‘I’ve been told that originally he wanted Daisy Wines very badly.’
After a hesitation Bates said, ‘Daisy Wines. Was that the name she used as a singer?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and according to you, by the time Edwards hired you he was trying to get rid of her.’
‘Edwards wanted the goods on her. I don’t think he ever said what he was going to do with them.’
‘But even though you followed her all that time, you didn’t come up with anything?’
‘No.’
‘Why didn’t he go to someone else?’
Bates shrugged. ‘I think my boss convinced him that if anybody could catch her at it, I could.’
‘So Edwards still thought there was something to catch?’
‘I gather he had no doubt at all.’
‘Can I talk to your boss at Horse Thief?’
‘Long dead,’ Bates said quietly. ‘I took orders, did my work, wrote my reports and turned them in. It was a good outfit as they went. Honest, because they were making money. I left in 1942 to go into the Navy. Spent the War as an M.P., first in Norfolk and then in Long Beach. When I got out I thought about going back to agency work, but set up on my own, here.’ He pointed to the window.
‘So you can’t tell me about Edwards?’
‘I only met him a couple of times. But I can tell you he was a nutcase,’ Normal Bates said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he had a warped mind and it came out clearly at the trial and that’s why his wife walked. Nobody who heard her testify would have convicted her.’
‘What kind of warped?’
Bates leaned back, breathing hard because he was involved in what he was talking about despite all the years.
‘It’s fashionable now for the rich to be sado-masochists,’ he said. ‘But to hear it described in a court of law in Indianapolis, Indiana’ in 1940, detailed, was almost more than those of us who were there could bear. If Edwards hadn’t been dead already, I think there would have been a man or two in the courtroom who would have made it happen by the end of that day.’
‘Edwards’ sister tried to shoot Mrs Edwards after the acquittal.’
‘Small calibre from too far away,’ Bates said dismissively.
We sat quiet for a long time.
I found myself thinking about the fact that he had plied my trade before me.
Perhaps we shared a wavelength. He said, ‘The kind of life I’ve led, I ought to be dead.’
I said nothing.
‘Are you reopening the Edwards case?’
‘I have one main interest.’
‘Which is?’
‘Where she is now if she’s alive. And if not, what happened to her. The Edwards trial is the most recent information I have, so far.’
I paused, but he didn’t take the opportunity to volunteer anything more.
‘She left town after she was acquitted,’ I said. ‘Do you have any idea of where she went?’
He looked quizzical. ‘Me?’
‘It must have been an important part of your life then, with the trial and everything. You might have heard something.’
‘I never heard anything,’ he said, hard now. ‘As far as you could tell by me Mrs Edwards passed from the face of the earth a couple of days after it was over.’
I was restless when I left Normal Bates, but I didn’t feel like simmering on it to work out why. There was a lot to do.
I stopped at a phone booth and called Miller. For a change he was not at his desk.
I checked my watch. Lunchtime. Wendy Winslow?
Lunchtime was about the earliest that there was a good chance of catching Maude Simmons in her office. I called. Better luck.
‘I’ve just left a message on your answering machine,’ she said. ‘Did you get it?’
‘No. I’m out.’
‘You should have remote access. Well, if you can stop by, I have your trial transcript.’
I stopped by.
It was a hefty volume.
‘Not as bad as if it were for one of the big money, society trials they have these days,’ Maude said. ‘It would be four times as thick. I suppose it’s to help the people in the gallery who are writing books.’
I asked, ‘Anything else?’
‘Isn’t that enough to keep you busy?’
‘I wondered about a lead in Logansport.’
‘Not yet.’ Then, ‘I have a meeting this afternoon with Kenny Gay.’
I brought the name back. ‘The lawyer at Barker, McKay and Gay.’
‘A senior partner,’ she said. ‘But no promises.’
I took the transcript home, thinking I would have a quiet read over a hamburger and oven fries. But I checked my answering machine first. Apart from Maude’s call there was one other, from Miller. His message was, ‘Get your ass down here, now.’
He still wasn’t at his desk. But the reception officer at Homicide and Robbery with Violence, Sergeant Mable, knew I was expected and told me to wait.
My stomach snarled, but I sat. I read my transcript for twenty minutes.
Miller barely acknowledged me when he came into the reception area. He just said, ‘Come on.’ The way he said it left me with the feeling that he was a real policeman.
‘Sit down,’ he said when we got to his cubby hole.
I did; so did he.
He said, ‘I don’t want any gobbledy garbage from you, Al. Just a simple answer. I want to know how the hell you knew that Ella Murchison was murdered.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘The pathologist found a needle mark on her left arm. Her medical records didn’t show any injections recently, and there was a little light bruising on her arms and on her abdomen, so he checked her blood. He found nembutal. It’s an anaesthetic. And it’s also used by vets. Somebody came in and put the old lady down, Al. The pathologist thinks whoever it was sat on her, maybe put a pillow over her face, and injected her.’
‘Why inject her instead of suffocate her?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ Miller asked angrily. ‘Maybe because suffocation is pretty easy to notice and he – or she thought there was a better chance of nobody suspecting foul play this way. Which is damn well how it would have been, except for you.’
