The Zebra-Striped Hearse

27

THE MAID APPEARED in the doorway. She was back in uniform but still using her unzipped personality.

“Now what?”

“Mrs. Blackwell is ill. You’d better see to her.”

She crossed the bedroom to the dark bathroom, dragging her feet a little. I waited until I heard the two women’s voices. Then I made my way back through the house to the telephone I had used before. The Citrus Junction paper with the Simpson story on the front page lay untouched on Isobel Blackwell’s desk. If she had guilty knowledge of it, I thought wishfully, she would have hidden or destroyed the newspaper.

Arnie Walters answered his phone with a grudging “Hello.”

“This is Archer. Have you seen Blackwell?”

He ignored the question. “It’s about time you checked in, Lew. I heard you took Campion last night–”

“I want to know if you’ve seen Mark Blackwell, Harriet’s father.”

“No. Was I supposed to?”

“He set out early Thursday morning for Tahoe, at least that was his story. Check with the people there, will you, and call me back. I’m at Blackwell’s house in L. A. You know the number.”

“Is he on the missing list, too?”

“Voluntary missing, maybe.”

“Too bad you can’t keep track of your clients. Have they all flipped?”

“Everybody’s doing it. It’s the new freedom.”

“Stop trying to be funny. You wake me up in the middle of the night, and you don’t even tell me what Campion had to say.”

“He denies everything. I’m inclined to believe him.”

“He can’t deny the blood on the hat. It’s Harriet’s blood type, and she was last seen with him. He can’t deny the murder of his wife.”

“That was a bum beef, Arnie.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“A semi-fact, anyway. Campion’s no Eagle Scout, but it looks as though somebody made a patsy out of him.”

“Who?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Then what’s your theory about Harriet? She’s vanished without a trace.”

“She may have met with foul play after Campion left her. She was carrying money and driving a new car. We ought to bear down on finding that car. One place to look would be the airport parking lots at Reno and San Francisco.”

“You think she flew some place?”

“It’s a possibility. Look into it, will you, but call me back right away on Blackwell. I have to know if the Tahoe authorities have seen him.”

Isobel Blackwell spoke behind me as I hung up: “Do you doubt everything and everyone?”

She had washed her face and left it naked of make-up. Her hair was wet at the temples.

“Practically everything,” I said. “Almost everyone. It’s a little habit I picked up from my clients by osmosis.”

“Not from me. I’ve never learned the habit of distrust.”

“Then it’s time you did. You’ve been deliberately cutting yourself off from the facts of life, and death, while all hell has been breaking loose around you.”

“At least you believe I’m innocent.”

She came all the way into the room and sat in the chair I’d vacated, turning it sideways and resting her head on her hand. She had drenched herself with cologne. I stood over her with the distinct feeling that she had come to place herself in my power or under my protection.

“Innocence is a positive thing, Mrs. Blackwell. It doesn’t consist in holding back information out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. Or shutting your eyes while people die–”

“Don’t lecture me.” She moved her head sideways as though I’d pushed her. “What kind of woman do you think I am? I’ve asked you that before.”

“I think we’re both in the process of finding out.”

“I already know, and I’ll tell you. I’m an unlucky woman. I’ve known it for many years, since the man I loved told me he was diabetic and couldn’t or shouldn’t have children. When he died it confirmed my unluck. I made up my mind never to marry anyone or love anyone again. I refused to expose myself to suffering. I’d had it.

“I moved to Santa Barbara and went on schedule. My schedule was chock full of all the activities a widowed woman is supposed to fill up her time with – garden tours and bridge and adult education classes in mosaic work. I got myself to the point where I was reasonably content and hideously bored. I forgot about my basic unluck, and that was my mistake.

“Mark came to me late last summer and told me that he needed me. He was in trouble. My heart, or whatever, went out to him. I allowed myself to feel needed once again. I’d always been fond of Mark and his blundering boyish ways. That may sound like a queer description of him, but it’s the Mark I know, the only one I’ve known. At any rate I married him and here I am.”

She turned her head up to meet my eyes. The tendons in her neck were like wires in a taut cable. An obscure feeling for her moved me. If it was pity, it changed to something better. I wanted to touch her face. But there were still too many things unsaid.

“If you’ve been unlucky,” she said, “you become unwilling to move for fear the whole house will come tumbling down.”

