusual tiling. I’m going to let you kibitz while we question some of the people.”
A blond detective in a tan sports jacket poked his head in the tent. Sergeant Grimsby got up, went outside with him. Walsh pulled a stick of chewing gum from a pocket, cut at the wrapper with a thumbnail.
“Now I want a couple of things from you,” he said. “No talking to Teporters.” Gordon and Blake nodded. “And when anybody we bring in here lies, or is mistaken about something, you’re to sound off. Understood?”
“Understood,” Gordon said.
“I want a blueprint of what happened. Every move everybody made.” Walsh frowned at the piece of gum, unwrapped now. “A thing’s shaping up here I don’t like.” His eyes, the color of faded burlap, moved up to their faces. “You know those locked-room murders they’re always putting in books?”
They nodded again.
“Well, this baby, if something don’t give, could make all of ’em look like kindergarten riddles.”
Blake said, “You’re sure it’s murder, Captain?”
Walsh ignored this “Grimsby,” he called. “Start bringing ’em in.”
The two litter bearers, still wearing only loin cloths, were first. Grimsby took notes while the captain questioned them. They were scared, but reasonably coherent. They had done only what Mr. Gordon had told them to do in the rehearsals. Carried the litter into the tent, put it on the cot and fled when the shots were fired.
“Fled where?” Walsh asked.
“Why, where Mr. Gordon said. Into the jungle. Just like in the rehearsals.”
“You talk with Miss Garnet?” Walsh asked.
Gordon said, “They wouldn’t during the scene.”
“Before the scene then.”
“No,” the younger bearer said.
“Why not?”
“She told us to knock off the gab.”
Walsh’s faded brown eyes brightened. “Made you sore, eh?”
“Well,” the younger bearer said, “it wasn’t very friendly of her.”
“Sore enough to shoot her?” Walsh asked sharply. “At the same time the other shots were being fired?”
“Me! You think I …?”
“No,” Walsh said wearily. “I don’t think anything of the sort. Where would you hide a gun in a jockstrap? Beat it. Both of you.”
As the hearers left, brown faces relieved, Blake studied the captain. It was something he hadn’t thought of: this possibility of the shots coming from somewhere besides the Webley. A rifle maybe. With a silencer on it. Improbable, but if something like that had happened it would clear Lisa. Not that she wasn’t clear.
Josh Gordon, evidently working along the same lines, asked, “Do you know whether or not the bullets came from the pistol. Captain?”
“Boys in Ballistics checking that.” Walsh jerked his head at Sergeant Grimsby. “Bring in the next one.”
The next one actually had to be brought in and propped against the tent’s center pole. Poor Ashton Graves, still in his hunter’s costume, eyes half closed, face an unhealthy soap-white. Drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, Blake thought, and found himself inanely wondering what a fiddler’s bitch was. Dog or lady friend?
Walsh was studying the swaying figure. “You able to talk?”
“Certainly—old boy,” Graves said in a surprisingly clear voice. “Can—always talk.” He seemed to be in a world where time had slowed down. “My job—in life.”
“Your job right now is to tell us what you did up to the time of the shooting.”
It seemed to take forever, but Graves managed to cover everything, not missing a move and even quoting some of the dialogue. He told of leaving Lisa by the pistol, of leading the bearers into the tent and telling them to put the litter on the cot, of bending over Caresse and pulling back the blanket to see where she was hurt.
“You’re sure you pulled the blanket down?” Walsh asked.
“Quite sure.”
Walsh swung around to Sergeant Grimsby. “It was over her when we got here, wasn’t it?”
Thumbing back through his notebook, Grimsby found the page he was looking for. “‘Entire body covered by blanket,’” he read.
“Who put it back?” Walsh eyed Gordon. “You do it when you found she was dead?”
“I didn’t touch anything.” Gordon’s face was alert. “What are you getting at?”
