“What of it?”
“Obviously, two lovers were plotting to kill someone. But why assume it was the woman’s husband?”
“But who else—?”
“Isn’t it equally possible that these lovers were plotting to kill the man’s wife? Curtis may be willing to make divorce easy for Esther if she wants it, but would Kate be willing to make divorce easy for Peter? Or would she make the whole thing very unpleasant? Particularly unpleasant for a young man who is dependent on his mother?”
“Oh, no!” Amy was on her feet. Blindly she stumbled toward the picture window. Mist was swirling through the trees, across the hedges... Not Peter. Not Kate. Amy pressed her hot forehead to the cool glass. “Don’t let it be Peter!”
The picture window.
Then she knew.
Payne was startled by the look in her eyes as she turned. “Everything you’ve said was a lie. It was you all along. You are Esther’s lover. You killed Charley Maitland. You killed Sharpe. And you are going to kill Curtis Gregory. I see it all now. And I’m going to prove it.”
“You can’t, because it isn’t true!”
Amy ran into the hall. Footsteps behind her spurred her flight.
“What in heaven’s name—?” It was Esther’s voice.
Amy looked back. Esther was coming down the wide stairs. She had paused in the grace of arrested motion, one hand on the balustrade.
Payne, in the doorway of the living-room, was looking up at her. Their eyes met and held, unsmiling, intent.
To Amy the tableau was like an illustration of the snatch of drama she had overheard yesterday. The fire that smoldered so darkly in the woman’s eyes, brilliant against the dull pallor of her face. The buoyant posture of the man’s lean, supple body; the brooding look on his swarthy face, harder and more virile than a merely handsome face. A born gambler, a buccaneer to his fingertips. And the woman an outlaw, too, at heart. Both drawn irresistibly together when they met in an orderly, ponderous world like Curtis Gregory’s or Charley Maitland’s, where there was a place for every emotion and every emotion was kept in its place. These two seemed the star-crossed lovers of all time, desperate, doomed.
“Amy!” called Esther. “Where are you going?”
“To Allan’s!”
Amy turned and ran out to her car...
Allan’s car was standing in his driveway when Amy drove between the gateposts.
“Can’t it wait?” Allan stood in the driveway, bag in hand.
“Let your patients wait a few minutes. This is vital, Allan. The man was Payne, and I can prove it.”
“Payne?” Never before had Allan seemed so slow. “It can’t be Payne!”
“Why not? It is, and we must do something about it. Let me tell you.”
“All right.” Allan seemed dazed as he followed her into the house.
In the waiting-room he sat sidesaddle on the edge of the table and lit a cigarette. “I’m a busy man Amy. Please make it brief.”
“Allan! Aren’t you interested in saving Curtis Gregory’s life?”
“Not particularly.” His eyelids dropped as he shook ash into a tray. “Curtis is a grown man. Let him take care of himself. He’s been warned. I’ll do anything the police require, but I’m not going out of my way to stir up mud.”
“I’m not going out of my way, either!” Red flags were flying in Amy’s cheeks. “This was thrust upon me... Allan, you were wrong. It wasn’t here, in this room of yours, that those two — Esther and Payne — were talking when I overheard them on the telephone.”
“What?” She had really startled Allan this time.
“As Kate said last night, there are lots of living-rooms in Oldport that are 30 feet wide, with hard, uncarpeted floors and picture windows.”
“I know that,” retorted Allen. “But we have to explain the apparent coincidence; out of several thousand possible wrong numbers, you got one where you overheard someone you knew — Esther. There’s only one explanation — the one I gave you last night. My number was in your mind because you were going to ask for it next. Your tongue slipped and you asked for it the first time without realizing you had done so. We have the same friends, so it wasn’t surprising that here you overheard someone you knew, if you did. All quite simple.”
“Allan, it was simpler than that. Don’t you see it? I didn’t get a wrong number. My tongue didn’t slip.”
“You didn’t—?” He looked at her.
“Do you remember what number I intended to call first?”
“The Gregorys’.”
“Exactly. I did ask for the Gregorys’ number, just as I thought I did, and I got the Gregorys’ number. It was that simple. There was no coincidence at all. What threw me off at the time was the voice that seemed to belong to a Negro butler. For when I called the number a second time, the Irish voice of their maid told me there were no butlers and no Negroes there. That and the word ‘stables’ confused me. Curtis used to call that building the barn before he married Esther.”
“You mean Sharpe answered the Gregorys’ telephone that first time?”
“Why not? Sharpe worked for a landscape gardening company. That afternoon he must have been trimming the Gregorys’ hedges. He heard the telephone and no one answered, so he stepped inside and answered it himself, just as we thought he did here. Even my asking for ‘Mrs. Corbett’ made no difference. Mother was just as likely to be there as here. And what place safer for Esther to hold that conversation than their own home while Curtis was out and the maids in their own quarters? Once she discovered that I thought the conversation had taken place here, she said she’d been at home all afternoon. That’s why she looked so slyly pleased — I’d given her a sort of alibi.”
“But what makes you think Payne is the man?”
“Who else can it be? You were making house visits when Sharpe died. Peter was here getting empirin for Mother. That leaves only Payne. Last night Esther thought it safe to admit that he was home with her all that afternoon when Curtis was out, because the conversation I overheard was supposed to have taken place here. Of course, she said Payne was upstairs, while she was downstairs, but that could be a lie.”
“And the Siamese cat?”
“This afternoon the Gregorys’ maid said something about a stray kitten being there yesterday. I was never sure that the cat I heard was a Siamese; I merely thought it might be.”
Allan rose and began to pace the floor. “Why was Sharpe killed here? You think Payne followed him?”
“Of course. Payne and Esther couldn’t afford to have his body found there. Allan, don’t you see what must have happened in the middle of that conversation? Payne or Esther noticed the unhooked telephone and broke the connection. Sharpe came back from the Gregorys’ stable to the Gregorys’ living-room, expecting to find the line still open. They said they had broken the connection accidentally and asked him who had called. He answered, ‘Miss Corbett.’
“Esther and Payne realized I must have overheard something. They knew I couldn’t recognize the voices of Payne, a stranger, and Esther, a woman I scarcely knew. They hoped I wouldn’t identify those voices when I heard them again. But whether I did or not, I would never have any corroborating evidence as long as I never met Sharpe. He was the only witness who knew I had been listening to an open telephone line there while he went to the stable to look for my mother. He was the only witness who knew that Payne and Esther were the pair he found talking there when he came back from the stable.”
“And Sharpe wasn’t kicked by my mare at all?”
“Why assume that? Because he was found dead in the stable? Because the wound was shaped like a horseshoe? Couldn’t Payne strike Sharpe’s head with a horseshoe? And wouldn’t he do it in a stable, so it would look as if a horse had done it?”