by Craig Rice
Chapter Fifteen
“The victim,” Jake read aloud, “was a bachelor, with no near relatives. He had been an employee of the Farmers’ Bank for twenty-nine years, and for the past eighteen years had been first tenor in the choir of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jackson, Wisconsin.”
He tossed the newspaper aside. “Hardly a lively career.”
Helene sighed. “He doesn’t sound like a likely candidate for murder.”
“You never can tell,” Jake said. “Maybe somebody else wanted to be first tenor.”
The steamy warmth of the day had persisted till early evening. The faint haze had lingered, turning a sinister yellow shortly before sunset, then suddenly lifted, leaving the sun to go down behind Heide’s Hill like a copper penny dropped into a slot machine.
Jake stepped out onto the tiny balcony outside their room. In the west a pale orange light faded upward into ocherous green. The green ended abruptly at the edge of great black clouds that had suddenly materialized out of nowhere and were slowly settling down toward the western horizon. All at once a quick breeze ruffled the elms on West Third Street, and a mourning dove called sorrowfully from somewhere just behind the Methodist Church.
“It’s going to rain like hell and damnation,” Jake said, stepping back into their room.
Helene shivered. “As long as the wind doesn’t blow. One good healthy puff and the General Andrew Jackson House will be halfway into the next county.”
“Well, you wanted to get out of Jackson, Wisconsin,” Jake reminded her. He heard a door open and close, said, “There’s the doc, I want to find out how Malone is,” and went out into the hall, Helene at his heels.
Dr. Spain, a pleasant-faced, bald-headed man in a white suit, said, “Your friend’s all right. Just so he stays quiet and in bed until tomorrow. I gave him something to make him sleep for a few hours.”
“How does he feel?” Helene asked anxiously.
“He feels like hell,” Dr. Spain told her. “But he’ll feel better. He ordered a case of beer to be kept on ice in the hotel refrigerator, and arranged for the clerk to send him up a bottle every fifteen minutes after he wakes up.”
“He’s normal,” Jake said.
Dr. Spain set down his bag and began feeling through his pockets. “Wonderful how a man could get a crack on the head like that and still be able to add. Wish old Doc Goudge wasn’t out in the asylum. He used to have a theory about blows on the head making you remember a lot of stuff you’d forgotten except that when you recovered you forgot it again.” He located a leather cigarette case in his right-hand coat pocket, and began searching himself for a match. Jake, fascinated, didn’t offer him one.
“How about your other patients?” he asked.
“Oh, I guess they’re all right. Nasty injuries these bombs leave. Never saw any before myself. Not as bad, though, as the time Emerson Lowell Smith fell into the threshing machine.” He found the match and scratched it on his pants.
“Not really Emerson Lowell?” Jake said.
The doctor nodded, lighting his cigarette. “Emerson Lowell Whittier Smith. He was a half-wit. Phil Smith was his uncle. His mother was a Proctor, Hattie Goudge. Always thought she was a little cracked, myself. Lived until she was eighty-two and then went out in the barn and hanged herself.” He looked around for a place to throw the match, finally put it in his breast pocket. “She was Doc Goudge’s aunt.”
“Oh,” Helene said. “Today must have seemed pretty dull to you after the life you’ve lived.”
“Not bad at all,” Doc Spain told her. “You should have been here the time about five years ago when I had a farmer’s wife out on Route Four having triplets, and a woman over in Willow Springs having twins.” He puffed at the cigarette and said, “I got three tickets for speeding. You know, I’ve got a theory about these murders.”
“That’ll be worth hearing,” Jake said.
“I got to looking up statistics in the almanac when I was home for dinner,” Doc Spain said, “and I found the per capita homicide rate for the whole country. Well do you know, figuring it out according to the population of Jackson County, we should have four murders every thirty-two years. That leaves us two more coming.”
“Interesting,” Helene said. “You won’t mind if we don’t stay to see the fun.”
