“I’ll tell him. Good-by, Sid.”
“Good-by, sugar.”
That was about it. I put the phone in its cradle and pushed it away from me. It had been bad enough, as it had to be, but not as bad as it might have been.
“Tell who what?” Cotton said.
“You’re who,” I said, “and what is that you’d better not come sneaking around picking Sid’s brains again if you don’t want to be shot.”
“What the hell’s the matter with that woman? She can’t be threatening an officer of the law in line of duty.”
“She also called you a clunk-head. That makes two people in ten minutes. I’m beginning to think there must be some truth in it.”
“Did she say anything about me, Gid?” Hec said.
“Nothing much. She concentrated on Cotton.”
“Well, I suppose she’ll never speak to me again after this.” He stood up behind his desk and looked strong and resigned and slightly noble. “It’s one of the penalties of a job like mine. You do your plain duty, no matter how much it may hurt you inside, and someone always hates you for it.”
“As I see it,” Cotton said, “my plain duty right now is to take the prisoner over to the county jail, and I’m going to do it.”
“That’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “It’s Cotton’s duty to do it.”
So he did his duty, and we went. I had tried to be brave and assured and all that prideful stuff, and maybe I managed to make the picture pretty well, but I didn’t feel it. Inside, like Hec, I was hurting.
I have a notion I was hurting worse.
The county jail was a red brick building erected near the turn of the century in the center of a square block of grass and trees and flowering shrubs. It was two stories high, and my accommodations were second floor rear. I had been there four hours that seemed like four weeks when Harley Murchison, the jailer, came up and opened my grill and said that I had a visitor.
He took me down to a small room on the first floor, and there was Sid. I went over and put my arms around her, and she hung on for a few seconds, and I could hear a little choking sound in her throat, followed by a sniff in her nose. I sat down in a chair by a table, and she sat down in one beside me. We held hands.
“What have you been doing?” I said.
“I’ve been trying to run down that idiot Cotton McBride, that’s what, but he’s never anywhere I go, or at least someone says he isn’t, and it’s perfectly apparent by this time that he’s trying to avoid me.”
“Have you talked with anyone at all?”
“Only Hector Caldwell. He was so full of noble regrets and windy pretensions that I was nearly sick on his carpet, but at least he called here to the jail and said that I was to be allowed to see you, and so here I am.”
“If you love me, will you do something for me?”
“I’m not sure. I’m forced to recognize that you’re not always the best judge of what is for your own good. However, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go straight home and be good. Let me get out of this thing the best I can alone.”
“Excuse me, sugar, but to this point, in spite of my telling you exactly what to do and say in certain situations, you have shown almost no ability for getting out of it. On the contrary, you keep getting deeper and deeper into it. Please tell me why you think things will be any different hereafter.”
“Because this anonymous note isn’t sufficient evidence to base an indictment on, and Hec Caldwell knows it. My arrest on suspicion is just a kind of gesture, that’s all.”
“There. That’s exactly what I mean. You — assume without any earthly reason that Hec Caldwell will suddenly begin to think and behave intelligently. This is clearly impossible, for he doesn’t have the necessary brains, and he is, moreover, under the influence of Cotton McBride, who has even less. Now, sugar, what I want you to do is tell me exactly what was said in the telephone conversation between you and Beth. Just begin at the beginning and don’t leave anything out for the sake of discretion. What you might leave out could be the most significant of everything, and we can settle later any issues that may arise from your being honest.”
“All right. First, she asked me if it was me on the phone, and I said it was. Then she asked me what I was doing, and I said I was drinking Gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration, and she said something about drinking Gimlets still, and I said not still, but again, because I had taken time out for a bottle of white Burgundy. Then she asked if you were home, and I said no, that you were off discussing something with Rose Pogue, and she said that something like that with Rose might go on forever. Right after that she asked me if I would meet her somewhere, and I asked where, and she remembered Dreamer’s Park and suggested it, and I agreed to go. Incidentally, I ought to warn you that I didn’t tell quite all the truth to Hec and Cotton. What I didn’t tell them was that I found the body and didn’t report it.”
“It’s a relief to learn that you followed my instructions to that extent, at least. It really would be too bad to have you kept in jail for such a minor offense after you have been proved innocent of a major one.”
“Yes, it would. I couldn’t agree with you more.”
About that time Harley Murchison came to the door and coughed, which was a sign that it was time for Sid to go. I held her and kissed her and took a deep breath of the scent of her hair to smell after she was gone.
“You’re not a bad sort,” I said. “As wives go, you’re quite satisfactory.”
“I know. In some ways, I’m even exceptional.”
Then she sniffed and wiped her nose and went, and where she went and what she did, while I went nowhere and did nothing, make a story that you may not believe if I haven’t been able to make you see her as she was. I don’t know exactly what she did and said in all instances, for I wasn’t with her, but I’m sure I can use my imagination and tell it all with verisimilitude, if not with precise accuracy, from what she told me afterward, and what I heard from others, and most of all from simply knowing Sid and what, in given circumstances, she would most likely do and say.
Where she went first, after leaving the county jail and me in it, was to my office to see Millie Morgan.
“Here you are, Millie,” she said. “I was afraid you might be gone.”
“A few minutes later I’d have been,” Millie said, “but I’m glad I’m not. Have you seen Gid since that stupid Hec Caldwell put him in jail?”
“I just came from seeing him. I don’t think it was so much Hec who put him there, however, as Cotton McBride.”
“In my opinion, they were both in on it and equally responsible. What on earth makes them suspect Gid of having murdered Beth Thatcher? He called me on the phone and said they did, but he didn’t see why, and I’ve been dying to know ever since.”
“Because he went to Dreamer’s Park the night she was killed there, and someone apparently saw him and wrote a note to the police about it.”
“Well, what a dirty trick! Whoever did it?”
“That’s not known, for the note wasn’t signed.”
“Isn’t it rather odd that Gid would go to Dreamer’s Park in the middle of the night? Did you know he was going?”
“No. I only learned that he went after he had gone. To tell the truth, he went there to meet Beth.”
“The hell he did! If he were my husband, I don’t believe I’d be quite so amiable about something like that as you seem to be.”
“It’s not that I’m so amiable, really. It’s only that I’m forced by circumstances to appear so. I may yet, when the time is right, decide to deprive him temporarily of a few privileges for going off like that the minute my back was turned. Now, however, he is in jail and in trouble, and I must get him out.”