“I wish I knew.” Walsh sighed. “Make a note, Grimsby.” Grimsby made a note. Walsh scowled at Graves. “Go on, man.”
There wasn’t much further to go. Still speaking slowly and distinctly, a scholar translating hieroglyphics on an eroded monument, Graves told of Lisa’s entrance, of the two shots, of the struggle for the pistol and of his wrenching it from Lisa upon the arrival of the hunters. “It fell—beside the fire.”
“Which is where we found it,” Walsh observed. He glanced at Gordon. “Everything check?”
“That’s the way I saw it.”
“Okay.” Jaws working over the gum he had at some time put in his mouth, Walsh regarded Graves speculatively. “You hear anything strange? Like, maybe, two shots from somewhere else?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Now what’s with this speech we hear you made?” His eyes went to Grimsby. “With all the big words?”
Grimsby already had the right page in his notebook. He read, “‘Could kill Caresse, completely compunctionless, carnivorous, contemptible creature.’”
“You left out calumnious,” Gordon said.
Grimsby put it in.
A faint smile, more the echo of a smile than a smile, curled the corners of Graves’ mouth. “Meant every—word—of it.” His eyes seemed clearer.
“That don’t sound so good,” Walsh said. “With the dame being killed a couple of minutes later.”
“Would admit—I killed her—old boy,” Graves said. “If could think—how I did it.”
“Very sporting.” Walsh nodded agreeably. “You work on that. And so will we. Maybe we can get together later.”
“Pleasure,” Graves said.
A policeman came and took him away. Grimsby wrote industriously in his notebook. Walsh took out his gum, examined it dubiously, then put it back in his mouth again. “Complicated,” he said. “But that lad’s not as drunk as he’d have us believe.” A strange detective appeared, handed him a cardboard box and an envelope. “From Ballistics, Captain.”
“Fine.” Walsh ripped open the envelope, at the same time saying, “Get them two gun guys.”
The two gun guys proved to be the prop men. They waited uneasily just inside the tent while Walsh finished reading the report he’d taken from the envelope. Both men, Blake thought, looked as though a sudden noise would land them in the next county.
“Alf Romero,” Walsh said at last. “And Gus Romero. Brothers?”
“Uncles,” Gus said. “I mean he’s my uncle. Alf is.”
“And your story’s yo
u loaded the pistol with blanks, stuck it in the holster and never touched it again?”
“Is truth,” Alf said.
Walsh shook his head sorrowfully. “Trouble is, it can’t be.”
“Is truth,” Alf said.
“Let’s find out.” Walsh took the lid off the cardboard box. “First thing is to identify the weapon.” He took a pistol out of the box, held it out to Alf. “Webley-Fosbery. Generally comes in .455 caliber, but this is a .325. First one I ever saw.”
Reluctantly, Alf edged up to the pistol.
“Take it. Been dusted for prints.”
Alf took it. Gus moved to his shoulder. “Same pistol,” Alf said. “Same scratch on butt. Same serial number.”
“Which one of you loaded it?”
“We both load,” Alf said. “Gus give me the blanks, I fill clip, put clip in pistol.”
“You’re sure it was blanks.”
“All we got,” Gus said.
Walsh frowned, very serious now. “This is important. Can you prove you loaded it with blanks?”
Blake said, “I saw them, Captain. When I went to tell them they’d forgotten the pistol. Blanks.”
Walsh sighed. “I was afraid of that. So now we got the pistol loaded with blanks. Who put it in the holster?”
“Me,” Alf said. “I run out on set.”
Gordon said, “I saw him.”
“Okay. Pistol in holster. Now we jump to the fire. Pistol by fire. Same pistol.”
He paused, bushy brows almost hiding the burlap eyes. Grimsby stopped writing, stared at him expectantly. So did the others.
“Pistol by fire,” Walsh repeated thoughtfully. “Don’t prop men generally collect weapons after a scene?”
“Scene not over,” Alf said.
“Neither of you touched it?”
“We don’t go on set.”
