Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 16 Skeletons From My Closet

Homicide and Gentlemen by FLETCHER FLORA

Lieutenant Joseph Marcus walked past the ninth hole, par-four, with a fine official disregard of the green. It wasn't quite disregard, however, for there was in his performance a degree of deliberate malice that expressed itself by a digging-in of the heels and a scuffing of the toes. Lieutenant Marcus, who had been a poor boy and was still a poor man, felt an unreasonable animus for the game of golf and a modest contempt, in spite of certain famous devotees, for the folk who played it. He was by nature gentle and tolerant, though, and he was faintly ashamed of his feeling and its expression of petty vandalism.

With Sergeant Bobo Fuller at his side, although a half step to the rear, he descended from the green on a gentle slope and moved rapidly across clipped grass toward a place where the ground dipped suddenly to form a rather steep bank. Sergeant Fuller, whose name was really something besides Bobo that almost everyone had forgotten, did not lag the half step because he found it impossible to stay abreast. Neither did he lag as a pretty deference to rank. Sergeant Fuller did not give a damn about rank, to tell the truth. He didn't give a damn about Lieutenant Marcus either, and that was why he maintained the half step interval. He considered Marcus a self-made snob who read books and put on airs, and the interval was subtle evidence of a dislike of which the sergeant was rather proud and the lieutenant was vaguely aware.

Going over the lip of the bank, Marcus dug in his heels again, this time with the perfectly valid purpose of retarding his descent. At the bottom he was on level ground that again tilted, after a bit, into a gentle slope. Fifty yards ahead was a small lake glittering in the morning sunlight. Between Marcus and the lake, somewhat nearer to him and almost in the shade of a distinguished and gnarled oak, was a group composed of four men and a boy. The boy was holding, in one hand, a fishing rod with a spinning reel attached; in the other, a small green tackle box. Two of the four men were uniformed policemen who had been dispatched from police headquarters to maintain the status quo for Marcus, who had not been on hand at the time, and a third was, as it turned out, a caretaker who had walked into a diversion on his way to work across the course. The fourth man was lying on his face on the grass, his head pointed in the direction of the bank behind Marcus, and Fuller, and he was, Marcus had been assured, dead. That was, in fact, why Marcus and Fuller were there. They were there because the man on the grass was dead in a manner and place considered suspicious by public authorities hired to consider such things, which included Marcus, who also secretly considered the whole development something of an imposition.

Speaking to the pair of policemen, with the air of abstraction that had contributed to his reputation for snobbishness, he knelt beside the body to make an examination that he felt certain would yield nothing of any particular significance. This pessimistic approach was natural to him, and he was always surprised when things turned out better than he had hoped or expected. Well, the man was dead, of course. He had been shot, Apparently in the heart, by what appeared to have been a small caliber gun. From the condition of the body, he judged that the shooting had occurred not many hours earlier, for rigor mortis was not advanced. These things were always hedged about by qualifications, however, and it was doubtful that the so-called estimate of the coroner, who was presumably on the way, would be much closer to the truth than Marcus's guess. Sometime between was the way Marcus expressed it somewhat bitterly to himself. Between midnight, say, and dawn.

Still with the irrational feeling of being imposed upon, Marcus made other observations and guesses. Age, thirty to thirty-five. Height, about five-eleven. Weight, give or take ten pounds on either side of one-seventy. Hair, light brown and crew cut. Eyes, open and blind and blue. White shirt, blood stained. Narrow tie, striped with two shades of brown, and summer worsted trousers, also brown. Brown socks, brown shoes. Lying on the grass, about five paces away, a jacket to match the pants. In the right side pocket of the pants, coins amounting to the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents. Also a tiny gold pen knife. In the left hip pocket, buttoned in, a wallet. In the wallet, besides eighteen dollars in bills, several identifying items, including a driver's license and a membership card in Blue Cross-Blue Shield. Well, Marcus thought, they won't have to pay off on this one. According to both the license and the membership card, the dead man was someone named Alexander Gray. With all items officially appropriated and in his own jacket pocket, Marcus walked over to the brown jacket on the grass and found nothing in it. Nothing at all.

"Who found the body?" he asked of whoever wanted to answer.

"The kid found him," one of the policemen said.

Marcus turned to the boy, about twelve from the looks of him, who still held the rod and reel and tackle box as if he feared that they, too, might be appropriated. Marcus had no such intention, of course, but he wished he could borrow them and spend the day using them instead of doing what he had to do. Marcus liked kids, but he seldom showed it. It was his misfortune that he seldom showed anything, and much of the little he did show was a kind of characteristic distortion of what he actually thought and felt.

"What's your name, sonny?" he said.

"William Peyton Hausler," the boy said.

It was obvious that he was stating his name fully in an attempt to secure a status, however limited by his minority, that would establish his innocence and insure the respectful treatment to which he was entitled.

