Blow Hot, Blow Cold

14

It was later than they thought. It was, in fact, on the next evening that Masters came to see Dr. Jack Richmond. The chances were that it would have been the other way round — Dr. Richmond being called in to see Masters — if Masters had not happened to be in the neighborhood. To be exact, in the house next door.

In the meantime there had been some minor backyard action. Jack had come outside with a trowel and had begun to loosen the dirt around some rose bushes; and David, appearing in his yard a few minutes later, saw Jack at work and decided that he might as well go over and supervise the job. Jack really didn’t seem committed to the rose bushes, as indicated by the fact that immediately on spotting David he dropped the trowel and proposed a cold beer on the terrace. David declined feebly as a matter of form. Jack went in to get the beers, which he brought back shortly, and they were there, lolling in canvas chairs, when Nancy came outside looking for her helpmeet.

Expecting him to be at hand, Nancy was slightly aggrieved that he was not. She had been engaged in doing the dinner dishes in her hot kitchen, and it seemed to her that the least she had a right to expect of a husband, if he didn’t help, was to stay in his own backyard till the work was done. There he was, however, over on the Richmonds’ terrace, swilling beer like a member of the privileged class.

Nancy decided that what was good enough for him was certainly none too good for her. She drifted over sweetly and was invited to join them, an unnecessary amenity inasmuch as she had already done so; and when Jack returned with her beer, Vera was with him with a beer of her own.

By unstated agreement they avoided all reference to the Connors, whose remains had been claimed by various out-of-state relatives; and it was a problem to dredge up other topics when there was only one topic in the minds of all.

Jack and Vera, Nancy thought, looked haggard and tense. This was unusual, especially for Vera, who ordinarily adjusted to almost everything without trauma.

The silent house next door cast a shadow and a chill over lawn and hedge and flagstones, and to her annoyance Nancy found herself glancing at it over her shoulder, as if it were ready to spring. Thus it was, glancing back, that she suddenly saw it, and uttered a cry.

“Look!” Nancy said. “There’s a light in Lila’s room.”

“Yes,” Vera said. “It came on a few minutes ago.”

“Who in the devil could be up there this time of day,” David said, “and what in God’s name could they be doing?”

“Wait a minute.” Jack jumped up and walked around the house. When he returned he grunted, “There’s a police car parked out front. It must be that sleuth, Masters.”

He sat down again, picked up his can of beer, and leaned back with a deep sigh. It was for all the world as though he could sense the end of something and, sensing it, was relieved.

“What do you suppose he’s doing now?” Nancy said thoughtfully. “Could he be looking for the key again?”

“What key?” Jack said.

“The key to the back door. He thinks there was one in Larry’s key-case. Anyway, it’s missing. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, he thinks the murderer may have taken it after killing Larry in order to get into the house afterward and kill Lila.”

“Larry committed suicide,” Vera said. “Whatever ridiculous notions the police may have, there’s no doubt about that. If Lila was killed by somebody else, Larry’s suicide just happened to occur around the same time.”

“That’s my opinion too,” said David.

“I can tell you,” Nancy said, “that that is not the opinion of Lieutenant Masters. He made it perfectly clear the other morning when I told him about the light — I mean how it was off after being on at the time Larry left. It was the same morning I told him about Stanley, and how Stanley had seen and talked with Lila after I left him in the alley.”

“What are you, a witch or something?” David said. “Every time you mention Stanley, you conjure him up. Here he comes with Mae.”

“I think,” said Vera, “that I cannot possibly tolerate Mae this evening.”

But Vera managed to tolerate Mae after all. The Walterses declined beer and sat down stiffly. It was apparent that their marital relationship was in precariously delicate balance. Stanley had obviously been having a bad time and could look forward to no appreciable improvement in the immediate future.

“We were sitting on our back steps,” Stanley said, “and we saw the light go on next door. What’s doing up there?”

“It’s the police,” Jack said dreamily. “Masters, I suppose. He must be looking for something.”

