The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  He took me down to a small room on the first floor, and there was Sid. The walls and floor of the room were bare, and there was a long table in the middle of the room with three straight chairs along each side. Overhead, slowly revolving, was an old-fashioned ceiling fan that slapped and stirred the hot air into sluggish motion. Sid was standing with her back to a north window, and out in the yard beyond her were the pair of kids in jeans playing mumblety-peg. She was wearing a white sleeveless dress and white ballerina slippers, and she looked brown and sad and somehow younger than she had ever looked to me before. I went over and put my arms around her, and she hung on for a few seconds, and I could hear a little choking sound in her throat, followed by a sniff in her nose.

  “God-damn son of a bitch,” she said.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Nobody. It’s just an old trick. When I want to cry, I curse instead, and it’s very effective. The stronger the cursing, the more effective it is.”

  “I’ll have to remember that. I may be able to use it.” I sat down in a chair by the table, and she sat down in one beside me. We held hands.

  “What have you been doing?” I said.

  “I’ve been trying to run down that bastard Cotton McBride, that’s what I’ve been doing, but he’s never anywhere I go, or at least someone says he isn’t, and it’s perfectly apparent by this time that he’s trying to avoid me.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well.”

  “Do you think so? Well, I don’t, not by a damn sight, and he surely can’t avoid me forever, no matter how much he may want to.”

  “Have you talked with anyone at all?”

  “Only Hector Caldwell. I went to his office after I had temporarily given up finding Cotton McBride. He was so damn full of noble regrets and windy pretensions that I was nearly sick on his carpet, but at least he called here to the jail and said that I was to be allowed to see you and was to be shown every courtesy and consideration, all that, and so here I am, and I have a few things for you in this sack.”

  “Thanks very much for bringing them.”

  “They’re just a few little things, sugar. A safety razor and some soap and a few paperbacks. Just a few things like that. Harley Murchison looked at them and said it was all right for you to have them.”

  “Thanks most of all for bringing yourself.”

  “You musn’t thank me for that. It implies that I have done something out of kindness, which isn’t true. It’s only natural, since I love you, for me to come wherever you may be.”

  “If you love me, will you do something for me?”

  “I’m not sure. Possibly I’ll refuse to do it because I love you. I’m forced to recognize that you’re not always the best judge of what is for your own good. However, what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to go home and be good. Let me get out of this the best I can alone.”

  “Excuse me, sugar, but I have no confidence whatever that you could get out of it at all without my help.”

  “I’ll get out of it, all right. It’s merely a matter of a little time.”

  “I simply can’t understand what gives you such assurance. To this point, in spite of my telling you exactly what to do and say in certain situations, you have shown almost no ability for getting out of it. On the contrary, you keep getting deeper and deeper into it. Please tell me why you think things will be any different hereafter.”

  “Because this anonymous note isn’t sufficient evidence to base an indictment on, and Hec Caldwell knows it. My arrest on suspicion is just a kind of gesture, that’s all. Maybe Hec and Cotton think they can get more evidence that will support a charge, but they can’t because there isn’t any. Pretty soon, they’ll have to let me go.”

  “There. That’s exactly what I mean. What you have just said only confirms my conviction of how irresponsible and reckless you are. It makes my blood run cold to hear you talk. First you exaggerate your own ability to handle matters, which is not supported by events, and now you assume without any earthly reason that Hec Caldwell will suddenly begin to think and behave intelligently. This is clearly impossible, for he doesn’t have the necessary brains, and he is, moreover, under the influence of Cotton McBride in this case, who has even less. No, no, sugar, I’ll not stay out of it, and what I want you to do now, without any further delay, is tell me exactly what was said in the telephone conversation between you and Beth while I was away talking about Zoroaster with Rose Pogue.”

  “I’ve already told you what was said.”

  “Only generally, however. Not exactly.”

  “I can’t remember exactly. As I’ve reported, I’d been drinking gimlets, and my mind wasn’t as sharp as usual.”

  “You can remember if you try. It’s well known that almost anything can be remembered, even from early childhood, if one makes proper associations and really concentrates.”

  “It sounds like hard work. Why do you want to know what was said exactly?”

  “You never know, sugar. Maybe something significant was said to which, because of gin or dullness, you didn’t attach sufficient importance.”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll associate and concentrate if you insist.”

  “I do insist. It wasn’t long ago, actually, and shouldn’t be extremely difficult.”

  “Well, there I was in the living room. You had gone off in your pale yellow dress to Rose Pogue’s, and I was feeling lonely and scorned. I was drinking a gimlet and wanted to listen to some music, and I considered Haydn, as always, but I decided against him because he seemed a little too damn gay for the occasion, and then I found Death and Transfiguration, by Richard Strauss, and that’s what I played. It was still playing when the phone rang in the hall, and I went out and answered it, and it was Beth, as you know, and that’s when the conversation started.”

