Puzzle for Pilgrims

by Patrick Quentin

  “The real McCoy, Pete.”

  “You’ve been working hard.”

  “Sure. Want me to take off my pants too?”

  “I get the general idea with the pants on.”

  Leaving his unbuttoned shirt flopping outside his trousers, he crossed and poured two drinks. He handed me mine and lifted his glass.

  “Salud.”

  “Salud.”

  “We can be boys together a couple of minutes, Pete. The others’ll be right along.”

  “They’re coming?”

  The blue eyes opened wide. “Of course they’re coming. I called Iris. She was charmed—absolutely charmed. She’s bringing Martin and Marietta.”

  He sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair and propped the hand which held his drink on his knees.

  “So Marietta’s moved in with Martin,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He gave me a knowing wink. “Smart, that babe. Cashing in quick, ain’t she?”

  I almost hated him then. “You don’t imagine Martin’s wallowing in Sally’s money yet, do you? Those legal things take time.”

  He nodded soberly. “Sure. Guess they do. Still, she’s playing it the right way, getting in on the ground floor.”

  The door buzzer rang. He jumped to answer it. The three of them came in, Martin between Marietta and Iris. Jake greeted them with a whoop of delight. He slapped Martin’s back. He grinned at Iris. He picked Marietta up and swirled her around with her feet off the floor.

  “Hi, Marietta. How’s my girl?”

  Martin looked like thunder but said nothing. Jake put Marietta down. She gave him a fleeting smile.

  “Hello, Jake.”

  She saw me and came straight to me. I was amazed at the change in her. I had never seen her so radiant. Her eyes weren’t the lost-child eyes. The snow had melted. She was like a goddess of spring. I wondered whether she knew I’d been waiting in night after night for her to call.

  “Hello, Peter. Martin’s just finished work.”

  Jake came up behind her, with a drink in his hand. He slid his arm around her waist.

  “Scotch, baby. I’ve got everything else, but we’re drinking Scotch tonight. Scotch is a luxury in this country. Celebration.”

  She took the drink absently, as if he was just a man bringing a drink. She was still smiling at me.

  “Peter, why don’t you visit us sometimes? You’re so exclusive.”

  Jake poured drinks for Martin and Iris.

  “Sit down, sit down,” he said. “Get a load off those pretty feet.”

  Martin and Iris sat down together on a couch. Marietta dropped onto the arm of my chair, balancing herself on my shoulder.

  Jake stood in the middle of the room and lifted his glass.

  “To our reunion,” he said.

  We politely lifted our glasses.

  “Sure and you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he went on. “Couldn’t get you all out of my mind. Know that? After you, the folks in Acapulco were colorless as cellophane.”

  He strolled across to the couch on which Martin and Iris were sitting. The lazy grace of his big body was ominous to me. He grinned down at Martin.

  “How’s things coming with the lawyer?”

  Martin looked up at him, grave, polite,” They seem to be progressing.”

  “That’s fine. That surely is fine. Quite a lot of dough coming to you, isn’t there?”

  Martin said, “I believe there is quite a lot, yes.”

  “How much?”

  Martin’s dark blue eyes watched him rather dazedly as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “I… I think the lawyer said it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two million dollars.”

  “Swell,” said Jake. “Swell and dandy. How about writing me a check? Fifty thousand, maybe, to begin with?”

  His voice hadn’t lost its tone of amiable banter. I don’t think the others grasped what he said. I did, of course, because I’d been expecting the worst for days.

  Martin was still looking at him, puzzled. Then his vivid, golden smile came. “A joke. I’m sorry. I’m always slow on jokes.”

  Jake smiled back. “If it’s too early right now, I can wait a couple of weeks. But only a couple of weeks. That’s why I went to Acapulco. To give you time to get the ball rolling. Little breather. But after two weeks I’ll want action. If things haven’t panned out by then, I don’t imagine you with your prospects will have much trouble raising the fifty thousand from a moneylender. I can put you onto a couple right here in town. Reliable, discreet, easy rates of interest.”

