The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  “I agree that Mrs. Burdock doesn’t seem likely. I must say, Gid, that you aren’t helping yourself much.”

  “As for me,” Cotton said, “I don’t see why we have to assume any God-damn enemy at all. I don’t see why we can’t assume a good citizen who is against murder and wanted to tell the police something they should have been told sooner by someone else.”

  “I’m strongly in favor of good citizens myself,” I said. “I’m almost as strongly for them as I am against being accused anonymously of murder.”

  “Hold on, Gid,” Hec said. “You weren’t accused anonymously of murder. I pointed that out before. You were only accused of being where a murder was committed about the time it was.”

  “That’s a great satisfaction,” I said. “Thanks for pointing it out.”

  “However,” Hec said, “we still have the problem of what to do with you.”

  “That’s no problem,” Cotton said.

  “What’s your suggestion?” Hec said.

  “What we have to do,” Cotton said, “is hold him on suspicion.”

  “I guess that’s right,” Hec said. “I’m sorry, Gid, but I guess we have to hold you. You see how it is? You were there and all, and you didn’t tell about it, and that makes you suspicious at the very least.”

  “Thanks again,” I said. “I feel chosen. May I go back to my office and tidy things up a bit?”

  “I’m against it,” Cotton said. “You can’t let a murder suspect run around loose to do things like that.”

  “By God, Cotton,” I said, “it’s impossible for me to tell you how much I admire your devotion to duty. Do you think it would be permissible to make a couple of telephone calls?”

  “I can’t see any harm in a couple of telephone calls,” Hec said. “Can you, Cotton?”

  “That depends on who he calls and what he says,” Cotton said.

  “Who are you going to call, Gid?” Hec said.

  “A couple of pretty seamy characters, if you must know. Millie Morgan at the office for one, and Sid Jones at home for another.”

  “What are you going to say?” Cotton said.

  “That may turn out to be a problem, now that you’ve put it to me. Not so much with Millie, maybe. After all, she’s only my secretary, and I guess I’ll just tell her directly that I’m going to jail for an indeterminate period, and ask her to sort of sit on things at the office for the duration if she can bear the association with a homicidal idiot. Sid’s another matter, however. As a wife, she may be expected to react a little more aggressively to the news that her husband is under arrest on suspicion of murder, and she may require a delicate approach. Can anyone suggest how I could tell my wife delicately that I’m going to jail?”

  “I don’t have any suggestions,” Hec said. “Do you, Cotton?”

  “How the hell would I know?” Cotton said. “I don’t even have a wife.”

  “Gid,” Hec said, “I guess you’ll just have to go ahead and call and do the best you can.”

  “Thanks. May I use your phone?”

  “Sure. Go ahead and use it.”

  I did, dialing the office number first, and Millie answered.

  “Hello, Millie,” I said. “This is Number 1961.”

  “What? What did you say? Is that you, Gid?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What was that about Number 1961?”

  “Skip it. I’m just whistling in the dark.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m in the office of Hector Caldwell, attorney-at-law.”

  “Why are you calling? Why don’t you come back and tell me what he wanted with you?”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not possible at this time.”

  “Will you be long? I can hardly wait to hear.”

  “Well, don’t hold your hand on your tail while you’re waiting, honey, because it might grow there.”

  “Damn it, Gid, I simply can’t understand you. What do you mean, my hand might grow to my tail? What a hell of a thing to say!”

  “Sorry, honey. More whistling. What I mean is, it appears at the moment that my absence may be prolonged. Cotton McBride, who is listening to this end of our conversation, is of the opinion that it may be permanent. In brief, I’ve been hauled into custody.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Never more so.”

  “Didn’t I warn you about that son of a bitch Hector Caldwell? And Cotton McBride is worse, if possible. Have you admitted anything? What are you suspected of?”

  “I’m suspected of murdering Beth Thatcher.”

  “The hell you are! You didn’t, did you?”

  “I’m happy to say I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t think you did, really.”

  “It’s too bad that present company isn’t as easily convinced.”

  “Cotton and Hector? Those two bastards have absolutely no brain between them.”

  “I’m inclined to agree, but it’s beside the point. The point is, I’m under arrest, and I’ll be detained a while, and I wonder if you’ll sit on things at the office and more or less keep me in practice until further notice?”

  “I’ve got some things here right now that need your signature. Do you want me to forge it?”

  “You’d better not. One of us in jail at a time is more than enough. After I’m settled in my new accommodations, I’ll be allowed short visits from friends and associates, I think. Bring the papers over tomorrow, and I’ll sign them.”

  “I’ll be there. And don’t you worry, Gid. I’ll bet you’re out of that jail in no time. Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe I could get that Hec Caldwell in a compromising position that would enable us to put some pressure on him.”

  “Don’t bother, please. Just be a good girl and take care of things. Goodbye, now.”

  I hung up and took a deep breath, getting ready for Sid, and began to dial my residence number. Hec Caldwell leaned back in his swivel chair and looked past me at Cotton McBride with an expression of complacency.

