Red Gardenias (13 page)

Ann said, "Oh, she couldn't have!"

Carmel said, "She hasn't come out with it.... She just hints." She paused for nearly a minute, then added, "But I'm afraid a lot of people think it's the truth."

"But why...?" Ann began.

Carmel repeated the story she had told Crane of Richard's murder and John's subsequent suicide. She concluded in a low voice, "I tried not to let it happen.

I liked Richard, but I didn't care for him. I really didn't."

Crane almost believed she was telling the truth, even though he knew John had been murdered. She might have been fooled by the murderer. The note might have been cleverly forged.

Ann said, "I suppose the odor of gardenias and the lipstick on Richard's face made Alice suspicious?"

"You shouldn't have kissed him," Crane said.

"But I didn't. He tried to kiss me and I struggled. That's how the lipstick got on him."

Crane asked, "What gave Richard the idea he could have an affair with you?"

"John didn't pay much attention to me. He was away a great deal, on business." Her big eyes were dark. "I think he looked on me as an amusing possession, an interesting pet."

"But why," Crane pursued, "did you want Richard's correspondence if you'd evaded his advances?"

"I'd written him a few notes. They might have been misinterpreted."

"Oh."

Ann said, "I think you were brave to conceal John's suicide."

Carmel said, "I'm not brave now." Her eyes stared at ripe-tomato coals in the fireplace. "I wanted to find out if you... if you thought I should tell the truth...to stop Alice from talking."

"I'd keep quiet for a while," Crane said. "Remember, the truth would probably kill Simeon March." She nodded.

Ann asked, "How does Alice drop these things?"

"She and Talmadge are always talking about gardenias."

"Why don't you slap her face?" Ann asked.

"Oh, I couldn't do that!" Carmel's eyes widened.

Crane looked at Ann with surprise. She should know a lady would never slap another lady. What was she thinking of?

The doorbell rang. Ann said, "That must be Peter." She left them.

Carmel said, "She doesn't like me, does she?"

"Sure she does," Crane said.

She was silent, and he thought what a really beautiful woman she was. She was alabaster and pomegranate, like the babe in the Bible. He wondered what had been the matter with John, going away on business all the time.

Peter came in with Ann. His face was clean shaven and freshly powdered. He still looked a little embarrassed, but not sullen. "Hello," he said.

Crane said, "How about a drink?"

"Sure."

Ann mixed brandy and soda, distributed the glasses. She gave Crane a glass of tomato juice, asked, "You can have some brandy, if you want it, darling."

"I love tomato juice."

His hand was not quite steady, and in bending toward the drink, his head came close to Carmel's shoulder. He smelled the scent of gardenias. He wished she would use some other perfume. It gave him a funny feeling. He finished the drink, saw the others looking at him.

"Just a mild case of jitters," he explained.

Ann said, "Beside you a man with the palsy would look like the Rock of Gibraltar."

Williams came into the room with the younger Mr Jameson. "Here's Mr Jameson, Mr Crane," he said formally. "His bill is twenty-five dollars."

Crane didn't know what Williams was doing; he didn't know what Jameson was charging for, but he handed out two tens and a five. Going to the door, the real-estate man spoke to Peter March.

"How are you, Mr March? Haven't seen you since that day in Brookfield."

"I'm fine, thanks," Peter said.

Williams followed Jameson out the door. Crane thought, what the hell! He began to see what Williams meant. "Huh?" he said.

"You're going shooting with us Sunday? "Peter asked.

"Sure."

"Somebody'll call for you at six."

"Gosh! With the Country Club party tonight, I'd better get to bed."

"Not until you eat with me," Ann said.

Peter said, "If Bill's tired you can eat with me."

"I'm not tired," Crane said.

"Come over to my house, Peter," Carmel said. "Eat with me."

"No, thanks."

"What's the matter? Are you angry with me?" Carmel demanded.

Peter March finished his highball, stood up. "Thanks for the drink," he said to Ann.

"You think I'm a murderer, too?" Carmel asked.

"Carmel!" Peter's lips turned blue. "Let's keep family quarrels in the family."

Carmel pushed against Crane, stood up, too. "To hell with the family!" She was really angry. "Why don't you say what you're thinking?"

