“You didn’t tell him about the money?” I said in an undertone.
“No. Did you really get the picture?”
“Come inside and see.”
As we turned the corner of the building, a car left the curb in front of it, and started up the street with a roar. It was Admiral Turner’s black sedan.
“It looks like Alice driving,” Mary said.
“She’s gone to tell her father, probably.”
I made a sudden decision, and headed back to my car.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to see the Admiral’s reaction to the news.”
She followed me to the car. “Take me.”
“You’d better stay here. There’s no telling what might happen.”
I tried to shut the door, but she held on to it. “You’re always running off and leaving me to make your explanations.”
“All right, get in. I don’t have time to argue.”
I drove straight up the alley and across the parking lot to Rubio Street. There was a uniformed policeman standing at the back door of Hilary’s shop, but he didn’t try to stop us.
“What did the police have to say about Hilary?” I asked her.
“Not much. The ice pick had been wiped clean of fingerprints, and they had no idea who did it.”
I went through a yellow light and left a chorus of indignant honkings at the intersection behind me.
“You said you didn’t know what would happen when you got there. Do you think the Admiral—?” She left the sentence unfinished.
“I don’t know. I have a feeling we soon will, though.”
Finally I asked, “Is this the street?”
“Yes.”
My tires shrieked on the corner, and again in front of the house. She was out of the car before I was.
“Stay back,” I told her. “This may be dangerous.”
She let me go up the walk ahead of her. The black sedan was in the drive with the headlights burning and the left front door hanging open. The front door of the house was closed but there was a light behind it. I went in without knocking.
Sara came out of the living-room. All day her face had been going to pieces, and now it was old and slack and ugly. Her bright hair was ragged at the edges, and her voice was ragged. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I want to see the Admiral. Where is he?”
“How should I know? I can’t keep track of any of my men.” She took a step toward me, staggered, and almost fell.
Mary took hold of her and eased her into a chair. Her head leaned limply against the wall, and her mouth hung open. The lipstick on her mouth was like a rim of cracked dry blood.
“They must be here.”
The single shot that we heard then was an exclamation point at the end of my sentence. It came from somewhere back of the house, muffled by walls and distance.
I went through and into the garden. There were lights in the gardener’s cottage, and a man’s shadow moved across the window. I ran up the path to the cottage’s open door, and froze there.
Admiral Turner was facing me with a gun in his hand. It was a heavy-caliber automatic, the kind the Navy issued. From its round, questioning mouth a wisp of blue smoke trailed. Alice lay face down on the carpeted floor between us.
I looked into the mouth of the gun, then into Turner’s granite face. “You killed her.”
But Alice was the one who answered. “Go away,” she said. The words came out in a rush of sobbing that racked her prostrate body.
“This is a private matter, Archer.” The gun stirred slightly in the Admiral’s hand. I could feel its pressure across the width of the room. “Do as she says.”
“I heard a shot. Murder is a public matter.”
“There has been no murder, as you can see.”
“You don’t remember well.”
“I have nothing to do with that,” he said. “I was cleaning my gun, and forgot that it was loaded.”
“So Alice lay down and cried? You’ll have to do better than that, Admiral.”
“Her nerves are shaken. But I assure you that mine are not.” He took three slow steps toward me, and paused by the girl on the floor. The gun was very steady in his hand. “Now go, or I’ll have to use this.”
The pressure of the gun was increasing. I put my hands on the door frame and held myself still. “You seem to be sure it’s loaded now,” I said.
Between my words I heard the faint, harsh whispering of shifting gravel on the garden path behind me. I spoke up loudly, to drown out the sound.
“Admiral, you say that you had nothing to do with the murder. Then why did Todd come to the beach club this morning? Why did you change your story about the Chardin?”
He looked down at his daughter as if she could answer the questions. She made no sound, but her shoulders were shaking with internal sobbing.
As I watched the two of them, father and daughter, the pattern of the day finally came into focus. At its center was the muzzle of the Admiral’s gun, the round blue mouth of death.
I said, very carefully, to gain time, “I can guess what Todd said to you this morning. Do you want me to dub in the dialogue?”
He glanced up sharply, and the gun glanced up. There were no more sounds in the garden. If Mary was as quick as I thought, she’d be at the telephone.
“He told you he’d stolen your picture and had a buyer for it. But Hendryx was cautious. Todd needed proof that he had a right to sell it. You gave him the proof. And when Todd completed the transaction, you let him keep the money.”
“Nonsense! Bloody nonsense.” But he was a poor actor, and a worse liar.
“I’ve seen the bill of sale, Admiral. The only question left is why you gave it to Todd.”
His lips moved as if he was going to speak. No words came out.
“And I’ll answer that one, too. Todd knew who killed Hugh Western. So did you. You had to keep him quiet, even if it meant conniving at the theft of your own picture.”
“I connived at nothing.” His voice was losing its strength, but his gun was as potent as ever.
“Alice did,” I said. “She helped Todd steal it this morning. She passed it out the window to him when Silliman and I were on the mezzanine. Which is one of the things he told you at the beach club, isn’t it?”
“Todd has been feeding you lies. Unless you give me your word that you won’t repeat those lies, not to anyone, I’m going to have to shoot you.”
His hand contracted, squeezing off the automatic’s safety. The tiny noise it made seemed very significant in the silence. It echoed from the walls.
“Todd will soon be feeding worms,” I said. “He’s dead, Admiral.”
“Dead?” His voice had sunk to an old man’s quaver, rustling in his throat.
“Stabbed with an ice pick in his apartment.”
“When?”
“This afternoon. Do you still see any point in trying to shoot me?”
“You’re lying, Archer.”
“No. There’s been a second murder — Todd’s.”
He looked down at the girl at his feet. His eyes were bewildered. There was danger in his pain and confusion. I was the source of his pain, and he might strike out blindly at me. I watched the gun in his hand, waiting for a chance to move in on it. My arms were rigid, braced against the door frame.
Mary Western ducked under my left arm and stepped into the room in front of me. She had no weapon, except her courage.
“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “Hilary Todd was stabbed to death today.”
“Put down the gun,” I said. “There’s nothing left to save. You thought you were protecting an unfortunate girl. She’s turned out to be a double murderess.”
He was watching the girl on the floor. “If this is true, Alice, I wash my hands of you.”
No sound came from her. Her face was hidden by her yellow sheaf of hair. The old man groaned. The gun sagged in his hand. I moved, pushing Mary to one side, and snatched it away from him. He didn’t resist, but my forehead was suddenly streaming with sweat.