Sinful Woman

Chapter Six

The clock in the hotel lobby crept to 1:05, to 1:10, to 1:20. The tall man in the cow-puncher’s hat, who marched up and down, was a stranger to the clientele, the smart women who would get their divorces in a quiet, discreet way, then take their departures noisily, with orchids; and they regarded him somewhat humorously as they made their way to the dining room. There was nothing humorous, however, about the way the clerk regarded him. Sheriffs, in his scheme of things, were problems to be got rid of at once, if not sooner, and at the first inquiry for Miss Shoreham, he had begun paging that lady all over town. After each call he would give a report, with conjectural matter on where it would be advisable to try next. It was during one of these speeches that Inspector Cy Britten, of the city police, strolled up, set his elbows on the desk, and stood listening. Then he smiled in a sad sort of way, and said: “Parker, have you got a date with that picture actress?”

“That would be my business, I figure.”

“Are you by any chance taking her to lunch?”

“Are you by any chance bothered about it?”

“No, Parker, not that I know of, though I freely admit that when she sashays up the street every morning I generally peep out the window of my office and keep on peeping. It’s only that your office said you were here, and so it’s my duty to inform you that there’s been a shooting out at the Galloping Domino, and that it’s out past the city limits in the county, and that as a matter of fact a couple of your men have already left for there, and that it’s plainly your duty to go.”

“And that makes you happy?”

“Well, somebody’s got to take this girl to lunch—”

“And it might as well be you, hey?”

“As a matter of the courtesy of the police department, I just thought I’d wait here, and inform her of the unfortunate circumstances that have led to the disappearance of her luncheon pardner, and then, as the least that any gentleman could do, to—”

“You just thought it all wrong.”

“I’m willing to bet—”

“This is how it’s going to be: I left my car down to my office, not expecting to need it, and now, unfortunately and alas, I got no way to get out to the Domino without I commandeer the first car I can get. So as I see your car sitting out front, I hereby deputize you to do the job. This man can inform the young lady.”

Driving out, the Sheriff learned more of the details. The call had come first to one of the hospitals, which had sent an ambulance, with interne and orderlies. When the doctor had found the victim was dead, he had called the city police, mistakenly supposing the Domino to be within their authority; they had rung the Sheriff’s office, relaying the facts and offering whatever help might be needed. The Chief Deputy, after asking the loan of police photographers, had dispatched his own motorcycle officers, called the Coroner and police magistrate who also served as marrying justice, and also an undertaker. In addition to their photographers, the city police had sent a brace of uniformed patrolmen, in a patrol car, to put themselves at the disposal of the Sheriff. So that when he and Mr. Britten turned in at the Domino, there was quite an array of official cars and motorcycles, to say nothing of an ambulance and an undertaker’s truck.

At the door, a state policeman met them, and after saluting the Sheriff said: “We closed him down, pending and until. Such a mob jammed in here as soon as the radio give it out, on account of this picture actress, that—”

“On account of who?”

“Sylvia Shoreham. It’s her husband that got it, and from the way they’ve been piling in here you’d think—” He broke off, marched out to the gate, and held up his hand to a car full of boys that was turning in. “Just keep right on. Keep right on and don’t stop. This is not no cow-roping contest. I said beat it.”

The boys drove off, and the officer led the way inside. To the Sheriff, Mr. Britten said: “Lucky, wasn’t it, that I didn’t stick around to take the young lady to lunch?”

“Was, kind of.”

“Things generally turn out right.”

Inside, a white, tight-lipped Tony awaited them, and took them into the office where the police, Mr. Flynn and one other deputy, the Coroner, an undertaker, a doctor in white uniform, and two orderlies crowded back against the wall while two photographers took pictures. The late Baron Adlerkreutz was not lying as he had been a short time before, when he was an unseen presence behind the desk while Dmitri and Tony had their desperate argument. Now he lay in the middle of the floor, beside a few crimson drops on the linoleum carpet, the gun at his side, a tan silk handkerchief knotted in the trigger, and a white silk handkerchief knotted in the tan silk handkerchief, and fastened around his leg. Near him, and seeming to enclose him, were two ashtrays, two chairs, and the water cooler, on top of which was an electric fan. The Sheriff walked over, bent down, and peered. To Mr. Flynn, the Chief Deputy, who walked over close, he mumbled: “What’s the idea of the handkerchiefs?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. They’d been having some kind of an argument about a picture scene.”

