Saint Goes West (18 page)

Simon tapped his cigarette over the ashtray. “Then-you wouldn’t kill anyone on account of him?”

“God, no.”

“Then why did you kill Ufferlitz?”

She was an actress. She sat and looked at him, without any exaggerated response.

“This should be good,” she said. “Go on.”

“By the way,” he said, “did you hear the news a little while ago? On the radio?”

“I heard some of it.”

“Did you hear about Orlando Flane bumping himself off?”

“Yes. Did I do that too?”

“I don’t know. Can you think of any reason why he should kill himself?”

“Several. And he’s all of them. He was a bastard from away back. And he was pretty well washed up in this town. He didn’t have anything to live for for months, except Ufferlitz almost gave him a break.”

“And what do you think about Trilby Andrews?”

“I never heard of her. Who is she?”

“She isn’t. She was.”

She leaned back with her glass in her hand.

“Hawkshaw Rides Again,” she said. “Go on. You do the talking. I told you last night I could see it coming. I’m not a detective. Tell me how it works.”

He took another cigarette and lighted it from the stub of one that was only half finished. He refilled both their glasses from the shaker. Then he relaxed beside her and gazed up at the ceiling. He felt very calm now.

“I’m a lousy detective,” he said. “I never really wanted to be one … Maybe all detectives are lousy. They only get anyнwhere because the suspects are lousy too, and it doesn’t matнter how many mistakes a detective makes. You just blunder around and wait for something to pop … That’s all I’ve been doing. I’ve thrown accusations all over the place, and been sure I’d strike a spark somewhere. You rush around and jump to conclusions and have kittens over every flash, and get gorgeously master-minded and confused … But in the end I’ve started to think.”

He was thinking now, while he talked, picking up the loose ends that his driving imagination had so blithely pushed aside.

“Byron Ufferlitz was shot through the back of his head, in his study, in his home, by somebody that he presumably knew pretty well-at least well enough to give an opportunity like that to. That gives the first list of suspects. None of them have very good alibis, but on the other hand nobody except the murderer knows exactly when it was done, so alibis aren’t so important. I could have done it myself. So could you.”

“And you’ve decided that I did.”

“There wasn’t any clue,” said the Saint. “No clue at all. Every clue had been very carefully cleaned up. And I was too busy to see that the first clue might be there.”

“You’ll have to explain that.”

“When you leave clues, you don’t necessarily book yourself to the gas chamber. But when you clean up clues, you may do just that. Because the blank spaces show your own guilty conнscience. A clue isn’t a death warrant, because it’s only cirнcumstantial. If I dropped in here and killed you and went out again, I might leave a lot of clues-and none of them would mean anything. A scientific detective might sweep the carpet and put the dust under a microscope and find celluloid dust in it, and say, ‘Ha! someone has been here who’s been in conнtact with motion picture film; therefore the villain is someone from a studio.’ So what? So are hundreds of people … Or I might leave a book of matches from the House of Romanoff, and the inspirational detective would say, ‘Ha! This is a man of such and such a type who goes to such and such places’- regardless of the fact that I might have bummed the matches from a chauffeur who bummed them from somebody else’s chauffeur whose boss left them in the car. I might never have been in the House of Romanoff in my life … Now I don’t know what was cleaned off Ufferlitz’s carpet, or what matches were taken away, or anything else; but I do know one clue that was cleaned up that tells a story.”

“This is fascinating,” she said. “Go on.”

“The ashtrays were emptied,” he said.

She sipped her Martini.

“There might have been fingerprints on the cigarettes. Or-or the make of cigarette would tell who’d been there—”

“I’m not such an expert, but I wouldn’t want the job of trying to get fingerprints from old cigarette butts. They aren’t held right-you might get bits of three fingers, but never one complete impression. On top of which they’d be smudged and crushed and probably fogged up with ash. It’s a million to one you couldn’t get an identification. As for telling anything from the brand of cigarette-that may have worked for Sherнlock Holmes, but you can’t think of a brand today that isn’t smoked by thousands of people. And most of them change brands pretty freely, too. But one thing could have stood out on those cigarettes, one thing that nobody could miss, that even the dumbest amateur would have had to do someнthing about.”

