The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  “Wait a minute. Don’t hang up. Were you about to hang up?”

  “I was about to, yes.”

  “I wanted to ask you if matters will be cleared up shortly. Do you think so?”

  “At first I thought so, but now I’m not quite so optimistic.”

  “Surely he didn’t do it?”

  “Surely not.”

  “What on earth could have made him go to the park?”

  “He went to say good-by to someone he had known well. It was perfectly understandable and perfectly innocent.”

  “Do you think so? That’s comforting, at least. I have been told that Beth Thatcher was quite attractive.”

  “I only saw her dead, and she was beautiful.”

  “How unusual. So often dead people aren’t. Wasn’t it the night you were over here that he went to see her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Darling, did you know he was going?”

  “I didn’t know it in advance, because he didn’t know it himself until after I had left. He told me he had gone when I returned home.”

  “Really? One always wonders about such things, doesn’t one? I mean it could be either a sign of innocence or an exceptionally bold bit of deception. I will say, however, that you are being very steadfast and loyal, and I admire you for it.”

  “I’m not being steadfast and loyal at all. I am only lonely and wanting Gid home. He isn’t so much, perhaps, as men go, but he’s mine, and I want to keep him.”

  “Of course, darling. If that’s what you want, I’m sure I want it for you. And you are not to worry about Zoroaster. Not for an instant.”

  “Thanks again, Rose. Good-by.”

  On the back terrace, sitting and thinking with a clear head in the cool breeze, she reviewed once more her conversation with the Thatchers, but the prospects for anything enlightening coming from it grew dimmer and dimmer all the time, and in fact it was more confusing than otherwise, for it left her wondering, in the first place, how anyone as simple-minded as Wilson had ever managed to make so much money, and in the second, why in hell Beth Thatcher, who had called on the telephone about nine-thirty, had failed to pick up fifteen thousand dollars at nine when it had been agreed upon and arranged.

  Arriving at no answers to these puzzlers, she began to think then about the conversation between Beth and me as I had related it, to see if anything significant could be detected there that had heretofore escaped detection. She had a good memory for details, and she began at the beginning, with the ringing of the phone, and went over them all carefully once, after which she began to go over them again.

  The God-damn treacherous cicadas were noisy in the trees. In the pale light, the moon was pale in the sky. In the backyard across the hedge, Jack Handy was watering the grass and making comments in a loud voice to Mrs. Jack Handy, who was apparently somewhere in the house. On a near street, moving rapidly, was the tinkling sound of the siren bell of a Good-Humor man. They drove around in little jeeps painted white nowadays. The Good-Humor men did. Not in little wagons drawn by a horse as they used to do.“Why,” said Sid suddenly, “it’s absurd! It’s simply absurd!”

  She was on her feet with a sense of rising excitement, and she felt in an instant much better than she had been feeling.

  Feeling so good, and now having no longer such a pressing need of a clear head, she went inside and mixed three martinis and brought them out and drank them.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Sugar,” Sid said, “last night I was thinking and thinking, and finally I thought of something enlightening.”

  “Is that so?” I said. “I’ve been thinking and thinking too, and the result has been almost precisely the opposite.”

  I looked out the window into the yard beneath the spreading trees. The grass was dark green and cool-looking and inviting, and I wished I could go out and roll in it like a dog. It was my third day in jail, and I was tired of it. I wanted to go home.

  “Well,” she said, “this enlightening thing is something that was said, and it was said, moreover, directly to you. I don’t want to be excessively critical, sugar, but it does seem to me that a lawyer should be a little more capable of analyzing things and seeing their significance and all that. Do you suppose you would have done better to be something else?”

  “It’s often occurred to me. Just recently, you’ll remember, I went through a brief period of wanting to be a soldier of fortune or a deep sea fisherman or a Left Bank bum. Never mind that, however. Please tell me what was said that you’ve thought of that’s enlightening.”

  “I suppose I must, if you can’t think of it yourself. To begin with, I’ve been greatly puzzled as to why Beth Thatcher was fooling around making a date with my husband when she should have been attending to more important business. It just didn’t seem sensible, and that’s all there was to it.”

  “I’m with you so far.”

  “Then early last night I was out on the back terrace feeling depressed and lonely, and I suddenly remembered Rose Pogue and Zoroaster and the discussion group, which meets tonight. I couldn’t possibly go, because of you in jail, and everything being in such a mess, and so I called Rose and told her I couldn’t, and that got me to thinking about the telephone conversation you had with Beth, it being the same night I went to Rose’s, and all at once, after I had thought for a while, it was perfectly clear to me why Beth had neglected her business to make a date with you.”

  “Was it? Is it? Not to me. Why?”

  “Because she didn’t.”

  “Didn’t? Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t make a date with you.”

  “I’m sorry to be contrary, but she did. She called me on the telephone. I was drinking gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration at the time. I’ve told you and told you and told you.”

  “I know, sugar. I know someone called you, that is. But what makes you so positive it was Beth?”

  “Because she said it was.”

  “Anyone could have said it. That doesn’t make it so.”

