They addressed the questions to Walter who responded politely with a confession of murder. “After she had been gone some months,” his statement read, “I got a letter from her asking for a reconciliation. But she wouldn’t come near the house before meeting me. She needed to know I wanted her back first. She asked to meet me at—” He named a nearby Thameside village where the tryst was kept. They strolled along the river bank until after dark.
“But she hadn’t changed. She was soon calling me filthy names again. I lost my temper, we struggled, she fell and hit her head on the stone. I got frightened so I pushed her in the river.”
He volunteered to show them where it happened.
When dragging operations in the area failed to disclose Maude, it was assumed that she had drifted out to sea. Walter was brought to trial, however, this not being the first time a murder charge was sustained in the absence of any trace of the victim. But the prosecution’s case, not very strong at the outset, was further weakened by Walter’s quiet-voiced account of his unhappy marriage.
When he told of Maude’s brutal attack upon his pipe collection a murmur of sympathy arose from three members of the jury known to be pipe smokers. Several of Walter’s neighbors gave evidence of the provocations he had suffered and the trial ended when the Judge heeded the jury’s mercy rider to its verdict of “guilty” and sent Walter to jail.
Public interest soon died and when, some months later, a female body impossible to identify was washed ashore in the Thames Estuary, only a three-line newspaper report linked it with the Mayhew case. All this did was to settle the consciences of an uneasy handful who might still think Maude was not dead, that murder had not been proved.
It was almost ten years later that Maude’s true whereabouts came to light — in fact, not long before the liberalization of England’s penal laws and Walter’s own impeccable behavior during imprisonment effected his release. I got the news from the faithful Ace of Spades landlord. The Mayhews’ old villa had been torn down to make way for a widened road. Workmen digging up the weed-choked remains of Walter’s little tobacco plantation found bones which were speedily identified as human.
Clearly, Maude had gone home that night. Still in the grip of rage, Walter impulsively struck and killed her. He had, after all, admitted to such. But his next move was dictated by a more subtle impulse, one which lifts his somewhat hackneyed method of body disposal into the realm of pure irony.
Or you might describe it simply as an experiment in fertilization; which I can testify was successful, although it was the memory of my too-eager sampling of Walter’s tobacco which drove me off pipe smoking.
That his tobacco crop, along with his pipes, had been Walter’s prime concern was I think emphasized by his invented story of the Thameside incident. Anything, he must have felt, to keep heavy-footed bobbies from trampling and poking over the plants he had tended so carefully that season.
The last news I had came, not from the Ace of Spades, but from Walter himself. It was written on stationery headed Mayhew’s Pipe and Tobacco Mart, Piccadilly, W.1. Business was good, I gathered, although he doesn’t go in for domestic cultivation any more but stocks up on popular Virginia brands. One thing I’m sure of, though. None of them will have the distinctive flavor of the leaf which Maude so effectively, and posthumously, nourished.
Never Turn Your Back
by Larry Holden
Kenny was a hard cop to figure out. He had a murder to untangle... not a sexy redhead’s love life.
He was just about the most shot up guy I had ever seen. He couldn’t have been standing more than six feet in front of the muzzles when the shotgun let go with both barrels.
He’d taken the double load right in the chest. The funny part of it is, he had a real peaceful expression on his face, as if this were the best thing that had ever happened to him. Maybe it was.
He was a big, blond, good-looking guy, what I’d call the athletic type wolf, and the bedroom he was stretched out on the floor of, he had no business getting well-acquainted with in the first place, if you know what I mean. In other words, he had asked for it and, brother, he had gotten it in spades. The kind of spades they dig graves with, I mean.
He was dead about six hours when me and Kenny Riordan walked in there at eight that night. Me and Kenny is what you’d call a team on account of when you try to figure out a homicide, somebody’s got to have brains, and I ain’t no Einstein.
This red-headed dame was sitting on the sofa, and even though she was scared stiff, she was just about the sexiest looking tomato I ever laid eyes on. She was wearing one of those white nylon things that did to the old-fashioned bathrobe what the atom bomb did to the bow and arrow, and man, was she loaded in all departments!
Kenny pulled over a chair and sat down and started talking to her real soft and quiet. Kenny’s a smooth worker and a hell of a handsome guy. You know that kind of Irish — tall, black hair, blue eyes, et cetera. If he was in the movies, it wouldn’t be Rock Hudson’s puss you’d see up there in technicolor.
“We realize this is a terrible shock, Mrs. Sloan,” he said, schmoozing her, “and I hate to bother you at a time like this. But if you can calm yourself, it would be best to give us the details while they’re still fresh in your mind.”
Little by little he warmed her up and after awhile she sat there looking into his face like he was reading poetry to her, and here’s the story we get from her—
This guy Andresson — that’s the stiff — had been trying to make her on and off for months. So this night he walks in, and she’s getting dressed for dinner in the bedroom, and the next thing she knows, he’s making a pass at her. According to her, she wasn’t having any, and there they are rassling to and fro in the bedroom, and all she’s got on is panties and a brassiere, and who walks in but the husband, a guy with a terrible temper. She passes out cold and when she comes to, there’s Andresson all over the rug and the husband gone.
“I’m sure it was an accident, Mr. Riordan,” she said, giving him the big eyes. “They must have been fighting over the gun. Lew wouldn’t shoot anybody on purpose.”
“Okay, sister,” I said, real tough. “That was a nice little story and I enjoyed every word of it. But now let’s have the facts.”
This is just an act, see? I’m supposed to get tough, then Kenny bawls me out and tells me to beat it, and this gives whoever it is the idea that he’s a friend of theirs and before they know it, they’re telling him things they wouldn’t write in their diary.
She turned as white as an unfried bagel, and Kenny snapped at me, “That’s enough of that, Gene!”
“Enough of what? Fairy tales like we just listened to?”
“I said that’s enough! Beat it!”
I said, “You’re the boss,” real huffy, and walked away. But I had a funny feeling that this time he meant it. He really sounded sore, and I thought maybe I had done it wrong.
I poked around the house, and off the kitchen, there’s this little room, and there’s all kinds of guns up on the wall, and over on the bookcase there’s a big silver cup, and Lew Sloan turns out to be the state pistol champion of 1956. Brother! That guy Andresson just didn’t have good sense.
Later on, Kenny called to me, and when we left, the dame went to the door with us. To me she was an ice cube, but with Kenny it was a different story.
“You’ve been very kind, Kenny,” she said to him in a throaty voice, giving him the big eyes again. “Very kind.”