Patton said: “I ought to of thought of it myself. But if I had, it would be one of those ideas a fellow would throw away almost as quick as he thought of it. It would look too kind of far-fetched.”
“Superficially yes,” I said. “But only superficially. Suppose the body had not come up out of the lake for a year, or not at all, unless the lake was dragged for it. Muriel Chess was gone and nobody was going to spend much time looking for her. We might never have heard of her again. Mrs. Kingsley was a different proposition. She had money and connections and an anxious husband. She would be searched for, as she was, eventually. But not very soon, unless something happened to start suspicion. It might have been a matter of months before anything was found out. The lake might have been dragged, but if a search along her trail seemed to indicate that she had actually left the lake and gone down the hill, even as far as San Bernardino, and the train from there east, then the lake might never have been dragged. And even if it was and the body was found, there was rather better than an even chance that the body would not be correctly identified. Bill Chess was arrested for his wife’s murder. For all I know he might even have been convicted of it, and that would have been that, as far as the body in the lake was concerned. Crystal Kingsley would still be missing, and it would be an unsolved mystery. Eventually it would be assumed that something had happened to her and that she was no longer alive. But nobody would know where or when or how it had happened. If it hadn’t been for Lavery, we might not be here talking about it now. Lavery is the key to the whole thing. He was in the Prescott Hotel in San Bernardino the night Crystal Kingsley was supposed to have left here. He saw a woman there who had Crystal Kingsley’s car, who was wearing Crystal Kingsley’s clothes, and of course he knew who she was. But he didn’t have to know there was anything wrong. He didn’t have to know they were Crystal Kingsley’s clothes or that the woman had put Crystal Kingsley’s car in the hotel garage. All he had to know was that he met Muriel Chess. Muriel took care of the rest.”
I stopped and waited for somebody to say anything. Nobody did. Patton sat immovable in his chair, his plump, hairless hands clasped comfortably across his stomach. Kingsley leaned his head back and he had his eyes half closed and he was not moving. Degarmo leaned against the wall by the fireplace, taut and white-faced and cold, a big hard solemn man whose thoughts were deeply hidden.
I went on talking.
“If Muriel Chess impersonated Crystal Kingsley, she murdered her. That’s elementary. All right, let’s look at it. We know who she was and what kind of woman she was. She had already murdered before she met and married Bill Chess. She had been Dr. Almore’s office nurse and his little pal and she had murdered Dr. Almore’s wife in such a neat way that Almore had to cover up for her. And she had been married to a man in the Bay City police who also was sucker enough to cover up for her. She got the men that way, she could make them jump through hoops. I didn’t know her long enough to see why, but her record proves it. What she was able to do with Lavery proves it. Very well, she killed people who got in her way, and Kingsley’s wife got in her way too. I hadn’t meant to talk about this, but it doesn’t matter much now. Crystal Kingsley could make the men do a little jumping through hoops too. She made Bill Chess jump and Bill Chess’s wife wasn’t the girl to take that and smile. Also, she was sick to death of her life up here—she must have been—and she wanted to get away. But she needed money. She had tried to get it from Almore, and that sent Degarmo up here looking for her. That scared her a little. Degarmo is the sort of fellow you are never quite sure of. She was right not to be sure of him, wasn’t she, Degarmo?”
Degarmo moved his foot on the ground. “The sands are running against you, fellow,” he said grimly. “Speak your little piece while you can.”
“Mildred didn’t positively have to have Crystal Kingsley’s car and clothes and credentials and what not, but they helped. What money she had must have helped a great deal, and Kingsley says she liked to have a good deal of money with her. Also she must have had jewelry which could eventually be turned into money. All this made killing her a rational as well as an agreeable thing to do. That disposes of motive, and we come to means and opportunity.
“The opportunity was made to order for her. She had quarreled with Bill and he had gone off to get drunk. She knew her Bill and how drunk he could get and how long he would stay away. She needed time. Time was of the essence. She had to assume that there was time. Otherwise the whole thing flopped. She had to pack her own clothes and take them in her car to Coon Lake and hide them there, because they had to be gone. She had to walk back. She had to murder Crystal Kingsley and dress her in Muriel’s clothes and get her down in the lake. All that took time. As to the murder itself, I imagine she got her drunk or knocked her on the head and drowned her in the bathtub in this cabin. That would be logical and simple too. She was a nurse, she knew how to handle things like bodies. She knew how to swim—we have it from Bill that she was a fine swimmer. And a drowned body will sink. All she had to do was guide it down into the deep water where she wanted it. There is nothing in all this beyond the powers of one woman who could swim. She did it, she dressed in Crystal Kingsley’s clothes, packed what else of hers she wanted, got into Crystal Kingsley’s car and departed. And at San Bernardino she ran into her first snag, Lavery.”