  “You see, Cotton?” he said. “Nothing at all was said that could do the least harm.”

  “Nothing harmful was said at this end of the line,” Cotton said, “but I’m not so sure about the other.”

  “What harmful could she have possibly said? You tend, as a policeman, to be excessively suspicious, Cotton.”

  “That’s a smart-aleck redhead, in case you don’t know it, and it comes natural to her to say harmful things.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “our conversation was innocent at both ends. The only thing about it that you might find objectionable was her calling you a pair of sons of bitches and bastards.”

  “There you are,” Cotton said. “That’s a smart-aleck redhead if I ever saw one. She has no respect for anyone.”

  “Why did she want to call us names like that?” Hec said. “That’s no way to talk about public officials.”

  “She was a little upset because you arrested me,” I said. “She’s slightly prejudiced in my favor.”

  “I can appreciate her being upset and prejudiced,” Hec said, “but I still don’t like being called a son of a bitch and a bastard. Either one is bad enough, and both at once are just too damn much.”

  I had dialed, and the phone was ringing. It rang and rang and no one answered. I was just about to hang up, having decided that Sid had gone out somewhere, when all of a sudden she was on the line breathlessly.

  “Hello, hello,” she said. “Who’s there?”

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “Gid?”

  “Gid the mate of Sid. Sid and Gid Jones, that is.”

  “Sugar, I was out on the back terrace taking a sun bath, and after a while I barely heard the phone ringing after I don’t know how long, and I ran in as fast as I could to answer. I’m so gla
d I got here before you hung up.”

  “Are you wearing your white bathing suit?”

  “Yes, I am. I always wear the white one when I’m sun bathing, because it leaves the most of me out in the sun.”

  “I’ve observed that before, and I wish I was there to observe it now.”

  “So do I, sugar. I’d much rather be observed by you than that Jack Handy next door. He’s been out in his backyard all morning, and half the time he’s been peering at me through the hedge. He’s a regular God-damn Peeping Tom.”

  “At least he’s a discriminating Peeping Tom. You ought to feel flattered. If one must be addicted to voyeurism, it’s in his favor to be selective.”

  “Voyeurism? What’s that?”

  “That’s peeping.”

  “Oh. Is that what it is? Sugar, is everything all right? Why did you call?”

  “I called to tell you that I won’t be home for dinner tonight.”

  “How exasperating! Why won’t you? Where will you be for dinner?”

  “For dinner I’ll be in the county jail as the guest of Cotton McBride and Hector Caldwell.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No one has dinner in the county jail.”

  “Oh, yes, someone does. A number do, as a matter of fact. The prisoners, I mean.”

  “What’s that? Prisoners? Are you sure you’re sober? I hope for your sake, as well as mine, that this isn’t the beginning of another gimlet affair.”

  “No. Not at all. Whatever they serve in the county jail, I’m sure they don’t serve gimlets.”

  “Sugar, you sound rather confused. I can’t quite make any sense of what you’re saying. Are you trying to tell me something that you don’t quite have the courage to tell me directly?”

  “I guess that’s it.”

  “Tell me what it is at once. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Beth Thatcher, and as a consequence I’m being taken into custody, which is a way of saying that I’m being put into jail.”

  “Nonsense. How can you be arrested for killing someone you didn’t kill? Who’s arresting you? Is it that Goddamn Cotton McBride?”

  “Cotton and Hec. It’s a cooperative job.”

  “Where is that McBride? Is he there?”

  “Right here. Old rabbit ears himself.”

  “Put him on the phone. I want to talk to him immediately.”

  “I don’t think I want to. He’s already sufficiently annoyed with me.”

  “What I’d like to know is how the hell they can arrest you without any reason whatever.”

  “They think they have one. Someone wrote a note and told them that I went to Dreamer’s Park the night Beth was killed.”

  “Here, now, by God!” Cotton said. “You can’t talk to her about that.”

  “Cotton’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “You can’t talk about the evidence.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “What did you say?” Sid said. “Did you tell me to go to hell?”

  “Not you. Cotton and Hec.”

  “Oh. That’s all right, then. That’s nothing to what I’ll tell them the first chance I get. Who wrote the note?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t signed.”

  “Well, an unsigned note doesn’t prove anything. Any nut could write an unsigned note. Surely, after what I told you, you denied being there.”

  “I didn’t, unfortunately. I admitted it.”

  “Admitted it? Actually? Sugar, were you temporarily insane or something? I told you explicitly to say that you were at home all night.”

  “I know you did, and I tried, but somehow or other I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Why not? What was to prevent you?”

  “Hell, I can’t explain it. It may have been a supernatural influence.”

  “Sugar, you musn’t begin to imagine things. It’s the worst land of sign. The damage has been done now, and we’ll simply have to make the best of it. It’s perfectly clear to me that I must take a hand in this directly if anything sensible is ever to be done.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “I don’t know at this moment, but I’ll think of something.” She was silent for a few seconds, as if she had already begun to think, and when she spoke again her voice had receded and saddened. “I’ll have to think of something all the time to avoid thinking of you in jail. Sugar, I can’t bear to think of you in jail.”

