After Midnight

by Nielsen, Helen

  “Miss Armitage—” he called.

  Afternoons were always windy at the beach, and the surf was noisier at the rocky end. She didn’t hear him. As Simon was about to call again, he noticed a man in swimming trunks who was trying to fold up a canvas chair on the narrow spit of sand just below the Seacliff houses. It was his pale body that made him so conspicuous: white skin above black trunks, white arms threshing about with the chair. A small brown boy in short levis scrambled over the rocks and came to the man’s rescue as Simon approached. Momentarily distracted, Simon now noticed that Nancy Armitage had stopped a short distance from the man in trunks and was staring at him strangely.

  Now the chair was neatly folded. The boy grinned and handed it to the man.

  “Keep it,” the man said. “I won’t be needing it any more.”

  The voice was familiar. Simon forgot the nurse and turned back to Frank Lodge, who seemed smaller and more vulnerable in trunks than he had on the witness stand at the hearing. Now he stooped and gathered up a collection of sun lotion, beach towel and sandals, and, rising, became aware of his audience.

  He seemed embarrassed.

  “Mr. Lodge,” Simon said, “are you leaving us?”

  “Drake—isn’t it? Yes, Simon Drake,” Lodge answered. He had to shout the words above the sound of the surf behind them. “I will be leaving soon. Confidentially, I was glad of the chance to get rid of that chair. Nearly broke my back bringing it down the stairs.”

  “You should have taken your sun bath on the deck.” Nancy Armitage said quietly.

  Lodge looked at the woman, but he didn’t answer her. He juggled the equipment in his arms, hesitated as if waiting to be excused, and then simply turned his back to both of them and stalked to the stairway. Simon stepped closer to Nancy.

  “That was Frank Lodge,” he explained. “He was a witness at the hearing.”

  “I know,” she said. “I followed it in the news.”

  “I thought you would. How did it feel, Miss Armitage? Did you have any regrets?”

  She buried her hands in the rolled up waistband of her sweater and began to walk slowly back along the route they had just taken. Simon followed at her side. As they walked away from the rocks the surf became quieter. They could speak in normal tones.

  “That’s a strange question to ask,” she said. “Why should I regret telling the truth?”

  “I have—often,” Simon said. “But then, I’m a nonconformist. I was thinking of Roger Warren. In spite of your bias against his wife, the jury failed to indict. And yet Warren was murdered—by someone. Do you have a second choice for killer, Miss Armitage?”

  She was nobody’s fool, this mercurial Nancy Armitage. Her antennae were up and her radar working.

  “No!” she said quickly. “I wasn’t acquainted with Mr. Warren.”

  “But he did live dangerously.”

  “I don’t know about that, either.”

  “It’s obvious. His house—his car. The violent way he died. Did you know you had something in common? He was fond of your song—’Infidelity.’”

  Nancy stopped and picked up a shell from the beach. She brushed the sand from it and carefully avoided Simon’s eyes.

  “Who told you that?” she asked tightly.

  “His wife. She played it on the juke box at The Cove when. I took her there before the hearing. She said Roger whistled it in the shower.”

  “It has a nice melody,” she admitted.

  “But it isn’t in the machine at The Cove any more,” Simon said. “It wasn’t getting any plays.”

  The shell didn’t please Nancy. She threw it back in the sand and continued walking. She walked faster now with an independent swing to her gait.

  “Mr. Drake,” she said, as he quickened his pace to keep up, “if you’re so smitten with the little widow, why don’t you shack up with her and work it out of your system—or are you afraid of knives?”

  “Frankly, I’m more afraid of claws,” Simon said, “and yours are showing.”

  “Not my claws—my instincts,” she retorted. “Why would you have gone all the way out to The Cove to play a juke box if she wasn’t under your skin?”

  “All the way out?” Simon echoed. “You know where it is, then. You’ve been there?”

  “A few times.”

  “But you didn’t walk—not that far, even in the rain.”

