by Ellery Queen
“‘No,’ I told her. ‘It must have been me. Mollie’s been home since ten o’clock.’ Not wanting to start any gossip.
“‘I love the moonlight,’ Lilybelle said. ‘It’s so quiet and so mysterious. I saw a lamp lit in your house, and then put out again. I heard your back screen door slam and thought I heard you say something like, “What have you been doing, Mollie?” kind of sharp and mad. Then I could hear you cranking your car. I wondered if maybe she wasn’t feeling well, and you were going for the doctor.’
“‘No,’ I told her. ‘I guess for a minute I thought maybe she had come out on the back porch behind me. But it wasn’t her. It was just the vines moving in the moonlight. I just thought I’d take a ride to set my new tires right.’
“Then—I don’t know why—but she looked so kind of pretty, with her dark curls and her big eyes, and the moonlight silver on her nightdress and her bare feet, and I had the nylons on the seat beside me, that I’d brought back out to the truck again, without knowing it; and I said to her, ‘Would you like a pair of nylons, Lilybelle?’ And she got up and came out to the truck, and stood up on the running board beside me and opened them.
“‘My!’ she said. ‘You sure know your way around, Mr. Bantreagh! What is it a bribe for? Have you murdered Mrs. Bantreagh, and you want be to keep it quiet?’”
John Bantreagh swallowed.
“Laughing,” he said. “Just joking. She didn’t have any idea that she was dead, of course. And she looked in the back of my truck, where I’ve got those old burlaps, and she said to me, ‘Why, you did! You have! And you’ve got her body in there now, Mr. Bantreagh!’
“‘That’s right,’ I told her. ‘No sense in trying to fool you. I hit her over the head with my truck crank because she’d been nagging me about you, Lily belle. Now the deck’s all clear for you and me. What’ll it be—Niagara Falls?’
“Wanting to just take it along in stride with her. Just joking, like a fellow does with a girl when she’s pretty.”
The young deputy, competent and cool, looked at him with alert and steady eyes, as gray as the dawn.
“For Pete’s sake,” he said, “is that all, Mr. Bantreagh? I thought you might know something about this fellow she had been stepping out with. But you don’t even know for sure that there was anybody. She might have bought her stockings and lingerie stuff herself, with some grocery money that she had held out on you. Here she is dead. Somebody killed her. But all you can tell about is how you covered up your kids and the pajamas they were wearing and thinking for a minute you saw her on the back porch when you were starting to crank your truck, only it was just the vine leaves and moonlight, and then some kidding conversation you had with this Lilybelle babe, to keep her from starting any gossip. But how is that telling anything about who killed her?” He shook his head with an exhalation of his flat diaphragm. “If it wasn’t murder I could almost laugh,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t have any boy friend. Maybe nobody killed her.”
“Oh, yes, she did,” said John Bantreagh. “Oh, yes, he killed her. I drove on into the village after leaving Lily belle. Everything was all dark and shut up, except the Waldorf All-Nite lunch wagon on the square across from the library. I went in there and the counterman was behind the counter, and a truck driver or somebody eating a piece of pie. I asked what time the library had closed tonight. And the counterman said it had closed at five o’clock; it wasn’t ever open at night.
“I said to him, had he seen a lady in a white dress with big red polka dots on it, and white shoes, with light-brown wavy hair and hazel eyes, and plucked eyebrows and a red mouth, about twenty-nine? And he said there was a lady like that who sometimes came in between eleven and midnight and got sandwiches or things like that and took them out to her boy friend in their car, but she hadn’t been in tonight. It was almost two o’clock now, he said, and so she probably wouldn’t be in now.
“Then the truck driver spoke up and asked me if she lived on Jaybird Road and if she hung around the Swamp Run culvert bridge in the evenings, about half a mile out of town. I said yes, I reckoned she lived somewhere up that way. He said that he had seen her half a dozen times when he was going along Jaybird Road, sitting on the abutment of of the culvert bridge in the evenings, like she was waiting for someone. And he had given her his horn and the high sign, only he was generally in a hurry, and there were babes like her along every road, and he could have all of them he wanted. But one time last month, he said, he had came coasting towards the culvert bridge with his engine off—there’s a grade down before it, and he was a little low on gas—and he saw her sitting there, not knowing anyone was near. She was stretching out her nylon legs and tightening up her garters to some black-lace things she had on. And she had looked up just as his truck rolled to her and had smiled at him.
