She said, “I’ll be waiting downstairs, in your car.”
She was waiting there when the taxi dropped me off. I got in behind the wheel and I wanted to put my arms around her and kiss her, but I didn’t. I’d waited a long time; I could wait a little longer.
I drove to Grandma’s, and one house beyond.
Henderson’s lights were on. We went up on the porch and I rang the bell.
After a minute the door opened and he stood there. I could see surprise, and something else, on his face. He said, “Robin and Rod! Come in.” We went in and he led the way to his study.
“Robin, Rod, sit down. May I offer you a drink?”
I started to say no, and then I realized that I really wanted one. Robin nodded faintly; she must have felt as I did, even though she didn’t yet know what I knew. Henderson made three drinks at a liquor cabinet at one corner of the room. He said, “I was just thinking I’d like one myself before I turned in. Now there may be something to drink to. Are you two—reconciled?”
I said, “I don’t know, Mr. Henderson. There’s something that comes before that. I’ve got my memory back—and I even know why I lost it. And Robin’s told me something I couldn’t have remembered because I didn’t know it. But when the two stories add together—Why did you kill Grandma, Mr. Henderson? I thought you were her only real friend.”
He looked at me gravely. “What makes you think I did, Rod?”
I turned to Robin. “Will you tell again what you told me early this evening, Robin? Then I’ll fill in the gaps.”
She told it calmly.
I said, “I had a date with Vangy Wayne that evening, Robin. But—it didn’t click. My mind was on you and not on her. I took her home around nine o’clock and by ten we’d quarrelled—or rather she’d ordered me out because I’d told her I was still in love with you. I left. I had a start at drinking already and I decided I might as well forget things by hanging one on. Harry Weston lives only a couple of blocks from there and I went to his place to find company for the rest of my drinking. He took me to the tavern around the corner from there. I started to hang one on—a good start. And then, suddenly, I got an idea. Maybe it was because I was drunk, but it seemed like a wonderful idea.”
I looked at Robin; I was talking to her now and it came to me that I should have told her this part of it first, before we came here. But it was part of the story and it had to be told.
I said, “I told you early this evening—and it was a deduction then, not a memory as it is now—the main reason for our breaking up. The fact that you wanted children—your own children, not adopted ones—and because I thought then that I had a hereditary tendency toward insanity I didn’t dare give them to you. So I—”
Henderson interrupted. “Where did you get that idea, Rod?”
“From Arch. He told me…” And I told him just what Arch had told me and when.
“He knew better than that, Rod. I knew the cause of your mother’s death, and Arch and I happened to talk about it once, back when, five or six years ago. He knew.”
For the moment I was distracted from my story. I stared at Henderson. “Why would Arch have told me that if he knew the truth?”
He smiled faintly. “You tend to judge other people by yourself and their motivations by yours. I don’t know Arch’s reason for telling you that whopper, but I can guess. He was trying to break up your marriage with Robin—and he succeeded.”
“But why?” I wanted to know. “Arch isn’t in love with Robin.”
“Arch is in love with money. Arch is the one of the two of you who is psychopathic, if either of you is. I think he’d do anything for money—except possibly, kill for it. A year and a half ago—that would have been about the time he learned that Pauline Tuttle didn’t have too long to live, that you and he would soon be splitting her estate between you. And if you had a wife—and especially children—he’d never get more than half of the estate. If you were single, divorced and without children, he’d be your heir. If you predeceased him—and I won’t even suggest that you might have had help in doing that eventually—the whole of her estate would be his, not half of it. And he probably, then, figured as most people did that her estate was a lot larger than it turned out to be.”
He interlocked his fingers and stared at me. “Rod, Arch would have told a lie to break up your marriage for an even more off-chance of getting a lot less money.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said. But I did, and I guess the tone of my voice showed that I did, because Henderson didn’t say any more. Yes, I remembered Arch down the line now. A thousand little things, not the few that had come up in the last week and a half.
But that I could think about later. I’d been talking about the night of the murder, and Arch had been in Chicago then.
I said, “Robin, suddenly while I was sitting in that tavern I got an idea that seemed—at least in my drunken state—to be the answer to the problem of us. A suggestion that might enable me to talk you out of the divorce. You wanted children, your own children—and they couldn’t, I still thought, be mine. I remembered an article I’d read the evening before in a digest magazine telling how medical science was perfecting—had already succeeded with animals—in something even more amazing than artificial insemination. Artificial fertilization—a way in which you could have your own children without me or any other man being the father.
“All right, maybe it was a wild idea but in my state that night it seemed wonderful, the complete answer to my problem. I wanted to get to you right away and tell you the truth about why I hadn’t wanted children and then my idea for getting around it. My car wasn’t available because it was being repaired, so I started for Grandma’s to borrow Arch’s—at any price. I realized I needed some sobering up before I started driving, though, so I walked part way, as far as downtown, where Walter saw me. Then I rode a cab for a while but got out again to walk the last few blocks.”
I turned to Robin. “You saw me go in; you were driving up then. I saw from the outside that Arch’s light was out—I’d forgotten he was in Chicago—but he could be in bed, so I let myself in and went up to his room. He wasn’t there. I didn’t want to bother Grandma—especially as I was still drunk enough that she’d notice it—so I went quietly through the house to the back and outside to the garage to see if Arch’s car was there.
