“I admitted Miss Madeline Lester shortly after eight,” the butler said. “She went immediately to Mr. Eurich’s study. She opened the door herself, before I had the chance to announce her. I heard her and Mr. Eurich begin talking. She had said to me that he had called her, but he seemed surprised to see her, or perhaps it was... ah... the way he took her hands in his, just before he closed the door.”
There was more from the butler. Then Mrs. Groat said, “Yes, I saw Madeline Lester in the house. She came out of Mr. Eurich’s study to the living room, and he followed her. They seemed to be... arguing. He saw me, told me and the other servants we could retire to our quarters, the little house in back.”
There was more from Mrs. Groat, too. She was sure cooking right along. Only it was Madeline Lester’s goose...
And there was some from all the other official men who had come with Mr. Lumsden, and who, meantime, had been ambling over the room and messing with the corpse.
It made you bleed inside — if you knew Madeline. She was on the spot. She’d had every opportunity to murder Mr. Eurich. Fact is, it looked sort of like she was the only person who had had the opportunity to kill him. The gun that had shot him had been a twenty-five, Lumsden said, a woman’s weapon. They found a handkerchief she had dropped, a footprint of a woman’s shoe outside. And Lumsden kept narrowing the time, trying to fix it so Madeline was the only one who could have killed Eurich.
Me... I sat and hurt and bled inside. She wasn’t anywhere around this room, naturally, but it seemed like I could hear her voice, soft and low, like a clear mountain stream. I could see her face floating off yonder between me and the wall. Mister, it was a face a man would sell his soul to Satan for, with the kind of long hair that is so black it looks blue. And they were going to put her in the electric chair. You could see that in Lumsden’s eyes.
Then he was crossing the room, back to me. His voice was like a sharp plow point driving into a big rock hidden under sod. “Willie, you saw her, didn’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“Damn you, Willie! Damn you! You saw her running away as you approached the house!”
I hung to the arms of my chair, pushed halfway to my feet. You’re doggone tooting I had seen her — but let Lumsden try and make me say it! “No, sir. I swear, Mr. Lumsden...!”
He grabbed the front of my coat and shook until my teeth rattled. “You’re lying, Willie! Tell us. Damn you, tell us! Say that she was running from the house and you saw her, and then found Mr. Eurich dead! Say it — and it’ll be the last link, Willie. Well have enough statements about the time element to prove she did it. To show that Cal Eurich was alive when she came, alone with her the entire time, and dead when she left!”
“I can’t say it, Mr. Lumsden. ’Cause I didn’t see her.”
He glared at me like a red-headed chicken hawk for a second, then slammed me back in the chair. “Okay, Willie” he said. “Okay.” He beat his fist in his other palm, then said. “Come on, we’re getting out of here. You, Barney — I’m still not satisfied that you came to Eurich simply to talk business. And you, too, Willie. We’re going on a little joyride!”
I’m glad he thought so. The only joy I got out of it was getting away from Mr. Eurich’s corpse, which seemed to look worse and worse as the minutes went by.
Me and Barney Thomas and Mr. Lumsden all left the house and got in a black sedan at the curb, Lumsden saying there was plenty of room in the front seat for all of us. I ain’t so dumb, and I knowed that Lumsden was keeping me and Barney right with him so that if he found Madeline nobody would have a chance to make up a story in private.
A little rain had started falling, and the windshield wipers pecked along and the tires make sucking sounds in the night. I was cold and felt bad and shivered once in a while. Barney Thomas sat and smoked and looked out at all the lights we were passing.
I sat and thought about Madeline. Seems as if she’d been born in the country herself. She had told me. She’d come to the city, had plenty of tough times. But Madeline Lester could sing and once she got started, she went right up the ladder. She was the best singer that had ever warbled a song in anybody’s night club. Mr. Eurich had even said himself that he’d lost money on his club until he hired her. So she sort of had an inside drag on things. I knowed it. So did Barney Thomas, and a lot of other people. Lumsden amongst them, as he remarked during that ride through the rainy night. And Cal Eurich had been stuck on Madeline, too, in his way.
I thought about all that. I thought about the first time I ever talked to her, one afternoon when I was working on Mr. Eurich’s rose bushes and she had come to the house. It was like talking to a story-book person.
She let me come to her apartment a time or two. She said I was different She used to run her fingers over the muscles in my long arms, muscles which can bust a shirt sleeve, and she would shiver a little, and a time or two I kissed her and it damn near stopped my heart.
And now Lumsden was pulling the car over to the curb in front of her apartment house...
Lumsden showed his Detective Sergeant’s badge to the colored janitor, who had a woolly white head, and the janitor got out his pass keys. We rode the elevator and the janitor opened the door of Madeline Lester’s apartment.
You could feel that somebody like her lived here. You could smell her perfume some and when Lumsden turned on the soft light, you saw the big, square furniture in her living room.
I’ll admit it. Some folks would have called Madeline tough. She had her cold, stony streaks, times when her eyes would flash and her lips get tight. I reckoned that she would have — committed murder, if she’d wanted to. But I’d seen her at times she was scared and helpless, and most anybody could lead her around then. Anyhow, she was Madeline...
Lumsden started prowling over the place. Me and Barney Thomas sat down in the living room. We watched Lumsden go over the room like a dandified bloodhound. Then Lumsden went in the next room, and Barney Thomas jerked himself over to me on the big couch.
“All right, punk,” he said in a rough whisper, “did you see her?”
I said, “Did you?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” he said. “Do you know why she went to Eurich’s place tonight?”
I said, “Do you?”
His eyes got nasty under their meaty veils. “Do you know why I went there? Why Cal Eurich called me?”
“No,” I said, “why did he?”
Barney scorched me a second with his gaze, like he was trying to read my face. “You didn’t know about the un-declared dough? The income tax? That he wanted me to cache the money for him?”
Before I had a chance to say anything else, Lumsden came back in the room. Barney straightened and fired a cigarette and let the smoke spout out of his nose.
But I forgot about Barney, looking at Lumsden. His face was tight and bright, his eyes like black-eyed peas with a polish on them. He was carrying a newspaper unfolded out in front of him, like a tray, and on the newspaper was some pieces of charred paper.
“These were burned in the fireplace in the next room,” Lumsden said. “But the boys in the lab have got ways and means of bringing charred words back to life. I guess we better let the tech squad have a look at them.”
A little more than thirty minutes after we had left Madeline’s apartment, we were leaving the main police station. Lumsden still had me and Barney Thomas by the ears. We went down the big stone steps to the sidewalk, got back in Lumsden’s car. He’d left me and Barney in charge of some fellows downstairs while he’d gone upstairs with the charred pieces of paper to the scientific men.