The Zebra-Striped Hearse

26

THE MAID reluctantly let me in. I waited in the hallway, counting the pieces in the parquetry and wishing that I had never seen Isobel Blackwell, or taken her money, or liked her. She finally appeared, wearing the same dark suit and the same dark patches under her eyes. Her movements were carefully controlled, as if she was walking a line.

She said with unsmiling formality: “I hope the importance of your news justifies this late-night visit.”

“It does. Can we sit down?”

She took me into the drawing room, under the eyes of the ancestors. I said to them as well as to her: “I’m doing you a favor coming here. If you weren’t my client, there’d be policemen instead, and reporters trampling the roses.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?” Her speech was slurred, and her eyes had a drugged look. “If I am, you’ll have to explain it to me. And please bear in mind that I may not be thinking too clearly – I’m full of chloral hydrate. Now what were you saying about policemen and newspapermen?”

“They’ll be here tomorrow. They’ll be wanting to know, among other things, if you have an icepick with a square-cut silver handle.”

“We do have, yes. I haven’t seen it lately, but I assume it’s somewhere in the kitchen, or one of the portable bars.”

“I can tell you now it isn’t. It’s in the hands of Sergeant Wesley Leonard of the Citrus County Sheriff’s Department.”

I was watching her closely, and she seemed genuinely perplexed. “Are you trying to threaten me in some way? You sound as though you were.”

“The word is warn, Mrs. Blackwell.”

Her voice sharpened. “Has something happened to Mark?”

“Something has happened to Ralph Simpson and Dolly Stone. I think both those people were known to you.”

“Dolly Stone? I haven’t even seen the girl in years.”

“I hope you can prove that, because Dolly was murdered last May.”

She lowered her head and moved it from side to side, as if she was trying to dodge the fact. “You must be joking.” She stole a look at my face and saw that I was not. “How? How was she murdered?”

“She was strangled, by unknown hands.”

Isobel Blackwell looked at her hands. They were slender and well kept, but the knuckles suggested a history of work. She massaged the knuckles, as if she might be trying to erase the history.

“You surely can’t imagine that I had anything to do with it. I had no idea that Dolly was dead. I was quite close to her at one time – she was virtually my foster daughter – but that was years ago.”

“She was your foster daughter?”

“That may be putting it too strongly. Dolly was one of my projects. The Stones lived across the road from us, and I couldn’t help noticing the beginnings of antisocial tendencies in the child. I did my best to provide her with an example and steer her clear of delinquency.” Her voice was cool and careful. “Did I fail?”

“Somebody failed. You sound a little like a social worker, Mrs. Blackwell.”

“I was one before I married my first husband.”

“Ronald Jaimet.”

She raised her brows. Under them, her eyes appeared strangely naked. “Suddenly you know a great deal about my affairs.”

“Suddenly your affairs are at the center of this case. When I found out tonight that you knew Dolly Stone and her parents, it knocked most of my ideas sideways. I’m trying to work up a new set of ideas, and I can’t do it without your co-operation.”

“I’m still very much in the dark. I’m not even sure what case we’re talking about.”

“It’s all one case,” I said, “Harriet’s disappearance and Dolly’s death and the murder of Ralph Simpson, who was stabbed with an icepick–”

“My icepick?”

“That’s the police hypothesis. I share it. I’m not accusing you of doing the actual stabbing.”

“How good of you.”

“The fact remains that you knew Ralph Simpson, you were almost certainly aware of his death, and you said nothing about it.”

“Is this the same Ralph Simpson who worked for us at Tahoe in the spring?”

“The same. A day or two after he left you he was stabbed to death and buried in the back yard of the house you used to own in Citrus Junction.”

“But that’s insane, utterly insane.”

“You knew about it, didn’t you?”

“I did not. You’re quite mistaken.”

“There’s an account of the Simpson killing on the front page of the Citrus Junction paper in your sitting room.”

“I haven’t read it. I take the paper, to keep track of old friends, but I’m afraid I seldom look at it. I haven’t even glanced at it this week.”