  “I can hardly bear it myself.”

  “I’ll come down to see you as soon as possible and bring you a few things that you may need.”

  “Sid, I’m sorry.”

  “For what, sugar?”

  “For everything.”

  “Oh, no. Not for everything. There are a few things that have happened recently that you may be sorry about if it does you any good, but in most ways most of the time you have nothing to be sorry about at all. You’ve been a superior and interesting husband, all in all, and I love you as much as ever and maybe more.”

  “And I you, and no maybe. More and more and more.”

  “Sugar, I’m about to cry, and I don’t want to.”

  “I’ve got to hang up now. Will you be all right out there in Hoolihan’s Addition all alone?”

  “I don’t intend to be alone very long. I promise that you’ll be back almost before you know you’ve been gone. You just wait and see.”

  “Apparently I’ll have to.”

  “And you tell that bastard McBride not to come sneaking around here picking my brains again if he doesn’t want to be shot as a trespasser. I’ll tell him myself if you’ll only put him on the phone.”

  “I’ll tell him. Good-by, Sid.”

  “Good-by, sugar.”

  That was about it. I put the phone in its cradle and pushed it away from me. It had been bad enough, as it had to be, but not as bad as it might have been.

  “Tell who what?” Cotton said.

  “You’re who,” I said, “and what is that you’d better not come sneaking around picking Sid’s brains again if you don’t want to be shot.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with that woman? She can’t be threatening an officer of the law in line of duty.”

  “She also called you a bastard. That makes two people in ten minutes. I’m beginning to think there must be some truth in it.”

  “She wasn’t responsible,” Hec said. “You’ve got to realize, Cotton, that it puts a strain on a wife to learn that her husband’s going to jail. Did she say anything about me, Gid?”

  “Nothing much. She concentrated on Cotton.”

  “Well, I suppose she’ll never speak to me again after this.” He stood up behind his desk and looked strong and resigned and slightly noble. “It’s one of the penalties of a job like mine. You do your plain duty, no matter how much it may hurt you inside, and someone always hates you for it.”

  “As I see it,” Cotton said, “my plain duty right now is to take the prisoner over to the county jail, and I’m going to do it.”

  “That’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “It’s Cotton’s duty to do it.”

  So he did his duty, and we went. I had tried to be brave and assured and all that prideful stuff, and maybe I managed to make the picture pretty well, but I didn’t feel it. Inside, like Hec, I was hurting.

  I have a notion I was hurting worse.

  CHAPTER 11

  The county jail was located in the oldest residential area of town, a red brick building erected near the turn of the century in the center of a square block of grass and trees and flowering shrubs. A brick walk led up to the building from the street, a pattern of moss in the cracks between bricks, and the walls of the building were covered with ivy. It had not changed in appearance in my time, and I suppose it had not changed ap
preciably in fifty years or more, except to age and mellow and acquire as the years passed a soft deceptive air of being something better than it was. Inside, the floors were darkened by innumerable applications of varnish and sweeping compound, and the air was heavy with the scent of cedar. Entering, I had for a moment the captured feeling of being a kid again in another time, say ten or twelve a quarter of a century back, and I was coming into school on my way to the room for grade four or six.

  The building was two stories high, and my accommodations were second floor rear, northeast corner. There was a narrow barred window in the east wall and another narrow barred window in the north wall, and thus I had the luxury of double exposure, which was something, I learned, that no other cell in the whole place had, and I think this was in deference to my status as a murder suspect among petty offenders. There was a bunk for sleeping attached to a wall. There was a lavatory for washing. There was a commode.

  In the middle of the afternoon of that first day, I was standing at the north window looking sometimes down through bars into the side yard where the dark grass was patterned by shade and sun, and sometimes out levelly into leaves of oaks and maples and sycamores. It was an old and quiet and beautiful yard in which kids might have played for hours on summer days, much too nice a yard for a jail to have, and there were, in fact, two kids playing there at this time, two boys in jeans. They were sitting cross-legged on the grass, facing each other and deeply intent upon what was happening between them, and what was happening, I saw, was a game of mumblety-peg. One of the boys would take the pocket knife and go through as many of the tricks as he could without missing, and then the other boy in his turn would do likewise, and I began to try to remember as many of the tricks as I could of the game as I used to play it. I found that I could remember most of the tricks, how they were done, but only three of the names for them, and the three names I remembered were Dropping the Devil through the Well, Spanking Baby’s Bottom, and Jumping the Pasture Fence. This was one way to keep from thinking of Sid and the trouble I was causing her through idiocy, but not a very good one or a very successful one, and I kept thinking of her in spite of boys in jeans and mumblety-peg. I had been in jail four hours, but they seemed like four weeks, and the four had become five when Harley Murchison, the jailer, came up and opened my grill and said that I had a visitor.