The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  “Now, I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Jones. You’re always going around making critical remarks about the police and the medical profession, and I want to warn you that you’d better stop. It’s not right.”

  “Isn’t it? Without making an issue of the fact that you’ve slightly exaggerated my position, I’d like to point out that being critical of a doctor and a policeman and a coroner is not quite so serious a matter as putting someone in jail for the silliest of reasons.”

  “By God, Gid was in the park during the estimated time of death. He’s admitted that he was, and that’s reason enough to hold him.”

  “I believe you said the estimated time of death is four hours. Seven to eleven. How many other people were in the park in that time?”

  “How the hell would I know? We didn’t have the damn park under surveillance.”

  “That’s a very significant admission, don’t you think? Thank you for making it.”

  “I’m not making any admissions or anything else. I’m only saying what’s what. The point is, Gid’s the only one we know was in the park, and he went there specifically to meet the victim, and he had a reason to hold a grudge against her.”

  “Is that so? I’m especially interested in that statement. What reason to hold a grudge?”

  “You know what reason. She played him a damn dirty trick once.”

  “By marrying someone else? On the contrary, she did him a favor. If she hadn’t married someone else, Gid would never have had the chance to marry me.”

  “Well, it’s not my place to argue the relative merits of two women.”

  “That’s correct. It isn’t. I’m glad to know that you know what your place isn’t, even if you don’t always seem to know what it is.”

  “I’ll have to repeat, however, that he went to meet her in the middle of the night in Dreamer’s Park, and it’s only natural to assume that his reason, murder or something else, was not to play patty-cake or ring-around-the-rosie.”

  “Possibly that’s because, not being the type that women care for, your assumptions are distorted by wishful thinking. Do you often engage in fantasy?”

  Cotton took an even firmer grip on the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white, and breathed deeply several times. It was plain that Sid had touched him where touching hurt.

  “There’s nothing to be gained from our sitting here taking turns telling what we don’t like about each other,” he said finally.

  “I agree,” Sid said. “From my point of view, it would take far too long, and it would be much more profitable to discuss the murder case. It’s apparent, if you’ll excuse my saying so, that it’s high time it was investigated carefully by someone sensible. We have already established, for example, that you don’t really know when the victim died or who was with her when she did. Now I would like to know what makes you so sure you know where she died.”

  “Damn it, she died in Dreamer’s Park.”

  “How do you know? Did someone actually see her killed there?”

  “No, but that’s where she was found, and it’s logical to assume that that’s where she was killed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one in his right mind would be lugging a dead body around this town when it would be safer and easier to leave it where it became dead. Besides, Beth Thatcher called Gid and arranged to meet him in the park, and by God that’s where she went and where she was killed.”

  “It must be a great comfort to have a dogmatic mind. As for me, I’m never so sure about things. It occurs to me, although I’ve read about the murder in the newspaper and heard it talked about by various people, including you, that no one has ever made much of a point about blood. Was the weapon that killed her left in the wound?”

  “It was not. We haven’t found it yet, but we’re looking for it, and we probably will. It’ll be necessary, by the way, to search your house and yard.”

  “We can settle that when the time comes. What I want to know now is how much blood there was.”

  “Not much. Very little. The wound was just a sort of puncture, made by a thin blade.”

  “It was deep, however, for it killed her. Wouldn’t a deep wound like that bleed considerably, even a sort of puncture, when the weapon was pulled out?”

  “The doc said most of the bleeding was internal.”

  “Nevertheless, I consider it odd and interesting that more of it wasn’t external. I’m convinced that a long blade, however thin, would cause considerable bleeding.”

  “The doc says it wasn’t exactly a blade, from the looks of the wound. It was more spike-like.”

  “But the paper and everyone have kept saying blade.”

  “It was just something that got said and repeated. As far as the public is concerned, what’s the difference?”

  “I’m not the public. I claim to be a participant, having Gid in jail, and I’m of the opinion that there’s quite a difference between a blade and something spike-like. It’s obvious that you’ve been either sloppy or deceptive in numerous instances. I’m willing to concede, however, that something spike-like would probably cause less bleeding than a blade.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  “But I reserve the right to think that there might have been more bleeding elsewhere.”

  “There wasn’t. There wasn’t an elsewhere, and there wasn’t any more bleeding. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t even enough bleeding to wash away all the dirt.”

  “Dirt? Did you say dirt?”

  “That’s what I said. There must have been some dirt on the weapon, because there was some at the edge of the wound, and a little inside.”

  “Well, this is getting more odd and interesting all the time, and it seems to me that you’ve given far too little attention to details that deserve more.” Sid stood up and smoothed her skirt over her hips, leaving her hands on them afterward as she looked down at Cotton. “I gave you a significant lead only last Saturday, for instance, when you were at our house drinking one of our beers. Have you done the least thing about it?”

  “It doesn’t appear now that it will be necessary.”

  “It may not appear necessary to you, but it does to me.”

  “I’d better warn you not to interfere with police business.”

  “Anything I do will not be interference. It will only be what you should have done yourself and didn’t.” She turned and walked away a couple of steps and looked back over her shoulder. “By the way,” she said, “if you actually plan to waste time searching our yard and house, be sure you bring a warrant with you when you come to do it.”

