Say It with Murder

by Edward S. Aarons

  “All right, Bill. I’m just concerned about Martha, that’s all.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Carmody said.

  “All right, then. But I don’t see—”

  Martha stepped back and let Carmody inside and he closed the door against Markham Dunning; he felt Martha move away from him in the narrow, warm hallway and he put out his hand and caught her arm and said: “Why are you here in the dark? What happened here?”

  “Help me, Bill,” she whispered.

  “I will. Tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll help you. Show me.”

  “I don’t want to go in there,” she whispered.

  “Where?”

  “The bedroom. I walked in after I came back from the library and I felt so good and happy and then I saw him there in all that ugliness and I thought I was going to faint and then I didn’t and I wished I had. I hated him but I never wanted this sort of thing for him. Never. Never, never.”

  Carmody felt cold at the low monotone of her voice. He kept his hand on her arm in the dark and said: “Wait a minute. Let’s put on the light. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, as long as you’re here.”

  He groped for a wall switch and snapped it on and he saw Martha standing with her shoulders against the wall and her hands pressed flat against the wall beside her and her head turned curiously away toward the front door. Her face was very white. He saw her swallow and then he looked down the hall and the first thing he saw on the floor just inside the kitchen doorway was a small green ballet slipper crusted with drying mud and sand. As he picked it up, the front door opened and Markham Dunning came in, saying something apologetic and concerned and contrite—but coming in. Carmody walked over to Martha with the slipper in his hand.

  “Was Lila here when you came back?”

  “Lila?”

  “Robbie Ravelle’s girl.”

  “No, I don’t know her. Nobody was here but Paul.”

  Dunning said: “Don’t shut me out of this, Martha. I know you are in trouble of some sort, and I insist on helping.”

  “All right,” she said wearily. “I just thought it would be better if you weren’t mixed up in it, Mark. I know how you felt about Irene.”

  “What’s this got to do with Irene?” Carmody asked.

  “Look in the bedroom,” Martha whispered.

  He couldn’t put it off any longer, although he knew what he would find now. Stray light moved ahead of him as Martha pointed to the bedroom door. The door was ajar and he pushed it open a little more and saw Lila’s ballet slipper in his hand and put it in his pocket absently, but not quite forgetting about it or dismissing it from his mind. He found a light switch and put it on and then stood there, exhaling in a long sigh.

  Paul Sloade lay sprawled on the neat chenille-covered bed. He lay across it with his head and shoulders dangling almost to the floor, his long black hair actually touching the carpet and his face, seen upside down with his black staring eyes, seemed something inhuman and misshapen, as if it didn’t belong to anybody Carmody had ever known. He wore only dark green swimming trunks on his thick, compact body. His teeth glistened white in the light that touched his bloody, battered face and the bullet hole in his chest and the dark molded bruises on his torso. He looked as if someone had first shot him and then jumped all over him, kicking and scratching and beating him, as he lay dying, in a frenzy of hatred. Carmody heard a quick retching sound behind him and looked over his shoulder and saw Markham Dunning being violently sick. He looked at Martha and saw her staring straight ahead, her shoulders rigid against the corridor wall.

  He told himself he had to do something about this, that he couldn’t allow this to be, and then the thought touched him that there would be dismay and fury and confusion up in Monte’s ballroom when Monte learned that the golden goose had been slaughtered. Then he thought that maybe Monte Bachore knew all about this already. He felt a rising tide of panic flood his mind and his thoughts jumped this way and that, seeing the open bedroom window, the lack of blood on the counterpane of the bed, the stiff rigidity of Paul Sloade’s arms and legs. He forced himself to walk farther into the bedroom and touch the dead man with the back of his hand. The flesh felt cool. The blood on him had already dried into dark crusts. When he turned he kicked something on the floor and he saw it was a small automatic, an Italian Beretta, and he started to pick it up and then thought he ought to keep his hands off it and he paused and looked up and saw Martha Courtney in the bedroom doorway watching him.

  “It’s mine,” she whispered

  He didn’t want to understand her. “Yours?”