  Marietta’s hand was gripping hard into my shoulder. Martin got up and sat down again. Iris looked as if she had heard the knell of doom. She had, of course.

  To me it was almost a relief having him come out with it at last.

  Iris said in a voice that was meant to be calm. “Just why should Martin give you fifty thousand dollars, Jake?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Why?”

  He looked disappointed in me. “Now, Peter, we all want to keep this friendly, don’t we? We don’t want to wallow in ugly details.”

  I said, “Fifty thousand dollars is an ugly detail. If one, why not more?”

  “Well, well.” He sighed. “We live and learn.” He crossed to a chair from which he could keep us all under observation. He sat down, hitching his pants up at the knees. “I’d have thought nice people like you’d have felt a decent gratitude. I’d have thought you’d have wanted me to have a cut—after all I did for you.”

  He was stripped for action now. The friendly rough-diamond act was over. The real Jake was as exposed as the big bare arms and patch of brown stomach visible behind the unbuttoned shirt. I had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.

  “Well?” he said. “You want it?”

  None of the others spoke. I saw that I, as usual, would have to take over. I didn’t have much hope of success.

  I said, “Okay, Jake. Give with the ugly details.”

  He was watching Marietta, the lids half lowered lazily over his eyes. She was pale now, cold and lonely as the snow on Ixtacihuatl.

  He said, “Well, it’s mostly about dames falling off of balconies. Where I come from, if a dame leans against a rotten balustrade and it gives way, the piece of balustrade hits the ground before she does, not after. Check?”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Then, where I come from too, a dame, taking a stroll out onto her own balcony, has to be powerful clumsy to lose a slipper and knock over a vase of flowers in transit. Check?”

  “More,” I said.

  He grinned. “I’m only just beginning, Pete. There’s this letter that was in her typewriter, for example. It’s a funny kind of letter for a dame to be in the middle of writing when she happens accidentally to fall off of a balcony. Like me to read it?”

  This was where the real danger started.

  “Read it,” I said.

  He pulled a shabby wallet out of his pocket and made a great show of searching. “Where’s it now? I could have sworn—Oh, sure. Here we are.” He produced a piece of paper. He unfolded it.

  “Quite a letter,” he said. “She was writing it to this Mr. Johnson, the lawyer guy here in Mexico. It says:

  Dear Mr. Johnson:

  I’ve tried to call you all day but the connections are terrible. I’m writing because this is very very important. You’ve got to come immediately because I’m going to change my will…”

  He looked up from the paper at Martin. “Hear that?”

  Martin glared back at him. Martin could look tough too. He reminded me of a golden-glove kid facing up to the heavyweight champ.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Sure. Let me see now. Pretty sloppy typer, Sally. Guess she was het up. Here we are…”

  I’m cutting my husband out completely. I don’t know where I’m going to leave my money and I don’t care, just so Martin doesn’t get any. He’s run off with another woman and wants me to divorce him. I won’t divorce him. But i
t’s not just because he’s run off that I want to change my will. It’s because I’m afraid. Mr. Johnson, you’ve got to believe me. I’m not being hysterical. I’m afraid he’ll murder me for the money, either he will or the woman will. And it’s not only that. I know something about him and his sister, something that could put them in jail for years. They know that too. I’m afraid of them all, Mr. Johnson, desperately afraid. That’s why I’m writing to…”

  He stopped reading. “That’s where she broke off to take a stroll on the balcony. Needed a little fresh air maybe.” He folded the paper and put it neatly back in his wallet. “Someone was a dope not to notice that letter and destroy it.”

  He finished his drink and rose. “Anyone ready for a freshener?”

  No one said anything. He poured himself another drink and half turned to glance at Martin.

  “Now, Martin, I’m not saying you necessarily murdered Sally. Maybe Marietta did. Maybe Iris did. But you’re all so palsy-walsy that I figure you’d like to stick together. And what’s fifty thousand bucks to a guy who’s dragging down two million smackers just because a little lady got so forgetful and fell off of her balcony before she could lick an envelope and a postage stamp?”

  Martin’s lips were pale. “That’s all the evidence you’ve got?”