"All right." Anger brought Peter's heavy brows down over his eyes. "I'm thinking you didn't have to be so nasty to Alice."

"She practically called me a murderer!"

"That's no reason to start a brawl." He faced her. "The Marchs have always been gentlemen and... ladies."

Carmel came toward him with quick steps. "Do you call murder a gentlemanly accomplishment?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you know that John killed Richard?"

"Over you?" His eyes, his mouth were O's of astonishment. He stared at Carmel. "I don't believe you."

Crane admired the melodrama. A woman telling her husband's brother that her husband murdered his cousin. He wondered if Ann had caught the additional implication of Jameson's surprising identification of Peter March. It would be strange, he thought, if she were in love with Peter and Williams turned him up for murder. He looked at Ann, but her green eyes were on Peter March.

Carmel spoke in a whisper. "John did kill Richard, though. And then he killed himself."

Belief and a trace of horror came into Peter's eyes. "It wasn't an accident?"

"He left a note saying he'd killed Richard. Paul Woodrin saw it."

Crane felt almost certain she was telling the truth. He was sure there had been a note. Dr Woodrin wouldn't lie about that. Of course, she could have written the note herself, showed it to the doctor, then destroyed it.

"But why didn't...?" Peter began.

"I was afraid it would kill your father."

Peter collapsed in the big damask chair opposite the couch. "Poor John..." He looked up at Carmel. "You should have told me." He looked at Crane... suddenly became conscious of him. "But these people... how do...?"

"I told them," Carmel said. "I knew they suspected something ever since the night you tried to get my letters for me." She was very pale, but emotion made her black eyes magnificent. "And I wanted disinterested advice... whether or not I should tell... Alice's hints..."

"What did you say?" Peter asked Crane.

"I told her to see if the gossip didn't blow over."

Peter nodded. He said, "Carmel, I want to talk with you."

She said, "All right."

They went to the door. "Good-by, and thank you," Carmel said.

"We haven't done anything," Ann said.

Back in the living room, Crane said, "Was something said about food?"

Ann said, "I think I believe Carmel."

Crane sat on the couch.

"Peter believed her," Ann said.

"You like Peter, don't you?"

"Yes, I do."

"How would you feel if I told you Doc Williams just slipped a noose over his neck?"

"Bill!" Her green eyes widened. "You're joking!"

Williams came in from the dining room. "Not much!" He had a scotch and soda in his hand. "Jameson certainly put Peter on the spot. It was Peter, not John, who asked about Richard's Brookfield house."

Ann objected, "But Jameson identified John's photograph."

Crane said, "Newspaper photographs are lousy."

"And John and Peter looked a lot alike," Williams said. "That's what gave me the idea of having Jameson see Peter in person." He was very proud of himself.

Ann's lips were scornful. "That doesn't make him a murderer."

Williams said, "The voices... They sounded alike, too."

Crane explained, " Peter, not John, suspected Richard was having an affair with Carmel. So Peter caught her parked with Richard in the car. Carmel thought it was John in the darkness because their voices sounded alike."

"And when Peter comes back to the party," Williams said, "Richard has had a whiff too much of gas."

Crane improvised, "And then John becomes suspicious of Peter... and gets killed, too."

"But the suicide note," Ann objected. "You can't get around the suicide note."

"Who'd know John's writing? Who could best forge the note?"

After a long time, Ann said, "Peter, I guess."

Miss Kirby did not appear particularly surprised when Crane, at three-fifteen on Saturday, buzzed for her, and announced he was leaving.

"I lasted five minutes longer than last time," he informed her proudly.

This did not make the profound impression he expected. She said, "Yes sir."

He got his hat and the tan camel's-hair topcoat. "You might send up that piece of copy on my desk."

Miss Kirby picked up a large sheet of gloss paper, glanced at it nearsightedly through her spectacles and turned pale. "Oh, Mr Crane!" she exclaimed, holding it out to him.

At the top of the page was an ink drawing of a refrigerator, and in it was the body of a man, folded up in such a double-jointed manner that his knees crossed in back of his neck. Beneath the picture was the caption: Don't Bury Your Husband: Freeze Him in Your Rapo-Arctic!