I tried to explain why I had felt suspicious.
‘So all you admit to was the coincidence of her dying suddenly when she knew things you wanted to know and didn’t want to talk about them.’
‘That’s all there was, Jerry.’
‘What kind of things did she know?’
‘I have been trying to trace a woman whose baby Mrs Murchison raised as her own daughter. The fact the child wasn’t actually hers came out only a few days ago. Mrs Murchison was the obvious and best source of information about what had happened and about the woman who was the real mother. But she wasn’t talking, either because she was not clear-headed, or, more likely, because she didn’t want to.’
‘So who is this real mother and where do I find her?’
‘I can tell you where she was in 1940,’ I said.
When I left Miller, I went to a phone book and found the main office number for Douglas Belter’s bank. But when I called his secretary said that he was at home. I called his home. It took twenty rings for an answer, but when it came the voice was Belter’s.
I said that I wanted to come and see him. He agreed and didn’t ask what it was about.
Belter answered the door himself too. He looked grimmer and greyer than ever, haunted, as if the accumulating shocks were getting near the too-much point. Maybe I was projecting my ideas of what a banker’s life should be like, assuming that he wanted calm and organisation. Maybe he was really a night rover, pocket poet and garden revolutionary. But whatever way he cut his path, it seemed to be getting near the quick.
‘Paula is in bed,’ he said. ‘Tamae is out.’
I followed him into the house and he led me to the kitchen. We sat at the kitchen table. He said, ‘You said you
were at Police Headquarters. Were you there about Ella?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They wanted to know if I knew who had murdered her.’
‘Murdered,’ Belter said. He held his head. ‘My God!’
His shock was in finding himself in that sordid part of the world where human beings deprive other human beings of the miracle of life. It’s not the sort of thing that actually happens, not to real people.
Except, sometimes, it does.
‘There’s no chance that . . . it could be anything else?’
‘No.’
‘How ...?’
‘Somebody gave her a shot of an anaesthetic called nembutal. Somebody put her to sleep.’
He blinked. ‘I’ve just had a call from a lieutenant named Miller. But he didn’t tell me. . . .’ His voice faded.
Miller must have wanted to see for himself how the news was taken. The lover of Wendy Winslow seemed far away.
‘I know Miller,’ I said.
‘He said that he would come out this afternoon. He told me and my wife to stay at home.’
I sat and watched him stare at the table top for a few minutes.
‘Mr Belter, did you kill Mrs Murchison?’
He lifted his eyes to me slowly. ‘Did I what?’
‘Lieutenant Miller will ask you that.’
With more time to prepare indignation he would have given a more vigorous answer than he did.
‘No,’ he said.
‘O.K.,’ I said. ‘But here’s another one.’
‘Yes?’
‘Your wife and housekeeper visited Mrs Murchison the morning of the day she died.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did either of them go back in the afternoon?’
‘I . . . don’t know.’ Belter sat silently.
‘Can I talk to your wife?’
‘I would prefer that you didn’t disturb her.’
‘When is Tamae going to be back?’
‘She shouldn’t be long,’ he said. As he said it, we heard the front door.
‘I would like to talk to her.’
‘All right,’ he said, and he rose and left me in the kitchen.
A minute later Tamae Mitsuki joined me. She looked old and pale and small. ‘Doug just told me,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to look at Paula. He may call the doctor. He says the police are coming here.’
‘If she’s not in a fit state to be interrogated, a doctor here to say so would be useful.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, which was comment on Mrs Belter’s state of fitness, though Mrs Mitsuki looked none too steady herself.
‘How much of Mrs’ Belter’s moodiness is controllable, Mrs Mitsuki?’
‘I don’t know. I just do what I can to help.’
‘You and Mrs Belter visited Mrs Murchison the morning of the day she died.’
‘Yes. We did.’
‘Did either of you return in the afternoon?’
Behind me a loud voice said, ‘Why don’t you just out and ask whether Tamae and I killed her, Mr Samson?’
As I turned, I saw Paula Belter, an apparition in a long plain white nightdress, standing in the doorway. Behind her, Douglas Belter seemed a shadow. I heard him saying faintly, ‘Now, Paula.’
‘It’s not my job to investigate Mrs Murchison’s death.’
‘It’s nice to hear that you remember what you’re being paid so well for,’ Paula Belter said.
‘But the police will want to know and you should be prepared for their questions.’
‘I think Tamae and I will manage to answer any questions which the police feel they need to ask.’
Tamae Mitsuki rose from the table and went to Mrs Belter. She said quietly, ‘Mr Samson has more experience of police matters than we do. Perhaps he can help.’
Paula Belter shook her head. ‘I want him to go. I want him to leave,’ she said. She stepped forward. ‘I want you to leave now. Leave!’
I left.
As I drove back down Meridian towards town, I considered that Paula Belter had a reasonable point. I was hired to try to establish history and location of Vera Wert Daisy Wines Edwards. Whether Mrs Murchison’s death arose from the investigation or not was irrelevant to the terms of my employment.