  “It used to be Irene’s. I took it when I straightened out her things after the funeral.”

  “Was Paul here when you came back from Matachogue?”

  “Yes. Just as you see him.”

  “Martha, you’ve got to stay calm.”

  “I’m calm now. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  Carmody turned his back on the dead man sprawled on the bed and took Martha’s arm and turned her around and pushed her ahead of him toward the front of the house. He felt her shiver and then her hand tightened on his and he felt the chill in her fingers. Carmody drew a deep breath and touched her hair and tried to smile and then dropped it because it didn’t fit with anything he felt inside.

  “Martha, he wasn’t killed here in your house. It happened somewhere else, more than an hour ago. Somebody brought him here, and I intend to find out who it was.”

  She nodded mutely, then said: “Paul was a great philanderer. You know he didn’t love Irene. I let him pay a lot of attention to me because I wanted to find out the truth about Irene, and I know the people at the hotel were talking about us, the way we were always seen together. The police are going to think I killed him.”

  “But you didn’t,” Carmody said.

  “They’re going to think he made a pass at me that I didn’t want to take. A lot of people at the hotel know how I really felt about Paul. I hated him and when Irene was alive I let him know it, and other people knew it, too. The police will think I led him on this past week and when he made a pass at me I took the chance and the excuse to kill him.”

  “But you were in the library at Matachogue.”

  “Yes. I took this from the news files.” She turned as she spoke and picked up a large red purse and fumbled in it for a clipping and handed it to Carmody. “I think this will help you, Bill.”

  He put it in his pocket without looking at it.

  “My problem isn’t important now. Did anybody see you at the library?”

  “Only the clerk, when I first went in. I was alone in the reference room all the rest of the time. And I used the side door to go out because it was convenient, that’s all. Nobody saw me leave, I’m sure.”

  Dunning came out of the bathroom looking white and shaken. “I’ve got to tell you something, Martha. I saw Paul this afternoon at the hotel. He was very drunk, and he was loud and boastful. He said he knew you wanted to find out about Irene and he could tell you who killed her and that it was a great joke on everybody.”

  “Did he tell you this?” Carmody asked.

  “He wasn’t talking to me. He was just talking to the air, you know. He was drunk in the bar, talking to himself; but the bartender heard him, and so did I.”

  “Did he say anything specific? Did he say who killed Irene?”

  “No, he just said it was a great joke. I don’t believe he even saw me, you know. But you can check with the barman. Maybe Jimmy heard more than I. I actually thought he was just raving drunk, you see, and I didn’t pay too much attention to it then. I’m sorry about it, now.”

  Dunning trembled and sat down on the arm of a chair and stared blankly into space. Carmody saw that Martha, too, was stunned by what had happened and what she had seen, and he knew it was up to him to do something and to do it fast, because Paul Sloade had not been dumped into Martha’s bed for nothing. He looked a
t Dunning and wondered if Dunning had killed Paul Sloade and then he looked at Martha and thought he might just as well suspect her or himself of this thing. You’ve got to think of something, he told himself, and not just about getting out of here and running away. It’s the same old cycle of the past repeating itself, and there was a time long ago when you saw a man get killed and you could think of nothing except to run away and hide yourself in an army ten thousand miles away on the other side of the world. The pattern is not quite the same this time, however. This time Martha is in it and you don’t want her in it and you’ve got to get her out of it.

  The answer came to him and he turned back into the bedroom, stiffening himself against what he had to do. Dunning followed him and said in a thin, reedy voice: “Bill, what do you have in mind?”

  “We’ve got to get him out of here.”

  “You mean, move the body?”

  “We have to do it. Somebody dumped him here to incriminate Martha and we’ve got to keep Martha out of it.”

  “Yes. I think you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right” Carmody said. “Give me a hand.”

  “I don’t think I can touch—”

  “Then get out of my way.”

  “Wait. Perhaps we should call the police.”

  “No police,” Carmody said. “Not just yet.”

  “But where will you take him?”

