The Ivory Grin

Chapter 22

I rang three times at long intervals. Sunday bells tolled antiphonally in the silences. Mrs. Benning finally came to the door. A bathrobe of rough brown wool was pulled high around her throat. Her face was marked by sleep, as if she had been battling dreams all morning. “You again.”

“Me again. Is the doctor in?”

“He’s at church.” She tried to shut the door.

My foot prevented her. “That’s fine. I want to talk to you.”

“I’m not even dressed.”

“You can dress later. There’s been another killing. Another friend of yours.”

“Another?” Her hand covered her mouth, as if I had slapped her.

I pushed into the hallway with her and closed the door. Sealed off from the noon glare and the slow Sunday noises, we stood close and looked into each other’s faces. It seemed to me that we shared a twilight understanding. She turned away, her long back swaying from the waist. I kept my hands from reaching out to hold her still.

She spoke to the mirror: “Who was killed?”

“I think you know.”

“My husband?” In the mirror, her face was mask-like.

“That depends on who you’re married to.”

“Sam?” She whirled, in a dancer’s movement, ending plumb. “I don’t believe it.”

“It occurred to me as a possibility that you were married to Charles Singleton.”

She laughed unexpectedly. It wasn’t pleasant laughter, and I was glad when it broke off.

“I’ve never even heard of Singleton. Is that the name – Singleton? I’ve been married to Sam Benning for over eight years.”

“That wouldn’t prevent you from knowing Singleton, knowing him intimately. I have evidence that you did. He was murdered this morning.”

She recoiled from me, breathing hard. Between breaths, she said: “How was he killed?”

“Somebody hit him with a hammer or some other heavy weapon. It made an inch-deep dent in his skull, but it didn’t kill him. Then he was driven up into the mountains in his own car, soaked with gasoline, and set fire to. The car was pushed over a three-hundred-foot bank and left to burn, with Singleton inside it.”

“How do you know it was his car?”

“It’s a 1948 Buick two-door with a dark green body and a light green top.”

“You’re sure it was him inside?”

“He’s been identified. Most of his clothes were burned off him, but his belt-buckle has his initials engraved on it. Why don’t you come down to the morgue and make a formal identification?”

“I told you I don’t even know him.”

“You’re showing a lot of interest in a stranger.”

“Naturally, when you come here and practically accuse me of murdering him. When did all this happen, anyway?”

“Before dawn this morning.”

“I’ve been in bed all night and all morning. I took a couple of nembutals, and I’m still groggy. Why come to me?”

“Lucy Champion and Charles Singleton were both friends of yours. Weren’t they, Bess?”

“They were not.” She caught herself. “Why did you call me Bess? My name is Elizabeth.”

“Horace Wilding calls you Bess.”

“I never heard of him, either.”

“He lives on the Sky Route near Singleton’s studio. He says Singleton introduced him to you in 1943.”

“Wilding is a liar, he always has been a liar.” She caught her lower lip in white teeth and bit it hard.

“You said you didn’t know.”

“You’re doing the talking. Talk yourself to death.”

“Is that what Lucy did?”

“I don’t know what Lucy did.”

“She was a friend of yours. She came here to this office to see you.”

“Lucy Champion was my husband’s patient,” she said flatly. “I told you that last night.”

“You were lying. This morning your husband lied to cover you. He went into an explanation of why he had no records on her, and then he had to explain what he was treating her for. Any real disease would show up in an autopsy, and he knew that. So he had to make her a hypochondriac, a patient whose sickness was caused by fear. There’s no post-mortem test for a phobia.”

“She was a hypochondriac. Sam told me she was.”

“I never knew a hypochondriac who didn’t take his temperature once a day at least. Lucy hadn’t touched her thermometer in two weeks.”

“Wouldn’t that sound good in court, though, against the word of a professional man and his wife?”

“It’s good enough for me. And this is as close to court as you want to get.”

