Murder with a Past

19

“Crandall Cox and Kathleen,” Tully said. “Did they know each other?”

“How would I know?”

“She knew Ollie Hurst, even thought of marrying him. She knew Cox too, didn’t she?”

“I tell you I don’t know! Man oh man, I’ll fix you for this, Dave—”

“Stick to the subject at hand. Mercedes took Kathleen abroad to keep her from marrying Ollie. Did Cox figure any way in that?”

“I don’t know!”

“You do know,” Tully said. “Mercedes runs a pretty taut ship. She’s held Kathleen’s fate up to you since you were in diapers — I mean, as a horrible example of what comes from crossing mama. Right, Andy?”

Andy was pressing a handkerchief to his nose. “Wait till she hears about this.”

“I’m not impressed any more,” Tully said. “I have a wife to get back. Are you going to talk?”

“The papers—” Andy shrank back.

“I read the papers, Andy. They printed the official handouts. Your half-sister was a good enough swimmer to be on her school swimming team. She didn’t drown accidentally, now, did she?”

Andy glared up at him. Whatever it was that he saw in Tully’s eyes, it made his own eyes shift.

“No. She didn’t.”

“Well,” said Tully. Then he said, “And she wasn’t murdered, either. The Swiss police are among the best in the world. They wouldn’t have missed that.”

“I don’t follow you,” the boy said sullenly.

“Kathleen was the daughter of a millionaire American. And there was no proof her death wasn’t an accident. Under the circumstances, didn’t the Swiss authorities decide to let it go at that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tully stooped over him and said softly, “Kathleen killed herself, Andy, didn’t she? Took that boat out in a squall and deliberately upset it and let herself go under? Probably leaving a suicide note that Mercedes destroyed. Isn’t that the truth about Kathleen?”

The boy’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Yes.”

“Why, Andy? Why did Kathleen kill herself?”

“She’d found out she was pregnant.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Gordon.”

Mercedes Cabbott’s son shot to his feet and darted toward the door. Before Tully could move Andy was out of the house.

A moment later his car roared its belated defiance as it escaped.

Tully went into the utility washroom off the kitchen and plunged his face into a basinful of cold water. Then he went into the kitchen and looked up the number of the Pittman sanitarium and dialed it and asked if Mr. Oliver Hurst was still there, and how was Mrs. Hurst? He was told that Mr. Hurst had left not long before and sorry, we can give out no information about our patients.

Tully broke the connection, began to dial Ollie Hurst’s home number, thought better of it, and hung up.

He got into the Imperial and drove over to the Hurst house.

Ollie answered the door. He looked like hell.

“Dave. I was just going to call you.”

“How is Norma?”

“Quiet under sedation. The doctor kicked me out. Come on in. Something up?”

“Yes. I hate to ask this of you, Ollie — you look about as beat as I feel! — but would you do me a favor?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Ollie Hurst said crossly. “What?”

“I’m going up to the Cabbott ménage to see Mercedes. I’d like you to be present when I tackle her.”

“About what?”

“I’ll explain later. Will you come?”

Ollie stood there. “You put me on a spot, Dave. I’m not comfortable in that house.”

“I wish I could spare you,” Tully said. “But Ollie, I’ve got to have you there.”

“All right.”

Ollie went for his jacket and tie. Tully got into his car and waited. Finally the lights went off and the lawyer came out and climbed in beside Tully. Tully turned the car around and headed for the hills.

As the Imperial turned into the Cabbott grounds Ollie Hurst said suddenly, “This isn’t about Ruth, is it, Dave?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see—”

“That is, not directly.” Tully’s mouth set in a grim line. “Everything I’ve been doing in the past few days has been about Ruth one way or the other, Ollie.”

Hurst nodded and settled back. He appeared shrunken, half the size he had been.

It was George Cabbott who opened the door. The blond giant looked angry and formidable.

“We’ve been expecting you,” Cabbott said. “Come in.”

“Then you do know the story,” Tully said.

“I do now!”

Mercedes’s husband did not even glance at Oliver Hurst. He led them through the house to the terrace. Mercedes was waiting for them at the king-size terrace table. She looked odd in the weird lighting of the insect-repellent bulbs.

“It was quite horrid of you, David,” Mercedes said in a high, tight voice.

“Yes,” George Cabbott growled, “you sure had one hell of a nerve. Why don’t you take me on for a change?”

“You didn’t try to clobber me, George,” Tully said. He looked around. A cigarette was smoldering in an ash tray on the table; neither Mercedes nor George Cabbott smoked. “I take it Andy’s declared himself on the side of discretion. He’s updated you, Mercedes?”

