The Golden Goose

16

And in this swift transshipment of horrors — Grundy to Coley to Princess O’Shea, Coley to Princess O’Shea from one cast of horror to another — Prin went inexorably on.

“Because, you see,” said Prin, “I’ve known about the will all along. Uncle Slater told me about it in confidence just after he had Selwyn Fish draw it up secretly. That was Uncle Slater’s mistake. He forgot that for all the sweetness and light I’m supposed to radiate, I am nevertheless an O’Shea born and bred, however much I’ve always wished I weren’t; and that an O’Shea will do anything, for any reason — even, sometimes, for no reason.

“But this time there was reason enough. Uncle Slater was an old dear, but the way he was going he might have lived on and on and on. And I knew he had left everything to me, and I was sick of pretending to be someone I never really was, and going through the motions of working for my keep — what a joke that job is, and how I loathe it! — and being dependent on handouts, et cetera, ad infinitum. So I stole some of the drug from Mr. Free’s pharmaceutical cubby, and I dropped a lethal dose into Uncle Slater’s bedside bottle of bourbon just before he came home for his nap. If he had to die at my hand, I wanted his death to be as painless and even pleasurable as possible. And it was — oh, I hope it was.

“So now, Coley, go away,” said Prin in a strange half cry. “Go away and let Lieutenant Grundy do whatever he has to do. And don’t look at me that way, I can’t bear it. Go away!”

And Princess O’Shea clutched her pretty face with her two little palms and began to weep, not as if her heart were breaking, but rather as if it had broken long, long before and she had forgotten how to weep properly.

And Lieutenant Grundy, who had been glaring at her in profound horror, now glared at her with profound bitterness; and finally he looked away, as if he were unable to take the sight of her at all any longer, because she had betrayed him into human feeling against the dictates of his policeman’s training and his policeman’s sense, which had told him all along that she had plotted the murder of her uncle.

As for Coley Collins, he had turned his back on her. And there he stood, a sad figure with a droop to his shoulders, in an attitude of hopelessness and helplessness, as if she had reduced him in a stroke to something far less than a man. But then he turned around, and Lieutenant Grundy saw that this had all been illusion, a trick of posture and atmosphere. For Coley Collins’ eyes held something hard and abstracted, and there was a twisted smile on his lips, a smile at once sorrowful and cynical — the grist of a mill that had ground an unexpected portion for the miller. And Coley sighed, and he spoke. And although he addressed Princess O’Shea principally, and Lieutenant Grundy incidentally, he actually seemed to be talking to himself.

“All right, you win,” Coley said. “You win, Princess; and you lose, Coley; and you don’t know what we’re talking about, Lieutenant, which isn’t to be marveled at, because murder isn’t your dish of chop suey, is it? — which is a nice-nelly way of saying you wouldn’t last two weeks on a big-city police force.

“The lady declines to accuse me,” Coley went on as Prin raised her quite tearless face and Lieutenant Grundy parted his quite dry lips, “and I thank the lady for that; but by accusing herself she has cleverly placed me in a position in which I must accuse myself; and that is cleverness indeed. Because it calls on me to act in a manner unnatural and painful and downright stupid, when you come to think of it; and only a master psychologist or an outraged female would think of it.”

Coley Collins turned to Grundy. “Miss O’Shea was right the first time, Lieutenant. I killed Slater O’Shea. He was a nice old bird, and I hated to do it, but I did. Maybe the idea,” he continued, turning to Prin squarely, “sneaked into my head in a sort of suppositional way when your uncle blabbed to me about the will, I don’t know. I do know there was an heiress around, and I’ve never had any luck with heiresses, because either they were ugly and I didn’t want them, or they were pretty and they didn’t want me. But then you came into the taproom one evening, and everything felt just right. You were an heiress, you were a doll, and you were interested. So it became more than a hypothesis — much more. It became a plan — well, all right, a plot. I should like to assure you, if you need assurance, Princess, that Uncle Slater’s money became immensely more attractive because you came with it. But I don’t suppose you care about that now. Anyhow, we both know there was something between us. I knew we’d be married if things worked out, so I put the stuff in your uncle’s bourbon Manhattan-for-the-road that afternoon at my bar just before he left for home. Because of its delayed action I was pretty certain he wouldn’t die till he got there; and I figured his death would pass as from natural causes — heart failure; and I’ll bet it would have, too, if not for that old maniac Appleton.