"I don't think that's the one I meant," Crane said. Miss Kirby found another sheet. "This must be it."

"Does it say: 'Your Kitchen is Our Laboratory'?"

"Yes sir."

On the way out, Crane stopped in Simeon March's office.

Back of a gigantic desk, with tall windows behind him, the old man looked small and slightly frail. That is, until he growled at Crane, "Well, what have you been doing?" His voice sounded as virile as a tugboat captain's.

"We've been looking up one of Richard's girls."

"What's that going to get you? Everybody knows Richard had girls."

"We thought she might throw some light on the death."

"Waste of time." The old man's maple-sugar eyes glowed. "You know where to look."

His wrinkled, brown face resembled an angry Indian sachem's. Coming from behind, the light changed the wrinkles into dark lines, made him look as though he had fallen face first into a briar bush. The tan-and-brown spots on his skin looked like bruises.

"Get Carmel," he said.

Crane felt there must be an undisclosed reason for his hatred of Carmel. He asked, "Why are you so sure she's the murderer, Mr March?"

"Look at her," the old man barked. "Wears clothes like... like a kept woman."

Crane switched to another angle. "Why do you think Carmel killed Richard?"

The old man regarded him so viciously for a moment that Crane thought he was enraged at the question. Then he said, "I suppose you'll have to know."

He growled out the story without taking the cigar from his mouth. He'd heard Carmel and Richard talking with suspicious intimacy at a party one night about four months before Richard's death. John had been going out of town on business a great deal, and he had assigned a company detective to watch Carmel during these periods.

"Richard, too?" Crane interrupted.

The old man shook his head. The detective had reported that Carmel spent a great deal of time with Richard, so the old man had gone to Carmel, he asserted, and told her he knew she was having an affair with Richard. He threatened to tell John unless she broke it off. She denied that she loved Richard, but he was adamant. "Never let me hear of your being alone with him, or I'll run you out of town," he had told her.

She had finally agreed not to see him any more.

Crane couldn't resist a question. "But why did she kill him?"

"He wouldn't give her up," Simeon March said, looking at Crane through shrewd eyes. "So she had to kill him."

"But then, when things were fixed up, why did she kill John?"

"She didn't love him, wanted to get rid of him." For an instant there was real pain in his deep-set eyes. "And she knew I'd stop a divorce."

Crane said, "That's a pretty elemental view. Carmel kills one man because she loves him, another because she doesn't."

Simeon March snarled, "I'm not paying you for philosophy. Just get Carmel." His cigar jerked with each word.

"You hate her, don't you?" Crane said.

"Wouldn't you hate the woman who killed your son?"

"If I was sure she had."

"I am sure." The old man was shouting now. "You get proof. That's what I want. Proof." He got to his feet, leaned over the huge desk until his face was a few feet from Crane's. "Anything else you want?"

Crane moved back a step. "Why isn't Talmadge March your lawyer?"

Simeon March blinked at him, then said, "Too young."

"Do you think he could be hard up?"

"No. He has plenty of money."

Crane felt relieved that the interview was over. He was glad he didn't work steady for the old buzzard. He went to the door, halted. "Have you told anybody you suspect Carmel?"

"Judge Dornbush, my lawyer, knows something about it."

"Would he talk?"

"Certainly not!" Jaw set, he scowled at Crane. "Why d'you want to know?"

"There're some funny stories going around town."

"About Carmel?"

"Yes."

"Why, damn them!" Simeon March hit the desk, made the humidor rattle. "They wouldn't dare talk about a March!" He glowered at Crane. "Even if she is a murdering wench."

He let himself in the house with his key. Ann Fortune was in the blue-and-white living room. The crackling fire put rose tints in her tanned skin, darkened the green in her eyes. She was wearing a gray suit with a jacket trimmed in Persian lamb. Her hair was the color of cane syrup.

She placed a marker in her book. "Hello."

"Hello."

"You're home early."

He backed up to the fire. "I got lonesome."

"Really?"

"Really." The fire warmed his ankles, the backs of his knees. "It's swell to come home to you."

"Why, Bill!" Her voice was warm. "Thank you."