Hanging up, he moved past Lydia into the bedroom and quickly began to dress. She watched him from the bedroom doorway.
“A news story?” she asked.
“There’s been a shooting out at the old Runyon place,” he said in no particular tone.
Lydia was aware that Betty Case had been a teen-age romance of Marshall’s, because he had once casually mentioned that they had been high-school sweethearts. He had volunteered no information other than that, however, and she had never questioned him about it. She must have suspected that Betty was still somewhat special to him, though, for on the rare occasions he and Lydia encountered the Cases socially, Lydia invariably examined Betty in the estimating manner of a woman studying a rival, and he had caught a similar look in Betty’s eyes when she examined Lydia.
“Betty?” Lydia asked.
“Dad didn’t know. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you at the office in the morning.”
He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and hurried across the front room to the door.
Chapter IV
The old Runyon place was a huge, two-story building dating back to the Civil War. It had always been well kept up, though, and was in as solidly good condition as the day it was built.
All the lights on the lower floor were burning when Marshall drove through the driveway gate, and a few lights were burning on the second floor. There was a police car parked where the driveway circled past the front porch.
A young uniformed policeman named Nat Thorpe opened the door to Marshall’s ring.
“Oh, hello, Kirk,” he said. “News sure travels fast in this town.”
“I have an arrangement with the police desk you must not know about,” Marshall said, moving past him through the entry hall to the door of the front room.
Relief washed over him when he saw Betty seated in a chair at the far end of the huge room. She was wearing a robe over her nightgown. Standing before her was the burly figure of Chief Barney Meister.
The chief glanced over his shoulder as Marshall approached and said without surprise, “Hello, Kirk.”
Betty, her face pale, merely looked up and gave him a weak smile.
“What’s the story?” Marshall asked.
“A shooting,” Meister said. “Doc Derring’s upstairs with him now, if you want to take a look.”
Marshall looked at Betty and the chief said, “I’ve only gotten the bare details from her so far. I’m waiting for her to quiet down. You’ll have time to go upstairs before I start detailed questioning.”
Retracing his way to the wide staircase, which was off the entry hall, Marshall climbed to the second floor. The hall light was on here, and light also streamed from the open door of a bedroom at the far end of the hall. The body of a man lay face-down in the doorway, his legs in the hall and his head inside the room.
Moving to the doorway, Marshall saw Dr. Emmett Derring inside the room, bending over the body. Apparently the doctor had dressed hurriedly, for beneath his suit coat he wore pajama tops instead of a shirt. He lived only two doors away, Marshall knew, so if he still hadn’t completed his examination of the shooting victim, the shooting couldn’t have happened too long ago.
The prone man’s head was turned sidewise so that Marshall could see his profile. It was Bruce Case. He was fully dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. In one outstretched hand was gripped a meat cleaver.
Dr. Derring closed his medical bag and rose to his feet just as Marshall appeared in the doorway.
“Hi, Kirk,” he said. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? We were fishing together just this afternoon.”
“What happened?”
“Betty mistook him for the cat burglar. I guess they both heard him on the roof. Bruce must have gotten that meat cleaver from the kitchen to go hunting for him. When he opened Betty’s door, she thought it was the burglar and shot him. All these lights weren’t on then. All she could see was a shadowy figure with what looked like an axe in his hand.”
“My God!” Marshall said. “No wonder she’s in shock.”
Derring raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t noticed. I thought she’s been holding up rather well.” He moved out into the hall. “He must have died instantly, because there’s hardly any bleeding. We may as well go downstairs.”
“What about Bud?” Marshall asked.
Derring pointed to a closed door across the hall. “Slept through it all. I looked in on him and he’s all right. No point in waking him.”
Patrolman Nat Thorpe appeared at the head of the stairs and moved toward them. He had a flash camera in his hand.
“All right to take pictures now?” he asked Derring.
“Go ahead. I’m finished.”
They went downstairs together, leaving the policeman alone with the body. When they entered the front room, Meister gave the doctor an inquiring look.
“He died instantly,” Derring said. “Nothing could have been done for him even if I’d been called earlier.”
The added comment seemed to have been directed at Betty rather than the chief, for Derring was looking at her when he said it.
In a low voice she said, “I just wasn’t thinking, Emmet. I was so appalled at what I’d done, all I could think of was to call the police.”
“It wouldn’t have helped to call Dr. Derring first,” Meister said soothingly. “Nobody’s blaming you. Are you settled down enough now to tell us exactly what happened?”
Betty closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “I’ve already told you I thought it was the cat burglar. I shot him. That’s all there is to it.”
Meister gave his head a mild shake. “Not quite. I’ll have to know step-by-step everything that happened just before the shooting.”
She took a deep breath. “All right. It was just two-thirty, because I glanced at the luminous dial of my bedside clock when a noise on the roof awakened me. It sounded like someone walking around up there. Instantly, I thought of the cat burglar, because he always starts on the roof, doesn’t he?”
Meister said, “His M.O. generally has been to climb a drainpipe to the roof, then lower himself by rope to a second-story window. At least we think he uses a rope. We can’t see how else he’d manage. So what did you do?”