I couldn’t tell if she was lying. Her face had become a stiff mask which refused to tell what went on in the mind behind it. Her eyes had veiled themselves. Guilt can effect those changes. So can innocent fear.

“You have sharp eyes, don’t you, Mr. Archer? Unfriendly eyes.”

“Objective eyes, I hope.”

“I’m not fond of your objectivity. I thought there was a – degree of confidence between us.”

“There was.”

“You put that emphatically in the past tense. Since you’ve been operating with my money, operating on me in fact, I would have expected a little more tolerance, and sympathy. You realize my connection with Dolly proves nothing whatever against me.”

“I’d be glad to see that proved.”

“How can I prove it?”

“Tell me more about Dolly. For instance, what were the antisocial tendencies you noticed in her?”

“Must I? I’ve only just learned of her death. It’s distressing to rake over the past under the circumstances.”

“The past is the key to the present.”

“You’re quite a philosopher,” she said with some irony.

“I’m simply a detective with quite a few murder cases under my belt. People start out young on the road to becoming murderers. They start out equally young on the road to becoming victims. When the two roads intersect, you have a violent crime.”

“Are you suggesting that Dolly was a predestined victim?”

“Not predestined, but prepared. What prepared her, Mrs. Blackwell?”

“I didn’t, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She paused, and took a deep breath. “Very well, I’ll try to give you a serious answer. I was concerned about Dolly, from the time she was four or five. She wasn’t relating too well to other children. Her relationship with adults wasn’t right, either, and it got worse. It showed up particularly in her contacts with my husband. Dolly was a pretty little thing, and her father had treated her seductively and then rejected her. It’s a common pattern. The Stones aren’t bad people, but they’re ignorant people, lacking in insight. They were our good neighbors, however, and Ronald and I believed in helping our neighbors as best we could. We tried to provide Dolly with a more normal family constellation–”

“And yourselves with a daughter?”

“That’s an unkind remark.” Her anger showed through her mask. She forced it back. “It’s true, we couldn’t have children; Ronald had a diabetic condition. I’m also aware of the ease with which good white magic turns into bad black magic. But we made no attempt to take Dolly from her parents, emotionally or otherwise. We merely tried to give her some things they couldn’t – books and music and recreation and the company of understanding people.”

“Then your husband died, and you moved away.”

“I’d already lost her by that time,” she said defensively. “It wasn’t I who failed Dolly. She’d begun to steal money from my purse and lie about it, and she did other things I prefer not to go into. She’s dead: nil nisi bonum.”

“I wish you would go into the other things.”

“I’ll put it this way. I wasn’t able to protect her against degrading influences – I only had a part of her life after all. She ran with the wrong crowd in high school and picked up gutter ideas of sex. Dolly was already mature at the age of fifteen.”

She didn’t go on. Her mouth was grave, her eyes watchful. It was possible, I thought, that Dolly had made a play for Ronald Jaimet before he died. It was possible that Jaimet had fallen for it. A daughterless man in middle age can take a sudden fall, all the way down to the bottom of the hole. It would be a suicidal hole, but suicide came easily to a diabetic. He simply had to forget his dose and his diet.

Being a murder victim came easily to a diabetic, too.

“You have that look again,” Isobel Blackwell said. “That objective look, as you call it. I hope I’m not the object of your thoughts.”

“In a way you are. I was thinking about Ronald Jaimet’s death.”

“Apparently you’ve come here tonight determined to spare me nothing. If you must know, Ronald died by accident. And incidentally, since I think I know what’s on your mind, Ronald’s relations with Dolly were pure – wonderfully pure. I knew Ronald.”

“I didn’t. What were the circumstances of his death? I understand Mark was with him.”

“They were on a pack trip in the Sierra. Ronald fell and broke his ankle. What was worse, he broke his insulin needle. By the time Mark got him down the hill to Bishop, he was in a coma. He died in the Bishop hospital, before I could get to him.”

“So you have the story from Mark.”

