‘Do you know why she left?’
‘Not real for sure,’ Winnie Wert said. ‘But she did take me aside and have a talk about staying away from mens. I was only seven, but I recall that clear. She talked to me because I was her real sister, onliest one she got. And I’ll tell you straight, I sure wish I had listened to her better.’
‘So you think she had trouble from a man here?’
‘I didn’t know nothing about it at the time, but I could guess who that was.’
‘Who?’
‘Tommy Wingfield.’
‘The doctor?’
Winnie Jane Wert laughed hard. ‘Gracious me, no. Old Doc Wingfield was a sweet, kind, gentle kind of man. This was his boy, his only boy what lived in the house with ’em. He must of been eighteen, nineteen when Vera was there and I know for a fact that he made a lot of little babies in his day.’
‘Does he live locally now?’
She grew momentarily grave. ‘No. He don’t live at all. He got killed in France in the War.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And that’s the last you know of Vera? When you saw her in 1935?’
Looking at me sharply the woman said, ‘Now, I didn’t say that, now did I? That was the last time I saw Vera, but I heard from her since then. Plenty.’
‘When?’ I asked, my heart starting to race.
‘Oh, lots of times.’
‘When was the last?’
‘The last? Lessee.’ She looked at me. ‘You know that all the boys, each an’ ever one, is gone.’ Then, in case it wasn’t clear, she added, ‘Dead.’
‘All your brothers? I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Last was Earl. That’s ironical, ain’t it, him being the oldest. But he passed over from cancer, it was three years ago come March.’
I sat.
‘Sad time it was. He had him four kids and a wife. Hard on them.’
‘And you heard from Vera then?’
‘Not direct, to me. But she sent a wreath and five hundred dollars for the family.’
‘Three years ago?’
‘That’s right. And she’s had her a wreath at ever single funeral. Each of the boys. And she made a gift to the families too.’
‘But she didn’t attend any of the funerals?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know. Maybe she was too far away to come.’
‘But who told her that the boys had died?’
‘I don’t know that neither. She just knowed. And more than that, she knowed other things. She knowed when I was down on my luck and she got me . . .’ Miss Wert paused. ‘I got to say, I was in jail for thieving, which I did only because I was real hard up and not because I’m a bad person. But Vera give me money, a kind of allowance, when I come out. It ain’t enough to live high on, but it keeps me going. Pays the rent on this place, even if the landlord lets it get like a pigsty outside.’
‘How did you start receiving this allowance?’
‘Governor of the reformatory had me brought in and told me how my sister had contacted them and set it up. Give me a speech on taking advantage of the opportunity.’
‘How do you receive the money. Miss Wert?’
‘In cash. In hard cash. I get me a letter that I got to sign for, twice ever month.’ She spread her hands, palms up, resting on her knees. ‘Like I say, it don’t go very far and when I got extra expenses, you know. . . .’
I nodded. ‘Where are the letters mailed from?’
‘They come from Indianapolis. But they won’t help you much.’
‘Why not?’
‘The address is some lawyers, and you know lawyers.’ She winked. ‘Well, maybe you don’t know ’em, but I never had no joy from no lawyers. And these that sends the money, I wrote to them last year when I was sick and I had some time, see, and expenses, you know. It was a letter of thank you to send on to Vera, but I didn’t get no comeback. Wasn’t just no cold neither. Pneumonia I had. But nothing. So don’t talk to me about no lawyers.’
‘Is there anything else about Vera?’ I asked.
‘You ain’t saying that you knew everthing I already told you?’
‘No. You’ve helped a lot.’
She sank back on her chair with visible relief. ‘Oh, that’s good.’ After a moment she said, ‘I don’t really know nothing else. I got a picture though. That any good?’
Before I answered, she rose and went to another room. She was gone only a moment and returned with a small photograph. ‘This is it.’
It showed the Wert family, all eight of them, in a posed snapshot taken outside a house. The youngest child was in its mother’s arms, and Vera Wert was easily identifiable as a slight, serious-looking girl, standing stiffly next to her father, a sallow-faced man with tiny eyes and stubble visible on his chin.
‘I would very much like to borrow this, if you would let me.’
She shook her head. ‘Oh no.’ Then she stopped shaking her head. ‘But I’ll sell it to you for . . . ten bucks?’
Chapter Twenty One
Friday dawned wet and cold. I woke with the light, but ruminated for a long time in bed before getting up. I charged it as work time.
I often do my best work in bed.
I cooked a big breakfast. I washed all the dishes. At nine-thirty I went to the phone.
I called the police department, got put straight through.
‘Lieutenant Miller.’ The voice was strong.
‘You sound like a razor-keen ambitious cop again,’ I said.
‘I feel reborn,’ he said.
‘I’m pleased for you, Jerry. I’m pleased you’re getting some joy.’ ‘I have no idea where it’s going to lead, Al. But we are good for each other. I kind of keep her feet on the ground and she kind of keeps my head in the air. Food even tastes better to me now.’