  “It’ll do, won’t it?”

  I said, “We get the idea. No fifty thousand dollars and you go to the police.”

  He grimaced. “Well, Peter, I guess I could, couldn’t I, if I felt in an ornery mood?”

  “You’re forgetting something,” I said. “You discovered the body. You suppressed the evidence. That makes you an accessory after the fact.”

  “Peter, I’m surprised at you.” He grinned. “No, on second thought, I’m not. You don’t know the whole story about me. I figured it’d simplify things to be kind of reticent for a while. You see, I’m a private detective. A private dick to you. Like to see the credentials? Pretty.”

  He fumbled some papers out of his pocket and tossed them to me. They proclaimed that Jacob Lord, whose photograph was affixed thereunto, was a licensed private investigator in the State of California. That’s what he looked like, of course. Now I knew, it was written all over him.

  “Yeah, Peter,” he said. “Sally hired me, imported me from California a couple of days before she died. She was scared of being murdered by Martin or Marietta or Iris, she said. My job was to keep an eye on all of you and protect her. That’s why I picked Marietta up at the bar.”

  He grinned. “Swell job I did of protecting, didn’t I? But that’s not the point. The point is the police’ll feel kind of sorry for me, losing a valuable client like that. And of course they’ll understand why I held up the evidence temporarily. After all, I was in your confidence. It was a perfect setup for a little preliminary investigation. I’ll say I needed an accident verdict at the inquest to put you all off your guard.”

  I said, “And you think they’ll believe you?”

  “Natch, Pete, old pal.”

  “The police aren’t crazy for private dicks.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, baby. Here in Mexico, a private investigator from the States—he’s a big shot. Besides, that whole setup in Taxco’s ready to break. It didn’t break just because I handled it fine. But they all know the Martin-Iris-Sally setup. There’s the will, too, Martin inheriting. The moment murder’s mentioned, even with a tenth of the evidence I got…” He shrugged expressively.

  “It’ll only be your word against ours.” I sounded more arrogant than I felt. “I’ll swear the balustrade wasn’t over Sally’s legs. Iris and I will swear there was no slipper, no overturned vase, nothing in the typewriter. After all, that letter you just read us isn’t signed. You could have typed it yourself. We will say you framed the whole thing.”

  “For why?”

  “For fifty thousand dollars.”

  “And you think they’ll believe you?” He was mocking me by quoting my own words back.

  “Why not? I’m as disinterested a party as you.”

  He looked at Iris. He looked at Marietta. He winked at me. “Disinterested, eh?” He paused. “No, Pete, I’m kind of afraid they wouldn’t go for that. You see, there was a slipper, there was an overturned vase, there was a letter in the typewriter. Remember? Of course, if your memory’s kind of fuzzy…” He felt in his pocket again and produced two small squares of paper which looked like photographic prints. He leaned forward and stretched them out to me. “Always carry my camera. That’s a habit of Jake’s. Comes in handy. I snapped these when you and Iris were still out on the terrace.”

  There were two photographs, one of Sally’s desk with the paper clearly visible in the typewriter, another taken down the living room showing the slipper and the overturned vase.

  “Too dark, of course,” Jake was murmuring, “to have gotten a shot of Sally down in the stream bed with the balustrade over her legs. But I guess the police’d get the idea from these. Get the idea, I mean, that I was the guy telling the truth and you…” He pursed his lips at me. “A liar, Pete, that’s what they’d find out you were.”

  This clinching evidence didn’t affect me much. I had known from the beginning I was fighting a losing battle. I made a move to return the photographs. He waved them away.

  “Keep ’em, Pete, for your memory book. I got plenty more.” He turned to Martin. “There’s another little matter, Marty, me boy. I kind of hate to bring up old history, but Sally mentioned something in that letter about a rather unpleasant thing you and Marietta—yes, you, beautiful—pulled a couple of years back.”

