The Four Johns

Chapter 13

Susie Hazelwood looked out the window of the Volkswagen. The suburbs were behind them; they were driving through a sweet, still valley in the light of the half moon. The road was bordered blackly by oaks and poplars, pewter hills rising beyond.

Susie fumbled in her purse and took out a handkerchief and touched her nose. In a tight voice she asked, “How do you know Mary is dead?”

“Let’s talk about my chart,” Mervyn said. “A while back I was thinking it was meaningless — an arbitrary set of values arbitrarily rated. For instance, I don’t really know that John Pilgrim is twice as vindictive as John Boce or that John Viviano is bolder than John Thompson. This is just my personal assessment of their characters. Still, maybe I’ve got something.”

“What?” Susie asked scornfully.

Mervyn turned into a side road and stopped the Volkswagen in a patch of moonlight. The motor died, and there was silence. Only gradually did Mervyn become aware of the crickets. To the north and east twinkled lights, the occasional flicker of automobiles along the Freeway.

Mervyn said, “As we were leaving the coffee shop I looked at you and I said to myself: If I were to grade Susie by this chart, she’d rate a perfect score. Eighty out of eighty on the nose. Ingenuity, imagination, duplicity, perversity, boldness, the lot.

“Lucky for Susie, I told myself, the chart is just nonsense. Then I began thinking. I tested you out against my outline of events. I could find nothing that really pointed to you until I remembered what happened last night. Somebody shot at me from the back lot.

“Like a damn fool I immediately ran to see who it was. I found nobody, and couldn’t understand where he’d gone. But with every possible place eliminated — but one — it had to be that one. And that was into one of four apartments of the south six-plex — through a back window. Not Harriet’s, not Mrs. Kelly’s — the fence stops before it passes under their windows. Apartment Nine is vacant and the people in Apartment Eight are on vacation. Apartment Seven is full of airline stewardesses none of us ever got to know. That left Apartment Twelve, Susie. Your apartment.

“No real problem for an athletic wench to take a shot at Mervyn, then run around, jump up on the fence, climb through the back window and watch old Mervyn blundering back and forth.” He turned to scrutinize her. “If I’d caught you, you’d probably have killed me then and there.”

“Just as I can now,” said Susie. There was a little .22 revolver in her hand. She had her back against the door and she was holding the gun close to her body, where Mervyn could not easily get at it. “With no more compunction than when you killed Mary. Or pushed Mrs. Kelly down those steps.”

Mervyn sat staring into the set white face.

Susie went on in a bitter, taunting way. “You thought you were frightfully clever bringing me here, didn’t you? How naïve do you think I am? Do you know why I let you drive me way out here? Because it’s after midnight, Mervyn. It’s tomorrow.”

Mervyn slapped at the gun. It exploded and the bullet passed under his chin and out the open window. He grabbed the .22 with one hand and Susie with the other, shoulder under her jaw to keep away from her teeth.

He wrenched, and had the gun.

Susie pressed back against the door, panting. Mervyn sat quietly, waiting for his heart to slow down.

After a while he said, “So I killed Mary. In that case, of course, I’ll have to kill you.”

Susie said nothing. Her eyes flashed in a moonbeam.

“By the way, how did you know I killed Mary?”

“Because I saw you.”

“Oh, you did?” Mervyn said. “Suppose you tell me about it.”

“I saw you club her to death with your ski boot.”

“Really. Well. Tell me more. From the beginning.”

“Mary was flying south.” It spilled out in her frustration. “She asked John to take her to the airport.”

“John who?”

