Death in Donegal Bay

by William Campbell Gault

  “Oh, shut up!” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  THE SHERIFF’S STATION WAS located about midway between Donegal Bay and Veronica Village. We picked up the plainclothes deputy there. His name was Harold Pointer. He was a middle-aged, middle-sized man with prematurely gray hair.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” he asked as he climbed into the car.

  “At the Detterwald house,” I said. “I was there when you and Duane’s attorney came to the house.”

  “That’s it,” he agreed. “Were you involved in that, too?”

  “There could be a connection,” I said. “I understand Duane isn’t going to be prosecuted.”

  “He isn’t, and I’m glad. Anthony has been nothing but trouble since he moved in. We don’t need his kind up here.”

  I didn’t ask him if they needed the Cyrus Allingham kind. The area was probably loaded with the breed.

  “Ye gods!” Bernie said when the castle came into view. “Is that for real?”

  “It’s our San Simeon,” Pointer said. He stepped out of the car. “I’ll phone.” He went to the phone booth.

  “We can get in,” Bernie said, “but can we get out?”

  “If you and Pointer are armed, we might escape. But watch out for the moat. Allingham told me it’s mined.”

  “Is the man crazy?”

  “Only to us,” I said. “We’re the immoral minority.”

  Down went the drawbridge, up went the portcullis. The door was open when we walked toward the house. The tall figure of Cyrus Allingham was outlined by the light from the entry hall behind him.

  “Good evening, Harold,” he said to Pointer. And then he saw me. “What are you doing here? I’ve heard some disturbing things about you since last we talked, Mr. Callahan.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Pointer said, “We’re not here to harass you, Mr. Allingham. This is Lieutenant Vogel of the San Valdesto Police Department. He assured me that we are here only for any helpful information you might have about the death of Luther Barnum.”

  Allingham said stiffly, “I have no information that could help. Our maid might have, but she’s in Hawaii.”

  “No, she isn’t,” I said. “I talked with her this morning.”

  He glared at me, scowled at Pointer, and said, “Come in.”

  Joan was sitting at the far end of the living room. She didn’t get up as we entered. “Good evening, Harold,” she said.

  I was getting the uneasy feeling that Harold wasn’t on our side. I said, “Good evening, Joan.”

  She ignored me. She asked Harold, “What is he doing here?”

  Bernie said, “You could call it a citizen’s complaint. If we are intruding, we will leave. But I think you would be better served if we stayed. Mr. Callahan is not a scandalmonger.”

  “Scandal?” Allingham asked. “Did I hear you correctly, sir?”

  “You did,” Bernie said evenly. “One of those scandal-sheet reporters interviewed Lucy Barnum’s cousin at his hotel.”

  Joan glanced worriedly at her father, and then at me.

  “Luther told him nothing,” I said. “Luther’s secret died with him.”

  Allingham looked at Pointer. Pointer shrugged. Allingham said, “I don’t like this.”

  “Perhaps,” Pointer said, “it would be wise to have your attorney here.”

  Allingham shook his head. “Let’s sit down.”

  We sat at the other end of the room from Joan. Allingham looked coldly at me. “Speak your piece, Mr. Callahan.”

  “Luther,” I opened, “was probably killed by a person who was familiar with the rear-door entrance to the second floor of his hotel. The prostitutes who live on that floor do their soliciting near that doorway. Only their customers can get to the second floor by that staircase. Luther probably told Lucy about it.”

  “Did she tell you that,” Allingham asked, “when you talked with her this morning?”

  “No. Because I didn’t ask her. I didn’t pry. She was so troubled, so close to panic, I thought it would be cruel. And I doubt if she would have told me if I had asked.”

  “Good!” he said.

  “About the customer who came to that door the night Luther was killed, the girl told me she thought he was a mute. He didn’t talk. He paid her and went to her room. Then, while she was getting undressed, he suddenly walked out.”

  “I’m not following you,” Pointer said. “Is that the man you think Mr. Allingham might know about?”

  “It might not be a man,” I said. “That’s why he didn’t talk. A woman posing as a man wouldn’t risk talking.”

  Pointer’s smile was cynical. “You’re really far out, aren’t you? Is that all you have, these kookie theories?”

  “Let’s hear the rest,” Allingham said.

  “The customer,” I went on, “had a bulge under the field jacket he, or she, was wearing. It might have been a bottle of cognac. The killer might have taken that poisoned liquor down to Luther’s room on the same floor. He, or she, might have been somebody Luther knew, or knew of. Most tenants in that hotel don’t open their doors to strangers that late at night.”

  “Might, might, might,” Pointer said scornfully. “All maybes, no meat, no case.”

  “Why don’t you shut up?” Bernie said. “Why don’t you keep your brown nose out of this?”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up,” Pointer said. “I’ll—”

  “Be quiet, Harold,” Allingham said. “Go on, Mr. Callahan.”

