“You just don’t have a talent for these things,” Mervyn said sympathetically, “although I must admit you gave me a hard time. I don’t suppose you’d care to hear my confession now?”
“Oh, stop playing with me, you — you sadist,” Susie said dully. “Shoot me and get it over with.”
“But the longer I talk the longer you live. Right?” When she did not bother to reply, Mervyn settled back and said reflectively, “In the main you’ve described events with reasonable accuracy. In the main.
“I’d just driven up in the Volkswagen when Mary came running out of the court carrying her suitcase. She asked if I’d drive her to the airport. I said I would if she’d wait till I got rid of a bag of groceries, changed my shirt and put on a jacket. She said she had time, so she got into the Volkswagen with her bag and I went to my apartment. I couldn’t have been gone more than five, six minutes, Susie. When I came back I found Mary sitting on the seat with her skull crushed and my ski boot in her lap.”
Susie was glaring at him.
“I picked the boot up, and her body fell over side-wise... I was stunned. Not only by the shock of seeing Mary that way, but of the fix I was in if anyone should see me. I’d surely be accused of Mary’s murder. And if that happened — regardless of whether I was cleared or not — the notoriety, the mere fact of being connected with a bloody homicide, would ruin my career. You know what an old lady Professor Burton is. I not only wouldn’t get the assistant professorship I was after, I’d be fired from the university and probably blackballed everywhere.
“Well, I panicked. I know now — I think I even knew it then — that it was stupidly wrong. But all I could feel was that I had to get Mary’s body out of my car and my life. So I got into the Volkswagen and drove off. And, of course, the moment I did that I was committed — any chance I might have had of convincing the police I was innocent I kicked away in that one blind act.
“The irony of the whole thing was that someone had seen me, someone did assume I was a murderer. You.”
“You filthy liar!” Susie choked. “How can you sit here and tell me such lies when I saw you hit her with that boot — saw you with my own eyes?”
“What you saw in that evening light, Susie,” Mervyn said gently, “was me leaning into the car — at which Mary’s body fell over on its side — while I tossed the boot in the back. That’s what you saw.”
Susie blinked and blinked and blinked at him.
“You don’t believe me,” Mervyn said.
Susie licked her lips.
“Susie,” Mervyn said. “She was already dead when I got there.”
She began to sob hysterically. Mervyn watched her. After a while he put his hand on her shoulder. She gasped and jerked away from his touch.
“Damn it,” Mervyn growled. “If I didn’t kill Mary, it’s not likely I’m going to kill you, is it?”
“I don’t believe you! I can’t!”
“You’re too upset to think clearly, Susie. If I’m a murderer, then you’re going to be murdered. If I’m not a murderer — if I’ve told you the truth — then you’re perfectly safe. Isn’t that so?”
Her mouth was open a little. But she did nod, ever so slightly.
“Well, you can relax. I have no intention of murdering you.”
Susie expelled a deep shuddering breath. “But I tried to murder you.”
“Yes,” he said morosely, “and for that I owe you. But the truth is, I brought it on myself. So I’m not even going to beat you up. I don’t know, maybe I’ll kiss you.”
Susie started to say something, but stopped.
Mervyn went on in a broody voice. “Driving off with Mary dead beside me — wanting only to get rid of the body, I thought of Madera. I’d grown up there. I had no idea you were following me. Later, when I found the body I thought I’d buried in that barn lying in the trunk of the convertible, it was the worst jolt of my life.”
Susie cleared her throat. “What did you do with her?”
Mervyn said, “The river,” in a very low voice.
Susie stared blindly ahead.
“My only excuse, Susie, is that I was in a complete funk.”
Susie asked in a husky whisper, “If you didn’t kill Mary, who did?”
“I don’t know. ‘John’ — whichever John it is. I’ve detected my head off, and I still don’t know which one. Of course, all the time I kept going on the assumption that Mary’s killer was sending me the notes and so on. What a detective.”
Susie put her hand on his arm. “Mervyn.”
Mervyn looked at her.
“Mervyn, I’m sorry.” Her voice was harsh and forlorn. “For both of us. It’s too late to feel sorry for Mary.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” said Mervyn bitterly. “I’m not only a lousy gumshoe, I’m a moral weakling besides.”
“Mervyn.”
“What?”
“Let’s go to the police, and tell them everything.”
Mervyn did not reply.
“What’s the matter?” Susie cried. “Are you afraid they might not be as gullible as I am?”
“Oh, stop it,” Mervyn said. “I was just thinking that all of a sudden I don’t give a damn if old Burton does kick me out. Who wants to spend the rest of his life in the twelfth century, anyway? By the way, here.” He tossed the little .22 into her lap. “Better put it on safety before you shoot your big toe off.”
“Then the police it is?” cried Susie gladly.
“The police it is.”
Mervyn started the car, and Susie’s breath came out in a great sigh, and she stared down at the little revolver and finally picked it up and dropped it in her bag. And all the way back to Berkeley they sat with shoulders touching, feeling very close and yet very far away from each other, too. There was a sort of intimate sadness in the Volkswagen.
He parked it before the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments and switched off the headlights. They sat in the dark.
“I thought we were going to the police,” Susie said, even more sadly.
“We are,” Mervyn said. “But on the way home I couldn’t help thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“How very strange that Mrs. Kelly should fall down the steps here the same night Mary was murdered.”
“Mervyn!”
“What?”
“We must be telepathic. I was thinking the same thing!”
“There’s something even stranger, Susie. Not only did Mrs. Kelly fall down the steps the night Mary was murdered, but the old lady is positive I’m the one responsible for her fall. That I pushed her. I think we can assume that she was pushed, all right — she’d hardly have imagined that. But why does she insist I did the pushing? I didn’t, Susie, you know. The whole thing is very peculiar.”
“It certainly is,” said Susie, and they sat in silence. And all of a sudden Susie looked up and said, “Mervyn.”
“What, Susie?”
“I think this is important enough to investigate as quickly as possible.”
“But the police...”
“Another day won’t matter, will it?”
“But where would we start investigating?” Mervyn asked rather helplessly. “I’ve already proved what a bust I am as a detective.”
“We go to the horse’s mouth — Mrs. Kelly.”
“In the hospital?”
“Where else? It’s too late tonight — after visiting hours — but we can go first thing in the morning. We can both use a good night’s sleep, anyway, after — after everything that’s happened today. All right?”