“And you worked for him, didn’t you?”
“So what? Working for a person is no crime.”
“Murder is the crime we’re talking about. Who killed him, Marian? Was it Culligan?”
“Who says anybody killed him? He pulled up stakes and went away. The whole family did.”
“Brown didn’t go very far, just a foot or two underground. They dug him up last spring, all but his head. His head was missing. Who cut it off, Marian?”
The ugliness rose like smoke in the room, spreading to its far corners, fouling the light at the window. The ugliness entered the woman and stained her eyes. Her lips moved, trying to find the words that would exorcise it. I said:
“I’ll make a bargain with you, and keep it if I can. I don’t want to hurt your boy. I’ve got nothing against you or your husband. I suspect you’re material witness to a murder. Maybe the law would call it accessory–”
“No.” She shook her head jerkily. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe not. I’m not interested in pinning anything on you. If you’ll tell me the whole truth as you know it, I’ll do my best to keep you out of it. But it has to be the whole truth, and I have to have it now. A lot depends on it.”
“How could a lot depend, after all these years?”
“Why did Culligan die, after all these years? I think that the two deaths are connected. I also think that you can tell me how.”
Her deeper, cruder personality rose to the surface. “What do you think I am, a crystal ball?”
“Stop fooling around,” I said sharply. “We only have a few minutes. If you won’t talk to me alone, you can talk in front of your husband.”
“What if I refuse to talk at all?”
“You’ll be having another visit from the. cops. It’ll start here and end up at the courthouse. And everybody west of the Rockies will have a chance to read all about it in the papers. Now talk.”
“I need a minute to think.”
“You’ve had it. Who murdered Brown?”
“I didn’t know he was murdered, not for sure. Culligan wouldn’t let me go back to the house after that night. He said the Browns moved on, bag and baggage. He even tried to give me money he said they left for me.”
“Where did he get it?”
After a silence, she blurted: “He stole it from them.”
“Did he murder Brown?”
“Not Culligan. He wouldn’t have the nerve.”
“Who did?”
“There was another man. It must have been him.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
“I hardly remember. I only saw him the once, and it was at night.”
Her story was turning vague, and it made me suspicious. “Are you sure the other man existed?”
“Of course he did.”
“Prove it.”
“He was a jailbird,” she said. “He escaped from San Quentin. He used to belong to the same gang Culligan did.”
“What gang is that?”
“I wouldn’t know. It broke up long before I married Culligan. He never talked about his gang days. I wasn’t interested.”
“Let’s get back to this man who broke out of ‘Q.’ He must have had a name. Culligan must have called him something.”
“I don’t remember what.”
“Try harder.”
She looked toward the window. Her face was drawn in the tarnished light.
“Shoulders. I think it was Shoulders.”
“No last name?”
“Not that I remember. I don’t think Culligan ever told me his last name.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was a big man, dark-haired. I never really saw him, not in the light.”
“What makes you think he murdered Brown?”
She answered in a low voice, to keep her house from hearing: “I heard them arguing that night, in the middle of the night. They were sitting out in my car arguing about money. The other man – Shoulders – said that he’d knock off Pete, too, if he didn’t get his way. I heard him say it. The walls of the shack we lived in were paper thin. This Shoulders had a kind of shrill voice, and it cut through the walls like a knife. He wanted all the money for himself, and most of the jewels.
“Pete said it wasn’t fair, that he was the finger man and should have an equal split. He needed money, too, and God knows that he did. He always needed money. He said that a couple of hot rubies were no good to him. That was how I guessed what happened. Little Mrs. Brown had these big red jewels, I always thought they were glass. But they were rubies.”
“What happened to the rubies?”
“The other man took them, he must of. Culligan settled for part of the money, I guess. At least he was flush for a while.”
“Did you ever ask him why?”
“No. I was afraid.”
“Afraid of Culligan?”
“Not him so much.” She tried to go on, but the words stuck in her throat. She plucked at the skin of .her throat as if to dislodge them. “I was afraid of the truth, afraid he’d tell me. I didn’t want to believe what happened, I guess. That argument I heard outside our house – I tried to pretend to myself it was all a dream. I was in love with Culligan in those days. I couldn’t face my own part in it.”
“You mean the fact that you didn’t take your suspicions to the police?”
“That would have been bad enough, but I did worse. I was the one responsible for the whole thing. I’ve lived with it on my conscience for over twenty years. It was all my fault for not keeping my loud mouth shut.” She gave me an up-from-under look, her eyes burning with pain: “Maybe I ought to be keeping it shut now.”
“How were you responsible?”
She hung her head still lower. Her eyes sank out of sight under her black brows. “I told Culligan about the money,” she said. “Mr. Brown kept it in a steel box in his room. I saw it when he paid me. There must have been thousands of dollars. And I had to go and mention it to my hus– to Culligan. I would have done better to go and cut my tongue out instead.” She raised her head, slowly, as if she was balancing a weight. “So there you have it.”
“Did Brown ever tell you where he got the money?”
“Not really. He made a joke about it – said he stole it. But he wasn’t the type.”
“What type was he?”
“Mr. Brown was a gentleman, at least he started out to be a gentleman. Until he married that wife of his. I don’t know what he saw in her outside of a pretty face. She didn’t know from nothing, if you ask me. But he knew plenty, he could talk your head off.”
She gasped. The enormity of the image struck her. “God! They cut his head off?” She wasn’t asking me. She was asking the dark memories flooding up from the basement of her life.
“Before death or after, we don’t know which. You say you never went back to the house?”
“I never did. We went back to San Francisco.”
“Do you know what happened to the rest of the family, the wife and son?”
She shook her head. “I tried not to think about them. What did happen to them?”
“I’m not sure, but I think they went east. The indications are they got away safe, at any rate.”
“Thank God for that.” She tried to smile, and failed. Her eyes were still intent on the guilty memory. She looked at the walls of her living-room as if they were transparent. “I guess you wonder what kind of a woman I am, that I could run out on a patient like that. Don’t think it didn’t bother me. I almost went out of my mind for a while that winter. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and listen to Culligan’s breathing and wish it would stop. But I stuck to him for five more years after that. Then I divorced him.”
“And now he’s stopped breathing.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You could have hired a gun to knock him off. He was threatening to make trouble for you. You have a lot to lose.” I didn’t believe it, but I wanted to see what she would make of it.