This Game of Murder

Chapter XIX

The apartment at 126 Howard Street was only two blocks from where Lydia lived, but in a place the size of Runyon City two blocks can make a vast difference. Lydia’s neighborhood was a middle-income residential section where the only building on the street which wasn’t a residence was a church. Howard Street was dotted with second-rate taverns and small businesses. Gail Thomas lived in one of several flats above a laundry.

Marshall climbed the stairs alongside the laundry and examined name plates along the hallway until he found one reading: Gail Thomas. There was no bell, so he knocked.

“In a jiffy,” a feminine voice called.

About a minute passed before the door opened. The blonde was wearing a polka-dot Bikini with about as much material in it as in two neckties. She had a hip-length beach robe over it, but the robe was wide-open.

“You caught me—” she started to say, then halted and stared at him. “I thought you were my date.”

“Sorry,” he said. “We’ve never met, but I suppose you know who I am. May I talk to you for a minute?”

She regarded him dubiously, then shrugged. “If it won’t be too long. One of the photographers from a New York paper is taking me to the beach to shoot some pictures. He should be along pretty quick. Come on in.”

He followed her into a small combination living room-bedroom which had a sofa-bed against one wall, at the moment serving its role as a sofa. Off to one side an open door led to a kitchenette.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. Marshall,” she said. “I was just changing into my suit and I was bare naked.”

She was still nearly naked, he thought, glancing at the slim strip of cloth across her bust, which covered little more than her nipples. The lower part of the suit was no wider, barely concealing her pubic area and dwindling to shoelace width at the sides of her hips.

He felt automatic dislike for the girl, not only because of her part in Betty’s troubles, but because of the vindictiveness she had shown Betty at the hearing. But he had to admit she was well-endowed physically. She had a slim, small-boned frame, but her bust must have measured forty inches and must have required a D-plus cup. It was the more remarkable because her breasts thrust straight out without the least suggestion of sag, despite their considerable weight.

She must have been proud of them, for she made no attempt to close her beach robe. She didn’t ask him to sit, merely standing in front of him and waiting for him to state his business.

“I’m not sure just why I’m here,” he said. “Except that I believe Mrs. Case innocent and am doing everything I can to prove it.”

She emitted an indulgent little laugh. “Naturally, you being her boy friend. I read all about you and her in some of the out-of-town papers.”

“I’ve read a lot about you, too,” he said. “But I doubt that more than half of it was true. What do you think everything you read about my relationship with Mrs. Case was?”

She stopped to think this over, then said grudgingly, “They made up a lot of stuff about me all right. But you are her boy friend, aren’t you?”

“I’m quite fond of her, but we weren’t carrying on an affair behind her husband’s back at the same time he was carrying on one with you behind hers. Up to the golf game I had with her a few hours before Bruce was shot, and which the yellow journals made so much of, I hadn’t even spoken to her in private since the day she was married. We used to meet at social affairs occasionally and say hello, but that was the extent of our intimacy.”

“This on the up-and-up?” she asked with surprise.

“Why should I lie to you?” You don’t mean anything to me.”

“Then why are you trying to get her out of this?”

“For a number of reasons. I am fond of her. We were engaged years back, before she married Bruce, and while I wasn’t what you called her ‘boy friend’ while she was married to him, maybe I am again now that he’s dead. But the main reason is that I think she’s innocent.”

“How could she be?” Gail Thomas said fiercely. “She admits she shot him, and all that evidence about the cat burglar being there was proved to be rigged. I’ll bet when they finally catch that burglar, he’ll say he was never there that night.”

Wait until she saw the next day’s papers, he thought. He said, “Why do you hate her so much? You were the other woman, not she. You moved in on her man, not vice versa.”

“Because she murdered him! She could have let him have a divorce to marry me, but if she couldn’t keep him, she didn’t want me to have him either.”

“That’s a little ridiculous,” he said. “She was not only willing to give him a divorce, it was her idea.”

“That’s what she said in court,” the blonde agreed. “But I happen to know different.”

“I suppose Bruce told you she wouldn’t let him go,” he said with a touch of indulgence. “It’s a standard dodge used by married men who cheat on their wives but don’t want to upset the status quo. Bruce earned less from his law practice than the average skilled laborer earns over at the local steel plant. He could have earned more, but he didn’t like to work. Believe me, he had no intention of giving up his luxurious life at Rexford Bay for love in a furnished flat.”

She stalked furiously over to a small writing desk against one wall and jerked open a drawer. Pulling out a string-bound package of letters, she slipped off the string, laid the stack on the desk and began thumbing through it. There seemed to be about two dozen envelopes, and she must have known them all by heart because she picked out the one she wanted by its postmark date.

Handing it to him, she said, “Read that.”

Glancing at the envelope, he saw that it was addressed by typewriter to Miss Gail Thomas at a Buffalo address. It was postmarked Runyon City and the postmark date was nearly a year old. There was no return address.

He pulled out the single typewritten sheet and unfolded it. A quick glance told him it was a love letter. Bruce Case had found one regular use for his law office anyway, he thought cynically. He had typed love letters to his mistress there.

The letter read:

It was signed simply, ‘Your lover,’ and even that was typed.

Handing the letter and envelope back to the girl, Marshall asked, “What’s that supposed to prove?”

