I said: “I hate weeping women. One more sniffle and I’ll take you home to your husband.”
“Oh, no! I won’t cry. Honest.” Her big, dumb eyes pled with me like a stricken cow’s.
I said: “Start from the beginning. How long did you know Bagnell?”
“About three months.”
“How’d you meet?”
“Out here. Amos works nights, and I go out alone sometimes. One night I came out here and met Louie and he asked me to have a drink. We liked each other right off. It was sort of love at first sight. After that I used to come out every Tuesday and Thursday, and we’d talk in his office and have a few drinks.”
“Why Tuesday and Thursday?”
She seemed surprised at the question. “Those were the quietest nights. Louie was never sure of being free other nights.”
I asked Fausta: “Were those quiet nights?”
“Not more than others.”
“Those were just the nights he had open,” I said brutally. “Monday and Wednesday he had a brunette. Probably Friday and Saturday he had a red-head, and rested on the Sabbath.”
She said, “That’s not true,” and looked distressed. But she didn’t start to cry again.
“So you were in love and saw him twice a week. When’d your husband find out?”
“I don’t know. Last night was the first he mentioned it. He goes to work at six, and just before he left he told me he knew all about Louie and me and if I didn’t stay away from him, he’d kill us both. He threatened to strangle me.”
“Cut your throat, you said before.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the same. Just what did he say? His exact words.”
“He said, ‘I’ll wring your neck’.”
I looked down at her bovine face a long time. “What did he say about Bagnell?”
“He said, ‘I’ll stop him making a tramp out of you, if I have to wring both your necks’.”
“Is that all he said?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“It’s a little different from threatening to kill you both,” I said dryly.
“Where was your husband last night?”
“He must have followed me here.”
“Here? Were you here? Last night was the brunette’s night.”
She looked hurt. “I felt I had to talk to Louie. But he was busy. I was out front when it happened. I didn’t even know about it until the police came, and when I heard Louie was killed, I got scared. I just stayed with the crowd and left when they did.”
I said: “You sure must have been in love. How come you didn’t rush to throw your arms around the body?”
“I was too scared,” she said defensively. “I knew Amos must have done it, and I couldn’t go home, so I stayed at an hotel all night.”
“Which one?”
“The Park.”
“Under your own name?”
“No. Mary Smith.”
“Original,” I said. “What makes you think your husband followed you here?”
“He must have. He killed Louie, didn’t he?”
I tried it another way. “Where was your husband supposed to be?”
“At work. His place opens at six-thirty and closes at one-thirty A.M.”
“Where’s your husband now?”
“I don’t know.”
I asked patiently: “Where is he usually this time of day?”
“At home.”
“Address?”
“1418 Newberry. Apartment C.”
To Fausta I said: “Can you put this gal up until I check on Amos?”
“Sure. She can stay at Louie’s apartment upstairs.”
“Good. Salt her away until I let you know it’s safe for her to go home.”
In the dining room I found Caramand and Greene in the same positions I had left them.
I said to Vance: “Who tended the parking lot last night?”
“Romulus.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Upstairs sleeping. He don’t go on duty till five.”
Mouldy said: “Tonight he don’t go on at all. Nothing to tend.”
Looking at my watch, I saw it was four.
“Get Romulus up,” I told Vance. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to talk to him.” To Mouldy I said, “You can be my guide,” and started toward the front door with the bulky bodyguard trailing along behind.
From the driveway I examined the chunky building. Even with two stories it was squatly stockade like, an impression partly due to its shape and heavy stone construction and partly to the thick bronze doors and vault-like windows with their vertical bars. We started to circle the drive around the building’s right side, but I stopped before we came to the turn in order to examine more closely the wrought-iron fence.
At the edge of the building the horizontal components of the fence were set in mortar between stones. Midway between this point and where the fence turned with the driveway was a door-sized gate similar to the one I had noticed through Bagnell’s bath window the previous night. It closed from the outside with an iron padlock. I lifted the lock, noted the hasp was rusted to the frame and let it clang back against the gate handle.
“No one’s gone through here for a long time,” I said.
“Guess not,” Mouldy agreed in the polite tone people use when they don’t understand what you’re talking about and think they should.
From our position near the corner of the building we could see the whole front of El Patio and the entire length of one side. I saw that all the lower floor windows were barred.
We walked on to where the drive turned, and turned with it toward the rear. I stopped at the gate I had seen the previous night from the bathroom window. It was locked by an iron padlock identical to the other, also rusted shut.
“How do you get from one side of this fence to the other?” I inquired. “Nobody’s used these gates for years.”
Mouldy lifted his shoulders and let them drop again. “No one but Romulus comes back here. Maybe he climbs over.”
Continuing on, we turned the corner where the drive entered the parking lot and the fence ran off toward the woods. Directly opposite the center of the building’s rear we came to a third gate. Its padlock was brass and looked new.
“Who has keys to this?” I asked.
“Just Romulus, as far as I know.”
Paralleling the fence, we walked along the gravelled lot until we met the treed area at its end. The fence ended here too, suddenly and incompletely. I stepped around its edge onto the back lawn.
“Fine fence,” I said. “Blocks three sides, but anyone could get in here from the highway.”
“It’s just decoration. Louie counted on the bars for protection.”
I grunted, thinking they hadn’t proved very protective.
We pushed out into the undergrowth, circumnavigating bushes where we could and plowing through when no break was apparent. In about fifty yards we came to the highway.
Almost immediately we found what I had hoped for, tire marks on the clay shoulder. I squatted to examine them and Mouldy followed suit, screwing up his face in an unsuccessful attempt to look intelligent. The automobile had pulled its two right wheels completely off the road, leaving tracks in the shape of a fifteen-yard arc. A slight depression in the center of the arc, smooth and designless, told that the car had stopped, then spun its wheels in starting again. The tread marks were interesting. They consisted of little round dots made by the suction cups of skid-proof tires. I liked that. Such tires are rare, except on commercial vehicles.
Rising, I looked up and down the edge of the treed area in an attempt to detect evidence of anyone having forced through the underbrush. I not only found none, I couldn’t even relocate the spot we had broken through. I am not a woodsman.
We plowed back through the fifty yards of growth and found a sleepy Negro boy waiting for us in the parking area.
“Ize Romulus,” he announced. “Mr. Vance say you all want talk to me.”