He turned back to me quickly. His eyes became hard and empty again, like gun muzzles.
“Just who are you? What’s your interest in this case?”
“I’m a friend of Hugh Western’s, from Los Angeles. I stopped off here to see him, and found him dead. I hardly think my interest is out of place.”
“No, of course not,” he grumbled. “On the other hand, I don’t believe in amateur detectives running around like chickens with their heads cut off, fouling up the authorities.”
“I’m not exactly an amateur. I used to be a cop. And any fouling up there’s been has been done by other people.”
“Are you accusing me?”
“If the shoe fits.”
He met my eyes for a time, trying to master me and the situation. But he was old and bewildered. Slowly the aggressive ego faded from his gaze. He became almost querulous.
“You’ll excuse me. I don’t know what it’s all about. I’ve been rather upset by everything that’s happened.”
“What about your daughter?” Alice was still at the window, working at her picture and paying no attention to our voices. “Doesn’t she know Hugh is dead?”
“Yes. She knows. You mustn’t misunderstand what Alice is doing. There are many ways of enduring grief, and we have a custom in the Turner family of working it out of our system. Hard work is the cure for a great many evils.” He changed the subject, and his tone, abruptly. “And what is your idea of what’s happened?”
“It’s no more than a suspicion, a pretty foggy one. I’m not sure who stole your picture, but I think I know where it is.”
“Well?”
“There’s a man named Walter Hendryx who lives in the foothills outside the city. You know him?”
“Slightly.”
“He probably has the Chardin. I’m morally certain he has it, as a matter of fact, though I don’t know how he got it.”
The Admiral tried to smile, and made a dismal failure of it. “You’re not suggesting that Hendryx took it? He’s not exactly mobile, you know.”
“Hilary Todd is very mobile,” I said. “Todd visited Hendryx this morning. I’d be willing to bet even money he had the Chardin with him.”
“You didn’t see it, however?”
“I don’t have to. I’ve seen Todd.”
A woman’s voice said from the shadow of the back porch: “The man is right, Johnston.”
Sarah Turner came down the path towards us, her high heels spiking the flagstones angrily.
“Hilary did it!” she cried. “He stole the picture and murdered Hugh. I saw him last night at midnight. He had red mountain clay on his clothes.”
“It’s strange you didn’t mention it before,” the Admiral said dryly.
I looked into her face. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the eyelids were swollen with weeping. Her mouth was swollen, too. When she opened it to reply, I could see that the lower lip was split.
“I just remembered.”
I wondered if the blow that split her lip had reminded her.
“And where did you see Hilary Todd last night at midnight?”
“Where?”
In the instant of silence that followed, I heard footsteps behind me. Alice had come out of her cottage. She walked like a sleepwalker dreaming a bad dream, and stopped beside her father without a word to any of us.
Sarah’s face had been twisting in search of an answer, and found it. “I met him at the Presidio. I dropped in there for a cup of coffee after the show.”
“You are a liar, Sarah,” the Admiral said. “The Presidio closes at ten o’clock.”
“It wasn’t the Presidio,” she said rapidly. “It was the bar across the street, the Club Fourteen. I had dinner at the Presidio, and I confused them–”
The Admiral brushed past her without waiting to hear more, and started for the house. Alice went with him. The old man walked unsteadily, leaning on her arm.
“Did you really see Hilary last night?” I asked her.
She stood there for a minute, looking at me. Her face was disorganized, raddled with passion. “Yes, I saw him. I had a date with him at ten o’clock. I waited in his flat for over two hours. He didn’t show up until after midnight. I couldn’t tell him that.” She jerked one shoulder contemptuously toward the house.
“And he had red clay on his clothes?”
“Yes. It took me a while to connect it with Hugh.”
“Are you going to tell the police?”
She smiled a secret and unpleasant smile. “How can I? I’ve got a marriage to go on with, such as it is.”
“You told me.”
“I like you.” Without moving, she gave the impression of leaning towards me. “I’m fed up with all the little stinkers that populate this town.”
I kept it cool and clean, and very nasty: “Were you fed up with Hugh Western, Mrs. Turner?”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard that he dropped you hard a couple of months ago. Somebody dropped him hard last night in his studio.”
“I haven’t been near his studio for weeks.”
“Never did any posing for him?”
Her face seemed to grow smaller and sharper. She laid one narrow taloned hand on my arm. “Can I trust you, Mr. Archer?”
“Not if you murdered Hugh.”
“I didn’t; I swear I didn’t. Hilary did.”
“But you were there last night.”
“No.”
“I think you were. There was a charcoal sketch on the easel, and you posed for it, didn’t you?”
Her nerves were badly strained, but she tried to be coquettish. “How would you know?”
“The way you carry your body. It reminds me of the picture.”
“Do you approve?”
“Listen, Mrs. Turner. You don’t seem to realize that that sketch is evidence, and destroying it is a crime.”
“I didn’t destroy it.”
“Then where did you put it?”
“I haven’t said I took it.”
“But you did.”
“Yes, I did,” she admitted finally. “But it isn’t evidence in this case. I posed for it six months ago, and Hugh had it in his studio. When I heard he was dead this afternoon, I went to get it, just to be sure it wouldn’t turn up in the papers. He had it on the easel for some reason, and had ruined it with a beard. I don’t know why.”
“The beard would make sense if your story was changed a little. If you quarreled while Hugh was sketching you last night, and you hit him over the head with a metal fist. You might had drawn the beard yourself, to cover up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If I had anything to cover up I would have destroyed the sketch. Anyway, I can’t draw.”
“Hilary can.”
“Go to hell,” she said between her teeth. “You’re just a little stinker like the rest of them.”
She walked emphatically to the house. I followed her into the long, dim hallway. Halfway up the stairs to the second floor she turned and flung down to me: “I hadn’t destroyed it, but I’m going to now.”
There was nothing I could do about that, and I started out. When I passed the door of the living room, the Admiral called out, “Is that you, Archer? Come here a minute, eh?”
He was sitting with Alice on a semicircular leather lounge, set into a huge bay window at the front of the room. He got up and moved toward, me ponderously, his head down like a charging bull’s. His face was a jaundiced yellow, bloodless under the tan.
“You’re entirely wrong about the Char din,” he said. “Hilary Todd had nothing to do with stealing it. In fact, it wasn’t stolen. I removed it from the gallery myself.”
“You denied that this morning.”
“I do as I please with my own possessions. I’m accountable to no one, certainly not to you.”
“Dr. Silliman might like to know,” I said with irony.
“I’ll tell him in my own good time.”