  “Good. You’re doing marvelously, sugar. Just begin at the beginning of the conversation, and don’t leave anything out for the sake of discretion. What you might leave out could be the most significant of everything, and we can settle later any issue that may arise from your being honest.”

  “All right. First, she asked if it was me on the phone, and I said it was. Then she asked me what I was doing, and I said I was drinking gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration, and she said something about drinking gimlets still, and I said not still, but again, because I had taken time out for a bottle of white Burgundy. What was said after that for a while is pretty hazy, but I’m fairly sure it concerned the music, which she could hear, and the state of my emotions, which was gloomy. Then she asked if you were home, and I said no, that you were off discussing Zoroaster with Rose Pogue, and she said that something like that with Rose might go on forever. Right after that she asked me if I would meet her somewhere, and I asked where, and she remembered Dreamer’s Park and suggested it, and I agreed to go. And that’s all of what was said that I can remember, as exactly as I remember it.”

  “That clears up what was said, then. Is there anything you want to add or change regarding what was done?”

  “Oh, no. Absolutely not. I told you what happened as it really did, but I ought to warn you that I didn’t tell quite all the truth to Hec and Cotton. What I didn’t tell them was that I found the body and didn’t report it.”

  “It’s a relief to learn that, you followed my instructions to that extent, at least. It would be too bad to have you kept in jail for such a minor offense after you have been proved innocent of a major one.”

  “Yes, it would. I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “Are you positive you’ve told me all you can remember of what was said?”

  “All. Did I say anything significant that I failed to understand because of gin or dullness?”

  “That remains to be seen. I admit that nothing significant is apparent, but perhaps I’ll discover something if I keep thinking about it.”


  About that time Harley Murchison came to the door and coughed, which was a sign that it was time for Sid to go. I stood up, and so did Sid, and Harley went away again to give us a chance to say a private good-by in our own way, and I took advantage of the chance. I held her and kissed her and took a deep breath of the scent of her hair to smell after she was gone, and she said, “Goddamn son of a bitch,” as she had before, in order to keep from crying.

  “You’re not a bad sort,” I said. “As wives go, you’re quite satisfactory.”

  “I know, sugar. In some ways, I’m even exceptional.”

  “I’m very glad that you’ve come to see me, and I hope you’ll come again. Now, however, since you must go, I’d appreciate it if you would go quickly. I don’t want to humiliate myself by an unmanly exhibition. I have a certain status here that I must maintain. After all, I’m the only prisoner suspected of killing someone, and I’m rather looked up to. Harley and I are going to play dominoes this evening. He’s already asked me, and I’ve accepted.”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose and went, and where she went and what she did, while I went nowhere and did nothing, make a story that you may not believe if I haven’t been able to make you see her as she was. I don’t know exactly what she did and said in all instances, for I wasn’t with her, but I’m sure I can use my imagination and tell it all with verisimilitude, if not with precise accuracy, from what she told me afterward, and what I heard from others, and most of all from simply knowing Sid and what, in given circumstances, she would most likely do and say.

  Where she went first, after leaving the county jail and me in it, was to my office to see Millie Morgan. It was getting pretty late in the afternoon by that time, and Millie was getting ready to close up and go home when Sid arrived. As a matter of probability, she was sitting sidewise to her desk with her legs crossed and a mirror in one hand and a lipstick in the other. I’m willing to commit myself to this because repairing her lips was almost always Millie’s last activity before leaving, and what the crossed legs contributed to it I don’t know, but they seemed to be essential.

  “Here you still are, Millie,” Sid said. “I was afraid you might be gone.”

  “A few minutes later I’d have been,” Millie said, “but I’m glad I’m not. Have you seen Gid since that God-damn Hec Caldwell put him in jail?”

  “I just came from seeing him. I don’t think it was so much Hec who put him there, however, as Cotton McBride.”

  “In my opinion, they were both in it and equally responsible. Anyhow, Hec is the county attorney and is expected to act as if he had some intelligence. Cotton is more easily excused because no one could reasonably expect anything of him that required a brain. What on earth makes them suspect Gid of having murdered Beth Thatcher? He called me on the phone and said they did, but he didn’t say why, and I’ve been dying to know ever since.”

  “Because he went to Dreamer’s Park the night she was killed there, and someone apparently saw him and wrote a note to the police about it.”

  “Well, what a damn dirty trick! To write such a note, I mean, and deliberately get someone into all this trouble. Whoever did it?”

  “That’s not known, for the note wasn’t signed.”

  “Isn’t it rather odd that Gid would go to Dreamer’s Park in the middle of the night? Did you know he was going?”

  “No. I only learned that he went after he had gone. I was away from home at the time, talking with Rose Pogue.”

  “You don’t seem much disturbed by it all, except that it’s got him in jail, and so I assume that his reason for going there, whatever it was, was innocent enough.”

