The Zebra-Striped Hearse (29 page)

“You have that look again,” Isobel Blackwell said. “That objective look, as you call it. I hope Im not the object of your thoughts.”

“In a way you are. I was thinking about Ronald Jaimet’s death.”

“Apparently you’ve come here tonight determined to spare me nothing. If you must know, Ronald died by accident. And incidentally, since I think I know what’s on your mind, Ronald’s relations with Dolly were pure—wonderfully pure. I knew Ronald.”

“I didn’t. What were the circumstances of his death? I understand Mark was with him.”

“They were on a pack trip in the Sierra. Ronald fell and broke his ankle. What was worse, he broke his insulin needle. By the time Mark got him down the hill to Bishop, he was in a coma. He died in the Bishop hospital, before I could get to him.”

“So you have the story from Mark.”

“It’s the truth. Ronald and Mark were good friends as well as cousins. Ronald was the younger of the two, and he’d always admired Mark. I could never have married Mark if that hadn’t been the case.”

Under the increasing pressure of my questions, she seemed to feel the need to justify the main actions of her life. I brought her back to Ronald Jaimet’s death.

“Diabetics don’t usually go on pack trips in the mountains. Aren’t they supposed to lead a fairly sheltered life?”

“Some of them do. Ronald couldn’t. I realize, I realized then, that it was risky for him to expose himself to accidents. But I couldn’t bring myself to try and stop him. His annual hike was important to him, as a man. And Mark was there to look after him.”

I sat for a minute and listened to the echoes of her last sentence. Perhaps she was hearing them, too.

“How did Ronald happen to take a spill?”

“He slipped and fell on a steep trail.” She jerked her head sideways as if to deflect the image of his fall. “Please don’t try to tell me that it was accident-proneness or unconscious suicide. I’ve been over all that in my mind many times. Ronald had a great sense of life, in spite of his illness. He was happy in his life. I made him happy.”

“I’m sure you did.”

She went on stubbornly, justifying her life and its meanings: “And please don’t try to tell me that Mark had anything to do with Ronald’s death. The two men were deeply fond of each other. Mark was like an older brother to Ronald. He carried him on his back for miles over rugged trails, back to the jeep. It took him most of a day and a night to bring him down the hill. When Harriet and I finally reached the hospital—she drove me up to Bishop that day—Mark was completely broken up. He blamed himself for not taking better care of Ronald. So you see, you’re wandering far afield when you suggest that Mark—”

“The suggestion came from you, Mrs. Blackwell.”

“No, it was you.”

“I’m sorry, but you brought it up.”

“I did?” She dragged her fingers diagonally across her face, pressing her eyes closed, drawing down one corner of her mouth. Her lipstick was smeared like blood there. “You’re probably right. I’m very tired, and confused. I only have about half a lobe working.”

“It’s the chloral hydrate,” I said, thinking that the drug had some of the properties of a truth serum.

“It’s partly that and partly other things. Before you arrived, I had a very wearing hour with Harriet’s mother. Pauline flew all the way from Guadalajara to find out what had happened. I didn’t know she had so much maternal feeling.”

“What went on in that hour?”

“Nothing, really. She seems to blame me for the family trouble, and I suppose I blame her. Someday, in the brave new world, we’ll all stop blaming each other.”

She tried to smile, and the faltering movement of her mouth charmed me. I would have preferred not to be charmed by her.

“Someday,” I said, “I can stop asking questions. As it stands, I have to go on asking them. What kind of a houseboy was Ralph Simpson?”

“Adequate, I suppose. He worked for us such a short time, it’s hard to say. I don’t like using servants, anyway, which is why we have only the one living in. I’m accustomed to doing things for myself.”

“Is that why Simpson was fired?”

“Mark thought he was too familiar. Mark likes to be treated as a superior being; Ralph Simpson was very democratic. I rather liked it. I’m not really used to the stuffy life.” She glanced up at the ancestors.

“I heard a rumor at Tahoe that Ralph was fired for stealing.”

“Stealing what, for heaven’s sake?”

“It may have been a topcoat,” I said carefully. “When Ralph got home from the lake, he had a man’s topcoat which he told his wife was given him. It was brown Harris tweed with woven brown leather buttons. One of the buttons was missing. Do you know anything about the coat?”

