“The hired gun was waiting for me. After I heard about Mitchell’s car I had a hunch. Even generals and other important people have hunches. Why not me? The trick is to know when to act on one. I was lucky tonight—or last night. I acted on a hunch. He had a gun, but I had a tire iron.”
“What a big strong unbeatable man you are,” she said bitterly.
“I don’t mind the bed. Do I take my clothes off now?”
I went over and jerked her to her feet and shook her. “Stop your nonsense, Betty. When I want your beautiful white body, it won’t be while you’re my client. I want to know what you are afraid of. How the hell can I do anything about it if I don’t know? Only you can tell me.”
She began to sob in my arms.
Women have so few defenses, but they certainly perform wonders with those they have.
I held her tight against me. “You can cry and cry and sob and sob, Betty. Go ahead, I’m patient. If I wasn’t that—well, hell, if I wasn’t that—”
That was as far as I got. She was pressed tight to me trembling. She lifted her face and dragged my head down until I was kissing her.
“Is there some other woman?” she asked softly, between my teeth.
“There have been.”
“But someone very special?”
“There was once, for a brief moment. But that’s a long time ago now.”
“Take me. I’m yours—all of me is yours. Take me.”
24
A banging on the door woke me. I opened my eyes stupidly. She was clinging to me so tightly that I could hardly move. I moved her arms gently until I was free. She was still sound asleep.
I got out of bed and pulled a bathrobe on and went to the door;
I didn’t open it.
“What’s the matter? I was asleep.”
“Captain Alessandro wants you at the office right away. Open the door.”
“Sorry, can’t be done. I have to shave and shower and so on.”
“Open the door. This is Sergeant Green.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant. I just can’t. But I’ll be along just as soon as I can make it.”
“You got a dame in there?”
“Sergeant, questions like that are out of line. I’ll be there.”
I heard his steps go down off the porch. I heard someone laugh. I heard a voice say, “This guy is really rich. I wonder what he does on his day off.”
I heard the police car going away. I went into the bathroom and showered and shaved and dressed. Betty was still glued to the pillow. I scribbled a note and put in on my pillow. “The cops want me. I have to go. You know where my car is. Here are the keys.”
I went out softly and locked the door and found the Hertz car. I knew the keys would be in it. Operators like Richard Harvest don’t bother about keys. They carry sets of them for all sorts of cars.
Captain Alessandro looked exactly as he had the day before. He would always look like that. There was a man with him, an elderly stony-faced man with nasty eyes.
Captain Alessandro nodded me to the usual chair. A cop in uniform came in and put a cup of coffee in front of me. He gave me a sly grin as he went out.
“This is Mr. Henry Cumberland of Westfield, Carolina, Marlowe. North Carolina. I don’t know how he found his way out here, but he did. He says Betty Mayfield murdered his son.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing for me to say. I sipped the coffee which was too hot, but good otherwise.
“Like to fill us in a little, Mr. Cumberland?”
“Who’s this?” He had a voice as sharp as his face.
“A private detective named Philip Marlowe. He operates out of Los Angeles. He is here because Betty Mayfield is his client. It seems that you have rather more drastic ideas about Miss Mayfield than he has.”
“I don’t have any ideas about her, Captain,” I said. “I just like to squeeze her once in a while. It soothes me.”
“You like being soothed by a murderess?” Cumberland barked at me.
“Well, I didn’t know she was a murderess, Mr. Cumberland. It’s all news to me. Would you care to explain?”
“The girl who calls herself Betty Mayfield—and that was her maiden name—was the wife of my son, Lee Cumberland. I never approved of the marriage. It was one of those wartime idiocies. My son received a broken neck in the war and had to wear a brace to protect his spinal column. One night she got it away from him and taunted him until he rushed at her. Unfortunately, he had been drinking rather heavily since he came home, and there had been quarrels. He tripped and fell across the bed. I came into the room and found her trying to put the brace back on his neck. He was already dead.”
I looked at Captain Alessandro. “Is this being recorded, Captain?”
He nodded. “Every word.”
“All right, Mr. Cumberland. There’s more, I take it.”
“Naturally. I have a great deal of influence in Westfield. I own the bank, the leading newspaper, most of the industry. The people of Westfield are my friends. My daughter-in-law was arrested and tried for murder and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.”
“The jury were all Westfield people, Mr. Cumberland?”
“They were. Why shouldn’t they be?”
“I don’t know, sir. But it sounds like a one-man town.”
“Don’t get impudent with me, young man.”
“Sorry, sir. Would you finish?”
“We have a peculiar law in our state, and I believe in a few other jurisdictions. Ordinarily the defense attorney makes an automatic motion for a directed verdict of not guilty and it is just as automatically denied. In my state the judge may reserve his ruling until after the verdict. The judge was senile. He reserved his ruling. When the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, he declared in a long speech that the jury had failed to consider the possibility that my son had in a drunken rage removed the brace from his neck in order to terrify his wife. He said that where there was so much bitterness anything was possible, and that the jury had failed to consider the possibility that my daughter-in-law might have been doing exactly what she said she was doing—trying to put the brace back on my son’s neck. He voided the verdict and discharged the defendant.
“I told her that she had murdered my son and that I would see to it that she had no place of refuge anywhere on this earth. That is why I am here.”
I looked at the captain. He looked at nothing. I said: “Mr. Cumberland, whatever your private convictions, Mrs. Lee Cumberland, whom I know as Betty Mayfield, has been tried and acquitted. You have called her a murderess. That’s a slander. We’ll settle for a million dollars.”
He laughed almost grotesquely. “You small-town nobody,” he almost screamed. “Where I come from you would be thrown into jail as a vagrant.”
“Make it a million and a quarter,” I said. “I’m not so valuable as your ex-daughter-in-law.”
Cumberland turned on Captain Alessandro. “What goes on here?” he barked. “Are you all a bunch of crooks?”
“You’re talking to a police officer, Mr. Cumberland.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn what you are,” Cumberland said furiously. “There are plenty of crooked police.”
“It’s a good idea to be sure—before you call them crooked,” Alessandro said, almost with amusement. Then he lit a cigarette and blew smoke and smiled through it.
“Take it easy, Mr. Cumberland. You’re a cardiac case. Prognosis unfavorable. Excitement is very bad for you. I studied medicine once. But somehow I became a cop. The war cut me off, I guess.”
Cumberland stood up. Spittle showed on his chin. He made a strangled sound in his throat. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he snarled.
Alessandro nodded. “One of the interesting things about police work is that you never hear the last of anything. There are always too many loose ends. Just what would you like me to do? Arrest someone who has been tried and acquitted, just because you are a big shot in Westfield, Carolina?”