“Dandy.” Walsh took a clip from the cardboard box. “This was in the pistol.” The burnished metal gleamed in the light. “Take a look at it, Alf.”
Bending over the clip, Alf said, “Same one I put in pistol.”
“Now these.” Plucking them one by one from the clip, Walsh lined five blank cartridges on the cover of the script he still held on his lap. “Same blanks?”
“Same. Only two missing.”
Walsh collected cartridges, clip and pistol, put them back in the cardboard box. Then from the envelope he produced two other cartridges. “Found these here, in the tent.” Cupping his hand he dropped the cartridges in it, thrust the hand out at Alf. “What about ’em?”
“Mama mia!” Alf exclaimed.
“Yes,” Walsh said. “Real bullets. Expended, but real—.325 caliber ammunition.”
There was a long silence.
“A dilly,” Walsh said finally. “Pistol goes into scene loaded with blanks. Forty or so people watch scene being played. Nothing—but nothing unusual happens. But when the pistol’s fired, out come two real bullets.”
“Impossible!” Blake exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Walsh said. “Ain’t it, though.”
Lisa Carson
If only the man would go away. She wanted to cry. She needed to cry, but the bulky blue-serge back framed by the dressing room doorway made it impossible. She couldn’t cry while he was listening. It was like being in a cell. A death cell, almost.
Murderess, she said to herself. You killed her. Murderess. She savored the word, feeling the icy bands tighten. But not really a murderess. She hadn’t known the pistol was loaded. But she had wanted to kill Caresse when she fired it. Not as Ahri, but as Lisa. A death wish. Could she have wished the pistol loaded? No, that was silly. It was all so mixed up it seemed a kind of nightmare.
Yet there was no escaping the three things that kept floating up out of the nightmare. She had wished Caresse dead. And in wishing her dead she had fired the pistol, not from the tent entrance as she was supposed to, but from two or three feet off. And she had killed her.
Guilty or not guilty? If only the man would go. She needed to think. She needed to cry. She needed Dick. It was strange, but she no longer hated Caresse. She was actually sorry for her. Guilty or not guilty?
“Miss Carson.” The man’s face was inside the door. “Captain Walsh wants you.”
First, entering the tent, she looked for Caresse. The cot was empty, thank God! Then she saw Dick, his face solemn but somehow reassuring, and she would have run to him if it hadn’t been for the others. Josh Gordon and the thin-faced sergeant who’d questioned her, she saw, and an older man. Captain Walsh, she supposed it was.
“Sit down, Miss Carson,” he said. His eyes looked like pieces of brown sugar.
On a small table beside him, in a cardboard box, was the pistol, and she stared at it fascinated, barely hearing Captain Walsh say, “Grimsby’s got a question.”
“An omission,” Grimsby said.
“Of what?”
“A remark to Mr. Gordon. About planning to kill Miss Garnet.”
Josh Gordon snorted. “A joke!”
“Was it, Miss Carson?” Captain Walsh asked.
Despite the eyebrows and the square jaw he didn’t look very terrifying. He looked like the marshals in Westerns she’d made. The kindly old men the heavies either killed or wounded so the hero had to take over and clean up the town.
“It was a joke,” she said. “But I did daydream about killing her.”
“You were sore because she changed the story?”
“A second omission,” Grimsby said.
Josh Gordon said, “We’d better get you a lawyer, Lisa.”
“She doesn’t need a lawyer,” Dick said.
“Well then …” Captain Walsh opened the script on his lap. “About this scene in the tent. Where were you supposed to wound Miss Garnet?”
“What about it?” Dick asked sharply.
“She play it like you wrote it?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t think so.” Captain Walsh raised the script, read: “‘… Ahri appears in the tent entrance … McGregor starts for her but … the pistol explodes twice.’” He looked up at Dick. “That mean pushing past McGregor and firing point-blank?”
Helplessly, Dick stared at her.
She said quietly, “I killed her.”
