This Game of Murder

Chapter XIV

A week after the hearing Jonas Marshall called his son into his office for a conference. “We’re going to have a change of policy,” he announced abruptly.

Marshall cocked an inquiring eyebrow.

“So far in this thing we’ve stuck conservatively to factual accounts of events,” the editor of the News said. “Meantime every other newspaper in the country has been playing the case to the hilt. We’re on the inside and you have a personal relationship with everyone involved except this Thomas woman. You’re the only reporter Betty will see and you’re a personal friend of the D.A., the defense attorney and the chief of police. It’s a little ridiculous that with all this advantage, we’re letting the whole country scoop us.”

His son stared at him. “You mean you’re going to start crucifying Betty, too?”

“Of course not,” Jonas said impatiently. “Anyway, she’s already been stripped bare for the whole nation to see. It would be a little silly at this point to start rehashing everything that’s already been said, even if we practiced that yellow sort of journalism. What I have in mind may actually help her.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

“My idea is a series of articles stressing the tragic aspects of the case and tending to be sympathetic to Betty. Chief Meister, Arn Ross and Hank Quillan are so tired of reporters by now that their standard answer to everything is, ‘No comment.’ But they’ll talk to you. And all three have known Betty since she was a child. For example, your slant for the story on the chief could be that he always regarded Betty as a particularly fine woman, and it was a shattering experience for him to have to arrest her. Arn’s could follow a similar vein. With Quillan you could show his dedicated belief in her innocence and his confidence of an acquittal. It’s exactly the reverse of what everyone else has been doing to her, you see.”

Marshall was staring at his father coldly.

“Then we could cap it with an article on Betty, playing up the pathos of her situation,” Jonas went on, oblivious to his son’s expression. “Here’s a woman used to everything money can buy, whose whole world has suddenly tumbled about her. You could contrast the drab surroundings of the county jail with her big home at Rexford Bay. Describe how her usual vivaciousness had deteriorated into listless despair. You can touch on the tragic effect on young Bud, who has already lost one parent and now may lose the other. What do you think?”

“I think it stinks,” his son said.

Jonas reddened slightly. “A good news reporter can’t let personalities affect his reporting.”

“This isn’t reporting. It’s sob-sister stuff. I wouldn’t write that kind of drivel even if it was Gail Thomas in the can instead of Betty.”

“You’ll write what I tell you to!” Jonas yelled.

Marshall leaned both palms on the desk. “I’ll write news stories. By definition, news stories are reports of events, not tabloid regurgitations disguised as information. If you want to fill the paper with sob-sister feature articles, write ‘em yourself.”

Turning on his heel, he strode to the door.

“Come back here!” Jonas roared.

The reporter turned with his hand on the knob. Jonas glared at him and Marshall glared back. There was a long period of silence. Finally the older man made a dismissing gesture.

“Eventually you’ll take over this job,” he growled. “I hope the hell when you do, you have a son exactly as pigheaded as you.”

Marshall smiled at him. “I won’t be as crotchety an editor.”

He went out and closed the door behind him. Ten minutes later his father sent word to the city room that he wanted to see him again.

When the reporter entered the editor’s private office for the second time, Jonas said, “I’ve got another idea, and this one’s straight reporting.”

“What?” Marshall asked.

“Everybody in this case has been turned inside out except the victim. About all that’s been printed about Bruce Case is that he was Betty’s husband, was a local lawyer, and came here eleven years ago from Philadelphia. His origins and antecedents haven’t been touched on, because nobody knows what they are. Eventually some reporter is going to dig, though. Maybe his life before he came here was as dull as carrot pie, but maybe again there’s something in it that would make news. Do you consider that straight reporting?”

“I guess,” Marshall admitted.

“Then, for once, let’s not get scooped. I want you to run down to Philadelphia and find out everything you can about him.”

“Okay,” his son said agreeably.

Jonas looked a bit surprised. “Check the airline schedule out of Buffalo and catch the next flight.”

“I have to run down to the county jail first. Betty’s expecting me at eleven.”

“I knew it was too much to expect instant obedience just for once,” Jonas exploded. “Send a message that you can’t make it.”

“The logical place to start on Bruce is to get as much information as I can from his widow,” Marshall said reasonably. “I’m not going to rush blindly into Philadelphia with nothing but a name.”

His father subsided. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted grudgingly. “Anyway, get there as fast as you can, before some other reporter beats you to it.”

Marshall started out, paused at the door and asked, “Who’s going to mix your martinis while I’m gone?”

Jonas merely grinned at him.

Back in the city room Marshall made his usual morning phone call to Audrey Reed and learned that Bud was fine. He arrived at the county jail just at eleven.

The women’s section was not built for maximum security, so it wasn’t necessary to talk through a screen of meshed wire. The visitors’ room was large and plain with small, individual tables having a chair on either side of them. There were two other men seated at tables when Marshall was let in. He took the table farthest from them. A few moments later a matron escorted Betty and two other female prisoners in through the opposite door.

All three were dressed in the same drab, sacklike prison dresses. But even in this unattractive garment Betty managed to look shapely. She could wear a flour sack with a stylish flair, Marshall thought.

The matron remained in the doorway, out of earshot, but where she could watch everything going on. Seating him self across from Marshall, Betty reached out to give his hand a squeeze.

