He said, “You got anything to back up your claim that Jerrold murdered Terzian and this Bascomb?”
“Some fairly sound theories. And the stolen carpet.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “You found that too?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“Right here in the camp. I'll show you.”
I took him around to the shed and uncovered the rolled Daghes-tan and watched while he got down and peeled back an edge of it. Then he nodded and said, “Jerrold put it here?”
“Uh-huh. You want me to go into it now?”
“Not just yet.” He stood up. “We'll have to take it along as the evidence when we; leave. You want me to notify Kayabalian, or you want to handle that yourself, you working for him and all?”
“You can notify him. I'll get in touch with him later. Tomorrow probably.”
We went outside, and I said, “If you're going up to see the body, I'd like to stay here. I've looked at enough death-too damned much of it.”
“I guess we all have,” he agreed, “the business we're in.”
So I showed him the path that led up to Cody's cabin, and after he and the deputy went up there I came back to Harry's and sat on the porch this time, out of the drizzle. I let myself think now, arranging my thoughts so I could lay it all out for Cloudman when the time came.
The white-uniformed intern came back first and said that Cloudman had told him he'd better have a look at me. That made me feel a little more sure of Cloudman's attitude; it was probably going to be all right between us. The intern peered at the cut on my forearm and the abrasions on my hands, and swabbed some antiseptic on them; then felt my ribs and asked me a few questions about sore spots and dizziness and double vision. I was not coughing now, and I did not say anything about my lungs; their condition was between me and Dr. White and the pathology lab at San Francisco General.
He had just finished telling me to get into bed and get some rest when Cloudman and Harry and the one deputy reappeared. At Cloudman's instructions, the intern went off to supervise the removal of Jerrold's remains. The rest of us were pretty cramped on the small porch, and it was starting to rain harder; we trouped inside the cabin and found places to sit, all except Cloudman. He stood with his back against the mantelpiece, worrying his scalp and grimacing. The rain made a soft, oddly lonely sound on the roof.
“Okay,” Cloudman said to me, “you can tell it now.”
I nodded. “Maybe I'd better give you a little background on Jerrold first,” I said, and I told him why Harry had asked me to come up and what had happened here at the camp since Sunday-Jerrold's wild jealousy, his wife's flirtations and probable infidelity, his deteriorating state of mind. Cloudman did not interrupt; the only sounds in the room were my voice and the pattering rain and the scratch of the deputy's pencil on the pages of a notebook.
When I was done, there was a moment of silence. Then, quietly, Cloudman said, “Two of you should have told me about this Sunday night or Monday afternoon.”
“I guess we should have,” I said. “But neither of us figured a connection then between Terzian's death and Jerrold. His instability seemed to be a product of his wife's actions and business pressures, nothing else. Error in judgment that was mostly mine; I'll take the responsibility for it.”
“All right, go on.”
“I didn't really begin to tie up Terzian's murder with somebody here at the camp until last night, when I discovered that Bascomb had disappeared.” I explained about the incident at Cabin Five. “But it was still only speculation; I didn't have anything more than a hunch, I hadn't tumbled yet to the things that pointed to Jerrold.”
“When did you tumble?”
“Not until this afternoon, up at the mine.”
“Why'd you leave the call for me this morning?”
“To tell you about Bascomb's disappearance and the possible tie-up with Terzian. I was on my way back from The Pines when I noticed the mine and realized it was what was on the missing sketch.”
“What was Jerrold's relationship with Terzian?” he asked. “Burroughs here told us he didn't know anyone who collected Oriental rugs and carpets.”
“That's right, buddy,” Harry said. He was sitting forward in his chair with his hands on his knees, and he still looked a little stunned. “Jerrold liked to talk about himself, he would have mentioned something like that before.”
“I don't think he was a collector,” I said. “I think he was buying stolen Orientals for one of his big advertising clients-the kind of client who won't buy stolen goods directly but doesn't mind getting them through a middleman, no questions asked. It's just an assumption, no facts to back it up, but it makes sense. Mrs. Jerrold told me he was a fanatic when it came to business, that he'd do anything to bring larger clients into his agency. Which means he'd do anything, too, to keep the ones he already had. Advertising people have contacts in all kinds of places; it wouldn't have been too difficult for him to connect with a man like Terzian.”
“I'll buy it for now,” Cloudman said, nodding. “What about these things that pointed to Jerrold?”
“There's the peacock feather, for one.”
His brow wrinkled. “You're coming at me out of left field.”
“Not really. You figured the feather came out of the killer's car and got dropped accidentally; the only question was why anyone would have it in his car in the first place. Well, Jerrold had been wearing this fisherman's hat off and on, decorated with all kinds of things-buttons, flies, patches, bits of colored felt. Any man who would put all that stuff on a hat might also get the idea of adding part of a peacock feather. That's pretty flimsy, I know-but it adds up.”
“You've got to have more than that.”
“There's a process of elimination,” I said. “On Sunday night, while Terzian was being murdered, Mrs. Jerrold and Karl Talesco were together over here on the lakefront; she intimated that to me the following morning. Also, the Rambler wagon that belongs to Talesco and Sam Knox was parked outside when Harry and I left in one of the skiffs-hardly any time for one of them to get over to the bluff and kill Terzian. And Knox volunteered the information today that he'd talked to Bascomb around dusk Sunday, an admission a man guilty of Bascomb's murder wouldn't make. That narrowed it down to the kid, Cody, and Jerrold, both of whom had gone off in their cars late Sunday afternoon. The pattern of Bascomb's death and the stealing of the mine sketch laid it on Jerrold.”
“How so?”
“They weren't wholly rational acts,” I said. “They suggested an unstable personality.”
“Spell it out.”
“Let me give it all to you, starting with Terzian's murder.”
“Go ahead,” Cloudman said.
“Assume Jerrold made arrangements with Terzian to come up here from San Jose and then to meet over on the bluff. My guess is that he wanted to get a look at the carpet and maybe make a partial payment on it, after which Terzian would deliver it to some place in the Los Angeles area. During the meeting, something set Jerrold off-an argument over money, Christ knows now. He grabbed up a lug wrench and settled the argument by bashing in Terzian's skull. Then, in a panic, he transferred the carpet to his car, wedged down the gas pedal in the van, and sent it over the edge-another irrational act, because the water at the foot of the bluff is shallow. A reasoning man couldn't expect the van to sink out of sight; why not just hide it back in the trees somewhere?”
I paused to clear my throat; my voice sounded thick, rusty. At length I went on: “After Jerrold was through with the van, he'd have realized he also had a problem with the carpet. He couldn't hide it in the trunk of his car because of its size, and he couldn't leave it out in the open somewhere because of its fragile nature; and for some reason-guilt, fear of discovery through a prolonged absence-he didn't want to drive it down to Los Angeles right away. So his decision was to bring it back here and hide it for the time being.”