“Who was having the argument?”

“The picture men. He was a producer.”

“They here?”

“In the bar.”

“Bring them in.”

“If you’ll take a tip from me, you’ll talk to them where they are. Two of them are all right, but one of them, the one that seems to be boss, he didn’t do so good in presence of the body. He kind of cracked up. He—”

“O. K.”

Motioning Tony, Mr. Britten, the Coroner, the undertaker, the doctor, police and deputies to follow him, the Sheriff led the way into the bar, now deserted except for Mr. La Bouche, Benny, and Dmitri, who sat huddled at a table, and an officer who sat reading a paper. Mr. La Bouche jumped up and began arranging chairs, to be assisted at once by Benny; but Dmitri sat where he was, huddled in the posture of a man having a chill, and watching in some sort of oblique way, as though his nose were a side-vision mirror in which he could see what was going on. Tony made brief introductions, sat down, looked at his finger nails a moment, then said: “All right. Get going.”

Dmitri drew a long, trembling breath. He said: “Sharf, Excellenz, I hope you don’t take it personal I feel so upset.”

“Not at all, pardner. Now shoot.”

“Yes, quite so. We came here last night, me, my production manager, Mr. La Bouche, and my special writer, Mr. Benny Zitt.”

“These guys?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“We came to talk about a moving picture. You heard of me, yes? I’m Dmitri Spiro, president Phoenix Pictures, strictly class product, make only the best. We came to see our star, Miss Sylvia Shoreham, and talk about a picture. She was to get a divorce today, it meant a new start. Vicki was her husband, but all are good friends, fine friends — friendly friends.”

“Get to the shooting.”

“We talked about the picture, and there was one scene Miss Shoreham, she didn’t like. She is girl in prison, and had to shoot another girl, and didn’t like. She said, Dimmy, is impossible. She said, Dimmy, my public will not let me do this thing. Then she walked by the river to cool off.”

“Was it hot?”

“She was sore.”

“What then?”

“So then Benny, he had an idea. He said, Mr. Spiro, she shoots the other girl, but it’s accident! She finds the gun, she hides the gun, she puts the gun under the bed, but has no bad conscience gegen other girl. But the other girl sees the gun, gets the wrong idea. So they straggle! The straggle like in Destry Rides Again, only better. Then the gun goes off. It’s accident, but who’ll believe it? But, Vicki, the Baron Adlerkreutz, he said, ‘Yes, Dimmy, but out in the audience, how do we know it’s accident?’ Then Mr. La Bouche here, he said: ‘I show you, Vicki. It is so simple, you laugh. But wait a minute, I have to have a gun, or you won’t believe it.’ So we go to Tony, ask plizze may we borrow gun?”

The Sheriff looked at Tony, who licked his lips and said: “I keep seven guns out here, on account of our heavy stock of cash, four rifles and three pistols, all registered to me and all under permits I got on file. I didn’t want to lend them any gun. I don’t want to lend anybody a gun ever. But they were friends of Miss Shoreham’s, and she’d been such a good customer and all, and they acted like it was important, so I took out the clip and handed over the automatic I keep in the desk.”

“If you took out the clip—”

“I must have forgot the shell in the barrel.”

“Pretty careless you’re getting.”

“Sheriff, if Mr. Spiro feels upset, I feel it double, because I ought never to have lent the gun in the first place. I thought I threw the ejector and snapped the trigger, that’s all I can say; but a wholesaler’s man was waiting for me out back and—”