Doc Spain took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked at her, and said, “You know, I bet you’ve got a vitamin deficiency. Can tell by the color of your skin. Or maybe you just use the wrong shade of face powder. But I’m right about those statistics. Added ’em up twice. So, you can look for two more murders.” He picked up his kit.
Jake said, “Maybe you and Buttonholes ought to get together. He calls his premonitions.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Doc Spain said gravely. “I’ve got a theory about Buttonholes’ premonitions. Sort of a combination of extrasensory perception, and electrodynamics. Never forget a telepathic dream I had once back in ’22. Remind me to tell you about it sometime.” He pulled his Panama hat a little more over one eye, said to Helene, “Better check up on that vitamin deficiency,” and darted down the stairs.
Helene counted ten and then wailed, “But, Jake, some people just don’t want to look healthy.”
“I know,” Jake said. “Two vitamin pills, or a change of face powder, and you’d lose all your charm. Just remember I’m the man who even loves you with your face washed.” He paused. “Emerson Lowell Whittier Smith. I wonder what they named his uncle. Phil Smith, I mean.”
“Philip Smith,” Helene said scornfully.
Jake said, “You have no imagination.” He took her arm and dragged her down the stairs to the clerk’s desk. “Have you a list of the county officers, by any chance?”
The clerk dragged a battered pamphlet titled County Directory from somewhere under his desk.
“Thanks,” Jake said. He grabbed it and began thumbing through the pages. “Abbott” a few pages slipped through his fingers, “Jones, Jules, Knaimer, Peterkin, Peters, Peterson.” He paused, “P-f-e-el-wudgin-k-y—the hell with it. Rasmussen, Saintsmith, Satterlee, Saunders, Smith.”
“Darling, is this a new game,” Helene said wearily, “or have you gone nuts?”
“Curiosity can be a hobby too,” he told her. “When the uncle of a guy named Emerson Lowell Whittier is named Phil Smith—” He ran a thumbnail down the directory. “Here. County clerk. Smith.” He paused again. “Philomen Ma. Smith.”
Helene said, “I don’t believe it,” and snatched the book from his hands. Thirty seconds later she handed it back and said, “All right. His name is Philomen. Philomen Smith, Ma. The printers made an error.”
“No,” Jake said, “It’s Philomen Ma. Smith. Not Philomen M. A. Smith, but—”
Helene leaned over the desk and turned the full and dazzling candle power of her smile on the weary clerk. “Could you tell us Mr. Smith’s middle initial, please?”
The clerk blinked, smiled back, and said, “Which Smith, Stanley, or Livingston?”
Helene raised her eyebrows. “Twins, I presume?”
The clerk looked confused. “How did you guess?”
“It’s a small world,” Helene said cryptically.
The clerk looked even more confused. “They’re Ed Smith’s boys. Stanley’s in the legislature. Phil Smith’s their uncle.”
“He’s the one she means,” Jake said. “Phil Smith.”
“His middle initial? It’s Ma,” the Clerk said. “M-a.” No, he didn’t know what it stood for. Massachusetts, maybe. There was a Massachusetts Wills lived up near Willow Springs.
“Six gets you ten it stands for Madhouse,” Helene muttered as they walked back up the stairs. “And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had all I can stand.”
“Sissy,” Jake said, “I don’t leave Jackson County until I find out Philomen Smith’s full name.”
“Jake, what were you talking about with Jerry Luckstone? What are you planning to do tonight?”
“Nothing much. A litt
le piece of research I’m doing for him. I can’t tell you about it till it’s over.”
Later he tried to decide what kept him from telling her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, because he did. And there was no earthly reason why he should not. It was just one of those premonitions; they were contagious.
“If it’s something dangerous, I’m going along,” she said grimly, and added, “It isn’t fair for you to have all the fun.”
“It isn’t going to be dangerous,” Jake said, “and it isn’t going to be fun, and I can’t take you along anyway.”
She sighed. “Father always said a wife shouldn’t ask questions. Sometime they might get answered. And what I don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“You get dressed for dinner,” Jake said, changing the subject fast, “while I get some more cigarettes.”
