I got up and walked out of the room before he could say anything. I went downstairs, opened the front door, crossed the lawn and climbed into my car.
The clock on the dashboard showed that it was one-thirty. I was tired but I wasn’t discouraged. I could now concentrate on finding Marian French’s killer. Maybe it wouldn’t be easy. But I was going to find him. Cranville wasn’t a big town. Someone in Cranville was responsible for the killing, and if I got the right kind of lead it shouldn’t be difficult to run him to ground.
I returned to the Palace Hotel, went upstairs and found Audrey and Reg fast asleep. They were lying on the twin beds, still dressed, and I had to shake them before they knew I was in the room.
Audrey sat up and groaned faintly. “I’m so tired,” she said. “What happened? Did you see Wolf?”
“I saw him,” I said grimly. “You turn in now. We’ll meet tomorrow. There’re things I want to talk to you about. Come on, Reg, we’ll get a room here and get ourselves some sleep. We’re out of a job. Wolf’s sacked me, and that goes for you too. How would you like to become a detective?”
Reg looked at me sleepily as he rolled off the bed. “Sure,” he said; “that’s been my life’s ambition. I never did think I’d be editor of the Gazette for long.”
I grinned at him. “Come on,” I said. “You weren’t cut out to be an editor, but you’ll make a swell detective. Let’s go get a room.”
He ambled over to the door. “Do you want me to see the desk clerk while you tuck her in?” he asked, eyeing Audrey with his youthful leer.
“Get a double room,” I said, pushing him into the passage. “We’ll need to watch our expenses.”
“Don’t take too long saying good night to that blonde,” he returned. “I want some sleep even if you don’t.”
When he had gone, I stood over Audrey as she lay on the bed and we smiled at each other. “All right now?” I said. “Anything else you want?”
“I’m fine — just tired, that’s all. Is it all right about the kidnapping?”
I sat on the bed by her side and took her hand. “I fixed Wolf. In his position he can’t afford to get tough with me.”
She looked down at our hands. “I suppose he can’t,” she said, “but you will be careful?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve knocked around too long to let a fat old guy like Wolf upset me.” I stroked her hand absently, thinking how nice she looked. “We’re partners now,” I went on; “only the senior partner. What I say goes.”
“I suppose I’ll have to let you have your own way,” she said lazily. “All right, I’ll admit I’ve made a mess of things. I’m in no position to get tough with you either.”
“Now you are being smart,” I said. “In fact you’re not in the position to refuse me anything.”
“Not anything?” she said, in mock alarm.
“Not anything,” I repeated, slipping my arm under her head and half raising her. Her head rested in the crook of my arm and our faces were close. “Does that worry you?”
She looked at me seriously. “No, I don’t think it does.”
I kissed her. “Sure?”
She pulled my head down. “I like it,” she said softly. “Let’s do it again.”
Eleven o’clock the next morning we went over to Audrey’s office to plan our campaign.
“Now let’s see what we have to do,” I said as soon as we had settled down. “It’s a certain bet Wolf will try to stop the investigation. I don’t know what Forsberg will do about that. Maybe he’ll recall me. If he does, then I’ll quit working for him. I’ve chiselled two grand out of Wolf and that’ll keep us off the bread line. Our job is to find the guy who killed Marian, and we’re going to find him. I’ll split the two grand three ways so we’ll all have a little dough, but we’ve got to work fast and get this case cracked before our dough gives out. Is that all right with you two?”
“Isn’t it foolish to throw up your job with the International Investigations?” Audrey said, looking worried. “I mean, jobs don’t grow only on trees, and you might want...”
“That’ll have to look after itself,” I broke in. “Maybe Forsberg will let me go ahead. He’s had a retainer from Wolf and he might give me a free hand. Anyway, I’ll wait until I hear from him. I don’t give a damn one way or the other. I wouldn’t mind setting up in business on my own. We three might make a good thing out of it. But never mind that for the moment. I want to run over this case and see what we’ve got.”
“Not much,” Reg said gloomily. “We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”
“And I’ll tell you why,” I said. “Up to now we have all been concentrating on the election angle. But suppose these kidnappings have nothing to do with the election?”
“But they must have,” Audrey protested.
I shook my head. “There’s no must about it. Suppose we ignore the election entirely. Never mind about Wolf or Esslinger or Macey. We’ll forget them. Let’s begin from the beginning. Four girls disappear. There’re no clues except a shoe belonging to one of them which is found in an empty house. Then a fifth girl disappears in exactly the same way as the other four, only this time we find her body before the murderer can hide it. If we hadn’t have gone to the house at the time we did we should never have known that Marian had been killed. She would have disappeared in the same way as the other girls disappeared. It’s a safe bet that the other four girls were also strangled and maybe they were all killed in the same house. That gives us something, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Audrey said, doubtfully. “It gives us the method, but I don’t see how it helps.”
I went over to her desk and sat down. “We’ll put this down on paper,” I said, picking up a pencil. “Take the girls first. What do we know about them?”
“They’re just ordinary girls,” Reg said. “Nothing much there. Why should anyone want to kill them?”
“They were all blondes,” I said, writing that down. “Maybe that has nothing to do with it, but it’s a point. They were all young and they all belong to the same set except Marian.” I stared at the paper and then added: “Well, that doesn’t get us very far, does it?”
“I would like to know how the murderer persuaded them to go with him to that empty house. I mean, a girl would be half-witted to enter a lonely, spooky-looking house like that unless she trusted the person she went with,” Audrey said.
I stared at her for a long moment. “Yeah,” I said, “the nickel drops, You have something there. Someone phoned Marian and arranged to meet her at the house. We know that because she had a phone call and she wrote down the number of the house. Why did she go there without even calling me to tell me where she was going? She knew where I was.”
“She went there because she knew the person who called her and she thought she could trust him,” Audrey said, the colour going out of her face.
“Ted Esslinger,” I said softly. “He was the only guy, except Reg, Wolf and me, that Marian knew in this town.”
“The other girls also knew Esslinger well,” Reg said, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “They all knew him well enough to go with him to an empty house if his story was good enough.”
Audrey got to her feet and began pacing up and down. “But this is crazy,” she said. “He can’t be doing it. Why should he? It... it’s all wrong. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Take it easy,” I said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling smoke deeply. “We don’t know it’s Esslinger. It just happens that it could be him.”