“Why, thank you, Lieutenant. That’s very generous of you.”
Masters sipped his coffee. He really wanted cream and sugar, but he was afraid to ask for them. The coffee was also bitter, from having been standing on the range for God knew how long. Nevertheless, he sipped it with every appearance of relish.
“Well!” said Masters. “Now what about this experiment of yours, Mrs. Howell? You said something about getting into the Connor house?”
“You carry a key to the house, don’t you? I want you to take me inside.”
“Why do you want to go inside?”
“I want to try the light in Lila’s bedroom. To see if it will go on.”
Masters blinked. “I don’t suppose you’d mind explaining?”
“I happened to remember that on the night Lila was killed the light in her bedroom was on — I mean after Larry left. I definitely recall seeing it. But the next day, when we found Lila’s body, the light was off.”
“You don’t say.” Masters regarded her with admiration and respect. This might prove an important confirmation of part of his theory. “You’re assuming that the light was turned off by Lila?”
“Or by somebody else. In either event, it shows that somebody was in that house after Larry left — and that ought to go a long way toward clearing Larry’s name.”
“Unless, of course, the bulb simply burned out.”
“Of course. That’s why I want to examine the bulb.”
“It won’t be necessary, Mrs. Howell. The bulb was not burned out. We’ve had it on since then.”
“The bedlight, too?”
“Bedlight? No... Could it have been the bedlight you saw?”
“I doubt it. But there’s no sense in leaving any possibility unexplored, is there, Lieutenant?”
“You’re right there! Let’s go over and settle the matter, shall we?”
They entered the Connor house by the front door and went directly upstairs to Lila’s bedroom. Masters, preceding her into the room, stepped aside.
“It was your idea, Mrs. Howell,” he said archly. “You try them.”
The room was full of shadows, and Nancy moved reluctantly through them to the hapless double bed. The bedlight came on readily. She turned it off again just as Masters flipped the wall-switch that operated the ceiling fixture.
“That settles it,” Nancy said. “No burned-out bulb, and it was definitely the ceiling light I saw. The bed-light casts most of its light on the bed, and anyway it’s much less bright.”
“You’ve established an important point.” Masters looked around. “By the way, as long as we’re here, there’s something else I want to look for. Do you mind waiting?”
“What is it you’re after, Lieutenant?”
“A key. A key to the back door. We found Lila’s in the key-case in her purse, so hers is accounted for. But her husband’s is missing.”
“What grisly fun,” Nancy said. “Do you mind if I help you look for it, Lieutenant? I’m not much good at standing around waiting. I get itches in all the inconvenient places.”
“Well,” Masters said doubtfully. “It’s against the rules—”
“Whose rules — that doddering old police chief’s?” Nancy said with scorn. “Or—” and Masters flinched under the beautiful fire that leaped into her eyes — “or am I still a suspect, Lieutenant Masters?”
“No, no, no,” he said hastily. “By all means help me look!”
For the better part of an hour they worked their way through the house, searching every place they could think of where a key might have been left or lost or hidden. But they failed to find it. At last they came back to the room in which they had begun; and Nancy, conceding defeat, sat down on the edge of Lila’s elegant chaise. But Masters went once more around the room, and then disappeared in the bathroom. When he came out he was looking rather inscrutable.
“If you ask me,” Nancy said, “this is a waste of time. I told you the back door was unlocked when I tried it Sunday afternoon. I don’t see why you persist in thinking that it was locked before.”
“Is it reasonable that the Connors left their back door unlocked? Even at night?”
“No, but they may have neglected to lock it that particular night. After all, they’d been drinking a lot of beer and quarreling. A drinkie-fightie episode can make married people forget to take their shoes off when they go to bed, let alone a little thing like locking the back door.”
“No, the murderer couldn’t have counted on that, Mrs. Howell. He would still have had to bring the back-door key with him, in case the door was locked.”
“Then maybe he still has it.”
“That would make him out an idiot,” said Masters, “and, whoever it is we’re dealing with, he’s certainly no idiot.”
“Or just threw it away.”
“Maybe.” Masters sounded cryptic.
“Lieutenant, you know something!” Nancy was so excited that she grabbed Masters’s arm, leaning very close to him. Masters closed his eyes momentarily; her perfume made him feel faint. “Come on, what is it? Tell me!”
“Well, I do have an idea,” he said weakly.
“What?”
“I’d rather not say now. It may be all wet.”
This clearly closed the subject, so Nancy let Masters walk her back to her house. On the terrace he lifted his hat and was about to depart when Nancy said, “Oh, I almost forgot!” and detained him a little longer, belatedly recalling Stanley Walters’s confession about having talked to Lila that night after Nancy went back into her house. Masters listened with mounting bitterness, glaring at the alley where Stanley had been standing on the night under discussion.
“That settles it,” the detective growled when Nancy had finished. “Why didn’t Walters himself tell me this?”
“Don’t blame Stanley too much, Lieutenant,” Nancy said. “He’s in mortal terror of his wife. Mae can be very unpleasant where other women are concerned.”
Recalling Mae Walters, Masters did not doubt it. Just the same, he was boiling mad.
“Walters should have told me,” he said. “It’s a serious offense withholding evidence in a murder investigation. It’s cost me a lot of time and headaches. I could have got off to a flying start on this case, instead of floundering around in the swamp of my own thick head!”
“Stanley didn’t withhold it,” Nancy said quickly, a little frightened by this unexpected side to Lieutenant Masters. “He was just a little late in giving it, Lieutenant. He actually asked me to tell you.”
Masters grunted. “I’ll deal with Mr. Walters later. The point is, the evidence is now conclusive. Lila Connor was definitely alive after you saw Larry Connor leave home, and that practically puts the clincher on the conclusion that he didn’t kill her, and consequently didn’t commit suicide, either. Walters’s testimony fits with other evidence I have. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no doubt now that we’re dealing with a live murderer of two people; and unless I’m going soft in the head, he’s living somewhere around here.”
And Masters stalked off toward his car.
13
There was a man coming down the alley, trying doors. If the rear of a building was flush with the alley, he would pause merely long enough to assure himself that the back door was secured; but if there was a parking area between the building and the alley, he disappeared for a minute or two and Masters knew he was trying another door out of the line of sight. The door-tester dragged one leg, the result of an injury years ago when he was a brakeman on the railroad. He had received a large settlement at the time; but the money was long gone, and now he lived on a small pension supplemented by his earnings as a night watchman. His name was Jake Kimble.
Masters, waiting on a side street at the end of the alley, could follow Jake’s progress by the approaching flashlight; he could also hear the slithering sound of Jake’s maimed foot dragging over the uneven brick. The detective was familiar with old Kimble’s route. He had been waiting now for a quarter of an hour. It had occurred to Masters that the watchman might be the possessor of vital information.