The Eleventh Hour (13 page)

For once, Conway thought, he’s got a point. “It’s hard to believe,” he said. “But you see I worked a lot at night. It got pretty dull for her sitting home every evening, so she used to go to the movies. Every once in a while I’d offer to take her, but she’d say she didn’t want to interfere with my work, and I believed her. I think it was true, at first. Lately, of course — well, I guess she didn’t see as many movies as I thought.”

“Still and all, I should think you coulda told from the way she acted—”

“I guess I’m like most men — conceited enough to think ‘How could a woman want another man when she has me?’ ”

“Not me — I’m no egotist,” said Bauer. “I take nothin’ for granted — especially about women. I watch Greta like a hawk.”

“Probably the best way,” Conway said.

“Sure. She knows it, so it makes it easy for her. That way there’s no temptation for her to step out of line.”

“She’s a lucky girl.” Conway was beginning to lose interest in Detective Sergeant Bauer’s philosophy of life and love.

The detective looked at him reflectively. “You don’t seem to be very much upset about this Taylor,” he said.

Conway realized that his preoccupation with other matters was causing him to forget his role of the bereaved, and deceived, husband. “I don’t know,” he said. “After the week I’ve had — first her disappearance, then learning she’d been murdered, I guess nothing can hit you very hard.”

“Yeah,” Bauer said, “you’re sort of paralyzed.”

“How about Taylor’s alibi?” Conway asked. “What do you think of it?”

“Can’t tell yet. We’ll know more by morning.”

“The captain seemed to think he might be able to fake an alibi. Isn’t that pretty hard to do?”

“Practically impossible,” Bauer said. “Unless there are a lot of awful dumb detectives around.”

Conway felt encouraged to go on. “I didn’t understand what you said up in the office about my having an alibi. What did the car being parked at ten-four have to do with it?”

“That was just one thing,” the detective replied. “Like to know why we were sure so quick that you didn’t do it?”

“I’d be very interested,” Conway said, conscious of his understatement.

Bauer assumed his professorial air. “Any time a woman’s murdered,” he said, “naturally the first suspect is her husband. That’s only common sense, because, the way it works out, most married women who get killed, it turns out it’s their husband did it. I don’t know why that is,” he mused. “Funny thing, because most men aren’t killed by their wives.”

“Very interesting,” Conway said. “I’d never realized that.”

“Anyway, the first thing I did was check up on you to see if you might have killed her. Not if you did, mind you, but if you could have.”

“It never occurred to me that I might need an alibi,” Conway said. “All the time I was looking for her, after the squad car left me, and then on the trolley going down to the police station — I doubt if anyone would remember seeing me then, or that I could prove where I was, and when.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” the detective stated. “When a guy’s on the level, he’s got a lot of things working for him he don’t even know about. And vice versa. When he isn’t, there’s a lot of things working against him.” The remark disturbed Conway vaguely, but he dismissed it as Bauer went on. “For instance, that squad car looked all over the neighborhood after it left you, and there was no sign of your car. If you’d done it, the car couldn’t be very far away. But, of course, they might of missed it, so I don’t count that as a positive fact.”

“I see.”

“But then we got two very positive facts. The car was parked between ten-o-two and ten-o-four, and you were at the police station at ten twenty-three. No taxis picked up any fares around there at that time, and there’s been no report of a private car giving anybody a lift. Besides, nobody who’d just left a dead bod}^ in a car would be fool enough to ask for a lift. And a man running down a quiet street couldn’t help but be noticed. So if it was you parked that car, it means you’d have to of walked to the station in twenty-one minutes. Well, that can’t be done — I checked it personally, so there’s no possibility of me being wrong.”

“I’d never have thought of that,” Conway said.

“There was another thing, and this is what I mean about things working for a fellow that he don’t even know about. You happened to mention something I bet you don’t even know you said, and you know I’m not conceited, but not one man in a thousand would of paid any attention to it.”

“What was that?”

“You just happened to mention that when you were on that streetcar, you missed the stop at Wilcox and had to ride on to Cahuenga. You didn’t even know it meant anything when you told me. Well, it was certainly a long shot that the motorman or conductor would remember what stops they made three nights before, but I took it. And whaddya know, the motor-man was coming down with the flu that night, and that was the last trip he made. He was in a hurry to finish the trip, and trying to make up time, and he remembered that he beat a light at Wilcox. Somebody bawled him out for it when he stopped at Cahuenga. So now you see why I said you had an alibi you couldn’t of faked?”

