“Who was it?” Gray demanded.
“A guy by the name of Herrick. Philip Herrick.”
The telephone rang next morning while Gray was still at the breakfast table. He carried it on its long cord into the kitchen and set it beside his plate.
“Hello?” he said.
“Gray?” a deep, rich voice inquired. “This is Daley Quine. I hear you had some trouble last night.”
“I’m still shaking,” Gray told him.
“Any idea who did it?”
“Not yet. It could have been anybody. Ferguson must have had lots of enemies. But I think it was somebody I’ve met before. It’s just an impression. I can’t prove a thing.”
“We might talk about it later on,” Quine suggested, not very hopefully. “There’s something new—you heard about the fingerprint angle?”
“Herrick? Yes.” Gray’s toaster clicked and he reached over to remove two pre-frozen waffles gingerly with his fingertips and laid them on his plate.
“What’s his story?” Gray asked.
“Hell, how can he deny it? He swears he hadn’t seen her for nearly a week. Says there was no quarrel. Says he’ll shoot himself if his wife finds out. The damn fool didn’t even tell me he had any connection. I almost dropped the case in his lap right then.”
Gray was spreading butter on the hot waffles.
“Was he just going to sit tight and let Eileen go to the gas chamber?” he asked.
Quine said, “Well, actually I don’t know that it means a lot. I get the impression Herrick thinks she really did it.”
“What about Pollard?”
“That’s anybody’s guess,” Quine said. “Eileen could have fought with Beverly Bond over Pollard. She could have fought with her over Herrick. Maybe she was trying to break it up before her mother found out. Hell, nobody knows but Eileen, and she isn’t talking. Either way, she’s got a motive. And Gray— ” Quine paused and Gray heard him blow his breath out explosively.
“What is it?” Gray asked, pouring sirup.
“Something else turned up.”
The tone of his voice made Gray suddenly straighten alertly.
“What?”
“It seems there was an earring,” Quine told him. “Eileen’s earring. Found on the floor in front of the body Saturday night. Eileen had one on. The other—well, somebody dropped it in the struggle at the Bond place. Witnesses saw Eileen pounding at the door with one earring on and one missing. The D.A. thinks this sews her up tight.” He paused, apparently waiting for comment.
Gray was silent. He could see again Eileen in his office chair, nervously fingering the single earring shaped like a dolphin.
After a moment Quine said, “Well, that’s that. It’s a damned lucky thing I’ve got a pipeline or this would have been sprung on me at the trial.” He chuckled. “Not that I couldn’t handle it. My theory is Eileen dropped the thing in the hall while she was knocking on the door. When they broke the door down everybody swarmed in and the earring got kicked into the apartment.”
“They may have witnesses who saw it before anybody went in,” Gray suggested dubiously.
“Damned few witnesses I can’t shake,” Quine told him. “That’s what I get paid for.” He cleared his throat. “Now all we’ve got to do is talk Eileen into retracting her statement,” he said.
“And that’s where I come in?” Gray asked.
“That’s where you come in.”
12
Zoe Herrick lay on a sofa by the window, looking out at the foggy morning. She had a mass of lace-edged pillows behind her and a pink-satin quilted coverlet across her knees. Her carefully curled hair was gray and her face lined and sagging. She looked old to be the mother of a girl of only twenty-three. But her make-up was elaborate and her manner as Gray came in was the confident manner of a beauty. Her whole face lit up with animation and sparkle.
“Mr. Gray!” she said, holding out her hand. On the thin fingers heavy diamonds caught the light. “It was good of you to come. I appreciate it.” She clutched his hand and looked up into his eyes for a moment. “We have this terrible trouble,” she said, “and I feel so helpless. I know things are being kept from me. I know it! I felt I had to see you…” She let the contralto voice die resonantly, and released Gray’s hand.
“Sit down,” she said. “Over there. That’s a very comfortable chair. My husband likes it. I’m just having coffee. Will you join me?”
