“Then I happened to learn that he had let all his life-insurance policies lapse and had borrowed all he could
on them. I had a rather good idea by that time as to what they were planning.
“I began, also, to notice a change in Jack Finley. There was something just a little hollow creeping into those tragic protestations that my husband had ruined his life, and mine, and was ruining Cynthia’s. He gave me an odd impression of a man who was torn by an insane jealousy, but a jealousy that was under perfect control and was waiting for something.
“Two months of this went by, and I began to suspect what it was. He had told his sister, Charisse. She was slightly more intelligent, and she had guessed why Cynthia Cannon had changed her name. And she hated my husband. I think I have already told you that she had been another of his sordid affairs.
“She also worked in the bank. This was important.”
She broke off and glanced across at me. “You see it
now, don’t you?”
“I think so,” I said. “Yes. I think I do.”
She nodded and went on. “I let myself be persuaded. Our lives were ruined. What more did we have to live for, except revenge? Jack continued to rave about not being able to stand it any longer each time my husband disappeared for the weekend on some pretext or other, but he went on waiting.
“Well, that Saturday noon my husband came home from the bank a few minutes late, and said he was going on another fishing trip. He packed his camping equipment and went upstairs to shower and change clothes. I slipped out, as usual, and searched the car.
“This was the day. I found it.
“It was in a briefcase, rolled up in his bedding. During all those months, while I had been suspecting it and watching, I had often wondered if I would actually go through with it if I ever found the proof and knew, but the moment I opened that briefcase and saw the money there was no longer any doubt or hesitation.
“There wasn’t much time. I slipped it out of the car and hid it in the basement, knowing about how long it would take Jack to get there after Charisse had phoned him my husband had been the last to leave the bank and that he was carrying a briefcase.
“He arrived approximately on schedule, coming in the back way on foot. He was quite convincing. His face was white, and his eyes stared like a madman’s. He demanded to know if my husband had said he was going fishing again. I told him yes, and perhaps I was just a bit hammy myself. He said we couldn’t go on. We couldn’t stand it any longer.
“He was still inciting me with this theatrical harangue when I heard my husband coming down the stairs. I took Jack’s gun from his pocket and shot him as he came through the door.”
She stopped. For a moment she sat staring over my head. Her face showed no emotion whatever.
“All right,” I said. “So then of course he took charge of getting rid of the body and the car?”
She nodded. “Yes. He was remarkably efficient and calm. It was almost as if he had planned all the details beforehand. And it really wasn’t difficult. The cook wasn’t there, as I had been giving her Saturdays off. We merely had to wait until it was dark.”
“And what did they do when they found out it wasn’t in the car?”
“They both came, Sunday night. And of course I didn’t even know what they were talking about. There was no announcement by the bank until Monday morning, you will remember. And certainly they had never said anything about money before. I was sure Mr. Butler hadn’t had any such sum with him.
“They threatened me with everything. But what could they do? If they actually killed me they’d never find it. And obviously they couldn’t threaten me with the police because they were equally guilty. It was somewhat in the nature of an impasse.
“It was buried in a flower bed until the police grew tired of searching the house and watching me. Then I brought it down here and put it in those three safe-deposit boxes.”
“And so Finley was actually the one that abandoned the car in front of Diana James’s apartment. She swore it was you.”
She smiled faintly. “Cynthia, perhaps, wasn’t the most intelligent of women, but even she should have known I’d never be guilty of such an adolescent gesture as that.”
I sat there for a minute thinking about it. It was beautiful, any way you looked at it. She had outguessed them all.
Except me, I thought.
I grinned. I was the only one that had won. They had murdered and double-crossed each other for all that time, and in the end the whole thing was three safe-deposit keys worth forty thousand dollars apiece, and I had all three of them in my pocket.
“Baby,” I said, “you’re a smart cookie. You were almost smart enough to take the pot.”
I went downstairs and around the corner. The morning
papers were out now. I bought one.
I opened it.
“MRS. BUTLER DEAD,” the headline said
“COMPANION SOUGHT.”
Chapter Seventeen
I stood there on the corner under a street light just holding the paper in my hand while the pieces fell all around me. It was too much. You could get only part of it at a time.
Somebody was saying something.
“What?” I said. I folded the paper and put it under my arm. There were a half-million other copies covering the whole state like a heavy snowfall, but I had to hide this one. Companion sought. I started away. You didn’t run. You didn’t ever run. You walked, slowly.
“Hey, here’s your change. Don’t you want your change, mister?” It was the newsboy. Why did they call a man who was seventy years old a newsboy?
“Oh,” I said. “Uh—thanks. Thanks.” I put it in my
pocket.
I couldn’t stand here under the light.
As fast as I got a piece of it sorted out, something else would fall on me. I couldn’t stay here. I knew that. The man already thought I was crazy or blind drunk. He was watching me.
But I couldn’t go back to the apartment with this paper. If she read it I was through.
I could hear her laughing. I was hiding her from the police for $120,000, but the police weren’t looking for her. She was dead. They were looking for me.
I had to do something. Throw it away? With the man standing there watching me and already thinking I was nuts? I looked wildly around for the car. It was parked just ahead of me. I got in and pulled out into the traffic, having no idea where I was going.
I turned right at the corner and went out toward the beach. In a minute I saw a parking place in front of a drugstore and pulled into it. There was light here. I could read the paper sitting in the car.
But even as I spread it open I knew I didn’t have to read it. I could have written it. The whole thing would fall into place like the pieces in a chess game in which you had been outclassed before you’d even started to play.
I read it anyway.
It was even worse.
I was right as far as I had guessed, but I hadn’t guessed far enough. They had found the body of Diana James, all right. And the deputy sheriff had regained consciousness at last. “Sure it was Mrs. Butler,” he said. “I threw the light right in her face. Then this guy slugged me from behind.”
Of course they hadn’t looked much alike. But they were of the same height and general build, and the same age, and they were both brunettes. There probably wasn’t even any dental work to go on, if they called in her dentist. And who was going to?
Nobody was.
Why should they? The deputy sheriff had seen her there, hadn’t he? And she had to be on her way into the building instead of out, because he had been watching it and nobody had gone in before. Then there were the shots, after he was slugged. Diana James had come through the back yard while he was unconscious. Nobody knew anything about her, anyway. She’d been gone for six months.