“I’m sorry, sir. Her cottage doesn’t answer. Would you care to leave a message?”
The answer jarred Dave strangely. He could not understand where she had gone or what would keep her out so long and the concern which heretofore had been absent began to make itself felt.
“No,” he said, “but there’s something you could do for me. Have you anyone that you could send over to her cottage?”
“Why—I suppose I could find someone—”
“I wish you would, please. Send someone with a key; it could be important.”
The clerk agreed to see what he could do and Dave stood there while the minutes dragged and some insidious disturbance began working on his thoughts. Beyond the little corridor where he stood he could see the bar and part of the lounge which overlooked the sea. Lights were on here and the guests had begun to gather for their cocktails and he could hear their laughter and the sounds of their voices. There was, somehow, an unreality about the scene; for there was a feeling of remoteness in him now and the hand that held the telephone had become noticeably damp at the palm. When, finally, he heard the clerk’s voice he straightened and held his breath.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Yes. Did you—”
“Sorry. But Miss Allison is not in her cottage.”
Dave let out his breath and thanked the clerk. He said he would like to leave word that Mr. Payne had called and that he would call again.
There was still some light in the sky when he stopped his car opposite the gateway to Gloria Ludlow’s small house. The front door and the shutters—those that he could see—were still closed, but because worry was riding him now, he turned into the drive and continued on to the side of the veranda. He had no special objective in mind when he got out of the car. He had no great hope that anyone was here but he went up the front steps nevertheless and knocked several times on the front door. Because some strange reluctance was working on him he made a complete circuit of the house and then stopped in front of the garage. Only then did it occur to him that the closed doors might be significant.
There had been another car in the yard at Crawford’s place. Sam Brennan had not seen the car come but he, Dave, had assumed that it might be Gloria’s. But if this was so would she have closed these doors? Was it the custom here on the island to close the doors when the garage was empty? He did not know, but some impulse, born of doubt or stubbornness or both, prompted him to make sure. An open padlock hung from the staple but the hasp had not been secured and as soon as he started to open the door he saw the car.
He knew at once that it was a Hillman. He thought it was the right color but there was a way to be sure and when he inspected the broken lock on the glove compartment door he knew that this was Joan’s.
This was enough to tell him that something was very wrong and he was doubly glad now that he had decided to detour past here on his way to police headquarters. He had, as yet, no conclusive explanation for the car, but two alternatives suggested themselves at once: Joan could have ridden with Gloria to Alan Crawford’s place, or she could be somewhere inside this house.
Not liking this alternative, not wanting to think too much about it, he nevertheless went up on the veranda and began to try the shutters. All were locked but he could look down the angle of the slots and see that each was fastened by a hook and eye. There was not enough room to slide his fingers into the opening but when he had opened his penknife he found that the blade would reach the hook. The rest of it was simple, and after a quick glance at the deserted house across the wall, he lifted the shutter and stepped inside.
He knew at once that he was in a woman’s bedroom. It was nothing that he saw; it was the distinctive odor which hung in the air and came from a blend of cosmetics and lotions and perfume. Because there was so little light here he left the shutter part way open. He could see the bed now, and the vanity, and the chest and the floor lamp by the boudoir chair. He turned this on and even as the shaded light illuminated the room, he heard the sound.
It was soft but distinct, a faintly thudding noise and he knew at once that it came from somewhere inside the house. It stopped as he listened; started again. This time it seemed closer and he stepped to the open door and glanced into the living room beyond. He stopped here, his breathing shallow as he listened. This time when the sound came he turned back and stepped to the closed door in the other wall.
A squarish closet opened up before him when he turned the knob and as his glance moved from the row of hanging dresses to the floor, he saw her.
She was on her side, her knees drawn up. A cord of some kind had been knotted about her ankles. Her wrists were tied behind her back and a face towel had been twisted and thrust between her teeth before it had been tied behind her neck. He saw the fear in her eyes as he knelt quickly beside her, but in that next instant the fear was replaced with recognition and relief. When he saw her try to smile something twisted sharply inside him.
“It’s okay,” he said huskily. “It’s okay. Just take it easy.”
And now, wasting no time on words, he got his arms under her knees and shoulders and picked her up. Still not saying anything he carried her to the bed, turned her on her stomach and quickly released her wrists. The face towel was easy to loosen and as he removed it from her mouth she smiled again and sat up.
He went to one knee to free her ankles and when he glanced up she was massaging her lips and the corners of her mouth with the tips of her fingers. He sat beside her on the bed and took her free hand. Very gently then he began to caress the indentations that still remained where the cord had left its mark.
“Are you all right?”
She started to speak but her mouth and throat were still dry. When she had trouble with her voice she nodded.
“Who did it?”
She looked at him a moment before she tried to reply. He thought there was some odd reluctance in her dark-blue eyes and she hesitated again before she spoke.
“I think it was Gloria.”
“Aren’t you sure?”
“I’m sure it was a woman but I didn’t actually see her. I didn’t hear her either. My back was turned and she came up behind me. I guess I was too busy looking.”
“Where?”