  “Look, Sid, it won’t do. Honestly it won’t. Beth had a voice that sounded like an invitation to bed if she so much as asked for a light. There was no other voice like it that I ever heard, and I’d have recognized it any time, anywhere.”

  “Please don’t be so obtuse, sugar. You have scarcely covered yourself with distinction in this matter up to now, as I’ve pointed out before, and it’s time you made a special effort to do a little better. Surely you can see that the unusual quality of Beth’s voice is precisely the thing that would make it so easy to imitate. I mean, a common sort of voice would be quite difficult, really, but almost anyone with a little effort could do Donald Duck or Tallulah Bankhead.”

  “Are you saying that someone called me and pretended to be Beth?”

  “Yes, sugar. It explains other things and must be true.”

  “What makes you think it’s true? You haven’t given me any reason yet.”

  “I was in hopes you’d get it without my help. It would restore my confidence in you somewhat if you could. Can’t you? Really try.”

  “Damn it, Sid, cut it out. I’m in no mood to match wits with you this afternoon. I concede defeat.”

  “Oh, well, it’s evident that you are determined not to see what is perfectly clear. I may as well tell you, I suppose. It was what was said about Rose Pogue that makes me sure it was not Beth Thatcher who said it. I’m ashamed that I didn’t understand it sooner.”

  “All I can remember being said about Rose Pogue was that a conference with her might go on and on forever. That was after I had said you’d gone over to talk with her about Zoroaster and had left me alone.”

  “There! You see, sugar? You only needed to make a genuine effort, and you thought of it right away. You are not really so obtuse as you sometimes seem.”

  “Thank you. Now that I’ve though
t of it, perhaps you’ll tell me what the hell in particular it means.”

  “Why, sugar, how could Beth Thatcher have possibly known that Rose is so talkative and goes on and on forever about matters in detail? After all, Beth Thatcher left town seven years ago, and Rose only came three years ago, when she was hired by the Board of Education to teach second grade, and it was therefore clearly impossible for Beth to know Rose at all, or anything whatever about her.”

  She was sitting on the long table with her legs hanging over the edge, and her eyes were bright with pride and excitement. I had been standing facing her, but now I felt limp all of a sudden, as if my bones had gone soft in an instant, and I sank down slowly onto a straight chair and put my forehead against her knees and closed my eyes.

  “Sugar,” she said, “are you all right?”

  “All right,” I said, and I had this assured feeling that she was truly onto something of significance, and that all right everything would shortly be, if it wasn’t quite already. “I’m only wondering who it could have been. Who, conceivably, could it have been?”

  “There is nothing difficult about that,” Sid said. “It was whoever killed her, of course.”

  “And who, conceivably, is whoever lolled her?”

  “As to that, I’m not sure yet, but there are things that can be safely deduced, and the first deduction is that the killer is surely a woman. As I told you, it would have been easy for a woman to imitate Beth’s voice, even if she were no more than a little clever, but it would hardly have been possible for a man, unless he were especially talented and trained, which isn’t likely.”

  “That sounds reasonable enough. Now go on deducing. Deduce, for example, why this woman, whoever she may be, killed Beth and then tricked me into going to Dreamer’s Park and incriminating myself.”

  “Why, sugar, that is so elementary that it doesn’t really deserve to be called deducing. Allowing for the possibility of her being a little crazy, which could have been a factor, she undoubtedly killed Beth because she hated her, and incriminated you because she hated you also, although not quite so much, perhaps, as Beth. The incrimination part was land of sloppy and uncertain at best. There was no assurance that it would work, and it nearly didn’t, for you simply kept quiet about finding the body, which you might not have found at all in such a dark place, and it looked as though you were going to come out of it with no more than a certain amount of inconvenience and a somewhat guilty conscience. That is why, after a while, it was necessary to send the note to the police.”

  “You contend, then, that the telephoner and the writer are one and the same person?”

  “Oh, yes. Naturally. It’s practically certain.”

  “By God, it’s almost traumatic to feel that one’s been the cause of such machinations. I can understand someone’s wanting to kill Beth, for I’ve felt the desire myself on occasion, but I can’t quite see myself as the kind of fellow who incites such strong emotion.”

  “Sugar, I’m prepared to testify that you are perfectly capable of inciting strong emotion, but that is beside the present point, and we’d better not get into it. What we must get into is who this woman is by name, and I’m just beginning to get some interesting ideas that may amount to something. As I recall, regarding your telephone conversation, you said you were drinking gimlets, and whoever was imitating Beth said something about drinking gimlets still. Is that true?”

  “Yes. True. I remember distinctly. And I said not still, but again, because of the bottle of wine.”

  She was swinging her legs now like a small, intense girl watching a foot race or something else exciting, and her face was set in the fiercest imaginable scowl of concentration.

  “It’s apparent, then, that the person on the telephone, who was surely a woman, was also someone who knew that you had been drinking gimlets. Since it has been established that it was not Beth, it must have been someone else who was right there in the Kiowa Room watching you at the time, and there is only one person that I can remember your mentioning by name when you came home late and covered her with gin kisses on the terrace.” She stopped swinging her legs and sat very still on the table, and the fierce scowl faded slowly through subtle changes into an expression of childish wonder.

