“Where are we going?” I said. I suspected that we were headed for Beverly Hills, where the police know who pays them their wages.
Neville said into the speaking tube: “Turn down a side street and park. Then take a walk around the block.”
“That’s better,” I said when we had parked. Terry Neville looked frightened. Ed looked sulky and worried. For no good reason, I felt complacent.
“Spill it,” I said to Terry Neville. “Did you kill the girl? Or did she accidently drown — and you ran away so you wouldn’t get mixed up in it? Or have you thought of a better one than that?”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know she was dead. But I was there with her yesterday afternoon. We were sunning ourselves on the raft, when a plane came over flying very low. I went away, because I didn’t want to be seen there with her—”
“You mean you weren’t exactly sunning yourselves.”
“Yes. That’s right. This plane came over high at first, then he circled back and came down very low. I thought maybe he recognized me, and might be trying to take pictures or something.”
“What kind of a plane was it?”
“I don’t know. A military plane, I guess. A fighter plane. It was a single-seater painted blue. I don’t know military planes.”
“What did Una Sand do when you went away?”
“I don’t know. I swam to shore, put on some clothes, and drove away. She stayed on the raft, I guess. But she was certainly all right when I left her. It would be a terrible thing for me if I were dragged into this thing, Mr.—”
“Rogers.”
“Mr. Rogers. I’m terribly sorry if we hurt you. If I could make it right with you—” He pulled out a wallet.
His steady pallid whine bored me. Even his sheaf of bills bored me. The situation bored me.
I said: “I have no interest in messing up your brilliant career, Mr. Neville. I’d like to mess up your brilliant pan sometime, but that can wait. Until I have some reason to believe that you haven’t told me the truth, I’ll keep what you said under my hat. In the meantime, I want to hear what the coroner has to say.”
They took me back to Ronald’s, where my car was, and left me with many protestations of good fellowship. I said goodnight to them, rubbing the back of my neck with an exaggerated gesture. Certain other gestures occurred to me.
When I got back to Santa Barbara the coroner was working over Una Sand’s body. He said that there were no marks of violence on her body, and very little water in her lungs and stomach, but this condition was characteristic of about one drowning in ten.
I hadn’t known that before, so I asked him to put it into sixty-four dollar words. He was glad to.
“Sudden inhalation of water may result in a severe reflex spasm of the larynx, followed swiftly by asphyxia. Such a laryngeal spasm is more likely to occur if the victim’s face is upward, allowing water to rush into the nostrils, and would be likely to be facilitated by emotional or nervous shock. It may have happened like that or it may not.”
“Hell,” I said, “she may not even be dead.”
He gave me a sour look. “Thirty-six hours ago she wasn’t.”
I figured it out as I got in my car. Una Sand couldn’t have drowned much later than four o’clock in the afternoon on September the seventh.
It was three in the morning when I got to bed. I got up at seven, had breakfast in a restaurant in Santa Barbara, and went to the beach-house to talk to Jack Ross. It was only about eight o’clock when I got there, but Ross was sitting on the beach in a canvas chair watching the sea.
“You again?” he said when he saw me.
“I’d think you’d have had enough of the sea for a while. How long were you out?”
“A year.” He seemed unwilling to talk.
“I hate bothering people,” I said, “but my business is always making a nuisance out of me.”
“Evidently. What exactly is your business?”
“I’m currently working for your mother-in-law. I’m still trying to find out what happened to her daughter.”
“Are you trying to needle me?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair as if to get up. For a moment his knuckles were white. Then he relaxed. “You saw what happened, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But do you mind my asking what time your ship got into Frisco on September the seventh?”
“No. Four o’clock. Four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I suppose that could be checked?”
He didn’t answer. There was a newspaper on the sand beside his chair, and he leaned over and handed it to me. It was the Late Night Final of a San Francisco newspaper for the seventh.
“Turn to page four,” he said.
I turned to page four and found an article describing the arrival of the USS Guam at the Golden Gate, at four o’clock in the afternoon. A contingent of Waves had greeted the returning heroes, and a band had played California, Here I Come.
“If you want to see Mrs. Dreen, she’s in the house,” Jack Ross said. “But it looks to me as if your job is finished.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“And if I don’t see you again, goodbye.”
“Are you leaving?”
“A friend is coming out from Santa Barbara to pick me up in a few minutes. I’m flying up to Alameda with him to see about getting leave. I just had a forty-eight, and I’ve got to be here for the inquest tomorrow. And the funeral.” His voice was hard. His whole personality had hardened overnight. The evening before his nature had been wide open. Now it was closed and invulnerable.
“Good-by,” I said, and plodded through the soft sand to the house. On the way I thought of something, and walked faster.
When I knocked, Mrs. Dreen came to the door holding a cup of coffee, not very steadily. She was wearing a heavy wool dressing robe with a silk rope around the waist, and a silk cap on her head. Her eyes were bleary.
“Hello,” she said. “I came back last night after all. I couldn’t work today anyway. And I didn’t think Jack should be by himself.”
“He seems to be doing all right.”
“I’m glad you think so. Will you come in?”
I stepped inside. “You said last night that you wanted to know who killed Una no matter who it was.”
“Well?”
“Does that still go?”
“Yes. Why? Did you find out something?”
“Not exactly. I thought of something, that’s all.”
“The coroner believes it was an accident. I talked to him on the phone this morning.” She sipped her black coffee. Her hand vibrated steadily, like a leaf in the wind.
“He may be right,” I said. “He may be wrong.”
There was the sound of a car outside, and I moved to the window and looked out. A station wagon stopped on the beach, and a Navy officer got out and walked towards Jack Ross. Ross got up and they shook hands.
“Will you call Jack, Mrs. Dreen, and tell him to come into the house for a minute?”
“If you wish.” She went to the door and called him.
Ross came to the door and said a little impatiently: “What is it?” “Come in,” I said. “And tell me what time you left the ship the day before yesterday.”
“Let’s see. We got in at four—”
“No, you didn’t. The ship did, but not you. Am I right?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know what I mean. It’s so simple that it couldn’t fool anybody for a minute, not if he knew anything about carriers. You flew your plane off the ship a couple of hours before she got into port. My guess is that you gave that telegram to a buddy to send for you before you left the ship. You flew down here, caught your wife being made love to by another man, landed on the beach — and drowned her.”
“You’re insane!” After a moment he said less violently: “I admit I flew off the ship. You could easily find that out anyway. I flew around for a couple of hours, getting in some flying time—”