  “I know,” Cotton said sourly. “Otherwise, you’ll shoot me as a trespasser.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The next morning Sid got up early and dressed and made coffee. While she was drinking the coffee alone at the kitchen table, she began to plan what she would do that day, and what she planned to do, first of all, was to go out to the Thatcher home and talk with Mrs. Thatcher. She thought in the beginning that she would call and make an appointment, but then she reconsidered and thought that it might be better and more effective just to go on out. She had no reason to believe that she would be particularly welcome at any time, and even less so under existing conditions, and she did not wish to be told on the phone by a maid or someone that Mrs. Thatcher had a sick headache or had suddenly left town or anything like that. She was certain, however, that Mrs. Thatcher would not be an early riser, and that nine o’clock, or possibly ten, would be about the right time to go. It was only seven-thirty when she was thinking this, and so she would have to do something else for a couple of hours, to compromise between nine and ten, before leaving.

  She went out into the living room where she had left yesterday’s edition of the local newspaper after reading it last night. She took the paper back to the kitchen and poured another cup of coffee and began to read again on
the front page, continued on page three, the startling account of how Gideon Jones, prominent young local attorney, had been detained by authorities on suspicion of murdering Beth Webb Thatcher, formerly the wife of Wilson Thatcher, prominent young business executive. She read the account carefully from beginning to end, as she had already done once before, and although the grounds for suspecting Gideon Jones were made perfectly clear in short words that could be understood even on the fringes of literacy, there was not the slightest suggestion that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Thatcher were legally Wilson Thatcher and Thelma Bleeker, unwed and unchaste, or that they had been blackmailed as a result by the legal Mrs. Wilson Thatcher, who was dead from having been killed, and might, therefore, quite reasonably be considered suspicious themselves. Sid felt that this was discriminatory and unfair, and she suspected the connivance of Cotton McBride and Hec Caldwell.

  There was clearly, at any rate, a minor conspiracy to spare the Thatchers public embarrassment unless it became absolutely unavoidable, and it was Sid’s opinion, hotly held in indignation, that the Thatchers were not a damn bit more worthy of being spared than the Gideon Joneses, who had not been spared at all. There was even a bad picture of the suspect, me, and a more than slightly-sexy-one of the victim, Beth, and it was a safe bet that nine out of ten people who saw the latter came immediately to the conclusion that the subject of the former had been up to something considerably more interesting and entertaining than murder before murder was committed.

  After a couple of tedious hours, about nine-thirty, Sid went on out to the Thatcher home. It was a big, high house on an old street, and it sat well back from the street behind a deep yard. There was an iron picket fence around the yard with a pair of stone deer inside it. A driveway approached the house in a flat curve from the street, running under a side portico and on to garages in the rear. The house was built, I think, in the early twenties, but it had about it an ugly Victorian air of pretentious elegance. There was not actually any gingerbread on it, but it looked as if there should have been.

  Sid parked in the portico and went up side steps onto a high porch. She pushed a bell button beside a heavy door flanked by narrow panes of leaded glass, and pretty soon, as she had anticipated, the door was opened by a maid, who asked her what she wanted.

  “I want to see Mrs. Wilson Thatcher,” Sid said. “Please tell her that Mrs. Gideon Jones is calling.”

  The name produced an effect that it would not have produced before yesterday’s newspaper, and the maid, after a quick recovery from a startled expression inappropriate to a proper maid, said that she would see if Mrs. Thatcher was in. Sid was allowed to wait in the hall while this was being done, and the waiting ran into several minutes, at least four or five, before the maid returned with Mrs. Thatcher’s regrets that she was feeling indisposed and unable to receive anyone.

  “In that case,” Sid said, “I would like to see Miss Thelma Bleeker.”

  “Who?” the maid said.

  “Miss Thelma Bleeker.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s no one here with that name.”

  “Nevertheless, I’d appreciate it if you would go and tell Mrs. Thatcher that Mrs. Gideon Jones wishes to speak with Miss Thelma Bleeker, and I don’t mind telling you that it will be in her best interests if you do as I say.”

  “If you will just wait here,” the maid said.

  “I’ll wait,” Sid said, “but I don’t care to wait quite as long as I did before. Try to be a little quicker, if you please.”

  The maid went away again and came back again, this time quicker. Mrs. Thatcher, she said, had decided to see Mrs. Jones after all, and so Mrs. Jones followed the maid into a small room off the hall, where she was left, and pretty soon Mrs. Thatcher came to join her there, and with Mrs. Thatcher, somewhat to Mrs. Jones’s surprise, was no one but Mr. Thatcher.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Jones,” Wilson Thatcher said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Sid said, “it clearly isn’t, and we will probably all feel more comfortable if no one tries to pretend that it is.”

  “Well, it’s a difficult time for you, I know, and I would like you to believe, at least, that you have our sympathy.”

  “So far as that goes, the time is not nearly so difficult for me as some later time is going to be for someone else, and it is, moreover, a little too early for sympathy when it is not yet known who is really going to need it.”