“Looking for what?”

“I don’t know. Nancy thinks it’s a key to the back door. Maybe it’s for some evidence that you were in the room the night Lila was killed. Did you leave any fingerprints, Stanley?”

“My God, Jack, don’t say things like that! You know I was only at the door. I wasn’t inside at all.”

“I know? How? Because you say so?”

“It’s the truth. I swear! I was called down to police headquarters and I told the lieutenant exactly what happened.”

“You were a long time telling it, pal. Masters is pretty hard to bamboozle.”

Stanley was temporarily speechless.

“Anything that happens to him will serve him right,” Mae Walters said contemptuously. “He knew I’d taken a sleeping pill — that’s why he felt free to prowl around half the night talking to women in nightgowns — if she wore a nightgown.”

“We have been over that and over it,” Stanley spluttered, “and I don’t want to go over it again—”

“It’s probable that you will go over it again whether you want to or not,” Mae said. “Murdering Lila isn’t the only thing you could have done to her. For instance, you have shown that you’ll lie your fat head off at the drop of a bra.”

“Well,” Stanley said bitterly, “you just be sure to tell Masters that. He’ll be interested in the opinion of my own wife.”

“Oh, cut it out, Mae,” Jack said. “I was only pulling Stanley’s leg. Or maybe engaging in a little wishful thinking. Whatever he’s looking for, I’m the one Masters is gunning for.”

“What makes you think so?” Nancy asked suddenly.

“I don’t think, Nancy, I know. When the murder-suicide theory began to pop holes, I knew it was only a matter of time until he got around to me. He’s already been asking questions about me at the hospital. Other places, too, no doubt.”

“Let him ask,” David said heartily. “You were at the hospital that night, Jack, and you can prove it.”

“I can’t prove I didn’t leave for a while. And that’s not all of it. There’s something else he’ll find out, if he hasn’t already. You ought to be satisfied with old Stanley, Mae. You might have been married to me.”

“You’re married to me, as I recall,” Vera said, “and if I’ve had any complaints you’re the only one I’ve expressed them to.”

“That’s true, dear, and I’m grateful. Well, what will be will be. Any case Masters works out against me has to be highly circumstantial. The most he can show is that I could have committed murder, not that I did. I ought to be able to beat the rap with a good lawyer.”

“It would ruin your life,” Vera said. “Who’d go to a doctor acquitted of murder?”

“More than would go to one convicted of it. Anyway, there’s always research or veterinary medicine.”

At that moment the light went out next door. The three couples sat in the deepening dusk in silence, waiting; and after a few minutes, sure enough, the back door of the Connor house opened and Lieutenant Masters appeared. It was quite dark by now, and Masters was blurry in the shadows; he seemed to be doing something to the back door, which he had pulled shut behind him. His mysterious activity soon became clear: the door opened again. He had unlocked it from the outside.

“He’s found it,” Nancy exclaimed. “He’s found the lost key!”

As he turned from the door, Masters noticed them watching him from the Richmond terrace. He came immediately toward them. It was apparent that he had been engaged in some strenuous labor. His tie was hanging limply from his open collar, on his face was a smear of dirt where it had been caked by perspiration. He was holding the key in his right hand. He began to toss and catch it deliberately.

“Good evening,” he said in a peculiar tone.

“Somehow,” said Nancy, “I have a notion that it isn’t.”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil your get-together, Mrs. Howell. I can see you all later if you prefer. Or rather the one I want particularly to see.”

“No, thank you. I, for one, would rather not have to wait and wonder. Can’t you advance the time of execution?”

“I agree,” Jack Richmond said. “Even the guilty sleep better if things are settled.”

“In that case,” Masters said, “since you’re the one I want particularly to see, Doctor, I’ll be glad to oblige.”

“That sounds ominous. Am I going to be arrested for something?”

“Are you confessing to something?”

“Not at all. Would you sit down, Lieutenant?”

“Thank you.”

“How civilized we’re all being,” sneered Mae Walters.

