“It still stood as a holdup, of course. Only he had grabbed her jewel case, and no matter how wealthy a man is, it takes a lot of guts”—he grinned at Anne—“to throw a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of baubles into a river, or one of the reservoirs.
“Chandler didn’t have that sort. The damn fool has been carrying them locked in the trunk of his car ever since. He had a special lock on it, but we opened it today. They were there.
“I don’t think he knew we had them. The case is still in the car. But I knew he was after me. I knew too much. I believed Judith’s story when no one else did. And I had his gun. Only he and I knew it had killed Flaherty. When I asked him to meet me here tonight I was confident he meant to kill me.
“So I laid a trap for him, and got him.”
It was the end of the story. Months later, after all sorts of appeals, Ridgely Chandler was convicted of Johnny Shannon’s murder. But I will always believe he actually went to the chair for the shooting of one Inspector Flaherty, dead for twenty years. As O’Brien says, the police have long memories when it comes to a cop-killer.
As always happens, many things were not brought out at his trial, although Homicide had them. A search of the Benjamin house, for example, disclosed a singular document fastened with Scotch tape to the back of the high old-fashioned tank of the toilet in the bathroom. It was signed by Benjamin himself, and notarized.
I, Walter Benjamin—born Arthur Dawson—do hereby swear that I had nothing to do with the murder of Inspector John Flaherty. Flaherty was shot and killed by one Ridgely Chandler. I followed him that night and saw him do it.
This is to state that the money I received, fifty thousand dollars, was for the purpose of confirming Judith Maynard’s alibi in the death of Mollie Preston, and for no other purpose whatever.
Which was curious, to say the least, since Helga still believes he killed Mollie himself.
Of course, you get used to things like that when you marry a policeman. During the long months since I began this story of my sister Judith I have done much of the work at night. The long endless nights when the telephone rings and O’Brien picks it up, says “yeah” a couple of times, and then throws on his clothes and looks around for his gun.
He is a captain now. I don’t think he has to carry it, but it’s a matter of habit. He feels undressed without it. Sometimes it’s in his shoulder holster or stuck in his leather belt. Or again he merely drops it into a pocket. It is automatic. He doesn’t always know he does it. His mind is out somewhere in this huge city where we live. I get a hasty absentminded kiss and he is gone.
I go back to the kitchenette and get the coffee ready for his return. Not percolated. Just ready to turn the current on. But I never go to sleep again. I sit and wait or I sit and write. But even as I write I am waiting, for the sound of his key in the lock of the apartment, for his strong arms around me and the tenderness of his voice. For if he is both a police officer and a man, at least the man is mine.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1952 by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Copyright © 1980 by Frederick R. Rinehart and Alan G. Rinehart
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
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The Swimming Pool Page 33