“Lisa!”
“Why did you fire point-blank, Miss Carson?”
“Because I hated her. I don’t now—”
“For God’s sake, Lisa!” Dick was on his feet. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Shut up, Blake.”
“Like hell! She doesn’t mean murder. She means she was acting out how she felt.”
“Why don’t you let her say what she means?”
“It’s so mixed up,” she said. “What I was thinking and what happened. I shouldn’t have come so close.”
“You knew the pistol was loaded?”
“No.”
“How do you know you killed her?”
“Didn’t I?”
They didn’t answer.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “I wouldn’t have killed her if I hadn’t come so close. That’s why I’m to blame. I’d have missed her.”
The two policemen exchanged glances. “Neat,” Captain Walsh said. Grimsby nodded. “Go well with a jury.”
“Now wait a minute,” Dick said angrily. “You don’t even know if the bullets came from the gun.”
Walsh eyed the Webley on the table. “Just fired, the pistol was.”
“Sure. She fired it. Everybody admits that. But how can you be sure it wasn’t loaded with blanks?”
From the cardboard box Walsh took an envelope, poured from it two brass shells. “Where’d these come from, then?”
He wasn’t looking at Dick, but at her.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Two .325 caliber cartridges. Expended. Found by the cot here.”
She shook her head, not knowing exactly what that meant.
At the same time Dick spoke: “Okay. You’ve got a couple o
f expended shells. But you don’t know if they killed Caresse.”
Walsh took a piece of paper from the envelope. “Ballistics report on slugs removed from the body.” He glanced at the paper. “Two slugs—.325 caliber ammunition.”
“We’d better get that lawyer,” Josh Gordon said.
“No!” Dick said angrily. “They still haven’t proved the slugs came from the pistol.”
“Ballisties’ll do that,” Sergeant Grimsby said.
Captain Walsh sighed. “It sorta looks that way.” He didn’t seem too happy about it.
“Even so,” Dick said. “Proving the gun killed Caresse doesn’t prove Lisa loaded it.”
“No.”
“Or that she knew it was loaded.”
“I didn’t know,” she said quickly. “I killed her, but I didn’t know.”
“Let me get this straight, Miss Carson.” Captain Walsh’s eyes were sympathetic. “You feel like—well, like a driver who went through a stop sign and killed a pedestrian. You feel you wouldn’t have killed him if you hadn’t gone through the sign.”
She nodded. “If you add the pedestrian was somebody I hated.”
Captain Walsh frowned. “That’s the rub.”
“Jury won’t like that,” Grimsby observed.
Dick asked, “How many years for slugging a cop?”
“Just try it,” Grimsby said.
“Both of you,” Captain Walsh said. “Pipe down.” He turned, his voice softening. “Mind if I ask you one more question, Miss Carson?”
“Not at all.” She felt relieved, getting it out in the open. And the captain seemed to understand. At worst she was a hit-and-run driver. No, not even that. She hadn’t run. She smiled at Dick’s worried face. It was all right.
“Ashton Graves,” Captain Walsh said. “Did he touch the pistol?”
“When we fought over it.”
“Before that. When it was in the holster.”
“He didn’t come near it.”
“Did anyone else touch it?”
“During the scene?”
“Yes.”
“I was the only one.”
Captain Walsh nodded. “Well, thanks, Miss Carson.”
“Then I can go?”
“No. I’m afraid we’ll have to hold you.”
“Suspicion of murder,” Sergeant Grimsby said.
“Like hell!” Dick said and started for her, and then he was lying on his back on the tent floor, an overturned chair by his head. Grimsby, rising and striking in one motion, had knocked him down. Josh Gordon was shouting angrily. The interior of the tent began to whirl. Faster and faster it whirled, a confusing blur of cot, table, tent pole and moving figures, like a film taken by a camera panning too rapidly. She swayed and someone took hold of her arm.
Black Is the Fashion for Dying Page 8