“There.” She nodded toward the open closet. “I was in there on my knees. I must have been too intent on what I was doing to think about anything else. All I know is that something hit me on the back of the head.” She put her hand back and explored some spot above her nape. “It’s sore but it doesn’t really hurt now. It must have stunned me because the next thing I knew I was tied up and stretched on the floor in the darkness.”
“But what were you looking for?”
“Shoes first, and then the money.” She looked at him again and now there was a triumphant gleam in her eyes and a small twisted smile was working on her mouth. “I found it too.”
“The money?”
“It was in the bottom of a hamper under some dirty clothes. But I didn’t come for that. If I hadn’t found the shoes I might not have looked for the money.”
“All right.” He cleared his throat, still not understanding what shoes she was talking about or exactly why she had come. “What’s this business with the shoes? Whose shoes?”
“My shoes.… No, they were her shoes. My shoes were missing.”
He waited patiently. He knew that eventually she would get things sorted out in her mind and tell the story in her own way.
“You see, last night when I got dressed for dinner my shoes were gone. They were plain black opera pumps, the kind every girl has, and I’d carried them under my arm when I ran away after finding Mike that night. On the way up there I found I couldn’t wear those high heels on the sand and when I came back to my room I tossed them into the closet. I didn’t even miss them until last night.”
“So?” he said, prompting her gently.
“I thought maybe the maid had taken them. I knew it didn’t make much sense but I didn’t know
how else to explain it. I didn’t have a chance to talk to her this morning because Major Fleming wanted to see us so early.”
She stopped to take a breath. Dave was still lost but he did not want to interrupt her train of thought so he waited until she continued.
“Well, when I finally spoke to the maid this afternoon she denied taking the shoes. I know these natives lie pretty easily when it suits them. But she could tell that I wasn’t angry or annoyed and that I wasn’t really accusing her of anything. I simply told her what had happened and said I was terribly curious about it and hoped she could help me. She insisted that she hadn’t taken the shoes but in the end she admitted that she had tried them on.
“I brought three pairs with me,” she said. “Red, brown-and-white, and the black ones. The maid said she didn’t have any that were quite as nice and that morning after Mike was killed when she was cleaning the room she wanted to try them on and see how they would look on her. She said she couldn’t get the red ones or the brown-and-white ones on because they were too small, but that the black ones were all right.”
She glanced round to see if he was following her. “This didn’t make any sense to me because they were all the same size, so I kept questioning her and she insisted that she was able to get the black ones on. What she wanted to do was parade around in the room and look at herself in the mirror but she was afraid to because she noticed that the lift on the heel of one of them was worn and loose. She was afraid if she started to walk on it it might come off. Well, I couldn’t understand why she should make up a thing like that and I also knew if she was telling the truth the shoes she’d tried on couldn’t be mine. But if they weren’t mine, whose were they?”
“Gloria’s?”
“They’re in that closet now.”
“What made you think they would be?”
“Because I finally realized how they happened to be in my closet in the first place.”
“You must have put them there.”
“Of course I put them there, but how did I get them?”
She put her hand on his arm, a breathlessness in her manner now and her eyes intent as she waited for his reply. When none came she said:
“I told you I walked up to the bungalow with the shoes under my arm. When I went into the living room I put the shoes on the floor. I’m not sure where even now but I do know that I was barefooted all the time I was there. When I came out and found Mike dead, I panicked. I started to run and remembered that I didn’t have my shoes and I looked around until I found them. Near the dining-room table. There wasn’t much light in the room anyway and the shoes were black and they looked like mine and I snatched them up and ran. When I got to the cottage I didn’t even bother to look at them. I just threw them into the closet and forgot them.”
She broke off abruptly and caught her breath in an audible gasp. When Dave realized that she wasn’t looking at him he followed the direction of her glance. He had heard no other sound and he was nearly as startled as Joan to see Gloria Ludlow standing in the doorway to the living room. She was wearing sandals and a cotton-print dress and her legs were bare. With the light on her face, her hair looked golden and her gray eyes were narrowed against the glow of the lamp.
“So you found her?” she said flatly.
Dave came slowly to his feet. “I didn’t hear you come.”
“I made sure of that. When I saw a car in the yard I parked in the street. I also saw the light in here and the partly open shutter. I came round the back way.”
Dave looked at her a moment, deeply distressed by the things he had heard and not wanting to admit the conclusion his mind was shaping. The big-boned but shapely body seemed at ease beneath the dress and there was as yet no tension in her handsome face. He sought some other explanation as he hesitated and when none came he said:
“Joan said she found the money.”
Gloria took time to look at the girl and to Dave it seemed that there was venom in the gray gaze now; the inflection of her voice seemed to verify his assessment.
“Yes,” she said, “the sneaky little bitch. I never did like her. Going around with her nose in the air and—” She broke off suddenly, as if to choke back her hostility. When she continued her tone was quietly defiant. “Why shouldn’t I have taken the money? Mike took twice that from me over the years.”
“You were there that night,” Dave said, certain now that there could be no other explanation.