“What was that?”

He said: “Lipstick.”

It was very quiet in the room. It was as if a section of the world enclosed between four walls and a floor and ceiling had been moved out into unrelated space. Ice settled in the shaker with a startling collapse like an avalanche.

“Of course,” she said.

“So it had to be a woman,” he said. “It couldn’t be Trilby Andrews, because she’s dead. But it might very likely be someone that he’d treated the same way, who reacted differнently. She killed herself; but a different kind of girl might preнfer to kill him. Or, it could be someone who was squaring acнcounts for Trilby.”

“Either way,” she said, “you came to me.”

He just looked at her.

She put out her cigarette and looked at the red tip where her lips had left their color. Then she turned to him again. Her eyes were strangely hard to read.

“So you’re still a great detective,” she said. “Now what happens?”

“We could have another drink.”

“Do you think I should give myself up, or would you rather turn me in and get some glory?”

“Neither. I may be a detective, but I’m not a policeman. I can be my own grand jury. From what I’ve found out about Ufferlitz since I began meddling with this, I’d just as soon leave everything as it is.”

A bell chimed somewhere in the house.

“Tell me the strings,” she said. “Go on. I’m grown up.”

“There are no strings, April,” he answered. “I feel rather satisfied about Ufferlitz getting killed. You see, some of those stories about me are still true. Once upon a time, before the Hays Office got hold of me, I might easily have killed him myself.”

Her eyes suddenly blurred in front of him.

” ‘Saint,’ ” she said, and her voice gave the word new meaning. But she didn’t finish.

The butler came in on padded feet, and said: “Lieutenant Condor is asking for Mr. Templar.”

Simon stood up.

Her eyes never left him as she stood up too.

“I’ll try and take him away,” he said. “May I come back and finish my drink later?”

Without waiting for an answer he strolled out into the hall to greet the hungry lugubrious figure of Lieutenant Condor. The Saint’s smile was genial and carefree.

“Well, well, well!” he murmured. “The never-sleeping bloodhound. How did you know I was here?”

“I figured you’d be with somebody,” Condor said rather cryptically. “I just tried one or two places, and this was it. Do you want to talk here or shall we go outside?”

“Let’s go outside.”

They went out into the dark that had fallen outside, and sauntered over the lawn towards the sidewalk where Condor’s police car was parked. A street lamp shone down on it like a dull white moon among the palms. Simon saw the driver stick his head out and watch them.

“You get on pretty well with her?” Condor asked, with matter-of-fact impersonality.

“Very well.”

“Was she helping you work out another alibi for when Flane was shot?”

Simon slowed his step, with his hands in his pockets, and said quite amiably: “If you’re serious about that, I’d like an official warning and we’ll talk it over with the District Atнtorney and my own lawyer. Otherwise you’d better go easy with those cracks. I can’t let you go on like this indefinitely. Now do I really need an alibi or what?”

“I’m afraid not,” Condor admitted lugubriously. He sighed. “This time you seem to be in the clear. Do you know anything about it?”

“Only what I heard on the radio.”

“Flane rushed into his home, quite cockeyed apparently, and went straight to his bedroom. His housekeeper was trying to ask him about something, but he just didn’t pay any attention. He must have grabbed a gun out of a drawer and shot himself, bang, just like that. She rushed right in and there he was, falling down, with a gun in his hand.”

“That’s quite a relief to me,” said the Saint. “So now why did you want me?”

“I thought you might have done some more figuring since it happened.”

The police driver opened the car door and got out, as they stopped on the pavement. He kept moving towards them with short awkward steps, his face fixed and staring.

“If it happened the way you say it did,” Simon observed, “it might have been a genuine suicide. In fact, I should say it must have been. So it’s no use dreaming about your murнderer following up to cover himself.”

“Unless he’s a genius,” said Condor.

The driver was right with them now. He was still staring at the Saint, his eyes popping a little. Suddenly his hand setнtled on to his gun.

“Is this Templar?” he interrupted hoarsely.

“Yes,” Condor said, glancing at him.

The driver’s mouth worked.

