“O.K., pal.”
“And, Ed?”
“Yes?”
“Will you remember what I said. That we both drink—”
“Will you kindly go jump in the river?”
It was sweet, all right, to stay late, and hold her in my arms, and feel her tremble a little, because she was a nice girl and if the guy had once been her husband that’s how a nice girl ought to feel about it. And yet, driving home, it all came back to me how Keyes had sat there and checked it off about the Moving Finger. We hadn’t had an advance copy, but we’d got a whiff of some queer-smelling ink.
7
TRACK OF ARRIVALS, AND next morning I drove out to the Cinnabar Ranch to tackle three shots from New Jersey that had flown out for some shooting in their private plane. Sometimes, after their first introduction to a Western trail horse, they’re not so hard to sell, and I was doing all right. Two of them had no time for me, but the one that was manager of a Newark sheet and tube plant walked over to the stables with me and he didn’t say much, but I had that feeling you get, that he was my onion if I peeled him right. I mean, just keep on talking and first thing you know he’ll cut in with whatever it is that’s on his mind, generally some question about cost. You get out your rate book, and if you’re any good you should book him for his medical right there, and next day have his check. So I did and he did, and then I lost him. How, don’t ask me. I had him and I didn’t have him, and when I got back to the office I knew I wasn’t right. It was eating on me a little more than I had thought, whatever it was I wasn’t buying about the death of Richard Sperry, geologist. And when Jane rang me, around noon, and asked me to step over, as the police had some questions they wanted to ask her, and she didn’t want to be alone with them, Bo-Bo the Butterfly did a couple of fronts in my stomach.
But when they came up to her suite, a patrolman and a sergeant, they treated her fine, and said all they were trying to do was check for their report where he fell from, or jumped from, whatever it was that he did, and they were pretty certain it had to be from this apartment. They hadn’t been able to find anybody that saw him fall, but they had questioned everybody on this tier, and three of them had seen him go by the window. But as one of them was the man in the apartment just below hers, it pretty well let any other apartment out, as hers was on the top deck. The sergeant looked at her, then said: “Not to upset you any more than I can help, ma’am, there’s things people do when they fall that a police officer knows about and not many other people do, and the way these people tell it sounds O.K. to us, and specially it sounds O.K. the way this fellow just below you tells it. It don’t sound to us like stuff he might be making up just to get his name in the paper.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“A man falling, he moans. It’s a pitiful sound.”
“Now I understand.”
“These people, that’s what they noticed.”
“It couldn’t have been this suite.”
“Were you here?”
“No, that’s the point. I was out.”
“Where was you, if you don’t mind saying?”
“At a picture show.”
“Here in town?”
“The Rhythm Parade. At the Granada.”
“You come straight here?”
“I arrived at the hotel around a quarter to twelve, after starting down to Harold’s and changing my mind and coming here. When I got here the ambulance had arrived and the officers were making the crowd stand back, so I had some trouble getting by. I had no idea what had happened, or who it had happened to, until I got up here and the officers rang me, a few minutes later, and then came up and told me.”
“Did this man have a key to your room?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He come here often?”
“Never. I hadn’t seen him in three years.”
“How could he have got in?”
“I don’t know.”
“He in any trouble that you know of?”
“I know nothing of his recent affairs.”
“He sick or anything?”
“He was in good health when he was my husband.”
“Get along with his wife?”
“I don’t know.”
“You got any ideas about this? You understand, ma’am, we’re not charging anybody. It’s nothing like that. But we got to make a report. It’s got to be, the way we figure it, that he went out that window there. The first thing is why, and the next thing is, how.”
“I can’t imagine his doing a thing like that, or any reason he would have for doing it. Or how he could get in here, or why.”
“That window’s high, for one thing.”
“Didn’t he have a window of his own?”
“He had a wife of his own, too. Watching him, maybe.”
“One reason for suicide, no doubt.”
That’s what she said, but she kind of snapped it out and everybody laughed. After a minute she laughed. It was easy to see that the cops had put it together on a suicide basis, with some trouble going on between Sperry and Mrs. Sperry as the reason for it. Then the sergeant said: “Anybody else in the apartment at the time you was out?”
“No. ... Or, wait. I’ll see.”
She went in the bedroom and picked up the telephone. There was some talk and she came back. “I just happened to think that my maid may have been up, putting out my things for the night.”
“Had they been put out when you got in?”
“Yes, of course.”
“She coming?”
“She’s on her way up.”
So that was the third time I saw this Harriet Jenkins that you probably read about, but the first time I really had a good look at her. She was about the sloppiest-looking thing in the way of a woman I ever saw, and cheap, and 100% servant girl from the cap on her head to the shoes on her feet. But if you have some little trouble understanding what came out later, I may as well tell you she was just about as sexy a number as you’re liable to see in a month of looking. She looked maybe twenty-six or -eight, and her face was coarse, her hair ratty red, and her neck that certain color that made you wonder how often she washed. But don’t let anybody tell you that under the ten-cent-store makeup, the cotton stockings, the bombazine uniform there wasn’t looks, shape and a way of handling her gum. There was also a droopy way of handling her eyes.
