by Craig Rice
Jake looked at him gloomily and was silent for a moment. “Malone, do you need any of your two hundred bucks back?”
“Not right away.” Malone said. “Need any dough?”
“No. I thought you might. While I was checking up on the local homicides yesterday, I got into a crap game with some Times photographers.”
“I’ve had all I can stand this early in the morning,” Malone said crossly. “Finish your breakfast and leave me in peace.”
Jake was silent for two minutes and then said, “Say, there was a funny item in the paper this morning. Some guy had his car stolen last night. A phony call went in to the police reporting it seen way down on the south side.”
“That’s nothing,” Malone said. “Whenever a car is reported stolen on the police radio, there’s half a dozen calls from cranks who think they saw it.”
“Yes, but wait a minute. The guy who made the phony call said his name was Gerald Tuesday.”
“Pure coincidence,” Malone assured him. “It was another Gerald Tuesday.”
Jake said, “I’ll believe there was one Gerald Tuesday. I’m damned if I’ll believe there were two of them.”
Malone leaned across the table, looked around as though spotting eavesdroppers, and said in a low voice, “Jake, do you believe in spiritualism?”
Jake dropped his spoon again, stared at the lawyer for a moment, then rose, kicking back his chair. “Let me out of here!”
The two men paused for a moment just outside the door, standing in the shelter of the entrance. Jake looked at his watch. “Well, it’s another day. I might as well go over and call on Mona McClane.”
“Listen,” Malone said quickly, “along the line that Mona McClane’s murder may not have been committed in the Chicago area, I picked up a tip for you. Blake County is covering up a homicide.”
“What’s that?”
Malone was thinking up details fast. “I don’t know the reason it’s being covered, but I do know no news is being given out to the public. You know how Blake County is, with all those rich and influential guys living there.”
Jake nodded and said slowly, “Mona McClane’s country place is in Blake County, too. Where did you pick this up?”
“From a bookie who lives up there. Ran into him at the city hall.”
“It might be something,” said the red-haired man.
Malone told his conscience that everything would be all right in the end. He said, “Well, you know Andy Ahearn, the sheriff out there. You ought to be able to pry information out of him if anyone could.”
Jake nodded again. “Yes, I could. If I step on it, I can make the next North Shore train.” He waved at a passing taxi. “Thanks, Malone.”
“That’s all right. Call me when you get back.” He watched until the taxi had vanished down Rush Street. It was a dirty trick, but it would keep Jake out of the way for a few hours, and Malone needed those hours badly right now.
After a moment’s thought, he hopped in a cab and drove to his hotel. There was no sign of Helene in the lobby. He looked up at the clock. Five minutes to ten. She should have been here by now, to find out what Ross McLaurin remembered, sober.
Oh well, she’d be along. The little lawyer went up to his room, shaved and changed his shirt, and went down the hall to the room he had taken for Ross McLaurin.
The young man still slept, a faint pink flush on his young cheeks. He might sleep for hours, Malone reflected, and there was no use waking him in the meantime. There was nothing to do but wait.
He decided to call Helene. The maid at the McClane house informed him that she had gone out, at least an hour ago. No, she hadn’t left any message as to when she would be back.
Malone hung up the receiver and yawned deeply. There was no telling when Helene might show up. There was no telling when Ross McLaurin might wake up and remember what he knew about the murders. In the meantime—
He slipped off his shoes, loosened his tie, and sank down in the easy chair After all, it had been a long night.
In two minutes he was sound asleep.
* The Wrong Murder.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m sorry as hell, Jake,” Andy Ahearn, sheriff of Blake County, was saying. “It’d never have happened if I’d been here myself. I’m sorry you got thrown in the jail. But Joe’s impetuous. He’s only been a deputy for a coupla months, and he loves his work.”
Jake said, “Well, maybe I oughtn’t to have busted him one in the nose. But he made me sore. He said I was either drunk or bats, and I lost my temper. Disorderly conduct, the dirty bum! I ought to bust him again for throwing me in your damn jail.”