“Old faithful,” she said. “I don’t know how I’d hold up without you. How’s Bud?”

“Fine, according to Audrey.” He studied her face. “You’re still losing weight.”

“It isn’t just despondency,” she said dryly. “The food here isn’t exactly from the Ritz.”

“Maybe you’ll be out in a week,” he said. “Maybe the grand jury won’t return a true bill.”

She gave him a pale smile. “I’ve already stopped hoping that. Henry has no hope of it, and he should know. He says that after the indictment the trial probably won’t be set for months, so I’ll be here for a long time even in the unlikely event that I’m finally acquitted.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said roughly. “You’ll be acquitted. You’re innocent.”

“Only five people in the world aside from me seem to think so,” she said, still smiling. “Aunt Audrey and Uncle George, Bud, Henry Quillan and you.”

“You can add Mom and Dad to the list. Lydia, too.”

“Lydia’s on my side?” she said with raised brows. “Of her own accord or because of you?”

“Mainly, I suppose, because she has faith in my judgment,” he admitted.

“I suppose you still see a lot of her,” she said wryly.

“Not at the moment.” Then he added with honesty, “I’ve been avoiding her because I don’t want the visiting newsmen to get any ideas about us and splash her name in papers all over the country.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “You’re a remarkably honest person, Kirk.”

“I try to be. I won’t be here tomorrow, incidentally.”

“Oh?”

“I’m flying to Philadelphia. Dad wants me to look into Bruce’s background.

She looked surprised. “Whatever for?”

“We run a newspaper. Everything you and Gail Thomas ever did has been reported in other papers. Dad wants a scoop on Bruce. Don’t worry. We won’t print anything sensational. We wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, any more than you already have been.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she said, but he noticed a suddenly withdrawn look in her eyes.

“You could make it easier for me by giving me a brief biographical rundown,” he said.

“All right,” she said, smiling again. “He graduated from Cornell Law School when he was twenty-four and had been a law clerk in Philadelphia for a year when we met. His parents both died about the time he graduated, so I never knew them. Now you shouldn’t have to go to Philadelphia.”

“I can hardly spread that to two columns,” he said. “Who were his parents?”

“His father’s name was Harlan and his mother’s Martha. He was a contractor of some kind.”

“Well, that gives me something to start on. What was the name of the law firm where he was a clerk?”

“I’ve forgotten,” she said, and he got the odd impression that she was lying. She reached across to press his hand again. “Is it so important to do a story on Bruce, Kirk? Or if it is, can’t you get all you need from me and Henry Quillan? We were the two who knew him best.”

“During the past eleven years, yes. But you don’t seem to know a devil of a lot about him before that. Didn’t he ever talk about himself?”

She shook her head. “That’s one bad habit he lacked. I was never quite sure whether it was modesty or secretiveness.”

“Nobody’s that modest,” he said. “The average man probably eventually tells his wife everything he’s done since birth — that he’s not ashamed of. I have a hunch I’m going to find a story in Philadelphia.”

Her hand squeezed his. “Don’t go, Kirk. Please.”

“Why not?” he asked in surprise.

Pulling her hand back, she put it in her lap. “I look forward to your visits so.”

That was a cover-up, he knew by her manner. There was something in Philadelphia she dreaded he would learn. It didn’t deter him any, because he had no intention of using anything he found if he thought it would hurt her in any way.

He said, “I’ve already had one argument with Dad today. If I refused to go to Philadelphia I would probably get there without even taking a plane. He would throw me all the way.”

She gave him a resigned smile. “That was selfish of me. I don’t want to interfere with your work. I’ll see you when you get back.”

The matron announced, “Visiting time is up, folks.”

Back in town Marshall dropped in on Henry Quillan to find out what he knew about Bruce Case’s background before the man came to Runyon City. He wasn’t greatly surprised to learn that the lawyer knew practically nothing about his former law partner’s antecedents.

“I suppose you know that old Arthur Runyon bought him a junior partnership here after he married his daughter,” Quillan said. “Naturally I made some investigation before agreeing to the deal, but it covered only his academic record and his work for his former employer. He was in the upper third of his class at Cornell. Wesson, Wesson and Masters of Philadelphia, the law firm he worked for there, gave him a pretty good recommendation, particularly commending him for his brief work. As it turned out, he wasn’t as conscientious a worker once he got himself set in a law partnership as he had been as a mere clerk. With a wealthy wife, he didn’t need the money, of course, so he did just about what he had to. He was an able enough lawyer when he put his mind to it, but that was only sporadically.”

“It doesn’t sound as though he was a great asset to the firm,” Marshall said.

“Oh, I have no kicks. There wasn’t so much work that it left me snowed under. And, of course, our division of profits was based on the cases we each handled. There’s really some advantage to having a junior partner willing to take all the routine cases and leave the interesting ones to you. Besides, Betty’s father paid enough for his share of the firm so that I would have been ahead if Bruce had never showed up at the office at all.”

By the time Marshall left the law office, his opinion of Bruce Case had been solidified. The man obviously had been a fortune hunter, and the minute he’d acquired a rich wife, he had relaxed in his new-found luxury and had devoted only enough time to making a living to keep up the appearance of being gainfully employed.