“No? Why not?”
“Grimes had ambitious plans for Quintin. He intended to put him in the capitol.”
“Governor?”
“Eventually.”
“Who told you?”
“Quintin himself. His wife corroborated it.”
“It didn’t have to be true, just because he said it.”
“It didn’t have to be, but I think it was.”
“Maybe something developed that we don’t know about. Maybe Grimes changed his plans. Maybe he told Quintin he was going to dump him.”
“I doubt it, but maybe so. If so, how would it have helped matters to kill Grimes? Quintin would still have been in the dump.”
“Not if he had an agreement with Boniface.”
“I see what you mean. Quintin kills Grimes. Boniface becomes the power. Boniface assumes the support of Quintin.”
“Something like that. You think it sounds reasonable?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think you would. Neither do I, as a matter of fact. The thing’s too clumsy. If it had been planned that way, Quintin would have to have been left in the clear.”
“That’s right. A man who’s been a murder suspect is no candidate for office.”
“You got any other ideas?”
I looked across the lake into the cool, deep pocket of a cove. “No,” I said.
He sighed and slapped a fat thigh. Turning fully around, he stared up the slope toward the cottages.
“I’m afraid to move, Johnny. That’s the truth.”
“You better call in the state cops.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
“There’s a phone in my cottage.”
“Thanks. I’ll use it. I’ve got to get the coroner out here, too.”
He lumbered off the dock and up the slope. I sat on the bench and listened to him go. He breathed so heavily on the ascent that I could hear him almost the entire way to the top. And then, in a kind of flash of insight, I remembered what it was that had hung last night for a moment on the edge of consciousness, and it was nothing I had seen, and nothing I had heard, but something, instead, that I hadn’t heard and should have.
The bad that had come in the Chrysler would get no worse. It was now as bad as it could get.
The sun rose higher in the east, and shadows shortened under shoreline trees. I sat in the sun on the dock and waited for the murderer to come, and after a while she did. It seemed like a long, long while, but it wasn’t. It was, from the time Sam Austin went up the slope, no more than five minutes. She sat down beside me on the bench with a soft sigh.
“You should despise us,” she said. “We’re corrupt people.”
“Maybe I should,” I said, “but I don’t. Especially not you.”
“You should despise me most of all.”
“No. I confess that I admire you very much.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful. Because you were a fine companion for a little while. Because you’re the coldest, cleverest woman in an emergency that I’ve ever known. I admire you, and I’m afraid of you.”
She didn’t look at me. As I remember it, she never looked at me once while she sat there. All I remember is the stark, high-fashion beauty of her cold profile as she stared steadily across the glittering water.
“Why do you say that?”
“I say it because it’s so. Last night when I came up from the point and heard you in the cottage, you made a bad mistake. When I made a noise, you were startled and spoke immediately without thinking. It was a mistake most women would have been unable to surmount. Not you. You did the only possible thing that could give you a chance to escape the consequences, and it almost worked. Instead of sending me away, which would have put you in the worst possible position after the body was found, you called me inside. You had me help you put the body on the bed, taking the head and shoulders yourself to prevent my discovering the stringer, and to prevent its making a noise in the movement. Who would dream that a murderer would ask for help to move the body of his victim? There was simply no reason why it should have occurred to me that Dan Grimes was dead, and it didn’t. I accepted naturally the reasonable explanation — that he was drunk. It must require a special kind of woman to drive a piece of pointed steel into a man’s brain and then, afterward, nearly caught in the act, to carry out calmly such a dangerous deception. Not only did you have a witness to the fact that Grimes was alive when you left him, but also, by keeping me with you the rest of the night, a witness to the fact that you could not have killed him later. I feel rather bad about that. I hoped that it was only my company you wanted, but I see that it wasn’t. Never mind. Providing an alibi, I guess, should be considered part of the service, too.”
She lifted her head, tilting her face to the sky, as if, by doing so, she could expose herself to more of the clean bright light of the new day.
“You said you had no reason to think that he was not alive. Why do you think so now?”
“Something that almost registered at the time, but didn’t quite. A little while ago, as I listened to Sam Austin climb the slope, it did. There were three of us in that dark cottage, but only two of us were breathing. A man in a drunken sleep breathes heavily, but during all the time we were in the room together, the three of us, I never heard Dan Grimes breathe at all.”
She shrugged her thin shoulders, still looking at the sky, seeming to dismiss the indictment with indifference.
“It’s really very flimsy, you know. After several hours, you remember that you didn’t hear a man breathe. I doubt that it would be given much credence against my word.”
“I doubt it, too. If it isn’t, your husband will certainly have to pay your consequences.”
She was silent. For a full minute, she was a still as stone.
“Why?” she said.
“Because, to start with, the death of Dan Grimes must be paid for by someone. Because, to continue, Jerome Quintin is in the most vulnerable position. Because, to finish, he’s now expendable. Ira Boniface, at this moment, is probably the most powerful man in this state. He doesn’t have the same regard for Jerome Quintin that Dan Grimes had, and he won’t have the same plans. He doesn’t even like Quintin, as a matter of fact, and I’ve got an idea he’d be happy for a chance to dispose of him permanently. In less than a day I’ve learned that much, and you know it better than I do. There may be no case now, no real evidence, but it won’t be too hard for Boniface to arrange it.”
She stood up and walked over to the edge of the dock. I sat and looked at her thin body against the bright water and distant dark trees. After a while she spoke to me without turning.
“I was in our cottage when he came in and passed out in the chair. I started back to the other cottage, and then I saw the stringer, and I had a feeling that it had all been planned for me. I felt a kind of compulsion. I picked up the stringer and went back and killed him. It’s odd, isn’t it? I killed to save my husband’s soul, and now I must confess to the killing to save his life. What you said is true, and I was foolish not to see last night, when I asked you to take me away, that it would be this way. Well, it would be all right, I think, if only I could feel that it’s worth it. But I don’t. Now that I’ve done what I have, and must do what I must, I understand that Jerry’s worth none of it. I should simply have left him and gone away. Will you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Will you please go up and ask that fat sheriff to come down? Perhaps he can take me away immediately in his boat. I don’t think I could bear to face the others.”
“All right,” I said.
I stood and turned and started up the slope. I was about halfway up when the inboard roared to life behind me. I didn’t stop or turn my head.
When we find her, I thought, tomorrow, or the day after, she will no longer look like a high-fashion model, or anyone I ever saw or knew, and it will be like looking at another person entirely.