Man Sinister

Chapter VI

My insides began a transmutation to cold jelly as I considered motives. Harold would not have killed his own father. It was just as unlikely that Vera would have. Ellen and Wilfred had just as little reason. Papa Joe had been their bread and butter, and they were accustomed to his tirades.

Even if McGinty could have slipped into the house here, for some reason wanting Papa Joe out of the way, he couldn’t have known where the poison was. To have him accidentally find it and prepare a drink, somehow knowing that Papa Joe would drink it, was stretching the wildest laws of chance and coincidence far beyond the breaking point. Anyway, McGinty was after Harold, not Papa Joe.

Lucy Quavely had been in the house the night before, but what possible reason could she have for murdering Papa Joe? Besides, she wouldn’t take a chance of blighting the Quavely name, no matter how much she might want to kill somebody.

And that extremely unpleasant process of elimination left only one person. My shoulder had been stiff this morning when I woke. If Hagan discovered my black and blue marks and in any way could learn that I’d received them last night when Papa Joe struck me with his cane, I could picture that police captain’s reaction.

Panic crawled into my throat. I lighted a cigarette when I caught Conroy watching me closely, walked over to a chair and sat down.

“You’re sure you’ve leveled with us, Martin?” he asked me shrewdly. “About the quarrel you had with the old man and all the other details?”

“I’m positive.”

Conroy settled back in his chair. “When we find Wilfred we might pick up a lead. When did you see him last?”

“Late yesterday.”

So Wilfred was gone and Hagan had been unable so far to find him. The jelly didn’t suddenly turn to flesh and blood again, but I had the thought that Wilfred’s disappearance might remove some of the pressure from me, give me a little time to do something. Just what, I didn’t know. All I knew that Hagan didn’t know was that business about McGinty and the empty bungalow. Harold wouldn’t let the police in on that, of course, and certainly Vera would accede to his wishes and remain silent. She would go a long way to protect him. She had already proved she would stick to her man when the going got rough.

Hagan came back downstairs. I outlined my movements of yesterday afternoon and evening for him, except that I skipped the episode of the cottage. Even if I had mentioned it, I knew well enough that Harold would deny the whole thing. Unless McGinty or his body turned up I would be made out a ridiculous and fantastic liar, putting new questions in Hagan’s mind. He might even conclude that I’d been drunk enough to poison the man who had reared me.

I knew he was waiting for me to make just one slip. If there had been so much as a single bullet mark in the empty cottage I might have told him the whole story, at that. But now the only one, besides Harold and me, who had heard the shots was in the morgue.

When Hagan departed, with a caution to stay within reach, I went to look for Ellen. I found her in the kitchen. She was spreading a napkin over a plate of food she was placing in the warmer of the range. She threw a startled glance over her shoulder at me as I entered.

“I ain’t myself, Mr. Martin,” she said, with a tremor in her voice. “Not since the minute I found poor Mr. Cranford,”

“Now of course you’re worried about Wilfred.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know where he is, don’t you?”

Her gaze came quickly to my face. Her lips pursed. She was a pretty little creature with her wide eyes dewy with tears. “How would I know?” she wailed.

“Just a guess.” I shrugged. “Wilfred scares easily. He wouldn’t want to hide where he was completely alone. He’d want help, the assurance of somebody he loved and could trust. I thought he might have got in touch with you.”

“Oh, no sir!”

“Who saw him last?”

“I guess I did, Mr. Martin.”

“When?”

“Last night. Young Mr. Cranford rushed in the house, then his father came in a few minutes later. Old Mr. Cranford began yelling for Wilfred to come up to his room. Wilfred went, and nobody saw him any more.”

“He’s hiding because he’s afraid, Ellen,” I told her. “Mr. Cranford must have died just before Wilfred went into his room or while he was there. Wilfred was afraid someone might think he had something to do with it and ran. But his running makes it all the worse. You see that, don’t you?”

She lowered her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“If he gets in touch with you, you’ll let me know?”

She was silent.

I said, “I promise you that I’ll do everything I can for Wilfred.”

She nodded.

“Harold will help too. You know Harold would never let anything happen to Wilfred, feeling as he does about you.”

My stab found its mark. She was too simple to control her feelings, but not simple enough to miss the meaning of my statement. Her face went scarlet. She turned quickly and busied herself at the stove.

Harold, you stinking tramp.

Harold stayed in his room with Vera for the most part, leaving me to speak to sympathetic callers as news of Papa Joe’s death spread. I made the necessary arrangements for the time when the coroner should release Papa Joe’s body.

Lucy Quavely phoned me about eleven o’clock, a brittle quality in her voice.

“I have just suffered a frightful indignity,” she informed me.

“We all do, at times,” I murmured.

“You didn’t have to send that policeman to my hotel with his questions, Steve.”

“I didn’t.”

“You told him I was in the Cranford home last night.”

“I told him you talked to me a few minutes in the parlor. By the way, Lucy, how did you happen to locate me?”