“I sat up in bed, took the gun from beneath my pillow and listened. I thought I heard a peculiar rasping sound from the direction of the window at the far end of the hall. Then I heard stealthy footsteps and my bedroom door eased open. A dark figure stood there with a glittering blade of some kind in his hand. I was absolutely sure it was the cat burglar, so I fired. When he dropped, I turned on the light and saw it was my husband.”
“You and your husband had separate rooms, huh?”
There was a long pause before Betty said, “He’d been sleeping in the downstairs study, just off the kitchen. I suppose he, too, heard the noises, went to the kitchen to arm himself with the meat cleaver, then came upstairs to investigate. He must have opened my door to see if I was all right, and so as not to awaken me he didn’t turn on the hall light first.”
Meister opened his mouth to ask another question, changed his mind and closed it again. Marshall suspected he had been about to ask why her husband had been sleeping in the downstairs study when there were several bedrooms upstairs.
Instead he asked, “Why do you suppose your husband was fully dressed? He even had on shoes and socks. Seems if he was awakened from sleep he would just throw on a robe, like you did.”
“He may have just come in,” Betty said. “He was out this evening, and I went to bed while he was still gone. I have no idea when he got home.”
“I see. Incidentally, I checked that hall window upstairs — the one you thought you heard rasping noises coming from. It wasn’t your imagination. The screen’s been cut out.”
“Then the cat burglar actually was trying to get in!”
“Looks like it. The window was still closed but unlocked. Probably he was frightened off before he could push up the window — by your husband upstair
s.”
“He had pushed it up!” Betty said. “He may actually have been in the house. I closed the window after phoning the police because there was a draft. I didn’t notice the cut screen, though.”
“It’s cut right out of the frame. Probably he just dropped it on the ground and we’ll find it outside.”
Nat Thorpe came into the room carrying his camera in one hand and the meat cleaver in the other. Hefting the cleaver, he asked, ‘Will we want this, Chief?”
“Sure,” Meister said. “It’s evidence. You get the gun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tag them both and put them in the safe when you get back to headquarters. Have you finished everything else I told you to do?”
“Yes, sir. I took four pictures and I checked all the rooms. There’s a kid sleeping in one, but I took a good look anyway. He didn’t wake up. I couldn’t find any evidence of anything being disturbed anywhere in the house except for that cut screen. At any rate the guy’s not hiding here.”
The chief said, “We’ll see what we can find outside after it turns daylight. Meantime, Mrs. Case, don’t let anyone touch that window or screen. I’ll want a fingerprint man to go over both in the morning.”
“There’s no one here but Bud and me,” she said. “I’ll keep him away from it.”
That was the extent of the preliminary investigation. Meister told Betty he would be back about eight a.m. and that meantime she could have an undertaker come for the body. He and Nat Thorpe departed.
There was no such thing as a public morgue in Runyon City. Dr. Derring asked Betty what undertaker she preferred and she said the Joyce Funeral Home. The doctor phoned Joyce to send someone for the body.
When he hung up, he said to Betty, “Want me to send Virginia over to stay with you the rest of the night?” Virginia was his wife.
Betty shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll be all right.” She glanced at Marshall. “You’ll stay until they come for the body, won’t you, Kirk?”
“Of course,” he said.
“The doctor studied her contemplatively. “Like a sedative before I go home?”
She shook her head again. “I’ll be all right, Emmet. Don’t worry about me.”
Remembering the doctor’s comment upstairs that he thought Betty was holding up well, Marshall almost wished she had expressed a need for a sedative. Aside from her paleness, she didn’t seem very emotionally upset over having shot her husband. Perhaps she was merely forcing herself to be calm, but it struck him that she was succeeding remarkably well.
“Okay,” the doctor said. “If you need me, call or run over.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m sure I won’t.”
When the doctor had left, Betty gave Marshall a pale smile. “Do you suppose I’m in a state of shock, Kirk? I don’t think it’s quite registered on me what I’ve done.”
The question had the effect of relieving him. Quite possibly she hadn’t yet realized fully what had happened and emotional upset would come later.
“It was an accident,” he said. “Don’t brood about it.”
“But I can’t seem to feel anything. I’m not going to pretend to you I still loved Bruce. After this afternoon you know I didn’t. I was planning to divorce him. But I ought to feel something after killing a man I lived with for eleven years. All I feel is sort of dazed. Of course I regret it, but I can’t induce any feeling of guilt.”
“It was an accident,” he repeated. “Regret is all you should feel, not guilt.”
He had seated himself on a sofa near her chair. Getting up, she came over to sit next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.
“Hold me for a minute,” she said. “Please don’t kiss me. Just hold me.”
Putting his arm about her, he drew her against him and gently stroked her hair. He could feel her heart beating against his chest. After a time she sighed.
“Have you always hated me for what I did to you?” she asked.
“Of course not. I was hurt at the time, but time heals all wounds, they say.”
“You never married. And I always sensed that you still felt something for me when we ran into each other over the years. Didn’t you stay away from marriage because of me?”
“I suppose I was a little gun shy,” he admitted.