Across the street, in Gollett’s drugstore, he bought cigarettes, asked to use the telephone, called Cora Belle, and introduced himself.
“I have a long evening on my hands, and Jerry Luckstone said you might be kind enough to show me some of the county’s night life.”
Cora Belle declared she would be delighted. “Will you bring your lovely blonde wife with you?”
“She has a bad headache,” Jake said glibly.
There was just a shade too long pause before Cora Belle said, “Oh.” Then, “Well, drive by around eight or nine, and we’ll take in a few roadhouses.”
Jake walked back to the hotel room reminding himself that he could always call and break the date, or even just not show up at all. The chances were Cora Belle didn’t know anything of importance. If she did, she wouldn’t confide it to him, and in any case, it wasn’t any of his business. Still, he’d promised Jerry Luckstone, who was in a tough spot.
He found Helene doing a very special job on her right eyebrow before the greenish mirror. Her organdy dress billowed around her like a honey-colored cloud.
“Helene,” Jake said, “I love you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world. I never realized how much I love you until right this minute.”
She finished with the eyebrow and wheeled around to look at him. “Just what are you up to? Will you promise me it isn’t dangerous?”
“Of course it isn’t dangerous,” he told her, “and it has nothing to do with the subject. I just happened to look at you and think about how much I love you. About how much nicer you are than any other woman in the world, nicer and smarter and more beautiful and much more fun.” He had never felt quite as miserable in his life.
A few minutes with Malone after dinner didn’t help his frame of mind. He found the little lawyer just wakening from a drugged sleep and preparing to sink into another one. He propped himself up in bed on one elbow and stared sourly at his visitor.
“Don’t ask me how I feel, because I feel terrible. And I’m going to stay right here and stay asleep until we can get out of this town.” He lay back on the pillow and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“Jake,” he said at last, “there’s something deadly and poisonous going on here in Jackson. Far more deadly and far more poisonous than any of us ever even dreamed about. And it isn’t finished yet.”
“You’ve been talking to Buttonholes,” Jake said crossly. “Shut your eyes and keep still.”
Malone ignored him. “It’s more than murder. No one goes so far as to blow up a bank full of people without plenty of cause.” His voice was thick with sleep. “It’s something big and something terrible, and here we are right in the middle of it.”
Jake was silent. Suddenly he’d found himself wondering if Cora Belle Fromm had murdered the ex-Senator, and planted a tobacco-tin bomb in the Farmers’ Bank, and if she suspected that his date with her tonight was an attempt to pump information. It was perfectly possible. He preferred not to believe it.
“Now pay attention.” Malone’s voice was very drowsy now. “Keep out of it. Stay close to the ground and keep your head down, and don’t stick your neck out.”
“Why should I do imitations of a worm?” Jake said. “You won’t have to get me out of jail when you wake up in the morning, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“Jail,” the little lawyer yawned, “would be the easiest place to get out of.” His eyes closed, he was asleep.
He was also a brilliant prophet.
Chapter Sixteen
By ten o’clock Helene had taken down her hair, brushed it, and put it up again twice, tried to read three different newspapers, and given herself a complete manicure. That was when she put her wrist watch under the pillow and resolved not to look at it again.
Only people with no mental resources, she told herself sternly, were bored and unhappy at spending a lonely evening in a dreary hotel room, with nothing to do.
She gave herself a luxurious facial, tried once more to read the newspapers and gave it up, rinsed out a pair of stockings and hung them to dry on a clothes hanger, and emptied and dusted out all the ash trays. By now it must be well after midnight, and Jake should be coming along any minute. She looked once more at the watch. It was ten-fifteen.
Having exhausted her reportory of the small chores women use to kill time when men keep them waiting, there was nothing to do but begin all over. She took down her hair again for another brushing, tried out several new hairdos, didn’t like any of them, and put it back the way it had been in the first place.
