“Were Helen and Bradshaw close?”
He answered cautiously: “I wouldn’t say that. I guess they lucked into each other last summer the same way Helen and I did. Anyway, he was busy Friday night. He had to give a speech at some big dinner. At least that’s what he told me this morning.”
“He wasn’t lying. Did Bradshaw and Helen meet here in Reno?”
“Where else?”
“I thought Bradshaw spent the summer in Europe.”
“You thought wrong. He was here all through August, anyway.”
“What was he doing here?”
“He told me once he was doing some kind of research at the University of Nevada. He didn’t say what kind. I hardly knew him, actually. I ran into him a couple of times with Helen, and that was it. I didn’t see him again until today.”
“And you say he recognized you Friday night and came here to question you?”
“That’s the truth. He came here this morning, gave me quite a grilling. He believed I didn’t do that murder. I don’t see why you can’t believe me.”
“I’ll want to talk to Bradshaw before I make up my mind. Where is he now, do you know?”
“He said he was staying at the Lakeview Inn, on the North Shore. I don’t know if he’s still there or not.”
I stood up and opened the door. “I think I’ll go and see.”
I suggested to Jud that he stay where he was, because a second runout would make him look very bad. He nodded. He was still nodding when a counter-impulse took hold of him and he rushed me. His heavy shoulder caught me under the ribs and slammed me back against the doorframe wheezing for air.
He threw a punch at my face. I shifted my head. His fist crunched into the plaster wall. He yipped with pain. He hit me low in the belly with his other hand. I slid down the doorframe. He kneed me, a glancing blow on the side of the jaw.
This impelled me to get up. He rushed me again, head down. I stepped to one side and chopped the back of his neck as he went by. He staggered rapidly through the door and across the landing, and plunged down. At the foot of the stairs he lay still.
But he was conscious when the police arrived. I rode along to the station to make sure they nailed him down. We hadn’t been there five minutes when Arnie came in. He had an understanding with the officers. They booked Foley for assault and related charges, and promised to hold him.
Chapter 24
Arnie drove me out to the Lakeview Inn, a rambling California Gothic pile which must have dated from the early years of the century. Generations of summer visitors had marched through the lobby and trampled out any old-world charm it might once have had. It seemed an unlikely place for Roy Bradshaw to be staying.
But Bradshaw was there, the elderly night clerk said. He took a railroad watch out of his vest pocket and consulted it. “It’s getting pretty late, though. They may be asleep.”
“They?”
“Him and his wife. I can go up and call him, if you want me to. We never did put telephones in the rooms.”
“I’ll go up. I’m a friend of Dr. Bradshaw’s.”
“I didn’t know he was a doctor.”
“A doctor of philosophy,” I said. “What’s his room number?”
“Thirty-one, on the top floor.” The old man seemed relieved at not having to make the climb.
I left Arnie with him and went up to the third floor. Light shone through the transom of 31, and I could hear the indistinct murmur of voices. I knocked. There was a silence, followed by the noise of slippered feet.
Roy Bradshaw spoke through the door. “Who is it?”
“Archer.”
He hesitated. A sleeper in the room across the hall, perhaps disturbed by our voices, began to snore. Bradshaw said:
“What are you doing here?”
“I have to see you.”
“Can’t it wait till morning?” His voice was impatient, and he had temporarily mislaid his Harvard accent.
“No. It can’t. I need your advice on what to do about Judson Foley.”
“Very well. I’ll get dressed.”
I waited in the narrow ill-lit hallway. It had the faintly acrid smell which old buildings seem to absorb from the people who pass through them night by night, the smell of transient life. The snoring man was uttering terrible moans between his snores. A woman told him to turn over, and he subsided.
I could hear a quick interchange of voices in Bradshaw’s room. The woman’s voice seemed to want something, which Bradshaw’s voice denied. I thought I recognized the woman’s voice, but I couldn’t be sure.
I was sure when Bradshaw finally opened the door. He tried to slip out without letting me see in, but I caught a glimpse of Laura Sutherland. She was sitting upright on the edge of the unmade bed in a severely cut Paisley robe. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she was rosy and beautiful.
Bradshaw jerked the door shut. “So now you know.”
He had pulled on slacks and a black turtleneck sweater which made him look more undergraduate than ever. In spite of the tension in him, he seemed quite happy.
“I don’t know what I know,” I said.
“This is not an illicit liaison, believe me. Laura and I were married some time ago. We’re keeping our marriage secret, for the present. I’m going to ask you to go along with that.”
I didn’t say whether I would or not. “Why all the secrecy?”
“We have our reasons. For one thing, under the college regulations, Laura would have to give up her post. She intends to, of course, but not immediately. And then there’s Mother. I don’t know how I’m going to break it to her.”
“You could just tell her. She’ll survive.”
“It’s easy enough to say. It isn’t possible.”
The thing that made it impossible, I thought, was Mother’s money. Having money and looking forward to inheriting more were difficult habits for a man to break in early middle age. But I felt a sneaking admiration for Bradshaw. He had more life in him than I’d suspected.
We went downstairs and through the lobby, where Arnie was playing gin rummy with the night clerk. The bar was a gloomy cavern with antlers on the walls instead of stalactites and customers instead of stalagmites. One of the customers, a local man wearing a cap and windbreaker and carrying a load, wanted to buy Bradshaw and me a drink. The bartender told him it was time to go home. Surprisingly, he went, and most of the others drifted out after him.
We sat at the bar. Bradshaw ordered a double bourbon and insisted on one for me, though I didn’t need it. There was some aggression in his insistence. He hadn’t forgiven me for stumbling on his secret, or for dragging him away from his wife’s bed.
“Well,” he said, “what about Judson Foley?”
“He tells me you recognized him Friday night.”
“I had an intuition that it was he.” Bradshaw had recovered his accent, and was using it as a kind of vocal mask.
“Why didn’t you say so? You could have saved a lot of legwork and expense.”
He looked at me solemnly over his drink. “I had to be certain and I was very far from being that. I couldn’t accuse a man, and set the police on his trail, unless I were certain.”
“So you came here to make certain?”
“It happened to work out that way. There are times in a man’s life when everything seems to fall together into place, have you noticed?” A momentary flash of glee broke through his earnestness. “Laura and I had been planning to steal a weekend here for some time, and the conference gave us the opportunity. Foley was a side issue, but of course a very important one. I looked him up this morning and questioned him thoroughly. He seems completely innocent to me.”