“It’s the truth. Ronald and Mark were good friends as well as cousins. Ronald was the younger of the two, and he’d always admired Mark. I could never have married Mark if that hadn’t been the case.”

Under the increase in pressure of my questions, she seemed to feel the need to justify the main actions of her life. I brought her back to Ronald Jaimet’s death.

“Diabetics don’t usually go on pack trips in the mountains. Aren’t they supposed to lead a fairly sheltered life?”

“Some of them do. Ronald couldn’t. I realize, I realized then, that it was risky for him to expose himself to accidents. But I couldn’t bring myself to try and stop him. His annual hike was important to him, as a man. And Mark was there to look after him.”

I sat for a minute and listened to the echoes of her last sentence. Perhaps she was hearing them, too.

“How did Ronald happen to take a spill?”

“He slipped and fell on a steep trail.” She jerked her head sideways as if to deflect the image of his fall. “Please don’t try to tell me that it was accident-proneness or unconscious suicide. I’ve been over all that in my mind many times. Ronald had a great sense of life, in spite of his illness. He was happy in his life. I made him happy.”

“I’m sure you did.”

She went on stubbornly, justifying her life and its meanings: “And please don’t try to tell me that Mark had anything to do with Ronald’s death. The two men were deeply fond of each other. Mark was like an older brother to Ronald. He carried him on his back for miles over rugged trails, back to the jeep. It took him most of a day and a night to bring him down the hill. When Harriet and I finally reached the hospital – she drove me up to Bishop that day – Mark was completely broken up. He blamed himself for not taking better care of Ronald. So you see, you’re wandering far afield when you suggest that Mark–”

“The suggestion came from you, Mrs. Blackwell.”

“No, it was you.”

“I’m sorry, but you brought it up.”

“I did?” She dragged her fingers diagonally across her face, pressing her eyes closed, drawing down one corner of her mouth. Her lipstick was smeared like blood there. “You’re probably right. I’m very tired, and confused. I only have about half a lobe working.”

“It’s the chloral hydrate,” I said, thinking that the drug had some of the properties of a truth serum.

“It’s partly that and partly other things. Before you arrived, I had a very wearing hour with Harriet’s mother. Pauline flew all the way from Guadalajara to find out what had happened. I didn’t know she had so much maternal feeling.”

“What went on in that hour?”

“Nothing, really. She seems to blame me for the family trouble, and I suppose I blame her. Someday, in the brave new world, we’ll all stop blaming each other.”

She tried to smile, and the faltering movement of her mouth charmed me. I would have preferred not to be charmed by her.

“Someday,” I said, “I can stop asking questions. As it stands, I have to go on asking them. What kind of a houseboy was Ralph Simpson?”

“Adequate, I suppose. He worked for us such a short time, it’s hard to say. I don’t like using servants, anyway, which is why we have only the one living in. I’m accustomed to doing things for myself.”

“Is that why Simpson was fired?”

“Mark thought he was too familiar. Mark likes to be treated as a superior being; Ralph Simpson was very democratic. I rather liked it. I’m not really used to the stuffy life.” She glanced up at the ancestors.

“I heard a rumor at Tahoe that Ralph was fired for stealing.”

“Stealing what, for heaven’s sake?”

“It may have been a topcoat,” I said carefully. “When Ralph got home from the lake, he had a man’s topcoat which he told his wife was given him. It was brown Harris tweed with woven brown leather buttons. One of the buttons was missing. Do you know anything about the coat?”

“No. Obviously you do.”

“Did your husband ever buy clothes in Toronto?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Has he ever been in Toronto?”

“Of course, many times. We passed through there on our honeymoon last fall.”

“This coat was bought from a Toronto firm named Cruttworth. Did your husband have dealings there?”

“I couldn’t say. Why is this topcoat so important to you?”

“I’ll tell you if you’ll let me look at your husband’s clothes.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly, without his permission.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I don’t believe he’ll leave Tahoe until Harriet is found.”

“Then he may be there for a long time. The chances are better than even that she’s dead and buried like Ralph Simpson, or sunk in the lake.”

