This Game of Murder

Chapter VII

Marshall and his father had a restaurant dinner together that evening; afterward Marshall went home and slept until nine o’clock. It was about a quarter of ten when he arrived at Betty’s house with his mother’s overnight bag.

Bud was already in bed and Sylvia announced that she was retiring, too. She left Betty and Marshall alone in the front room and went upstairs.

As soon as the older woman was out of sight Betty went over to where Marshall was seated on the sofa and slid into his arms.

“Know why I wanted to see you so badly tonight?” she breathed against his lips.

“Why?” he asked, gently kissing her.

“Because it’s going to be a long time before we can be together again. To satisfy the conventions, I’ll have to act the grieving widow for perhaps months. I can’t start having gentlemen callers immediately after the funeral.”

“I suppose the neighbors might talk,” he agreed.

“It’s going to be hard, Kirk, because I’m not a grieving widow. I’m as sorry as can be for what happened, but we both know I no longer loved him and meant to leave him. Do you think I’m callous for wanting you when my husband isn’t even buried yet?”

“Just what do you mean, wanting me?” he asked cautiously.

“Just what it sounds like. I want you to take me. Right now.”

Her lips moved against his and he felt her tongue press urgently against his teeth. When he parted his jaws slightly, it thrust deeply into his mouth. Her hand groped for his and pressed it to her breast.

After a time he raised his head and said in a low voice, “We can’t here. Suppose my mother or Bud came downstairs?”

Jumping to her feet, she took his hand and drew him erect. Leading him to the entry hall, she drew him down it past the staircase to the door of the den and pulled him inside. Flicking on the overhead light, she closed and locked the door, then crossed to the single window and drew the drapes.

“Is this safe enough for you?” she asked.

He glanced around. In addition to a desk, bookcases and a couple of overstuffed chairs, there was a day bed against one wall. This room, he remembered, was where Bruce Case had been sleeping after being ousted from his wife’s bed.

“I suppose it’s safer than the woods beyond the ninth hole,” he said grudgingly. “I give in.”

“What an avid lover you are,” she said. “Don’t do me any favors.”

Grinning at her, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. After a time she pulled free, switched on the desk lamp and turned off the overhead light. This still left the room well-lighted, but at least it subdued the glare. She gave him an inquiring look.

“Leave it on,” he said. “I like to see what I’m doing.”

Kicking off her shoes, she turned her back to him. “Unzip, please.”

He pulled the zipper down to her waist. With her back still to him, she slipped out of the arms, loosened a side zipper and stepped out of the dress. She tossed it onto a chair.

He took off his shirt and tossed it onto the other chair. As she laid her slip on top of her dress, he threw his undershirt on top of his sport shirt. Then he reached out to unsnap her brassiere. She stood quietly as he fumbled with the clasp, finally got it undone and let the garment slide down her arms. Tossing it onto the chair, she leaned back against him.

His arms went around her from the rear and he cupped both plump breasts, gently rolling the nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. He could feel them swell and harden beneath his touch. Her body began to squirm against his.

After a time she pulled away, turned to face him and pulled off her panties. This left her clad in nothing but a thin garter belt and stockings.

He managed to complete stripping while she was removing the stockings and garter belt. When he reached for her, she took his hands, threw herself prone on the day bed and drew him down alongside. Her arms went about his neck and she pressed her naked body tightly against his.

“Do it just like in the woods,” she whispered against his lips. “I don’t care if you never stop, but I want you to start right now...”

It must have been twenty minutes before he released her. When he rose to his feet, she lay motionless with her arms and legs sprawled and her breasts heaving with exhaustion. She stared up at him, totally spent.

“I should be able to sleep now,” she finally managed to say. “I don’t even feel like moving from here to go upstairs.”

After a time she did rouse herself enough to get up. By then he was fully dressed. The only garment she put back on was her dress, bundling up the rest of her clothing and carrying it and her shoes to the foot of the stairs, where she left them until she was ready to go upstairs.

