Fallen Angels (6 page)

Considering that, in the case of a murdered
spouse, the extant spouse is generally the first person suspected
of having done the deed—Ernie had taught me that—Mr. Chalmers
appeared truly grieved by his wife’s demise. I got the feeling he’d
have felt bad even if she’d died of natural causes, although I also
wondered if he were faking his feelings. If so, he was a mighty
good actor. He appeared positively sick.

Phil and Ernie were busy discussing things
over the body of Mrs. Chalmers, and I’d helped Mr. Chalmers to an
easy chair, where he sat with his face in his hands and his elbows
propped on his knees, patently miserable—again, unless he was
faking. Feeling useless, I said, “Is there anything I can do to
help you, Mr. Chalmers? I’m so very sorry about all this.”

He glanced up at me, and I saw that tears
stood in his eyes. “Thank you, Miss Allcutt”—I’d introduced
myself—“I can’t think of anything. I’m so . . . so . . .” His words
trailed off.

“If you do think of some way I can be of help
to you, please don’t hesitate to ask me.”

“Thank you. Oh!” He straightened in his
chair. “There is something you can do for me. You can telephone my
son.”

“Your son?” Another suspect, by gum! Maybe
the son of this family had decided to do away with his mother so
that he’d inherit more money. Or something like that. I’d have to
work out the details later.

“Yes. I . . . I’d call him myself, but . . .”
He gulped loudly, and I deduced he was having a bit of trouble
keeping his emotions in check. My sympathy was instantly aroused,
and I began to believe he wasn’t faking anything.

“I’ll be very glad to telephone him for you,
Mr. Chalmers.”

“Wait a minute, you,” a gruff voice said at
my back.

I turned, surprised, to find a uniformed
member of the Los Angeles Police Department scowling at me. “Yes?”
I said in my mother’s most austere voice.

The policeman seemed unaffected by my
hauteur. Breeding will tell, as my mother is fond of saying. Curse
this man, he had none. Nevertheless, I lifted my eyebrows to let
him know what I considered his place in the universe to be, even if
he disagreed with my assessment.

To my relief, my Mother imitation seemed to
be having an effect at last. The officer swallowed and said, “Er, I
just need to know who it is you’re going to telephone. That’s
all.”

Mr. Chalmers responded to this almost-civil
statement. “I asked Miss Allcutt to put a call through to my son.
He needs to know what happened, and I need him here to . . . to . .
.” He couldn’t go on. Folding up like a fan, he again buried his
face in his hands, and his shoulders started to shake slightly.

With a grimace for the officer, I expressed
my opinion of a servant of the public who would make a grown man
cry. The policeman only looked slightly abashed. I knelt beside Mr.
Chalmers. “What is your son’s number, sir? I’ll call him for you.”
I spoke very gently.

So Mr. Chalmers gave me his son’s telephone
number, and I headed to the ’phone nook under the staircase and put
the call through. After what seemed like a hundred rings, at least,
a voice on the other end of the wire answered at last with, “Sierra
Vista Golfing Association.”

I was a little startled to learn that the
younger Mr. Chalmers worked at a golfing establishment. Or perhaps
he only played golf there. My awful brother, George, played golf. I
think all bankers are required to learn the game. George looked
positively ridiculous in his golfing knickerbockers. But that’s
neither here nor there. “I need to speak with Mr. Chalmers,
please.”

“One moment, please,” said the polite voice
at the other end of the wire.

It wasn’t much more than a moment later when
another, lighter, more playful voice said, “Simon here. Who’s
calling?”

“Mr. Chalmers, my name is Miss Allcutt, and I
fear there’s been an . . . accident at your parents’ house. Your
father requested that I telephone you and ask you to come home as
soon as you possibly can.”

“An accident?” He sounded alarmed. “Is the
old man all right?”

The old man? Exactly how callous was this
fellow, anyway? “Your father is well, sir. It’s your mother who has
had . . . an accident.”

“My mother? My mother’s dead!”

I reeled at his words. Had he just confessed
to murder? Over the telephone? To me? Before I had a chance to
react, he spoke again.

“Who did you say you were?”

Good Lord. Complications upon
complications.