  They had reached the spot just below where Simon’s car was parked. She faced him—eyes blazing.

  “Mr. Drake,” she said, “there are such things as cabs.”

  “Yes,” Simon said.

  “And friends with automobiles.”

  “Admittedly,” Simon said. “And, while we’re on the subject, Charley Becker is dead.”

  “I read that in the news, too.”

  “Did you read that he was murdered?”

  It became very quiet. Here the surf was just a whisper against the sand, and for seconds Nancy Armitage made no sound at all. Then, hoarsely, she said:

  “That’s not true!”

  “The District Attorney thinks it is—and so do I.”

  “But why? He wasn’t—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “He wasn’t what, Miss Armitage?”

  “He wasn’t anybody.”

  “Are you class conscious, Miss Armitage? Do you only approve of murder if the victim is a rich, spoiled bourgeois? You said something like that before the hearing—”

  “I said that I lied about seeing Wanda kill her husband. You tried to imply then that we knew one another—but you didn’t succeed. You can’t ever succeed because it isn’t true. I don’t want to talk to you any more, Mr. Drake. You won your case. You got your client off free just as I said you would. You won. Please leave me alone!”

  She wasn’t all ice, this conscience-ridden Florence Nightingale. Her voice was trembling with anger when she ended her speech, and she punctuated it by running quickly up the dozen wooden steps to the parking level.

  “Miss Armitage,” Simon called after her, “are you sure you weren’t in front of the Warren house the night of the murder?”

  She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down at him.

  “I went to an ambulance call on Palm Drive,” she said. “I told you that!”

  “You told Duane Thompson that, too. And there was such a call and everybody accepted your story. But Miss Armitage—did anybody see you there?”

  Simon was too close to Seacliff Drive to go home without making a call. He drove to the Warren house and found Wanda attired in a knee length smock with a portable hair dryer buzzing on her head.

  “By the time we reach another planet,” he remarked, “Earthlings will look more like space people than space people. Where do you plug off?”

  Wanda located the switch and put an end to the buzzing. Even with a balloon on her head she was lovely. Simon suggested dinner. She declined.

  “I’m packing,” she said. “The rent’s up in three days.” And then she laughed ironically. “On our anniversary,” she added. “In exactly three days Roger and I would have been married a year.”

  “Where will you go?” Simon asked.

  “I did start out to have a career.”

  “Not back to the Club Mobile! I won’t allow it!”

  “You won’t allow it?” she echoed. “Mr. Drake, you sound just like my father!”

  She switched on the dryer again and marched into the bedroom. Simon followed. It was still daylight and the sliding glass doors were open. The roar of the surf on the rocks below was a greater deterrent to communication than the hair dryer had been. He closed them.

  “Have you read the papers?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m tired of reading about me. I haven’t even turned on the radio all day.”

  “Then you don’t know that Charley Becker’s dead.”

  He watched her face for reaction. There was none.

  “I don’t know a Charley Becker,” she said.

  �
�Yes, you do. He operated The Cove and rented the boat to Roger.”

  Now her eyes widened in apprehension.

  “That man is dead? What happened?”

  “Officially, he fell off the pier and drowned.”

  “And unofficially?—Oh, Simon, was he killed, too? Does it have anything to do with the record in the juke box?”

  “It might.”

  “Then last night—”

  “Last night, in all probability, whoever killed Becker tried to kill us, too. The song ‘Infidelity’ was played repeatedly to frighten us out of the restaurant. The rest would have been automatic if my getaway speed hadn’t been underestimated. Think, Wanda, isn’t there anything you haven’t told me? Something Roger might have mentioned about his fishing trips? If only he’d talked in his sleep!”

  Wanda sat down on the edge of the bed and deliberated.

  “He didn’t even snore,” she said. “In fact, he didn’t sleep much.”

  Simon stood facing Wanda with his back to the glass door. When a huge wave rolled in and crashed against the reef, the entire door shuddered as if reacting to a sonic blast.