  “Monte Bachore is smart. We’ll dump him at Monte’s. Then we’ll call the police.”

  Dunning looked at him in surprise and then nodded and made a giggling sound. Carmody looked at Martha, at her enormous eyes strained wide in her white face, and then he told her to get the trunk of his car open and when she was gone he turned to the bed again. He had to hold himself together to touch the dead man and he thought he could never tell Paul Sloade now that in one thing, at least, he had been wronged—the matter of Lucas Deegan. He bent down and pulled at the dead man and with a quick heave he lifted the inert cold weight to his shoulder and made for the doorway. Martha was already outside. Dunning led the way to the front of the house and as Carmody came out through the doorway he heard the siren.

  It was very loud, and he wondered why he hadn’t heard it before.

  And then, while he had no chance to move or duck or hide with the burden of the dead man on his shoulder, a car screeched to a halt in the graveled lane beyond the picket fence and a spotlight suddenly blazed and pinned him in guilty brightness where he stood.

  12

  CARMODY stood still in the accusing glare of the spotlight that framed him in the cottage doorway, with the dead man on his shoulder, and for a frantic moment something threatened to break inside him as panic clawed his mind to shreds. He heard the door of the police car slam and saw the chief, in his blue shirt and topee and gun belt sagging down over his little watermelon belly, coming toward him with a long shadow cast ahead of him as he walked down the path of the spotlight to the house. There was a quick slithering movement to his left as Dunning slid away into the shadows. He could not see Martha. He became aware of the weight of the dead man as a solid, intolerable burden that pressed him down into the earth, and he thought fragmentarily that if Paul Sloade were anywhere at all beyond the pale of the living, he would be laughing himself sick.

  Somehow that thought steadied him and he drew a long deep breath that was partly a prayer that Martha would stay out of sight, wherever she was. He lowered the body carefully to the step and straightened as the chief came up to him. “Carmody?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is that Paul Sloade?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Look for yourself,” Carmody said. “He was drunk.”

  “Drunk?”

  “He’s not drunk now,” Carmody said.

  Hallowell pushed his topee back on his iron-gray hair and hunkered down, wheezing a little, and Carmody saw the thick red nape of his neck with its deep network of creases and his hand closed spasmodically into a fist and then opened again. He couldn’t see into the glare of the spotlight that still held steadily on the front of the cottage, but he could hear the soft throbbing of the police car motor and he knew the chief’s subordinate still sat in the car. Frogs sang in a ululating chorus in the black pine woods surrounding the cottage. The chief made a grunting sound as he looked at Paul Sloade’s battered face and probed at the dead man’s naked chest where the bullet wound was a dark purple pucker in the tanned skin.

  Hallowell straightened and grunted again and pushed his topee farther back on his head and put a hand on his gun belt.

  “He’s dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is that all you can say about it? That’s right?”

  “I’ll say anything you want me to say,” Carmody said.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Did the girl do it?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Carmody said: “Chief, you know me. I’m Mr. Bachore’s right-hand man. You know that whatever I’m doing here is on Mr. Bachore’s direct orders. We both take orders from Mr. Bachore, so let’s not kid ourselves with questions about who killed Paul Sloade. Who sent you here, anyway?”

  “Mr. Bachore,” said the chief.

  “Did he tell you what you’d find here?”

  Hallowell’s small pale eyes were ugly. “He told me he was afraid you and the girl here got out of hand because you had a grudge against Mr. Sloade, and he told me you might be wanted by the New York City police.”

  “And what kind of a bonus did Monte pay you?” Carmody asked.

  The chief made a hawking sound and spat on the ground and moved his hand on the gun belt so it now rested on the butt of the gun.

  “You’re pretty smart. You figger it out. All I know is I’m takin’ you in.”

  “Charged with what?”

  “With murder. Now where is the girl?”

  “You want her, too?”

  “Mr. Bachore wants her.”