“No. Obviously you do.”

“Did your husband ever buy clothes in Toronto?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Has he ever been in Toronto?”

“Of course, many times. We passed through there on our honeymoon last fall.”

“This coat was bought from a Toronto firm named Cruttworth. Did your husband have dealings there?”

“I couldn’t say. Why is this topcoat so important to you?”

“I’ll tell you if you’ll let me look at your husband’s clothes.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly, without his permission.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I don’t believe he’ll leave Tahoe until Harriet is found.”

“Then he may be there for a long time. The chances are better than even that she’s dead and buried like Ralph Simpson, or sunk in the lake.”

Her face was ugly with dismay. “You think Burke Damis did this to her?”

“He’s the leading suspect.”

“But it isn’t possible. He couldn’t have.”

“That’s his contention, too.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“I ran him down last night. He’s in custody in Redwood City. I thought that was going to close the case, but it didn’t. The case keeps opening up, and taking in more people and more territory. The connections between the people keep multiplying. Damis’s real name is Campion, as you may know, and he married Dolly Stone last September. She had a child in March, and two months later she was strangled. Campion was the main suspect in her death.”

“That’s incredible.”

“What I find hard to believe, Mrs. Blackwell, is that you were totally unaware of all this.”

“But I was. I hadn’t been in touch with Dolly.”

“There has to be a further connection, though. You see that. Bruce Campion alias Burke Damis married your one-time foster daughter last year. This year he planned to marry your stepdaughter, with your support, and got as far as eloping with her. Coincidences come large sometimes, but I’m not buying that one.”

She said in a small voice: “You’re really suspicious of me.”

“I have to be. You tried to keep me off Campion’s back. You promoted his marriage to Harriet.”

“Only because she had no one else. I was afraid of what would happen to her, to her emotions, if she went on being so bitterly lonely.”

“Perhaps you were playing God with her, the way you did with Dolly? Perhaps you met Campion through Dolly, and put him up to marrying Harriet?”

“I swear I never saw him before he came to this house last Saturday night. I admit I rather liked him. People make mistakes. I seem to have made a mistake about you as well.”

Her look was complexly female, asking me for renewed assurances of loyalty and fealty. Under the threat of the situation she was using all her brains now, and the full range of her temperament. I guessed that she was defending herself, or something just as dear to her as herself.

“Anyway,” she said, “what possible advantage could I derive from serving as a marriage broker to Mr. Damis-Campion?”

The question was rhetorical, but I had answers for it. “If your husband disinherited Harriet, or if she was killed, you could inherit everything he has. If Harriet and your husband were killed, in that order, you could inherit everything they both have.”

“My husband is very much alive.”

“At last report he is.”

“I love my husband. I won’t say I loved Harriet, but I cared for her.”

“You loved your first husband, too, and you survived him.”

Tears started in her eyes. She made an effort of will which contorted her face, and cut the tears off at the source. “You can’t believe these things about me. You’re just saying them.”

“I’m not saying them for fun. We’ve had two murders, or three, or four. Ralph Simpson and Dolly, Harriet, Ronald Jaimet. All of the victims were known to you; three were close.”

“But we don’t know that Harriet has been murdered. Ronald
definitely was not. I told you the circumstances of Ronald’s death.”

“I heard what you told me.”

“My husband will confirm my account, in detail. Don’t you believe it?”

“At this point I’d be silly to commit myself.”

“What kind of a woman do you think I am?” Her eyes were intent on mine, with a kind of scornful ardor.

“I’m trying to develop an answer to that question.”

“I don’t admire your methods. They’re a combination of bullying and blackmail and insulting speculation. You’re trying to make me out a liar and a cheat, perhaps even a murderer. I’m none of those things.”

“I hope you’re not. The facts are what they are. I don’t know all of them yet. I don’t know you.”

“I thought you liked me, that we liked each other.”

“I do. But that’s my problem.”

“Yet you treat me without sympathy, without feeling.”

“It’s cleaner that way. I have a job to do.”

“But you’re supposed to be working for me.”