“Boce. John had a date with Harriet, but after he broke it Harriet wouldn’t let him borrow her car. So he couldn’t take Mary after all. I told Mary I’d take her in your convertible — I didn’t think you’d mind — but she was still angry with me from our spat and said she preferred to take a cab. I told her not to be a ninny and went out back to the garage to get your convertible anyway, and I was coming around the corner and pulling up at the curb when I saw Mary had already come out with her bag and was sitting in your Volkswagen. I couldn’t understand it, so I just sat there and watched. And that’s when I saw you come out and take your ski boot and lean into the Volkswagen where Mary was sitting. And to my horror I saw Mary fall over. I couldn’t believe my eyes; I thought I was dreaming the whole thing. But then you jumped into the Volkswagen and drove away... with Mary’s body.

“I followed you in your convertible. What else could I do? I followed you for hours. All the way down the valley. After you’d passed through Merced you turned off the road and headed out into the country. I stayed behind you, driving with my lights off for most of the way. When you turned off onto a little private side road, I didn’t dare follow with the car, so I parked and walked in. You drove to an old barn—”

“Part of what used to be my grandfather’s cattle ranch.”

“...and I watched you through a window. You pried up some floor boards and then carried Mary’s body in and crammed it in the hole. Along with her suitcase. Then you replaced the boards and scattered straw around and drove off.

“I walked back for your convertible — I’d left it behind some bushes off the road, so I knew you couldn’t have seen it in passing — and while I walked, I knew what I was going to do. I drove the convertible to the barn, pulled up the boards, dragged Mary’s body out” — Susie’s voice faltered — “and put the body and her suitcase in the trunk of your car. You’d left the boot behind, too, that dreadful boot, so heavy and smeared with... with—”

“That must have seemed stupid of me,” Mervyn said.

“Anyway, I threw the boot and Mary’s purse in the convertible and drove off. My first thought was naturally to drive to the nearest police station, but then I decided not to go to the police at all. They might think I was in on it with you, or even that I’d done it myself and tried to involve you, because I had had that quarrel with Mary just before she left, and at least one person knew it, Harriet Brill, and of course it would be bound to come out.

“So I decided that the best way to do it was keep myself out of it altogether. I drove to Madera and left the convertible there, figuring that when the police found it they’d look in the trunk first off and find Mary’s body and of course trace the car directly to you. I decided not to leave Mary’s purse and the boot you’d killed her with in the car; I thought they could serve a more useful purpose if they were actually found in your possession. There was a big paper bag in the car from some marketing you’d apparently done, and I put the purse and the boot in it, and after I abandoned the car I took the paper bag and walked a good way from where I’d left it and then grabbed a cab to the bus station and got back to Berkeley on the bus.”

“And the next day, I suppose,” Mervyn said, “when I wasn’t in, you got into my apartment through my bedroom window and planted the purse and the boot there for the police to find?”

“Yes,” snapped Susie, “exactly. I thought I had you nicely trussed up for the police, and I waited for them to find the car and Mary’s body in it, and search your apartment and find her purse and the ski boot you’d murdered her with. Only you were too smart for me, Mervyn. You undid everything I’d done, after the police stupidly didn’t look into the trunk when they found your car.

“Well, I swore to Mary’s memory that I wouldn’t let you get away with her murder. I still thought it safer not to become involved, so I began sending you those anonymous notes, hoping that what scraps of conscience you had left would drive you to go to the police and make a confession. But when I saw it wasn’t working, that you didn’t give yourself up, that you’d undoubtedly disposed of every shred of evidence connecting you with the murder, I knew there was nothing left for me to do but punish you myself — kill you with my own hands. And now I’ve failed in that, too. What a mess I’ve made of it all!”

“You just don’t have a talent for these things,” Mervyn said sympathetically, “although I must admit you gave me a hard time. I don’t suppose you’d care to hear my confession now?”

“Oh, stop playing with me, you — you sadist,” Susie said dully. “Shoot me and get it over with.”

“But the longer I talk the longer you live. Right?” When she did not bother to reply, Mervyn settled back and said reflectively, “In the main you’ve described events with reasonable accuracy. In the main.