Thinking fast, I said, “My name is Miss
Allcutt. I’m here with representatives of the Los Angeles Police
Department.”

“Good God! The police are involved?”

“Yes.”

“Tell the old man I’ll be there in five.”

And he hung up the receiver on his end before
I could ask five what or get him to repeat his confession. Perhaps
I’d misunderstood him. With a sigh, I replaced the receiver on my
end and turned to find Ernie scowling at me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he
demanded. He still looked sick.

However, his looking sick was no excuse
for his abominable behavior. “I was telephoning Mr. Chalmers’ son
for Mr. Chalmers is what I was doing. What are
you
doing, standing there and glowering at
me?”

Ernie’s scowl faded. “Don’t get mad, Mercy. I
still feel like hell. That was nice of you to call the man’s son
for him.”

“Thank you.” My voice was stiff and icy.

“It turns out I’m their chief suspect, you
know.”

The ice melted at once, and I stared at him
in horror mixed with more than a little disbelief. “You? Why on
earth do they—?”

“I told you that you should have left him
tied up,” said another voice. This one belonged to Phil Bigelow.
“You unwrapped him, and now there’s nobody but you to swear that he
was bound and gagged.”

“What
?”

“He’s right, Mercy,” said Ernie, grimacing.
“Please don’t yell.”

I transferred my stare of astonishment to
him. “I’m not yelling! I don’t believe this!”

“Listen, Mercy, it’s just that the police
pretty much have to see for themselves that what people involved in
a murder say is true,” Phil said. “They can’t just take anybody’s
word for anything when it comes to murder.”

It took me a second to untwist those
sentences. When I did, I nearly exploded with wrath. “Do you mean
to tell me that the representatives of the Los Angeles Police
Department don’t believe
me
?
Mercedes Louise Allcutt? From Boston, Massachusetts? Does that
disbelief extend to
you
,
Detective Philip Bigelow?” Except for a couple of times when
dealing with my mother, I don’t think I’d ever been that angry in
my life.

Phil held up a hand. The gesture was meant to
be one of placation, I think, although I wasn’t in a mood to be
particularly discerning at the time.

“It’s not that they don’t believe you,” he
said. Then he instantly reversed himself by saying, “But you have
to understand that most people don’t want to be involved in
situations like these, and the police must be very careful about
who they believe and who they don’t believe.”

“Your grammar is as hideous as your logic!” I
told him. I’m not generally so mean to people, but I was truly
quite angry at the time. “Anyhow, the woman was hit on the back of
the head! Why would Ernie hit her on the head?”

“I don’t think he did, Mercy,” said Phil. He
appeared as frustrated as I felt.

“Well, then,” I said, “if there’s no good
reason for Ernie to have hit her on the head and thrown her down
the stairs, why do the police suspect him?”

“Mercy, it’s just a fact of life in a
situation like this,” said Ernie. I noticed he had a hand pressed
to his head as if he were trying to hold it together.

“But it’s insane not to believe that what
happened happened!” Indignant as all get-out, but conscious of
Ernie’s pain, I lowered my voice and told Phil, “Just go upstairs
and look at the ropes and gag yourself if you don’t believe
me!”

“We’ve got everything in evidence, but the
ropes and gag alone don’t mean anything. We don’t know what they
were used for or who used them. You’re the only who saw him in
them.”

“And nobody believes me? Or Ernie? Just look
at him! He looks terrible!”

“Thanks,” Ernie said. I frowned at him, but
all he did was grin back at me. I was right, though. He looked
terrible.

“I believe you, Mercy,” said Phil, sounding
as if he wished he were elsewhere. “But the police department has a
big job to do, and we have to corroborate all the evidence that’s
discovered at a crime scene. Unfortunately, there’s no
corroboration of Ernie’s condition when you arrived at the
Chalmers’ home, because no one but you saw him.” He eyed me for a
second and said, “You said the servants were out?”

“Yes. The house was unlocked, and
because I was worried about Ernie, I entered. I suppose
that’s
a crime too?”

Phil sighed. “No. I understand why you
entered. I only wish you’d had someone with you and that the
someone else had seen Ernie. The only story we have is yours, and
you work for him. For all we know, you’re the one who tied him up
in order to divert suspicion from him.”