“I didn’t realize you’d gone to so much trouble on my account, Sergeant,” Conway said in all honesty. “And I’m truly grateful to you. You haven’t missed a trick.”

Conway signed a receipt for the car, and a mechanic brought it out as Larkin drove into the garage in the police car.

“I’ll ride with Mr. Conway,” Bauer said. “You follow us out to the house.”

“Car seems to be all right,” Conway said. “What have they been doing with it all this time?”

“They take it apart, they analyze everything, they put it together, and finally figure out the guy who done it was under nine feet tall because he didn’t poke a hole in the roof with his head. They drive me crazy, those scientifics.”

“I can believe that,” Conway said.

“Betty home?” the detective asked.

“She was when I left. I promised to take her for a drive this afternoon — show her some of the town.”

“I wouldn’t say anything about this Taylor business to her,” Bauer said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think nice women ought to hear about that kind of stuff. Certainly can’t do any good. And her own sister and all — might even give her ideas.”

“She’ll read about it in the papers anyway.”

“Only if we really pin it on this guy,” the detective replied. “And I don’t think we can. Just tell her I’m looking around to see if there’s anything I might have missed — letters or phone numbers or anything.”

When they arrived at the house, they found Betty listening to a speech on the radio.

“What’s that?” Bauer demanded. “Couldn’t you get a ball game?”

“I didn’t try,” Betty answered. “That’s the President.”

“Rebroadcasting that speech he made last night?” Conway asked. Betty nodded.

“If it wasn’t for the baseball, I’d never look at a radio,” the sergeant said. “Why do they keep rebroadcasting these speeches? Once is plenty for most of ’em.”

“They’re ‘broadcasting it at this more convenient time,’ “ Betty answered. “That’s what the man said.”

“What’s more convenient about it?” Bauer growled.

“He made the speech about eight-thirty last night in New York,” she explained patiently. “That’s five-thirty here, which isn’t a very good time, so they put it on again this morning. Public service, the radio people call it.”

“It’d be more of a public service if they’d broadcast a game from the Polo Grounds out here right now,” Bauer said.

“Well, do you want to get started?” Conway asked.

“H-mm?” A faraway look had come into the detective’s eyes, and he seemed to recall himself with an effort. “Oh — yeah,” he said rather uncertainly.

“Started at what?” Betty asked.

Conway was about to explain when Bauer interrupted. “I just happened to think of something,” he said. “I forgot it was Saturday — something I got to do before noon.” He was on his way to the door. “The other thing can wait — I’ll be out this afternoon sometime.”

Conway wondered what new inspiration had struck the detective, but Betty was more practical. “At least we don’t have to ask him to lunch,” she observed.

While she prepared the meal, Conway made a thorough search of Helen’s room. In a cardboard box, with some other costume jewelry, he found a pair of earrings he had never seen before; they were, he assumed, a gift from Taylor which she had thought it unwise to wear. Otherwise there was nothing, not even a scrap of paper, which could possibly have been a clue to the liaison with Taylor. Conway took some slight consolation from the fact that he had not been exceptionally stupid; he could see no reason why he should have known about, or even suspected, the affair.

After lunch he took Betty in the car and began searching for an apartment; late in the afternoon, after a dozen stops, he saw her walk toward the car smiling, for the first time since they had started out.

“I’ve taken it,” she said. “It’s not much, but it’s not too bad, I can almost afford it, and I can get in right away. If you don’t mind a little more taxi service, I’ll pick up my bags and move in now.”

Conway knew that he was being irrational before he spoke. “Must you?” he asked. “Why don’t we have dinner, and then after it’s dark I’ll drive you over.”

She turned to him and smiled, that warm, adorable smile he was finding more and more irresistible. “If you like,” she said.

Conway expected Bauer to appear the moment they reached home, but when, after dinner, the table had been cleared, and he and Betty again sat over coffee and cigarettes, he became optimistic that he might have the evening alone with her. Her youthful enthusiasm, her mature tranquillity, he found more endearing than ever, and it required conscious effort to refrain from making love to her.

He had not told her about Helen and Taylor, not for the reasons Bauer had advanced, but simply because there had been no time to go into it. Now, because he wanted to be as honest as he dared be, there seemed no reason to withhold it.