“You must know why I married Bruce so suddenly. I imagine the whole town was counting.”
He shifted a trifle uncomfortably.
“I don’t know if I was in love with him or not,” she said. “We met at a Bryn Mawr dance and he gave me a rush. I was flattered because he was the only older man who had ever shown me attention. I was only nineteen, remember, and he was twenty-five. It wasn’t just a shotgun marriage. He had asked me to marry him and I was considering it before I learned I was pregnant. That seemed to take the decision out of my hands, so we eloped.”
He felt a momentary resurgence of the old bitterness. “How long had you been sleeping with him?” he asked a trifle roughly. “I was still getting love letters up to the day I heard of your elopement.”
“Please,” she said against his chest. “I was still in love with you. Don’t you think it’s possible to love two people at the same time?”
That stopped him, since he had experienced a guilt feeling over the same question earlier that night. Before he could frame any reply the doorbell rang. Hurriedly she pulled away from him. He rose to answer.
It was the men from the mortician.
Chapter V
The sun was rising when Marshall got home. As he plodded tiredly up the stairs his parents’ bedroom door opened and his father peered out.
“What was the trouble?” Jonas asked.
“Betty Case accidentally shot her husband,” Marshall said.
He moved on to his own room, but left the door open. Jonas, barefoot and in pajamas, quietly closed his and his wife’s bedroom door so as not to disturb his wife and trailed his son across the hall.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” Briefly Marshall explained to his father what had happened.
When he finished, Jonas frowned. “The poor girl shouldn’t be left alone at a time like this. She doesn’t have a living relative left in town since her parents died, does she? What’s the matter with Emmet Derring? He should have insisted on sending his wife over.”
“Betty says she’ll be all right,” Marshall said.
“Nonsense,” Jonas said in his crispest executive-editor tone. “I’ll get your mother up and you can run her out there.”
When he used that tone there was no point in arguing with Jonas. Deciding he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, Marshall showered and shaved while his father went to rout his mother out of bed.
Sylvia Marshall was dressed and all ready to go when he came downstairs. However, she didn’t quite seem to understand who it was that she was expected to offer solace to.
“Elizabeth Case, dear,” Jonas said with enormous patience. “You know the Cases. Bruce was in law partnership with Henry Quillan.”
When Sylvia continued to look puzzled, her son offered, “Betty Runyon, Mom.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said with an enlightened expression on her face. “She married that nice young lawyer with no family background.”
“Now you have her identified,” Jonas said approvingly. “That same nice young lawyer is the one she accidentally shot.”
“How awful,” Sylvia said with compassion. “Betty Runyon is such a sweet girl. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”
It was six thirty a.m. and quite light by the time Marshall and his mother got to the old Runyon place. But the big houses at Rexford Bay were all set well back from the road and were screened by trees so that the houses couldn’t be seen from the road. Therefore Marshall and his mother couldn’t see what was occurring on the roof until they drove down the long driveway, parked in front of the porch and got out of the car.
Sylvia looked upward and said, “Whoever is that on the roof?”
Peerin
g in the direction of his mother’s gaze, Marshall saw Betty, in slacks and a sweater, kneeling on the front slope of the roof, examining the metal pipe of an air vent.
Betty saw them, too. Waving to them, she walked up to the roof peak and disappeared down the rear slope.
“Who do you suppose that was?” Sylvia asked.
“It was Betty, Mom.”
“Betty Runyon? Why is she climbing around on roofs?”
“Let’s go see,” Marshall said, taking his mother’s elbow and steering her around the side of the house to the rear.
Betty was climbing down a ladder when they reached the back of the house. Lightly dropping the last few feet to the ground, she brushed her hands together and smiled at her visitors.
“You didn’t have to come back, Kirk,” she said. “Hello, Mrs. Marshall.”
Sylvia took her by the shoulders and kissed her. “I’m so sorry about your trouble, dear. I’m going to stay right here with you until things are organized again.”
“Thanks, but it’s really not necessary. You’re welcome, of course.”
“Then it’s settled,” Sylvia said. “I have to stay. Jonas said to.”
Despite herself Betty couldn’t avoid an amused smile. “We wouldn’t dare disobey Mr. Marshall. Of course you’ll stay.”
“Whatever were you doing on the roof?” Sylvia asked.
“Looking for more evidence that the cat burglar was actually here last night. I found it.”
“What was it?” Marshall asked.
“There’s a short length of rope tied to an air vent directly over the hall window where the screen was cut. The shot must have put him into such a hurry to escape that he cut the rope instead of taking time to untie it.”
Marshall wondered why she couldn’t have waited for the police to discover the rope. Perhaps, despite her earlier complaint that she was unable to feel guilt over the accident, she was now beginning to develop some guilty feeling and had found it necessary to convince herself beyond any doubt that the cat burglar had actually been there.
He said, “Does Bud know what happened yet?”
Betty’s expression turned worried. “He’s still asleep. I’ve been mulling over what to tell him. I suppose the kindest thing is to tell him the truth at once, instead of letting him eventually hear it from some playmate.”
This Game of Murder Page 3