  “Is it that noisy here all the time?” Simon demanded.

  “Usually,” Wanda said. “Roger told me it was because of the rocks, or the depth or something. Oh, I don’t know. It’s not so bad in the daytime, usually. When we first moved in, we couldn’t stand it. We were going to move…. Simon, about that car—”

  Simon held up one hand for silence.

  “I’m thinking,” he said.

  He looked out through the glass doors. All of the new houses on Seacliff Drive had them. All of the new houses had sundecks. Frank Lodge was on his at the moment, apparently having abandoned the beach for the day.

  “When you and Roger rented this house,” Simon asked, “did you look at any of the others?”

  “Several,” Wanda said. “They were all vacant then.”

  “Do they all have the same floor plan?”

  “Yes—except some of them have three bedrooms. The colors are different. I wanted this one because I like gold.”

  Simon stepped over the bed and took the dryer from Wanda’s head.

  “Don’t—I’m not dry!” she protested.

  “Make the sacrifice,” Simon said. “Now, listen.”

  He left her sitting on the edge of the bed with her hair in pin curls and walked back through the living room, down the front stairs and opened the front door. There was always some wind in the afternoon, but it wasn’t anywhere near the velocity of the storm that had occurred the night of Roger Warren’s death. Simon opened the door wide and then slammed it shut. He repeated this action three more times, locked the door and returned upstairs to the bedroom.

  Wanda stared at him questioningly.

  “Did you hear it?” he asked.

  “Hear what?” she countered.

  “Did you hear the front door slam?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “How could I hear the front door slam back here on the ocean side of the house? We even had to have an extension put on the doorbell.”

  “Where?” Simon demanded.

  “I don’t remember. Oh—yes. It’s on the wall behind the teak screen.”

  Simon found the bell and disconnected the wires. When Wanda asked him why, he explained that he wanted her to lock him out when he left the house and devote the rest of the evening to drying her hair.

  “And forget this house has a door,” he added, “until you hear from me.”

  Simon drove to City Hall and found Lieutenant Franzen applying adhesive tape to the frames of his glasses.

  “My head must have shrunk,” he said. “They fall off whenever I look down.”

  “What do you know about Frank Lodge?” Simon asked.

  Franzen fitted the glasses over his ears and reflected.

  “Lodge, Frank,” Simon prodded. “A state’s witness at the Warren prelim.”

  “I know who Frank Lodge is,” Franzen answered, “but I wonder why you’re asking. Worried, Mr. Drake?”

  “What about?”

  “Justice. Truth. Murder will out.”

  “You still think Wanda Warren killed her husband!”

  “Don’t you, Mr. Drake? In a case like this one—a husband and wife problem—it’s usually a pretty basic situation. Love, hate. Hate, love. You got lucky, Mr. Drake. If that neurotic nurse hadn’t tried to play the good citizen—”

  “How do you know she’s neurotic?” Simon asked.

  “The way she came in here with that yarn about witnessing the murder and then reversed herself before the hearing. It suggests some kind of instability, don’t you think?”

  “Do you really want to know why she reversed herself?” Simon asked.

  Franzen was immediately interested.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Because I learned she was mixed up with a man and spent at least a part of that Sunday with him. I warned her that I would force her to reveal his identity if she testified at the hearing.”

  “If the D.A. knew that!” Franzen exclaimed.

  “Duane Thompson is free to make as many inquiries as I do,” Simon said. “It’s not my fault if he’s careless. If he hadn’t been so sold on his own opinion, he would have checked out Nancy Armitage as thoroughly as I did. Now I’ve told you about Armitage. What can you tell me about Lodge?”

  Franzen’s integrity had been challenged. He had to cooperate. He went to the files and got the folder on Frank Lodge.

  “We’re not as careless as you think,” he said. “I personally had a complete check run on Lodge. Here it is: Age—42. Occupation: salesman for Dover Power Tools, Incorporated, Alameda, California, for the past three years. Married to the former Mae Evelyn Aldrich, 39, for eight years. Mrs. Lodge is a substitute school teacher in the elementary grades. Lodge was hospitalized last August—surgery for kidney stones. He came to Marina Beach early in September to recuperate.”

