Say It with Murder

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Don’t go to them.”

  “Why not?”

  Her face was strangely hard, her mouth tight. “Because I want you with me.”

  Monte called across the beach, his voice impatient.

  “I’ve got to see them,” Carmody said.

  “Must you jump when Mr. Bachore beckons?”

  “What makes you think I jump?”

  “I can tell you. I can see it in you,” Martha replied.

  “Now don’t be unreasonable,” Carmody said.

  “You can talk to them later, can’t you?”

  “No.”

  “All right. It’s your choice.”

  She turned and walked away from him. Carmody stood looking after her and then he heard Monte call him again and he tightened his mouth against what he wanted to say to Martha and walked across the beach to the narrow boardwalk. Monte was smiling behind his spade-shaped beard. Paul Sloade looked angry and red-eyed and harassed

  “Ah, Bill,” Monte said. “Paul and I have been having an interesting discussion. We do not see eye to eye, however. Will you please tell Mr. Sloade, for instance, what is in Robbie Ravelle’s mind and heart?”

  “Murder,” Carmody said.

  “And whom does he wish to kill?”

  Carmody looked at Paul. “He wants to kill you.”

  “So. And what keeps him from carrying out his desire?”

  “You and Sam Link and your plan to get the eggs from this golden goose.”

  Paul Sloade’s face was dark with anger. “Damn it to hell, I’m not afraid of that big lump of muscle.”

  “Ah, But Bill, now, has something else. Tell him about the padlock, Bill.”

  Carmody talked about the padlock and he talked about Monte’s plan for a gambling room on the third-floor ballroom of the hotel, and while he talked Monte rocked back and forth on his heels and looked at the peaceful, sparkling water of the ocean. Paul Sloade stood stiff and erect, as if he were receiving a court sentence. While Carmody talked, he saw Martha drive off from the parking lot behind the Beachcomber, in a blue convertible.

  “Bill can fry you,” Monte said. “If he does not talk to the police, it is only for our mutual benefit, Mr. Sloade.”

  “I can tell the police a few things myself,” Sloade said thickly.

  “Really? Chief Hallowell receives seventy dollars a week as compensation for his services to the town. I am paying him two hundred. The chief is an interesting man. An agronomist. He raises potatoes and ducklings. He has been anxious to expand his farm holdings, and I am making arrangements to help him in his ambition. He thinks very highly of me, and agrees that cooperation in the matter is not too unreasonable.”

  Paul Sloade’s face hardened. The color left it, and there was a ring of white at the corners of his mouth. He spoke quietly, looking at Monte Bachore and then at Carmody.

  “One of you killed my wife. I know it was one of you. You did it just to get me in this corner, to move in on me with blackmail.”

  “Please, Mr. Sloade,” Monte murmured.

  “I’ll find out which one of you killed her,” Paul said. “And when I do, look out for me.”

  Monte chuckled. Then he drew a deep breath and tapped Paul Sloade’s chest with the metal tip of his black walking stick.

  “Until then, Mr. Sloade,” he said. “This is exactly what you are going to do…”

  8

  IRENE SLOADE was buried at four o’clock the following afternoon. In the evening, after the heat of the day, a hurriedly summoned court of inquest met at the courthouse in Matachogue and declared her death due to accident or misadventure. Carmody attended both the funeral and the inquest. He sat in the back of the courtroom between Sam Link and Robbie Ravelle and looked at the back of Martha’s bowed head. Martha was escorted by Paul Sloade and Mark Dunning. Both men were extremely attentive to her. It was hot and close in the courtroom, and the two antiquated fans made a steady snoring sound that seemed indecent, just as the deliberations of the coroner and the testimony of the thick-necked chief of police seemed indecent. When the inquest was over Carmody waited for a chance to talk to Martha, but she walked right past him and if she saw him she gave no sign of recognizing him. He stood there watching her walk away from the courthouse between Dunning and Paul Sloade and then Sam Link gave his whinnying laugh and said, “Now we can go to work, music man.”

