This Game of Murder

Chapter XXIV

The next day, Wednesday, the Runyon City News published an exclusive story announcing the release from jail and dropping of all charges against Mrs. Elizabeth Case. The story explained that new evidence uncovered by Police Chief Barney Meister proved beyond any doubt that Bruce Case, not his widow, had set the scene to make it appear that the cat burglar had entered the home, and had been hoist by his own petard. There was no mention of the wire-across-the-stairs incident or of the twelve-year-old murder-suicide of Bruce’s parents.

The story was picked up by the wire services on Thursday and published all over the country. That same day a Detroit doctor and his beautiful nurse-receptionist were arrested for conspiring to murder the doctor’s wife.

By Friday the doctor and his mistress were in headlines from coast to coast and the Runyon City shooting was a dead issue.

Marshall wasn’t around when Betty was released from jail. Immediately after filing his story on Wednesday, he left on a Canadian fishing trip and didn’t get back until early Sunday evening. He phoned Betty at eight p.m.

“Still mad at me?” he inquired.

“I never was angry, Kirk. I was deeply disappointed when you took things into your own hands against my express wishes. But the publicity hasn’t been as bad as I expected it to be.”

“There won’t be any more digging,” he said. “You’re yesterday’s news. No one need ever know about Bud’s grandfather. It’s out that his father was a killer, or at least that he wanted to be, but that won’t hurt him any more than people thinking his mother was a murderess.”

“I suppose not,” she said. “I probably was exaggerating the whole thing. But I kept visualizing what would happen to his life if the whole appalling mess came to light. I just couldn’t stand to do that to him.”

Marshall said, “At the jail you told me I’d lose you if I went to Meister and Ross. Does that still stand?”

There was a period of silence before she said, “As it turned out, I guess you did the best thing. I thought I’d hear from you before this.”

“I wanted to give you time to settle down. I’ve been fishing up in Canada.”

“Oh?” she said. Then, after a pause, “Are you tired from the trip?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then why don’t you drop over?” she asked softly.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he told her.

Young Bud let him in when he rang the doorbell. The boy led him into the front room and said, “Mom’s upstairs getting herself all fixed up. I’m supposed to entertain you until she comes down.”

Taking a seat, Marshall grinned at him. “How do you propose to go about it?”

Momentarily Bud didn’t know what to make of this question, then realized he was being teased and smiled. “Just talk, I guess.” He sat on the couch across from Marshall’s chair.

“Where’s your Aunt Audrey?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, she went back to Rochester Friday. We didn’t need her any more. There’s just Mom and me now.”

Glancing about the room, Marshall spotted a wooden screen frame leaning against one side of the empty fireplace. “Why do you keep that there?” he inquired, pointing toward it.

“It’s gotta have new wire in it. A man from the crime lab just brought it back yesterday. They’d been keeping it for evidence, you know. That’s the screen from upstairs that Dad cut the wire out of.”

Apparently the youngster knew of his father’s murder attempt, if he was aware that it was his father who had cut the screen. Marshall was a little surprised. He had assumed that Betty would attempt to shield her son from knowledge that his father had tried to kill her. Of course it was inevitable that some other boy would tell him eventually, but he had thought Betty would want to delay his finding out as long as possible. It could be that Bud had read it in the newspaper. Few ten-year-olds read anything except the funnies, but Bud was an intelligent boy for his age.

“Did you read about him cutting it in the newspaper?” Marshall asked.

Bud looked at him without comprehension. “Why would something like that be in the newspaper?”

“Well, how do you know he cut it?”

“We saw him.”

“Come again?” Marshall said.

“Mom and me — I mean I. That same evening when everything happened. Only a lot earlier.”

A considerable period passed before Marshall said anything. Finally he said, “Just what happened, Bud?”

“That’s all. We saw him cut out the screen.”

From previous experience Marshall had learned the best way to get a story out of the boy. He said, “Remember that game we played on the beach, Bud? Where you told me everything that happened up until you tripped over the wire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s play it again. You start with when you and your mother left the country club that day and carry it right through.”

“Okay,” the boy agreed. “That must of been about four. Mom drove us home and made me take a bath, even after I’d been in the lake all afternoon, and we both got all dressed up because we were going out to dinner. About five we drove over to the Rexford Bay Inn and Mom sat at a table for a while having a cocktail while I played the shuffleboard. That’s like bowling, you know, only there’s a flat metal thing instead of a ball, and you have to put a dime in.”

“I know,” Marshall said, wondering if he shouldn’t have asked the boy to start ten minutes before the screen was cut. With his total recall, he might not get to the point before his mother appeared.

“Then we had supper — I mean dinner — and came back here about six-thirty,” Bud said. “Mom put the car away and closed the garage door. She wanted to go over to the Derrings’ for a while, so we walked across the Pierce lawn next door, over to the Derrings’ house. I played out back with Jim Derring for about an hour while Mom was inside visiting with Mrs. Derring. Then she called me and we started back home across the Pierce lawn. I guess that was about seven-thirty. It was still real light.”

Marshall said, “It doesn’t get dark until about nine this time of year.”

“Just as we reached those big bushes between our house and the Pierces”, I said, ‘Hey, look what somebody’s doing.’ We both stopped and Mom looked where I pointed. You couldn’t see who it was behind the screen, but you could see the knife sticking out and cutting across the top. Mom pulled me behind one of the bushes and we watched. The knife went all around the four sides, then Dad leaned out the window and dropped the cut-out piece to the ground behind the bushes next to the house.”

