"That part I don't know," said Mendoza. "Some reason may show up. But so far, I like all that, don't you?"
"It hangs together, after a fashion," agreed Hackett grudgingly. "And one thing, a couple of those items wouldn't be so easy to destroy or get rid of. They could soak the labels oh? the bottles. But if it's a modern apartment there'll be no open fire, to burn anything. Nothing identifiable about a tie, or the cash-but a watch, even the knife-"
"Especially as dear Brooke was given to having things monogrammed. Me, in that position I'd take the whole collection down to a lonely stretch of beach and consign it to the Pacific, but they haven't had much time, as I say. And speaking of that, I'd better not sit here detailing theories any longer-I'll see them and we'll have a look. What's your program?"
"I'm going out to Eagle Rock," said Hackett rather morosely, "to see this fellow Dave Morris who's some leading light in that theatrical club. See what he can give us on Twelvetrees."
"Then, pues vamos! -let's go, and see what turns up."
Hackett hadn't sounded very enthusiastic about all that, but on his way out to Eagle Rock he found himself hoping Mendoza was right, that it was those Kingmans. Because he'd started having a little vision of his own, and he didn't like it. Which was absurd on two counts: the first being, of course, that an efficient police officer should look at a case, and the people in it, objectively. You began feeling sorry for them, or mad at them, or contemptuous of them, and you couldn't look at the evidence fair and square.
And the second count was that the Kingmans were the obvious answer, that a thing like that in his mind was out of a paperback detective thriller; you just didn't run across such things every day. But they happened, oh, yes. Now and then. Maybe this was one of the times.
And he wasn't happy to think it might be. No reason for it; what the hell were these people to Art Hackett?
Just because she had nice eyes, and he'd felt sorry… The things people did to each other. A lot of talk about active, deliberate evil, and it did harm, no question; but he sometimes thought more mischief was made by the plain stupidity, by the passive, self-centered uncaringness. A culmination, Mendoza had said. And Hackett could see that happening. The last straw, you might say, for that girl Angel (my God, what a name!). That after Mona had, in a sense, turned her into what she was, the graceless ugly duckling-when she fell in love with a man, knowing he'd never look twice at her, it was Mona who had him. Never mind in what way. Making everything boil up in her all at once.
And how the hell any woman-a man like Twelvetrees, another one all front, the too-handsome collar ad- But look at it objectively: people didn't show much common sense about these things. Ever. When it came to feelings. How many men had fallen for a beautiful face and found that's all there was? And he was, wasn't he, just the type a girl like that would have fallen for-a girl without experience, younger than her age in some ways.
A girl not in a very sound psychological state to begin with. Whether she knew it or not… All right, he told himself almost angrily: build it; how might it have happened?
Mona Ferne would have had his address: the girl would have known where to go. Did she drive, have a car of her own? Find out. What would it be in her mind? Please look at me, I could give you more than she ever could! And him laughing at her? Or, If I can't have you, she never will!
The gun. His own? Or had she planned it, come prepared? All that business afterward-no, she couldn't- How could he say for sure? A streak there of deliberate planning, yes; the ways she devised for punishing Mona. She wasn't a mental defective by any means.
"Hell," he said aloud to himself. The law said motive wasn't very important. You needn't go hunting up a plausible motive to match the nice solid tangible facts the law liked-ownership of weapon, presence on the scene, witnesses, fingerprints, and so on and so on. But in practice, that was one of the first things you had to look for. A lot of murders were done for very little reason, a moment's loss of temper, the ten bucks or thirty cents in the victim's pocket, a mere suspicion of wife or husband, things like that; but as a general rule, nobody got worked up to murder without some hell's brew of emotion churning inside them-whether it was what you might call rational emotion or not, lasting a minute or a year.
He didn't like the idea, but he could see it happening, since he knew the girl had been in love with Twelvetrees.
And it was, of course, a really wild one, no evidence there at all-something like one of Mendoza's hunches. He thought he'd keep it to himself for a while, see how things piled up-or didn't-on the Kingmans. If and when there was nowhere else to look, then look.
Meanwhile, he found the address Mona Ferne had given him: Dave Morris was at home and unsurprised to see him.
"I wondered if I ought to come in, when I saw the papers-but I hadn't seen him for a day or so before he supposedly left, I don't know anything really to tell you. Everybody's been calling me up, shall we go to the police or not-you know-" He shrugged. He was a stocky dark young man with an ugly, attractive face, and vitality exhaled from him with every breath; he was a restless talker, gesturing, changing position every ten seconds.
"Well, maybe you can help fill in some of the background, but first, when did you see him last?"
"On Wednesday the twenty-eighth," said Morris promptly. "I've got all this pat in my mind, ready for you, see. Some of us met here to talk over a new show we're thinking of doing, and for what it's worth I'll tell you that it was the first time Twelvetrees didn't jump at a part. He was-oh, what the British call cock-a-hoop that night-kept hinting we might get a surprise soon, that sort of thing… No, nothing definite. He was just-on air, as if he'd just heard he'd inherited a fortune or something. Tell the truth, I wasn't very curious, and when he didn't show at our next meeting, I didn't do any crying over it… "
Morris liked to talk, and Hackett was used to listening. Some more background emerged. Most of the people in this group had got on the lowest rung of the show-business ladder at least; Twelvetrees had been one of only three amateurs, without any experience, among them. "And he was an awful ham, but the girls fell for his looks, you know." It hadn't been for quite a while they'd found out how he'd earned a living-"if you can call it earned"-he'd apparently tried to keep his different lives in separate compartments; and when they did, they'd kidded him about it some. If Hackett wanted Morris's opinion, Twelvetrees didn't take the Mystic Truth very seriously, except of course as an easy living. Which was understandable. Morris himself wouldn't look down his nose at anything like that; eking out subsistence with on-call TV work as an extra was pretty precarious. No, Twelvetrees had never said much about his background, specifically where he came from, except just Pennsylvania. He wouldn't say that Twelvetrees had been bosom pals with anybody in the group, though he was faithful in attendance at their meetings and always eager to take a part in one of their plays.
"Which kind of canceled out, if you get me, because while some of us aren't always able to take on a part-on count of prior commitments we'll get paid for-we do like to have competent actors in our little productions. We get a certain number of producers and so on keeping an eye on what we're doing, you see, which is why we go to the trouble and expense of putting shows on, besides giving ourselves experience. Stop me, by the way, if I get irrelevant, maybe you're not interested in all this. Well, for one thing, he was a bit older than most of us, you know, and the men didn't like him-including yours truly-because, well, we don't usually care much for the too-too-handsome boys who go round preening themselves in mirrors, do we? Yes, he was rather like that. And the girls, a couple of them are faithful devoted wives, and a couple more have enough common sense to see through that kind. And as for the couple left who'd have been thrilled-to-pieces-darling if the divine creature had asked them for a date, he did a lot of arm patting and general showing off, but beyond that, not a tumble."