  “Well, Mr. Bachore can’t have her,” Carmody said. His voice was raw. “You know I didn’t kill Sloade because Monte knew he was dead when he sent you over here. You’re no cop. You’re nothing but a hired stooge and hoodlum, just like the rest of them, and if you think I’m going to give you a chance to put your paws on me in somebody’s dark cellar or put your dirty grafting hands on the girl, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Hallowell yanked at his gun.

  Carmody saw in that instant of time that his words had hit the chief with the truth and the chief didn’t want to face the truth and didn’t want it to exist where he could be reminded of it. And not wanting to hear the truth from anyone who knew it meant that whoever knew it had to be destroyed. He saw the chief bring up the gun and he saw that the chief was beyond reason now and was going to kill him. In that same moment he felt a sudden hatred for thieves and officials who were thieves and he hit the chief with all the hatred that was in him.

  His fist made a dull chunking sound like a cleaver going into meat on a butcher’s block and he saw and felt the chief’s nose break under his knuckles and there was a spray of blood and a strangled sound from the cop’s open mouth. From somewhere beyond the spotlights he heard Martha’s sudden scream and Dunning’s shout and then Hallowell’s gun went off with a blasting roar and the bullet spattered on the stone cottage step near Carmody’s feet. Hallowell staggered backward and tripped over Paul Sloade’s rigid legs and fell with his topee rolling off into the dark gloom beyond the sharp edge of brilliance carved by the spotlight.

  Carmody turned and ran. He heard Dunning shout again and he swung in the direction of his voice and saw Dunning and Martha run toward him. The other cop who was still in the car yelled and turned the spotlight after them. The pine woods made a solid black wall directly ahead. Martha caught his hand and shouted something and he saw her hair flying and saw Dunning’s thin face strained with the effort to ke
ep up with them. At any moment he expected to feel the impact of a bullet in his back. The shots came just before they reached the sanctuary of the woods. The first bullet cracked overhead, and the second kicked up dirt in front of Martha’s feet. Then the tall pines closed in around them.

  For moments afterward their flight was a nightmare scramble through dark brush that caught and tore and scratched at them with malevolent fingers. The spotlight of the car cast long, unearthly shafts of brilliance through the woods over their heads. Martha stumbled and fell and he picked her up and they ran on again. There were no more shots. At the far edge of the pine grove they halted, gasping, and heard the quick thrash of running feet behind them.

  Carmody held her with one arm around her waist and saw Mark Dunning sink to his knees and bow his head on his chest in the starlight. Ahead was an open area of scrub through which he caught the glint of a salt-water creek.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Where are we going? What can we do?”

  “Later,” he said. “We’ll decide that later.”

  “Did you have to hit him?” Martha asked.

  “Yes.”

  Dunning said unexpectedly: “I heard it, Martha. Bill did the right thing. There was nothing else he could do.”

  “But none of us killed Paul! Why are we running?”

  “Come on,” Carmody said.

  They moved out through the underbrush, stepping with care to keep from making any unnecessary noise. The sound of Chief Hallowell calling to his assistant came from the depths of the pine woods, and now and then Carmody saw the glint of a flashlight. After a while the shouting and yelling of the police grew dimmer, and the glimpse of water he had seen became a small stream that they waded and then came out upon the first of a series of sand dunes. Carmody remembered that Martha’s cottage was only a mile from the hotel, and he guessed that the direction of their flight was taking them back to the beach again. He tried to think of what to do next, but all he could think of was to put as much distance between himself and Hallowell’s gun as possible. The sand dragged at his feet and from somewhere to his left, where he judged the road to be, came the quick wail of a siren. The chief was going back to the hotel. A succession of quick alternatives came to him—flight on Martha’s boat, flight by road in the Ford that Monte had given him, flight by doubling back into Matachogue and taking the train. He dismissed them all. He didn’t want to run. He was determined not to run. He was not afraid of Hallowell and he knew the chief would be impotent by morning, far more fearful of him than he was at present of the police. But at the moment he knew that Hallowell was too dangerous to risk meeting. His mind jumped ahead, seeing the need for just a few hours of time, and then he knew what had to be done and he felt better.