"You live around here?"

"On the street over there, the other side of the golf course." He gestured with the hand holding the rod and reel to indicate the direction.

"Looks like you're going fishing."

"Yes, sir. In the lake."

"You fish here often?"

"Pretty often. The manager of the club said it was all right."

"It doesn't look like much of a lake. Any fish in it?"

"It's stocked. Crappie and bass, mostly. Club members fish in it. I'm not a member — my dad isn't — but the manager said it was all right for me to fish."

"What time was it when you found the body?"

"I don't know exactly. It hadn't been light long. About six-thirty, I guess. I wanted to get to the lake early because the fish bite better then."

"That's what I hear. Early morning and late evening. What'd you do when you found the body?"

"Nothing much. I walked up close to it, and I spoke a couple of times to see if there'd be any answer, but there wasn't, and I was pretty scared because I could tell something was wrong, and just then Mr. Tompkins came along."

"You touch anything at all?"

"No, sir. Not a thing."

"Who's Mr. Tompkins?"

"This is him. He's one of the caretakers."

"Okay. Thanks, sonny. You better go and see if you can still catch some fish."

The boy went on down the gentle slope to the little lake, and Marcus turned to Tompkins, who was a leathery-looking man who appeared to be in his sixties. He was dressed in faded twill pants and a blue work shirt of heavy material like the ones that Marcus had worn with roomy bib overalls as a kid.

"Is that right?" Marcus said. "What the kid told me?"

"I guess so. Far as I know. When I got here, he was just standing and staring at the body. He looked scared."

"No wonder. Kids don't find a body every day. What'd you do?"

"I looked at the body, not touching it, and I could see a little blood where it had seeped out in the grass. I told the kid to stay and watch things while I hustled up to the Club House to call the police."

"The Club House open that early in the morning?"

"No. There's a phone booth on the back terrace. I happened to have a dime."

"Lucky you did. I usually don't. After you called the police, did you come back here and wait?"

"That's right. Just came back and waited with the kid and didn't bother anything."

"Good. You did just right. I don't suppose you know this guy?"

"The dead man, you mean? I never saw him before."

"All right. You might as well go on to work." Marcus turned away to a uniform. "You go up to the Club House and bring the manager down here. You can tell him what's happened if he's curious."

The caretaker and the policeman went off in different directions, one toward the Club House and the other, presumably, toward whatever building sheltered the equipment for taking care, and Marcus began to prowl slowly the area around the body. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, just anything he could find, and he found nothing. No significant marks in the clipped grass growing from hard earth. No small item conveniently dropped that might later point to a place or person. Not even, he thought bitterly, a lousy cigarette butt.

The brown jacket bothered him. Why the hell had the dead man taken it off? Before he was dead, of course. And why had he left it lying on the ground five yards or so from where he had walked to be killed? Unless he had been moved after being killed, which didn't seem probable. And why, for that matter, had he been here on the golf course at all? A golf course did not seem to Marcus to be a likely place to be in the hours between midnight and dawn, sometime between, but then a golf course did not seem to Marcus a likely place to be at any time whatever, unless you came, like the kid, to fish in a lake or to lie on the grass under a tree and wish that you were something besides what you had become.

Fuller, watching Marcus, was tempted to ask him what he was looking for, but he resisted the temptation. Anyhow, quite correctly, he guessed that Marcus didn't know himself, and he was determined to avoid giving, in front of the uniform, the impression of a dumb cop appealing to his superior for enlightenment. Marcus was already, in Fuller's opinion, sufficiently overrated at headquarters. As it turned out, after a few minutes, the appeal went the other way, but it was no triumph for Fuller, after all, for it only forced him to admit what he had hoped to conceal.

"Any ideas, Fuller?" Marcus said.

"Not yet," Fuller said. "I've been trying to figure it."

"So have I, but I haven't had any luck, and I doubt if I ever do. As I see it, a guy who got himself shot on a golf course must have been crazy, and crazy people make the worst kind of murder victims from a cop's point of view because it's almost impossible to figure logically why they did what they did that got them killed."

Sure, Fuller thought. Read me a lecture about it, you topnotch snob. The Psychology of Nuts by Dr. Joseph Marcus.

He was saved from making a reply by the return of the other uniform and a small man in Bermuda shorts and heavy ribbed stockings that reached almost to his knees. Marcus approved of the shorts, for he was always one for keeping comfortable, but he was damned if he could understand why anyone would deliberately qualify the effect of the shorts by wearing the stockings. Which was, however, he conceded, none of his business.

"You the manager of this club?" Marcus said.

"Yes," the small man said. "Paul Iverson."

"I'm Lieutenant Joseph Marcus, Mr. Iverson. We've got a body here."

"Yes, yes. I know. The officer told me."

"He was shot."

"It's incredible. I can hardly believe it."

