Killing Cousins

Seventeen

She drove downtown in the station wagon and parked in a small paved lot beside the City Hall, in which police headquarters were located. Inside, Sergeant Muller, who was waiting for her, escorted her to the desk of Lieutenant Necessary, who was also waiting for her. While Muller was retreating, relieved this time of the obligation to perform an introduction, Necessary unfolded upward from his chair and held out a hand. He resisted a desire to hold Willie’s overlong, and to hold it, for the brief time that he did, more tightly than was proper.

“Thanks for coming so promptly, Mrs. Hogan,” he said. “Please sit down.”

“I’m glad to cooperate in any way I can,” Willie said, “but I hope you won’t keep me too long.”

“I’ll be as brief as I can.”

Willie sat down in the chair beside the desk and crossed her legs, and Necessary was almost positive that the knee on top was dimpled. Dimpled knees, he thought, were rather rare and peculiarly seductive. He wished he could verify the dimple at his leisure, but he could allow himself only the first quick and insufficient look.

“I have some information,” he said, looking at his hands, which he laid on his desk, “that I feel I should discuss with you.”

“I know what it is,” she said. “You know?”

“I think so. It’s about Gertrude Haversack.”

“Have you known about Gertrude Haversack long?”

“No. Only since Monday. She called me and asked me to come and see her, and I went.”

“What did she want to see you about?”

“She said that she and Howard had planned to leave town together last Saturday. She said she didn’t believe Howard would leave without her, after making plans and everything for them to leave together. She seemed to have some ridiculous notion that something had happened to Howard and that I was somehow responsible.”

“I see. Well, granting the truth of what she claims about your husband and her making such plans, it does seem odd, to say the least, that he would suddenly abandon them.”

“Do you think so? It all depends upon your point of view, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Frankly, after meeting Gertrude Haversack I don’t find it at all odd that a man should decide not to run away with her. I only find it odd that he should have considered it in the first place.”

This was so precisely Necessary’s secret attitude that he felt for a moment a sense of communication with Willie that alleviated briefly the sour sickness of heart that was his basic feeling.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “it seems certain that your husband maintained a relationship with Miss Haversack for some time, and it is not unlikely that they did have plans to leave town together.”

“Perhaps it’s true. If you say so, I’m willing to concede it.”

“You don’t seem particularly concerned.”

“Should I be? He was deceptive and dishonest with me, taking all that money which was rightly half mine, and now it turns out that he was just as deceptive with Gertrude Haversack, and good enough for her.”

“You think, then, that he deliberately lied to her?”

“That seems apparent, doesn’t it? Probably he only made a lot of promises to get what he wanted from her before he left.”

“She’s convinced that he didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Naturally she’d say that. It’s humiliating to a woman to be discarded.”

“I must say, Mrs. Hogan, that you don’t impress me as being humiliated.”

“That’s because I wasn’t discarded. Not really. It was different with Howard and me.”

“How different?”

“I’d prefer not to go into it. It wouldn’t help you to know.”

“Are you suggesting that you had, in effect, already discarded him, and that his action was only a kind of final acceptance of it?”

“You may put it that way if you like.”

“All right. Can you tell me why Miss Haversack discussed this business with you in the first place? Did she expect you to explain why your husband failed to carry out their plans?”

“No. She had this ridiculous notion that something had happened to him that I was responsible for.”

“In that case, why didn’t she come first to the police?”

“Because she wanted to try to blackmail me for ten thousand dollars to get her to keep quiet.”

Necessary had been looking alternately at her and at his hands, and now he looked up from his hands with a sharp jerk of his head and looked at her steadily for several seconds before speaking.

“Do you understand what you’re saying?” he said.

“Of course I understand. I’m quite capable of understanding myself, thank you.”

“Then why didn’t you come to the police? Blackmail’s a crime.”

“Because it was so perfectly silly. I’d done nothing wrong, and I simply decided to ignore it. I didn’t want a lot of unpleasantness. The truth is, I thought she was one of these crazy people you read about. After I left her, I didn’t expect to hear from her again.”

“Well, she must have had some reason for trying such a thing. She must have had some reason for thinking you would be vulnerable.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? That’s why I decided she must be crazy. Crazy people don’t have reasons for thinking something. Only crazy reasons, anyhow “

He spread the fingers of his hand on his desk, staring at them morosely, and his sour sickness of heart, he thought, was seeping from his pores into the close air of the room, so that he could smell himself, his sour sickness, and he did not like the smell. Suddenly he looked up again with that peculiar jerk of his head.