She came in with her own key and stopped when she saw the cops and shot a look at Jane like she wanted a cue. But Jane just said they wanted to ask her a few questions and told her she could sit down. Sitting down didn’t seem to be something she was very good at, anyway around Jane, but she pulled the chair out from in front of the writing desk, sat on the edge of it, pulled her dress down over her knees, and began looking from one to the other of everybody in the room. That went on for quite some time, because cops, they make a specialty of sitting there looking at you, so you get fidgety wondering what they’re thinking. But the sergeant got enough of it and sounded off: “You knew Mr. Richard Sperry?”
“Oh, yes, sir. ’E was my employer for some years.”
“When’s the last time you seen him?”
She looked away and kind of huddled up like some puppy dog that was getting a bawling out, and then she asked Jane: “Is it important, ma’am?”
“Quite important.”
“’E asked me not to say.”
“I’d tell it, if I were you.”
“’E gave me a tenner not to say.”
“Regardless of what he gave you, it’s desirable that you tell anything you know, and it may have very bad consequences, particularly to yourself, if you conceal anything you know. The police officer has asked you when was the last time you saw Mr. Sperry.”
“It was last evening, sir.”
“Where?”
“’Ere.”
“In the hotel?”
“In this room.”
“When?”
“Around eleven, sir.”
The cops looked at each other and Jane looked at me and then remembered not to look at me, and you could tell this was something nobody had expected. But the maid didn’t seem to think there was anything out of the way about it. “He came here looking for Mrs. Delavan?”
“’E did, twice.”
“Tell us about it.”
“The first time was around nine. I was lying down on the spare bed, ’aving a look at the illustrated magazines, as Mrs. Delavan was seeing a picture and there was no need for me to ’urry my work in any way. And the buzzer sounded and I got up and put on my cap and peeped out the pigeon ’ole, as they call it ’ere. And ’oo should be in the ’all but Mr. Sperry. And I welcomed ’im in, for I ’adn’t seen ’im since I left Bermuda. And ’e was most gracious to me, as we ’ave one or two personal memories, I think I may say. But ’e was deeply disappointed when I told ’im Mrs. Delavan would be late getting in, and shortly after that ’e left. And it was at this time that ’e gave me the tenner and asked me not to mention ’is visit to anybody. ’E repeated ’imself several times. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Jenkins,’ ’e said. Tell nobody. Nobody.’”
“And who was nobody?”
“Mrs. Sperry, I think sir, but ’e made no exceptions.”
“And this was a little after nine?”
“’Is first visit, yes, sir. Then, around eleven I’d say it was, ’e came again. I invited ’im in to wait for Mrs. Delavan, and ’e began walking up and down ’ere, very nervous like, and often looking out the window for ’er, and leaning out and looking down at the street, until I ’ad to warn ’im it was dangerous as ’e could lose ’is balance and fall. Then ’e calmed down a little and I suggested ’e might prefer to wait for ’er alone. So I left ’im there, and left word with him for Mrs. Delavan I would remain dressed a little while if she needed me, and around twelve, as there was no call, I went to bed.”
“Well, that about clears it up.”
The sergeant said that to the patrolman, and the patrolman opened a portable typewriter he had beside him and stuck a piece of paper in and started to write. But Jane got up, lit a cigarette, and broke in on it. “Not quite ... Jenkins, why have you let a whole morning go by without telling me this?”
“Ma’am, ’e asked me not to. ’E gave me a tenner.”
“Doesn’t it seem to you that under all the circumstances you’ve been carrying discretion a little too far?”
“I’ve accepted your suggestion, ma’am, to conceal nothing from the officers, but if I may say ’ow I feel, I’m not looking forward at all to my next meeting with Mr. Sperry, and it’ll cost me the tenner, I’ll ’ave you know, in connection with all your fine ethical ideas, for I can ’ardly keep it now I’ve broken the promise I made to him.”
“... Jenkins, haven’t you heard?”
“I’ve not been out, ma’am. I’ve been in my room all morning after making myself a cup of coffee, waiting for your call.”
“I didn’t ring you—I didn’t want to talk about it. ... Mr. Richard was killed shortly after you left him last night, in a fall from that very window.”
“Oh, no, ma’am, don’t tell me that!”
After the cops went and Jenkins quit her bawling, it was Jane that cracked up a little, and it took some little cheek-patting to get her calmed down. But when the phone rang I wouldn’t let her answer. I figured it was the reporters, and if she was that much upset to find out Sperry had had something friendly in mind when he came up there, I didn’t think facing a bunch of buzzards with lead pencils and notebooks would do her much good. We let the phones ring and I put on her coat and zipped her down to the basement and out the side way to my car and headed out of town with her and I had no idea where we were going, but we wound up at Sacramento. We had a swell dinner at the Senator and at last it seemed everything was cleared up and coming back she tucked her hand in mine and said she was falling in love, I said O.K. by me. She said O.K. by her. It’s funny the dumb things you say that mean so much to you you could remember them the rest of your life.