Gray let her pour from a silver pot into a flowered cup fragile as eggshell. The coffee smelled wonderful.
“No cream,” he said. “No sugar. Thank you, Mrs. Herrick.” He sat down and faced her expectantly. There was a confidence in her manner that told him she didn’t know yet about her husband’s relationship with Beverly Bond. With any luck, perhaps she need never know.
“I can’t believe,” she said, looking up at him over the rim of her cup, “that my little girl did this terrible thing. I know some other explanation will have to be found. I know it! That’s what I want to talk to you about, Mr. Gray.” She sipped coffee and seemed to be waiting.
Gray said, “Quine is a good man, Mrs. Herrick, but he’ll need all the help he can get. I think you said on the telephone you had something important to talk to me about. Have you talked to Quine too?”
She gave him a rather blank look. “Quine? He won’t tell me anything. My husband won’t even discuss Eileen with me. I’m going out of my mind not knowing what’s happening! That’s why I wanted to see you.”
Again she looked expectant. It began to dawn on Gray why he was here. The important subject she had wanted to discuss was herself. She was feeling left out with all this legal and emotional activity going on around her. She had summoned Gray—perhaps in the role of family employee—to furnish her with news her husband and her lawyer withheld.
His first reaction was anger. His second was anger at himself for expecting more from her than she could give. In her position, with her handicaps and problems, would he himself do better?
She gave him a flashing, expectant look and he realized something more—that this was not a real situation to her. She had been insulated from reality so long she couldn’t recognize it when it touched her. And her experience on the stage helped foster the illusion. To Zoe Herrick, this was a play. She was struggling for a bigger role in it. But no matter how it came out, the play would end, the curtain would come down and the actors would go home untouched by the events on the stage. And meanwhile, the excitement was stimulating.
“All I know about what’s going on,” she said, “I get from watching the newscasts and reading the paper. Philip won’t tell me anything. How do you suppose I feel?”
“What is it you want to know?” Gray asked.
“Is Eileen in danger, really? I can’t believe she is. She couldn’t have killed that poor girl. They wouldn’t really try her for it, would they?” She was talking too fast. She was trying to evade an answer. She didn’t want to hear it.
Gray said gently, “I’m afraid they will.”
She drew a long, shuddering breath. Gray couldn’t tell if she was calculating the effect or not. It sounded sincere.
“I wish there was more to tell you, Mrs. Herrick,” he said. “Nobody knows very much just yet. It’s a matter of piecing things together until we get a pattern big enough to recognize.” He thought for a moment. “Have the police talked to you?” he asked.
She gave a quick, frowning nod. Evidently the interview hadn’t been very satisfactory to her.
“Oh, yes, a little.”
“What did they ask?”
“Things about Eileen, mostly. Who her friends are, whether she ever mentioned that wretched Bond woman. What she did that—that night. How she was dressed, how she seemed to be feeling. Nothing I was very helpful with, I’m afraid.”
Gray said, “How she was dressed?”
“Yes. What dress, what wrap, whether she wore jewelry—it seems pretty silly, doesn’t it? All they had to do was look at her the next mor
ning. They tell me the poor child didn’t even have a change of clothes until we sent her some.”
“Jewelry,” Gray echoed. “Did they specify what kind?”
Zoe shook her head. “She wasn’t wearing any, so it didn’t matter.”
“Not even earrings?”
“I don’t think so. They didn’t ask me specifically, but I can’t remember any.”
Probably they didn’t make it specific, Gray thought, for fear of alerting Quine. He wondered how important the earring really was. Maybe the police had witnesses who were sure it had lain at the dead girl’s feet when the door burst open. He knew that he dared not go on the assumption they hadn’t
“Mrs. Herrick,” he said, “think hard. Could Eileen have been wearing earrings that night without your noticing?”
“I don’t understand,” she said, looking interested. “Why on earth do you ask that?”