“I
beg
your pardon?” My voice came out like sharp, pointy
icicles.

“They think we staged the thing,” said Ernie
wearily.

“They
what
?” That time my voice was more like a
shriek. Both men winced.

Phil shrugged. “I know you wouldn’t do
anything like that, but I’m not the only detective on the
case.”

“But look at his wrists!” I said, lowering my
voice slightly. “There are marks there! I wouldn’t tie him up so
tightly! In fact, I doubt that if I’d tied him up there would be
any marks at all, because the ropes wouldn’t have been on his
wrists for very long.”

Phil appeared disgruntled, as well he should.
“Listen, all of this is relevant. But the fact is I’ll probably be
taken off the case, since Ernie and I are good friends. I suspect
Detective O’Reilly will be assigned to lead the investigation.”

“Which is bad for me,” said Ernie wearily.
“O’Reilly hates my guts. And vice-versa.”

“But that’s not fair! If you’re Ernie’s
friend and they won’t let you handle the case, why would they give
the case to a man who hates his guts?” Gee, I don’t think I’d ever
said the word
guts
before.

Another shrug from Phil. “That’s just the way
these things work sometimes.”

“And why would I tie up my own boss? For that
matter, why would I have to? Why would Ernie kill Mrs. Chalmers?
There’s no motive!”

“Well, one of my colleagues suggested that
Ernie and Mrs. Chalmers had been . . . engaged in some sort of . .
.”

Phil’s face turned a dull, brick red. I
didn’t understand what he was trying to convey, so I prompted him.
“Engaged in what?”

“Oh, Christ, Mercy,” said Ernie disgustedly.
“Some cop thinks the Chalmers dame and I were playing sex games,
and I must have accidently pushed her down the stairs.”

I was speechless. In fact, I don’t think I
could have uttered a word if I’d tried.

Fortunately for me, Phil said, “You don’t
have to be so blunt, Ernie.” He nodded his head toward me. In other
words, he considered me too innocent to hear such things.

The awful truth was that I seemed to be
exactly that. I gave myself a hard mental shake. “If they were
playing . . . those kinds of games, why would Ernie hit her on the
head?”

“I
don’t know,
Mercy!” Phil said, throwing his hands in the air in a gesture of
futility and frustration. “Somebody only mentioned the possibility,
is all.”

A silence descended among the three of us
that lasted a good year or two. Then I asked, feeling desperate,
“Well, what about fingerprints? Wouldn’t there be fingerprints on
the ropes and gag? And has anyone found the weapon she was bashed
with?”

“No weapon has been found. The only
fingerprints they’re liable to find on anything in that room are
yours and mine and those of Mrs. Chalmers,” Ernie told me. “Ropes
don’t take good fingerprints. Anybody have any headache
powders?”

I stared at him bleakly and ignored his
question. “But . . . but . . .” I couldn’t even bring my stern
Boston breeding into play in this situation. That’s probably
because my mother would have preferred to be caught dead than have
anything at all to do with the police and, therefore, I had no
memories upon which to call. I cast a glance at the body of Mrs.
Chalmers, which had finally been decently covered with something
that looked like a sheet and recalled the younger Mr. Chalmers’
confession.

Somewhat cheered by this recollection,
even though I still wasn’t sure I’d heard it exactly right, I said,
“When I telephoned to Mr. Simon Chalmers, he said he knew his
mother was dead.” When both men stared at me blankly, I said with
some impatience, “Don’t you see? He already
knew
!”

Ernie and Phil exchanged a glance. Then Ernie
said, “Mr. Simon Chalmers’ mother has been dead for years. Mrs.
Persephone Chalmers was his stepmother.”

My euphoria at having already tagged the
crook evaporated like steam from a teakettle. “Oh.”

“So I’m still their chief suspect.”

“I can’t believe this,” I finally said in
something akin to defeat.

Ernie patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry
about it, Mercy. I’ll figure out who did this. It sure as hell
wasn’t me.”

“Of course, it wasn’t,” said I in staunch
defense of my employer, even if he did swear too much.