The Zebra-Striped Hearse

29

I GOT BACK to Isobel Blackwell around noon. All morning county cars had bumped down the old blacktop road, and county men had tramped back and forth along the gangway to the beach house. I told my story, and Blackwell’s, till it grated on my tongue. If I had any doubts of Blackwell’s credibility, I suppressed them. I was bone-tired, and eager to see the case ended.

They trundled his body away. We searched for Harriet’s body in the house and under it, and up and down the beach. We went back to Malibu and examined her car. It told us nothing.

“The consensus is that Harriet’s in the sea,” I told Isobel Blackwell, “that he disposed of her body in the same way he disposed of the topcoat. And like the topcoat it will probably come in with the next big tide.”

We were in her sitting room. The drapes were closed, and she had left the lights off. Perhaps she didn’t want me to see her face; perhaps she didn’t want to see mine. She sat in a long chair and peered at me through the artificial gloom as if I was as monstrous as the things I had had to tell her. The side-to-side movement of her head, the gesture of incomprehension and denial, was threatening to become habitual.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Blackwell. I thought you’d rather hear it from me than get it from the police or read it in the newspapers.”

“Does it have to be in the newspapers?”

“It will be. You don’t have to read them. After you’ve gathered yourself together, you ought to take a long trip, put all this behind you.” My suggestion sounded feeble in my own ears.

“I couldn’t face a journey now.” After a pause, she said in a softer voice: “I thought horrors like this only occurred in Greek plays.”

“The horrors will pass. Tragedy is like a sickness, and it passes. Even the horrors in the Greek plays are long since past.”

“That’s not much comfort to me here and now.”

“It’s something to think about.”

“I don’t want to think.” But she sat locked in thought, as still as ancient marble, her mind transfixed by the Medusa fact: “How could he bring himself to kill Harriet? He loved her.”

“In a sick way. Where girls were concerned, even his own, he was a mother’s boy playing with dolls in the attic. Love like that can change to hatred if it’s threatened. You cut off the doll’s head–”

“He cut off her head?”

“I was speaking figuratively. Apparently he cut her throat with an old razor blade. He used the same blade to slash Campion’s painting.”

Her head had begun its sidewise movement again. “I can understand why Mark had to kill Dolly, or thought he had to. Once he’d used her, she threatened him by her very existence. Ralph Simpson was a threat, and even Ronald must have seemed to be. But Harriet was his own daughter.”

“I suspect she was another threat to him, the most intimate one of all. Did Harriet know about his affair with Dolly?”

“I’m afraid so. Mark had a horrible habit of confession. I don’t suppose he poured it all out, but he did say something to Harriet last spring. He may have felt it was bound to come out, and it was his duty to prepare her. It didn’t have the desired effect.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Harriet came to me with it. She said she had to talk to someone. She was greatly upset, much more deeply upset than I’d ever seen her. She regressed to a very low age level; she was literally bawling with her head in my lap. I didn’t think she should be encouraged to throw childish fits at her age. I told her she ought to be able to take it if I could.”

“How did she handle that?”

“She got up and left the room. We didn’t discuss the subject again. I felt that Mark had made a mistake in telling her. It didn’t improve the situation among the three of us.”

“When did this happen?”

“Some time in March or April. I imagine Mark was concerned about the birth of the child, and that’s why he spoke to Harriet, though he never said a word about it to me. Looking back, it does throw some light on what Harriet was feeling. Dolly had displaced her in Mark’s affections, as she thought. A couple of months later she attached herself to Dolly’s widower. Do you suppose she was aware of what she was doing?”

“Yes,” I said, “and Campion knew what he was doing, but neither of them told the other. I believe that Campion took up with her in Mexico precisely because she was Mark’s daughter. He suspected Mark of killing his wife, and cooked up an affair with Harriet in order to get close to him. He surely wouldn’t have come back from Mexico, with an indictment hanging over him, unless he hoped to clear himself.”

“Why didn’t he ever say anything?”

“He did, last Monday afternoon, when your husband turned a shotgun on him. I failed to get the message. He hasn’t talked since then because he knew he wouldn’t be believed. Campion’s a maverick, an authority-hater, with a certain pride of his own. But he’ll be talking now, and I want to be there when he spills over. You can pay my time and expenses if you like.”

“I’ll be glad to.”

“You’re a generous woman. After some of the things I said to you last night–”

She cut me short with a movement of her head. “They helped me, Mr. Archer. You were cruel at the time, but actually you were preparing me – for this.”

“I was doing more than that. I considered you a possible murder suspect.”

“I know. The point is that you don’t any more. It’s over.”

“Almost over. Campion’s testimony should wind up the case.”

“What do you suppose he will have to say?”

“He probably made the mistake of speaking out to Harriet at the lodge, accusing Mark of Dolly’s murder. She couldn’t take it; it completely destroyed her image of her father. It must have been a shock, too, to learn that Campion had been using her, that his interest in her was mainly on his dead wife’s account. They quarreled, violently. Campion got his face scratched, she was hit on the head, somehow her hat got knocked into the water. She couldn’t have been badly hurt – she was well enough to drive to Malibu – but Campion didn’t know that. Judging by his attitude the other night, he may have thought he killed her, or injured her seriously.”

“But she drove herself from Tahoe to Malibu?”

“Apparently. It took her more than twenty-four hours. She may have had her head wound attended to on the way. She reached the beach house early yesterday morning and telephoned her father. Perhaps she accused him of murder over the phone, or asked him to deny it. He left you a note to put you off the track, went to the beach house, and killed her. He carried her body down to the beach and let it go out with the tide.

“But he had killed once too often. This doll bled. It was his daughter’s blood, and it was real. He was so paralyzed he couldn’t clean up after his final murder. He sat in the back bedroom all day and all night trying to gather the strength to kill himself. Perhaps he had to talk to someone before he did. I happened to be the one.”

“I’m glad it was you, Mr. Archer. And I’m glad he didn’t kill you. Truly glad.”

She rose up in the ruins of her life and gave me her hand. I said I would be seeing her again. She didn’t deny it, even with a movement of her head.