“Why,” said Sid suddenly, “it’s absurd! It’s simply absurd!”
She was on her feet with a sense of rising excitement, and she felt in an instant much better than she had been feeling in a long, long time.
Feeling so good, she went inside and mixed three Martinis and brought them out and drank them.
I looked out the window into the yard beneath spreading trees. The grass was dark green and cool-looking and inviting, and I wished I could go out and roll in it like a dog. It was my third day in jail, and I was tired of it. I wanted to go home.
“Sugar,” Sid said, “last night I thought of something enlightening.”
“Is that so? I’ve been thinking, too, and the result has been almost precisely the opposite.”
“Well, this enlightening thing is something that was said, and it was said, moreover, directly to you. It does seem to me, sugar, that a lawyer — especially an attorney of your caliber — should be a bit more capable of analyzing things and seeing their significance and all that.”
“Just tell me, please, what was said that’s enlightening.”
“I suppose I must, if you can’t think of it yourself. To begin with, I’ve been greatly puzzled as to why Beth Thatcher was fooling around making a date with my husband when she should have been attending to more important business. It just didn’t seem sensible.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“Then early last night I called Rose Pogue, and that got me to thinking about the telephone conversation you had with Beth, and all at once it was perfectly clear to me why Beth neglected her business to make a date with you.”
“Was it? Is it? Not to me. Why is it?”
“Because she didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t make a date with you.”
“I’m sorry to be contrary and have to mess up what must be leading up to a brilliant theory, but she did. She called me on the telephone.”
“I know, sugar. I know someone called you, that is. But what makes you so positive it was Beth?”
“Because she said it was.”
“Anyone could have said it. That doesn’t make it so.”
“Look, Sid, it won’t do. Honestly it won’t. Beth had a voice that sounded like an invitation to bed if she so much as asked for a light. I’d have recognized it anytime, anywhere.”
“Please don’t be so obtuse, sugar. You have scarcely covered yourself with distinction in this matter up to now, and it’s time you made a special effort to do a little better. Surely you can see that the unusual quality of Beth’s voice is precisely what would make it so easy to imitate.”
“Are you saying that someone called me and pretended to be Beth?”
“Yes. It explains other things and must be true.”
“Why must it? You haven’t given me any reason yet.”
“I was in hopes you’d get it without my help. It would restore my confidence in you somewhat if you could. Can’t you? Really try.”
“Damn it, Sid, cut it out. I’m in no mood to match wits with you.”
“Oh, well, I may as well tell you. It was what was said about Rose Pogue that makes me sure it was not Beth Thatcher who said it.”
“All I can remember being said about Rose was that a conference with her might go on and on forever.”
“There! You see? You only needed to make a genuine effort, and you thought of it right away.”
“Now that I’ve thought of it, perhaps you’ll tell me what it means.”
“Why, sugar, how could Beth Thatcher have possibly known that Rose is so talkative and goes on and on forever about matters in detail? After all, Beth left town seven years ago, and Rose only came here three years ago, when she was hired to teach second grade, and it was therefore clearly impossible for Beth to know Rose at all, or anything whatever about her.”
She was sitting on the table with her legs hanging over the edge, her eyes bright with pride and excitement. I was standing facing her, and I felt limp all of a sudden, as if my bones had gone soft in an instant.
“Who, conceivably,” I said, “could it have been who called?”
“There is nothing difficult about that,” Sid said. “It was whoever killed her, of course.”
“And who, conceivably, is whoever killed her?”
“As to that, I’m not sure yet, but there are things that can be deduced, and the first deduction is that the killer is surely a woman. It would have been easy for a woman to imitate that special quality in Beth’s voice, even if she were no more than a little clever, but it would hardly have been possible for a man, unless he were especially talented and trained, which isn’t likely.”
“That sounds reasonable enough. Now deduce why this woman, whoever she may be, killed Beth and then tricked me into going to Dreamer’s Park and incriminating myself.”
“This is so elementary that it doesn’t really deserve to be called deducing. Allowing for the possibility of her being a little crazy, she undoubtedly killed Beth because she hated her, and incriminated you because she hated you also. The incrimination part was sloppy and uncertain at best. There was no assurance that it would work, and it nearly didn’t, for you simply kept quiet about finding the body, which you might not have found at all in such a dark place. That is why, after a while, it was necessary to send the note to the police.”
“You contend, then, that the telephoner and the writer are the same person?”
“Oh, yes. Naturally.”
“I can’t quite picture myself as the kind of fellow who could incite such strong emotion.”
“Sugar, I’m prepared to testify that you are perfectly capable of inciting strong emotion, but that is beside the point, and we’d better not get into it. Besides, I’m just beginning to get some ideas that may amount to something. As I recall, regarding your telephone conversation, you said you were drinking Gimlets, and whoever was imitating Beth said something about drinking Gimlets still. Is that true?”
“Yes. True. And I said not still, but again, because of the wine.”
She was swinging her legs now like a small, intense girl watching a foot race or something else exciting, and her face was set in the fiercest imaginable scowl of concentration.
“It’s apparent, then, that the person on the telephone, who was surely a woman, was also someone who knew that you had been drinking Gimlets. Since it has been established that it was not Beth, it must have been someone else who was right there in the Kiowa Room watching you at the time, and there is only one person that I can remember your mentioning by name when you came home late and covered me with gin kisses on the terrace.”
She stopped swinging her legs and sat very still on the table, and the fierce scowl faded slowly through subtle changes into an expression of childish wonder.
“Sugar,” she said, “why would Sara Pike want to kill Beth Thatcher and go to all sorts of extremes to blame you?”
“Sara Pike! Are you serious, Sid? You can’t be.”
“I can and I am. Please answer my question. What did you and Beth Thatcher do to Sara Pike?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“There you go. Answering again before thinking. Of course you did something to her, however unintentional. She certainly didn’t kill Beth and incriminate you for nothing at all.”
“Well, I can’t think of anything. Not a damn thing.”
“Isn’t it true that Beth and Sara’s brother Sherman once went together seriously?”
“True, true, but of damn little consequence.”
“We’ll continue to think about it and see. At any rate, you said you had done nothing, and already we have come up with something.”