  “What work?”

  “You’re going to be assistant manager, didn’t you know? Robbie takes care of trouble; any kind of trouble. He’s big enough to scare trouble away just by having it look at him, y’know?”

  “What about you?”

  “I run the business end of it. I run the wheels.”

  Carmody looked at him. “Yes, you were always the conniver in Gimp Five.”

  “That was for cigarettes,” Sam said, laughing. “This is for the real moneyroony, music man.”

  Carmody got in the car and Robbie drove and Sam Link sat alone in the back seat. Lila had chosen to stay at the beach house. It was all arranged, Carmody thought and he didn’t have anything to say about it. Everybody was arranging his life for him, turning him down paths that looked black and ugly and dangerous, away from where he wanted to go. Monte had looked over the beach house that morning and decided they would all stay right there instead of moving into the hotel suites, because that way they would all attract less attention. Robbie and Lila had sulked about that, but Sam Link had talked them out of their disappointment.

  Sam link could talk anybody out of anything. Carmody sat back in the car and remembered how it had been in prison camp. Link had always been able to think up something new and intriguing and profitable for the greater comfort and convenience of Samuel Elgin Link. A small, scrawny man, balding even then, he could never have held his own in the jungle that was the camp except for his wits and the added factor of Robbie Ravelle’s enormous strength. Robbie was always a tall shadow behind him.

  Carmody frowned, trying to remember something, something at the camp, an elusive thing that slipped away from his mental fingers when he tried to grab it and hold it up for examination. It was there and then it wasn’t there, and he shook his head in frustration and gave it up.

  Work on the ballroom began the next day. Monte knew how to move quickly and efficiently, and he got things done. Carpenters and painters showed up at the hotel, and Carmody was put in charge of them, working with an architect and a very young man who was an interior decorator.

  The work began without any disturbance to the guests. Most of them were never aware of what was going on. In a matter of hours, Monte managed to throw enough details at Carmody for him to look after that he had no time to think, less time to worry, and no time at all to look for Martha. The gambling equipment, tables, wheels, birdcage, boxes of chips and cards and crated slot machines, arrived by truck on the third day, much to the irritation of the decorator who screamed that he could create nothing, nothing at all, amid such confusion. Monte pinched his backside and that made the artist feel better. Monte was always very cheerful and expansive. Nothing bothered him. Now and then he called Paul Sloade into his newly decorated office for a brief consultation. Carmody never had a chance to hear what was being discussed. He was too busy with the paperwork. When night came he ate alone at the Beachcomber and then swam in the ocean alone, ignoring Lila and Sam and Robbie, and fell asleep exhausted in his room, always locking the door after him. He had the idea that if he didn’t lock his door he would wake up with Lila in bed with him and Robbie in a raving homicidal mania if it ever happened. He wanted no part of it. He gave up playing at the Beachcomber, but made no explanations to Harry.

  The days were hot and clear, and there was still a month left of the season, but Monte wasted no time in his eagerness to shear the suckers. He began issuing guest cards, quietly and with a clever selectivity—working over the guest list at the hotel to pick the most likely candidates, those with the most money and the greatest boredom and the most extensive spheres of influence among th
eir friends and neighbors. Carmody never saw the police after the inquest. The police were busy directing traffic on the main highway through Matachogue, or digging potatoes, or feeding ducks.

  In one week the operation was set up and ready to roll.

  Now and then Carmody saw Martha, but never alone, and never to talk to. He saw her with Paul Sloade, twice on the beach and once on Martha’s sloop. He saw them dining together. He saw them driving through town. They were always busily talking, his dark head bent attentively toward her blonde hair. Once he saw her face, with its rapt attention given to Sloade’s words. Once he saw them laughing, and another time, late at night as he started walking back to the beach house, he saw them on the yacht club pier, arm in arm, and he saw Paul Sloade kiss her.

