“Dusts,the bottle and puts it back. She puts all the other bottles in the salt-and-pepper cabinet, knowing Mrs. Sawyer will have to move them around. Her own fingerprints wouldn’t make any difference, anyway.”
“And she puts out a carafe of water, knowing that when you return to the apartment and find the body after dinner, it would be any man’s normal instinct to pour himself a stiff one at the sideboard. Thus she got your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”‘
“Right.”
“Damned clever. How did you get to interview Lucy Connors?”
“I said I was from a magazine.”
“I see. It seems you’ve done better than we have, Fletcher.”
“The thing that has been puzzling since the beginning,” said Fletch, “is that this murder appeared to be a crime of sexual passion. The victim was naked. She was beautiful. And yet they autopsy turned up no evidence of sexual intercourse.”
“That was surprising,” said Flynn.
“There would be no such evidence, if the sexual affair was lesbian?”
“My God, it’s been in front of our eyes all the time.”
“Lucy has a key. She and Ruth were at the airport at the same time. She would be attracted to Ruth. Anyone would be. She and Ruth could not go to a hotel, easily or safely. Lucy is known to be violence-prone. Ruth would have resisted her.”
“An arrest,” said Flynn, standing up from his desk, “is imminent.”
“58 Fenton Street, Brookline,” said Fletch, also standing. “Apartment 42. Under the name of Marsha Hauptmann.”
“Have you got that, Grover?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Now, Frank,” said Fletch. “Would you do me a favor?”
“It seems I owe you one.”
“Get your goons off my back.”
“I will, indeed. Grover, order Mister Fletcher’s tail removed immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And will you be at home later tonight, Mister Fletcher?”
“I expect to be. Later.”
“Perhaps I’ll give you a call to tell you how things turn out.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“I’m sure you will, Mister Fletcher. I’m sure you will.”
Thirty-six
Both Andy and Sylvia marveled when Fletch donned blue jeans, boots, a dark blue turtle neck sweater, Navy windbreaker, and a Greek fisherman’s cap, and said he was going out for a while.
He said he would be back for dinner.
He wouldn’t.
Although free of his police tail, out of habit he went through the kitchen and down the service stairs of the apartment house. Going through the alley to his garage on River Street was a short cut, anyway.
In the black truck, Fletch put himself Newbury Street and headed west. (The two top storeys of 60 Newbury Street were lit.) He crossed Massachusetts Avenue, down the ramp, and continued west on the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension.
Lolling along, singing to himself while munching pretzels, he took the Weston exit, went left at a light, and curved right up a grade after a second light. The moon was out. Climbing, after he passed the golf course, he had a better view of the antique farmhouses, close to the road, and the well-separated estate houses, set back.
Passing the Horan house, he noted it showed no light.
He continued on into Weston Center.
Next to a drugstore on the main road was a lit telephone booth. Fletch parked at an angle, next to it, and checked his watch.
It was five minutes past nine Monday night. He had been in Massachusetts about six days and six hours.
Despite the dim light emanating from the drugstore, he knew it was closed.
In the phone booth, he dialed the Boston number of Ronald Risom Horan.
The man answered immediately.
Chewing gum in mouth, thumb pressed against his left nostril, Fletch said, “Mister Horan? Yeah. This is the Weston police. Your burglar alarm just went off. Yeah. The light just lit house the console here.”
“Is someone at the house now?”
“Yeah! A burglar is, I guess.”
“Are the police there?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re sending the car over. As soon as we can locate it.”
“What do you mean, as soon as you locate it?”
“Yeah, they’re not answering the radio just now.”
“Jesus! Listen, you jerk! Get someone to the house right away!”
“Yeah. I’ll do what I can.”
“I’ll be out right away.”
“Yeah. Okay. You know where the police station is?”
“I’m not going to the police station, you jerk! I’m going to the house!”
The phone slammed down.
Taking his time, Fletch drove back to Horan’s house, down the driveway.
He drove behind the house to the garage. His headlights picked up the dirt track around the right of the garage. He drove around the garage. His headlights swept the area as he turned.
He backed the black truck into the tractor shed and turned out the headlights.
Walking back around the garage, he saw that the back and side of the house were bathed moonlight. It was easy to find a big enough stone.
On the back porch, being careful to lay his bare fingers nowhere but on the stone, he reexamined the alarm system carefully. There were six small panes of glass in the back door. Each pane had two wires of the alarm system zigzagging through it, from left to right, top and bottom.
Very carefully, with the stone, he smashed the pane of glass nearest the door handle, knocking out both wires.
The alarm went off—a high, excited, shrill, piercing, truly frightening ringing.
His mind’s eye saw a light beginning to flash at a console at the Weston police station.
As he went down the porch staff he pitched the stone into the woods.
He crossed the driveway to the bushes. In the bright moonlight, he stood, silently, further back in the bushes than he wanted to, but he still had clear views of the driveway, the side and back of the house.
Soon he saw the huge lights of the Rolls-Royce traveling north on the road. It braked as it approached the driveway.
The lights streamed down the gravel.
Horan turned the car so the headlights flooded the back porch of the house. He dashed across the gravel and up the steps. His feet crunched on the broken glass. He stooped to examine the window. Using his key, he let himself into the house.
The kitchen light went on.
In a moment, the burglar alarm was turned off.
No lights went on in the front of the house.
Dim lights, as from a stairwell, mixed with the moonlight on the window surface at the back of the house, both downstairs and upstairs.
Then lights went on in an upstairs room at the back of the house. Light poured out of its two windows.
Other than the kitchen, the room in the center of the second storey was the only room fully lit.
There was a noise from the road to Fletch’s left.
Blue lights rotating on the top of a police car came down the driveway. ,There was no sound of a siren.
The light in the room on the second floor went off.
The policemen parked behind the Rolls. Going around it, one of the policemen brushed his fingers along a fender.
Horan appeared at the back door.
“You Mister Horan?”
“What took you guys so goddamned long?”
“We came as soon as we got the call.”
“Like hell you did. I got out from Boston sooner.”
“Is this your car?”
“Never mind about that. What the hell am I paying taxes for, if this is the kind of protection I get?”
The policemen were climbing the steps, their wide belts and holsters making them look heavy-hipped.
“You pay your taxes, Mister Horan, because you have to.”
“What’s your name?”
“Officer Cabot, sir. Badge number 92.”