The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  “All right. Go home. Go home and say a prayer or curse or cry, but let me come out of this in my own way. Nothing can be proved against me, and it’s only a matter of time until I’ll be released.”

  “Do you really want me to?”

  “I do. I really do.”

  “It’s plain that you have no faith in me.”

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt or into trouble.”

  “I thought I was doing so well, too.”

  “You’ve done fine, and I appreciate it, but now it’s time to let someone else do the rest.”

  “All right. I can see that it’s no use. It was foolish of me to try.”

  It was time for her to go, and she went as far as the door, where she stopped. She looked very small and somehow beaten, looking back, and there was something shining in her eyes.

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

  And then she left, but she didn’t go home. She went, instead, to the office, where Millie Morgan was.

  “Hello, there, Sid,” Millie said. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “It’s going very well, as a matter of fact. For a while it hardly went at all, but then it began going better, and now it’s practically finished. Are you still available?”

  “Yes, I am. I was about to ask if you couldn’t make some use of me. There’s very little to do around here right now, and I’m getting bored. I was even considering asking my engineer in for a scrimmage. What do you want me to do?”

  “First I had better brief you on my conclusions. From several things that were said, it became apparent that the person who called Gid on the telephone and arranged to meet him in Dreamer’s Park was not Beth Thatcher, as the person claimed, but someone else who knew Rose Pogue, which Beth didn’t. It was easy to understand from this that Beth was dead at the time of the call, already killed, and that whoever called had killed her and wanted to incriminate Gid if possible out of pure spite. It’s my opinion at present that the killing was done somewhere besides the park, and the body taken there afterward. From some other significant things that I won’t bother to explain just now, it was easy to decide who did the killing and the telephoning, and probably even why they were done, but the trouble as matters now stand is that I can’t prove it.”

  “Proof would be helpful. I can see that.”

  “It will be absolutely essential, to be realistic, and the only way I can think of to prove it is to get a confession by some kind of deception, and that’s why I’ve come to consult you. The one thing that is perfectly obvious is that it’s of no use to expect any contributions from Cotton McBride or Hec Caldwell.”

  “You did just right in coming to me. I’m pretty good at deception, and I may be able to help you work something out. Incidentally, am I allowed to know who did the killing?”

  “By all means. Didn’t I say? It was Sara Pike who did it.”

  “The hell she did! It’s almost incredible. What makes you think so?”

  “Well, I don’t want to take the time to go into it fully, but Sherman Pike, who was supposed to have died of heart failure, didn’t die of heart failure at all, but killed himself because Beth Thatcher left him and took up with Gid again. It was kept a secret all this time, but Sara knew it and brooded about it, and so, when she just recently got her first chance, she managed to kill Beth and incriminate Gid out of revenge. As I admitted, I can’t prove any of it yet, but it’s perfectly apparent.”

  “It is? Tell me why.”

  “Oh, because Sara knew Gid had been drinking gimlets in the Kiowa Room, and was surely the one on the telephone, and was just as surely, therefore, the one who did the killing. She had to have a reason for killing Beth and calling Gid, of course, and the only reason that seems probable is the one I’ve just explained. You see now? It’s perfectly apparent.”

  “It does become clearer when you know all the facts. How do you propose to deceive Sara into confessing?”

  “That’s what we must now put our minds to, and I have a plan already thought out that I’d like to have your opinion of.”

  “Tell me the plan, and I’ll give you my opinion gladly.”

  “We must keep in mind, to begin with, that someone who has killed someone is bound to be uneasy and afraid of the possible consequences, which will make her extremely susceptible to suggestions and threats and things like that. What I propose to do, if you agree, is to call Sara without identifying myself and claim to have seen her commit the murder. She will certainly deny at first that she did it, of course, but I’ll convince her one way or another that I happened by accident to see her, and what I intend to do then is pretend to be a blackmailer who wants money to keep quiet about it, just as Beth actually was in connection with something that I’ve promised not to tell about unless necessary. I’ll arrange to meet her alone at some place where you can be hiding as a witness, unknown to her, and it will be up to me to get her to convict herself by what she says, although the simple fact that she comes to meet me will surely be evidence of her guilt.”