  On the day before the ballroom was to open officially, Monte called him into the office. Monte wore a dubonnet cord jacket with a yellow silk ascot and dove-gray slacks. His beard was newly trimmed. He sat behind his new desk in his new clothes and looked happy.

  “Bill, I have an errand for you to run.”

  “You bet,” Carmody said. “I’m your boy.”

  Monte tossed a chain of car keys toward him and pushed a thick manila envelope across the desk. “Take these. Drive into New York and pay off the men whose names are on the list inside this envelope.”

  “Pay them with what?” Carmody asked.

  “There is fifteen thousand in cash in the envelope.”

  “Do you trust me with it?”

  “You’ll be back, Bill,” Monte smiled. “You’ve worked hard. You’ve stayed in line. I’m quite pleased with you, as a matter of fact.”

  “I shall offer up prayers of thanks to Mecca. Where did you get the fifteen grand?”

  “From Paul Sloade.” Monte laughed. “I’ve got a little present for you, Bill. Look out the window.”

  Carmody looked outside and saw a plum-colored Ford convertible with a black top on the driveway just below.

  “Is that the car I take?”

  “It’s yours. A little gift, in token of my appreciation. It’s registered in your name, everything taken care of. You see, we can get along if we try, Bill.”

  “I’m trying hard,” Carmody said.

  He took the keys and the envelope and went downstairs to the new car. Inside, he checked the registration cards in the glove compartment and put the manila envelope inside his coat and drove around to the front of the hotel. It was a gray, overcast day. There was not too much activity either on the beach or in the yacht basin. Carmody went into the hotel and up to the second floor to Monte Bachore’s suite. A colored maid was vacuuming the rug. Carmody sent her away and closed the door and turned the bolt latch from the inside.

  Monte’s rooms were big and luxurious and quiet. He went from the living room to the bedroom and opened all the closet doors and began to search the neat rows of expensive suits. He looked in all the shoes on the closet floor and inside the leather sweatbands of the hats on the shelf. Then he went to the dressers and worked carefully through Monte’s linen and socks and pajamas. He got a chair and examined the cornices over the Venetian blinds of all the windows. He looked under the rug, took the pillows from the chairs and settees, got down on his hands and knees and searched the underside of the bed and every chair and every table in the rooms. He was sweating. He searched quickly and efficiently, and found nothing.

  He went downstairs and saw Martha and Paul Sloade having a late breakfast in the dining room. Martha looked lovely and radiant, laughing at something Paul had said. Carmody went over to them and stood by the table. He didn’t look at Sloade.

  “Martha, I’m driving into New York this morning,” he said bluntly. “I thought you might like to come dong. We could have lunch and see a matinée.”

  “No, thanks. Go on. Go run your errands for Monte,” she said.

  He stood there for a moment and felt like a fool and saw Paul’s sly, triumphant grin and turned on his heel and walked away from there.

  He drove next to the beach house. The ocean looked sullen and gray under the thick overcast, and the sound of the surf held a new note of ominous threat. The wind blew in quick, spiteful gusts that made little sand devils dance across the beach and sting his face and eyes. Nobody was in the big gray house. He felt it creak in the increasing blows of the wind as he went through it looking in every room. Not even Lila was at home. Sam Link had chosen one of the bedrooms on the second floor, and he paused there in the doorway, frowning, and then went through the same search routine he had followed in Monte Bachore’s rooms. He found two guns, a Smith & Wesson .38 and a Magnum revolver, several pairs of loaded dice, two packs of trick cards. There was over a thousand dollars in loose cash stuffed carelessly in the top drawer of the old walnut bureau. Carmody left it where he found it and went through the pockets of Sam’s clothes in the closets. The only thing he found there was a traffic ticket for speeding through the town of Matachogue.

  The ticket was signed with the heavy, laborious signature of Chief Ira Hallowell. It was dated the third of the month, at 5 P.M.

