“I didn’t have enough money to satisfy her, and I would rather have married an octopus.”
“You admit, then, that she threatened you!”
“I don’t admit a thing. As for my reputation and professional career, important as they are to me, I wouldn’t kill because of a threat to them, expressed or implied.”
“Wouldn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. You haven’t got a case, Lieutenant, admit it. It’s all based on what I could have done, not on what I did. As for that two hours or so at the hospital, I repeat that I was in that private room napping every second of the unaccounted-for time, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.”
“I’ll prove it if I can, and I think I can.”
“Are you saying that I’m under arrest?”
“Arrest?” Masters seemed to consider the question. “No. Not yet, Dr. Richmond.”
“That’s what I thought.” Jack laughed and rose abruptly. “You’ll have to excuse me. This has been something of a strain.”
Without another word he turned and went into his house. Vera followed him quickly, looking worried. Masters continued to sit there for a few moments, then he slapped his thigh and said, “I’m sorry. By God, I’m sorry,” but whether this was a reference to the Richmonds or to his own position was not clear. He jumped up and left. These abrupt departures left the Walterses and the Howells rather awkwardly abandoned on the Richmond terrace.
“I knew it,” Mae said. “I knew from the start that Lila was a tramp.”
“Shut up, Mae,” Stanley said.
“She was bound to come to a bad end.”
“Shut up, Mae,” Stanley said.
“Yes, Mae,” Nancy said. “Do, please!”
“Come on, Stanley,” Mae said. “It’s apparent that we had better go home.”
Stanley rose without haste and walked Mae across the yard to the alley. On the way, Mae took his arm.
“Stanley Rides Again,” Nancy murmured. “He’s practically pure by comparison.”
“Mae’s impossible. I’d rather not talk about her.”
“Not Vera, though. Vera is superb. I wonder what I’d do if I caught you playing around.”
“You’d do just what I did about you and Stanley in the alley,” said David. “You’d adjust.”
“I was just joking about that, David Howell, and you know it!”
“In that case, let’s drop it. I feel like hell, tootsy-puss, and all I want is to go home and hoist a few.”
So the Howells went home and hoisted a few, and so forth, finally wrapping themselves around each other in an obscure revulsion from the death, dissolution and adultery of the evening’s conversation.
15
Masters was not happy. He had slept poorly for three nights; his temper was short, his tolerance level low. He was even, in a rational sort of way, hearing voices when he was alone, or rather, a voice. He heard it over and over, the voice of Jack Richmond. He was hearing it now, as he sat brooding at his desk.
“I was in that private room napping every second of the unaccounted-for time,” the voice of Jack Richmond said, “and I challenge you to prove otherwise.”
Each time he heard the unvoiced words, they sounded more like the bluster of a guilty man. They did not sound at all, in Masters’s judgment, like the despair of innocence. They seemed the vain utterance of a man who was getting away with something. Masters did indeed feel challenged.
The hell of it was — the blazing, frustrating hell of it was — that the doctor was perfectly right in one respect. He had gone into an empty hospital room before Larry Connor’s murder, and he had been found there over an hour later, and there was no way of proving that he had not remained there the whole time. For three days Masters had tried in vain to dig up a witness who had seen Dr. Richmond during the crucial period. He had apparently not been seen approaching the Connor office, or leaving it, or returning and leaving Sunday morning for the legerdemain with the air-conditioner. It was bad luck. The streets of the town early on a Sunday morning would have been virtually deserted. As, apparently, they had been.
Masters was still at his desk, brooding, when his chief dropped in and claimed a chair.
“How’s it going, Gus?”
“It’s not,” Masters said. “It’s gone. Gone, I mean, as far as it’s going.”
“You decided to drop it? You think, after all, it was murder and suicide by Connor?”
The chief’s voice betrayed the wish behind the thought, and Masters’s recognition of it increased his irritation.
“Hell, no. It wasn’t murder and suicide by Connor, and I haven’t decided to drop it. Damn it all, you can’t just drop a murder case.”
“Don’t get upset, Gus,” said the chief, with the sympathy of a man who has slid home safely and can afford to relax. “Any plans?”
“To slit my throat, maybe. I know what happened, and I know who’s guilty. And I can’t do a damn thing about it!”
“Who’s guilty?” repeated the chief, astounded. “Who, who?”
“Dr. Jack Richmond, that’s who. I’ll give odds on it.” Masters added, “Though there don’t seem to be any takers.”
“If you know he’s guilty—”
“There’s a big difference between knowing something and proving it. There’s no proof.”
“You’d better be sure,” said the chief excitedly. “We can’t afford a mistake that big.”
Masters grunted.
“I’ve got a suggestion, Gus. You listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“Dump what you’ve got on the county attorney’s desk. Let him decide if it’s anything he wants to take into court.”
“The county attorney,” Masters said wearily, “is just a few years out of law school, and his trial experience doesn’t include first-degree murder. You expect that pup to take a chance on getting his brains knocked out? He wouldn’t even try.”
“Damn it, Gus, you fish or cut bait. You can’t spend the rest of your life on this thing!”
“Look, Chief, let me keep up the pressure on this guy. He may break or something. If I could only dream up a way to trick him into exposing himself!”
“On your head be it,” said the chief oracularly. He heaved himself to his feet, creaking in various places. “Because you can lose it, Masters, if you do anything foolish.”
He left; and Masters, abandoned in his own unpleasant company, reflected on the ominous change in his chief’s form of address from “Gus” to “Masters.” There was nothing very subtle about the warning that accompanied it. But then the chief had not retained his office for sixteen years by the exercise of subtlety. Wham! was his motto.
So now, the lieutenant thought, my job is on the line, too.
But Augustus Masters was a stubborn man. As he saw it, he had no choices. Back to the wars.
He decided to try to cleanse his mind of all bias and preconception and go over the case from as virgin a viewpoint as he could muster. Forget Dr. Jack Richmond and all the fancy deductions about the air-conditioning. Forget everything but the facts, and even reexamine those for hidden flaws or rivulets that trickled off in unguessed directions.
The logical place to start, he thought, was Larry Connor’s office. He had kept it locked; it was as the investigation had left it. Doggedly Masters reached for his hat and walked over to the business block and entered the alley running behind it.
He let himself in by way of the alley door and stood for a moment in the hot storeroom behind Connor’s office. The air was stale and stifling, and he automatically jerked his collar open and loosened his tie. The air-conditioner in the window beside him was silent, and he found himself listening in the silence. He was aware of a vague and irrational uneasiness. This was ridiculous, of course, and he started to laugh; but then he was listening hard, crouched a little. There was a sound, an odd sound scarcely more audible than heavy breathing; and after a moment he realized that someone, somewhere on the premises, was crying.