"It looks like someone took advantage of the privacy of your golf course to commit a murder."

Iverson's expression, although indicating shock and a shade of nausea, was primarily one of resentment. Among the activities of the club, he palpably felt, one expected and accepted certain indiscretions and transgressions of the peccadillo type, but murder was neither expected nor acceptable and ought to cause someone to lose his membership.

"Are you certain that it's murder?" he said. "Perhaps he killed himself."

"With his finger, maybe?"

"Oh, I see. There's no gun."

"Right. No gun. Besides, there's no powder marks on his shirt. He was shot from a distance."

"Do you think it could have been an accident of some sort?"

"It could have been, but I don't think so."

"Well, it's a terrible thing. Simply terrible. I can't understand it at all."

"You're luckier than me. You don't have to understand it. All you have to do is see if you recognize the body."

Iverson hesitated, then walked over to the body and looked intently for a moment into blind blue eyes. When he straightened and turned back to Marcus, the shade of nausea in his face had deepened, but there was also a new element of relief, as if the worst, which had been anticipated, had not developed.

"I don't know him," he said. "I can assure you that he was not a member of this club."

"Well, that's all right," Marcus said with an unworthy feeling of spite. "Maybe the murderer is."

"I believe you'll find that he is not. I find it inconceivable that a member of this club should be involved in anything like this. It will create a dreadful fuss, I'm afraid, as it is. We may have some withdrawals."

"Are you positive this man was not a member? His name was Alexander Gray."

"I'm quite positive. Our membership is limited, rather exclusive, and I'm acquainted with all members. That's why I'm convinced that none of them could be involved."

"Even exclusive people can commit murder, Mr. Iverson. Possibly even exclusive people you happen to be acquainted with. Never mind, though. Thanks for coming down."

Marcus turned away abruptly, and there was in his movement an implication of disdain that made Iverson flush and Sergeant Fuller curse softly under his breath. Aware that he had been dismissed, the manager went back across the course toward the Club House, only the roof of which was visible beyond the rise. Marcus went over and picked up the brown worsted jacket from the grass where he had dropped it after exploring the pockets.

"I wonder where the coroner is," he said.

"He'll be along," Fuller said.

"Well, I won't wait for him. You stay here and find out what he's got to say. Nothing much, I suspect. Because he never does."

Sergeant Fuller was curious about Marcus's plans, but he was damned if he would give him the satisfaction of knowing it. He watched Marcus go off toward the Club House, where they'd left their car in the parking lot, and he cursed again under his breath, Marcus for what he was, and the coroner for not coming.

In the car, unaware that he had been cursed, or even that he had given cause for cursing, Marcus checked Alexander Gray's driver's license for an address. The street and number rang a faint bell, and he sat quietly for a minute, concentrating, trying to fit the location properly into a kind of mental map of the city. If his mental cartography was correct, which it was, Gray had lived not more than a mile from the entrance to this club. Probably somewhat less. Marcus looked at his watch and saw that it was two minutes after nine o'clock. Starting the car, he drove down a macadam drive and slipped into the traffic of a busy suburban street. He swung off after a while and was soon parked at the curb in front of a buff brick apartment building which displayed in large chrome numbers above the double front doors the address on the license.

Inside on the ground floor, he found the apartment of the building superintendent, who turned out to be, when he had opened his door in response to Marcus's ring, a wispy little man with wispy gray hair and pince-nez clipped to the bridge of a surprisingly bold nose. Marcus introduced himself and received an introduction. The superintendent's name was Mr. Everett Price.

"Is there an Alexander Gray living in the building?" Marcus asked.

"Yes." Mr. Price removed the pince-nez, which were, of course attached to a black ribbon, and held them by the spring clip in his right hand. "He's in three-o-six. He shares the apartment with Mr. Rufus Fleming."

"Oh? Have Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming shared the apartment long?"

"About two years, I think. Yes, two years this summer. Perfect gentlemen, both of them. Quiet and good-mannered. There is, in fact, something old-fashioned in their manners. Rather courtly, you know. It isn't often, nowadays, that you find that quality in younger men."

"I agree. It's rare. Do you know if Mr. Fleming is in at the moment?"

"No, I don't. It's possible, however, this being Saturday. Mr. Fleming doesn't work on Saturday."

"I wish I didn't. I believe I'll just go up and speak with Mr. Fleming, if you don't mind."

Mr. Price looked confused. He scrubbed the lenses of the pince-nez with a clean white handkerchief and clipped them to his big nose again, peering at Marcus as if he had decided that some revision of his first judgment of him had become necessary.

"Excuse me," he said. "I thought you wanted to see Mr. Gray."

"I didn't say that," Marcus said. "I only asked if Mr. Gray lived here."

"Yes. So you did. I made an assumption, I suppose. In any event, it's quite likely that both gentlemen are in this morning."