But I felt involved. I felt sure that the killing had some direct connection with developments in the case. But how they could lead to this murder I didn’t understand. Paula Belter’s real mother protecting the secret of her identity? But how would she know it was in danger? No, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a good reason why someone would want Ella Murchison dead.
Which only served to underline how much I didn’t know. Because somewhere there was someone who had had sufficient reason, good or not.
Chapter Eighteen
At Biarritz House I was told that Connie Howard was in the staff lounge talking to the police. I gatecrashed.
Miller and a plain-clothes detective I didn’t know were in the room with her. Miller looked distinctly annoyed when he heard someone coming in but when he saw it was me, he said only, ‘The bad penny.’
Mrs Howard said, ‘That is the man who came to my apartment. Before then it hadn’t occurred to me that something might be wrong about Ella dying. But the more I thought about it, the less right it was.’
‘You said that Mrs Murchison was behaving strangely,’ Miller said.
‘Only that several of her visitors said she was having memory trouble, but when I talked to her, she was fine. All the attention seemed to stimulate her. I felt she was as alert as she had been since I knew her.’
Miller sighed. ‘The daughter and housekeeper were her only visitors that day?’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Howard said.
‘Did she have any enemies among the other patients, or people that she feuded with, or people who envied her or disliked her for some reason?’
‘There are always little tiffs, but there was nothing in the slightest way serious.’
‘I see,’ Miller said.
I said, ‘When you say there were only the two visitors, in the morning, does that include other residents stopping in?’
‘No, no,’ Mrs Howard said, ‘We don’t monitor in-house visits.’
‘Or,’ Miller said, ‘the number of stops in her room by members of the Biarritz staff?’
Connie Howard looked at Miller sternly, a mother on the verge of scolding a child for being stupid and wasting time.
But hypodermic syringes aren’t available only on the streets. Some doctors and nurses have access to them too, so Miller was being sharp, not silly.
He said, ‘Did you see Mrs Belter and Mrs Mitsuki when they came that day?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they have a bag with them, or any kind of package?’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘How long did they stay?’
‘I don’t really remember. Half an hour?’
‘Were they together in the room with her all the time?’
‘I . . .’ she began. ‘As a matter of fact, Mrs Belter did come out a couple of minutes before . . . ?’
‘Mrs Mitsuki,’ I said.
‘She asked at the desk whether the doctor was on the premises.’
‘Why?’ Miller said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did she look upset?’
‘I don’t remember her looking upset.’
‘And did she go back to the room then?’
‘Yes, but they left, her and the housekeeper, almost right away.’
‘Did you stop to see Mrs Murchison in the afternoon?’
‘Not after lunch.’
‘Did you see anybody at all outside her room after that?’ I said.
‘No.’
Miller said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Howard. That will be all now.’
Connie Howard rose tentatively, but left the room without saying anything else. I said, ‘What all have you got?’
‘I only started when the autopsy preliminary came back this morning. This is my first stop.’
Miller’s detective colleague said, ‘You want me to keep taking notes, Jer?’
‘What? Oh. No.’
The man closed a notebook.
Miller turned back to me. ‘I’m off to these people who hired you now. Want to come?’
‘I think I’ll give it a miss,’ I said.
‘O.K.,’ he said without interest. He left with his note taker.
I wanted to talk to Paula Belter. But considering the tone accompanying my recent exit, I decided it would have to wait. Maybe some undeferential cop treatment by Miller would make her more receptive to the prospect of my gentle questionings.
Even if some of the questions I had weren’t quite so gentle.
So I went back to my office.
I finished the transcript of the Vera Edwards trial over a couple of sandwiches and a beer.
Vera Edwards had come back to her home at ten o’clock on the 21st of April, 1940, a Saturday night. There, husband ‘Benny’ Edwards was waiting for her. A houseboy employed by the Edwards family testified that ‘Mr Benny’ had been drinking heavily and was in a terrible temper. Vera Edwards did not appear unusual as she came in, was modestly dressed, well behaved and polite. He said that she always treated the servants with courtesy, in contradistinction to her husband and the rest of his family. Of the family, Wanda Edwards and the senior Mr Edwards lived in the house at the time. The houseboy, a maid, a cook and a chauffeur/gardener also lived on the premises.
The houseboy testified that Mr Benny Edwards shook his wife physically as soon as she returned to the house, and that he had called her names – ‘tramp’ and ‘bitch’ – and then told the houseboy to ‘get lost’. The houseboy did not leave them until Mrs Edwards also told him that he should go on to bed.
The houseboy did not go to bed, although he admitted Mr Edwards was often, even routinely, abusive to his wife in front of the servants. Instead he did chores in and around the kitchen and was still there when he heard the shots.
The last he had seen of Edwards alive was as he led his wife by the wrist through the hall towards the conservatory.
The fatal shots had been fired more than an hour later. The time was agreed by both the houseboy and a key prosecution witness, Wanda Edwards.
Miss Edwards testified to being awake when she heard the shots because, although she retired early, she often found it difficult to sleep. And on this occasion she knew her brother was upset. She had come immediately from her room, and she claimed that she had been the first person to get to the conservatory, although her bedroom was farther away than the kitchen.
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