“I’d just driven up in the Volkswagen when Mary came running out of the court carrying her suitcase. She asked if I’d drive her to the airport. I said I would if she’d wait till I got rid of a bag of groceries, changed my shirt and put on a jacket. She said she had time, so she got into the Volkswagen with her bag and I went to my apartment. I couldn’t have been gone more than five, six minutes, Susie. When I came back I found Mary sitting on the seat with her skull crushed and my ski boot in her lap.”

Susie was glaring at him.

“I picked the boot up, and her body fell over side-wise... I was stunned. Not only by the shock of seeing Mary that way, but of the fix I was in if anyone should see me. I’d surely be accused of Mary’s murder. And if that happened — regardless of whether I was cleared or not — the notoriety, the mere fact of being connected with a bloody homicide, would ruin my career. You know what an old lady Professor Burton is. I not only wouldn’t get the assistant professorship I was after, I’d be fired from the university and probably blackballed everywhere.

“Well, I panicked. I know now — I think I even knew it then — that it was stupidly wrong. But all I could feel was that I had to get Mary’s body out of my car and my life. So I got into the Volkswagen and drove off. And, of course, the moment I did that I was committed — any chance I might have had of convincing the police I was innocent I kicked away in that one blind act.

“The irony of the whole thing was that someone had seen me, someone did assume I was a murderer. You.”

“You filthy liar!” Susie choked. “How can you sit here and tell me such lies when I saw you hit her with that boot — saw you with my own eyes?”

“What you saw in that evening light, Susie,” Mervyn said gently, “was me leaning into the car — at which Mary’s body fell over on its side — while I tossed the boot in the back. That’s what you saw.”

Susie blinked and blinked and blinked at him.

“You don’t believe me,” Mervyn said.

Susie licked her lips.

“Susie,” Mervyn said. “She was already dead when I got there.”

She began to sob hysterically. Mervyn watched her. After a while he put his hand on her shoulder. She gasped and jerked away from his touch.

“Damn it,” Mervyn growled. “If I didn’t kill Mary, it’s not likely I’m going to kill you, is it?”

“I don’t believe you! I can’t!”

“You’re too upset to think clearly, Susie. If I’m a murderer, then you’re going to be murdered. If I’m not a murderer — if I’ve told you the truth — then you’re perfectly safe. Isn’t that so?”

Her mouth was open a little. But she did nod, ever so slightly.

“Well, you can relax. I have no intention of murdering you.”

Susie expelled a deep shuddering breath. “But I tried to murder you.”

“Yes,” he said morosely, “and for that I owe you. But the truth is, I brought it on myself. So I’m not even going to beat you up. I don’t know, maybe I’ll kiss you.”

Susie started to say something, but stopped.

Mervyn went on in a broody voice. “Driving off with Mary dead beside me — wanting only to get rid of the body, I thought of Madera. I’d grown up there. I had no idea you were following me. Later, when I found the body I thought I’d buried in that barn lying in the trunk of the convertible, it was the worst jolt of my life.”

Susie cleared her throat. “What did you do with her?”

Mervyn said, “The river,” in a very low voice.

Susie stared blindly ahead.

“My only excuse, Susie, is that I was in a complete funk.”

Susie asked in a husky whisper, “If you didn’t kill Mary, who did?”

“I don’t know. ‘John’ — whichever John it is. I’ve detected my head off, and I still don’t know which one. Of course, all the time I kept going on the assumption that Mary’s killer was sending me the notes and so on. What a detective.”

Susie put her hand on his arm. “Mervyn.”

Mervyn looked at her.

“Mervyn, I’m sorry.” Her voice was harsh and forlorn. “For both of us. It’s too late to feel sorry for Mary.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” said Mervyn bitterly. “I’m not only a lousy gumshoe, I’m a moral weakling besides.”

“Mervyn.”

“What?”

“Let’s go to the police, and tell them everything.”

Mervyn did not reply.

“What’s the matter?” Susie cried. “Are you afraid they might not be as gullible as I am?”

