“Does this man exist outside your fertile brain?”
“He does.”
“Where? In what guise? Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” Cave said on a rising note. “If you want to know, why don’t you try and find him? You have plenty of detectives at your disposal.”
“Detectives can’t find a man who doesn’t exist. Or a woman either, Mr. Cave.”
The D.A. caught the angry eye of the judge, who adjourned the trial until the following morning. I bought a fifth of scotch at a downtown liquor store, caught a taxi at the railroad station, and rode south out of town to Mrs. Kilpatrick’s house.
When I knocked on the door of the redwood cottage, someone fumbled the inside knob. I pushed the door open. The flaxen-haired child looked up at me, her face streaked with half-dried tears.
“Mummy won’t wake up.”
I saw the red smudge on her knee, and ran in past her. Janet Kilpatrick was prone on the floor of the hallway, her bright hair dragging in a pool of blood. I lifted her head and saw the hole in her temple. It had stopped bleeding.
Her little blue revolver lay on the floor near her lax hand. One shot had been fired from the cylinder.
The child touched my back. “Is Mummy sick?”
“Yes, Janie. She’s sick.”
“Get the doctor,” she said with pathetic wisdom.
“Wasn’t he here?”
“I don’t know. I was taking my nap.”
“Was anybody here, Janie?”
“Somebody was here. Mummy was talking to somebody. Then there was a big bang and I came downstairs and Mummy wouldn’t wake up.”
“Was it a man?”
She shook her head.
“A woman, Janie?”
The same mute shake of her head. I took her by the hand and led her outside to the cab. The dazzling postcard scene outside made death seem unreal. I asked the driver to tell the child a story, any story so long as it was cheerful. Then I went back into the grim hallway and used the telephone.
I called the sheriff’s office first. My second call was to Frank Kilpatrick in Pasadena. A manservant summoned him to the telephone. I told him who I was and where I was and who was lying dead on the floor behind me.
“How dreadful!” He had an Ivy League accent, somewhat withered by the coastal sun. “Do you suppose that Janet took her own life? She’s often threatened to.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t suppose she took her own life. Your wife was murdered.”
“What a tragic thing!”
“Why take it so hard, Kilpatrick? You’ve got the two things you wanted – your daughter, and you’re rid of your wife.”
It was a cruel thing to say, but I was feeling cruel. I made my third call in person, after the sheriff’s men had finished with me.
The sun had fallen into the sea by then. The western side of the sky was scrawled with a childish finger-painting of colored cirrus clouds. Twilight flowed like iron-stained water between the downtown buildings. There were lights on the second floor of the California-Spanish building where Harvey had his offices.
Harvey answered my knock. He was in shirtsleeves and his tie was awry. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. His breath was sour in my nostrils.
“What is it, Archer?”
“You tell me, lover-boy.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“You were the one Ruth Cave wanted to marry. You were going to divorce your respective mates and build a new life together – with her money.”
He stepped backward into the office, a big disordered man who looked queerly out of place among the white-leather and black-iron furniture, against the limed-oak paneling. I followed him in. An automatic door closer shushed behind me.
“What in hell is this? Ruth and I were good friends and I handled her business for her – that’s all there was to it.”
“Don’t try to kid me, Harvey. I’m not your wife, and I’m not your judge… I went to see Janet Kilpatrick a couple of hours ago.”
“Whatever she said, it’s a lie.”
“She didn’t say a word, Harvey. I found her dead.”
His eyes grew small and metallic, like nailheads in the putty of his face. “Dead? What happened to her?”
“She was shot with her own gun. By somebody she let into the house, somebody she wasn’t afraid of.”
“Why? It makes no sense.”
“She was Cave’s alibi, and she was on the verge of volunteering as a witness. You know that, Harvey – you were the only one who did know, outside of Cave and me.”
“I didn’t shoot her. I had no reason to. Why would I want to see my client convicted?”
“No, you didn’t shoot her. You were in court at the time that she was shot – the world’s best alibi.”
“Then why are you harassing me?”
“I want the truth about you and Mrs. Cave.”
Harvey looked down at the papers in his hand, as if they might suggest a line to take, an evasion, a way out. Suddenly his hands came together and crushed the papers into a misshapen ball.
“All right, I’ll tell you. Ruth was in love with me. I was – fond of her. Neither of us was happily married. We were going to go away together and start over. After we got divorces, of course,”
“Uh-huh. All very legal.”
“You don’t have to take that tone. A man has a right to his own life.”
“Not when he’s already committed his life.”
“We won’t discuss it. Haven’t I suffered enough? How do you think I felt when Ruth was killed?”
“Pretty bad, I guess. There went two million dollars.”
He looked at me between narrowed lids, in a fierce extremity of hatred. But all that came out of his mouth was a weak denial. “At any rate, you can see I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill either of them.”
“Who did?”
“I have no idea. If I did, I’d have had Glen out of jail long ago.”
“Does Glen know?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“But he knew that you and his wife had plans?”
“I suppose he did – I’ve suspected it all along.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that he asked you to defend him, under the circumstances?”
“Odd, yes. It’s been terrible for me, the most terrible ordeal.”
Maybe that was Cave’s intention, I thought, to punish Harvey for stealing his wife. I said, “Did anybody besides you know that Janet Kilpatrick was the woman? Did you discuss it with anybody?”
He looked at the thick pale carpeting between his feet. I could hear an electric clock somewhere in the silent offices, whirring like the thoughts in Harvey’s head. Finally he said, “Of course not,” in a voice that was like a crow cawing.
He walked with an old man’s gait into his private office. I followed and saw him open a desk drawer. A heavy automatic appeared in his hand. But he didn’t point it at me. He pushed it down inside the front of his trousers and put on his suit jacket.
“Give it to me, Harvey. Two dead women are enough.”
“You know then?”
“You just told me. Give me that gun.”
He gave it to me. His face was remarkably smooth and blank. He turned his face away from me and covered it with his hands. His entire body hiccuped with dry grief. He was like an overgrown child who had lived on fairy tales for a long time and now couldn’t stomach reality.
The telephone on the desk chirred. Harvey pulled himself together and answered it.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy, preparing for re-direct… Yes, I’m finished now… Of course I’m all right. I’m coming home right away.”
He hung up and said, “That was my wife.”
She was waiting for him at the front door of his house. The posture of waiting became her narrow, sexless body, and I wondered how many years she had been waiting.
“You’re so thoughtless, Rod,” she chided him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing a guest for dinner?” She turned to me in awkward graciousness. “Not that you’re not welcome, Mr. Archer.”