At the door she put her arms about his neck to kiss him good-night.

“Why did I ever let you go?” she said. “I think I’m falling in love with you all over again.”

“I’ve never been completely out of love with you,” he told her.

During the drive home he decided he was going to have to resolve things one way or the other before long. He couldn’t continue to alternate between two women. Besides being unfair to both of them, he was beginning to feel constitutionally incapable of keeping up the pace.

The next morning Sylvia arrived home at eight a.m. in time to cook breakfast for her husband and son. George Reed, Betty’s uncle by marriage, drove her home.

The banker was an affable, gray-haired man of fifty-five with a double chin and a substantial paunch. He said that he and his wife had started to drive from Rochester, which was less than a hundred miles away, at six that morning and had just arrived. He refused an offer of breakfast.

“My wife’s making breakfast at Betty’s for all of us,” he said. “I promised I’d be right back. Thanks a lot for staying with Betty last night, Mrs. Marshall.”

“I was glad to,” Sylvia said. “Anything else she needs, just tell her to call me.”

When Reed had left, she said, “Isn’t he a nice man?”

“Seems to be,” her husband said. “But you would think Jack the Ripper was nice. I’ll have just one egg this morning.”

After checking into the city room long enough to read his mail, Marshall drove over to police headquarters in the basement of the City Hall. He found Chief Meister in his office.

“Anything new?” he asked, taking a seat in front of the chief’s desk.

“A little,” Meister said. “I just phoned the paper to ask if you’d like to run out to see Mrs. Case with me, but you’d already left. You’re an old friend of hers, aren’t you?”

“I’ve known her all my life.”

“I thought it might be best to take along somebody who knew her well when I ask to look around the place.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Farroway sent over his lab report this morning. Incidentally, one set of prints he lifted from the window were left there by the dead man. Mrs. Case left the other one.”

“That’s too bad,” Marshall said. “I’d hoped the cat burglar had finally left a clue.”

“Seems the cat burglar may not have been there at all,” Meister said slowly. “Farroway’s report says the screen was cut from the inside.”

“What!”

“There isn’t any doubt about it, Kirk. He put it under a microscope. The individual wires are bent outward where they’re cut. That’s why I need another talk with Mrs. Case. Want to come along?”

“I certainly do,” Marshall assured him.

Before they left, the chief took the two-foot length of rope from his desk drawer, coiled it and put it in his pocket. Marshall didn’t ask him why he was taking it along, because he knew. The chief obviously hoped to find the coil it came from somewhere about the old Runyon place.

They drove out in Marshall’s car. En route Marshall kept turning over in his mind the bombshell Meister had dropped. The more he thought about it, the sicker he got. He kept remembering Betty’s controlled emotions immediately after the shooting, and also her climb to the roof. He wondered if she would ever have mentioned being on the roof if he and his mother hadn’t unexpectedly arrived while she was up there. Was it possible that instead of looking for evidence, as she had claimed, she had been in the act of planting some?

He recalled that Patrolman Graves had said the fragment of rope was tied to the air-vent pipe by a fisherman’s knot. This was an odd knot to use on half-inch rope, as primarily it was used to tie flies to a nylon leader. Of course there was no reason it wouldn’t hold as effectively with rope as it would with a delicate leader, but it seemed to indicate that the person who tied the rope to the air vent knew something of fishing. And Betty was as accomplished an angler as her husband had been. In their youth Marshall had many times seen Betty tie a fisherman’s knot. As a matter of fact, he had taught it to her.

Then, after working himself up over the evidence of her guilt, he angrily began to berate himself for having so little faith in her. Of course she couldn’t have deliberately murdered her husband, he told himself. Not only was she incapable of such a crime, it would have been ridiculous fo her to commit it when divorce was so easy these days. Inasmuch as she had all the money in the family anyway, there would be no financial advantage. Even the house was hers. All she would have had to do to get rid of him was to put him out of the house and fly to Reno for six weeks.

He began to feel a little better.