“Yes, I was there. It was easy enough to get away from my party. With people table-hopping, and dancing going on, there was no problem. I wanted to see Mike and I came up the beach and I was almost to the bungalow when I heard the shot. I stopped and waited and pretty soon she” —the eyes flashed at Joan—”came running out and up the beach. I went in and found Mike on the floor and the money there in the box and I took it. I didn’t stop to think that it might be mine. Or maybe I did. Maybe I wasn’t sure about his will or maybe I thought somebody else might come in and take it before he was found. I took the box and threw it under that shack out back and hurried back to the Carib Club—”
Dave shook his head. “It won’t do, Gloria.”
“What do you mean, it won’t do?”
Dave told her about the mixup with the shoes. He repeated the details Joan had given him. “There’s only one answer to those shoes, Gloria,” he said. “Joan was in that back bedroom when Mike was killed. You had come up the beach the same way she had, with your shoes under your arm. You put them on the floor when you came into the bungalow. You did what you did with Mike and grabbed the money, and you knew you had to get out of there in a hurry. What you didn’t know was that there were two pairs of shoes in the room. You grabbed the first pair you saw—why shouldn’t you? And you didn’t know you had the wrong pair until you got back to your party. It must have been quite a shock.”
“So.” Gloria looked at him strangely, her jaw tightening. “You’ve got it all figured out.”
“I haven’t got hardly anything figured out,” Dave said, “and I don’t intend to try. From now on it’s up to Major Fleming and I think I ought to call him. Where’s the telephone?”
“In here.”
She indicated the living room with a jerk of her head and moved out of the doorway. Dave touched Joan’s arm and led the way into the other room. He saw the telephone on the stand near the wall but he never got a chance to use it.
He heard Gloria say: “Not now, David!” When he turned he saw the little gun in her hand and knew at once that it was the same small automatic he had seen in her straw basket the night she had come down the beach after Mike had been killed.
Then, even as he understood what she meant, he thought he heard a car door close. He stood immobile, brown eyes wide and uncertain while steps sounded outside. Someone moved across the veranda. Then, Crawford stepped into the room.
20
FOR A FEW seconds after Crawford stepped across the threshold no one said anything, no one moved. They were all watching him, as though waiting for his reaction. He was dressed in denim slacks, canvas-soled shoes, and a polo shirt; a natty yachting cap was cocked on his head and his dark gaze was busy as it flicked from Joan to Dave to Gloria before it focused on the little automatic in her hand. Not until he started to move forward did he speak.
“Trouble, baby?”
“I’m afraid so,” Gloria said.
“Bad?”
“It looks that way now.”
He stopped in the center of the room, as though undecided as to what he should do next and Dave began to wonder just how much he knew. His immediate reaction had suggested that he was surprised to find them here and now Dave spoke up to ask if Crawford had known what happened to Joan.
Crawford heard him out and shook his head. He looked at Gloria.
“What was the idea?”
“Of tying her up? What else could I do, let her run to the police?”
“I guess you were going to take a trip,” Dave said.
“What makes you
think so?” Crawford said.
“You put a lot of supplies aboard this afternoon.”
“You’ve been a pretty busy boy.… Yeah, I was going to take a trip.”
“Because of those clippings about Tony Cruise?”
“What did you do with them?”
“They’re in the glove compartment of my car.”
Crawford eyed him suspiciously. “They weren’t there last night.”
“I thought probably you were the one who broke open that glove compartment. The trouble was, you got the wrong car.” He went on to explain how he had used Joan’s car that night at the Club Morgan. “Were you the one that Joan almost caught yesterday afternoon at the bungalow?”
Crawford nodded.
“Why did you bother to take those reports Sankar had made from my pocket?”
“I just happened to have them in my hand when I heard her on the front porch calling for you. I’d only just gotten there,” he said. “I looked in your coat pockets first and saw these sheets. I didn’t know what they were but I started to read them and then I heard her and had to run for it. I didn’t care a damn about those reports; I just had to get out in a hurry.”
“Did you come back last night? Are you the one who took that Mauser?”
The question brought no reply from Crawford. While he had been talking his glance kept moving back to the little automatic in Gloria’s hand. It seemed to bother him and now he mentioned it.
“Do you want to let me hold that, baby?” he asked.
“No.”
Crawford shrugged but showed no annoyance. “Well,” he said casually, “let’s have a drink anyway. It looks like we’re going to have a meeting of the board, so let’s get comfortable. Sit down. I’ll be right back.”
He walked down the room and through another doorway and presently Dave could hear him working on an ice tray. He glanced at Joan and saw that she was watching him and now he pointed silently at a chair. She sat down and so did he, and this gave him a chance to look over the room which was plainly furnished with a native-built table in the center and two long, narrow, fiber runners on each side that served as rugs. There were two occasional tables of local manufacture, a stand on which a rediffusion set stood, and several chairs, none of which looked very comfortable. As he leaned back he brought out his cigarettes and offered them to Joan. By the time they had lights Crawford returned with a bottle under each arm, a tray of ice in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. He made a second trip to get glasses.
Moment of Violence Page 17