“It had driven him kind of wild,” said John Bantreagh tiredly. “He had stopped his truck and jumped out to grab her. Just then he had looked around, and there was a car that was stopping at the side of the road, just off the culvert bridge, about twenty feet away in the shadows under the trees. There was some man in it, looking at him. He had let go of her and had jumped back into his truck again and driven off.
“‘What are you looking for her for?’ he said to me. ‘Are you trying to make her yourself? Brother, if I was you, I wouldn’t! I’m big and plenty tough myself, and I’m not scared of anything. But there was something about that guy. . .Your wife?’ he said—I guess I must have said something—‘If she was my wife, with those black-lace things and that smile she had, I’d kill her!’
“So I knew.” John Bantreagh swallowed. “But I had known when I found those nylons and things. I reckon I had kind of known all along, if I had thought about it. I drove around looking for her,” he said tonelessly. “Along every road I came to. It was just breaking dawn when I came along the back road here. I saw something white off in the meadow and I drove in through the break in the fence and found her. It kind of knocked me out.”
The breath of dawn air across the silvered grass stirred the ends of the young deputy’s black knit tie on his expanse of snow-white shirt. He stood motionless with fists on hips. There was nothing else stirring about his hard towering figure or about the world. Only John Bantreagh’s knees, which caved and caved.
No, his knees weren’t caving any more. It was just a lingering of ceased sensation.
“Who was he?” the calm, alert voice of Deputy Roy Clade came to him. “I guess this counterman and this truck driver wouldn’t know. But what did he look like? Did they say?”
“They didn’t get a look at him,” said John Bantreagh. “When she had come into the Waldorf he had always stayed in his car across the street, with his lights out in the blackness under the trees around the square. The truck-driving fellow didn’t see what he looked like, either. He just got scared and jumped in his truck and drove away.”
“Cagey,” commented Roy Clade. “He was taking care that nobody saw him with her, if he ever had to get rid of her like he did. Maybe he knew from his experience that these married ones are hard to ditch. What kind of a car did he have, did they say?”
“They didn’t know the make,” said Bantreagh. “It was just a black sedan.”
“Nine cars out of ten—” said Roy Clade, “nine out of ten are black sedans. I’ve got one myself. There’s nothing in that, unless they got his license number. And they wouldn’t have, if he was that cagey. He would have had his plates muddied over.”
“No, they didn’t get his license number,” said Bantreagh. “Nobody ever did, I reckon, that saw her with him. He was cagey, like you say.”
The big young deputy shook his head. “It’s not any good, I’m afraid, Mr. Bantreagh,” he said. “Nobody knows who he is, where he lives, what he looks like, the number of his car license, or anything. Just this counterman and this truck driver who knew that she had been stepping out with some man that had a car, and maybe two or three more people here or around who may have seen her getting into it
with him from a distance when it was getting dark, or getting out of it below the place next to yours when he brought her home. He was awful cagey. He did it, all right, I reckon. But he’ll get away with it, as sometimes happens. I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Bantreagh, but I’m afraid the police have been left with nothing to go on at all.”
John Bantreagh rubbed his forehead. So much—so much to forget. That he would try to forget. That he must keep from the kids forever. So much to forget, even of bright and tender things, of when he had been younger and she had been so very young, no older than Lily-belle, and all the world had been pink-colored and full of joy.
He had known that he could never give her all she wanted. It hadn’t been her fault that it had come to this. It had been his. If he had only been a little smarter. Though it could not be mended now. So much to forget, of shame and grief and failure. But some small, trivial thing to remember. And now he had remembered it.
“Nothing to go on, except what she told me,” he said.
“What she told you?” said Deputy Roy Clade. “I thought you said that she had never told you anything. That you never knew a thing about it or had the least suspicion until last night.”