"I wonder if you would come up with me. Just in case neither of them is."

Now Mr. Price looked startled. Possibly he had suddenly gathered from Marcus's tone that Marcus was certainly going up in spite of anything, although willing to make a nice pretense of asking permission, and that the superintendent was damn well coming up with him, whether he was agreeable or not.

"What on earth for?" Mr. Price said.

"So that you can let me into the apartment, if that is necessary."

"Oh, I couldn't do that without authorization from the tenants. It's unthinkable."

"Is it? I don't believe so. You can try thinking about it on the way up. You may change your mind."

"I'm reasonably certain that either Mr. Fleming or Mr. Gray will be in on a Saturday morning."

"Mr. Fleming, maybe. Not Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray will never be in again. He's dead. He has, it seems, been murdered."

The pince-nez popped off Mr. Price's nose and jerked and swung at the end of their ribbon. Marcus had a bleak vision of a trap sprung, a body hanging.

"What did you say?"

Marcus didn't bother to repeat himself. He merely waited for the information to soak in and become tenable.

"This is dreadful," Mr. Price said.

"So it is."

"Why would anyone murder Mr. Gray? He was such a pleasant man."

"Pleasant people are sometimes murdered. Usually by unpleasant people."

"When did it happen? Where?"

"Never mind that now. You'll know soon enough. Everyone will. Now I would like to go upstairs and see Mr. Fleming if he's in, or look through the apartment if he's not."

"Yes," said Mr. Price. "Yes, of course."

They went up three floors and rang the bell of three-o-six. Mr. Fleming was either not in or not answering. The former was true, as Marcus learned immediately after Mr. Price had opened the door for him. The apartment consisted of a living room, a large bedroom with two beds, a bath and a small kitchen. No one was there. The beds were made and the kitchen was clean and the living room was orderly. Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming had been tidy housekeepers. Mr. Fleming, so far as Marcus knew, still was.

"Did Fleming spend the night here?" he asked.

"I don't know. He was here early, as Mr. Gray was, but he may have gone out again and not returned."

"All right. Thanks. I won't need you any longer. And don't worry about the apartment. I'll leave it in good order."

Mr. Price didn't look convinced, but he left. Marcus went into the bedroom and began to prowl. He opened drawers and looked into closets, but all he achieved was confirmation of the judgment he had already made — that Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming were clean and orderly enough to please the most fastidious woman. In the living room, after poking into places and scanning the titles of books that struck him as being intolerably dull on the whole, he stopped before the mantel of a dummy fireplace to look at a picture. A photograph of a young woman. Inscribed. He took it down and read the inscription: For Rufe and Alex with all my love, Sandy. The double inscription implied a Platonic meaning at variance, it seemed to Marcus, with the totality of love. He scratched his head and examined Sandy's face.

It was a lovely face. A wistful face. Shaped like a small, lean heart. Big eyes with sadness in them. Tenderness in them. Passion in them? Passion, at least, in the soft lips set in the merest of smiles. In spite of the suggested passion, however, there was — Marcus groped for the word — a kind of mysticism. He was falling, in an instant, half in love.

Putting the photograph back on the mantel, he turned away. Then he turned back. On the mantel, placed squarely below a reproduction of Daumier's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that hung on the wall above, was a sizable leather case. He removed the case and opened it. Inside, nested in plush, was a matched pair of.22 caliber target pistols. Both clean. Both lately oiled. Beautifully cared for. The purloined letter still makes its point, he thought. In his attention to drawers and closets, he had nearly overlooked the case in plain sight. Not, so far as he could see at the moment, that it would have made any particular difference if he had. Nevertheless, he appropriated the case and took it with him when he left. That was after he had returned once more to the bathroom and stood for a few minutes with an abstracted air before the open medicine cabinet above the lavatory.

Downstairs, he rang the superintendent's bell again. Mr. Price, clearly relieved to see him on his way out, made a polite effort not to show it.

"Are you finished, Lieutenant?" he said.

"Yes. For the present, at least. I'm taking this with me. It's a pair of matched target pistols. Was either Mr. Gray or Mr. Fleming an enthusiast for target shooting, do you know?"

"Both were, as a matter of fact. Sunday mornings, fair days, they have gone off regularly for matches. I believe they made small wagers. I do hope you will take good care of the pistols."

"The best. I'll give you a receipt for them if you want me to."

"I'm sure that won't be necessary."

"Thanks. By the way, there's a photograph on the mantel upstairs. A young lady. Blonde hair cut quite short. Very pretty face. It's signed Sandy. Do you know her by any chance?"

"I've met her. Miss Sandra Shore. She was introduced to me in the hall one evening when I happened to encounter her with Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming. Afterward, on several occasions, I exchanged a few words with her when she came to call."

"Has she come here often?"