  “Do you think I’ll be acceptable to Hec Caldwell as a witness? I doubt it. He’ll be likely to believe that we’ve made it all up just to get Gid out of jail.”

  “He may be a little dubious, I admit, but he will certainly have to make an investigation of Sara as a result, and once he and Cotton McBride are put on to her, even they may discover the truth. It’s probable that Sara’s somewhat unstable mentally and will break down and admit everything soon enough if seriously accused.”

  “Nevertheless, I think it might be a good idea to have one or both of them there to hear it with me.”

  “I’ve thought of that, but I don’t believe I want to risk it. I’m afraid they might reject the plan and refuse to let us go through with it.”

  “Another thing that bothers me a little is the feeling that it might be dangerous. Sara’s probably unstable, as you say, to have done such a thing, and in fact I consider it likely that she may be secretly as mad as the March Hare. There’s no telling what she may try to do to you, and to me also if I’m forced to come to your assistance.”

  “There’s some danger in it, all right, but I’m prepared to face it for Gid’s sake.”

  “Well, I’m not quite so dedicated to Gid as you are, but I’m willing to face it with you. When do you intend to call Sara?”

  “Now is as good a time as any. Will you please look up her number in the directory?”

  Millie looked it up and told it to Sid, and Sid dialed. The phone at the other end of the line rang twice and was answered. It was answered by Sara, who lived alone. “Is it Sara Pike speaking?” Sid said.

  “Yes.” Sara said, “Who’s this?”

  “You don’t know me, but I know you, and I know what you’ve done because I saw you do it.”

  “What’s that? What did you say?”

  Sara’s voice, Sid said later, was suddenly shrill and almost frenzied, and it was obvious immediately that she was, as Sid had predicted, extremely susceptible to suggestions and oblique threats and things like that.

  “You heard what I said, and you know what I mean,” Sid said.

  “On the contrary, I don’t understand you at all. Tell me who you are and what you want. Why have you called me?”

  “I’ve called to tell you that I saw you kill Beth Thatcher. I was there and saw it, and you had better believe me. Don’t hang up, or I’ll go straight to the police.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “I’m not, but I think that you may be.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We had better meet somewhere and talk about that.”

  “I’m not at all sure that I agree. Why should I?”

  “For the same reason that you haven’t hung up. To keep me from going to the police.”

  “I don’t even know who you are. Are you afraid to tell me your
name?”

  “You’ll know me when you see me, and that will be soon enough. Do you agree now to meet me? If you don’t, I’ll hang up myself, and you can take the consequences.”

  There was a long silence on the line, and Sid had an uneasy feeling that there was a great deal of furious thinking going on at the other end, thinking that was probably not quite sane but crazy-crafty, and this turned out to be true from what was next said.

  “I’ll meet you in one place only,” Sara said. “It must be there or nowhere.”

  “Where is that?” Sid said.

  “At the place where you say you saw me kill Beth Thatcher, and you must tell me right now where that place is.”

  It was a neat and treacherous little trap, clearly one that Sid should have anticipated, and she cursed herself because she hadn’t. She felt at once triumphant and defeated, for it was apparent that she had been right all the way along, that the murder had truly been done somewhere besides Dreamer’s Park, and if she now said Dreamer’s Park, which was where it was supposed to have been done, she would give herself away as a liar, but she didn’t, of course, know where else to say. But Sara knew where else. That was equally apparent, and the little trap, however neat and deadly, was also a confession.

  There was an even longer silence on the line now, but this time it was Sid who was doing the furious thinking. She explained afterward that it was like one of those odd psychological experiences in which someone in a great crisis is able to do something that would normally be impossible, like the man who picked up the safe that weighed five hundred pounds and threw it out the window of a burning building. Sid was not required to perform a physical feat, however. She was only required to know in an instant where Sara Pike had killed Beth Thatcher, and it was actually a little longer than an instant before she knew, but she knew soon enough. All of a sudden, she was hearing Cotton McBride say again that the wound had really been a sort of puncture with a little dirt around the edge, and immediately after that she was standing beside me in the cemetery, helping bury Beth again, and she was seeing now what she had seen then without really noticing, and what she saw was a metal vase for flowers with a spike on the bottom that you push into the ground to keep the vase from falling over. She had, she said later, an exhilarating and immediate feeling of absolute assurance.