When the boy stopped, Marshall said, “Keep going, Bud. You aren’t finished.”

“Oh. I thought you just wanted to know about us seeing him cut the screen. Mom held my arm and told me to be quiet. Dad closed the window from inside, and a couple of minutes later we heard the back door open and close. Mom pulled me along behind the bushes until you could see the place in the wall where you go down to the beach. Dad was just going down the steps. We moved closer to the wall until we could see over it. Dad was walking along the beach behind the Pierce house and the Derring house. He kept going to where the road comes down to the water. past the country-club grounds and cut across that. I guess he was walking over to the clubhouse. Across country like that instead of taking the streets it’s only about three blocks.”

There was the sound of feet tripping lightly down the stairs. Marshall said quickly, “I guess that’s enough, Bud.”

Betty entered the room with a smile on her face. With her strawberry-blond hair drawn into an upsweep, she was beautiful in a white, form-fitting dress. Marshall rose from his chair.

“Hello, Kirk,” she said. “Time for your bath, Bud. When you’re in your pajamas, give a yell and I’ll come kiss you good night.”

“Okay,” Bud said, getting up from the sofa. “Good night, Mr. Marshall.”

“ ‘Night, Bud.”

When the boy had gone upstairs, Betty came over, placed her hands on Marshall’s shoulders and offered her lips for a kiss. He touched them very gently with his own.

“Your passion overwhelms me,” she said, cocking an eyebrow at him. “After all this time I thought I’d have to fight you off.”

He smiled a trifle weakly. “Maybe I’m tireder from the trip than I thought.”

“Would a drink perk you up?”

“All right,” he agreed, more to get her out of the room for a minute so that he could think than because he was thirsty.

She moved on through the dining room toward the kitchen. Marshall sank heavily back into his chair.

What Bud had told him changed the whole picture of what had happened that night. Betty had known what Bruce planned. That explained her puzzling transfer of Bud back to his own bedroom, when she had been having him sleep in her room ever since the attack on Mrs. Ferris. She had never for a moment thought it was the cat burglar opening her bedroom door. She had known it was Bruce, and had been calmly waiting for him in the dark with a gun in her hand.

It still wasn’t murder. He knew no jury in the country would convict her, even if the whole truth came out, for it was patently a case of self-defense. But her cold-blooded handling of the situation appalled him. Any normal woman would simply have asked for police protection.

He understood what her thoughts must have been. By then she had realized that her father’s drowning had been no accident and that she was marked as the killer’s next victim. She must have hated Bruce to the core of her soul.

Perhaps there was some moral justification in what she had done. But he knew beyond any doubt that he didn’t want a woman who took such matters into her own hands.

All at once he felt a sense of relief. The shackles which had kept him bound to a memory for so many years dissolved.

There was no point in letting her know he was aware of her cold-blooded act, he decided. The burden of her own guilt was enough for her to bear. For he was sure she felt the burden. Now he understood her strange insistence on being tried. Guilt must have been the deciding factor in her decision to stand trial instead of telling the partial truth. Concern over her son’s future had been only part of it. She must have felt the need to stand trial because she knew in her heart that she had deliberately killed her husband, even though the killing could be legally justified.

Betty came back into the room with a tray containing a highball, a bottle of beer and an empty glass. She set it on the coffee table before the sofa.

“Come on over here,” she invited.

Moving over to the sofa next to her, he poured beer, waited for the foam to settle and liften his glass. He might as well get it over with fast and clean, he thought.

“I can’t think of any appropriate toast,” he said. “Unless you want to make it to friendship. This’ll probably be our last drink together in such cozy surroundings.”

She looked at him strangely. “What do you mean?”

“Lydia and I are getting married.”

Momentarily her face registered shock, but she recovered immediately and assumed a bright smile. Her eyes failed to join her lips in the smile. They suddenly grew opaque and expressionless.

“Congratulations,” she said, touching her glass to his. “When?”

“We haven’t set a date. I suppose she’ll want enough time to get in a few bridal showers. Probably in the fall.”

“Im sure you’ll be very happy.” She drained half her drink, a few moments later drained the other half.

He left fifteen minutes later. As she walked him to the door, Bud called from the top of the stairs, “Mom! I’m ready.”

“The voice of the master of the house,” she said, offering her hand in a formal handclasp. “Good luck, Kirk.”

“The same to you,” he said.

The door closed gently behind him and he heard the bolt click home.

He was still only nine-fifteen when he parked in front of Lydia’s apartment house. There was light in her front windows.

She answered the door in her quilted housecoat and with a towel wrapped about her head.

“I just stepped out of the shower,” she said, smiling at him. “Come on in.”

As she closed and locked the door behind him, he said abruptly, “How’d you like to get married?”

Her eyes widened. “To you?”

He burst out laughing. “I’m not running a marriage brokerage.”

“I guess it was a silly question,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure I heard right. Do you mind repeating what you said?”

Taking her by the shoulders, he drew her against him. “Will you marry me? I love you. Would you prefer it on my knees?”

“I accept,” she said, throwing her arms about his neck. Never mind your knees. When?”

“I think the bride is supposed to fix the wedding date. That’s up to you.”

“Labor Day,” she said. “Then you’ll be able to remember our anniversary. But let’s start the honeymoon right now.”

Obligingly he scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.