by Zenith Brown
“Well, we go back to the poisoning of the little driver,” he went on, not very cheerfully. “And we’ve got to find out who got to Durbin’s place just before you got there Thursday night, Colonel. And how they got in and out.”
“The little driver,” Colonel Primrose said very placidly, “was quite accidentally killed by D. J. Durbin, who was trying to poison Cass Crane. There’s never been the slightest doubt about it, Bigges. It looks too obvious the way it happened. It wouldn’t have if the little man hadn’t drunk the liquor and Crane had, and Durbin had whipped off with the balance of it, which of course is what he went there to do. Durbin was well used to taking chances, through a ruthless, treacherous and damned rotten career. He got away with everything, by and large, until . . . Thursday instant. The exact time being, I take it, unknown to us. No, you can forget about Achille. The poisoner doesn’t strangle people.”
“All right, Colonel,” Inspector Bigges said shortly. “That leaves us like this. Two doctors are ready to swear Mrs. Durbin couldn’t physically have done it. We know he was dead at nine-forty or thereabouts. Armistead says he was alive at eight-thirty. The doctors say he ought to have been dead at eight. But you can’t put the time of death within an hour. I’m banking on Armistead—Mr. Blodgett says he’s a well-known lawyer of fine reputation. And that gives him and the multi-millionnaire clown an out.”
He looked at Colonel Primrose steadily.
“My guess, Colonel, is that the person who came in that house after eight-thirty and before you people got there, and killed him, was somebody who just hated him.—Just couldn’t stand it to have him alive any longer.”
“That would be . . . just about my guess too,” Colonel Primrose said quietly.
“All right.—Why did Mrs. Durbin break up the records?”
“The only assumption is that she knew—or thought she knew—who the murderer was,” Colonel Primrose said. “And didn’t want him caught.”
“—The chief fellow she wouldn’t want caught being the guy Durbin had tried to poison the night before.”
Colonel Primrose said nothing.
“You can’t get away from Cass Crane, Colonel,” Bigges said doggedly. “Now I’m going to make a guess here.—Mrs. Durbin called him up after she went upstairs, all right. But she’d also called him up right after Durbin had smashed her with the stick . . . and she told him about it. Wouldn’t any red-blooded fellow——”
He stopped as the doorbell sounded.
“That’s Mrs. Crane, I expect,” Colonel Primrose said. “She’s about due now. Perhaps she can tell us something. Will you let her in?”
That was to Inspector Bigges, and it was to stop me. I sat down again.
“I’ve had trouble with Buck this morning, Mrs. Latham,” he said, smiling a little. “You two are going to do a lot of damage, some day.”
He turned to Molly as she came in. Her head was high, but her face was a little pale, as well it might have been, of course, meeting Inspector Bigges at my door. She looked quickly at me, and at Colonel Primrose.
22
Molly Crane stood there just inside the doorway.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” Colonel Primrose said. “I want you to listen to . . . something I have here, and I want you to tell me something.”
He hesitated for a moment.
“There was some question,” he said deliberately, “about the purpose of Cass’s visit to the Durbins the night he came home. And there had been some questions before that.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
Her voice was perfectly steady.
Colonel Primrose took a record out of the book he’d brought and put it on the victrola.
“I have a conversation here between Cass and Sondauer,” he said soberly. “He went to Sondauer’s apartment at the Garfield last night at ten o’clock. It took us all evening to rig up Durbin’s recording machine in the next room. The first voice you hear is Armistead’s, Sondauer’s attorney. The third is Sondauer.”
He waited until the automatic needle moved over and set itself down on the black disc.
It was the most extraordinary thing to hear. Listening to Mr. Austin-Armistead I could have thought myself in the room.
“Good evening, Crane. You know Mr. Sondauer, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know him. Good evening.”
Then Mr. Sondauer’s voice, cordial and rich, with a slightly foreign accent, though what accent it was, any more than what part of the world it was one had heard in D. J. Durbin’s voice, I couldn’t tell.