  Irene Sloade had died on the morning of the fourth. Carmody put the summons in his pocket and started downstairs again. Halfway down he heard the front door slam against the kick of the wind and he saw Robbie Ravelle stagger inside. Carmody halted where he was. The big man did not see him. He watched Robbie clutch at the door jamb and slide along the hallway with his shoulders against the wall. Tears streamed from the man’s silver eyes. He made a sobbing sound and suddenly fell to his knees and began to pound the floor with his big fists, striking the floor with heavy, monotonous, massive blows. Over and over again. Carmody saw the spreading stain of blood on Robbie’s knuckles and heard the queer, high-pitched wailing sound Robbie made as he pounded the floor. The man’s whole body shook and shuddered.

  Carmody went down the rest of the steps and stood in the hallway in front of the kneeling man.

  “Robbie.”

  Ravelle’s yellow hair hung down in lank strands over his eyes. He kept hitting the floor with his fists, and Carmody felt the heavy jolts up through the soles of his feet. He leaned down and touched Robbie’s shoulder and Robbie suddenly let out an ear-piercing scream and rolled away, scrambling to his feet. He crashed blindly into the wall, screamed again, and lurched like a behemoth into the living room where he threw himself onto the couch and shook and cried.

  “Robbie, what’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

  “Go away.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Yeah. Sick.”

  “What about a doctor?”

  “No doctor.” The big man’s voice was muffled. His white teeth caught on the edge of one of the sofa cushions and he began ripping at the cover until the cover tore and the white stuffing puffed out of it. “Get away from me, Billy.”

  “Is this why they wanted to keep you at the hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “A drink.”

  Carmody went into the kitchen and found a bottle of Scotch and poured half a water glass full and carried it back to the man in the living room. He grabbed a handful of Robbie’s hair and saw that Robbie’s teeth were locked tightly together. He pulled the man’s head back and poured the Scotch against Robbie’s teeth and some of it seeped through and Robbie coughed and swallowed and coughed and sputtered and then reached up for the glass and took it from Carmody’s hands.

  Carmody sat down across from him and lit a cigarette and watched him.

  In five minutes Robbie sighed and sat back on the couch with his arms limp and exhausted, his bloodied hands resting on his thighs.

  “I’m all right now,” he said

  “Where is Lila?”

  “I don’t know. I was lookin’ for her but I couldn’t find her. I guess that’s why I got upset.”

  “You were more than just upset. Has this happened often?”

  “Often enough.”

  “You ought to be in the hospital.”
r />   “Dog the hospital. I’ll be O.K.”

  Carmody looked at his watch. “Are you sure you don’t need anything more?”

  “Go on, beat it,” Robbie said. “You done enough.”

  Carmody got up and went out.

  Ten minutes later he was on Route 27 heading for the Moriches and the Southern State Parkway beyond. The speedometer mileage on the plum-colored Ford read only 18 miles, but Carmody ignored it and let the new car roll along at an even, effortless 50. It was a two-and-a-half hour ride into the city and he rode with the ghost of Irene Sloade on the leather seat beside him. Thinking about her and of what he had found this morning, he knew that her death had been neither an accident nor suicide. He had been right all along. She had been murdered.

  He drove mechanically with this knowledge cold and hard inside of him.

  He didn’t want to think about it but he couldn’t twist his mind away from it Paul could have killed her, but it would have been an act of supreme stupidity to do it just when he and Sam Link and Robbie came on the scene. All right, he told himself. Assume Paul Sloade is innocent. Who else? He thought of Sam and Robbie and Monte. Any of them might have killed Irene in order to hang a frame on Paul. But then there was the complication of the padlock, and the padlock made it pretty thin. The subtlety of the padlock was neither Sam’s method nor Robbie’s. And it depended on Paul’s getting panicky and replacing the padlock in the first place. No. Well, maybe it was an accident Maybe Paul was afraid of the repercussions when it was discovered that the gate had been unlocked. Well, why was the gate unlocked? The gallery came to a dead end there. Why would anybody unlock it? Only to invite an accident Carmody thought. An accident to whom? To Paul? Irene? Martha? Somebody else?