  “Surely,” she said assuredly. “I’ll meet you beside your brother Sherman’s grave.”

  There was a third interval of silence. Then Sara’s voice, curiously flat and almost apathetic.

  “Shall we say about eight o’clock?”

  “Eight o’clock will be fine,” Sid said.

  She hung up with a feeling of having done quite well. In fact, she didn’t know how she could have done much better.

  “Sara’s guilty, as I thought,” she said to Millie. “We’re going to meet at eight o’clock.”

  “I would almost swear,” Millie said, “that you said beside her brother Sherman’s grave.”

  “It was a trick on her part. I had to name the place where Beth was killed in order to prove I was not lying about seeing it done, which in fact I was.”

  “How the hell did you know the place? Did you know it all along?”

  “No. It just came to me suddenly when I remembered about the puncture and the dirt and the little metal vases with spikes in the cemetery.”

  “Oh. That explains everything nicely. A cemetery seems an odd place for Beth to have gone with Sara Pike, however. Why do you suppose she went?”

  “Well, Gid said Beth was very sentimental in her own way, and I agree that she must have been. After all, she had gone seriously once with Sherman Pike, and she met Sara in the Kiowa Room, and undoubtedly it all came back nostalgically or something. It’s not so odd, really, that she went with Sara to visit Sherman’s grave, especially if Sara suggested it. There are a few people I have known who are dead and buried in different places that I would gladly visit if it were convenient.”

  “That may be true, but I can think of many places that I would prefer to a cemetery as a place to meet someone who has killed once and might not be adverse to killing again. Especially at eight o’clock. Isn’t it beginning to get pretty dark then?”

  “That’s only so much the better. I prefer that she not recognize me until she gets quite close.”

  “Where, may I ask, am I supposed to be hiding all this time?”

  “I’ve considered that. The Pike plot, as I recall, is right next to the Thatcher mausoleum, and the mausoleum’s just the place.”

  “Oh, by God! If you imagine that I’m going to hide in a mausoleum at eight o’clock, you’re simply mistaken. Or any other time, for that matter.”

  “Not in it. Behind it. It would be impossible to get in it, anyhow, for it’s naturally kept locked.”

  “Well, behind it is bad enough, but I agree to hide there. What time shall we meet and go?”

  “We had better go separately, I think, as a precaution. I’ll go there directly by the main entrance to the cemetery, but you had better slip in at the far side near the mausoleum so as not to be seen. It will entail some walking through a field, for there is no road approaching on that side. You must give yourself time enough to be in position shortly before eight.”

  “I’ll be there,” Millie said. “You can count on me.”

  CHAPTER 14

  So there they were at eight o’clock, Sid beside Sherm’s grave and Millie behind the Thatcher mausoleum. And there at eight also, a thin and ghostly shape approaching slowly among the headstones, was Sara Pike.

  She stopped when she was quite near and leaned forward to peer through the shadows. She was wearing a loose, light coat that hung freely from the shoulders, although it was a warm evening, and her hands were thrust deeply into the pockets of the coat.

  “Who is it?” she said. “It’s Sydnie Jones, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Why are you here? Was it you who called? It’s a trick, isn’t it?”

  Her voice was thin and clear but somehow remote, as if it carried through the air from a great distance.

  “It’s no trick,” Sid said. “I had to talk with you, and I knew you would refuse if I merely asked.”

  “Have you come here alone? You haven’t, have you? Who is with you?”

  “No one is with me, as you can see.”

  “Are you sure? You could be lying. Perhaps someone is behind the mausoleum.”

  “No one is there, but you can look if you like.”

  “I think I shall. Please stand where you are while I do. I don’t want you to come near me.”