“It’s lying in pieces around you now, Mrs. Blackwell.”

“I hardly need you to tell me that.”

“Was Mark in trouble with a girl last summer?”

“Yes. He picked her up at Tahoe and got her pregnant. She was plaguing him for money, naturally. He didn’t care about the money, but he was afraid she’d press for something more drastic. Marriage, perhaps, or a lawsuit that would ruin him in the public eye. What people think is very important to Mark. I suppose he thought that marriage to me would protect him and tend to silence the girl.” Stubbornly, she refrained from naming her.

“Did he have the gall to spell this out to you?”

“Not in so many words. His motives are usually quite transparent. He gives himself away, especially when he’s afraid. He was terribly afraid when he came to my house in Santa Barbara. The girl, or one of her friends, had threatened him with criminal charges. Apparently he’d driven her across the state line.”

“Did you know the girl was Dolly Stone?”

“No.” The word came out with retching force. “I’d never have married Mark–”

“Why did you marry him?”

“I was willing to feel needed, as I said. He certainly needed me, and so did Harriet. I thought a marriage that started badly couldn’t fail to improve. And Mark was so desperately afraid, and guilty. He believed he was on the moral skids, that he might end by molesting little children on the streets. He said I was the only one who could save him, and I believed him.”

“You didn’t save him from murdering Dolly. I think you know that by now.”

“I’ve been afraid of it.”

“How long have you suspected?”

“Just tonight, when we were talking about his topcoat, and I got sick. I’m not feeling very well now.”

A greenish pallor had invaded her face, as though the light had changed. Without thinking about it, I touched her temple where the hair was wet. She leaned her head against my hand.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” I said. “You realize we have to go on to the end.”

“I suppose we do. I lied to you about the topcoat, of course. He bought it when we were on our honeymoon – we ran into some cold weather in Toronto. Mark said it would come in handy when we went up to Tahoe in the spring. I suppose Ralph Simpson found it there, and brought it to Mark for an accounting. Mark took the icepick the Stones had given us–” Her voice broke. “These things are all mixed up with our marriage,” she said. “You’d think he was trying to make a Black Mass of our wedding ceremony.”

She shuddered. I found myself crouching with my arms around her, her tears wetting my collar. After a while the tears stopped coming. Later still she drew away from me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to let my emotions go at your expense.”

I touched the tragic hollow in her cheek. She turned away from my hand.

“Please. Thank you, but also please. I have to think of just one thing, and that’s my duty to Mark.”

“Isn’t that pretty well washed out?”

She raised her eyes. “You’ve never been married, have you?”

“I have been.”

“Well, you’ve never been a woman. I have to follow through on this marriage, no matter what Mark has done to it. For my sake as well as his.” She hesitated. “Surely I won’t have to stand up in court and testify about these things – the icepick, and the coat, and Dolly?”

“A wife can’t be forced to testify against her husband. You probably know that from your social-working days.”

“Yes. I’m not thinking too well. I’m still in shock, I guess. I feel as though I’d been stripped naked and was about to be driven through the streets.”

“There will be bad publicity. It’s one reason I had to get the facts from you tonight. I’d like to protect you as much as possible.”

“You’re a thoughtful man, Mr. Archer. But what can you do?”

“I can do your talking to the police for you, up to a point.”

Her mind caught on the word police. “Did I understand from your telephone conversation just now that you’re asking the Tahoe police to arrest Mark?”

“I asked a friend in Reno, a detective I’ve been using, to find out if your husband is up there. He’s going to call me back.”

“Then what?”

“Your husband will be arrested, if he’s there. He may not be within five thousand miles of Tahoe.”

“I’m sure he is. He was so concerned about Harriet.”

“Or about his own skin.”

She looked at me with sharp dislike.

“You might as well face this, too,” I said. “There’s a very good chance that your husband left here this morning with no intention of ever coming back. What time did he leave, by the way?”

“Early, very early. I wasn’t up. He left me a note.”

“Do you still have the note?”

She opened the top drawer of her desk and handed me a folded piece of stationery. The writing was a hasty scratching which I could hardly decipher:

“It could be a farewell note,” I said.

“No. I’m sure he’s gone to Tahoe. You’ll see.”

I dropped the subject, pending Arnie’s call. Some time went by. I sat in a straight-backed chair by the French doors. The dark sky was turning pale. House lights pierced the emerging hills, like random substitutes for the fading stars.