The Sheriff nodded at Dmitri, who went on: “And so, Bushy, he showed Vicki how we can do the scene, so Sylvia will love it. He say ‘Vicki, girls fight till dresses are torn to rags, and maybe Sylwia don’t look good in a scene where her dress is all torn off. So one piece of the dress, one piece of the other girl’s dress, catches in the gun — the trigger. We cut in, show the dress caught in the trigger, but the girls don’t see it. So, Sylvia almost has the gun. She twists the gun from the other girl’s hand, but oh! — oh! — oh! — oh! People see the piece of the torn dress pull tighter, tighter, tighter — and boom! The gun goes off, and there is the other girl dead on the floor. So we tie one henadkerchief to Vicki’s leg, one to the gun tryger, tie the henadkerchiefs together. Vicki takes the gun, I grab it, twist his hand. Bushy, he stands by the camera, which was an electric fan on the water cooler. Bushy, he say, ‘come around slow now, so it’s in close to the camera.’ So we come around slow, handkerchiefs tighten, Vicki say, ‘Ah yes, I see now, is very good, yes, yes — come up very slow’ — and boom! There was Vicki on the floor, and I can’t believe it. I say ‘Vicki, Vicki, speak to me.’ I say—”

“O. K.”

The Sheriff, who had evidently found this recital a little difficult to keep up with, knit his brows and in a moment said to Mr. La Bouche: “I didn’t see any signs of a fight.”

“What fight?”

“Well—?”

“Oh, they didn’t do the fight, if that’s what you mean. We allowed for that. A fight, it’s like jungle stuff, it’s a cutter’s job anyway. You shoot five hundred feet, or whatever you need, and he puts it together. All that mattered was the torn dress and the gun. So we laid it out how that would break. We figured the cell would be nine feet long, five feet wide, with two out for the bunk. So we marked the set with the ashtrays and chairs, set up the camera over the water cooler, and started her going. I mean, it was an electric fan. The henadkerchiefs were the torn dress.”

The Sheriff asked a number of questions of the doctor, checked the routine work that had been done by his men and Mr. Britten’s, asked the Coroner if there were questions he wanted to ask. The Coroner wanted more information from the young interne, and was pretty exact about rigor mortis, the extent of internal bleeding, and such things. He said he thought he would be ready for the inquest tonight, if the autopsy showed nothing to extend the inquiry. The Sheriff nodded to the undertaker. “O. K., you can move him. Hold him for autopsy and the police will instruct you. You can open any time, Tony.”

Departure of the body cleared out quite a lot of vehicles out front, to say nothing of many uniforms inside. It gave Tony a chance to set his office to rights, and the undertaker’s truck was hardly out the gate before he had charwomen at work in there, and was busy himself, setting things in order. When the room was restored to its former condition the Sheriff asked: “Is Miss Shoreham here?”

“I had the maid take her to the ladies’ room.”

“Will you ask her to step in?”

“Right away, Sheriff.”

Her astonishment, when she saw him, was complete. He went over, took her hand, and led her to a chair. “You have a time remembering I’m sheriff of this county, don’t you?”

“All I saw was police.”

“They help. But it’s my case.”

“I’m sorry about the lunch.”

“I too. I was there waiting.”

“I kept thinking about it, believe it or not.”

She had let her hand stay in his, and now leaned her head against his arm with the trust of a weary child. “I guess I just wanted to be with somebody that loves me.”

“You think I love you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, you’re right.”

He sat on the arm of her chair, and put his arm around her, and she caught it in her hand and held it close, and cradled her head against his coat. They sat that way a long time. Then he said: “What happened?”

“I don’t know what happened. I was over by the stream, and I haven’t got it straight what they tried to tell me. They were rehearsing some kind of scene.”

“They said you didn’t like it.”

“It wasn’t that. It was them.”

“I kind of wondered about that part.”

“It didn’t make any difference how they did it, I wasn’t going to do the picture or have any more to do with them. They could just have well — never started their rehearsing.”

She began to cry, and he knelt beside her and wiped her eyes with his big bandanna, and blew her nose.

Then he got up, went to the window, stood for a long time looking over toward the mountain stream. When he spoke it was with the utmost casualness:

“Who killed this man?”

She stopped crying suddenly, and he turned around and looked at her. Then she said: “I did.”

“Why?”

She started to talk, and rehearsed the events of the morning. At the end she said: “I’m not ashamed of what I did, though I’m not proud of it. I love my sister more than I love anybody. She’s not responsible, and what he was about to do, what he would have done, was a shocking, horrible thing. I feel I did right. It was the only way out that I could see.”

“What did your sister say about it?”