“Joe’s an awful nervous fellow,” Andy Ahearn said.
“Besides,” Jake Justus added bitterly, “I lost two bucks playing pinochle with the jailer.”
“He’s a good pinochle player,” Andy said. He added, as though offering reparations, “Have a drink?”
“Sure,” Jake said, hoping the quality of Andy Ahearn’s gin had improved since his last visit. It hadn’t.
“I really am sorry about this, Jake,” the sheriff said again. “Joe, he’s sorry too. If I’d been here myself—”
“Sure, we’re all sorry,” Jake said. “You’re sorry, he’s sorry, I’m sorry, nobody’s happy but the jailer, he won two bucks. Forget it. It’s a swell jail. Now come clean about this murder you’ve had out here and we’ll call it square.”
Ahearn stared at him. “Jeez, Jake, maybe you are nuts.”
“Come on, Andy, I’ve done favors for you in the past. Besides, I’m not working for any newspaper now. I got a reliable tip you’d had a homicide out here that wasn’t breaking into print.”
“Where did you get the tip?”
“Fellow I know.” Jake hesitated, then shook his head. No use dragging Malone into this. “No one important.”
“All right,” Ahearn said, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But the only murder we’ve had out here was three months ago when some goon got his dome split in a tavern brawl.”
“Is that the honest-to-God?” Jake demanded.
“You don’t think I’d lie to you?” Andy Ahearn asked in a hurt voice. He added, “Hell, things have been so quiet out here the boys have been arresting each other just to keep in practice.” He poured a generous slug of gin into his visitor’s glass.
“Thanks,” Jake said.
Andy Ahearn went on, “If you don’t believe it, you can look through every record in the place.”
Jake shook his head. “I’ll take your word for it. Somebody gave me a lousy steer, that’s all.”
“Too bad,” the sheriff said sympathetically.
They spent a few minutes in reminiscent talk, and Jake rose to go.
“Say,” Andy Ahearn said. “I hear you married that blonde girl from Maple Park—Miss Brand. Congrats.”
“That’s all over now,” Jake said. “We split up.” He wondered how many years it would be before he’d be able to say it calmly and mean it that way.
“So?” Andy Ahearn said. He paused. “You don’t tell me.” He paused again. “Well, that’s what I always say about marriage. Here today and gone tomorrow.”
Outside the courthouse, Jake paused and looked around. He considered telephoning Malone and calling him a few names, and then decided it would be far more satisfactory to wait and do it more fully in person.
Andy Ahearn could have been lying to him. And if he were covering up, the records wouldn’t show anything. He’d been suspiciously willing to show those records. Jake decided that since he was already out here, there was no harm in nosing around a little. The McClane estate was only a few miles away, in Maple Park. He didn’t know what might be found there, but it couldn’t hurt to take a quick look.
He hailed one of the local taxis and told the driver to leave him near the McClane place. Then he leaned back and tried to decide what to do when he got there. He not only didn’t know what he expected to find, he didn’t even know where to lo
ok for it.
Signs of a struggle, perhaps? With two feet of snow on top! Or a body, just carelessly left around. He reminded himself that such a murder wouldn’t conform to the terms of Mona’s bet anyway. No sense in tramping all over a square mile or two of snow, looking for the guy Mona McClane had murdered. It might not even be a guy. Might be a gal. Might be the Siamese twins. He wondered what Helene would do if she were here.
Helene, he knew, would probably insist on going over every square inch of the place with a magnifying glass.
The two sides of the McClane estate that bordered on the street were bounded by a high grillwork fence. Jake walked along it until at last he came to a small service gate that was unlocked, in spite of the fact that the house was closed up for the winter.