“I got rather a shock this morning,” he said. “The police picked up a man who’s admitted he was having an affair with Helen.”

Betty looked up at him slowly. “Oh?” she said.

“You don’t seem very surprised.”

“Not particularly. Who was it?”

“A man named Taylor — I’d met him a couple of times. I didn’t even recognize him in the line-up. I’m afraid he’s in for rather a bad time.”

“You don’t think he had anything to do with it?”

Conway shook his head. “Regardless of your faith in the law of averages, I still think it was a maniac.”

“You didn’t suspect anything?”

“It never occurred to me. That’s what worried me this morning — that they wouldn’t believe me; that they’d start thinking they’d found a motive for me to kill her, and then go on from there. It’s a good thing they weren’t as suspicious as you.”

She looked at him soberly. “They didn’t know Helen as I did. I’m not surprised she had a lover, but she’d be too clever to let you find out, because then you could have divorced her. She couldn’t have endured that. No, I’m sure you didn’t know about it.”

“I don’t want to turn your pretty head with flattery,” he said, “but that’s the first logical observation you’ve made since you’ve been here.”

“Do you mind very much? I know it must have been a shock, but — do you care terribly?”

“I don’t care anything about any woman in the world — except you,” he said.

“Oh, my darling—” She was at his side in an instant. “I’ve so needed to hear that.” Her lips entreated a kiss and her arms encircled him fiercely. Then, “I’ve needed that even more,” she said.

“I wasn’t sure, after last night,” he said. “I didn’t know how you felt about it today.”

“I couldn’t stop loving you overnight. I don’t think I can stop loving you ever.”

“I’ve been afraid, a dozen times today, that I’d lost you.”

“You’ll never lose me,” she whispered. “Unless you want to.”

“I’m going to tonight — when you leave here.”

“I don’t want to leave you.” Her eyes lifted to his. “Oh, why can’t you have faith in me? What must I do to make you trust me?”

No man on earth, Conway thought, could doubt her. Or resist her. He could tell her, prove his faith in her, and she would be a haven where he could put aside his fears, his suspicions, his constant vigilance. He had to tell her: he was starving for this love she offered.

“I do trust you, my dearest,” he said, and at that moment the clangor of the doorbell echoed from the house.

They sprang apart guiltily. “It’s Bauer, damn him,” Conway said. “Stay here. I’ll get rid of him as soon as I can.”

It was not Bauer, but Larkin and another detective whom Conway saw when he opened the door.

“Want you at Headquarters right away,” Larkin said.

“What’s up?”

“I dunno. They never tell me anything.”

“I’ll get a coat and turn out some of these lights,” Conway said. He went into the dining room and noticed Larkin move to keep him in view. He stepped out onto the patio and blew out the two candles which were still alight on the table. Betty, on the settee, was out of sight of the detective.

“I have to go to Headquarters,” he whispered. “Wait for me, my darling.” In the darkness, he saw her nod her head. “I won’t be long.” He pretended to lock the door to the patio, picked up a coat, and rejoined the detectives in the hall.

Larkin drove and the other detective sat in back with Conway. Both men were unusually taciturn.
Or perhaps,
Conway thought,
it seems that way because I’m used to Bauer.
But try as he might, he was unable to elicit a shred of information from either of them.

The two men accompanied him to Ramsden’s office, and Larkin knocked before opening the door. He went inside for a moment, and then the door opened again, and he motioned for Conway to enter.

Ramsden, seated behind his desk, looked steadily at him as he came in. “Good evening, Captain,” Conway said.

“Hello, Conway.” The “Mister” was conspicuous by its absence, and Conway wondered whether this indicated familiarity or — or what? Bauer was seated at one side of the captain’s desk, and a young man at the other.

Ramsden indicated the young man. “This is Mr. Davis,” he said, and Conway noted that the young man was tall and thin, with a very high forehead and a collar to match. “He’s the assistant district attorney,” Ramsden continued.

“Good evening, Mr. Davis,” Conway said, and felt his throat begin to tighten even as he spoke.

“Hello, Conway,” Davis said. “I understand you murdered your wife.”

“What!” The word leaped involuntarily from Conway’s lips. He looked at Bauer, whose expression did not change, and then at Ramsden.

The captain nodded. “That’s right, Conway.”

