Leave Her to Hell (16 page)

“I’m sorry I told him,” she said. “It was a mistake.”

“Not for me,” I said. “It made me a smart guy instead of a corpse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s not important.”

The sun in the sky was nearing the tooled ridge of stone. I wished for a drink, but nobody brought one. Faith Salem’s breasts rose and fell, rose and fell. Her long brown legs stirred slightly in the sun. I wondered if I should tell her about Colly and Rosie and decided not. Maybe, if I didn’t, she would never know, depending on whether the police broke the case wide open or closed it quietly on a theory.

“Did Constance tell all this?” she said.

“The part about the accident and the blackmail and the murder. Not the rest.”

“How strange it is. How strange simply to forget everything and become someone else.”

“Strange enough, but not incredible. It’s happened before. People have gone half around the world and lived undetected in new identities for years.”

“Is she all right now?”

“She remembers who she is and everything that happened until she found the body of Regis Lawler in his apartment. She doesn’t remember anything that happened in the time of the fugue. That’s a long way from all right, I guess, but it’s as good as she can hope for.”

“Why become me? Why me of all people?”

There was honest wonderment in her voice. Looking at her, the lean brown length of her, I could have told her why, but I didn’t. I had a feeling that it was time to be going, and I stood up.

“I think I’d better leave now,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I think you’d better.”

“I’ll send you a bill.”

“Of course. I’ll be here as long as the rent’s paid. That’s about three months.”

“Are you going to look at me before I leave?”

“I don’t think so. Do you mind letting yourself out?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Good-bye, then, Mr. Hand. I wish you had a lot of money. It’s a shame you’re so poor.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s a crying shame.”

She never moved or looked at me, and I went away. The next day I sent her a bill, and two days after that I got a check. I saw her her twice again, but not to speak to. Once she was coming out of a shop alone, and once she was going into a theater on the arm of a man. I learned later that she married a very rich brewer and went to live in Milwaukee.

Robin? I see her every now and then on a fair day.

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Killing Cousins

The town of Quivera, in spite of its intrusion upon a legend, is not an exceptional town, and Ouichita Road, which is a street in Quivera, is not an exceptional street. There was a time, however, when it tried to be, and the signs of the attempt are still apparent. It is eight winding blocks of black macadam, narrow and tree-lined, in an area that achieves an atmosphere of indigenous rusticity. This atmosphere, not really so much achieved as retained, is due to a lack of artificial landscaping and a vague agreement among Ouichita property owners to preserve as much as possible the natural growth of the area. Oaks and maples and sycamores and elms and dogwood and redbud are thick on the deep lawns that slope rather steeply to the street on both sides, and the houses appear to have been dropped down among them casually. The rusticity thus preserved somehow manages, ironically, to seem more artificial than any amount of designing and planting would have made it.

There are a few very expensive houses on Ouichita Road, but most of them are not. Most of them are only moderately pretentious, and were built by people in the upper-middle-income bracket who were willing to risk a bigger mortgage than they could comfortably carry. The same people drive a somewhat bigger car than they ought to drive. Or, if they do not, drive two smaller ones, one of which is usually a Renault or a Volkswagon or an MG or something else of foreign extraction. They operate shops, work in banks, sell insurance and real estate, practice professions. They usually belong to the Country Club, and occasionally become delinquent in the payment of their dues. They think of themselves as rather more sophisticated than the average run of Quiverans, and perhaps they are. On Ouichita Road there is a high incidence of marginal promiscuity, a lower incidence of adultery.

Several Ouichita Road residents have achieved fame. One, a lawyer by the name of Chalmers, is remembered as the only Republican candidate for governor to be defeated in a period of thirty years. Another, the daughter of a certified public accountant, went to Hollywood and appeared briefly in two adult westerns, in one of which she was photographed in the proximity of John Wayne. Still another, the nephew of the gubernatorial candidate and eventually the husband of the actress, was an All-American tackle at the state university, and played two seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers before coming home to sell insurance for his mother’s cousin.

But the most famous by far of all Ouichita Road residents, or all Quiverans together, was Mrs. Willie Hogan.

Willie committed murder.

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Text Copyright © 1958 by Fletcher Flora

Cover Art, Design, and Layout Copyright © 2012 by F+W Media, Inc.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-3688-0

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3688-5