“It may not matter at all. But do you remember?”
She shut her eyes, pressed a heavily ringed hand to her face, went through a practiced stage routine of an actress painfully calling up memory before the footlights.
“Earrings, earrings,” she said. “I don’t think—I really don’t seem to see any earrings, Mr. Gray. Eileen was wearing her hair in a new way, brushed forward over her ears. I’m not sure I could have told whether she had any on or not.”
Gray said, “Oh,” rather blankly. Then he asked, “Would a woman with her ears covered up wear earrings?”
Zoe smiled. “That’s very interesting. I don’t know. As a matter of fact I doubt if anybody knows. Ears have been uncovered for so many years now—heavens, since the early thirties, isn’t it? Right now the style’s still fairly new. It would just be a question of how you feel about it. There’s no precedent that I know of.”
She touched her ear delicately. Then a rather startled look crossed her face.
“Yes!” she said. “I’m wrong. She was wearing earrings. I remember now. I was going along the hall in my chair that evening when I heard Eileen and her father talking in her room. Her father was—” Zoe Herrick paused, grimacing. “Philip has a temper,” she confided. “He and Eileen don’t always get along too well together. But I expect you know that Mr. Gray. Philip was scolding Eileen about something.” She flashed Gray a sympathetic glance. “As a matter of fact, I think your name came into the conversation. Philip hasn’t been happy about psychotherapy for Eileen, you know, and that night he—”
“Let’s not lose the earring just yet” Gray suggested, smiling. “I’m interested in that too.”
She smiled back, a bright vivacious smile.
“I’m sorry. I know I ramble too much. Philip was standing by the bureau scolding Eileen and I remember now she was just putting on one earring, leaning forward to look in the mirror. Very pretty earrings they are, too. Gold dolphins with brilliants all round.”
“You saw just one at that time?”
Zoe closed her eyes, thought, and nodded. “Just one. Then she saw me and called for me to come in, and I came. She appealed to me on the subject of psychotherapy, and I tried to smooth Philip down. He never loses his temper with me, Mr. Gray. Not even on this subject. Though I admit when the idea came up that Eileen might need help, we nearly quarreled about it.” She smiled at Gray. “That would have been our fifth quarrel in twenty-five years. It’s a good record, isn’t it?”
Gray smiled back. “You’re not serious?”
“Indeed I am. We’re still very much in love.”
“It’s an amazing record,” Gray said. “About the earring—Then Eileen might have been distracted and not put on the other one? She could have left home not realizing it?”
Zoe nodded. “Except when she turned quickly or brushed her hair back, you couldn’t see them. It’s quite possible. No one would have noticed, probably. Mr. Gray, I do wish you’d tell me why you ask!”
Gray set down his cup and rose.
“When I have something to go on, I’ll come back and tell you,” he promised. “Just now it’s guesswork. But you’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Herrick.” He paused, looking at her consideringly.
“Maybe you can be a little more helpful. Do you know Dan Abel?”
Her face lighted up a little. “Oh, yes. I like Dan. A very nice boy. A little too serious, almost dedicated. I’m sorry he and Eileen broke up. I sometimes think—well, no, I’d better not say it.”
“Say what, Mrs. Herrick?”
She wasn’t hard to persuade. “All right, I will say it. It’s just that I think marriage should be between two people who love each other. Like Philip and me. Not—not for convenience or business or politics. And I did like Dan Abel.”
“You don’t like Neil Pollard?”
“He’s a fine man,” Zoe said. “He’s a dependable man. I think it would make a good marriage, except for one thing. Eileen doesn’t love him.”
“How do you know that?”
“I haven’t the least idea, but I do know.” She smiled.
Gray nodded. “I’d trust your judgment,” he said. “I’m sorry. I have to leave.” He took her extended hand. “You’ve had to go through a hard ordeal, Mrs. Herrick. There may be bad times still to come. I hope you believe I’m doing all I can to help. Whatever I have to do.”