‘And you’re not resigning?’
‘No. We’re looking to keep the status quo, on the surface.’
‘So, no TV slot?’
‘It’s been shelved. I’m an unofficial consultant. It wouldn’t be the right career move for me to change jobs now.’
I could visualise him smiling. Then he asked, ‘What did you want?’
‘An up-date on the Murchison case.’
‘Nothing new,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s remembered anyone going in or out of the room?’
‘No. We’ve covered all the staff on duty and most of the residents. There is a lot of routine traffic in the corridor so somebody probably did see but didn’t notice. We’re trying a reconstruction, as many people repeating their movements as possible.’
‘No feelings about whether or not it was someone to do with the nursing home?’
‘We’ve got no evidence about anything yet, Al.’
‘Good luck,’ I said.
I went out into the big world. My first visit was to the house of Wanda Edwards.
I rang the bell three times before the door was answered by bestseller-writer-in-the-making Jane Smith. She wore a long quilted dressing gown and her puffy face said, ‘If you think I look rough on the outside, just be thankful you aren’t participating in what’s on the inside.’
‘Yeah?’ she said aloud.
I asked to see Miss Edwards.
She said, ‘Hang on,’ and closed the door.
It took so long for her to come back that even a patient person like me was on the verge of having a go at the bell again.
But then the door reopened. ‘You didn’t tell me who you are,’Jane Smith said.
‘You didn’t give me the chance.’
She sighed deeply. ‘Jesus. Hell. Shit. Come in.’
When it’s put right, I don’t need asking twice.
‘I was here a couple of days ago,’ I said.
She looked at me, but as if the effort hurt her eyes. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘So who are you?’
I told her. Then I said, as we walked into the depths of the house, ‘Feeling the effects of a bit of late researc
h?’
She stopped, turned and spoke, each action completed before the next began. ‘Were you part of the scene last night?’
‘No.’
‘What do you know about my research?’
‘Virtually nothing,’ I said. ‘We established that fact the last time I was here.’
‘Oh.’
She turned, led with her right foot and followed it with a left.
We stopped outside the conservatory door. I told her my name again, without being asked.
She looked at me with a painful squint of recollection. ‘A detective?’
‘Yes.’
‘You guys sure pick your times.’ She entered the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked at my watch. It was a little after ten.
Jane Smith reappeared almost immediately. She passed me without a word, and I took that to be an invitation to enter the room.
Miss Edwards sat in a chair by the wall of windows which faced the rear garden. I walked towards her and she turned to face me. She placed the palms of her hands together and touched the joined tops of her index fingers to the point of her chin. It was an attitude of serious contemplation.
‘Mr Samson,’ she said. ‘The private investigator.’
‘May I sit down. Miss Edwards?’
‘Certainly.’ She didn’t point, but there was a choice of three wicker-framed cushioned chairs.
I sat.
Miss Edwards said, ‘I have been thinking about death. Something that someone of my age has good reason to take into account.’ She paused, but not long enough to force me to make the social sound of hoping earnestly that she see us all out. The old woman looked slighter than I remembered, but purposeful. She said, ‘Do you know that I am the last surviving member of my family? That when I die the line will end?’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.
She smiled slightly over the tops of her fingers. She said, ‘Oh, I think you did.’
‘I suspected it,’ I said, ‘but, in fact, it is a closely related subject that I wanted to speak to you about.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘I meant to work up to it more gently.’
‘That is candid of you. Say what you must.’
‘I have been reading a transcript of your sister-in-law’s trial.’
What smile there was vanished.
‘Please tell me to go if you are not willing to talk to me about it.’
Her hands dropped to rest one on each leg. She took a deep breath. ‘You reopened all that for me the other day,’ she said. ‘Ask what you want.’
‘My key question is to do with your testimony that your brother was positive he was not the father of the child which his wife was expecting.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Miss Edwards, what I need to know is how he could be so sure, and how you could be so certain that he was sure.’
‘I knew my brother, Mr Samson. I was present when he received the news. His reaction was immediate, instinctive and true. It was surprise, shock, and anger. I had no doubt then and have no doubt now. Benny would know. He said it couldn’t be. So that is the fact of the matter.’
I said quietly, ‘You realise it would mean you have a niece or nephew somewhere.’
‘There is no chance whatever of that being the case,’ Miss Edwards said.
‘All right.’
She leaned back. ‘The things that woman said.’
She meant Vera Edwards in her testimony about Benny’s sexual predilections.
‘I hadn’t thought about it for decades.’ She looked beyond me, somewhere distant. Into the past? But it was only for a moment.
She said, ‘I realised I knew very little about my secretary yesterday. So I asked her what sort of books she wants to write.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘They are so smart, these young people. But so misdirected. Life was so positive, so organised and orderly when I was a young woman, a younger woman. I long for those days.’
‘What do you miss?’