“Lavery knew her as Muriel Chess. We have no evidence and no reason whatever to assume that he knew her as anything else. He had seen her up here and he was probably on his way up here again when he met her. She wouldn’t want that. All he would find would be a locked-up cabin but he might get talking to Bill and it was part of her plan that Bill should not know positively that she had ever left Little Fawn Lake. So that when, and if, the body was found, he would identify it. So she put her hooks into Lavery at once, and that wouldn’t be too hard. If there is one thing we know for certain about Lavery, it is that he couldn’t keep his hands off the women. The more of them, the better. He would be easy for a smart girl like Mildred Haviland. So she played him and took him away with her. She took him to El Paso and there sent a wire he knew nothing about. Finally she played him back to Bay City. She probably couldn’t help that. He wanted to go home and she couldn’t let him get too far from her. Because Lavery was dangerous to her. Lavery alone could destroy all the indications that Crystal Kingsley had actually left Little Fawn Lake. When the search for Crystal Kingsley eventually began, it had to come to Lavery, and at that moment Lavery’s life wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. His first denials might not be believed, as they were not, but when he opened up with the whole story, that would be believed, because it could be checked. So the search began and immediately Lavery was shot dead in his bathroom, the very night after I went down to talk to him. That’s about all there is to it, except why she went back to the house the next morning. That’s just one of those things that murderers seem to do. She said he had taken her money, but I don’t believe it. I think more likely she got to thinking he had some of his own hidden away, or that she had better edit the job with a cool head and make sure it was all in order and pointing the right way; or perhaps it was just what she said, and to take in the paper and the milk. Anything is possible. She went back and I found her there and she put on an act that left me with both feet in my mouth.”
Patton said: “Who killed her, son? I gather you don’t like Kingsley for that little job.”
I looked at Kingsley and said: “You didn’t talk to her on the phone, you said. What about Miss Fromsett? Did she think she was talking to your wife?”
Kingsley shook his head. “I doubt it. It would be pretty hard to fool her that way. All she said was that she seemed very changed and subdued. I had no suspicion then. I didn’t have any until I got up here. When I walked into this cabin last night, I felt there was something wrong. It was too clean and neat and orderly. Crystal didn’t leave things that way. There would have been clothes all over the bedroom, cigarette stubs all over the house, bottles and glasses all over the kitchen
. There would have been unwashed dishes and ants and flies. I thought Bill’s wife might have cleaned up, and then I remembered that Bill’s wife wouldn’t have, not on that particular day. She had been too busy quarreling with Bill and being murdered, or committing suicide, whichever it was. I thought about all this in a confused sort of way, but I don’t claim I actually made anything of it.”
Patton got up from his chair and went out on the porch. He came back wiping his lips with his tan handkerchief. He sat down again, and eased himself over on his left hip, on account of the hip holster on the other side. He looked thoughtfully at Degarmo. Degarmo stood against the wall, hard and rigid, a stone man. His right hand still hung down at his side, with the fingers curled.
Patton said: “I still ain’t heard who killed Muriel. Is that part of the show or is that something that still has to be worked out?”
I said: “Somebody who thought she needed killing, somebody who had loved her and hated her, somebody who was too much of a cop to let her get away with any more murders, but not enough of a cop to pull her in and let the whole story come out. Somebody like Degarmo.”
FORTY
Degarmo straightened away from the wall and smiled bleakly. His right hand made a hard clean movement and was holding a gun. He held it with a lax wrist, so that it pointed down at the floor in front of him. He spoke to me without looking at me.
“I don’t think you have a gun,” he said. “Patton has a gun but I don’t think he can get it out fast enough to do him any good. Maybe you have a little evidence to go with that last guess. Or wouldn’t that be important enough for you to bother with?”
“A little evidence,” I said. “Not very much. But it will grow. Somebody stood behind that green curtain in the Granada for more than half an hour and stood as silently as only a cop on a stake-out knows how to stand. Somebody who had a blackjack. Somebody who knew I had been hit with one without looking at the back of my head. You told Shorty, remember? Somebody who knew the dead girl had been hit with one too, although it wouldn’t have showed and he wouldn’t have been likely at that time to have handled the body enough to find out. Somebody who stripped her and raked her body with scratches in the kind of sadistic hate a man like you might feel for a woman who had made a small private hell for him. Somebody who has blood and cuticle under his fingernails right now, plenty enough for a chemist to work on. I bet you won’t let Patton look at the fingernails of your right hand, Degarmo.”
Degarmo lifted the gun a little and smiled. A wide white smile.
“And just how did I know where to find her?” he asked.
“Almore saw her—coming out of, or going into Lavery’s house. That’s what made him so nervous, that’s why he called you when he saw me hanging around. As to how exactly you trailed her to the apartment, I don’t know. I don’t see anything difficult about it. You could have hid out in Almore’s house and followed her, or followed Lavery. All that would be routine work for a copper.”
Degarmo nodded and stood silent for a moment, thinking. His face was grim, but his metallic blue eyes held a light that was almost amusement. The room was hot and heavy with a disaster that could no longer be mended. He seemed to feel it less than any of us.
“I want to get out of here,” he said at last. “Not very far maybe, but no hick cop is going to put the arm on me. Any objections?”
Patton said quietly: “Can’t be done, son. You know I got to take you. None of this ain’t proved, but I can’t just let you walk out.”
“You have a nice big belly, Patton. I’m a good shot. How do you figure to take me?”