“If Arch’s car was there—and it was—I was going to take it and square it with Arch afterwards. Nothing mattered except my getting to Halchester in a hurry. And I was nearly enough sober to drive if I started out slowly—and with several hours of driving ahead of me I’d be sober enough to talk to you when I got there. I knew Arch’s car had a simple ignition lock that I could short out. I found a piece of wire and took care of that. Then I got in and started it.
“And that, Robin, is when you heard the two backfires you thought were shots. Arch never did keep that car tuned up or adjusted—his spark plugs probably had never been cleaned since he got it, and the timing was lousy. It backfired twice the minute I gunned it. And the sound, coming around the house from in back, sounded to you like shots in the house. That’s when you went in the front way.
“And that’s when I realized that I’d have to drive Arch’s car right past the window of Grandma’s study and that she’d hear it then, if she hadn’t already heard the backfires, and think the car was being stolen. She’d phone the police and I might be picked up before I got to Halchester. So I knew I’d have to go in and explain to her after all. I was afraid I might have to argue with her for a while so I pulled the wire off to stop the engine and went in the back way. And it was just as I closed the kitchen door, Robin, that I heard a shot, the shot you fired accidentally when you picked up that hair-triggered gun.”
She was looking at me now, her eyes wide.
I said, “I hurried through the dark kitchen and just as I got to the entrance to the hallway, there you came batting out of Grandma’s study, the gun in your hand, running to the front door. I couldn’t bel
ieve what I was seeing; I couldn’t even call out to you. I couldn’t get my feet going again, either, for seconds. And then I went into Grandma’s room and found her lying on the floor with a hole in her forehead.
“So, Robin, I had much more reason to believe you’d killed Grandma than you had to think I killed her. I was close enough that I knew the shot I’d heard came from that room and I was within sight of the door of it within seconds. And you came running out with the gun and—It knocked me for such a loop that I didn’t even realize that you had no motive to have killed her. If I thought of that at all, it must have been that you’d gone insane instead of me.
“I stood there until I heard your car start and then I went to the phone and called the police. I think—I’m not sure because this is the one period of a few seconds I’m still hazy about—that I was going to tell them I’d just killed a woman and they should come and get me. But the shock caught up with me then, with a bang. The shock of thinking you insane and a murderess. Somebody on the telephone was asking me my name and I couldn’t remember it. Or anything else.”
I said, “That’s why I had a compulsion against going to a psychiatrist since then and why I couldn’t remember of my own free will—my subconscious mind didn’t want me to know what it thought it knew. It wouldn’t let me remember. Until tonight you told me what really happened and the truth was something I could face. Then the block was gone—although I had to try for hours before I could take my first step through the fog.”
I asked, “Do you believe me, Robin? My part of the story, I mean, the fact that I didn’t kill her?”
“Yes, Rod.”
I turned back to Henderson then. “Why did you kill her, Mr. Henderson? I thought you were the only real friend she had. But you must have or you’d have had no reason to tell the whopper you told. You said you saw me go in the front door and kept watching and a moment later saw me pick up the phone in the study. Either my story or Robin’s, taken separately, can disprove that. The time it took me to go upstairs to look in Arch’s room, then to the garage and to wire around the car lock and start the car, then come back in—it would have been at least five minutes, maybe ten. And if you’d been watching you’d have seen Robin in the study; you’d have seen her enter the house and leave it. So unless both of us are lying, and in collusion, you were lying then. Why did you kill her?”
He took a long swallow from his drink, sighed, and put down the glass. He said, “I had to, Rod. I didn’t want to; I tried to work things so I could avoid it. When it happened—well, I found out I’m not a murderer, or at least not a very good one. I knew, even at the moment I pulled the trigger, that I wasn’t going to fight it out if I was ever even suspected. I’m too old, too tired for that. If the police had ever asked me, ‘Did you kill Pauline Tuttle?’ I’d have said ‘Yes’.” He smiled very faintly. “But they never asked. Now, when you and Robin have told them your stories, they will ask. And that’s that. In fact—” He opened a drawer on his desk and I leaned forward to jump, but it was only a sealed envelope he took out of it. He pushed it across the desk to me. “In fact, you might as well take them this when you go to them. It’s been ready, in case. It tells everything except why, and that I’m not going to tell. I think I’d like another drink, Rod. May I make us another around?”
“I’ll make it,” I said. I went to the cabinet.
He said, “I want you to believe this; I didn’t want to kill her. I worked for weeks to work out a way to get something out of her safe without having to kill to get it. I watched night after night, timing carefully, and I thought that I had time to cut through the screen the moment she left to get her glass of warm milk, get inside and out again before she got back. I picked Monday night because Arch was out of town. I cut the screen and went in; I got the gun out of her desk and went to the safe—and she came back too soon. I had to shoot her.