  “I didn’t know a kidney stone operation was so serious,” Simon said. “Did he have complications?”

  “He had medical insurance. It’s his money.”

  “But those houses on Seacliff Drive are expensive,” Simon protested. “He could do better in a rest home.”

  Franzen smiled tolerantly.

  “Maybe Lodge doesn’t like rest homes,” he said. “I have to use psychology and imagination in my job, Mr. Drake. Now just suppose you had been on the operating table and it was the first serious illness of your life. It suddenly dawns on you that you aren’t going to live forever and maybe there was one thing you always wanted to do—”

  “—rent a house on Seacliff Drive and sun myself on my own private beach,” Simon added. “Fine projecting, Lieutenant. But why doesn’t Mr. Lodge have his wife with him?”

  “She’s teaching school and they need the money. Lodge told me that part himself. Everything he told me checked out—the wife, the operation, the job.”

  It looked complete on paper but Simon wasn’t satisfied.

  “Why did he choose Marina Beach for the convalescence?” he persisted. “Had he been down this way before?”

  “Twice—both times representing his company,” Franzen said. “He stayed at City Motel both trips—and it’s on their records. Now, do you still think we’re careless?”

  “I think you’re perfectionists,” Simon said, “but so am I.”

  Simon left the lieutenant to straighten out his files and drove downtown to the City Motel. It was a posh new commercial hostelry with hot and cold swimming pools and piped music in every room. It had been open for exactly eleven months and every registration card completed during that period was still on file. The first date of Lodge’s stay was a dry well. The motel had been open only three days and Lodge was put on the second floor all by himself. The second date, late in August, was more interesting. Again Lodge chose the second floor, but this time he had a next door neighbor for the duration of his stay. A merchant seaman named Samuel Olson.

 
; FIFTEEN

  Samuel Olson was a merchant seaman on the S.S. Dobson assigned to the regular run between Los Angeles and Hong Kong by way of Honolulu and Yokohama. It was mid-morning of the day after Simon’s discovery of the volume of the surf sound below the Seacliff Drive houses, and, now that he had the key to the puzzle, everything was falling into place the way the sky fell on Henny Penny. Hannah’s contact came through with the needed information within hours of her call of inquiry. She relayed the message and waited for Simon’s reaction.

  “Finally,” he said, “I’ve got a connection. All those suspects and not one thing in common but some point of contact with Roger Warren, And now, when it comes, it’s not one of my suspects at all.”

  “By suspects you mean August Mayerling and Eddie Berman,” Hannah reflected.

  “And Nancy Armitage and Commander Warren.”

  “Commander Warren! You can’t think the commander killed his own son!”

  Simon didn’t blame her for being shocked. It was a wild idea.

  “I try to keep an open mind,” he explained. “The old boy’s playing it too coy, Hannah. He had to know Roger was mixed up in something off color. He’s an opinionated old goat, but he’s not stupid. And the Warren name and record is important to him. Whether he knows it or not, that’s why he’s intent on convicting Wanda. It would be so neat that way. Put all of the blame on the image he has of his son’s wife and resurrect Roger without blemish or wound. But resurrections aren’t brought about by shifting guilt. There’s more to it than that.”

  “But murder, Simon! No, I can’t see the commander committing murder even to save his precious honor.”

  “We all have a weakness—a breaking point somewhere,” Simon insisted. “For Commander Warren it’s that stiff-necked hero image that won’t let him forgive human weakness or even acknowledge that it exists. His fantasy—” He paused, remembering. “Nancy Armitage told me hers. She’s not stupid either, but she has a weakness.”

  “Which is?”

  “She’s a woman.”

  “And so is Wanda, and hell hath no fury—”

  Simon placed a finger firmly over Hannah’s lips.