  He smiled at Marietta affectionately. “I have the proof of that little carryings-on. Sally gave it to me for safekeeping. So it isn’t just the murder that would break. Get it? This other little thing’d come out too. There’s another murder motive right there. And even if you ducked the murder rap, you’d be up against a mighty unpleasant situation. Seems to me, under the circumstances, fifty thousand bucks wouldn’t be badly missed.”

  Martin’s face had gone very pale. He knew as well as I did when he was licked. He said, “You’ll get your fifty thousand dollars as soon as I can raise it.”

  “Fine,” Jake grinned. “That’s what I like to hear. Good straight talk.” He turned slyly to me. “Still feel like you’re smarter than me, baby?”

  I shrugged. “It’s Martin’s problem. Not mine. It’s up to him.”

  “Sure. It’s up to Martin. That’s good straight talk too.” Jake surveyed his guests’ scarcely touched glasses. “Now, charming people, how’s about another little snort of Scotch? After all, it’s on the house. Sally’s paying for it.”

  He crossed to the dumb-waiter and poured a strong shot of whisky. He put soda and ice in it. He carried it, smiling, to Marietta.

  “Down the hatch, beautiful.”

  Marietta took the drink. Her fingers gripped the glass tightly. With a violent movement of her wrist, she tossed its contents straight into his face.

  “Louse,” she said.

  Jake brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. His face was transfixed with fury, and his whole body was taut. I thought he was going to hit her. I jumped up. Then the smile came back to his mouth. He ran a hand across his cropped, wet hair.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Quite a shampoo Jake got.” He turned his back full on Marietta and watched Martin. “Funny. That reminds me of something. Almost the most important thing, and it slipped my mind. Jake must be breaking up. Old age.”

  He gestured around him. “Kind of pretty suite, isn’t it? But it comes awful high. And, believe it or not, I’ve spent all of Sally’s retainer already. Me and money. It just seems to slide through my fingers. I should put myself on a budget.”

  He sat down again on the arm of his chair. He twirled his drink, studying it solemnly.

  “I’ve been figuring. Until old man Johnson starts the dough rolling, we’re going to have to be pretty chummy. Not that we don’t trust each other, of course. But seems like we
ought to stick together for a while. Now, it’s nice having a plush suite like this. But we got to figure on being economical. Know what I’m going to do? I’m going to move out of here tonight and move in with Martin and Marietta.”

  “No.” The word, coming from Marietta, was a cry. “No. You can’t do that.”

  Jake’s eyes blinked at her. He got up and went to her, bending over her, his face close to hers.

  “Hey, hey, beautiful, what’s eating you?”

  She was shaking. Her green eyes were blind with panic. “You can’t,” she babbled. “You can’t. Really, you can’t. Martin’s working. He’s writing. He—he needs privacy. He needs… It’s too small. It’s too small for three. The beds—there are only two beds.”

  “Quiet.” Jake took her trembling arms. She struggled but couldn’t shake off the big hands. “Quiet, beautiful. What you getting so hot for?” He grinned, a brash, impertinent grin. “You ain’t got any objections to my sleeping with your brother, have you?”

  He released her. She gave a sob. She got up and hurried to the window. She stood there with her back to us, staring out, one hand clutching the looped silver and green drapes.

  Jake glanced after her and then shrugged. “Well, now we’ve got that settled, how about moving on? I’m almost packed. And since you folks don’t seem to want anything else to drink…”

  He smiled blandly at Martin. “I hope your sister’s a good little cook. Jake’s a fiend for an honest-to-goodness American breakfast, plenty of eggs and hot cakes.”

  Martin got up. His boy’s face was pale and drawn. But there was still a real dignity to him. I had to hand it to Martin. He’d behaved better than I had expected him to behave. He stared at Jake, not intimidated.

  He said, “I suppose, under the circumstances, I can’t prevent you from moving in with us, if you want to.”

  “That’s right, Martin,” said Jake.

  “But you might as well know one thing.” Martin’s voice was at its quietest. “If you worry Marietta, I’ll kill you.”

  Jake grinned over his shoulder at me. “Hark at him, Peter? A rowdy family, isn’t it? Always raring for a fight.”

  He patted Martin’s silver-blond head like an affectionate uncle.