At ten-twenty-five she decided she would rather talk to anybody, even the desk clerk, than to the walls of the room, and strolled down to the bar for a glass of beer. It was crowded, with most of the out-of-town visitors clustered around Buttonholes, buying him drinks while they listened to his description of his premonitions. An impressionable young woman from a Milwaukee paper was writing them down word for word.
There were a few faces Helene recognized. Tom Burrows. talking excitedly with a group of newspapermen. Charlie Hausen, the coroner, playing pinochle at a corner table with the local policeman. Jerry Luckstone sitting alone at the bar, deep in gloom.
Helene sighed. She wished she knew where Jake was and when he would be back. Mostly, she wished that he was here. She was not only bored, she was beginning to be angry.
She climbed up on a bar stool next to Jerry Luckstone. “If Jake doesn’t get here pretty soon,” she said, “there’s going to be murder done.”
The first part of her sentence was lost in the hum of conversation. At the word “murder,” everyone stopped talking and looked at her.
Jerry Luckstone giggled nervously. He was a little drunk. “What would you do if he were out with another girl?”
“Do?” Helene repeated cheerfully. “I’d wring her neck.” She turned to the bartender. “A beer. I’d wring her neck, cut her ears off, and fry them like eggplant, pull her hair out one at a time, and finally turn her remains completely inside out.”
The girl from the Milwaukee paper was highly amused. “Then what would you do to him?”
“Nothing,” Helene called back. “What good would it do me to make a widow out of myself?” She lit a cigarette. “The only reason I’d wring her neck would be to make sure he never went out with her again.”
“A very logical system,” Jerry Luckstone said, nodding wisely.
“It works every time,” Helene told him.
The gray-haired man from the Journal said, “I’ll never forget a story out in San Francisco about fifteen years ago—” and in another moment everyone was talking again.
“How’s Malone?” the young district attorney asked.
“Asleep,” Helene said, staring mournfully into her glass of beer. She wondered if Jerry Luckstone had seduced Arlene Goudge, if he had planned to marry Florence Peveley for her father’s money and political position, and if she had blown up the Farmers’ Bank. She hoped not.
Five minutes later she left half her beer on the bar and walked out the side door onto Third Street. There was a faint breeze coming up from the river, not much, but it freshened the air. She crossed Main Street and began
walking up Third.
From the morning’s driving around town, she had learned who lived in most of the houses on what Jackson, Wisconsin, called “The hill.” Senator Peveley’s had stood on its summit, at the end of Third Street. She noticed that there were lights in all its windows.
Half a block beyond Main, Third Street was dark and quiet and mysterious. Only patches of sky and occasional stars showed through the elm trees overhead, the sidewalk became a narrow pale-gray ribbon running between shadowy squares of lawn. The traffic on Main Street couldn’t be heard this far, and in the silence the sound of the crickets was almost deafening.
Most of the little houses that stood four or five to a block, set far back from the sidewalk, had windows lighted. Helene slowed her steps to look in here and there, trying to catch glimpses of their interiors, and the people who lived within. It all seemed so peaceful. Yet here in this house might be a man who hated his wife, next door one who loved his wife and hated her family, here one who was planning to rob his employer, there another who spent his life waiting for a wealthy relative to die, and so on, without end.
Malone was right. The potentiality for murder was like a germ that everybody, including all healthy persons, harbored, but that never developed unless certain conditions arose. It could happen in any one of these little houses.
That was Phil Smith’s house on the corner. Helene crossed the street and peeked at it curiously. What kind of house did the man named Philomen Ma. Smith live in? There was a light on upstairs in the front of the house; he himself must be in bed now, nursing his broken collarbone. Downstairs she could see into a long, narrow room lined with bookshelves, only half lighted with the glow that came in through an open door. On the other side of the hall was a brightly lighted room and through its principal window Helene could see four plump, middle-aged women, sitting around a table playing cards. They looked well fed and well cared for and contented, pleased with themselves and their houses and their printed silk dresses. One of them must be Philomen Ma. Smith’s wife.