We got in late, and it must have been after two o’clock when my phone rang and on the line was Keyes. “Ed, have you seen the papers?”
“About that maid?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“No, but I was there when she talked to the cops.”
“Does it strike you as peculiar?”
“She hadn’t heard it. She hadn’t been out.”
“You know anything about English servants?”
“I don’t keep servants.”
“Neither do I, but young Norton’s always got three or four of them around, and now and then I go out there. Ed, they’re the most gossipy, curious breed of people I ever saw, and how that maid, with romance waiting upstairs, could sit there in her room without ever once ringing Mrs. Delavan’s phone I simply don’t see.”
“What romance?”
“The former husband.”
“I’m the romance in that household.”
“Yeah, but does the maid know it?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Ed, it won’t add up. The former husband shows up, hands her a ten-spot to keep her mouth shut, and on the second trip she leaves him there to wait for his former wife who’s her mistress. I’m telling you, she couldn’t wait to find out what it was all about. Her nose would be quivering for it. And yet she didn’t make one move to go after it—that is, if the papers have got it right. Or have they?”
“On that point, apparently they have.”
“Well, thank God it’s not my grief.”
“Mine either.”
“This is one time we can spectate.”
“That’s it. Just take it easy.”
Part Three:
THE WILLING WIDOW
8
THE INQUEST WAS NEXT night at a mortuary on Sixth Street, and Jane wasn’t a witness, but the cops had asked her to attend, as something might come up, and they wanted her there in case. So we drove the maid over, and Keyes was already there, with Mrs. Sperry, a big-shot lawyer in town named Morton Lynch, and a squinty-eyed number named Biggs that kept fingering a trick derby he had, that seemed to be Sperry’s valet, and that corresponded, in looks at least, to the guy named in the eye’s report on who didn’t come out of the room that night. Mrs. Sperry was in black, with a veil, but one you could see through. She didn’t look at Jane or the maid, but after we had sat down she nodded at me with a sad little smile, and reached over and gave my hand a grip. Some newspaper men were there, with three or four other guys that weren’t newspaper men but tried to look like they were. They work for the adjusters, so I knew there was an insurance angle. Some cops were at a table, and on the other side of a counter was the undertaker, but back there on a table you could see part of a sheet, with something under it. The whole room wasn’t much bigger than my private office, and we all sat on folding chairs that had been set up in rows with an aisle down the middle. Every time somebody would come in they’d start to sit in the first two rows on the right-hand side, but the cops would wave them to other seats. It turned out, when some more cops came in with them, where they’d been rounding them up, these two rows were for the jury.
The coroner was Dr. Hudson, that I had met once or twice, and the cops all stood up when he came in. He was a squatty little guy, and after he had sat down and taken some papers out of his briefcase and studied them, the same sergeant as had come to see Jane banged on the table with the flat of his hand for us to stop talking. Then he asked all who had been summoned to testify to raise their right hands and the maid did and quite a few others did and he gave them the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and they all mumbled they would. Then he called the maid and the valet to view the body and when they had he asked them if they knew the deceased and they said they did and he was Richard Sperry and lived on the island of Bermuda. Then he asked if there was anybody else who wished to view the body, corroborate the identification, contest it, or add anythin
g to this part of the inquest, and he looked at Mrs. Sperry, but she shook her head no and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then he had two cops tell how they had got the call in their car, and all the rest of it, how it had happened that night, anyway from their end of it. Then the ambulance doctor that had certified the death testified. Then two autopsy doctors went on, and they told a lot of compound occipital stuff, but all it seemed to add up to was that he died of a bashed-in head. Then he had a huddle with the sergeant and called the maid. She told it about like she had told it to the cops. Then he looked around and asked if anybody else had any knowledge of the case. He didn’t expect any answer, you could tell that, because he was already putting his papers back in the briefcase. And Keyes didn’t either, you could tell from the way he was whispering to Lynch. And his head couldn’t have snapped around quicker if a gun had been fired in his ear than it did when Mrs. Sperry rose up like a ghost coming out of the floor, stepped into the aisle, did a slow march to the chair they had put out for the witness, and said: “I have.”
“You know something of this, Mrs. Sperry?”
“I do.”
“Something more than you told the police?”
“I told the police only the barest facts—that I spent the evening in my suite, that I was not with my husband at the time he met his tragic end, and that I had nothing more to tell them.”
“You mean, other things have come to light since?”
“I mean there was more.”
“That you—withheld?”
“I had to know my legal position first.”
“In respect to?”
“Self-destruction.”