“Oh, stop it,” Mervyn said. “I was just thinking that all of a sudden I don’t give a damn if old Burton does kick me out. Who wants to spend the rest of his life in the twelfth century, anyway? By the way, here.” He tossed the little .22 into her lap. “Better put it on safety before you shoot your big toe off.”

“Then the police it is?” cried Susie gladly.

“The police it is.”

Mervyn started the car, and Susie’s breath came out in a great sigh, and she stared down at the little revolver and finally picked it up and dropped it in her bag. And all the way back to Berkeley they sat with shoulders touching, feeling very close and yet very far away from each other, too. There was a sort of intimate sadness in the Volkswagen.

He parked it before the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments and switched off the headlights. They sat in the dark.

“I thought we were going to the police,” Susie said, even more sadly.

“We are,” Mervyn said. “But on the way home I couldn’t help thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

“How very strange that Mrs. Kelly should fall down the steps here the same night Mary was murdered.”

“Mervyn!”

“What?”

“We must be telepathic. I was thinking the same thing!”

“There’s something even stranger, Susie. Not only did Mrs. Kelly fall down the steps the night Mary was murdered, but the old lady is positive I’m the one responsible for her fall. That I pushed her. I think we can assume that she was pushed, all right — she’d hardly have imagined that. But why does she insist I did the pushing? I didn’t, Susie, you know. The whole thing is very peculiar.”

“It certainly is,” said Susie, and they sat in silence. And all of a sudden Susie looked up and said, “Mervyn.”

“What, Susie?”

“I think this is important enough to investigate as quickly as possible.”

“But the police...”

“Another day won’t matter, will it?”

“But where would we start investigating?” Mervyn asked rather helplessly. “I’ve already proved what a bust I am as a detective.”

“We go to the horse’s mouth — Mrs. Kelly.”

“In the hospital?”

“Where else? It’s too late tonight — after visiting hours — but we can go first thing in the morning. We can both use a good night’s sleep, anyway, after — after everything that’s happened today. All right?”

Mervyn took her hand and squeezed. It was warm and alive, and it squeezed back.

“All right,” said Mervyn fervently.

Daytime visiting hours were not until 2 P.M., but Susie knew the nurse on the floor, and they managed to get into Mrs. Kelly’s room. Mrs. Kelly took one look at Mervyn and opened her mouth to shriek. Susie was on her in a bound.

“Mrs. Kelly, Mrs. Kelly,” Susie said swiftly, “don’t. I’m here — I’ll protect you. Trust me, won’t you?”

The old lady mumbled excitedly from under Susie’s firm hand.

“Promise me you’ll just listen. Promise?”

Mrs. Kelly nodded and subsided. Susie took her hand away. Mervyn, poised at the closed door timidly, relaxed, but only just enough so that his muscles would respond to the emergency of instant flight if instant flight became necessary. As for Mrs. Kelly, she kept her terrified eyes on him throughout.

“Here’s what we want to know, Mrs. Kelly,” Susie said rapidly. “You claim Mervyn Gray here was the one who pushed you down those steps...”

“He was the one,” whispered the old lady.

“How do you know?” asked Susie.

“What?” said Mrs. Kelly.

“I said, how do you know Mervyn was the one who pushed you? When people are pushed downstairs the pushing has to be done from behind, hasn’t it? Or it simply isn’t pushing. So I ask you, Mrs. Kelly: If you were just starting down the steps and someone came up behind you and gave you a shove, how can you know it was Mervyn Gray?”

Mervyn could only look at Susie with abject adoration. There was a brain. The perfectly obvious point had stared him in the face all the time, and he hadn’t seen it once. What a girl! he thought.

“What I’m getting at is,” said Susie, “you didn’t actually see Mervyn push you, Mrs. Kelly, did you?”

“Well, no...” the old lady mumbled. “But somebody else did! She told me.”

“Oh,” said Susie.

