Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  “O.K., Bayless,” I said, removing my face from his and speaking gently again. “Let’s even concede that the killing of Dorothy Halliday was self-defense. You had killed her. Then you found Dean Halliday prowling that attic. You were sure that he, too, had discovered the same thing you had found. He may even have said something to you about it. You knew that Halliday knew he hadn’t killed his wife, so it would be logical for him to suspect that you had done it. That’s why you killed him.

  “You believed that I had run across the same information, so I had to go. You’ve helped us a lot, Bayless. I think we can stick you with all three murders, but that isn’t necessary. One is enough.”

  I drew up a chair and sat down. I lighted a cigarette. I rested my arms on the desk and talked confidentially to Robert Bayless.

  “Let me make one point clear, Bayless. I know I could be wrong. What both of us know is this: If I’m right— and you’ve already confessed—proof is easy enough to get.

  “Figure this out for yourself. You got at least fifteen thousand dollars in cash from Dorothy Halliday. That will appear in your bank records or we’ll find it in your bank box. You lived frugally. You’ve got it somewhere. We’ll find it.

  “You haven’t been away from Los Angeles in some time, but you must have done some checking on the New York angle. We’re going to do that, too, and somewhere along the line we’ll find out that you checked. With the Bureau of Vital Statistics in New York, perhaps; certainly with the bank that acted as trustee there. You’d have to supply credentials before they’d turn loose any such information.

  “I’m making this point, Bayless: You’re hooked. We can prove up on you. We’ll be going into court with all the evidence pointing to you as the murderer, and everything we need for motive.

  “You can take your choice. Now that you know we’re on the right track, you can keep your mouth shut, and we’ll do it the hard way. Or you can come clean and make it easier on all of us. It’s up to you.”

  That was a good time to stop talking, so I stopped. I had just about run out of gas anyway.

  Robert Bayless looked around the room. He saw no gleam of sympathy or friendliness. He looked for a longtime at Iris.

  Her eyes didn’t waver. Finally she said, “I know now, Robert. Danny is right. You did it.”

  That was the pay-off. Why, I don’t know. I never know just what it is that makes a criminal suddenly realize that he has reached the end of the line. I’ve seen them hold out when you expect them to break. I’ve seen them break when you knew they had you licked. There were flaws in the case we’d built up against Bayless, but there are flaws in any case.

  If you’re guilty, if you’ve done three murders in a row, if you’ve been living in fear, wondering where and when and whether your foot has slipped—if you’ve done that, and then suddenly you are confronted by someone who starts telling you all about your criminal activities, and getting most of it right, it isn’t unnatural that you would want to get away from the emotional strain that has been running you ragged. At the moment you don’t realize that you’re taking the first step toward the gas chamber; you’re not thinking a thing except that you’re hooked and you might as well get it off your chest. Any veteran cop can give you examples by the dozen. It’s usually a case of the right word at the right time. Iris Kent had supplied the word.

  Bayless didn’t break in the way you think of a man breaking. There were no hysterics, no dramatics, just a terribly quiet acceptance of what he believed was inevitable.

  “No need going on with it,” he said as though he were very, very tired. “I’m guilty.”

  It was as simple, as unostentatious as that. It was a reaching out for relief from unbearable tension.

  Nobody said anything. It seemed as though everything already had been said. Then Bayless surprised us.

  He turned to Iris. As far as he was concerned, she was the only person in the room. He said, “I want to ask you one question, Iris. The truth is terribly important to me.”

  “What is it, Robert?”

  “If things had just gone along as they were—if there had been no—no tragedy—would you have married me?”

  She thought it over for a moment, then shook her head. “No, Robert,” she said, “I don’t think I would. I was fond of you, but not that way.”

  Oddly enough, that seemed to satisfy him. He appeared to get a grotesque lift from the assurance that, in making his desperate play, he hadn’t passed up something that would have fallen into his lap anyway.

  He said, “Thanks, Iris,” and then he turned back to me. “What else do you want to know, Danny?” he asked.

  “I’d like you to fill in, Bayless. You got the same original hunch I got. You know how you checked it. You know we can do the same thing. It might take us a little time, but we can do it. Would you be willing to tell us the story and save us all that digging?”

  He nodded and said, “I don’t see why not. May I have a cigarette?”

  Marty gave him one, held the match for him, then tossed cigarettes and matches on the desk, so that he could reach them. Bayless started talking, and nobody interrupted.

  “You stated it fairly accurately, Danny,” he said. “I got my original hunch the same way you did, by searching through that old trunk in the attic and finding the picture that showed Dorothy as a lively little girl in 1917 when, according to her story, she hadn’t been born until 1919. At first I was merely curious. Then I started wondering what was behind it. I was sure it was something more than a woman trying to conceal her true age. Dorothy didn’t have that sort of silly vanity.

  “I made certain direct inquiries and I learned other details by employing the services of a reputable private detective agency in New York. I’ll give you the details later.

  “Check of vital statistics in New York and all the surrounding places showed no record of Iris’ birth. That didn’t seem natural. Dorothy always said that Iris was born in New York on September thirtieth, 1930. If she had been, there would have been a record of it. There wasn’t.