“That he’d been trying to get her to agree to a divorce as long as a year ago. I’m not saying he told her about being in love with me. He didn’t tell her he wanted a divorce because of another woman, because he knew she’d raise hell with me if she found out, maybe even drag me into court for alienation of affections. He just told her that since they couldn’t get along, he wanted out. She didn’t know about me until just before she killed him. But she did know he wanted a divorce.”

“You’re a very gullible young girl,” Marshall said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“So you were twenty when you met this married man, or at least when you became his mistress, and he was thirty-four. It’s easy for any man to make promises. But don’t you see how careful he was? The letter, even the signature, is typed so that no one could identify his handwriting. He doesn’t mention his wife by name and identifies himself merely as ‘Your lover.’ He doesn’t even call you by name, only by an endearment. There’s no return address on the envelope. He was making very sure that if you got too impatient about the marriage he was promising you, you couldn’t make any trouble. You couldn’t prove in a million years that those love letters came from Bruce Case. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even used a rented typewriter instead of one that could be traced to him.”

“That was just because he was a lawyer,” she said. “It wasn’t because he was handing me a line, or thought I would be a problem even if he was. He knew I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him even if I found out he was a rat. But he wasn’t. He wanted a divorce and she wouldn’t let him go. Then when she saw me, she knew she couldn’t possibly hold him any more, so she killed him.”

He looked at her curiously. “You mean she realized she was no competition for you?”

She arched her back, thrusting out her remarkable bosom. “Do you think she was? Why, she must be past thirty.”

“Just thirty,” he said, amused. “But at the risk of hurting your feelings, I’d rather have her for a wife than you. The relative attractiveness of women depends on a little more than age difference and bust measurement.”

“Can you see anywhere else she has me beat?” she demanded, slipping off her beach jacket and tossing it onto the sofa-bed.

Pulling in her already flat stomach, she marched past him with a beauty-contest walk, her hands, palms down, slightly out from her sides. She turned slowly to give him a rear view, then walked over to the sofa and put the beach robe back on.

He had to concede that she had a beautiful body. Her hips were softly rounded, neither too plump nor too slim; her legs were long and perfectly tapered; her skin was a creamy white and without a blemish to mar its perfection.

“You have everything to make a man want to crawl in bed with you,” he said with a sudden unreasonable desire to hurt her. “But what have you to offer for the other twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes of the day?”

She gazed at him with such a hurt expression on her face that he immediately felt ashamed of himself. All at once he realized she was one of those women whose sole interest in life was men, yet was slightly in awe of all men. If a woman had said to her what he had, probably she wouldn’t have hesitated to scratch the detractor’s eyes out. But she was no more capable of lashing back at male criticism than a child could lash back at a father.

She was probably what psychologists called a child-woman, he thought, one who needed a lover and protector and father-image all rolled into one. The very fact that she had picked a lover fourteen years older indicated this. Probably she wouldn’t make a bad wife provided she drew a dominating enough husband, because she not only would be amenable to bossing, but would need and expect it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a lousy thing to say. My only excuse is that sometimes I can’t help being a boor.”

“That’s all right,” she said in a small voice. “I guess I know what you mean. I guess I haven’t got all Mrs. Case’s fine ways. I never went to Bryn Mawr. I didn’t even finish high school.”

“I’m sure you’ll make some man an excellent wife,” he said, eager to amend the hurt. “Just because I’m upset about another woman being in jail is no excuse to take it out on you. Thanks for your time.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

She walked with him to the door. As he stepped into the hall, she said, “Mr. Marshall.”

He turned to look back at her in the doorway.

“Were you just saying that to make up for being mean, or do you think someday I could be a good wife for someone?”

“I meant it,” he said. “You possess one quality which has nothing to do with physical measurements or age. I’m sure you would never screech at your husband.”

After considering this, she nodded solemnly. “I don’t like to fight. When Bruce ever got mad at me I just shut up and was nice to him until he got over it. I was able to make him happy in other ways than just in bed. Honest, he wasn’t bored the other twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes when we were together.”

“I’m sure no man would be,” he said with a smile. “Please forget my uncalled-for crack.”

“I already have,” she said. “Can’t we be friends even if I am a prosecution witness against Mrs. Case? I’m only going to tell the truth in court. I have to do that.”

He said slowly, “We could be friends if you did exactly that, with no embellishment of the truth just because you have a grudge against her — I mean such as you did at the preliminary hearing when you answered questions which weren’t asked in a deliberate attempt to hurt her.”

She thought about this before saying, “Maybe I did. I was so furious at her, I thought she ought to be convicted right then and there. I still hate her, but I promise I’ll be fair. I’ll just tell what happened and let the jury decide what it means.”

They were getting along so swimmingly he decided to push it further. “Would you mind if I saw the rest of those letters sometime?”

At that moment footsteps sounded on the stairway and a thin bald head came into sight. Then the rest of the man appeared: a tall, skinny man of about forty with a camera hanging from his shoulder by a strap.

“Here comes my date,” she said. “Why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight and we’ll talk about it?”

As Marshall went down the stairs he realized that his opinion of Gail Thomas had totally changed in the short time he had talked to her. He had arrived with the preconceived notion that he would dislike her intensely; he came away feeling a little sorry for her and tending to like her. He could even understand her hate for Betty, now that he realized she had actually been in love with Bruce Case, for it would take a remarkably broad-minded woman to forgive another woman who had just killed the man she loved.