He stood motionless. His eyes were gray as the dawn. John Bantreagh lifted his blurred bloodshot gaze and met Roy Clade’s gray eyes.
“What she told me after I had found her,” said John Bantreagh. “Just before she died.”
“You mean—” said Roy Clade, with the muscles moving on his face. “You mean that she was still alive? You mean that she told you? Why, you’re crazy, you damn apple-knocking liar! She’d been dead since one o’clock!”
His right fist jerked from his hip. He jerked it upward against his shoulder, with a contorted look on his face and his mouth opening in a scream.
John Bantreagh had got his right arm in motion. He had swung it, stepping in on knees swift and wiry, no longer caving, cracking the truck crank across the bones of Roy Clade’s thick, strong wrist as the young deputy’s fist left his hip. With his wrist against his shoulder Roy Clade screamed.
John Bantreagh snapped his left hand forward, grabbed the gun out of its holster, dropped his crank, side-stepping. He had the gun in his right hand now, and the hammer back.
“Both hands out from your shoulders!” he said. “No use to yell at me and damn me! Heel! You know what this is. You know how it shoots. Heel, and swing your arms slowly back behind you till I have got your handcuffs on!
“Maybe she didn’t tell me,” he said, with a dry gasp in his throat. “But you did! Here I was beside her body, with blood on my hand, with the crank that might have been the thing that knocked her out, with my truck tracks leading right up to her, and no other tracks but them on the field! Here I was, her husband, the first man in the world to be suspicioned, even if there was nothing to show that I had ever been around here at all!
“Here I was, that had drunk whiskey tonight, that had given a pair of nylons to Lilybelle after she was dead! That had told Lilybelle I had killed her and had her body in my truck! That had gone in and talked to the counterman and the truck driver kind of wild, and maybe said that I would kill her when I found her—I don’t know. A man gets to talking wild when he thinks of his wife and those black-lace things, and his man’s pride.
“Here I was, with everything saying it was me! Why, my best friends would have thought sure I’d done it! They would have figured some reason why—Lilybelle, or some argument we’d had about the kids, or about some fellow that she’d been stepping out with—wouldn’t make any difference who. They would all have said that I had done it. At the least you might have asked me if I had. But you knew I hadn’t done it. Only the man who had killed her himself, in all this world, would know that! No need to swear at me. Hold your hands behind you! You know what this is against your back.
“It took me a long time to figure out,” said John Bantreagh tiredly. “I was knocked out. Just like a dummy. But I told you what her name was and you pretended never to have heard it before. I didn’t tell you how to spell it, though—I didn’t think that you might write it down. Everybody who just hears it thinks it’s spelled t-r-y, like ‘pantry.’ I always have a lot of trouble getting it spelled right. Thought sometimes of changing it myself. But you spelled it right without being told, when you wrote it down in your notebook. I’ve been trying to think how you knew, ever since you did.
“And other things you didn’t think of, I reckon! You’ve got that tire iron in your car’s tool kit or in your garage at home—you must still have it, you’ve mentioned it so often. And even if you’ve washed it with soap and water or kerosene there will still be blood in the pores of the iron, that will show in some of these machines that they have these days, I reckon that you know. There will be blood on your car cushions. Maybe on the shirt and suit you wore last night.
“And you went home and slept,” John Bantreagh said, “while I was out looking on every road for her all night! And got up and took a bath and shaved and rubbed yourself with sweet-smelling shaving lotion and put on a clean white shirt and your crisp black suit and your black knit tie, and came on back here to park just inside the woods’ edge off the road, to wait for her to be discovered. Only I was already here when you came.
“There’ll be the blood! There’s her name, that you knew how to spell. And somewhere—yes, somewhere, when they get to looking, no matter how careful and cagey you tried to be—there will be someone that has seen you and her together, when they go looking into it, and can tie you up in an iron way.
“Get into the back of your car! No need to blaspheme me. Kneel on the floor! I’m going to have to put some of my truck lashings around you. You’re powerful, and your brain is fresh and new-slept and smart. But I don’t think you’re going to get away. I’ll try to get you to the doctor as quick as I can. I’m sorry I had to hit so hard.
