The Case of the Turning Tide

Chapter 23

Mrs. Gibbs looked up from the newspaper and transfixed her husband with steady scrutiny.

“See by the paper that girl friend of yours was fibbing.”

“What girl friend?”

“You know well enough who I mean.”

“That Moline girl?”

“That’s the one. Looks as though she’s in bad now. She was the last person to see those two men alive.”

“So far as they know now.”

“Well, he was intending to mail a letter shortly before five o’clock, and he never got to the post office with it. You know what that means. He was dead before she was outside the city limits.”

“Oh, don’t keep picking on the girl. I tell you they haven’t anything on her.”

“That’s just like a man, sticking up for her. Trying to tell me that she was nothing to you, that you were so tired you just went to sleep and let her drive. You didn’t pay any attention to her, oh, no. And that picture of her in the paper, why, that was all right, too. ‘Don’t think anything about it, honey. It’s just the way all the women have their pictures taken now. The photographers insist on it.’ ”

Gibbs went on eating his supper in dogged silence.

“What happened — what really and truly happened? When you found her up in Santa Delbarra and brought her back — did you really leave at three o’clock in the morning?”

“I don’t know just what time it was.”

“You found her around midnight. Isn’t that what you said?”

“I guess so.”

“But you didn’t get in here until seven-thirty in the morning.”

“I stopped and had breakfast.”

“Oh, so you had breakfast with her?”

“Of course. I rang her lawyer, and while we were waiting for him to come to his office, we stopped in for a cup of coffee.”

“Stopped in where?”

“At an all-night restaurant.”

“You had more than coffee, because you weren’t hungry when you got home, and...”

“I had ham and eggs.”

“What did she have?”

“The same.”

“Then it wasn’t just a cup of coffee. You had breakfast together.”

“All right, we had breakfast together. So what?”

She was silent for a moment, then she said abruptly, “Where’s your typewriter?”

“Why, in my study.”

“That isn’t the one you had a few days ago.”

He paused with a fork halfway to his mouth. “How do you know?”

“Because I know. I wrote a letter on it.”

“I’ve told you I don’t want you to use my typewriter.”

“Why shouldn’t I use it if I want to?”

“It gets it out of adjustment.”

“Well, I like that. Why should it get out of adjustment for me if it doesn’t for you? I’m not one to smash a typewriter, simply writing a letter on it. But you’re avoiding my question. Where did you get that typewriter?”

“Are you sure it isn’t the one I’ve had all along?”

“Absolutely certain. There was a scratch on the enamel on the frame of yours, and you’d just had yours fixed up with a new platen and...”

Gibbs interrupted to say hastily, “I must have picked up someone else’s typewriter.”

“Where?”

“I wouldn’t know. In a hotel some place probably.”

She said, “That’s just the point. You did it in a hotel. I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“That you’d been with that woman.”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“It’s her typewriter. You switched typewriters with her.”

“She didn’t have a typewriter.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s a photograph of a typewriter in the paper. They say that it furnishes a clue to the murder of those men. They found it on the yacht. That Moline girl left it there. She killed him. But you picked up her typewriter, and she picked up yours. That’s your typewriter just as sure as I’m sitting here, Parker Gibbs.”

Gibbs said, “Now listen, honey, let’s be sensible about this thing. We...”

“But you said yourself you’d got it mixed up with someone else’s.”

“Now listen, hon, that’s not Miss Moline’s typewriter.”

“How do you know it isn’t?”

“Because I... well, it couldn’t be.”

“But you admit that isn’t your typewriter.”

“I’ll have to take another look at it. It may be the same one that I had. You know, those platens get pounded up very quickly. I do a great deal of writing, particularly while I was away on this last trip. I had to write a great, long report.”

“You’re just trying to fool me now. You’re just trying to pull the wool over my eyes. You said before that it wasn’t your typewriter. You’ve just thought of that.”

“Oh, forget it!”

“I’m not going to forget it. Unless you can prove to me you didn’t stay with that Moline woman, I’m going to ring up the district attorney and tell him that I have her typewriter.”

Gibbs said, “You try doing that and I’ll... I’ll break your neck.”

