“Please, Leonard, no more violence. I couldn’t bear any more violence.”
But there had been violence, and she had borne it. Its marks were on her face. One of her eyes had been blackened, one cheek was ridged diagonally with deep scratches. Otherwise she was a handsome woman of thirty or so, tall and slender-hipped in a tailored suit. A new-looking hat sat smartly on her dark head. But her single usable eye was glaring in desperation:
“Are you a policeman?”
Lister’s free hand covered her mouth. “Be quiet now. Don’t say a word. I’ll do the talking.”
They stumbled into the room in a kind of lockstep. I shut the door with my heel. The woman sat on the bed. The marks on her face were vivid against her pallor. Lister stood in front of her.
“Where’s Harlan?”
“I’ll ask the questions. You’ll answer them.”
“Who do you think you are?”
He took a threatening step. I leveled my revolver at his stomach.
“The one with the gun. It’s loaded. I’ll use it if I have to.”
The woman spoke behind him. “Listen to me, Leonard. It isn’t any use. Violence only breeds further violence. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any trouble. I know how to deal with these Hollywood dollar-chasers.” He turned to me, a white sneer flashing in his beard. “It is money you’re after, isn’t it?”
“That’s what Harlan thought. He paid me a thousand dollars to bury a dead woman and forget her. I’m turning his checks over to the police.”
“I hear you telling me.”
“You’ll see me do it, Lister. I’m turning you over to them at the same time.”
“Unless I pay you, eh? How much?”
The woman sighed. “Dearest. These shifts and stratagems – can’t you see how squalid, how squalid and miserable they are? We’ve tried your way and it’s failed, wretchedly. It’s time to try my way.”
“We can’t, Maude. And we haven’t failed.” He sat on the bed and put one arm around her narrow shoulders. “Just let me talk to him, I’ve dealt with his kind before. He’s only a private detective. Your brother hired him yesterday.”
“Where is my brother now?” she asked me. “Is he all right?”
“In there. He’s a little battered.”
I indicated the bathroom door with my gun. For some reason it was embarrassing to hold a naked weapon in front of her. I pushed it down into my waistband, leaving my jacket open in case I needed it quickly.
“You’re Maude Harlan.”
“I was. I am Mrs. Leonard Lister. This is my husband.” She looked up into my face. I caught a glimpse of the thing between them. It flared like sudden lightning in blue darkness.
“The dead one is Stella Dolphine.”
“Is that her first name? It’s strange to have killed a woman without even knowing her name.”
“No.” The word was torn painfully from Lister’s throat. “My wife doesn’t know what she’s saying, she’s had a bad time.”
“It’s over now, Leonard. I’m afraid I’m not very adequate in the role of criminal.” She gave him a bright smile, distorted by her wounds, and me the sad vestige of it. “Leonard wasn’t there. He was taking a shower when the woman – when Mrs. Dolphine came to our door. I killed her.”
“Why?”
“It was my fault,” Lister said, “all of it, from the beginning. I had no right to marry Maude, to drag her down into the life I live. I was crazy to bring her back to that apartment.”
“Why did you?”
His white-ringed eyes rolled around, straining for a look at himself. “I don’t know, really. Stella thought she owned me. I had to prove that she didn’t.” His eyes steadied. “I’m a disastrous fool.”
“Be still.” Her fingers touched his hairy mouth. The back of her hand was scratched. “It was an ill fate. I scarcely know how it happened. It simply happened. She asked me who I was, and I told her I was Leonard’s wife. She said that she was his wife in the eyes of heaven. She tried to force her way into the apartment. I asked her to leave. She told me that I was the one who ought to leave, that I should go home with my brother. When I refused, she attacked me. She pulled me by the hair onto the outside landing. I must have pushed her away somehow. She fell backwards down the steps, all the way to the bottom. I heard her skull strike the concrete.” Her small hand went to her own mouth, as if to hold it still. “I think I fainted then.”
“Yes,” Lister said. “Maude was unconscious on the landing when I came out of the shower. I carried her inside. It took me some time to bring her to and find out what had happened. I put her to bed and went down to see to Stella. She was dead, at the foot of the steps. Dead.” His voice cracked.
“You were in love with her, Leonard,” his wife said.
“Not after I met you.”
“She was beautiful.” There was a questioning sadness in her voice.
“She isn’t any more,” I said. “She’s dead, and you’ve been carrying her body around the countryside. What sense was there in that?”
“No sense.” Behind his hairy mask, Lister had the shamefaced look of a delinquent boy. “I panicked. Maude wanted to call the police right away. But I’ve had one or two little scrapes with them, in the past. And I knew what Dolphine would do if he found Stella dead at my door. He hates me.” The naïve blue eyes were bewildered by the beginnings of insight. “I don’t blame him.”
“What would he do?”
“Cry murder, and pin it on me.”
“I don’t see how. The way your wife described it, it’s a clear case of manslaughter, probably justifiable.”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know. I felt so guilty about Stella, I wasn’t thinking too well. I simply wanted to hide her and get Maude out of the country, away from the mess I’d made.”
“That’s what the five thousand was for?”
“Yes.”
“You were going by way of Chicago?”
“The plan was changed. Maude’s brother advised me to take her back to Chicago instead. After you tracked us down, I came here to him and made a clean breast of everything. He said leaving the country was an admission of guilt, in case the matter ever came to trial.”
“It will.”
“Does it really need to?” He leaned towards me, the bed squealing under his shifting weight. “If you have any humanity, you’ll let us go to Chicago. My wife is a gentlewoman. I don’t know if that means anything to you.”
“Does it to you?”
He dropped his eyes. “Yes. She can’t go through a Los Angeles trial, with the dirt they’ll dig up about me and throw in her face.”
I said: “I have some humanity, not enough to go round. Right now Stella Dolphine is using most of it.”
“You said yourself it was justifiable manslaughter.”
“The way your wife tells it, it is.”
“Don’t you believe me?” She sounded astonished.
“As far as your story goes, I believe you. But you don’t know all the facts. There are thumbprints on Stella Dolphine’s throat. I’ve seen prints like them on the throats of other women who were strangled.”
“No,” she whispered. “I swear it. I only pushed her.”
I looked at the delicate hands that were twisting in her lap. “You couldn’t have made those marks. You pushed her down the stairs and knocked her out and set her up for somebody else. Somebody else found her unconscious and throttled her. Lister?”
His head sank like an exhausted bull’s. He didn’t look at his wife.
“Stella Dolphine made trouble for you, and she was in a position to make more trouble. You decided to put an end to it by finishing her off. Is that the way it happened?”