“We meet again, Crane. You should have told me on the plane who you were. Come, sit down. Have a drink. What will you have, Mr. Crane?”
“I won’t have anything, thanks, Sondauer.”
I could see Cass Crane’s one eyebrow slightly raised, and the sardonic grin at one corner of his mouth.
“Mr. Blodgett told me you wanted to see me, Mr. Armistead, about getting word to your son in Africa. He didn’t say Sondauer was here. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go downstairs and have my drink.”
“Now, come, Mr. Crane. We have a little business to talk, you and me?”
“No. We haven’t, Sondauer. I’d like to tell you just what I told your rat-faced pal Durbin the other night. When I want to change my job I’ll do it. We’ve got nice clean sewers right here in Washington. I don’t have to get in yours. And don’t bother to send me a bottle of poisoned Scotch the way your friend did. I can still afford to buy my own liquor. Good night.”
I heard the door bang, and there was a moment’s silence. Then Mr. Sondauer’s voice again, slightly puzzled.
“But why did you think he would talk business, my friend Armistead? If he would have talked, he would not have kept quiet on the plane who he was. And Durbin has already said it was impossible.”
“—I thought he might have come around.”
“Ah, but he now can marry Durb——”
I’m sure Colonel Primrose had intended to pick up the needle arm before it got to that point. Or maybe he hadn’t. At any rate, as he got it off it fairly screeched the word “marry” at us.
Molly Crane stood there, her face paler still and her amber eyes wider.
“If you played that, Colonel Primrose,” she said quietly, before anyone else spoke, “to show me Cass is an honest man, you didn’t have to bother. I knew that. I knew the things people said were false. I’ve never doubted him even for an instant.”
I didn’t doubt her, not for one half instant.
“And if you wanted to tell me that now he can marry Mr. Durbin’s widow, you needn’t have done that either, because I know that too.”
She looked steadily from Colonel Primrose to the Inspector.
“And if you think he killed Mr. Durbin so he could marry her, you’re very wrong.”
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly before she went on.
“I should have told you, I guess, that I was at the Durbins’ Thursday night. Mrs. Durbin called him up about a quarter past eight, as he was leaving for the Pentagon. He didn’t say he was going to her house, but I knew he was. I don’t know what happened to me, but I was . . . I suppose I was jealous and a fool. I was frightened, too—I didn’t want him to go there after what had happened at our house. I didn’t know whether Mr. Durbin was making her call just to get him there, to try to trap him . . . the way Colonel Primrose tried to.”
A spot of color flared up along her high cheek bones, and she glanced across the room at him with withering angry contempt.
“I don’t know what I thought I could do, but I had to go. So I followed him. He went in the back way, and so did I. Then I followed him upstairs. It’s a big house, of course, and I know it better than he does, because I had friends who used to live there. She was crying, saying something about her hands, and a stick, and he was angry. Of course, anyone would be!”
She looked from one to the other of them, the color still burning in her cheeks, her voice passionate
with her conviction of truth.
“I was afraid he might do something to Mr. Durbin, and I wanted to stop him. I got downstairs and waited in the drawing room. I didn’t want him to know I was there unless he had to know—he’d have hated me. I hid behind the curtains and waited. Then two men came out of the library, slammed the door and went out at the front. Finally Cass came. He just came down the stairs, swearing, and went out the back way. He didn’t go near the library. I waited a minute and started to go too. But the phone rang and Flowers came up and answered it. It was a friend of his, and he talked and he talked and he talked.”
She moved her hands helplessly.
“It was a woman, and he told her about not having dinner and the kitten and Courtney’s hands, until I thought I’d scream. I went down into the cellar. I thought I could get out that way. But I couldn’t, and I came up again. It was too late then. You were there, Colonel Primrose. I could hear your voices. And Flowers was sitting out on the back step with the door open. I took my shoes off and got up the back stairs, thinking I’d ring for him and perhaps he’d go around trying to see who did it and I could get away. But then you rang for him and he was right in the hall and the drawing room, so I just stayed until . . . until I got out. It didn’t matter, because I knew Cass was safe.”