“Oh, you’re going to stick up for her!”

“I tell you, I’m working for some lawyers. If you stuck your finger in the pie, you’d ruin my entire career.”

“All right, then I’ll write an anonymous letter.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Gibbs said, thinking desperately.

“Oh, no? How do you know I haven’t done it already?”

“By George,” Gibbs exclaimed, “I remember now what happened. I took my typewriter to the lawyer’s office, and left it in the outer room. When I went out, I must have picked up one of the lawyer’s typewriters. I’ll take this right back and exchange it for mine. I’ll start right now.”

Mrs. Gibbs stood watching him, her hands on her hips, a sardonic smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“You didn’t eat your dessert.”

“I’m not hungry. I don’t want it.”

“Seems like you’re in an awful hurry to get that typewriter exchanged.”

“Well, I hate to have the lawyer think — and I want mine back.”

“Then you don’t think this is Nita Moline’s typewriter?”

“Of course, it isn’t.”

She said, “Go right ahead, Parker. Go right back to the lawyer’s office and get your own typewriter. When you bring it back, wake me up and show it to me. No matter what time it is, wake me up. Then I’ll let you have this other typewriter. But in the meantime, I’ve got it locked up. And I’m keeping it locked up.”

Hazlit looked up as Tucker came in from the law library, a triumphant grin on his face.

“We’ve got ’em!” Tucker said.

“What is it, Neldon?”

“The legal ace which takes the whole bag of tricks.”

“What?”

“A supreme court decision which has been overlooked by all concerned, one of those peculiar decisions which is logical enough when you read it, but one of which you never think when...”

“What is it?”

“A decision that a murder where two or more people are killed is in the nature of a public calamity.”

“Well,” Hazlit said, smiling, “I certainly wouldn’t think it was a public benefit — unless I could pick the victims — in which event it might be a service to all concerned.”

“Well, there it is in black and white,” Tucker said. “That such a murder is a public calamity.”

Hazlit looked at him with scowling incomprehension. “What good does that do? How does that help us?”

“Don’t you see?”

“No. I’m hanged if I do.”

“It puts us in the saddle, and keeps us there.”

“Will you please explain?”

“Don’t those words ‘public calamity’ mean anything to you?”

“Not a damn thing,” Hazlit said irritably. “All I know is that it looks as though Gibbs... What has a public calamity to do with it?”

“Don’t you remember the code sections dealing with disputable presumptions?”

“Well, what about them? They provide that a letter which has been stamped and deposited in a post office is deemed to have been received by the person to whom it was addressed. I remember that.”

Tucker laughed. He was as bubbling over with enthusiasm as his partner was immersed in irritation. “Among the presumptions is one which fixes the order of death, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, where two or more persons perish in the same calamity.”

Hazlit blinked his eyes. “That code section,” he said, “is limited to a wreck, a battle, or a big fire.”

“No, it isn’t. The words wreck, battle, or conflagration are used as illustration rather than for the purpose of narrowing the purport of the section. It’s subdivision forty of section nineteen-sixty-three, and the fourth sub-paragraph of that sub-division provides that where the two persons are both of the same sex, are both over fifteen years of age, and under sixty, the older person is presumed to have survived longer than the younger.”

Hazlit thought that over. “Good heavens, Neldon, if that means what it says — if that section is applicable — Great Scott, man, it gives us everything! It gives us the estate. It gives us— Hell’s bells, it puts us right in the saddle, and they can’t unseat us to save themselves.”

“That’s it,” Tucker said. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. We’re sitting pretty.”

“That,” Hazlit said, “is excellent — provided Gibbs hasn’t done something careless.”

“What’s Gibbs got to do with it?” Tucker asked.

“A private detective is always trying to show the value of his services. He wants to turn in satisfactory reports showing progress. I hope that Gibbs... well, it would be doubly unfortunate, now that we know the law is in our favor, if Gibbs had... oh, well, never mind.”

Tucker looked at him curiously. He said, “You talked with Gibbs. I didn’t.”

He retired to the law library, pulling the door shut behind him with a certain emphatic gesture of finality.

Hazlit got up, started pacing the floor, his forehead creased in a deep frown.