“It took a week or two,” she said sharply, “tracing you from job to job. Your last employer in Charleston said you’d left for Asheville. I came up, since Mr. Cranford’s home seemed to be the logical place to start looking for you here.”

I drawled thoughtfully, “Did you ever consider that Papa Joe might be a powerful ally for you, Lucy — for a monetary consideration, of course?”

I expected a violent reaction. Instead, she said calmly, “Naturally I did. I knew his wife had insisted on adopting you, and that he considered you too unimportant even to be a necessary evil. I also knew that he was in constant financial difficulties. He was entirely too superior and insulting and short-tempered to be a business success.”

“So you made a deal with Papa Joe?”

“I did not! I thought him too unreliable.” She suddenly chuckled. “If I had made a deal with him Hagan would love that. It would just about fix things for you, Steve. Say you were determined to hang onto the Quavely money. Papa Joe was about to queer it. Such a grave obstacle had to be removed.”

“They call that perjury, Lucy.”

“Do you think the captain would believe you? Or believe me? I’m smart enough to make it good, Steve, to make it stick.” She laughed again. “So I don’t have to spend thirty thousand dollars on you at all, do I? You’ll be sensible and agree to Bryanne’s freedom now, I’m sure.”

She hung up. I stood with the dead phone in my hand. A ridge of sweat had formed across my forehead. Lucy had neatly turned my suspicions of her and Papa Joe into a trap. I told myself that she was bluffing. But my heart was beating hard, with fear — and hatred.

I slammed the phone into its cradle and turned to the window. A man was idling across the street. For an instant my scalp went tight as I thought he might be McGinty. But he was too tall. A stake-out of Hagan’s, probably, watching the house.

Then a taxi rolled to a stop before the house, and a woman got out. Without hesitation, she came up the walk toward the house. The same black hair. The same softly angular face. The slender body was thinner now; the long legs took short steps.

I rushed into the hall and jerked the front door open. My wife was lifting a slim finger to ring the bell!

We looked at each other and it was all I could do to control my feelings. She smiled.

“Hello, Steve.”

“Hello, Bry.”

We told each other that we were looking well. Then we were in the silent parlor and our bodies came together and our lips met. Finally I held her back to look at her.

“Well!” she sighed. She sat down. “Do you have a cigarette?”

I lighted one for her. She took a couple of puffs before saying through her smile, “I came prepared to be brisk, businesslike, to ask if you had a job, what you intended to do with yourself in the future. You moved too quickly for me.”

“Would you believe that I intended to come to Greensboro as soon as I got a job?”

Her eyes and mouth released the smile, growing serious. She studied my face. “I’ve always believed it, Steve. I know the bargain my folks forced on you. It was cruel, unfair. Somehow we’ll have to repay them every penny.”

I pulled a chair close and sat down before her, reaching for her hands. “Lucy told me you were up and around, but she made it seem as if—”

“Lucy has been here?”

“Last night.”

Bryanne laughed. “The dirty little plotter. I suppose she had a deal in mind. She told me she was driving down to the beach for a week. She probably guessed I was tracing you and managed to keep up with my progress so that she knew where you were about as quickly as I did.”

Her glance curved up to lock with mine, her eyes deepened. “Steve, before things can be as they should, you’ll have to forgive yourself.”

“I can do that.”

“You’ll have to forgive the folks as well,” she pleaded. “Try to understand them, Steve. From the beginning they’ve been fighting for something they thought belonged to them. They’ve been so sure that our wartime infatuation, as they called it, would blow over, but that before it did, it would cost a terrible price.”

“Do they still feel the same way?”

“Yes, but they are not so sure now. They forced us apart. They’re aware of my feelings. They also know that you seemed to be deliberately trying to destroy yourself. They’ll still fight, but their punches will lose their sting. Forgive them, Steve, and give them an opportunity to stop fighting without losing face.”

I thought of Lucy sitting in a room in the Bradley Hotel, claws unsheathed. I wasn’t sure Lucy would interpret forgiveness as such. To her it would be calling her bluff. There was a big chance she would never follow the bluff through. Doing so would involve the Quavely name, indirectly, through the husband of a Quavely, in murder. But she might feel that the Quavely name was already involved. Forgiveness certainly entailed complications.

“You always admired a fighter, Steve,” Bryanne said quietly. “They’re fighters. You’ve seen only their worst side. They do have a good side. I know you’ll never be close to them in your feelings, and I realize how much I am asking of: you. But don’t let them be an invisible barrier between you and me, Steve.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” I promised.

She almost cried. Her lips held a tremulous smile.

“There are several things you must be told,” I said.

As quietly as I could I gave her the whole story, including Lucy’s threat.

“Leave Lucy to me,” she said, when I’d finished. “I’ll register at the Lang Park Hotel and get in touch with her. Steve, I’ll be waiting. I can’t tell you how badly I feel because of this dreadful thing happening to Papa Joe. But don’t worry about Lucy, darling.”

I kissed her when the taxi came in answer to my phone call, and as I watched her go away I remembered what she had said. She would be waiting.