“Mrs. Hogan,” he said, “do you know a young woman by the name of Stemple? Fidelity Stemple?”

She knew at once that she knew no one of that name well, but she thought carefully before answering in an effort to remember if it might be someone she had known slightly at one time, if not now, but she could remember no one at all with either the first name or last name he mentioned. It was an unusual name, Fidelity, and she was certain that she would remember anyone she had ever known who was called that.

“No,” she said, “but I didn’t know Gertrude Haversack, either, before Monday. I hope it’s not someone else Howard has been involved with.”

“It’s not. This young woman is dead. She was killed last night in an automobile accident a couple of hundred miles from here.”

“That’s very sad, I’m sure, but what has it to do with me? Why did you ask me if I knew her?”

He stared at her and shook his head as if he was bewildered and did not know himself why he had asked.

“I don’t know. I thought you might. Do you know a man named Fred Honeyburg?”

This time there were echoes in her brain, elusive and disturbing. She was almost positive that she had heard the name before, but she could not remember where or when or in what connection, and it was in that instant, hearing the echoes, that she had the most terrible conviction that everything that had been going right had suddenly started going wrong and would get as bad as it could be. In unconscious resistance to the conviction, she straightened in her chair in a posture of prim rigidity, folding her hands in her lap.

“I can’t remember anyone of that name,” she said, “and I wish you would tell me why you are asking me these strange questions about strange people.”

“Possibly they’re strange questions about strange people because they’re related to a strange story,” he said. “As I told you, Fidelity Stemple was killed in an automobile accident last night. Fred Honeyburg was driving the car she was riding in. Honeyburg wasn’t hurt much. Bruises and abrasions, as the expression is. Funny thing is, the car he was driving was your husband’s. A check of the license proved that. And to make the story stranger still, he claims he was asked to steal the car early last Sunday morning from the KC Municipal Parking Lot, and the person who asked him to steal it was his own cousin, who was also the cousin of your husband on the other side of the family, and this cousin’s name is Quincy Hogan of Quivera. Do you know Quincy Hogan, Mrs. Hogan?”

She sat there rigidly with her hands folded, and she was thinking with a kind of bitter clarity, as if a tiny thinking part of her brain were somehow detached from the stricken remainder, that even the most clever plans must certainly go wrong if you are deceived on every side by those you had thought reliable. She had been deceived by Howard, who had behaved in a way she hadn’t anticipated, and Quincy, clever as he was, had been deceived by his cousin on his mother’s side, who had failed to keep his agreement regarding the Buick. Such deception could not be predicted or dealt with. She sat alone in ruins, but to Necessary, watching her, she seemed so calm and demurely immune that his heart lifted in the hope that she was innocent, after all, of what he had begun to think her guilty.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I know him. How could I help it when he lives right here in town?”

“Do you know how he got hold of your husband’s car?”

“No. I can’t imagine.”

“Or why he left it in a certain place by arrangement to be stolen?”

“No. What can it possibly mean?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.”

“No idea at all?”

“It seems so senseless, doesn’t it? Do you think Howard and Quincy could have met after Howard left home last Friday night?”

“Possibly. Are you suggesting that Quincy may have done away with your husband and then disposed of the car in this way? It sounds pretty devious.”

“Well, Quincy’s clever, but he’s very odd. No one ever knows quite what he’s thinking or what he will do next.”

“What reason could he have had for harming your husband?”

“None that I know of. Could it have been for the money Howard had?”

“The twenty thousand, you mean? That’s a lot of money, all right. How would you explain the letter from Dallas?”

“Perhaps it was a trick to get everyone to quit wondering about Howard. Do you think it could have been?”

“I think it could. I think it was. However, I’m positive that Quincy did not meet your husband and kill him after he left your home on Friday night.”

“Are you? Why?”

“There’s the car, for one thing. It wasn’t left in the lot in KC until early Sunday morning. Where was it in the meanwhile?”

“I have no idea.”

“Don’t you, Mrs. Hogan? I do. I have an idea it was in the garage at your home on Ouichita Road.”

She sat quietly again, her hands folded and her head bowed, and she looked so small and forlorn that he wanted to lean forward and touch her and tell her that he was only guessing, after all, and that probably none of what he said was true, or at least he hoped it wasn’t. She sat unmoving for quite a long while in a silence that became oppressive, and she seemed to be thinking or praying or searching for something within herself, but what she was actually doing, in the ruins of her hope, was making a last desperate canvass of possible positions, the evasion or the truth or the lie that would help her most when help in fact seemed gone. After a while, she looked up with a sigh and a sad little smile that trembled on her lips.