"Frequently. Many times, I suppose, when I didn't see her. I'm sure that it was all quite proper. She was equally the friend of both gentlemen. They had been friends, she told me once, since childhood. It was quite a charming relationship."

"I'm sure it was. Tell me, do you know Miss Shore's address?"

"No, but it's probably in the directory."

"Would you mind checking it for me?"

"Not at all."

Marcus was invited in, but he preferred to wait in the hall. After a few minutes Mr. Price returned with the address written down on a sheet from a memo pad. Engaging again in mental cartography, Marcus located the address in relation to where he was.

"One more question, if you don't mind," he said, "and I'll run along. I assume both Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming own automobiles?"

"Only one between them, which they both used. One might think that such an arrangement would lead to difficulties, but they apparently worked it out very well."

"Mr. Gray and Mr. Fleming seem to have been extremely compatible. Share apartment. Share car. Share girl. Most commendable. Where is the car kept?"

"There's a garage at the rear, just off the alley. Stall number five. The automobile, if you wish to know, is a Ford. I'm not sure of the model. Recent, however."

"Thanks again. You've been most helpful."

Marcus turned with his sometimes offensive abruptness and went out of the building and around to the garage. Stall number five was occupied by a 1960 Ford. Mr. Fleming, wherever he was, was obviously moving either by shank's mare or in some other vehicle than his own. Marcus, in the one furnished by the department, drove to the address on the memo sheet, and this time it was unnecessary to disturb the superintendent, for there was a directory of tenants in the entrance hall that told him where to go, and he went.

The photographer who had taken Sandra Shore's picture, he learned, was an artist. He had caught on paper precisely the elfin and haunting quality of her face. The sadness and tenderness and passion assembled in the lean heart. Now, in person, there was more, of course. A small and slender body exquisitely formed, suggesting its delights in a boyish white blouse and a narrow skirt. Marcus, in the hall, held his hat and offered up a short and silent paean.

"Yes?" Sandra Shore said.

"My name is Marcus," Marcus said. "Lieutenant Joseph Marcus. Of the police. I wonder if I may speak with you for a few minutes?"

She surveyed him gravely, her head cocked a little to one side.

"Whatever for?"

"It will take only a few minutes. I'd appreciate it very much."

"Well, if you are actually a policeman, you will certainly speak with me whether I am willing or not, so there isn't really much use in asking my permission, is there?"

"It distresses me, but I must admit that you're right. Thank you for clarifying the situation so nicely. May I come in?"

She nodded and closed the door after him, when he was across the threshold. Following her into the living room to a chair in which he sat, he admired her neat ankles and lovely legs. When she was in another chair across from him, the narrow skirt tucked primly beneath her knees, which showed, he continued to admire the legs for a moment, discreetly, but soon went back to her face, which was the best of her, after all, in spite of distractions.

"You don't look like a policeman," she said.

"Don't I? I wouldn't know. What is a policeman supposed to look like?"

"I'm not sure. Not like you, however. What do you wish to speak with me about?"

"Not what, really. Who. A young man named Alexander Gray."

"Alex?" She managed to appear slightly incredulous without, somehow, disturbing the serenity of her expression. "What possible interest could the police have in Alex?"

"He's dead. Murdered, apparently. Someone shot him sometime early this morning on the course of the Greenbrier Golf Club."

She sat quite still, her only movement the folding of her hands in her lap. In her great, grave eyes there was a slight darkening, as if a light had been turned down.

"That's ridiculous."

"The truth is often ridiculous. Things don't seem to make sense."

"Alex isn't even a member of the Greenbrier Golf Club."

"Apparently you don't have to be a member to be killed on the course."

"I simply refuse to believe you. It's cruel of you to come here and tell me such a lie."

"It would be cruel if I did. And pointless."

"I see what you mean. You would have no reason. Unless there's a reason that I can't understand. Is there?"

"No. None whatever. Surely you realize that."

"I suppose I do. I suppose I must believe you after all." She stood up suddenly and walked over to a window and stood there for a minute looking out, slim and erect against the glass, her pale hair catching afire from the slanting light. Then she returned, sitting again, tucking the skirt and folding her hands. "Poor Alex," she said. "Poor little Alex."

He hadn't been so little. Average height, at least, but Marcus skipped it. Miss Sandra Shore was striking him as a remarkable young woman. There was genuine grief in her voice, in her darkened eyes, but her face was in repose, fixed as serenely in shock and grief as it had been in the photograph.

"You are very composed under the circumstances," he said. "I'm relieved and thankful."

"Perhaps I can't quite accept it yet, in spite of knowing that it must be true."

"Sometimes it takes a while for things to hit us hard. Do you feel like talking with me now?"

"What do you want to know?"

"You were a good friend of Alexander Gray's. Is that true?"

"Yes, it's true, but I can't imagine how you know. Unless you've talked with Rufe. Have you?"