She pressed his hand, dramatizing her vivacious smile.
“I do, Mr. Gray. I do!”
On the verge of turning away he paused suddenly, looking down at her.
“Mrs. Herrick, were you at home last night?”
She blinked. “Of course I was. I called you from here.”
“I mean afterward. And were you alone?”
“You sound like the police,” she said, smiling archly. “Yes, I was here and quite alone after about nine. Why do you ask?”
“Your husband wasn’t here?” Gray persisted.
“Oh, yes. I thought you meant alone in this room. Philip spent the evening in his study, I think. I went to bed early with a sleeping pill, read for a little while and turned off the light about ten. Does that help any?”
“I hope so.” Gray smiled at her. “Thanks. I hope I haven’t been too disappointing to you. I wish there were more to tell.”
“You’ve been very mysterious. Fascinating and mysterious. Do come back when you can, Mr. Gray. And thank you!”
The air smelled of rain as Gray got into his car under the trees. As far as the earring was concerned, he told himself, the field was wide open. Eileen had probably worn one earring to the night club. The other might have been left on her dressing table during the quarrel with Herrick. Or it might have slipped off unnoticed at any point during the evening. Herrick could have picked it up. Zoe could have picked it up. So could Pollard. Or Chris Bond, Beverly’s ex-husband. Or Beverly herself, he realized suddenly. Or any of dozens of still unidentified people along the route Eileen had traveled that night A route between her own bedroom and the apartment where the dead girl was found with a gold dolphin on the carpet at her feet.
And as for last night, that was wide open too. Briefly Gray shut his eyes and tried to guess if the killer in the dark room could have been Zoe Herrick. If she could walk a few steps, could she walk like a normal woman when she chose to? And that voice from inside the door—a woman’s contralto? He didn’t think so. But Zoe had been an actress, and it might be just possible…
Gray shook his head and started the motor. Somebody was afraid of him. Somebody wanted Ferguson silent. One thing was sure—the somebody wasn’t Eileen.
13
Eileen sat with her head lowered, running her thumbnail endlessly back and forth along a groove in the chair arm.
“What do you think I should have done?” Gray asked her in a quiet voice.
She shrugged irritably, not looking up. But at least, she wasn’t crying. She had relented enough to sit and listen. It was progress.
“You should have let me—end things—my own way,” she said in a muffled voice. “Why can’t you let me alone? You can’t help. Nothing can.
What good is psychoanalysis when I’m going to die?”
Gray said, “There’s a story about a patient who said to his therapist one day, ‘I feel terrible.’ The therapist repeated after him, ‘You feel terrible.’ The patient said, ‘I feel like jumping out the window.’ The therapist said, ‘You feel like jumping out the window.’ Then the patient got up, walked across the room and jumped out the window.”
Eileen looked up, shocked into a surprised, reluctant laugh.
“There are times when I have to interfere,” Gray said, watching her. They had been talking quietly for nearly half an hour now, repeating the same things in different terms, going around and around a spiral that seemed to be leading upward into the light. Or Gray hoped it was.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Eileen said angrily “I haven’t told you about my—about Neil and Beverly Bond. I mean—” She shot him a look. “I hadn’t told you until that day in your office when the police came. I wish now I had But it’s too late. I killed her, didn’t I?”
Gray let the silence go on.
“I did kill her!”
Gray said, “Eileen, do you remember how we’ve uncovered some of the causes of your unhappiness? Your dreams, and free association, and so on? How you’ve managed to look at some of the things that disturbed you so much you had to forget them? Like your feelings toward your parents?”
Eileen said slowly, “You mean—my loving him as well as hating him?”
“That’s part of it. You’ve often been angry with your father. But you remember a girl is often closer to her father in some ways than to her mother. She may think of her mother as a rival. She may wish her mother would die so she could have her father all to herself. We’ve found out how many of your feelings of guilt come from the time of your mother’s accident.”
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