  “When I talked with Joan,” I said, “she kept insisting that the information Alan Baker was threatening you with was probably some financial manipulation she didn’t understand. She was trying to throw me off the trail. What Baker knew had nothing to do with finance. And she told me Lucy was in Hawaii. That, we now know, was a lie.”

  “I lied about it, too,” Allingham admitted. “But certainly not to cover up a murder. My God, are you accusing Joan of that, of murder? I don’t know what you have learned about her or her relationship with Lucy, but accusing her of murder is absurd!”

  “Not if she was trying to protect you,” I pointed out. “She knew what a scandal-sheet story would do to you and your cause.” I looked at Joan. “Luther would never have given the reporter the story he was hoping for. He loved Lucy.”

  A silence.

  Then Pointer asked, “What’s going on here? What’s this about relationship?”

  Nobody answered him.

  I said, “When I talked with Luther, he said he knew why Lucy had stayed with Joan after the divorce, but that was another story. It was a story he would never tell anybody. He knew she was a lesbian when she was still living in Florian. But I repeat—he loved her.”

  From the other end of the room, Joan said, “The night Luther was killed, I was asleep right here. My father will attest to that.”

  “Not under oath,” he said wearily. “You were down at that benefit concert in San Valdesto. At least that’s what you told me. It is time to stop lying, Joan.”

  He looked at me. “We have lied, both of us, but we’re not murderers. You have come up with a damaging set of suppositions, I’ll admit. But you have no real evidence, have you?”

  “That’s for sure,” Pointer said.

  “We have a fingerprint,” Vogel said. “We lifted it off that cognac bottle. I brought the print with me. If it doesn’t match Miss Allingham’s, you are right. We don’t have a case.”

  Allingham looked at his daughter and back at Vogel. “We’ll go to the sheriff’s station tomorrow for the fingerprint check. The rest, the other thing that has been mentioned here tonight, there is no need to reveal that, is there?”

  Vogel shook his head. “Your daughter’s sexual preferences are no concern of mine. But murder is. I think we should check the fingerprint tonight.”

  “No need for that,” Pointer said. “Tomorrow will do as well. The understanding we got from your chief was that you were coming up here for information, not to make an ar
rest.”

  Vogel glared at him.

  “Call the station if you want,” Pointer said. “Captain Walsh is in charge. You know him, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “I know him,” Vogel admitted. “He could be your twin.” He turned to Allingham. “What brand of cognac do you serve your guests, sir?”

  “Spanerti.”

  “That was what we found in Barnum’s room. And there isn’t a liquor store in San Valdesto that sells it. Do you buy it locally?”

  Allingham shook his head. “It is not available locally. I buy it from the importer in San Francisco.”

  “And strychnine?” Vogel asked. “Is that available locally?”

  Allingham’s face stiffened at the scorn in Vogel’s voice. He said, “Our gardener uses it. He mixes it with chopped meat for the rats that have been troubling us.”

  “I’ll want to see him tomorrow,” Vogel said. “Make sure that he is available.”

  Allingham said, “We’ll all be here, Lieutenant. You have my word on that.”

  We left. As we got into the car, Pointer said, “I suppose you think I am a goddamned toady.”

  Vogel didn’t answer. He started the engine.

  Silence. We drove out over the drawbridge. We drove about a hundred feet down the long driveway before Vogel pulled over onto the grass and turned out the lights.

  “Now what?” Pointer asked.

  “Tomorrow!” Vogel said acidly. “She could be in Argentina by tomorrow.”

  “You don’t know the old man like I do,” Pointer argued. “He’s no liar. He didn’t have to tell you about the strychnine, but he did. And the cognac, too.”

  “I’m not after him,” Vogel said. “I’m waiting for her.”

  “So we sit,” Pointer said. “Did either of you guys bring a bottle?”

  We didn’t answer.

  “I’ll tell you how sure I am,” Pointer said. “If she comes down this driveway tonight, I’ll make the collar myself.”

  Forty-five minutes later, a Mercedes with the lights off rumbled over the drawbridge and started down toward us.

  Vogel switched on the car lights and pulled over to the center of the driveway. “Here she comes,” he said. “It’s your collar, Pointer.

  On the drive home, Vogel said, “They sure take care of their own up here, don’t they?”

  “Yup. We would have looked like a pair of damned fools if that print hadn’t matched, wouldn’t we?”

  “I wouldn’t. I only came along for the ride.”

  “And the credit,” I said. “Not that it will make you very popular in Veronica Village. But you still rank high with the boys here for the Donegal Bay information you fed them. I suppose Joan Allingham will be tried in San Valdesto.”

  He nodded. “They’re on the way to pick her up right now. And who do you think is going to defend her? Farini!”

  “It’s a crazy world,” I said.

  “They’re all nuts,” he agreed. “Everybody but us.”

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1984 by William Campbell Gault

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  978-1-4532-7343-2

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