"Rufus Fleming? No. I'd like to talk with him, however. I don't know where he is."

"Have you been to the apartment? Alex and Rufe lived together, you know."

"Yes, I know. I've been there. Do you have any idea where Fleming could be?"

"Just out somewhere, I imagine. He'll show up soon."

"His car was in the garage."

"Rufe often walks places. Quite long distances sometimes. He enjoys it."

"There was a photograph of you in their apartment. A very good one. I noticed that it was inscribed to both Gray and Fleming. All your love. Were you an equally good friend to both?"

"Equally? That's so hard to judge, isn't it? I loved them both. I still love them both, even though Alex must be dead, since you say so."

"Did they both love you?"

"Oh, yes. We all loved each other."

"Isn't that a rather unusual relationship to exist among two men and a woman?"

"I don't think so. Perhaps it is. It has been that way for so long that it seems perfectly natural to me."

"Didn't it ever get complicated?"

"Well, it was difficult in certain ways. They both loved me and wanted to marry me, and I loved both of them, which was all right, and wanted to marry both of them, which was not, and that's where the difficulty was."

"I understand. Bigamy is no solution. Besides being illegal."

"Yes. Anyhow, I couldn't bear to marry one of them and not the other, for that would surely have meant giving up entirely the one I didn't marry. If only I could have married one of them and kept the other one around as always, it would have been all right, but it wouldn't have worked, I'm sure, for a husband is different from a friend, no matter how good and tolerant he may be, and will become possessive and insistent upon his rights and resentful of the attentions to his wife of another man."

Marcus didn't quite believe her. Not her words. He believed them, all right. He didn't quite believe her. That she existed. That she was sitting this instant in the chair across from him with her knees together and her skirt tucked in. He was, in fact, more than a little confused by what seemed at once perfectly logical and utterly insane. That was it, he decided. It was logical, but nuts. There was not necessarily any contradiction in that.

"You said this relationship had existed for a long time," he said. "How long?"

"Oh, years and years. Ages. Since we were very young."

"You all knew each other then?"

"Isn't that what I said? Went through school together and have remained close to each other since."

"It's strange, to say the least, that two men should remain such friends in such circumstances."

"Well, they were very sweet and tolerant and understanding, and they kept thinking something could be worked out, but, as I said, there was no way to work it satisfactorily."

"Now, however, the problem has resolved itself."

"You mean, because Alex is dead, that there is nothing to keep me from marrying Rufe? That may be true, but I'll have to think about it. It doesn't seem quite fair to Alex. A kind of unfair advantage for Rufe, you know. I may be compelled by fairness to give him up also."

Marcus slapped a knee sharply and stood up and walked around his chair and sat down again. He closed his eyes and opened them, and she was still there.

"There was a pair of target pistols in the apartment," he said. "The superintendent told me they were bugs about target shooting. Is that so?"

"Oh, yes, and so am I. I have a pistol like the ones you saw. It all started when we were quite young. In the beginning, we used bb pistols. We lived in a small town, only a short walk into the country, and we used to go out together frequently, the three of us, and have matches. Would you like to see my pistol?"

"It would be kind of you to show it to me."

"Not at all."

She got up and went to a desk and returned in a minute with the pistol, which was, as she had said, apparently identical with the two he had appropriated. Clean, recently oiled. He took it and examined it and handed it back to her. She sat in her chair again, the pistol lying in her lap beneath her hands.

"Do you happen to have a photograph of Mr. Fleming?" he asked.

"Of Rufe? No. I'm sorry."

"Not even a snapshot?"

"Not even that. It's rather strange, isn't it, when you come to think about it? Neither Alex nor Rufe were much for having their pictures taken."

"Perhaps you could describe him to me."

"Why?"

"Oh, just in case I happen to see him or something. It might save me some time and trouble."

"Well, he's quite tall. About six-three, I'd say. Rather thin, but quite strong. He has a long face with thick eyebrows that grow across the bridge of his nose and black hair that's wiry and doesn't stay brushed very well. His shoulders are somewhat stooped, and I keep telling him to pull them back, but it doesn't do any good. I think he stoops deliberately to avoid appearing as tall as he is, especially when he's with me. As you can see, I'm rather small."

"Yes. I see." Marcus stood up, holding his hat, and looked around the room. An open entrance to a small kitchen. A door closed upon what must be a bedroom. Off the bedroom, certainly, a bath. No different, basically, from the place shared by Gray and Fleming. "Tell me," he said. "Can you think of anyone at all who might have wanted to kill Alexander Gray?"

"No. No one. Surely it must have been some kind of accident."

"He was in no trouble that you knew of?"

"None. If Alex had any trouble, it must have been minor."

"I see. Well, thank you very much, Miss Shore. If you see Mr. Fleming, please have him contact me at police headquarters."