  Thelma Thatcher (at least by squatter’s rights) was smoking a cigarette in a long holder, and she took a deep breath of smoke and held it for a moment in her lungs and let it escape slowly between her lips as she examined Sid intently. She was rather tall and angular, with large hands and feet and a long upper lip that gave her a kind of squirrelly look. She must have represented, Sid thought, a radical reaction from Beth. Old simple Wilson, having had too much of one extreme, had palpably taken on too much of the other. Now she began to frown, in no mood for amenities, and this suited Sid exactly, for neither was she.

  “Perhaps we had all better sit down,” Wilson Thatcher said.

  “No, thank you,” Thelma Thatcher said. “I don’t wish to.”

  “I don’t either,” Sid said.

  “It is evident from her use of my maiden name,” Thelma Thatcher said, “that she intends to exploit certain information that was foolishly divulged to her, and I think she had better tell us exactly what she wants.”

  “What I want,” Sid said, “is simply to get Gid out of jail, where he has been put by a pair of idiots without a brain between them, even if it means putting someone else there in his place.”

  “You seem to feel that we are in a position to help you. Please tell me how.”

  “You can help me by telling the truth, that’s how. Gid is in jail on suspicion of murder, simply because he happened to be in the place where the murder was supposedly done within the time some doctor thinks it happened, and it was all in the paper for everyone to read, but there was nothing there, not a single damn word, about how Beth Thatcher, after letting Wilson commit bigamy, came here to blackmail one or both of you for it. In my opinion, that’s as good a motive for committing a murder as being foolish enough to go somewhere you shouldn’t have gone at a time when you had much better have been anywhere else.”

  “We have no obligation to tell you any thing whatever.”

  “That’s true. But it may turn out to be more a matter of self-interest than obligation. It’s easy to see that you are being protected by the authorities from public embarrassment, and if you don’t want me to tell everything I know to everyone I meet, you’ll damn well humor me in all that I ask.”

  “It’s apparent that you have no sense of decency.”

  “That’s right. All I have is Gid in jail, and I want him out.”

  “What do you want to know?” Wilson Thatcher said.

  “What I want to know,” Sid said, “is exactly what Beth wanted from one or both of you. Besides that, I want to know why you came deliberately to our house and told us a lot of things that there was no need to tell anyone, let alone us, and which were probably lies.”

  “I came and told you what I did,” Wilson said, “because I was afraid. To be completely honest, I was afraid my wife had made a tragic mistake, and I was merely trying to divert to myself suspicions that I erroneously thought would fall upon her.”

  “I prefer to judge for myself,” Sid said, “whether they were erroneous or not.”

  “I didn’t want to go directly to the authorities,” Wilson said, “because I thought they might consider it odd for me to confess so much when it was not necessary. I wanted them to know, however, in order to keep their attention away from my wife, and so I chose to tell Gideon. I did so for two reasons. In the first place, he was the one person, aside from me, who would have the greatest personal interest in Beth’s death. In the second place, as a lawyer, he was someone I could
talk to under the pretense of seeking advice. As you guessed, I told several lies. I suppose I was pretty transparent.”

  “What you were,” Thelma Thatcher said, “was a fool.”

  “If so,” Sid said, “he had lots of company.”

  “I am finding this conversation exceedingly unpleasant,” Thelma Thatcher said, “and I would like to end it. Wilson, if you will kindly keep quiet, I’m sure I can relate what happened much more quickly and clearly than you would find possible.”

  “Quickly and clearly is the way I want it,” Sid said, “whoever relates it.”

  “Very well.” Thelma Thatcher drew smoke through her cigarette and detoured a little of it out through her nostrils, which gave her an effect, Sid thought, of angry belligerence, as if she were about to paw the carpet with her feet and suddenly charge someone. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened, regardless of what Wilson may have said in his ridiculous attempt to be heroic and sacrificial and divert suspicion to himself that was not yet directed toward anyone. This precious little bitch who was his first wife came to town, as you know, and one of the first things she did, apparently, was to call Wilson at his office and try to arrange a meeting with him, but he had the good sense to refuse to see her, fortunately, and I must admit that it was the only occasion in this whole affair when he showed any sense whatever. I doubt that she was greatly disappointed, however, for it was I she really wanted to see. She was shrewd enough in her way, and she was certain that she would be able to deal with me more easily and profitably than with Wilson. As a woman with a sense of shame and considerable pride, I would be almost certainly willing to pay handsomely to avoid being publicly humiliated and disgraced, whereas Wilson is reluctant to pay anything for any reason unless interest or dividends are assured.

  “She came here to see me without even calling in advance, just as you have done, and there was no doubt that she was telling the truth about never having gotten the divorce, for she had all the details on the tip of her tongue and even invited me to check the records in the place where the divorce had supposedly been granted. She spoke as if it were all a kind of party game which everyone should accept in the best of humor, and then she said she only wanted twenty thousand dollars to go away. She promised to go somewhere and finally get a genuine divorce, after which Wilson and I could get quietly married again, and everything would be all right. She seemed to feel that she was making a very modest request as a special concession.”