“Well, I saw him last night! I was circlin’ round to cover the back, an’ I had my flashlight right on him. I thought he’d come out of another house where they was havin’ a party. He musta bin at Ufferlitz’s when we got there!”

10

“THIS HAD better be good,” said Condor dispassionately.

He sat beside the Saint with a fresh toothpick between his teeth and a gun in the hand on his knee, while Simon zigнzagged his big Buick down on to Beverly Boulevard. He glanced once over his shoulder at the lights following behind them, and added: “Dunnigan’s right on your trail, so I hope you weren’t thinking of pulling any fast ones.”

“I’m hoping to save you a hell of a stink and a lawsuit for false arrest,” said the Saint. “Have you read that note?”

Condor looked at it again under the dashboard lights.

“And this is supposed to be why you went there.”

“That’s why I went there.”

“When did you write it?”

“I knew you’d say that. That’s why I got the hell out. I walked in, and there was Ufferlitz with his brains all over the desk. Then the cops came. I knew I was being framed, so I went away quickly.”

“You didn’t even say anything about it when I talked to you this morning.”

“Of course not. Nothing had been changed. You’d still have thought I was trying to put over a clever story. But you can check on it yourself now. I did. According to the night man at the Chтteau Marmont, that note was delivered by a meнdium-sized man in a buttoned-up tweed overcoat and a bushy red beard. A disguise, of course. And of course it sounds phony as hell. I could just as well have done it myself, with my knees bent to cut my height down. I knew you’d think that, and I’d have been crazy if I’d told you.”

Condor chewed audibly on his flake of timber.

“I like having my mind put straight for me,” he said. “So you played secrets. Did you know who the murderer was then?”

“No,” said the Saint honestly. “I had to get away and think and investigate for a bit. But I had to find him. I had to find him before he got me into some more trouble that I wouldn’t be able to get out of so easily. I knew it must have been someнbody who hated my guts. Somebody who was tough enough to kill Ufferlitz in the first place, and vicious enough to try and frame me for it. A guy with two motives.”

“And you found him all by yourself.”

“Yes,” said the Saint. “Orlando Flane.”

They stopped for a traffic light. Simon shifted into low gear and held the clutch out. He kept his eyes ahead, but he knew Condor was still watching him.

“You tell it,” said Condor. “It’s your story.”

“There wasn’t much to it. I’d taken a part away from Flane. He was on the skids, and that part might have saved him, but I took it away. I didn’t mean to. It was Ufferlitz’s idea. Flane was just letters in lights to me. But he didn’t understand that. His brain was all rotten with alcohol, anyнway. He was drunk at Ciro’s last night when we were there. You can check on that, too. And I guess he was just too mad to have any sense.”

“But why did he kill Ufferlitz?”

“Because Ufferlitz was blackmailing him. Flane wasn’t alнways a glamor boy for cameras. There was a time in New Orleans when he was charming feminine hearts for a much less romantic racket. He was in a bad spot once, and there was a girl who was a witness. She died-very conveniently. But Ufferlitz had the goods on him.”

“How do you know that?”

“You forget,” said the Saint gently. “Crime is my business. And I’ve got a rather phenomenal memory. Only sometimes it’s a little bit slow. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can confirm it with New Orleans.”

They were rolling eastwards on the boulevard again.

“Why didn’t you tell me that this morning?”

“It just hadn’t come into my head then. I got it after I left you this afternoon. Going off on a wrong tack after Groom- that business about the girl-girls-dirty work with girls- and suddenly the gates were open and it all poured in. I was in the Front Office then; and by God, Flane was there. Well, I’m just not a good citizen. I never could see why policemen should have all the fun. I just have to stick my own nose in. So I did. I told Flane I was wise to him. I told him the whole story, and invented what I wasn’t sure of. But I made it good. Just to see if I could make him break.”

“And then—”

“Then he broke. I don’t have to try and convince you about that. Here’s my first witness.”

He braked the car to a stop outside the neon faчade of the Front Office, and the prowl car slid tightly in behind. Simon opened his door and got out with careful leisureliness; and the detective put his gun away and got out after him.

They went into the crepuscular discretion of the bar, where a sizeable clientele was now dispersed through shadowy corнners; and Simon beckoned the bartender over.