  It was a precarious moment for the plan, and Sid was depending heavily upon the sharp ears and physical agility of Millie, who did not disappoint her. When Sara was at the front end of the mausoleum, about to turn the corner to the opposite side, Millie popped into view at the rear end, and she kept popping around corners out of sight just ahead of Sara until the mausoleum had been circled entirely and she was back where she had started. The suspense to Sid was severe, but the sudden shock of seeing that Millie was not alone was even worse, and the person with her, popping around corners with an equal agility, was no one but Cotton McBride.

  Sara, having circled the mausoleum, turned and came back toward Sid, stopping about six feet away, her hands still thrust deeply into the pockets of her light coat.

  “You see?” Sid said. “There is no one here but you and me.”

  “Why do you want to talk with me? What do you want?”

  “I want to talk with you because Gid, as you know, is in jail on suspicion of having killed Beth Thatcher, but he didn’t do it, as you also know, because you did it yourself right here where we are.”

  “Who says I did?”

  “I say it.”

  “You say it, but you can’t prove it. You told me on the phone that you saw me, but you did
n’t. You have only made some guesses.”

  “Deductions are what I’ve made, and they’re true ones.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Even the truth must be proved. Who will believe that I did it? What reason did I have?”

  “The reason is lying here between us, where he has lain for seven years.”

  “Sherm? Do you mean Sherm? Yes, that’s true. How do you know? More guesses?”

  “More deductions. He killed himself, and it was covered up as heart failure, which was easy enough for everyone to accept, because he had had rheumatic fever as a boy.”

  “You’re very clever. You must be very clever indeed. But no matter. It’s all true.” Sara’s voice took on a kind of singsong, crooning tone and tempo. “He was tender and brilliant and very good, and I loved him more than anyone else in the world, more by far than everyone else put together, and then he deliberately killed himself with the sleeping medicine he sometimes used to take at nights. He went to sleep and never woke up, and the empty bottle was there beside him when I found him, and I hid the bottle and told the doctor he simply died in his sleep. I don’t think the doctor believed it at all, but he was a friend of the family and pretended to believe it for our sake, and now he’s dead too and can never say differently. So far as anyone will ever know, Sherm died in his sleep of a bad heart, but he really died of a bad woman, a pretty little whore. I loved him and would have taken care of him always, but he didn’t want me, he wanted the whore instead and didn’t want to live without her, and so he killed himself, lolled himself over the whore, and left me all alone for all these years.”

  “I’m sorry. Truly I am.”

  “Don’t dare to be sorry. I won’t have you being sorry, for you are married to the man who was partly to blame, but now he is going to pay me back for it, even though Sherm wouldn’t have wanted it this way, and then I will be sorry for you, but it won’t make any difference.”

  “Why should you hate Gid? He never deliberately hurt your brother or you or anyone else.”

  “He took the little whore and made my brother die. Now I have killed the whore and destroyed her consort. The waiting was long, very long, but in the end it was so easy. She came here willingly with me, to visit the grave out of shallow sentiment, and I’m not really sure that I intended to kill her in the beginning. I only intended, I think, to tell her the truth. How Sherm died, and why, so that it would be on her conscience the rest of her life. That was foolish of me, wasn’t it? To imagine that she would have a conscience? Do you know what she said when I told her? We were standing right here beside the grave, and I told her, and she said, Well, what a perfectly ridiculous thing to do. That was when I picked up the vase and stabbed her in the back. The Voice told me suddenly to do it. It was getting late, not quite so late as now, but getting dusk, and I had to do something with her, of course, and the Voice kept telling me what to do. First I hid her body over there in the tall grass of that field, but then I was told to take her to Dreamer’s Park and incriminate her consort, who helped her kill my brother. I drove around as close as I could to where she was in the grass, and then I carried her to the car and took her to the park and carried her in there and put her in the bandstand under the seat so that there would be little or no chance of the wrong person finding her too soon and ruining everything. It was quite a dangerous thing to do, I suppose, but ever so exciting and satisfying. She was quite easy to carry, for I am much stronger than I look, and it was even easier to deceive her consort later and persuade him to meet her there. He must be a very credulous person. A fool.”