“I been trying to figure,” Patton said and rumpled his hair under his pushed-back hat. “I ain’t got very far with it. I don’t want no holes in my belly. But I can’t let you make a monkey of me in my own territory either.”
“Let him go,” I said. “He can’t get out of these mountains. That’s why I brought him up here.”
Patton said soberly: “Somebody might get hurt taking him. That wouldn’t be right. If it’s anybody, it’s got to be me.”
Degarmo grinned. “You’re a nice boy, Patton,” he said. “Look, I’ll put the gun back under my arm and we’ll start from scratch. I’m good enough for that too.”
He tucked the gun under his arm. He stood with his arms hanging, his chin pushed forward a little, watching. Patton chewed softly, with his pale eyes on Degarmo’s vivid eyes.
“I’m sitting down,” he complained. “I ain’t as fast as you anyways. I just don’t like to look yellow.” He looked at me sadly. “Why the hell did you have to bring this up here? It ain’t any part of my troubles. Now look at the jam I’m in.” He sounded hurt and confused and rather feeble.
Degarmo put his head back a little and laughed. While he was still laughing, his right hand jumped for his gun again.
I didn’t see Patton move at all. The room throbbed with the roar of his frontier Colt.
Degarmo’s arm shot straight out to one side and the heavy Smith and Wesson was torn out of his hand and thudded against the knotty pine wall behind him. He shook his numbed right hand and looked down at it with wonder in his eyes.
Patton stood up slowly. He walked slowly across the room and kicked the revolver under a chair. He looked at Degarmo sadly. Degarmo was sucking a little blood off his knuckles.
“You give me a break,” Patton said sadly. “You hadn’t ought ever to give a man like me a break. I been a shooter more years than you been alive, son.”
Degarmo nodded to him and straightened his back and started for the door.
“Don’t do that,” Patton told him calmly.
Degarmo kept on going. He reached the door and pushed on the screen. He looked back at Patton and his face was very white now.
“I’m going out of here,” he said. “There’s only one way you can stop me. So long, fatty.”
Patton didn’t move a muscle.
Degarmo went out through the door. His feet made heavy sounds on the porch and then on the steps. I went to the front window and looked out. Patton still hadn’t moved. Degarmo came down off the steps and started across the top of the little dam.
“He’s crossing the dam,” I said. “Has Andy got a gun?”
“I don’t figure he’d use one if he had,” Patton said calmly. “He don’t know any reason why he should.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.
Patton sighed. “He hadn’t ought to have given me a break like that,” he said. “Had me cold. I got to give it back to him. Kind of puny too. Won’t do him a lot of good.”
“He’s a killer,” I said.
“He ain’t that kind of killer,” Patton said. “You lock your car?”
I nodded. “Andy’s coming down to the other end of the dam,” I said. “Degarmo has stopped him. He’s speaking to him.”
“He’ll take Andy’s car maybe,” Patton said sadly.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said again. I looked back at Kingsley. He had his head in his hands and he was staring at the floor. I turned back to the window. Degarmo was out of sight beyond the rise. Andy was half way across the dam, coming slowly, looking back over his shoulder now and then. The sound of a starting car came distantly. Andy looked up at the cabin, then turned back and started to run back along the dam.
The sound of the motor died away. When it was quite gone, Patton said: “Well, I guess we better go back to the office and do some telephoning.”
Kingsley got up suddenly and went out to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of whiskey. He poured himself a stiff drink and drank it standing. He waved a hand at it and walked heavily out of the room. I heard bed springs creak.
Patton and I went quietly out of the cabin.
FORTY-ONE
Patton had just finished putting his calls through to block the highways when a call came through from the sergeant in charge of the guard detail at Puma Lake dam. We went out and got into Patton’s car and Andy drove very fast along the lake road through the village
and along the lake shore back to the big dam at the end. We were waved across the dam where the sergeant was waiting in a jeep beside the headquarters hut.
The sergeant waved his arm and started the jeep and we followed him a couple of hundred feet along the highway to where a few soldiers stood on the edge of the canyon looking down. Several cars had stopped there and a cluster of people was grouped near the soldiers. The sergeant got out of the jeep and Patton and Andy and I climbed out of the official car and went over by the sergeant.
“Guy didn’t stop for the sentry,” the sergeant said, and there was bitterness in his voice. “Damn near knocked him off the road. The sentry in the middle of the bridge had to jump fast to get missed. The one at this end had enough. He called the guy to halt. Guy kept going.”
The sergeant chewed his gum and looked down into the canyon.
“Orders are to shoot in a case like that,” he said. “The sentry shot.” He pointed down to the grooves in the shoulder at the edge of the drop. “This is where he went off.”
A hundred feet down in the canyon a small coupe was smashed against the side of a huge granite boulder. It was almost upside down, leaning a little. There were three men down there. They had moved the car enough to lift something out.
Something that had been a man.
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler was born in 1888 and published his first story in 1933 in the pulp magazine Black Mask. By the time he published his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), featuring, as did all his major works, the iconic private eye Philip Marlowe, it was clear that he had not only mastered a genre but had set a standard to which others could only aspire. Chandler created a body of work that ranks with the best of twentieth-century literature. He died in 1959.
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