Davis rose from his chair. “Sit down, Conway.” Larkin brought a chair and Conway sank into it. “We’ve got the whole thing taped,” Davis said as he sat on the edge of Ramsden’s desk. “You might as well make a full confession.”

He’s bluffing,
Conway thought.
They’ve got something, but he’s bluffing.
He remembered the other times he had almost panicked because of something Bauer had said or done, and resolved that it would not happen again. “I don’t know how much you know about this case, Mr. Davis,” he was able to say in an almost completely normal voice. “But I didn’t murder my wife, and the captain and the sergeant know that I couldn’t have. They just happened to mention that only this morning.”

“That was this morning,” Ramsden said.

“Yes,” Davis said, “and since this morning, thanks to some excellent detective work by Sergeant Bauer, the picture has changed. What was not possible then has become very possible indeed.”

“I know. The Einstein theory.”

“Look, pal,” Bauer said, “there was a little mistake made — a lucky mistake for you, up to now. You been on borrowed time since the day after the body was discovered. If it hadn’t been that somebody put the right facts together wrong, I’d of had this wrapped up in twenty-four hours.”

“Would someone mind translating this doubletalk?” Conway asked.

“We’ll begin at the beginning,” Davis said. “We’ll tell you exactly what you did and when you did it. There are a few details still missing, of course — we haven’t had time to check everything since this afternoon — and if you want to help us out with those, maybe we can help you out a little. Might even make some sort of a deal. Sergeant Bauer seems to think you rate a break.”

“That’s very kind of him,” Conway said.

“It starts in the drugstore, when you went over to get that cup of coffee because you were early for the picture. You had to ask your wife for money to pay the check. She was careless and you saw that she had a roll. You asked where she’d gotten it, and, because she wasn’t sticking with you much longer anyway, and didn’t care what you thought about it, she told you. She told you that she’d cleaned out your joint account, and, naturally, you got sore, and you had a fight. That we label Motive Number One.”

“One hundred per cent wrong so far,” Conway said. “I knew about the money an hour after she’d withdrawn it. I got a little upset because she was carrying it around. I told the sergeant all this.”

“Yeah,” Bauer said. “You told me.”

Davis appeared not to have heard the interruption. “Naturally, after that, you were in no mood to go to a movie. Nor was she. So you went back to the car. Somehow — this is one of the details you can help with — you found out about the affair with Taylor. I imagine that she probably taunted you with it — she was through with you, anyway. Motive Number Two.”

“Wait a minute,” Bauer broke in. “I got it. That red scarf she was wearing, that you didn’t like—” He turned to Davis. “He told the waitress he couldn’t stand it, and they were arguing about it. I don’t know if I told you before, but Taylor gave her that. So here’s what happened. Conway’s beefing about the scarf, and she says, ‘You got good reason not to like it — if you only knew.’ So he wants to know what she’s talking about, and she lets him have it. One thing leads to another, and” — he turned to Conway — “that’s when you killed her, figuring the scarf made it poetical justice.”

“I think that’s probably just about it, Sergeant,” Davis said. “How about it, Conway?”

“You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried,” Conway said. “But I guess you are trying, at that. For your information, until this moment, I didn’t know anything about that scarf.”

“There seem to have been a lot of things you didn’t know about,” Ramsden interjected.

“At any rate,” Davis continued, “you took the scarf and choked her and killed her. And then you snapped out of your murderous rage, and realized you had a dead body in the car. You drove around for a while, wondering what to do about it, and then you remembered these maniac killings, and you got a brilliant idea. You figured it all out, and you figured you could make it look like one of them, and get away with it. So you just parked the car on the first quiet street you came to, and went back to the theatre.”

“Let’s stop kidding,” Conway said. “I don’t know what you’re driving at; you must have something on your minds, but it certainly can’t be that you believe I did this thing. The car was parked at ten-o-four, remember? And you yourself, Sergeant, said I couldn’t have done it then.”

“That’s right,” Bauer said. “You couldn’t of done it if the car was parked at ten-o-four.
If.
That’s what threw me, and it was a lucky break for you — for a while. You must of had a good laugh when you found out that’s what we were going on — you couldn’t of hoped for a break like that. But — and I don’t expect
you
to be surprised at this — that car wasn’t parked at ten-o-four, it was parked at nine-o-i our, as I found out only this afternoon. So now d’you see what’s changed since this morning?”