“Yeah, what was he troubled about?” Armand asked.
“I consider that question impertinent, Armand. Any other comments?” He stared around the room. “All right, then. This meeting is adjourned. Wait. One more point. This is for you boys that live in the house. The bed check and curfew will be adhered to rigidly.”
Chairs were shoved back. Arthur walked out first. I went down the stairs and out the door. Tilly was sitting in my car.
“I walked over,” she said. “I didn’t want to be stood up.”
“How did you know I was going to?”
I turned on the lights and motor. She moved over close to me. “We’re going to your place and talk, Joe. I can think more clearly now.”
Chapter Six
Shooting at Windmills
She went in ahead of me and put the lights on, as I put the top of the car up against the dew. The gulf was rough, the waves thundering hard against the beach. We dragged chairs out onto the terrace. I held her tightly against me for a moment. “Hey,” she said, “I want to keep on thinking clearly for a while. Leggo!”
“Chilly woman.”
“Hush!” She sat down and after three tries we got our cigarettes going. “This,” she said, “is probably silly. You’ll have to let me know. Remember when we talked about what the dead boys had in common except the fraternity?”
“I remember.”
“Brad’s death makes the pattern more clear, Joe. Can you guess what they had in common?”
I thought for a time. “No. Give.”
“Rex Winniger, Tod Sherman, Ted and Brad were all very positive people. Strong personalities. They had influence in the fraternity. Every house has a certain quota of nonenities. But there was nothing wishy-washy about any one of that four. They had power in the house and on the campus. Is that going to help?”
I felt the excitement. “That is going to help. You are a lovely and intelligent gal. I was so close to it I didn’t even see it. Wait a minute now. Let me think. It doesn’t make motive any stronger from a sane person’s point of view, but it does make it clearer. Jealousy. Lust for power. If the pattern is anything other than accidental, it means we have to look among the membership for our boy. And we said a long time ago that insiders would have the edge by far on opportunity.”
I guess we got it both at the same time. She reached over and held my hand. Her hand was like ice. “It couldn’t be, Joe. It just couldn’t be.”
“Come on inside. I want to read you something.”
We went in and shut the terrace doors against the wind. I found my lecture notes from the abnormal psychology class. They were fragmentary, but I could piece them together.
“Listen, Tilly. One of the types of insanity least vulnerable to any known treatment is the true psychopath. It’s as though the person were born with some essential part missing. Conscience. The psychopath has no understanding of right and wrong. To him, the only thing is not to get caught. Has reasonable-sounding motives for all his actions.
“This type of person, if displeased with service, will set fire to a hotel and think nothing of the consequences as long as he is not apprehended. Entirely blind to the other person’s point of view. Many murderers caught and convicted and sentenced are true psychopaths. Motive for crime often absurdly minor. True psychopath shows high incidence of endowment of brains and charm of manner. Is often outstanding. Often basically arrogant.
“Delights in outwitting others. Capable of carrying on long-range planning. Constantly acts in the presence of others. Often a liar as well, with amazingly intricate and well-conceived fabric of untruth. Society has no good answer as yet to the true psychopath.”
I put the notebook away. She frowned at me. “But Joe! He’s such a sweet guy! Gentle, understanding. He was so nice to me after Ted... died.”
“High endowment of charm of manner. Constantly acts in the presence of others. Delights in outwitting others.”
“But with all he’s got on the ball, he’d be almost as big without... going to such crazy lengths.”
“Motive for crime often absurdly minor.”
“But to kill... just for the sake of fraternity house politics. Joe, it’s crazy!”
“A true psychopath is an insane person. He hides among us normal jokers because he looks and acts and talks just like one of us... up to a point.”
“Will the police listen to you?” she finally asked.
“They’d laugh in my face. What proof have I got? We’ve got to show that each murder helped him, even though it helped him in a minor way.”
She crossed the room. “Hold me tight, darling. I’m scared. I don’t want to think about him. I wish it were Bill, or Step, or little Jay Bruce, or even Al Siminik. Anybody except Arthur Marris.”
“We’ve got to get hold of Harv Lorr, the fellow who was president last year. He can help us straighten out the timing on those other deaths. He’s probably in North Dakota or some equally handy place.”
“He’s a Tampa boy. He’s working in the family cigar business. With luck, Joe, we can be talking to him in an hour or so.”
Harv Lorr came across from the door to our booth. “There he is,”. Tilly said. I looked up and saw a tall man approaching. He was prematurely gray and there were deep lines bracketing his mouth. He wore a light sport coat and an open-collared shirt.
“It’s nice to see you again, Tilly,” he said. His smile was a white ash in his sun-darkened face.
I had slid out of the booth. “Meet Joe Arlin, Harv,” she said. We shook hands and murmured the usual things. We all sat down.
Harv ordered beer. He sat beside Tilly. He turned so he could look at her. “You sounded a little ragged over the phone. What’s up?”
“It’s about Brad,” she said.
Harv frowned. “I read it this evening. Terrible thing. How do I fit?”
Tilly looked appealingly at me. I took over. “Mr. Lorr, I want to ask you some pretty pointless-sounding questions. If you stop me to ask me why I’m asking them, it will just take that much longer. Believe me, there’s a definite pattern in the questions. First. The two sophomores who were killed in that automobile accident. Were they of any particular importance in fraternity politics? Were they active?”
Harv looked puzzled. “They were two votes. At the election of officers the previous June they’d voted for me as house president for the next year, rather than Ted Flynn.”
“We’ll move on to the next question. We weren’t particularly interested in those two sophomores anyway. The next guy we care about is Rex Winniger. Was he active?”
“He was the outstanding man in the junior class. If he’d lived, I don’t think there was any doubt of his becoming house president during his last year. It was a blow to all of us.”
“He died in December. Then in March of this year it was Tod Sherman. He was a classmate of yours, as Flynn was. Was he active in house politics?”
“Everybody is to a certain extent, Arlin. When I won out over Ted, Ted gave up having any pronounced opinions. There is usually a couple of strong groups in the house. Tod Sherman was my opposition. We fought each other tooth and nail, but it was good-natured. At the time he died, we were pretty well lined up for the June elections. I wanted Arthur Marris for president and it was understood that Tod Sherman was pushing Brad Carroll.
“In a house that size the cronies of the pres get the gravy. You know that. Tilly said over the phone you were in the fraternity up at Wisconsin. You know then how a president on the way out through the graduation route tries to get one of his boys in for the following year.”