“The reason I dropped in later that day was to look over the field of action and see if there were any holes in the line that needed plugging. And the first thing I ran into was Appleton’s fool talk about calling the police and having an autopsy and all. And I realized right off that I had to change my strategy. If the thing was going to be handled as a murder instead of a natural death, I had to protect myself. And I saw that the best way to do it was to make it appear that the murder had taken place in Slater O’Shea’s house — if I didn’t do that, the police would surely trace the crime back to my bar. That’s why I conned you into taking me upstairs to your uncle’s room, Princess. And while we were up there I managed to slip some more of the drug into the bourbon bottle on his bedside table, as you figured. I’d taken the stuff from old Winnie’s supply to dose Uncle Slater’s last drink at my bar; I still had some with me — luckily, I thought — so I was sitting pretty.

“Don’t look at me that way, Princess,” Coley went on, a rather wistful note creeping into his voice. “In directing suspicion toward your family so it wouldn’t occur to anyone that I was the last one with opportunity to give old Slater his lethal drink, I knew I was also directing suspicion toward you, as one of the family. In fact, I knew you’d be the principal suspect when the will became known, but I saw no other choice; it simply had to be risked. I kept telling myself that they’d have to prove you stole the drug from old Free’s stock, and I knew you hadn’t stolen any, so how were they going to prove you had? But, let’s face it — I was using you. And that, I suppose, is what you couldn’t forgive, and why you decided to put me on this spot. You had me pegged right. I’m in love with you. Funny, isn’t it, that a jerky little four-letter word should be the thing that in the end made me not able to go through with it? I don’t understand it. It shows that a fellow can’t trust anybody, especially himself.”

And Coley Collins took a short turn about the frozen little office, ruminating aloud with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, like Napoleon. “It might have worked out all right even then if it hadn’t been for Aunt Lallie and that old fish Shark — I mean, that old shark Fish. After Appleton, they’re the ones who really ruined me. No one knew I knew about Slater’s real will, and no one would ever have known if I hadn’t been forced to expose that crooked will they fixed up between them so Lallie could get what Slater intended for Prin. And in being forced to say I knew about the real will, I had to reveal that I had a motive, through you, Prin, for killing him. You were sharp, Prin, sharp; you saw that before anyone else. What a team we could have made! Well, the whole thing went sour. I wish it hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

The stone that had been Grundy stirred. And he made a stony fist and pounded the fist into his palm, looking from Coley Collins to Princess O’Shea as if they were personal enemies.

“Which one of you is telling the truth?” he bellowed. “By God, which one of you is telling the truth?”

For the first time, really, Prin’s glance and Coley’s glance met eye to eye. But then Coley looked away, and he said to Grundy, “I am, Lieutenant.”

“Is he?” Grundy demanded of Prin coldly. “Or are you still sticking to your story?”

Prin shook her head. “I withdraw it, Lieutenant. It has served its purpose. It was all a lie. You’ve just heard the truth from him.”

“In that case,” and Grundy turned to Coley Collins, towering over him like some outraged spirit, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Slater O’Shea, and anything you may say et cetera.”

“I never thought I would be,” Coley sighed, “but it’s clear that I am. Prin, there is something I would like to know, if you don’t mind telling me.”

“There are many things I would like to know,” said Prin, “one of which is how a person like you happens.”

“Would you really have stuck to your confession if I’d kept quiet?”

“Now that,” said Prin, “I don’t know. It’s sometimes hard to tell what one will do.”

“A profound truth,” said Coley. “If anyone had accused me yesterday of behaving as nobly as I have behaved today, I would have laughed in his idiotic face. I must be out of my mind.”

“I shall try,” she said, “to hold on to that thought.”

Prin rose and straightened her frock with finality. As she did so, she looked again at the young murderer, but he seemed to have retreated into some daytime land of dreams. Funny, Prin thought, that she had never really noticed before how old he looked, how old and unredeemable.

“I feel a sudden need for a long, hot, cleansing tub,” Prin said. “May I go now, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Grundy said, “Sure you may,” and to her astonishment it was said with a vast tenderness. “I’ll see you’re not bothered any more than is absolutely necessary...” and he hesitated over a sound that might have been intended to become a word beginning with “P.” But at the last instant it came out a rather stiff “Miss O’Shea.”

And to her continuing astonishment Prin found herself smiling up at this suddenly tender-voiced small-town police officer. She had not thought it possible ever to smile again at anyone, especially a man.

“You may call me Princess,” Prin said shyly; and she was gone.

But not before she heard from behind her the thoughtful tones of Coley repeating the words, “I must be out of my mind... Grundy, I want to phone my lawyer.”

“And who would that be?” growled the tender lieutenant.

“I think... Yes! Selwyn Fish.”

Mr. Coley Collins was already at work preparing his defense.