“I don’t know if she knows it yet. I suppose she must, but I haven’t heard from her. While we were talking, Vicki thought I might go out there, where she was parked just outside the door here, and get her to come with me, and take her away from him. Or, I guess that’s what was in his mind. Anyway, he went to the door and told her to drive in and he’d meet her at the hotel, and she went.”

“Why did Spiro make it accident?”

“Hays office.”

“That’s right. I forgot.”

“If I get smeared, Spiro can’t release Sugar Hill Sugar. It cost him a million, and if it stays in the can he’s ruined.”

“Now, I get it.”

Presently he asked, “And why did you make it accident? They couldn’t lie to me, if you didn’t back them up.”

“My sister.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“My sister loved this man, and I love her. There is nothing I won’t do to prevent her from ever finding out what I did. Don’t try to use what I’ve told you against me. I want you to know the truth, but if you try to convict me, I shall say I never told you any such thing, and they’ll believe me. I’m not one of the leading actresses of the world for nothing.”

“Will they believe her?”

“She knows nothing to tell.”

“Do you remember the ending of that picture, The Glory of Edith Cavell? Where Cavell marched to the wall for something that was done by somebody else?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“I remember it very well. When she was before that court, telling her story, she looked a lot like you looked just now. You remember the court didn’t believe her?”

“I never saw the court scene.”

“You — what?”

“Except for the shots I was in, the whole courtroom sequence was done in retakes and I never saw them.”

“The court didn’t believe her, but shot her just the same to bust up her organization. She didn’t know it, but the man she was trying to save, the one that was more important than she was, was already dead. So the court shot her, knowing she hadn’t done what they were trying her for. The chief judge of the court hated it, and that was the most awful scene I ever saw in a movie, where you and him were facing each other there. He looked like he loved you as much as I do. It’s funny you don’t remember that.”

“It begins to come back to me.”

“I thought it would.”

He considered, said: “I’m taking you back to your hotel, and for the time being I’m not putting you under arrest, and I’m not putting you under guard. I could, but I’m holding everything in this case till I talk to your sister.”

“Now, I’ll tell you something. I love you, and I think you’re the only man I’ve ever loved. Don’t forget that, judge.”

“I won’t. I’ll take you back to town.”

They rode with him in Mr. Britten’s car. At the hotel, Mr. Britten suggested they enter through the kitchen and go up in the service elevator, as such a crowd of reporters, photographers, fans, and cops were visible inside, evidently waiting for her, that they might have trouble getting through. But when the Sheriff went up with her to her suite they found it empty. Sylvia, leaving him in the sitting room, went to her bedroom to phone the desk, and when she came back she looked frightened. “She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“She didn’t come back here.”

“Did you send her back to California?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then don’t worry, we’ll find her.”

He went down in the service elevator again, climbed into the car. But when Mr. Britten learned of the dragnet that must now be put out to find the missing girl, he gave an exclamation. “I knew there was something funny about this. And that girl, I heard about her when I began talking to the gamblers, but they didn’t have a word to say about her.”

“She’s daft.”

“She’s— What?”

“Not all there in the head. I doubt if they even saw her. From what Shoreham said to me, she just follows along, and waits in the car, and does what she’s told, and nobody pays any attention to her. Just the same, she’s driving around somewhere. I want her brought in, and Shoreham does.”

“Did it strike you they were covering up?”

“In what way?”

“It all checks up, I guess, or will when we get our lab reports in. And it was just about the kind of cock-eyed thing that does happen. But, I had the feeling that every time I turned my back they were looking at each other.”

“Did you figure on suicide?”

“Yes, I did. There were powder burns, and that put it within the ten-inch rule. And, I always said, if cops have made it a rule they won’t consider suicide from firearms unless there are powder burns, they ought always to consider suicide as a possibility when there are powder burns. And she got that divorce, and she’s a good-looking girl, and maybe he was stuck on her, and maybe he was tired of living. But why would they go to all that trouble to cover up?”

“Account of her, maybe.”

“They’re taking one awful chance.”

“She’s worth big dough to them. And maybe she’s a little daft too. Maybe she’s the kind that would go and join the Lithuanian Red Cross or something, so he didn’t die in vain.”

“You breaking it open?”

“I don’t know. We got to find that girl.”