He went in, closing the gate behind him, and stood wondering where to go first. Ahead of him, a wide, dazzling expanse of unbroken white swept up to a little rise in the ground, where the house stood, a massive, gray-stone affair, pleasantly softened by the drifted snow. The trees around it were bare and leafless; here and there heaps of discolored snow indicated the location of shrubs and bushes.
As far as he could tell, no one had been here for weeks. A narrow path, showing faintly through the snow, led along the side of the iron fence, and he followed it, looking for any indication he might find of some recent visitor. There was none. The path finally passed through a little clump of trees, and Jake found himself confronted with a high stone wall that separated the McClane estate from the one immediately south of it.
That would be the Venning place, Jake remembered. He followed the path along the wall until he reached a small iron gate set in the stone. It was unlatched. He hesitated a moment, then pushed it open and entered the Venning grounds, on a sudden, unexplainable impulse. He remembered that the Vennings were staying in town with Mona McClane and had been members of the household at the time of the murders—not only the two murders he knew about, but the one he wanted to find out about.
In the center of the Venning grounds was an immense, wooden house. Jake looked at it curiously and wondered if it might have been put there to frighten architects. It was almost too ugly to be pleasantly funny; it had a kind of sinister, gloomy horror. Immediately before it was what he guessed might be a patterned garden in summer, now a series of bulges and depressions in the snow.
He looked again at the house and reflected that it was no wonder Venning had stayed away for twenty years.
He walked across the lawn, swearing impotently at the snow that crept up under his trouser leg, and skirted the house. Behind it, an archway in a yew hedge led into another of the broad lawns that seemed to characterize the Maple Park landscape. He took a few steps across it and stopped suddenly.
There was a woman, tall, and dressed in black, standing just before a grove of trees that ran along one edge of the lawn. He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she were real, or something cooked up by Andy Ahearn’s gin. The leafless trees behind her were dark and shadowy, before her the snow was an unbroken, dazzling white.
Suddenly he became conscious of the murky gloom of the day and the heavy clouds that hung low overhead.
The woman took a few steps forward. Even at a little distance he saw that her lined, haggard face had once been beautiful. He remembered Malone’s descriptions of Mona McClane’s house guests and realized that this might be Editha Venning.
“Who are you?” she asked, frowning slightly.
“I’m Jake Justus.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of you from Mona McClane.”
“You’re Mrs. Venning, aren’t you?”
She nodded, looking past him at the clouds.
“I saw the gate was open,” Jake said, “and I thought I’d just take a look at the place here. I hope you don’t mind.”
She shook her head.
“I’m very interested in landscape gardening,” Jake told her.
She didn’t seem to care. She didn’t seem to object to his presence, indeed, she seemed almost to welcome it. She nodded again, slowly, as though he had explained everything satisfactorily.
“I came out here—” She paused, hesitated a moment, and then said, “I’m looking for something.”
“Perhaps I can help you,” Jake said politely.
She stared at him with her immense, tragic eyes as though she had already forgotten who he was.
Jake waited a minute and then said, “May I help you?”
“I’m looking”—again she hesitated—“for my husband’s grave.”
Jake blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t know where that is,” he said gently. “I’ve never been out here before. But I’ll be glad to help you look.”
She smiled at him gratefully. “Please do. I’m a little timid about being here alone. And I have heard about you from Mona, so we aren’t really strangers.” The smile faded. “I think it’s down this way, through the trees.”
They had gone at least twenty steps down the path before Jake suddenly realized what she had said.
Her husband’s grave.
The last he had heard, Michael Venning was alive and apparently in the best of health.
He wondered just what to do under the circumstances. The woman seemed to know what she was doing. Or did she? He had an unnerving thought that he might be alone in these gloomy woods with a madwoman, just after two murders had already been committed. She looked good and strong, too.
He resisted an impulse to call out and ask, “Pardon me. Mrs. Venning, but are you sure it’s your husband’s grave that you’re looking for?”
He resisted an even stronger impulse to turn around and run like hell for the gate.
