She put her hands across the desk and grasped one of mine. Her cigarette was burning uselessly in the ash tray.
“Please forgive me for this, Chuck, but do you need money?”
I laughed. “No. Thanks, anyway. The expenses weren’t large. Harry Evans paid for it.”
“You’ve already mentioned that. May I ask... the connection between you and Evans, and Evans and the girl, and the girl and you isn’t quite clear.”
“It wasn’t clear to me, until last night. I think it stacks up like this: the girl — let’s call her Leonore — was Evans’ lady friend. Mistress, if we want to be frank about it. The poetry and the Chinese symbol and another fact tend to show that.”
“Yes. And you said Evans retained you?”
“As a sort of local bodyguard. He knew he was heading for some kind of trouble, exact nature of which unknown. Meanwhile, I had met Leonore in quite another way. Now the three of us are tied together in a sort of triangle.”
“That much I can follow. And I understand your interest in the autopsy.”
“Yeah.” Her cigarette died unnoticed in the ash tray. She was still holding onto my hand. “Remember those ‘slices’ I mentioned last night in your car? Evans and Leonore were having a pretty deep love affair. Something happened to that love affair, something startling, something unexpected? Do you follow that?”
She recalled the unexpected but quite natural results of a certain chemical test, and said yes. “A baby.”
“Keep that in mind. And then Evans came in to my office for protection. He doesn’t really know what is going to happen to him, but he thinks the police will frame him.”
“That doesn’t sound like Boone.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t Boone. I’ve come to believe the chief of police is a rat; he denied me my license renewal because someone who has reason to dislike me applied pressure. But I don’t think he could or would go so far as to frame a man of Evans’ standing.
“To get back to the point: Evans walked out of this office and was killed by his mistress. They loved one another very much. What do you think of that?”
“Nothing at all. It is confusing.”
“That’s it, Elizabeth. The apparent contradiction is the fine point upon which the whole thing revolves. That contradiction has no business being there. But it exists. Find out why it exists and you’ll probably find out the answer to everything.”
“Sorry, Chuck. I’m not that bright.”
“Neither am I. I wish I was. If they loved each other as deeply as evidence suggests, he would never, never run out on her. Baby or no, he’d stick by her. Having no reason to kill him then, she promptly kills him. And shortly afterwards the death car is found, ditched. And she falls in the lake.”
“It sounds like murder for revenge, and then desperate suicide. I’m sorry, Chuck, I’m only a doctor. I’m lost.”
“I’m as good as lost. Logic tells me there is a third party mixed in somewhere. That third party can explain the contradiction of a mistress murdering her lover whom she’ll need very shortly; he can also explain why Evans expected to be framed.”
“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth suggested, “and how she left the car in one place and was ice skating in another a short while later. It’s a crying shame she decided to go ice skating that night. She could have told us...”
She stopped talking. We eyed each other.
“Yes,” I echoed, “it is a shame, isn’t it? I wondered how long it would take you to suspect something.”
Her eyes were narrow with speculation. The hands holding mine tightened around my fingers.
“Yes,” she said again, ever so softly. “It is a crying shame.”
I could see what she was thinking. Her thoughts were practically echoing my own. But Louise, what I couldn’t tell her was this: since last night when I had seen the Chinese symbol on that identification bracelet, I had known (or thought I knew) the missing third party.
Leonore was driving for the gambler. The gambler had told me it was Leonore’s first trip between downtown and the lake; but Leonore had told me it was her second. She had made her first trip after running down Harry Evans. Foolhardy as it may seem, she had gone straight to the lake.
Remember also how the gambler lost his poise when I mentioned talking to the doll? That was my mistake, Louise, for I realized, during that long half-hour wait before Beth came in, that I had said something he didn’t like.
And Leonore fell in the lake and drowned.
That gambling gentleman is probably our third party. But don’t ask me how or why Leonore killed her lover; don’t ask me why Evans expected trouble from the police; don’t ask me how the gambler fits into the picture. I don’t know.
“Beth — was there any trace of dope in the body?”
“None whatsoever. We would have found it. Why?”
“Remember my saying she was giving a lousy skating performance? She acted sort of funny on the ice. Not too sure of herself. I thought maybe she had been doped and sent out there.”
“No, it wasn’t that. Something else must have contributed to the poor skating.”
“Yeah. And that something else, whatever it was, pushed her into the lake, too.”
She didn’t have an answer to that one, and swung her gaze out the window.
I reached in the desk drawer for the telephone and put in a call for Rothman in Croyden. In a few minutes the operator informed me that Mr. Rothman couldn’t be reached at that number, but that a Mr. Liebscher of the same firm would talk to me if I so desired. Did I?
I did.
Liebscher greeted me, “It’s your nickel, chum.”
“Doesn’t Rothman ever work? And can’t you think of a new way to open a conversation?”
“Ah — it’s Charley-boy. How are you, chum?”
“Never mind my health. Look: I’m mailing you a clipping about a Chinese girl who drowned... what?”
“I said, skip it. We’ve got newspapers, too.”
“All right, here’s the story: remember what I told you earlier about Evans? That’s right. It turns out that this Chinese girl is connected with him. Or was, rather. His mistress. No — never mind how I found out. I want you to dig up some details for me, fast. I’m coming over there late this afternoon. Don’t hang up — there’s more.”
Beth had swung back from the window to watch me, a troubled expression in her eyes. I ignored the eyes.
“Liebscher: I think that lawyer — yeah, Ashley — is in on this, too. Take a quick look into his private affairs. Try to find out who some of his clients are; we might work through them. Anything that’ll give us a line on him.
“That isn’t all. I’ll want information on the big-time gambling outfits over there. Can you do it? Fine. I’ll see you sometime this afternoon. So long, now.”
I hung up.
The troubled expression in Elizabeth’s eyes had changed to worried concern and flooded over into her face.
“Chuck — do you think you ought to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Pry into this thing? It might be dangerous for you. After all, you’ve done as much as you can.”
“Elizabeth, you say you’re a doctor. Would you run out on a patient because he was dying of a disease that might kill you, too? After you had done everything humanly possible there was to do for him?”
“N...o.”
“Well, I’m not a doctor. I like to think I’m a detective. I swore no oath and I don’t have to go through with it if I don’t want to. But I won’t run out on a case just because there might be some danger in it.”
“Chuck, it isn’t a question of might be, it is. A man and a woman have been brutally murdered because of something you don’t fully understand. And yet you blindly insist upon putting your head into the bag to see if you can understand what’s inside.”