She followed him to the door and showed him out; the last thing he saw was her grave face and darkened eyes as the door closed between them. It was now well past time for lunch, and so he went on and had a steak sandwich at a small restaurant and went on from there to headquarters, where he read a brief report from the coroner as to the estimated time of Alexander Gray's death, which estimate was, as Marcus had predicted, not much different from Marcus's guess. The coroner thought that Gray had been killed by a.22 caliber bullet, but there had been no time as yet to recover it from the body, due to an accumulation of work, and an autopsy was promised as soon as possible.

Marcus carried the pair of matched pistols to ballistics and left them with instructions for tests, and then returned to his desk and began to clear up some paper work, including his own report of the Gray case. He tried three times without success, during the rest of the afternoon, to reach Fleming at his apartment, and he kept thinking that Fleming might call in, but he didn't. Late in the afternoon, Fuller came in and reported on what had happened at the golf course after Marcus had left, but it didn't amount to much.

Alone, Marcus rocked back in his chair and closed his eyes and tried to think. He thought mostly about Sandra Shore. He still had difficulty in convincing himself that she was real, and he wondered if she was truly so remarkably self-contained as she had appeared, or if she had only found it impossible to express more effectively her shock and surprise at news that was really no news at all. Had she in fact known that Alexander Gray was dead before Marcus had arrived to tell her so? Marcus wondered, but he didn't know.

He sat there thinking for a long time, not really getting anywhere, and then he tried Fleming's apartment again without any luck. He decided to go out and eat and go home, and that's what he did. In his bachelor's apartment, he read for a while and had three highballs, bourbon and branch, and listened, the last thing before going to bed, to a Toscanini recording of Beethoven's Sixth. The next morning, which was the morning of Sunday, he got up early and drank two cups of coffee and went back to headquarters, and he was at his desk there when Fuller, reluctantly on duty, brought in a young man to see him. The young man, according to Fuller, had something to say about the Gray case, now public knowledge, that might or might not be significant. The young man's name, said Fuller, was Herbert Richards.

"Sit down and tell me what you know," Marcus said.

"Well," said Herbert Richards, sitting, "I was driving out there yesterday morning on the street just east of the Golf Club where this guy was killed, and my old clunker quit running all of a sudden. I've been working on a construction job, and I was on my way to meet some of the crew at a place in town. We were going on together in one of the trucks, you see. Anyhow, my clunker quit, and I had to hurry terribly to make it on time, walking, and so I cut across the corner of the golf course, walking in a kind of gully that runs diagonally across the corner, and all of a sudden I heard shots."

"Wait a minute," Marcus said. "Did you say shots?"

"Yes, sir. Two of them. I read about the murder in the paper last night, and it said this guy was only shot once, so I wondered if I could have been mistaken, but I've thought about it, and I'm sure I'm not. They came so close together that they did sound almost like one shot, but I'm sure there were two."

"What did you do when you heard the shots?"

"Nothing. Just kept on going down the gully."

"Didn't it occur to you that something might be wrong?"

"Why should it? I've heard lots of shots in my life, or sounds like shots. This is the first time it ever turned out to be someone getting murdered."

Marcus conceded the validity of the point. Honest folk going about their business just didn't jump to the conclusion of murder at every unusual sight or sound, even the sound of shots.

"What time was this?" he said.

"That's mostly what I wanted to tell you. It was just daylight. Just after dawn. I know it's important to know the time something like this happens, and that's why I came down here."

"I'm glad you did."

"You think it may help?"

"I think so. Thanks. If you don't have anything else to tell me, you can go now."

Herbert Richards left, visibly pleased, and Marcus closed his eyes and thought for a moment about the scene of Alexander Gray's murder. Opening them again, he looked for Fuller, who was waiting.

"Fuller," he said, "you remember that high bank we went down about twenty yards or so from where Gray was lying? You take a couple of men and go out there and dig around in it and see if you can find a bullet."

Fuller, who resented the assignment, betrayed his feelings. Marcus, who marked the resentment, did not.

"Who cares if one bullet missed?" Fuller said. "We got the one in Gray, soon as the coroner digs it out this morning, and that's all we need. Besides, from the position of his body, Gray was facing the bank; the killer wasn't. Any bullet that missed him would have gone in the opposite direction."

"Go dig around anyhow," Marcus said. "It doesn't do any harm to be thorough."

Fuller gone, Marcus assumed his favorite position for thinking, chair rocked back, eyes closed, fingers laced above his belly. He thought this time about several things in a rather fantastic pattern. He thought about Alexander Gray and Rufus Fleming and Sandra Shore in an emotional triangle so crazy that it could certainly have been sustained only by a trio who were themselves a little crazy. He thought about Alexander Gray lying on a golf course. He thought about a brown worsted jacket lying on the grass about five paces from Gray's body. He thought about Herbert Richards, a construction worker in the act of trespassing, hearing two shots fired so closely together that they were barely distinguishable from one. He thought about a matched pair of target pistols placed in accidental symbolism below a reproduction of Daumier's Don Quixote. He thought about a cabinet above a lavatory in which there was only one razor and one toothbrush.