  “I’m not quite convinced that his reason for going was so damn innocent, I must admit, but it came to nothing, as it turned out, which makes it much easier to forgive him. To tell the truth, he went there to meet Beth Thatcher.”

  “The hell he did! If he were my husband, I don’t believe I’d be quite so amiable about something like that as you seem to be.”

  “It’s not that I’m so amiable, really. It’s only that I’m forced by circumstances to appear so. I may yet, when the time is right, decide to deprive him temporarily of a few privileges for going off like that the minute my back was turned. Now, however, he is in jail and in trouble, and I must do what I can to get him out. It’s perfectly clear that this is far too serious to be left in the hands of incompetents like Hec Caldwell and Cotton McBride. Whatever Gid may have intended to do in Dreamer’s Park and didn’t, I don’t wish to have him hanged or taken away from me permanently as a consequence.”

  “I agree with you there. It would be unfortunate to have anything very grim happen to him, although a little discomfort and a temporary loss of privileges seem to be in order. What do you intend to do?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to investigate the situation and see what I can discover. As a beginning, I’ve been trying to find that sneaky bastard McBride, but he’s been avoiding me.”

  “That’s a good sign, if you ask me. It shows how uncertain of himself he is. What do you expect to do to him when you catch him?”

  “I expect to ask him some questions, that’s what.”

  “Is that all? I was in hopes it would be more.”

  “I can hardly afford to assault a policeman, no matter how offensive he is or how much he may deserve it. There’s very little I could do to clear this matter up if I were in jail also.”

  “That’s true. You’ll have to control your natural impulses if you wash to remain free to operate. Is there anything in particular that I can do to help?”

  “Not immediately. There may be something later, however, and it’s reassuring to know that you’re available. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it. In the meanwhile, I’ll keep things open and going here at the office, although I don’t imagine there will be much to do after it becomes generally known that Gid is in jail. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to practice law in a cell.”

  “As a legal secretary, do you think his practice will suffer after his release? After all, people may be a little reluctant to employ a lawyer who has been suspected of murder, and worst of all, who behaved like a perfect simpleton in order to get himself suspected.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. It’s my professional opinion that his practice will benefit, if anything. He will get a certain amount of publicity, which is always good in the end, and when he is proved innocent, thanks to you, everyone will eventually forget how it really was and think that it was due to his own cleverness as a lawyer.”

  “That’s quite encouraging, I must say. I respect your opinion, and I’ve always felt that you have a great deal more to do with the efficiency of this office than is generally conceded. Would you like to go somewhere and have a drink or something?”

  “I’d like to, but I don’t think I’d better. I’m scheduled for a skirmish with a certain engineer this evening, and I need to keep a clear head.”

  “In that case, I’ll run along. Good-by for the present.”

  “Good-by,” Millie said. “Let me know the instant I’m needed.”

  Sid went downstairs and stood for a moment on the sidewalk to consider her immediate future. She thought at first that she would go home and apply herself to devising a plan of action of some kind, but then she thought that she might as well try once more to catch Cotton McBride, and so she went over to the police department in City Hall, and Cotton was there, and she caught him.

  “Here you are at last,” Sid said. “Where the devil have you been?”

  Cotton was sitting at his desk, inserted to his hips in the kneehole, and he stood up so quickly and carelessly that he banged one knee against the under edge of his belly drawer, which was not only painful but also added to an effect of guilty confusion.

  “I’ve been busy,” he said.

  “That�
��s certainly so. I won’t argue with that. You’ve been busy making mistakes and the worst kind of fool of yourself. Why have you put Gid in jail without a word of warning to me or anyone else?”

  “I put him in jail because he’s a murder suspect, that’s why.”

  “And why, precisely, do you consider him a murder suspect?”

  “You know as well as I do why he’s considered a suspect. Because he was seen in Dreamer’s Park about the time Beth Thatcher was murdered there.”

  “Are you sure? What time was that?”

  “He said he left home about nine-thirty, and he walked to the park, so it must have been around ten o’clock.”

  “Truly? That’s very astute of you. It’s incredible how you can make such clever deductions. I wasn’t asking what time Gid was there, however, for I knew long before you did. I was asking what time Beth Thatcher was murdered.”

  Cotton, who had his mouth open in position for his next remark, stood looking at her for a few seconds in silence, his mouth still open in position, and then he sat down slowly in his chair and took a firm grip on its arms. Sid, uninvited, sat down in a chair across from him.

  “That’s not exactly known, of course,” Cotton said.

  “How interesting! What time, exactly, would you say she was killed?”

  “Damn it, it’s impossible to do more than make a scientific estimate. The coroner says it was almost certainly sometime between seven and eleven.”

  “It must be wonderful to be able to make things like scientific estimates, and I don’t see how that coroner manages to do it. He isn’t even a doctor, let alone a scientist.”

  “The post-mortem was done by a doctor.”

  “Oh, yes. Naturally. A general practitioner who would have trouble diagnosing rigor mortis itself, without regard for the time it started.”