She turned back to Colonel Primrose.
“You see, none of you understand. You think Cass will marry Courtney because she has so much money. But that isn’t fair. It won’t be because of that. It’s because they’re in love with each other, and they both made a mistake, and they know it, now. People don’t always know things till they’ve been through some kind of a tragedy to learn. I understand how they feel. I seem to be the only one who does.”
I saw that Colonel Primrose had quietly taken another record from his book, and had glanced at the victrola. He was starting to put it on, but he stopped, looked at her soberly for a moment, and put it back in the book.
“Is he free of the suspicion you had against him, Colonel Primrose?” she asked simply.
“It wasn’t my suspicion,” he answered, just as simply. “But he is free of it.”
She turned to Inspector Bigges. “You don’t think he murdered Mr. Durbin, now?”
He looked at her and shook his head slowly.
“No. I believe your story. He’d have had to climb the garden wall to get in the library by way of the terrace, which can’t be done, and the door’s the only other way in. You didn’t hear anybody else come in?”
She shook her head. “But I couldn’t have, except when I was in the drawing room. And . . . if it’s all right for me to . . . to go, somewhere else, now . . . I couldn’t, while he was . . . in danger. But I’d like to give them a chance to begin without—without Cass’s having to worry about hurting me. And I’d like to go home now, if I may?”
Colonel Primrose nodded, and she left quickly, the tears, I think, not as far away as she was trying to make out.
We sat there silently for a while.
“Well,” Inspector Bigges said then, “no matter what the facts are, she’d only have to tell that story to a jury once. Crane’s a damned fool, chucking that girl for Mrs. Durbin . . . Mrs. Durbin and all the money in creation.”
It was the next morning, Sunday, that I took Sheila out for a run down the parkway above Rock Creek Drive. It was about eleven when I got back to the end of Beall Street and stopped in to see if one or both of them would like to come over for lunch, a vegetarian friend having—illegally perhaps—sent me a ham.
Cass opened the door.
“Hello, Grace, come on in,” he said. He grinned without any amusement. “I know I look like I’d been on a three-weeks’ bender.”
I must have looked as shocked as I was. He was haggard and drawn, his eyes bloodshot and his hair a mess, and he hadn’t shaved.
“Come on in, anyway,” he said.
I followed him into the front room.
“Where’s Molly?”
The house seemed quiet and dead. It had the curious atmosphere of a house not lived in, or one that’s had something happen in it, as if the soul had been driven out for the time.
“She’s at the hospital pinch-hitting for somebody.”
He said it as if everything inside him was gall and wormwood.
“Sit down,” he said.
“What is the matter, Cass?” I asked.
“Everything,” he said evenly. “She’s not coming back.”
He pulled a battered pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. The ashtray on the arm of his chair was filled with half-smoked butts and there were two empty crumpled packages in the fireplace.
“I don’t blame her. But I wish to God I hadn’t left her to find out she’d made a mistake. If I hadn’t gone off in a week after we were married, maybe she’d still care something about me. I guess it’s my fault. But . . . gosh!”
He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. Then he looked up at me.
“Were you ever in love, Grace?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Not if you just guess so. Down there I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. She was everywhere I’d look. All the time I was away. I’d write her the sappiest letters, and then I wouldn’t send them, thinking I was coming back and I’d see her. And most of the time I couldn’t let anybody know where I was anyway. You know, I damn near cried when I got off the plane and she wasn’t there.”
My face as I stared at him must have been a sheer blank.