  “At the same time I latched onto the same thing you did, about when Dorothy came into possession of the bulk of the Kent estate. The information was easy to get, provided you knew where to look. She took over the estate in 1940. That meant that she was then twenty-five years old, so she must have been born in 1915. I checked New York vital statistics again and found the record of Dorothy’s birth. It was 1915, all right, which fitted perfectly with the fact that she looked like a two-year-old in the 1917 snapshot taken with her father and mother.

  “I had the New York agency redouble their efforts. I had done some figuring, and it turned out right. I figured that if Iris were Dorothy’s daughter, she would have been born under an assumed name. In a case like that, the year of the birth might be changed if the real date would point unmistakably to illegitimacy. I figured that if that had been done, though, the child’s real birthday would probably have been retained.

  “A widow, using a name that is unimportant, checked in at an expensive private infirmary in New Jersey on September twenty-ninth, 1931. Her baby, a girl, was born the next day. Comparison of the handwriting on the hospital entrance forms with Dorothy’s writing confirmed the fact that it was she. The hospital records also showed that she had been accompanied by her ‘aunt,’ Mrs. Virginia Klinger. Mrs. Klinger, as you know, had been her governess and nurse.

  “Now I knew I had the answer. Mr. and Mrs. Elsworth Kent were killed in an air crash on February twenty-sixth, 1931-seven months before Iris’ birth. The baby certainly couldn’t have been theirs. It followed that the mysterious widow had to be Dorothy.

  “Further check was easy enough. I learned that Dorothy Kent had been in a swank finishing school on the Hudson in 1930 and that she was then fifteen years old. The school authorities remember her. They described her as a serious girl who looked young for her age. She returned from her Christmas vacation but left school shortly after that. I figure she told Mrs. Klinger that she was in trou
ble, and that the two of them worked together to keep the thing a secret, especially after they learned of the death of the Kents.

  “As I say, Iris was born in September 1931, so actually she is one year younger than she thinks she is. The local records are easy, too, when you’re on the right trail. Dorothy, her baby—who was supposed to be her sister—and Mrs. Klinger moved to Los Angeles in 1932. The new relationship was simple enough. It’s the sort of thing you don’t question. They moved fairly frequently until Iris was about five, when they settled in the house on Valleycrest Drive. Dorothy was about twenty then, and at that age it’s easy for a girl to claim to be sixteen or so, especially if she looks younger than she really is.”

  He lit another cigarette from the smoldering stump of the first.

  “I was in love with Iris, but I was sure she wasn’t in love with me. I tried and tried to get her to marry me, but she wouldn’t. I couldn’t sit by and let the information I possessed go to waste.

  “I started getting money from Dorothy. She was terrified that Iris would learn the truth. It was easy—too easy for me. It was so easy that I didn’t dream I was driving Dorothy to desperation.

  “The night of her death it was she who had the gun. She actually tried to kill me. The rest you know. Iris had told me where Dean’s mistress lived, and I left the car there to throw suspicion on her. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Halliday?” I asked.

  “You pegged that correctly, also, Danny. And this third one.” He stopped talking and looked at our faces. He looked haggard, but relieved. “I’ll get what I deserve,” he said quietly. “I didn’t plan to do murder. But after Dorothy was killed—when I realized that I couldn’t explain it the way it was—then the rest followed naturally. I’m sorry it had to end this way, but I’m glad it’s over.”

  Bayless said he’d sign a confession. Marty and the Skipper and Bert Lane and the captain from Homicide said they’d attend to that. Iris got up and started out of the room, I followed.

  We walked the length of the hall. The press photographers turned their cameras on Iris. She didn’t protest, didn’t even seem to notice.

  I was exhausted. I didn’t have any emotion left in me. I knew how much worse Iris must be feeling.

  She went downstairs with me. We got into one of the detective cars. I started west, which is away from the Los Feliz district. She didn’t say anything.

  I drove to the Strip and started climbing the winding streets leading to the summit. I parked up there, and we sat quietly, looking down on the millions of winking lights. The hum of the city came to us faintly. It was all there, we could see it in all its magnificence, but we weren’t part of it. Not at this moment.

  The night was pleasantly cool. I had the windows open and the air seemed fresh and sweet after the smoke-laden atmosphere of the police station.

  Iris looked tiny and helpless and all in. Her hand lay on the seat and I covered it with mine.

  She said in a flat, tired voice, “I’ve lost a sister. I’ve lost a mother. I’ve lost Robert.” She hesitated a moment and then she said, “You’ve lost your best friend.”

  Dorothy Halliday and Chuck Morrison were on the mountaintop with us. Someday they wouldn’t seem so close. Little by little they would grow more shadowy. But that time was a long way off.

  She said, “I’m going to be lonely, Danny. Can we be friends?”

  I put my arm around her and drew her close. I didn’t kiss her, didn’t try to make love to her. For the time being we were dependent on each other. We needed to be friends, we each needed the strength and courage we could draw from the other.

  I said, “We’ll be friends, Iris. Always.”

  The End