“True. I’ve been expecting you to fire me any minute.”

“Is that what you want?”

“It would free my hand. You can’t pull me off the case—I guess you know that. It’s my case and I’ll finish it on my own time if I have to.”

“You seem to be using a great deal of my time, too. And as for freeing your hand, I have the impression that your hand is already excessively free. I can feel the lacerations, Mr. Archer.”

Her voice was brittle, but she had recovered her style. That bothered me, too. Chloral hydrate or no, an innocent woman holding nothing back wouldn’t have sat still for some of the things I had said. She’d have slapped my face or screamed or burst into tears or fainted or left the room or ordered me out. I
almost wished that one or several of these things had happened.

“At least you’re feeling pain,” I said. “It’s better than being anaesthetized and not knowing where the knife is cutting you.”

“You conceive of yourself as a surgeon? Perhaps I should call you doctor.”

“I’m not the one holding the knife. I’m not the one, either, who took your silver icepick and stabbed Ralph Simpson with it.”

“I trust you’ve relinquished the idea that it was I.”

“You’re the most likely suspect. It’s time you got that through your head. You knew Simpson, it was your icepick, it was your old stamping ground where he was buried.”

“You don’t have to get rough,” she said in a rough voice. Her voice was as mutable as any I’d ever heard.

“This is a picnic compared with what you’re going to have for breakfast. I kept the police out of your hair tonight by suppressing your present name and whereabouts—”

“You did that for me?”

“You are my client, after all. I wanted to give you a chance to clear yourself. You haven’t used the chance.”

“I see.” A grim look settled like age on her mouth. “What was my motive for stabbing Ralph Simpson and burying him in the yard of our old house?”

“Self-protection of one kind or another. Most murderers think they’re protecting themselves against some kind of threat.”

“But why did I bury him in the yard of our house? That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“You could have arranged to meet him there, knowing the house was empty, and killed him on the spot.”

“That’s a pretty picture. Why would I rendezvous with a man like Ralph Simpson?”

“Because he knew something about you.”

“And what would that delightful something be?”

“It could have to do with the death of Dolly Stone Campion.”

“Are you accusing me of murdering her?”

“I’m asking you.”

“What was my motive?”

“I’m asking you.”

“Ask away. You’ll get no further answers from me.”

Her eyes were bright and hard, but the grinding interchange had hurt her will. Her mouth was tremulous.

“I think I will, Mrs. Blackwell. A queer thing occurred the night Dolly was murdered—queer when you look at it in relation to murder. When the strangler had done his strangling, he, or she, noticed that Dolly’s baby was in the room. Perhaps the child woke up crying. The average criminal would take to his heels when that happened. This one didn’t. He, or she, went to some trouble and ran considerable risk to put the child where he’d be found and looked after. He, or she, picked up the baby and carried him down the road to a neighbor’s house and left him in a car.”

“This is all new to me. I don’t even know where the murder took place.”

“Near Luna Bay in San Mateo County.”

“I’ve never even been there.”

I threw a question at her from left field: “The Travelers Motel in Saline City—have you been there?”

“Never.” Her eyes didn’t change.

“Getting back to the night of Dolly’s murder, a woman might think of the child’s safety at such a time. So might the child’s father. I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t Campion. Are you willing to discuss the possible identity of the child’s father?”

“I have nothing to contribute.”

“I have, Mrs. Blackwell. We have evidence suggesting that the strangler was wearing the Harris tweed topcoat I mentioned, Apparently one of the buttons was loose, about to fall
off. The baby got hold of it when the murderer was carrying him down the road. The neighbor woman found the brown leather button in the baby’s fist.” I paused, and went on: “You see why the identification of that topcoat is crucial.”

“Where is the topcoat now?”

“The police have it, as I said. They’ll be showing it to you tomorrow. Are you certain you’ve never seen one like it? Are you certain that your husband didn’t buy a coat from Cruttworth’s in Toronto?”

Her eyes had changed now. They were large and unfocused, looking a long way past me. Under her smudged makeup the skin around her mouth had a bluish tinge, as if my hammering questions had literally bruised her. She got to her feet, swaying slightly, and ran out of the room on awkward high heels.