“The person happened to be at her apartment window with the lights off,” Mrs. Kelly quavered, “and she saw me come out of my apartment and walk over to the steps. Then she saw Mr. Gray sneak up behind me barefooted, looking like — like a crazy man, and push me hard as he could just as I was starting down. Yes,” cried the old lady, pointing a shaking finger directly at Mervyn, “and she says you were laughing like a maniac all the time you were doing it, Mr. Gray! Shame on you! Doing a thing like that to a body that never did a mortal person harm!”

“Shhh,” Susie said soothingly, stroking the old lady’s hand. “Mr. Gray didn’t do it, Mrs. Kelly.”

“He... didn’t?”

“No, Mrs. Kelly. You were pushed by someone else.”

“But... but she told me he did it! She told me she saw the whole thing!” cried the old lady.

“Who told you, Mrs. Kelly?”

“Why, Harriet Brill!”

“I don’t think there’s any question now about what happened,” Mervyn said as he and Susie sat in the Volkswagen near the hospital entrance after they came down from Mrs. Kelly’s room. “And now that I know what happened, and that nobody named John had a damn thing to do with it, I keep wondering how one person could have been so wrong about so many things.”

“Poor Mervyn,” mourned Susie, with a little laughter in the mourning. “I wasn’t seeing exactly straight myself.”

“Why, you’ve been wonderfully perceptive,” Mervyn said warmly. “Oh, of course I see it all now — after you’ve practically drawn me diagrams.

“The whole thing was based on a misunderstanding on Harriet’s part. That phone conversation she told you she overheard in your apartment, when Mary was on the phone talking to ‘John.’ Actually, Mary was talking to John Boce at that time, trying to cajole him into driving her to the airport — not arranging to elope with him; I don’t think Mary was intending to go away with anybody, just off on a jaunt somewhere by herself.

“Anyway, hearing Mary’s usual lovey-dovey stuff with Boce on the phone, Harriet jumped to conclusions. And when, later that evening, Boce broke his date with Harriet on an obviously false pretext, and then asked to borrow her car, Harriet must have been positive that it was John Boce she had overheard Mary arranging to ‘go away’ with. And, for Harriet, that must have been the last straw — the man she was secretly gone on having the gall to ask for her car to elope, as she thought, with another woman!

“Of course, she turned Boce down cold about her car; but she must have been furious, and when she saw Mary leaving with the suitcase — that must have been just before or about eight o’clock that evening — she made up her mind to have it out with Mary then and there.

“By the time Harriet reached the sidewalk,” Mervyn said, frowning, “Mary must already have been sitting in my Volkswagen waiting for me to drive her to the airport. And Harriet leaned in and began jawing at her, accusing Mary of stealing John Boce from her—”

“And knowing my sister Mary,” Susie murmured, “she must have told Harriet where she could go. God knows Mary didn’t want John Boce. But she’d want even less another female telling her she couldn’t have him.”

Mervyn nodded. “Whatever it was Mary said to her, Harriet lost her head. She reached over and grabbed the first thing she saw — which happened to be my ski boot — and brought it down with all her might on Mary’s head. And then ran back to her own apartment. I was in my apartment depositing my groceries and changing my shirt preparatory to driving Mary to the airport, and you were getting my convertible, and the whole thing between Mary and Harriet must have happened during those few minutes. By the time you drove around the corner and I got out there, Mary was already dead and Harriet was back in her apartment. The only part of it I don’t understand at all is that shoving-Mrs.-Kelly-down-the-steps business.”

“You stepped out of the room to argue with the head nurse when she found us in Mrs. Kelly’s room,” Susie said, “and while you were out Mrs. Kelly told me something that answers the question.

“Mrs. Kelly had been over to the church at a committee meeting earlier, she said, and when I asked her what time she got back she said it was just about eight o’clock. Mervyn, the Volkswagen was parked right outside the Garden Apartments, where Mrs. Kelly had to go past it on her way in. So she must have passed the Volkswagen when Harriet was either arguing with Mary or, for all I know, even killing her.