“I went back home and got in bed and then after a little while I heard what sounded like a couple of backfires and then, less than a minute later, something that sounded, by contrast, like a real shot. I got out of bed and went to that side of the house—and by that time you were standing at the telephone, Rod. No, I never saw Robin or knew she’d been there. But I thought fast—I figured you’d just walked in and had picked up the gun and it had gone off in your hand. And it occurred to me that the police might suspect you; they generally start by suspecting anybody who finds a body. And I didn’t want you to have trouble, so I got dressed and went over there. And told the story I told to clear you. I didn’t know whether you’d have told about firing a shot accidentally, so I didn’t mention hearing it. But I did tell about hearing a shot at half past eleven to set the time—the right time—of the murder as being before you got there.”
I finished making drinks and came back with them.
I said, “But why, Mr. Henderson?”
“If I told you that, Rod, the whole thing would have been—useless.”
“You mean, even as it stands now with us ready to turn this confession over to the police and tell them what you’ve just told us, it wasn’t useless?”
“Exactly. I’m sorry.”
I took a sip of my drink and thought a moment. I said, “I’ve got to know why, Mr. Henderson. And as long as we have your confession that you did it there’s no reason why we have to tell the police the reason if you tell us under our promise not to tell. Won’t you trust us?”
I looked at Robin. She nodded.
Seconds ticked by on Henderson’s desk clock. Then he said, “She was a bitch, Rod, in business dealings at least. An avaricious bitch.” He said it calmly, quietly, not vindictively. “I started out helping her and then discovered that and cut loose. My son Andy was just hanging out his shingle then and I talked her into letting him do her work; he needed it to help him get started. And then five years ago, Andy made a mistake—”
“He told me about it,” I said.
“He didn’t tell you the truth, I’m afraid. He’d had a bad loss or two and was desperately in need of a few hundred dollars. He didn’t come to me because I happened to be short just then—although I could have raised it had I known. Instead he pulled what I honestly think is the only dishonest deal he’s ever pulled or ever will pull. He dragged down on a deal he was handling for Pauline Tuttle—five hundred and seventy dollars was the exact amount. And, of course, she caught him at it. She was talked out of sending him to jail only by Andy signing a full confession—plus my raising the money to make full restitution. Which, by the way, Andy has repaid me long since.
“But that was the start of it, Rod. She wouldn’t trust Andy any more, of course, but she made me—under threat of using that confession and ruining Andy’s career—do her legal work for her ever since. For free—I haven’t sent her a bill in all that time. Not only that, but she’d make me play casino with her—and what a lousy game that is. God knows what pleasure she got out of playing it, knowing I hated it—unless it was sadistic pleasure.”
He waved a hand. “But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that when I learned recently that because of her cardiac trouble she didn’t have long to live, I asked her what about Andy’s confession, what arrangement had been made to dispose of it in case of her death.
“She laughed, Rod, and said that would be up to her executor. And her executor is Hennig, who’s my worst enemy and who doesn’t like Andy either. He’s scrupulously honest financially—I’ll give him that—but he hasn’t an ounce of mercy in him. He’d pretend he was doing his duty by turning that confession over to the police—and he’d ruin Andy’s career completely; he’d see that the matter became known even if the police refused to prosecute after so long a time.
“And she had, probably, only months to live, Rod. That’s why I had to get that confession back right away. I wanted to make it look like an ordinary burglary, if I could—but I couldn’t open a safe so I had to work it as I did. That brief trip to the kitchen each night was the only time she ever left the safe open while she wasn’
t in the room and I knew that safe was where she kept the confession. And—well, that’s that. I’ve already told you the rest. The confession is burned; I did that the moment I got home with it. What’s going to happen now isn’t going to help Andy—but he’ll ride through it as long as my reason for killing her isn’t known. Even Andy doesn’t know that and won’t guess when he learns I killed her.”
“And what makes you sure Andy will ever learn?” I asked him.
I looked at Robin but I couldn’t read her face. I said, “Give me a few minutes, Mr. Henderson; just wait here, don’t do anything.”
I took Robin by the arm and led her outside to the sidewalk, out into the rain again. I said, “I’m not going to the police. Are you?”
“I—do you really mean you think we should—?”
“I mean I think he’s a good guy who got backed in a corner. He tried not to kill and when he did kill it was from an even more justifiable motive than self-defense—it was in defense of someone else.”
“It’s a big thing to decide, Rod, so quickly. Can’t we—sleep on it?”
“No,” I said. “Not even together. Robin, there’s a man in there waiting to find out whether he’s going to kill himself. You know, you could tell, that he wasn’t going to wait for the police. That’s why he had that confession ready, so they could find him dead. Do you want to make him wait all night? Could you sleep until you decide?”
“All right, I’ll decide. Whatever you decide.”
“But you must realize one thing. If we keep quiet, we’re making ourselves accessories to murder.”
“I don’t mind that, Rod. She was selfish and hateful. And Mr. Henderson didn’t want to kill her.” She smiled faintly. “But here we’re making our suspicions of one another true. I thought you’d killed her and you thought I had. Now that we’re accessories we’re guilty along with the real killer; we all killed Grandma.”
I said, “I’ll be back in a minute; it’s better if we don’t both go back in there. You wait in the car.”
We All Killed Grandma Page 17