I don't believe it, he thought. By God, I simply don't believe it.

After a while, he went to ballistics and got a report, but still lacked the specific comparison he needed, which waited upon the coroner. In his car, he drove slowly, with an odd feeling of reluctance, to Sandra Shore's apartment building. He rang her bell and waited and was about to ring it again when she opened the door. Her eyes widened a little in the faintest expression of surprise, recovering almost immediately their grave, characteristic composure.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning," she said. "Do you want to come in again?"

"If you don't mind."

"I do mind, rather, to tell the truth, but I suppose I must let you."

"Thank you. I'll try to be brief."

They sat as they had yesterday, in the same chairs, and he was silent for a while, looking down at the hat in his hands and wondering how to begin. Then he looked up at Sandra Shore, at the grave eyes in the serene heart, and let his own eyes slip away and fix themselves deliberately on the door closed upon her bedroom.

"May I go into your bedroom, Miss Shore?" he said.

"No. Certainly not." She sat very still, watching him until his eyes returned to her, and then her small breasts rose and fell slowly on a drawn breath and a sigh. "Well," she said, "I see you have been as clever as I was afraid you would be, but I'm glad, really, quite glad, because he seems to be getting worse instead of better, and I have been afraid he would die in spite of everything I could do. It was impossible to get a doctor, you see, and so I took out the bullet myself, but he seems to be getting worse, as I said, and I've been wondering what I should do."

"Did you also return the pistols to the apartment and pick up a razor and toothbrush while you were there?"

"Yes. How very clever you are! Alex and Rufe simply decided between them what they must finally do, the way to settle matters for good and all, and so they walked out there to the golf course together, which was the handiest place where it could be done, and it might have turned out all right for Rufe, although not for Alex, except that he got hit, too, in the shoulder, and that made everything much more difficult. He had to go somewhere, of course, and so he came here, and I helped him. He had the pistols, and I thought the best thing to do was to clean them and oil them and take them back to the apartment, and that's what I did."

"It was a mistake. Surely you know we can match the bullet in Alexander Gray with one of those pistols."

"That's true, isn't it? I suppose I didn't think of it at the time because I was upset and not thinking clearly about anything. It's odd, isn't it? I wanted so much to help Rufe, and I tried, but I guess I only did him harm instead."

"The fools! The crazy fools!" Marcus spoke with low-key intensity, slapping a knee. "Why the hell couldn't they have drawn high card for you or something?"

"Oh, no!" She stared at him with scorn, as if he had betrayed himself as a sordid sort of fellow with no discernible sense of honor. "Alex and Rufe would never have treated me so cheaply."

"Excuse me," he said bitterly. "I concede that you've done your best for Rufe, whom you love, but what about dear Alex, whom you loved equally and who is unfortunately dead as a rather irrational consequence?"

"If it had turned out the other way around," she said, "I'd have done as much for Alex."

"I see." He stood up, his bitterness a taste on his tongue that he wanted to spit out on the floor. "I'll call an ambulance, and then you and I can go downtown together."

He was at his desk, doing nothing, when Fuller came in that afternoon.

"We dug all over that bank," Fuller said, "and there's no bullet in it."

"That's all right," Marcus said. "I know where it is. Or, at least, was."

"The hell you do! Maybe you wouldn't mind telling me."

"Not at all. It was in the shoulder of a fellow named Rufus Fleming. He and Gray had a duel out there yesterday morning. That's how Gray got killed."

"A duel!" Fuller's eyes bulged, and he was so certain that Marcus had gone off the deep end that he felt safe in saying so. "You're always talking about someone being nuts," he said, "but in my opinion you're the biggest nut of all."

Marcus was not offended. He closed his eyes and smiled bleakly.

Well, he thought, it takes one to catch one.

By now, I hope, you have read each and every one of the stories in this Dell Book Anthology, and your appetite for crime-mystery-fiction has been whetted to a keen edge as a result. There is always the possibility, of course, that you are one of those who start reading a book from the back instead of from the front. Psychologists have a name for this habit, which I shall not define further, since I have no wish to invade any other field of research. I am kept quite busy laboring in my own vineyard, to mix a metaphor. Others enjoy the fringe benefits of my labors For example, the postal employees of the Riviera Beach, Florida, branch Post Office have noted a heavy increase in their daily burdens since we moved the editorial offices of Alfred Hitchcock's fine publication to an enchanting location, at 2441 Beach Court, Palm Beach Shores, Riviera Beach, Florida, facing the blue Atlantic. If you are interested in learning further particulars about this excellent publication, please write to me at the above address. I look forward to hearing from you, one and all.