“What?” Susie asked scornfully.
Mervyn turned into a side road and stopped the Volkswagen in a patch of moonlight. The motor died, and there was silence. Only gradually did Mervyn become aware of the crickets. To the north and east twinkled lights, the occasional flicker of automobiles along the Freeway.
Mervyn said, “As we were leaving the coffee shop I looked at you and I said to myself: If I were to grade Susie by this chart, she’d rate a perfect score. Eighty out of eighty on the nose. Ingenuity, imagination, duplicity, perversity, boldness, the lot.
“Lucky for Susie, I told myself, the chart is just nonsense. Then I began thinking. I tested you out against my outline of events. I could find nothing that really pointed to you until I remembered what happened last night. Somebody shot at me from the back lot.
“Like a damn fool I immediately ran to see who it was. I found nobody, and couldn’t understand where he’d gone. But with every possible place eliminated — but one — it had to be that one. And that was into one of four apartments of the south six-plex — through a back window. Not Harriet’s, not Mrs. Kelly’s — the fence stops before it passes under their windows. Apartment Nine is vacant and the people in Apartment Eight are on vacation. Apartment Seven is full of airline stewardesses none of us ever got to know. That left Apartment Twelve, Susie. Your apartment.
“No real problem for an athletic wench to take a shot at Mervyn, then run around, jump up on the fence, climb through the back window and watch old Mervyn blundering back and forth.” He turned to scrutinize her. “If I’d caught you, you’d probably have killed me then and there.”
“Just as I can now,” said Susie. There was a little .22 revolver in her hand. She had her back against the door and she was holding the gun close to her body, where Mervyn could not easily get at it. “With no more compunction than when you killed Mary. Or pushed Mrs. Kelly down those steps.”
Mervyn sat staring into the set white face.
Susie went on in a bitter, taunting way. “You thought you were frightfully clever bringing me here, didn’t you? How naïve do you think I am? Do you know why I let you drive me way out here? Because it’s after midnight, Mervyn. It’s tomorrow.”
Mervyn slapped at the gun. It exploded and the bullet passed under his chin and out the open window. He grabbed the .22 with one hand and Susie with the other, shoulder under her jaw to keep away from her teeth.
He wrenched, and had the gun.
Susie pressed back against the door, panting. Mervyn sat quietly, waiting for his heart to slow down.
After a while he said, “So I killed Mary. In that case, of course, I’ll have to kill you.”
Susie said nothing. Her eyes flashed in a moonbeam.
“By the way, how did you know I killed Mary?”
“Because I saw you.”
“Oh, you did?” Mervyn said. “Suppose you tell me about it.”
“I saw you club her to death with your ski boot.”
“Really. Well. Tell me more. From the beginning.”
“Mary was flying south.” It spilled out in her frustration. “She asked John to take her to the airport.”
“John who?”
“Boce. John had a date with Harriet, but after he broke it Harriet wouldn’t let him borrow her car. So he couldn’t take Mary after all. I told Mary I’d take her in your convertible — I didn’t think you’d mind — but she was still angry with me from our spat and said she preferred to take a cab. I told her not to be a ninny and went out back to the garage to get your convertible anyway, and I was coming around the corner and pulling up at the curb when I saw Mary had already come out with her bag and was sitting in your Volkswagen. I couldn’t understand it, so I just sat there and watched. And that’s when I saw you come out and take your ski boot and lean into the Volkswagen where Mary was sitting. And to my horror I saw Mary fall over. I couldn’t believe my eyes; I thought I was dreaming the whole thing. But then you jumped into the Volkswagen and drove away... with Mary’s body.
“I followed you in your convertible. What else could I do? I followed you for hours. All the way down the valley. After you’d passed through Merced you turned off the road and headed out into the country. I stayed behind you, driving with my lights off for most of the way. When you turned off onto a little private side road, I didn’t dare follow with the car, so I parked and walked in. You drove to an old barn—”
“Part of what used to be my grandfather’s cattle ranch.”
“...and I watched you through a window. You pried up some floor boards and then carried Mary’s body in and crammed it in the hole. Along with her suitcase. Then you replaced the boards and scattered straw around and drove off.
“I walked back for your convertible — I’d left it behind some bushes off the road, so I knew you couldn’t have seen it in passing — and while I walked, I knew what I was going to do. I drove the convertible to the barn, pulled up the boards, dragged Mary’s body out” — Susie’s voice faltered — “and put the body and her suitcase in the trunk of your car. You’d left the boot behind, too, that dreadful boot, so heavy and smeared with... with—”
“That must have seemed stupid of me,” Mervyn said.
“Anyway, I threw the boot and Mary’s purse in the convertible and drove off. My first thought was naturally to drive to the nearest police station, but then I decided not to go to the police at all. They might think I was in on it with you, or even that I’d done it myself and tried to involve you, because I had had that quarrel with Mary just before she left, and at least one person knew it, Harriet Brill, and of course it would be bound to come out.
“So I decided that the best way to do it was keep myself out of it altogether. I drove to Madera and left the convertible there, figuring that when the police found it they’d look in the trunk first off and find Mary’s body and of course trace the car directly to you. I decided not to leave Mary’s purse and the boot you’d killed her with in the car; I thought they could serve a more useful purpose if they were actually found in your possession. There was a big paper bag in the car from some marketing you’d apparently done, and I put the purse and the boot in it, and after I abandoned the car I took the paper bag and walked a good way from where I’d left it and then grabbed a cab to the bus station and got back to Berkeley on the bus.”
“And the next day, I suppose,” Mervyn said, “when I wasn’t in, you got into my apartment through my bedroom window and planted the purse and the boot there for the police to find?”
“Yes,” snapped Susie, “exactly. I thought I had you nicely trussed up for the police, and I waited for them to find the car and Mary’s body in it, and search your apartment and find her purse and the ski boot you’d murdered her with. Only you were too smart for me, Mervyn. You undid everything I’d done, after the police stupidly didn’t look into the trunk when they found your car.
“Well, I swore to Mary’s memory that I wouldn’t let you get away with her murder. I still thought it safer not to become involved, so I began sending you those anonymous notes, hoping that what scraps of conscience you had left would drive you to go to the police and make a confession. But when I saw it wasn’t working, that you didn’t give yourself up, that you’d undoubtedly disposed of every shred of evidence connecting you with the murder, I knew there was nothing left for me to do but punish you myself — kill you with my own hands. And now I’ve failed in that, too. What a mess I’ve made of it all!”