“Shut up,” said Stanley Walters savagely. His tone so startled his wife that she shut up.

David Howell said, “My wife guessed that you were looking for Larry’s back-door key, Lieutenant. I see you’ve found it.”

“That’s right, Mr. Howell.”

“I don’t know how,” Nancy said. “The other morning you and I looked and looked for it, Lieutenant, and we didn’t find it.”

“That was because we didn’t look in the right place.”

“Where was the right place, if it isn’t classified information?”

“Exactly where I suspected,” said Masters, not without satisfaction. “Remember, just as we were leaving, I mentioned having a notion? I got it at the last moment, while I was in the upstairs bathroom. When I opened the medicine cabinet above the washbowl, I noticed the little slot in the cabinet for the disposal of used razor blades. It occurred to me that the razor slot would be a great place for someone to dispose of a key he didn’t want found, and this evening I came back to dig that razor receptacle out. I was right. I found the key lying among a flock of old blades.”

“That was clever of you, Lieutenant,” said Vera Richmond, “jumping to the conclusion that the key had been dropped in there.”

“It wasn’t entirely a guess, Mrs. Richmond. The slot is very narrow, and a more careful examination indicated that something had been forced through it recently.”

“Good work, Lieutenant,” Jack Richmond said. “As my wife says, you’ve been clever.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say as much for our murderer,” said Masters genially. “He made several bad mistakes, and hiding this key was one of them. If he’d just left it lying around, I’d have no special reason to attach any significance to it. By trying to dispose of it, he only called attention to it. Now we know as a fact that he used it to gain entry to the house.”

“And then left the door unlocked when he made his getaway?” Dr. Jack Richmond said.

“He had to do that. He wanted Lila Connor’s body found as quickly as was compatible with his deception regarding the times of death. He counted on someone’s becoming uneasy and insisting on entering the house, and an unlocked back door greased the way. Incidentally, if Mrs. Howell hadn’t insisted on investigating, my guess is the murderer would have done so.”

“That’s the same as saying that the murderer is in this neighborhood, Lieutenant.”

“Closer than that, Doctor. He’s on this terrace.”

There was a dampish silence. Finally Jack Richmond said, “Well, so now what?”

“I’m in no hurry, Doctor,” said Masters comfortably; Nancy hated him. “Would you folks like to know how these murders were pulled off?”

“I’d like to know how you think they were pulled off,” snapped Nancy. “That might not come to the same thing.”

“I’ll be happy to listen to any contrary opinion after I’ve finished, Mrs. Howell,” said the detective with a little nod. “Well, to begin with, let’s assume — just to give us a handle to this thing — let’s assume the murderer was you, Dr. Richmond.”

“Me,” said Jack. “All right, let’s.”

“You spotted Larry Connor leaving his house on what proved to be the night of the crimes. You must have heard him talking to Mrs. Howell outside, because events show that you knew exactly where he was going — and you did say, didn’t you, that the windows of your house here were open that night? Probably you had not yet committed yourself to a program of murder and hocus-pocus. That decision must have come later, when you got a call to come to the hospital and found, after getting there, that you were in for a long wait. The wait presented you with the opportunity, and the rest was brainwork.”

“I sound like a veritable monster,” said Jack.

Masters smiled. “It was a simple matter to arrange for an empty private room to ‘rest’ in. The relative location of the room made it equally simple to slip out and down the stairway and go back unseen later. There was a considerable element of risk, of course. But you’d be safe if you could get back to the room before you were called to your patient — whom you’d examined and whose condition told you roughly how much time you had. You must have estimated that you had over an hour. So you sneaked out and drove to Larry Connor’s office.

“He had had a bad time, and you were a doctor and his ‘friend.’ You persuaded him to take a sedative and you prepared it yourself. But it was no sedative. You gave him a highly undoctorish Mickey Finn, in a lethal dose, to confuse the trail back to you. You then set the office scene to indicate suicide, did three further things, and hurried back to the hospital before you could be missed.