“As it happens,” Susie said, “Mrs. Kelly didn’t even notice. But Harriet must have seen her—”

“And assumed Mrs. Kelly watched the whole thing happen!” Mervyn cried.

“That’s right. So when Harriet ran back to her apartment with Mary’s blood on her conscience — if any — she probably had only one thought: to shut Mrs. Kelly’s mouth. Her chance came later that evening when the old lady left her apartment to go back to the church, or wherever she was bound. When Mrs. Kelly reached the top of the steps, Harriet sneaked up behind her and pushed her down—”

“Tried to kill her, too,” muttered Mervyn.

“But when Mrs. Kelly didn’t die, Harriet naturally had to keep visiting her in the hospital just to see how much she did know or remember. And apparently Harriet decided Mrs. Kelly’s fall had knocked the whole thing out of her poor old head. So then, just to round things off, she told Mrs. Kelly that whopper about having seen you do the pushing.” Susie shuddered. “Between Harriet and me, Mervyn, we almost did a perfect job on you—”

Mervyn grabbed Susie’s arm. “Susie!”

“What?”

“Talk of the devil.”

Up the street came Harriet Brill, shapeless in a baggy purplish tweed suit. She was carrying an armful of flowers.

“She’s on her way to see Mrs. Kelly,” Susie gasped. “And the old lady’s sure to spill the beans—”

“Call her over here,” Mervyn said swiftly. “And play along with me, Susie!”

Susie leaned out the window. “Harriet!”

Harriet stopped dead in her tracks. But then she grinned all over, and hurried toward the Volkswagen with happy cries. “Mervyn! Susie! What are you two doing here?”

“We’ve just been kicked out of the hospital,” said Mervyn darkly. “Came to visit with Mrs. Kelly, and the head nurse made an awful row because it wasn’t visiting hours.”

“Oh, shoot,” said Harriet. “I thought the poor thing might like some fresh flowers.”

“Better not go up there, Harriet. That battle-ax of a nurse,” said Susie, “has blood in her eye.”

“Well...” said Harriet doubtfully.

“We were just leaving,” Mervyn said. “Jump in. I’ll drive you back.”

“Why, thank you,” said Harriet. “Aren’t you sweet!”

Susie squeezed forward to let Harriet get in the back, and Mervyn started the Volkswagen and drove down Grove Street.

Harriet suddenly said, “Why are we going this way?”

“Oh, I got a damn parking ticket,” Mervyn said. “I’ll only be a minute paying my fine,” and he parked at the Berkeley City Hall and jumped out and hurried toward the annex housing the Police Department.

“Any word from Mary?” Harriet asked casually. “Mervyn has been worried about her.”

“She’s probably having the time of her life in Ventura,” Susie answered, not trusting herself to turn around.

“Strange she hasn’t written.”

“Well,” said Susie in a strangled voice, “you know Mary.”

Conversation languished. Presently Harriet said, “Mervyn’s certainly taking a long time.”

“Here he comes now.”

“Who’s that handsome man with Mervyn?”

Mervyn leaned into the car. “This is Lieutenant Hart, ladies. Susie Hazelwood in front, lieutenant. In back — Harriet Brill.”

Lieutenant Hart nodded politely. “How do you do? Would you both mind coming inside for a minute?”

Susie got out of the car. Lieutenant Hart held the door open. “Miss Brill?”

“What do you want?” Harriet faltered.

“I want to ask a few questions. We’ll be more comfortable inside.”

Harriet got slowly out of the car. She turned toward Mervyn and Susie, who were standing a little aside. In their tense, accusing faces she suddenly read something terrible. She looked wildly around, but Lieutenant Hart took her firmly by the elbow.

“What have they been telling you?” Harriet cried. “Whatever it is, it’s a lie!”

“Then you won’t mind telling me the truth, Miss Brill,” said Lieutenant Hart courteously, “will you?”