“My son felt he should tell me that you’d forced certain information from him,” she said frigidly. “Did you have to trick him into coming to your house?”

“And why Andy?” George Cabbott demanded. “If you wanted information, why didn’t you ask Mercedes, like a man?”

“Do you think she’d have told me?”

“Of course I wouldn’t have,” Mercedes said. She had not once glanced Ollie Hurst’s way. He stood just outside the circle of grisly light, a forlorn shadow.

“If you want to break a chain,” Tully said sententiously, “choose the weakest link. Confucius or Sherlock Holmes or somebody, wasn’t it?”

Mercedes poured herself a drink from the heavy silver cocktail shaker. Tully noted that her hands were trembling. She did not offer any to him or Hurst, or even ask them to sit down. She drank in hard gulps. Her husband stood by, watchful as a paid guard.

“All right, David. Now that you’ve broken the chain, what do you intend to do?”

“Get the rest of the story straight.”

“Then the police?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She poured another drink. George Cabbott took the glass from her hand and flung its contents out into the black lawn. She glanced at him, and he shook his head very slightly.

“How much will be made public, David?”

Tully shrugged. “The irreducible minimum, as far as I’m concerned.”

“After all these years you’d destroy her image... blacken her name?”

“I can’t destroy or blacken, Mercedes,” Tully said. “That was done long ago, by others.”

The beautiful young-old woman sank into a chair, her back growing a queer hump. Her husband leaned over and took her impeccable little hand. It lay there lifelessly.

“Why?” George Cabbott asked. “That’s what I don’t understand, Dave. What purpose does this serve?” He asked it in a determinedly reasonable tone, like a representative of management in a labor dispute.

“The cause of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Tully replied. “My wife’s.”

Ollie Hurst stirred, stepped forward. In the light he looked like a ghost. “Dave. What did Andrew tell you?”

“The truth about Kathleen’s death. When Mercedes strong-armed her into going abroad, Kathleen discovered that she was pregnant. She killed herself.”

The lawyer stared at him. Then he shuffled over to the table and took the shaker and Mercedes’s glass and poured. He set the shaker down carefully and drank slowly and thirstily. The tiniest frown appeared between Mercedes’s graceful brows. “What else do you know, Dave?”

“You tell me, Ollie. Was Kathleen’s child yours?”

“Yes.”

“Did she know she was pregnant when her mother took her to Europe?”

“No. Kathleen wrote me from Switzerland. Her letter reached me after the news that she’d drowned. I knew she had committed suicide.” Ollie Hurst stared out into the darkness.

“I suspected the baby was yours,” Tully said thoughtfully. “If it had been Crandall Cox’s—”

“You — shut — up,” Mercedes Cabbott whispered. “You shut your filthy mouth!”

“If it had been Cox’s,” Tully said, “he’d have tried to cash in on it right away. Of course, he must have found out. How did he find out, do you suppose, Ollie?”

He saw the fine sweat appear on Hurst’s bald head.

“The letter,” Tully said softly. “Of course! The letter you just said Kathleen wrote you. Didn’t you and Cox both go to college here? It must have been around the same time—”

“It was,” Mercedes Cabbott said. “Oh, it was! And now I remember, Oliver. You and Crandall Cox roomed together during one semester.”

“I’m going great guns, Ollie,” Tully said. “I’m really hitting it now. That’s it, sure. Cox swiped that letter from you, and he kept it like an insurance policy all these years. You probably thought you’d lost it. Isn’t that it, Ollie?”

The lawyer said hoarsely, “Dave.” He licked his lips and said again, “Dave.”

But Tully said, “It was Kathleen’s secret that brought Cranny Cox back here after fifteen years. He didn’t come back to put the bite on you, Mercedes — he was desperate, and he’d saved that letter for a desperate day, but he knew how tough you could be, and he’d look for a softer touch.

“You, Ollie. You’ve done well for yourself — he’d have investigated that for sure. You’re a respected member of the community. Your legal practice lies here. You have a vulnerable wife. He’d have played on all that, Ollie — counted on its making you pay through the nose to keep that letter from being published, ruining you socially, destroying your livelihood, maybe turning your wife into a hopeless lunatic.

“The one thing he didn’t count on,” Tully went on, and he had to steel himself with all his strength to keep from betraying the pity and sorrow and disgust he felt, “the one thing Cox didn’t count on was the lengths to which you’d go to hold on to what he was threatening. And the fact that you’re a lawyer and know that a blackmailer never stops.

“It was you who killed Cox, wasn’t it, Ollie?”