  “Sugar,” she said, “why would Sara Pike want to kill Beth Thatcher and go to all sorts of extremes to put the blame on you?”

  “Sara Pike! Are you serious, Sid? You can’t be.”

  “I can and I am. Now that I’ve thought it through and come to a solution, I have an absolute conviction. Please answer my question. What did you and Beth Thatcher ever do to Sara Pike?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “There you go. Answering again before thinking. Half of your troubles, I’m sure, come from talking or acting without thinking first. Of course you did something to her, however unintentional it may have been. It’s a simple matter of being reasonable. She certainly didn’t kill Beth and incriminate you for nothing at all.”

  “Well, I can’t think of anything. Not a damn thing.”

  “Isn’t it true that Beth and Sara’s brother Sherman once went together seriously?”

  “Yes. That’s true enough.”

  “And isn’t it also true that she broke off with him and took up with you after you got back from being away?”

  “True, true, but of damn little consequence.”

  “Perhaps. We’ll continue to think about it and see. At any rate, you said you had done nothing, and already we have come up with something.”

  “I said nothing was done to Sara. What was done to Sherm was something else, and it really amounted to damn little. Sherm was a brilliant sort of guy, and a nice one. No hard feelings. Besides, he died right away, and none of it made any difference to him then, one way or another.”

  “Well, there it is, sugar. You have said it yourself.”

  “Said what?”

  “That he died right away. Dying is surely something.”

  “Oh, come off, Sid. He’d had rheumatic fever as a kid. He died of heart failure.”

  “Are you sure? Who said so?”

  “The doctor said so, that’s who.”

  “Who was the doctor? Do you remember?”

  “Yes, I do. Old Doctor Weinsap is who. He was the Pike’s family doctor, and he was ours too. I think he was damn near everyone’s family doctor.”

  “I don’t know any Doctor Weinsap. Is he still practicing?”

  “Not here, at least. He’s dead.”

  “That’s too bad, for I would like to talk with him. Anyhow, it’s well known that old family doctors are inclined to make mistakes, and sometimes they will even say deliberately, out of a feeling of affection, that dying was the result of one thing when it was actually the result of something else entirely. I know this is true because I had an uncle on my mother’s side who died of acute alcoholism, and the family doctor, who was a friend, put it on the death certificate as some kind of kidney trouble.”

  “So far as that goes, alcoholism and kidney trouble are frequently connected. Nevertheless, with all due respect to your mother’s brother, there is no reason whatever to suspect that Sherm Pike died of anything but what Doctor Weinsap said he died of.”

  “You’re far too credulous, sugar. You’ll believe anything fantastic, even when the truth is as clear as can be.”

  “I’m sorry. What, precisely, is the truth?”

  “The truth is that Sherman Pike committed suicide. That’s perfectly evident.”

  “Is it? Why?”

  “Because of what has happened, of course. It’s the one thing that would explain why Sara Pike would do what she has to Beth Thatcher and you.”

  “I’m not sure, but something in your reasoning seems wrong. It’s backwards or something. Maybe you’re starting with a basic assumption that isn’t proved.”

  “You had be
tter leave the reasoning to me, sugar. You’ll have to admit that I’ve been more successful at it to this point than you have been. You’ll see. It will turn out that Sherman Pike committed suicide in some way because Beth Thatcher threw him over for you, and all this time Sara Pike has been brooding about it, knowing the truth, and when Beth came back to town, Sara met her and suddenly cracked up and killed her. Probably she has become somewhat crazy from keeping all this inside her for so long. Something like that is extremely hard on the mind. Everyone knows it.”

  “Sara took Sherm’s death hard, all right, but that was natural. He was a little older than she, a brilliant, sensitive guy with a good future, as everyone thought, and she was nuts about him. For a long time after he died, she was practically a recluse. Never went anywhere or saw anyone.”

  “There you are again. You keep trying to argue one way, but everything you say goes the other. No, no, sugar, you can’t dissuade me. Sara Pike did it and tried to put the blame on you, I’m certain of that now, and it only remains to find out exactly how.”

  “Yes? It seems to me that it also remains to prove it.”

  “You’re right for once. Idiots like Hector Caldwell and Cotton McBride must have everything done for them completely. Don’t worry, however. Now that I’ve begun so well and gone so far, I’ll surely think of a way to finish successfully.”

  She was still sitting there on the table with her legs hanging over, and I was still in the chair, although I had removed my head from her knees some time ago, when she had started to swing her legs and concentrate, and I got up and walked over to the window and looked out at the place under the trees where the two boys had been, but were not now, and after a while I turned and went back to where she was standing, having slipped off the edge of the table while I was gone.

  “Look,” I said. “Will you do something for me? Will you please do it?”

  “I may and I may not. It depends.”

  “If you love me a little yet, in spite of everything, you’ll do it.”

  “As a matter of fact, I love you a great deal yet, in spite of everything, and so if I will do it if I love you, I suppose I’ll do it.”