Her hands found each other once again and then palm slid past palm so each set of fingers gripped a wrist. ‘Myself, I loved the shopping. We had real stores then, where the clerks knew you by name and made you feel as if a customer was something worth being. Hasson’s, Lieber’s, Charlie Meyer’s for buying presents and Ayres of course.’ She tilted her head and remembered. ‘You could get fresh fish easily. It was something to do with the railroad connections from the east, but we had such lovely oysters and lobsters and fish.’
I watched her become younger with the pleasure of remembering.
‘And there were concerts. I used to go to the Murat for the symphony. When it was hot they opened the doors. No air conditioning then. And it meant you’d get unscored bells from the street cars as they went up and down outside.’
She stopped talking abruptly and her face grew harder and she said, ‘Of course she had no appreciation of real music’
‘She?’
‘But what do you expect of a night-club whore? Why Benny had to take up with her is something I never, never, never understood. So many nice girls.’
I said, ‘What parts of her life as your brother’s wife did your sister-in-law take to?’
‘None.’ Arch, sharp and short.
‘Not the parties?’
‘None of our people would invite them.’
‘The home organising?’
‘Nothing. A quiet, resentful slut. Not an ounce of feeling for my brother. And he was a boy who needed someone to care for him. The only thing she did for poor Benny was to sing to soothe him sometimes. I would hear her thin little voice wailing out some base tune or another. A siren’s call. She lured him to the very rocks and destroyed him.’
I was allowed to find my own way out. But instead of doing so I spent a few minutes wandering around the house.
I found Jane Smith in the dining room. She sat in a haze of pot smoke, holding her breath and a cigarette. In front of her, making a condensation ring on the table, was a glass of orange juice.
‘Miss Edwards asked that I remind you to use coasters under your glasses,’ I said, ‘and to be careful about ashes on the carpet.’
Jane Smith looked up blearily. ‘What? Oh. Yeah.’
She sat still.
There was a buffet behind her. I tried some drawers and came across some place mats. I took one and put her glass on it. I dried the ring with my jacket sleeve and left the ashes to fate.
She looked at me and said, ‘I remember you now.’
‘The cloud lifting with the hair of the dog?’
She grimaced.
I said, ‘I want to ask you a question.’
She shrugged.
I sat in a chair next to her and said, ‘As you went into the room to speak to Miss Edwards you said, “You guys sure pick your times”.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did you mean by “you guys”?’
‘I meant you private-eye guys.’
‘Has there been another private detective here?’
‘Yeah. Nice looking too, if you like the executive type that carries a calculator instead of a gun.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you carry a gun?’
‘Three.’
She looked impressed. ‘Can I hold one?’
‘I only take them out when I’m going to shoot someone,’ I said.
‘Oh.’
She drew, then sipped.
‘I don’t know what you said to Miss Edwards the other day, but she’s been a different person.’
‘Different how?’
‘She’s been active. And she’s been talking to me. She told me this weird story about her brother being murdered. She’s even gone out of the house for no special reason a couple of times. When she’s gone out before you wouldn’t believe the production number it’s been.’
‘And she hired a detective.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He came here this morning?’
‘
No, no. Day before yesterday. But it was late for business, you know. After ten p.m. I kind of had some friends in.’
‘Are you sure the man was a private detective? As opposed to a police detective?’
‘Miss Edwards had me look them up in the Yellow Pages and give her the name of what looked like the biggest. The guy’s card said he was from them.’
‘Which agency was it?’
‘National Security Company.’
‘Do you remember his name?’
‘Roger something. Look, what’s this about? You going to detect the detective now?’
‘Miss Edwards does not have a high opinion of private investigators. It’s interesting that she has hired one herself.’
Jane Smith didn’t share my interest.
I got up. ‘How’s the book coming?’ I asked.
She looked at me. ‘That meant to be some obscure double entendre or something?’
I left quietly.
Chapter Twenty Two
I made my way south to Tarkington Tower.
It would have been sensible to stop to call Normal Bates and warn him I was coming. To confirm he was there. To let him wash his breakfast dishes and vacuum and clear his overnight popsy from the premises. I even had the dime.
But I just didn’t feel like it.
I buzzed from the lobby.
Within a few seconds he called down on the intercom.
I told him it was me.
‘Who?’
I repeated my name.
And then nothing happened.
After half a minute by the clock I buzzed again.
He said, ‘What do you want?’
‘To talk,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ he said.
I stood for more than five minutes. Finally the voice through the speaker said, ‘Are you still there, Samson?’
‘Yes.’
He buzzed the door release. I entered the lobby.
No one had come out while I was waiting. I called both elevators. When they reached the ground floor, both were empty.
I used the stairs to get to the twelfth floor. I didn’t pass anybody coming down.
So maybe he used the five minutes to make a phone call.
Bates opened the door for me. He looked mountainous as his belly spread red braces. His smile grew only as he saw I was breathing heavily. ‘Meet anyone interesting?’
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