The woods that bordered the Venning estate grew thicker. Half neglected as they had been for twenty years, they were heavy with underbrush and weeds. Jake discovered that, looking back, he could just barely see the lawn and only a vague outline of the wooden mansion.
Ahead of him, Mrs. Venning paused suddenly.
“Someone has been here ahead of me.”
Jake looked where she was pointing. There were heavy tracks in the snow, a man’s tracks. It looked as though someone had passed through here, not once, but several times.
“A gardener?” he suggested hopefully. “Caretaker?”
She shook her head. “There’s one caretaker in the winter but he only looks after the house. No one would ever come out here unless”—she frowned—“he was looking for the same thing.”
Jake’s uncomfortable suspicion that Editha Venning was mad was followed by an even more uncomfortable one that she was sane.
“Perhaps you’d like to go back?” he asked anxiously.
“No. I want to see for myself.”
She went on through the trees, following the tracks already made in the snow. After a moment’s hesitation, Jake followed her. He hoped that whoever had made those tracks was gone now.
Once or twice she paused for a moment, as though listening. Jake paused, too. These woods were uncomfortably cold. He wished he had a drink, even Andy Ahearn’s gin. He wished Helene were there. Or he wished he were anywhere else in the world, and Helene were there, too.
A heavy clump of bushes suddenly appeared to bar their progress. He had a faint hope that his companion would turn back now. Instead, she examined the obstruction for a moment, discovered an opening where the previous visitor had evidently pushed his way through, and went on. Jake groaned and followed.
At the other side of the bushes, he stopped dead in his tracks. Editha Venning was standing in a little clearing hedged by the bushes, and she was looking down on a grave.
It was an open grave, and an empty one.
Chapter Fifteen
“I see you’ve found it,” Jake said inadequately. Editha Venning didn’t answer. He watched her for a moment as she stood there, her face pale, her immense, deep-set eyes dark and shadowy.
It was real. It had to be real. Andy Ahearn’s gin wasn’t that potent. He said to himself firmly, “I am Jake Justus.” It
sounded rather convincing, but not entirely. He picked up a pinch of snow in his fingers. It felt cold. And reassuring.
He took a closer look at the grave. It must have been a tough job to dig it. Someone had had to use a pickax on that frozen ground. There were piles of rain-spotted snow around it, but only a faint sprinkling of snow in the grave itself.
Jake tried to remember when the last snow had fallen. Not since he had been back in Chicago. Malone had mentioned that it had snowed on New Year’s Eve. Since then there had been a few rains, but no snow. Then the grave had been dug sometime since New Year’s.
Who could have dug it? Certainly not Editha Venning herself. She was a tall, muscular woman, but not strong enough for that job. Besides, she hadn’t known where the grave was; she’d had to look for it. Or had she put on an act for the unexpected witness?
Suddenly she turned and began retracing her steps, without a word. Jake followed, wondering what questions he dared ask. Where the path widened, he stepped up beside her taking her arm to help her over the rough patches, and stealing occasional glances at her face.
She was very pale, and apparently deep in thought, but her expression was not one of sorrow, nor of regret. There was only a kind of unhappy resignation and perplexity.
If the grave had not been there, Jake told himself, he would have gone back to his original theory; that Editha Venning had blown her top. But the grave was there. He’d seen it himself. He was rather sorry that it was. It would have been a lot easier to understand the other way.
He walked with her as far as the gate leading to the street. There she paused, with an air of dismissal.
“Can I get you a taxi?” Jake asked.
She shook her head. “It’s only a few steps to the North Shore station. I’d rather walk.”
He had an idea she didn’t want him to accompany her.
She stood for a moment, hesitating. “Thank you for coming with me. I didn’t like going through those woods alone. But I did want to see it, for myself.”
“Look here,” Jake said. He drew a quick breath. “Wouldn’t you like a drink? Maybe a cup of tea? It’s beastly cold and raw out here. I’d like a chance to talk—”