Her face was ugly with dismay. “You think Burke Damis did this to her?”

“He’s the leading suspect.”

“But it isn’t possible. He couldn’t have.”

“That’s his contention, too.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“I ran him down last night. He’s in custody in Redwood City. I thought that was going to close the case, but it didn’t. The case keeps opening up, and taking in more people and more territory. The connections between the people keep multiplying. Damis’s real name is Campion, as you may know, and he married Dolly Stone last September. She had a child in March, and two months later she was strangled. Campion was the main suspect in her death.”

“That’s incredible.”

“What I find hard to believe, Mrs. Blackwell, is that you were totally unaware of all this.”

“But I was. I hadn’t been in touch with Dolly.”

“There has to be a further connection, though. You see that. Bruce Campion alias Burke Damis married your one-time foster daughter last year. This year he planned to marry your stepdaughter, with your support, and got as far as eloping with her. Coincidences come large sometimes, but I’m not buying that one.”

She said in a small voice: “You’re really suspicious of me.”

“I have to be. You tried to keep me off Campion’s back. You promoted his marriage to Harriet.”

“Only because she had no one else. I was afraid of what would happen to her, to her emotions, if she went on being so bitterly lonely.”

“Perhaps you were playing God with her, the way you did with Dolly? Perhaps you met Campion through Dolly, and put him up to marrying Harriet?”

“I swear I never saw him before he came to this house last Saturday night. I admit I rather liked him. People make mistakes. I seem to have made a mistake about you as well.”

Her look was complexly female, asking me for renewed assurances of loyalty and fealty. Under the threat of the situation she was using all her brains now, and the full range of her temperament. I guessed that she was defending herself, or something just as dear to her as herself.

“Anyway,” she said, “what possible advantage could I derive from serving as a marriage broker to Mr. Damis-Campion?”

The question was rhetorical, but I had answers for it. “If your husband disinherited Harriet, or if she was killed, you could inherit everything he has. If Harriet and your husband were killed, in that order, you could inherit everything they both have.”

“My husband is very much alive.”

“At last report he is.”

“I love my husband. I won’t say I loved Harriet, but I cared for her.”

“You loved your first husband, too, and you survived him.”

Tears started in her eyes. She made an effort of will which contorted her face, and cut the tears off at the source. “You can’t believe these things about me. You’re just saying them.”

“I’m not saying them for fun. We’ve had two murders, or three, or four. Ralph Simpson and Dolly, Harriet, Ronald Jaimet. All of the victims were known to you; three were close.”

“But we don’t know that Harriet has been murdered. Ronald definitely was not. I told you the circumstances of Ronald’s death.”

“I heard what you told me.”

“My husband will confirm my account, in detail. Don’t you believe it?”

“At this point I’d be silly to commit myself.”

“What kind of a woman do you think I am?” Her eyes were intent on mine, with a kind of scornful ardor.

“I’m trying to develop an answer to that question.”

“I don’t admire your methods. They’re a combination of bullying and blackmail and insulting speculation. You’re trying to make me out a liar and a cheat, perhaps even a murderer. I’m none of those things.”

“I hope you’re not. The facts are what they are. I don’t know all of them yet. I don’t know you.”

“I thought you liked me, that we liked each other.”

“I do. But that’s my problem.”

“Yet you treat me without sympathy, without feeling.”

“It’s cleaner that way. I have a job to do.”

“But you’re supposed to be working for me.”

“True. I’ve been expecting you to fire me any minute.”

“Is that what you want?”

“It would free my hand. You can’t pull me off the case – I guess you know that. It’s my case and I’ll finish it on my own time if I have to.”

“You seem to be using a great deal of my time, too. And as for freeing your hand, I have the impression that your hand is already excessively free. I can feel the lacerations, Mr. Archer.”

Her voice was brittle, but she had recovered her style. That bothered me, too. Chloral hydrate or no, an innocent woman holding nothing back wouldn’t have sat still for some of the things I had said. She’d have slapped my face or screamed or burst into tears or fainted or left the room or ordered me out. I almost wished that one or several of these things had happened.