“I see. You’re judge and jury and everything else. Those are a lot of things for one little man to be.”

“Don’t stretch my patience. If I get tired of this, what happens to you? See what kind of a judge you draw downtown. I’m giving you a chance to talk before I hand my evidence to the cops.”

“Why?” Deliberately, she made me conscious of her body. She turned slightly and raised one hand to her head so that one of her breasts was lifted asymmetrically under the wool. The wide sleeve fell away from her round white forearm, and her white face dreamed upward. “Why go to all that trouble for poor little me? Poor little old incendiary me?”

“It’s no trouble at all,” I said.

She laid a cool hand on my cheek and let it trail onto my shoulder before she withdrew it. “Come out to the kitchen. I was making coffee. We can talk there.”

I followed her, not certain which of us was doing what the other wanted to do. The kitchen was large and poorly lit by a window over the sink. The sink was piled with dishes. I sat down at a chipped enamel table and watched her pour two cups of coffee from an automatic glass maker. When she had finished pouring, I pushed my full cup across the table to her and took hers.

“You don’t trust me as far as you can see me, Mr. Man. What did you say your name was?”

“Archer. I’m the last of my branch of the Archer family. I’d hate to see it die out suddenly by poison.”

“No children? Wife?”

“None of those things. Are you interested?”

“I could be.” She pushed out her lips, which were fleshy and well-molded. “It happens I’m already fixed up with a very satisfactory – husband.”

“You find him satisfactory?” Her eyes, which had now gone soft with the rest of her face, narrowed to cool blue slits. “Leave him out of it.”

“Because you’ve been playing him for a sucker?”

“I said leave him out of it. Unless you want hot coffee in the face.” She reached for her cup.

“What about hot gasoline?”

Her cup rattled on the table, slopping some of its contents over the rim. “Do I look like a murderer to you?”

“I’ve seen some fine-looking ones. You can’t deny that you’re a hard girl.”

“I came out of a hard school,” she said. “Do you know the mill section of Gary, Indiana?”

“I’ve passed through.”

“I graduated from it with honors.” A queer pride glinted in her smile. “That doesn’t make me a criminal, though. I might have turned into one if Sam hadn’t taken me out of it. I was on probation when he married me.”

“What for?”

“Nothing much. I guess I was what you call a juvenile delinquent. I didn’t feel like one. My old man was a hunkie, see, a real old-country hunkie. He had the grand old hunkie idea of tying one on and beating the womenfolk every Saturday night. I got tired of hiding under the bed, so I went out on my own. Out into the great world, ha. I waited table for a while and then I made a connection. My connection gave me a hat-check concession in one of the east side clubs. It wasn’t much of a joint but by the time I was sixteen I was making more in tips than my old man ever made sweating it out in the mills. Only my luck went sour. There was gambling in the place I worked, somebody fluffed the protection, and I got picked up in a raid. I copped a plea and they put me on probation. The sourpuss judge set it up so I couldn’t work in the clubs any more. That wasn’t the worst of it. I had to go home and live with the family.”

The dreams she had been battling in her sleep were taking over her waking mind. I didn’t say a word.

“Naturally I took the first chance I had to get out of that stinking flat with the arguments. The social workers were snooping on me, making me stay in nights where the old man could get at me. Sam saved my life. He picked me up in a movie one day. I thought he was a wolf at first, but he was innocent. It was really funny to see a doctor so innocent. Sam was a Navy medico then, stationed at Great Lakes. He was the first man that wanted to marry me, and I took him up on it. He had his orders to California and he was leaving the next week. We came out here together.”

“Did he know what he was getting?”

“He could see me,” she said levelly. “I admit I didn’t tell him I was jumping probation. But let’s get one thing straight about Sam and me, before we drop the subject. I was the one that was doing him the favor. I always have been.”

Looking at her and thinking of her husband, I believed her. “It’s a pretty colorful background for a small-town doctor’s wife. And I don’t imagine you’ve told me the half of it.”