“I see I must tell you the truth,” she said.

“I think you must,” he said.

“I had hoped to save him, but now I see that I can’t.”

“Save who, Mrs. Hogan?”

“Cousin Quincy.”

“What about Cousin Quincy?”

“In order to make you understand, I’ll have to tell you some personal matters that I had rather not have to tell.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll treat whatever you tell me as confidentially as possible.”

“Well, to begin with, Howard had this idea that Quincy and I were in love with each other, or were having a kind of affair at least, and the truth is, I am very fond of Quincy, who is clever and charming when you get to know him. There was nothing in it, though, that should have upset Howard and made him so absolutely unreasonable. He was simply furious and kept accusing me of things, and then there was this party at the Club last Friday night. Howard and I were there, and Quincy was there, and about midnight I went outside for some fresh air, and I met Quincy, who had gone out ahead of me. We talked and took a little walk and then came back to the Club, and Howard had gone home without me. There was nothing for Quincy to do but take me home in his car, which he did, and when we got there he decided that he had better come in and try to explain to Howard and see to it, anyhow, that Howard didn’t abuse me or beat me, which he had done before. It was a mistake for him to go in, as it turned out, for Howard was in a perfect rage, practically out of his mind, and he had this little gun he was going to shoot me with. When Quincy came in, however, he was determined to shoot Quincy first, but Quincy leaped on him suddenly and took the gun away. Perhaps you wouldn’t think Quincy would be capable, he’s so small, but he was actually incredibly fierce and quick. Howard, for his part, was a lunatic. He shouted and charged at Quincy and grabbed him by the throat with the intention of strangling him, and so Quincy shot him, naturally, in order to save himself. Afterward he took Howard away and disposed of him. I tried to convince him that he should call the police and tell exactly what had happened, that it was self-defense and all, but he said No, that no one would believe it, and because he had been so brave and had saved my life from Howard, who would have killed me, I agreed to keep quiet, and I have, up till now, and that’s the way it was and how it happened.”

From Necessary’s heart, the lift, the last sad hope, was gone. He wagged his head slowly from side to side, a gesture of definitive concession.

“And so,” he said, “you became an accessory to save him.”

“I know it was wrong, and I’m sorry, but I had to do it.”

“Yet, only a few minutes ago, you were suggesting that he met your husband that night and killed him for the twenty thousand dollars that he presumably had on his person. If you will excuse my saying so, Mrs. Hogan, you seem to be confused.”

She knew, of course, that she had done very badly, in spite of trying so very hard to do well. Now there was nothing more to say that would undo what had foolishly been said and done, but she said, nevertheless, with the peculiar and culminating courage of desperation, the only thing that she could think to say.

“I was frightened,” she said. “I hope you will understand and pay no attention to it.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand at all. Do you, Mr. Hogan?”

He was looking up and beyond her now, over her shoulder, and she turned and looked in the same direction, but there was no one there. There was only a closed door that opened into the next room. She turned back to find him staring at the door as if he were expecting someone to open it at any moment, and someone did open it, in fact, and stood behind her without speaking, and it was then, at the moment of the door’s opening, that she became fully aware for the first time of the little box on Necessary’s desk, an intercom. Everything they had said, she understood, had been overheard in the next room by Quincy himself and probably another policeman, and it was Quincy Necessary had spoken to, and Quincy now standing behind her. She stood up and turned and looked at him with a little smile, lifting her hands in a gesture of entreaty, and she thought that he was somehow smaller than she had remembered, thin and frail.

“Quincy,” she said, “Lieutenant Necessary doesn’t believe me. Please tell him that I told the truth.”

He shook his head, smiling, and the smile seemed to be an acceptance of the damned and perverse nature of things in general.

“Sorry, Cousin. Old Fred has put me in an untenable position, God-damn him. I’m afraid I must begin to protect myself.”

“Are you trying to put the blame on me, Quincy, after all I’ve done to save you?”

He continued to shake his head, still smiling.

“It won’t work, Cousin. I have the gun, you see. I kept it as insurance, with your fingerprints nicely preserved, for just such a contingency as this. I must say, however, that I hoped never to use it.”

Necessary stood up. His movements gave the effect of carefully controlled violence. Looking at Quincy, he kept seeing Willie. His feeling for her was not merely ambivalent. It was so complex, composed of such diverse and conflicting elements, that it made him feel grotesque, physically and mentally monstrous.

“Where is the gun?” he said. “And where is Howard Hogan?”

“You will find the gun in my apartment,” Quincy said. “As for old Howard, you’ll have to dig for him.”