“The three things you had to do constituted the heart of your plan. Lila Connor, not her husband, was your primary target. Therefore you had to make it appear that Larry died after Lila died — in spite of the fact that at this point Lila was still alive. You accomplished the first part of this deception by turning Larry’s office air-conditioning up as high as it would go, to slow the rate of decomposition; this meant, of course, that you had to return to the office early Sunday morning, before Larry’s body could be discovered, to turn the air-conditioner off, thereby establishing the presumption that it had never been on at all; otherwise, allowance would have been made for the air-conditioning factor and negated your deception. Secondly, the weapon which was to kill Lila had to bear his fingerprints. This was simple: you took the metal letter-opener from his desk, pressed the fingers of his right hand to the haft, carefully wrapped the letter-opener so as not to erase the prints, and carried it off with you in your medical bag. Thirdly, you took Connor’s back-door house key from his key-case, so that you could be sure of access to the Connor house — and Lila Connor — after you got through with your patient at the hospital and could drive home.”

“That’s a beautiful reconstruction, Lieutenant,” said Dr. Richmond. “Do you do your homework with detective stories? Fortunately, real life requires evidence.”

“You let me worry about that, will you, Doctor?” said Masters with a smile. “Even at that, it’s not all theorizing. I can prove that the air-conditioner in Larry Connor’s office was turned on and, much later, off. The night watchman heard the conditioner working when he made his second rounds of the night, and he’ll swear to it. I myself can testify, with the landlord of the building to bear me out, since he was with me, that the air-conditioner was off when we discovered Connor’s body. Meaning that the murderer had to have come back to the office, as I ‘theorized.’

“As for the weapon, Connor was strictly left-handed. On that score alone he’s cleared of the murder of his wife. It was a bad mistake to forget that fact in salting the letter-opener with the prints of Connor’s right hand — even allowing for the natural tensions of the night, the need to hurry, and so on. Yet the letter-opener came from Connor’s office desk — his secretary will positively identify it as such. Obviously, somebody other than Connor took the letter-knife from the office to the Connor house, and since we found it buried in Lila Connor’s breast, it was just as obviously taken by the murderer from the office for that purpose.”

Jack Richmond was thoughtfully examining his empty beer can. Then he looked up. “Actually, Lieutenant, you make out a beautiful case, but not against me necessarily. You haven’t demonstrated a single piece of direct evidence to link me to either death. It’s all circumstantial.”

“A lot of people have found themselves at the end of a rope, or in some equally unpleasant place,” said Masters dryly, “as a result of circumstantial evidence. Also, there’s the little matter of motive.”

Jack Richmond stirred, and Masters fell silent. He was silent for so long that he seemed to them to have been sidetracked by some faint far thought that switched on unexpectedly in the twilight.

“Do you want me to go into your motive, Dr. Richmond?” he said at last.

“You have been busy, Lieutenant, haven’t you?” murmured Jack. He laughed harshly. “All right, I was fool enough to let myself get involved with Lila. It was all over quite a while before she died. Don’t expect me to go into the details. You probably know most of them, anyhow.”

“I’ve made some run-producing hits,” nodded Masters. “See here, Doctor, if you’d rather not discuss this before your wife—”

“Don’t let Mrs. Richmond’s presence embarrass you, Lieutenant. My wife has known all about Lila and me for a long time. I’m happy to say that Vera knows because I told her, not because she caught me. So why should I have killed Lila? What price motive now?”

Masters blinked. He turned to Vera Richmond. “Is that the truth, Mrs. Richmond? And please don’t say it is if your husband is lying. It wouldn’t do either him or you any good, and if repeated officially it could have nasty consequences for you.”

“Jack told me voluntarily,” Vera said steadily. “And I decided not to let it break us up. For two reasons, Lieutenant. One, I love him. Two, I know he loves me, in spite of an occasional lapse of fidelity. It seemed to me ridiculous to allow our marriage to be ruined because of a tramp who didn’t mean anything to him but a fling.”