Isobel Blackwell sat with her head on her arms. She was as quiet as a sleeper, but I knew by the rhythm of her breathing that she was awake.

“There’s one thing I’d like to have clear,” I said to her back. “Is it possible that Mark killed Ronald Jaimet?”

She pretended not to hear me. I repeated the question in the same words and the same tone. She said without raising her head: “It isn’t possible. They were dear friends. Mark went to enormous trouble to bring Ronald down from the high country. He was almost dead from exhaustion when he got to Bishop. He needed medical attention himself.”

“That doesn’t prove anything about the accident. Was there any indication that it was a planned accident?”

She turned on me fiercely. “There was not. What are you trying to do to me?”

I wasn’t sure myself. There were obscure areas in the case, like blank spaces on a map. I wanted to fill them in. I also wanted to wean Isobel Blackwell away from her marriage before she went down the drain with it. I’d seen that happen to sensitive women who would rather die in a vaguely hopeful dream than live in the agonizing light of wakefulness.

I tried to tell her some of these things, but she cut me short.

“It’s quite impossible. I know how Ronald died, and I know how Mark felt about it. He was completely broken up, as I told you.”

“A murder can do that to a man. A first murder. Was Mark in love with you four years ago when Ronald died?”

“He most assuredly was not.”

“Can you be certain?”

“I can be very certain. He was infatuated with – a girl.”

“Dolly Stone?”

She nodded, slowly and dismally. “It wasn’t what you think, not at that time. It was more of a father-daughter thing, the kind of relationship he had with Harriet when she was younger. He brought Dolly gifts when he came to visit us, he took her for little outings. She called him uncle.”

“What happened on the little outings?”

“Nothing. Mark wouldn’t sink that low – not with a young girl.”

“You used the word ‘infatuated.’ ”

“I shouldn’t have. It was Ronald’s word really. He took a much stronger view of it than I did.”

“Ronald knew all about it then?”

“Oh yes. He was the one who put a stop to it.”

“How?”

“He talked to Mark. I wasn’t in on the proceedings, but I know they weren’t pleasant. However, their friendship survived.”

“But Ronald didn’t.”

She got to her feet blazing with anger. “You have a vile imagination and a vicious tongue.”

“That may be. We’re not talking about imaginary things. Did the Dolly issue come up shortly before Ronald’s death?”

“I refuse to discuss this any further.”

The telephone punctuated her refusal. It buzzed like a rattlesnake beside her; she started as though it was one. I walked around her and answered it.

“Arnie here, Lew. Blackwell didn’t turn up at the dragging operations. Sholto was there all day, and he says that Blackwell hasn’t been at the lodge since the middle of May. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Get this. Harriet’s car has been spotted. It was found abandoned off the highway north of Malibu. We just got word from the CHP. What does that mean to you?”

“More driving. I’ll go out there and take a look at the car.”

“About Blackwell, what do we do if he shows up?”

“He won’t. But if he does, stay close to him.”

Arnie said with a strain of grievance in his voice: “It would help if I knew what the problem was.”

“Blackwell is a suspect in two known murders, two other possibles. The ones I know about for sure are Dolly Stone and Ralph Simpson. He’s probably armed and dangerous.”

Isobel Blackwell struck me on the shoulder with her fist and said: “No!”

“Are you all right, Lew?” Arnie’s voice had altered, become soothing, almost caressing. “You haven’t been sitting up all night with a bottle?”

“I’m sober as a judge, soberer than some. You ought to be getting official confirmation in the course of the day.”

I hung up before he could ask me questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Isobel Blackwell was looking at me strangely, as if I had created the situation and somehow made it real by telling Arnie about it. The light from the windows was cruel on her face.

“Has my husband’s car been found?”

“Harriet’s. I’m going out to Malibu to look at it.”

“Does it mean she’s alive?”

“I don’t know what it means.”

“You suspect Mark of killing Harriet, too.”

“We’d better not discuss what I suspect. I’ll be back. If your husband should come home, don’t tell him what’s been said here tonight.”

“He has a right to know–”

“Not from you, Mrs. Blackwell. We can’t predict how he’d react.”

“Mark would never injure me.”

But there was a questioning note in her voice, and her hand went to her throat. Her head moved from side to side in the collar of her fingers.