“When Courtney said she was with Randy . . . he’s a swell guy. It didn’t occur to me they wouldn’t show up, so I insisted on waiting around, like a bloody fool, until Courtney told me they weren’t coming. I still thought . . . oh, well. I didn’t get on to it until she wasn’t here and he said she was over at your place. Then all this ruckus comes up. I knew Durbin was out to get me, one way or another. They pulled a lot of fast ones while I was down there. Somebody on my trail everywhere I went. I’d have to fall over a gal every night to get in my room and lock the door. I didn’t dare take a drink at a bar even. Well, that was okay down there, because she was here. But it isn’t okay here. However. If she’s in love with Randy . . .”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cass!” I said. “You make me sick!”
He stared at me as if I’d slapped his face.
“Don’t you know that everybody in town thinks you’re in love with Courtney—including Molly—and now that Courtney’s free . . . oh, don’t be an absolute dope!”
He stared at me still, the look on his face changing to as extraordinary a one as I’ve ever seen.
“—Molly knows I’m not in love with Courtney,” he said, very slowly, as if not really believing I could have said what I did. “I’ve never been in love with her. I had no idea what . . . what it was, till I met Molly. If I’d wanted to marry Courtney I’d have done it years ago. I like her, but I wouldn’t be married to her. I want to be able to come home and not have to get in a dinner jacket every night and entertain some guy because he’s useful to my career. It would drive me nuts. I’m going to get along all right without a lot of money and bootlicking the right people.”
He jerked his cigarette into the fireplace.
“I wouldn’t have married Courtney when she was still human. Now she’s got all that money . . .”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to feel you’d got where you were because you had a rich wife to support an embassy, or something. You see too much of that. Anyway, the point is, it’s Molly, Grace. I couldn’t ever love anybody else. That’s just the way it is.”
“And . . . you haven’t told her any of this, Cass—have you?” I asked, after a minute.
“How could I?” he said. “I don’t want her to feel sorry for me.”
I just went out to the bar to get some ice and soda water. It was too hot to drink anything else or I’d have done it. And out there I stopped suddenly, looking at the desk. It was a mild shambles. He’d come along after me, and nodded as I look
ed around at him.
“—Another visitor. You know, you’d think people like Durbin and Sondauer would know you wouldn’t leave information lying around. But first one, then the other. They must figure I’m so dumb that I’m beginning to think they’re right.”
I looked back at the litter. “Did they take anything?”
“I don’t even know what was in there. Some pictures of Courtney are gone, and they’re welcome to them. They’ve served their purpose.”
They’d certainly served one that I knew of, I thought.
“That’s how I found out Durbin was the nigger in the stockpile,” he said. “I took ’em from his house on a hacienda up in the mountains where the airport project was. His boys down there must have let him know they’d gone, and I guess he figured I’d got them. I don’t know whether he fell in love with her picture or figured when he came to Washington she’d be social and prominent enough to make his money go farthest buying up big names. He took a Washington paper, and he must have cut her out every time she appeared for about five years. He even sent to a photographer here and bought regular photographs. They didn’t like to admit they’d sold them, but they did finally. I wouldn’t have connected Durbin with the business if it hadn’t been for them. And if Sondauer wants them, that’s okay.”
He stopped and looked at me suddenly.
“Maybe he’s in love with her too. Well, well—Courtney, the multimillionnaires’ pin-up girl.”
He grinned at me for an instant.
“Well, the hell with it,” he said then. “Don’t tell the Colonel. I’m sick of all the cops and robbers stuff. If there’s anything in the damn place anybody wants they’re welcome to it.”
He grinned at me again, a lopsided, twisted grin.
“You know that poem of Browning’s—The Last Ride Together? ‘As for me, I ride.’ Well, Molly and I were taking our last ride together. In a bus, coming home from dinner at the Blodgetts’. I guess I’ll always see those two, standing in the door together saying goodbye. I was thinking, what’s old Horace got that I haven’t got? His wife’s still in love with him, and look at me. My wife says, ‘It’s wonderful, dear—I hope we’ll still be friends.’ ”