“At least you’re feeling pain,” I said. “It’s better than being anaesthetized and not knowing where the knife is cutting you.”

“You conceive of yourself as a surgeon? Perhaps I should call you doctor.”

“I’m not the one holding a knife. I’m not the one, either, who took your silver icepick and stabbed Ralph Simpson with it.”

“I trust you’ve relinquished the idea that it was I.”

“You’re the most likely suspect. It’s time you got that through your head. You knew Simpson, it was your icepick, it was your old stamping ground where he was buried.”

“You don’t have to get rough,” she said in a rough voice. Her voice was as mutable as any I’d ever heard.

“This is a picnic compared with what you’re going to have for breakfast. I kept the police out of your hair tonight by suppressing your present name and whereabouts–”

“You did that for me?”

“You are my client, after all. I wanted to give you a chance to clear yourself. You haven’t used the chance.”

“I see.” A grim look settled like age on her mouth. “What was my motive for stabbing Ralph Simpson and burying him in the yard of our old house?”

“Self-protection of one kind or another. Most murderers think they’re protecting themselves against some kind of threat.”

“But why did I bury him in the yard of our house? That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“You could have arranged to meet him there, knowing the house was empty, and killed him on the spot.”

“That’s a pretty picture. Why would I rendezvous with a man like Ralph Simpson?”

“Because he knew something about you.”

“And what would that delightful something be?”

“It could have to do with the death of Dolly Stone Campion.”

“Are you accusing me of murdering her?”

“I’m asking you.”

“What was my motive?”

“I’m asking you.”

“Ask away. You’ll get no further answers from me.”

Her eyes were bright and hard, but the grinding interchange had hurt her will. Her mouth was tremulous.

“I think I will, Mrs. Blackwell. A queer thing occurred the night Dolly was murdered – queer when you look at it in relation to murder. When the strangler had done his strangling, he, or she, noticed that Dolly’s baby was in the room. Perhaps the child woke up crying. The average criminal would take to his heels when that happened. This one didn’t. He, or she, went to some trouble and ran considerable risk to put the child where he’d be found and looked after. He, or she, picked up the baby and carried him down the road to a neighbor’s house and left him in a car.”

“This is all new to me. I don’t even know where the murder took place.”

“Near Luna Bay in San Mateo County.”

“I’ve never even been there.”

I threw a question at her from left field: “The Travelers Motel in Saline City – have you been there?”

“Never.” Her eyes didn’t change.

“Getting back to the night of Dolly’s murder, a woman might think of the child’s safety at such a time. So might the child’s father. I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t Campion. Are you willing to discuss the possible identity of the child’s father?”

“I have nothing to contribute.”

“I have, Mrs. Blackwell. We have evidence suggesting that the strangler was wearing the Harris tweed topcoat I mentioned. Apparently one of the buttons was loose, about to fall off. The baby got hold of it when the murderer was carrying him down the road. The neighbor woman found the brown leather button in the baby’s fist.” I paused, and went on: “You see why the identification of that topcoat is crucial.”

“Where is the topcoat now?”

“The police have it, as I said. They’ll be showing it to you tomorrow. Are you certain you’ve never seen one like it? Are you certain that your husband didn’t buy a coat from Cruttworth’s in Toronto?”

Her eyes had changed now. They were large and unfocused, looking a long way past me. Under her smudged make-up the skin around her mouth had a bluish tinge, as if my hammering questions had literally bruised her. She got to her feet, swaying slightly, and ran out of the room on awkward high heels.

I followed her. The threat of violence, of homicide or suicide, had been gathering in the house for days. She flung herself along the hallway and through the master bedroom into a bathroom. I heard her being sick there in the dark.

A light was on in the great bedroom. I opened one of the wardrobe closets and found Mark Blackwell’s clothes. He had a couple of dozen suits, hanging in a row like thin and docile felons.

I turned back the right cuff of one of the jackets. Written in the lining in indelible ink was the same cleaner’s code that Leonard had found in the sleeve of the topcoat: BX1207.