“Kneel on the floor, and pray!” John Bantreagh said. “I wouldn’t have ever known who you were. Nobody would have ever known about you, with nothing to start them looking into you. They would have put it on me, her husband, caught with her, caught red-handed, caught with motive, and I’d have got twenty years or life. And what would have happened to the kids is more than I can bear to think. The fear of it made my knees cave. It made me so blind that I could hardly see. If you had asked me whether I had done it I would have fallen dead away. But it won’t be that way. You told me.”
John Bantreagh looked at that still form lying in front of his truck wheels, with her staring eyes. “Perhaps,” he said, “she helped.”
“Q”
Florence V. Mayberry
Hong Kong or Wherever
They met on a tourist junk in Hong Kong harbor—the lonely, vulnerable American widow and the man in brown with the beautiful British voice; the rich widow and the insignificant man who looked like a “nothing”. . .You can’t see a ghost except in the dark. Or can you? You can’t escape from a ghost, here, there, in Hong Kong, or wherever. Or can you?. . .
The junk bounced gently between Kowloon and Hong Kong, heading beyond the harbor confines to the open China Sea on the far side of Hong Kong Island. It was just into twilight, the sky silky gray, lights spilling down Victoria Peak. I sat alone near the prow of the tourist junk on the lower deck. From the upper deck came the scattered, muted sound of talk, with now and again a shrill squeal as one of the women tourists glimpsed some unusual sight. Behind me there was the clink of glasses as the bartender prepared drinks at a gloomy little bar.
I was thinking: All alone. I didn’t know I would be this lonely, what kind of a life is this? Out in Hong Kong, or wherever I might chance to wander, rich, free, and alone. Better if I had stayed in Evanston, Illinois, attending the odd class at Northwestern, knitting, walking a poodle. Except, Evanston was where Harry had died.
Harry, I said to myself, damn you to hell, which is where you’ve probably gone, you made enough of it here for me.
And then Harry was with me, there on the junk, standing behin
d me where I couldn’t see his grin with its great spread of teeth and wet lips. I knew he was there, I felt him; these past few weeks I was always feeling him near me, following me. He was behind me with his great paw of a hand sticking out a fat finger ready to dig me in the ribs. I could feel the pulse waves of his laugh, a laugh like a bear’s if a bear could laugh—Huhh Huhh Huhh——give us a hug Molly Baby a hug for Harry——come on smooch your old man!
I sprang up from the long seat that lined the junk’s side, walked rapidly to the other side of the deck, as far from Harry as I could. I didn’t realize I was leaning over the side until the bartender called, “Missy! You sick?”
I drew back from the choppy swells and shook my head. “You want dlink?”
“Ginger ale, please,” I said, and sat down to stare at the dark, cluttered family junks scudding around the jampacked community of Water People huddled against the Kowloon side of the harbor. Supper fires glimmered on their decks, laundry was still flying on ropes strung from the masts, high-pitched chatter was rising and floating away. Nobody alone on those junks. But the very thought of being crowded into the midst of such human closeness, sweat, hands, smells, bodies—no!
The steward handed me a glass of ginger ale, his face concerned. As I took it I saw behind him the man in brown. An insignificant man, shoulders hunched forward, head drawn into them, smiling apologetically.
“I beg your pardon,” he said in a beautiful British voice. “If I’m intruding, just tell me to go away. But since we seem to be the only ones traveling singly on this trip, perhaps you’d like to talk a bit?”
His voice was hesitant, a mere shade from obsequious. He looked so innocuous I was certain he would be boring. But better bored than to have Harry’s ghost creeping behind be on great padded bear feet, lunging, grabbing—Got you Molly Baby give your old man a snuggle Baby!
“Please, I’d like to talk,” I said.
He sat beside me. Not close. I had been tensed for that, ready to scoot away, to make it plain I didn’t care to be close to anyone. “I’ve just arrived from Calcutta,” he said. “Wanted to see a bit of Hong Kong. First time back since I was a young boy, don’t seem to remember much except for the harbor. You’re American, aren’t you?”