“I don’t imagine I have. More coffee?”

“More information. When did you and Benning come out here?”

“The spring of 1943. They gave him duty at Port Hueneme because it was near his home here. We rented a cottage in Arroyo Beach for six months. Then he was shipped out. The next two years he was at sea, medical officer on a big transport. I saw him a few times when it came into San Francisco.”

“Who else were you seeing?”

“That’s a hell of a question.”

“A hell of an answer. Why did you leave Benning two years ago?”

“You’ve really been snooping, eh? I had my private reasons.”

“You ran away with Singleton, didn’t you?”

She had started to rise from the table, and froze for an instant, leaning on it, with her face averted. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“Singleton was incinerated this morning. I’ve made it my business to find out who struck the match. It’s a queer thing you’re not interested.”

“Is it?”

She poured herself another cup of coffee, with steady hands. Somewhere in the Chicago wilderness, or beating around the country in wartime and peacetime, she had gathered strength and learned balance. I looked at her firm white legs. She caught my look and returned it in a slow curve. To a window-peeper it would have seemed like a pleasant domestic scene on a Sunday morning. I almost wished it was.

I got up and looked out of the window. The backyard was overgrown with brown weeds and cluttered with the detritus of years. At its rear a small ramshackle barn sagged in the shade of a pepper tree.

She came up behind me. I felt her breath on my neck. Her body touched my back: “You don’t want to make trouble for me, Archer. I’ve had plenty of trouble. I could use a little peace in my old age.”

I turned, softly ambushed by her hips. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five. Church lasts a long time in these parts. He usually stays for Sunday school, too.”

I took her head in my hands. Her breasts were full and strong between us. Her hands moved on my back. I was looking at the part-line that ran white through her dull black hair. Where the part divided it there were narrow vestiges of blondeness at the roots.

“I’ve never trusted blondes, Bess.”

“I’m a natural brunette,” she said thickly.

“You’re a natural liar, anyway.”

“Maybe I am,” she said in a different voice. “I feel like nothing at all. This business has torn me in half, if you want the truth. I’m only trying to hold myself together and stay on this side of the walls.”

“And keep your friends out of trouble.”

“I have no friends.”

“What about Una Durano?”

Her face went stupid, with ignorance or surprise.

“She bought you a hat last spring. I think you know her well.”

Her mouth twisted in a grimace which threatened to turn to crying. She was silent.

“Who killed Singleton?”

She wagged her head from side to side. The short black hair fell over her face. Her face was gray and wretched. I felt ashamed of what I was doing to her, and went on doing it: “You were with Singleton when he left Arroyo Beach. Was it a snatch? Did you finger him for a mob, and then have to kill him? Did you have to kill him because Lucy got ideas? Did Lucy dream a five-grand dream and have to die before it came true?”

“You’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t finger Charlie Singleton. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, or Lucy either. She was a friend of mine, like you said.”

“Go on.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m not a squealer. I can’t.”

“Come down to the morgue and have a look at Charlie. You’ll talk then.”

“No.” The word was like a retching in her insides. “Lay off me a little. Promise to lay off me, and I’ll tell you something you don’t know. Something important.”

“How important?”

“Will you lay off me? I swear I’m absolutely clean.”

“Let’s have the one big fact.”

Her head was down, but her slant blue gaze was on my face. “It isn’t Charlie Singleton in the morgue.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is Singleton?”

“I can’t answer any more questions. You promised you’d let me alone.”

“How do you know it isn’t Singleton?”

“That wasn’t in the bargain,” she said faintly. Behind fluttering eyelids, her blue gaze jumped like an unsteady gas flame.

“I’ll put it as a hypothetical question. You know it wasn’t Singleton this morning, because he was killed two weeks ago. He was shot, and you saw it happen. Yes or no?”

She didn’t answer at all. Instead she fell forward against me, heavily. Her breath came fast as a small animal’s. I had to hold her up.