“That makes you out a rather remarkable woman, Mrs. Richmond. Wasn’t it pretty rough on you, having to live next door to the woman your husband confessed he’d been sleeping with?”

Vera flushed. But her voice did not quiver. “Yes, Lieutenant, it was rough, especially since for the sake of appearances we had to maintain a social relationship with the Connors. But what would you have had me do? Run? Tell Jack we had to move? It would only have given Lila a satisfaction she didn’t deserve. And after all, any way you look at it, I won and she lost.”

“Very refreshing attitude,” snapped Masters. “But it sounds a little too superhuman to suit me. I still think your husband’s affair with Lila Connor gave him a motive to kill her.”

“But how?” asked Vera, and this time it was a cry of protest. “He was through with her — I knew about it—”

“Was any man ever finished with Lila Connor,” said Masters in a deliberately brutal tone, “until she was ready to let go?”

His tone, his phrasing, seemed to bring Lila back, as by obscene invocation, from the dead. In the shadows Jack Richmond sighed.

“Apparently,” he said, “you investigated Lila thoroughly.”

“Yes, Doctor. The night of your party Larry Connor was reported to have made some harsh and startling comments about his wife. You surely didn’t expect me to ignore them? I checked on them, and they were all true. Lila had had three husbands in rapid succession before her marriage to Connor, and she played hell with all three. As she continued to do in the Connor marriage. She seems to have been driven by a hatred of men. She apparently got her kicks by entangling men emotionally, then dropping them with a thud. The only thing she couldn’t take was being dropped. Then she became really dangerous. Exactly what kind of threat did she pose when you went sour on her, Doctor? Scandal? Professional ruin? What did she want from you? Money? Divorce and remarriage?”

“I didn’t have enough money to satisfy her, and I would rather have married an octopus.”

“You admit, then, that she threatened you!”

“I don’t admit a thing. As for my reputation and professional career, important as they are to me, I wouldn’t kill because of a threat to them, expressed or implied.”

“Wouldn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. You haven’t got a case, Lieutenant, admit it. It’s all based on what I could have done, not on what I did. As for that two hours or so at the hospital, I repeat that I was in that private room napping every second of the unaccounted-for time, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.”

“I’ll prove it if I can, and I think I can.”

“Are you saying that I’m under arrest?”

“Arrest?” Masters seemed to consider the question. “No. Not yet, Dr. Richmond.”

“That’s what I thought.” Jack laughed and rose abruptly. “You’ll have to excuse me. This has been something of a strain.”

Without another word he turned and went into his house. Vera followed him quickly, looking worried. Masters continued to sit there for a few moments, then he slapped his thigh and said, “I’m sorry. By God, I’m sorry,” but whether this was a reference to the Richmonds or to his own position was not clear. He jumped up and left. These abrupt departures left the Walterses and the Howells rather awkwardly abandoned on the Richmond terrace.

“I knew it,” Mae said. “I knew from the start that Lila was a tramp.”

“Shut up, Mae,” Stanley said.

“She was bound to come to a bad end.”

“Shut up, Mae,” Stanley said.

“Yes, Mae,” Nancy said. “Do, please!”

“Come on, Stanley,” Mae said. “It’s apparent that we had better go home.”

Stanley rose without haste and walked Mae across the yard to the alley. On the way, Mae took his arm.

“Stanley Rides Again,” Nancy murmured. “He’s practically pure by comparison.”

“Mae’s impossible. I’d rather not talk about her.”

“Not Vera, though. Vera is superb. I wonder what I’d do if I caught you playing around.”

“You’d do just what I did about you and Stanley in the alley,” said David. “You’d adjust.”

“I was just joking about that, David Howell, and you know it!”

“In that case, let’s drop it. I feel like hell, tootsy-puss, and all I want is to go home and hoist a few.”

So the Howells went home and hoisted a few, and so forth, finally wrapping themselves around each other in an obscure revulsion from the death, dissolution and adultery of the evening’s conversation.