Stranger At Home (19 page)

“And you didn't want to lose them, and you didn't want me examining your books, because you knew I'd catch you.”

Up above, the plainclothesman began to thrash about in the bushes.

Sessions said, “Go ahead, call him. Give me up.”

“Not this time.”

“What?”

“Not this time. Because I know that in your place I would have done the same thing. Just thank God you're a rotten shot.”

There was a silence. The plainclothesman began to shout.

Vickers said, “I apologize, Sessions.”

He leaned over and thrust the hounds aside. He lifted Sessions onto his feet. He indicated the hilltop across the way.

“Get out of here, the way you came. Good night, Sessions.”

Sessions stood looking at him in the darkness. “Good night,” he said finally. “Good night, Vick.”

He turned and went away, quietly. Vickers stood where he was for a while. He was not paying any attention to Sessions. He had forgotten him completely.

He climbed back up the cliff and called the hounds wearily away from the plainclothesman, who was not in a good humor.

“What's going on here? Why the hell didn't you answer me?”

“I didn't think it was necessary. Your presence is quite gratuitous, you know.”

“What were you shooting at?”

Vickers glanced at the rifle he still carried. “I thought I saw a fox,” he said. He went away, into the house.

He went into the study. The house was very quiet. He propped the rifle in a corner and poured himself a drink and sat down with it. He began to shiver, possibly because it was cold, and he could not stop. He was thinking of the bullet hole in the taxi window, and his statement to Angie:
Only one man would have any reason
...

But another man had a reason. Not the right reason, but good enough.

Will you see a psychiatrist, Vick? For Angie's sake, will you see a psychiatrist? Will you see a psychiatrist see a psychiatrist see a psychiatrist
...

Vickers rose and locked the door of the den. He poured himself another drink and sat down again. He did not drink. He put the glass down and put his head in his hands.

Outside, the plainclothesman took up his post again.

Joe Trehearne examined the housecoat. It was early morning. There was a heavy fog outside his office windows, and the warning call of the foghorn down by the yacht harbor came faint and mournful through the nearer sounds of traffic. The pale fabric looked cold and dead in the gray light.

Joan Merrill sat erect and composed in a straight chair, watching him. She did not speak. Trehearne touched the brown stains very lightly with his finger. Then he flipped the annunciator switch and said a few words into it. Presently a man came in and took the housecoat away.

Trehearne sat down behind his desk. He left the annunciator open. “All right,” he said gently. “Let's have it.”

Without so much as shifting in her chair, Joan Merrill began to talk. Her voice sounded mechanical, as though she were a child in school reciting something she had memorized.

“Michael's return was a great shock to me. I knew that it was going to be much more of a shock to Angie. If he had sent word, if we had had any sort of warning... He should have known how cruel it was not to let us know. And when he forbade me to call Angie, I knew what he had in mind. He was hoping to catch her in some disloyalty, some indiscretion. He had left her for four years, without word, but he was hoping to find her guilty.”

She stopped and took a long uneven breath. Trehearne was aware that the apparent calmness of her manner was as forced as it was false. He hoped that she could hang onto it. He disliked emotional demonstrations, not because they embarrassed or affected him, but because the application of soothing-syrup and restoratives was such a stupid waste of time. He liked people who could say what they had to say and then go away quietly and collapse somewhere else.

She was talking again.

She said, “It made me angry.”

You wouldn't think she had it in her
, Trehearne said to himself.
She looks the perfect social factotum, sleek, efficient, and nothing inside her but skimmed milk. How you can be fooled
.

“I love Angie, and I know what sort of person she is, and I knew that all the gossip was just that. I knew that no man had touched her since Michael went away. I knew that she had stayed close to Harry and Job and Bill partly because they had been Michael's friends, and partly because she thought one of them might know what had really happened. But Michael never loved anyone but himself. He wouldn't know about things like that, or care. He'd only think of his own vanity, his own pride, the picture of himself in other people's minds. He wouldn't like being laughed at, or talked about. I didn't want it to be any worse than it had to be-his coming back. I thought Angie had a right to know.

“He stopped me phoning, and told me to go to bed. But I didn't. While he was in his room I got out of the house and took my car. The drive slopes downward from the garage. You don't have to start the engine if you don't want to. I didn't. I somehow didn't want him to know I'd gone. I think I was afraid he could run out and stop me. I don't know. I was upset, and Michael – well, it was like having a ghost in the house.

“I don't know how long it took me to get to the beach. I went the long way, I know, because it's a light, well-traveled road, and the short cut is across the flats. It's dark and lonely, and I've never dared to drive it alone. And I'm not a fast driver. I was in rather a bad smash once, and I've never quite got over it.”

Trehearne interrupted quietly. “What you mean is that if Vickers took the short road and drove fast, he could have got there well ahead of you.”

“Yes. Yes, he could have done, I know. It seemed hours before I got there. When I did, I saw the lights in the cabana and decided to go down there before I went to the house. I knew that Angie went down there a lot to get away from people she didn't like, and from the look of the party, I didn't think she would be enjoying herself. I hoped she'd be there, alone. So I went on down and crossed the beach. I had on that housecoat – I hadn't even thought of a wrap, the night was warm – and this.” She touched the soft jersey draped over her head. “I wear something like this driving, to keep my hair in place.

“I passed the landing. I heard a sound, a strange sort of grunting. I wasn't frightened. The people up in the house were shrieking like idiots. When there's a party like that going on, you're apt to find anything. I supposed some drunk was being sick. Then I saw the shape of a man, lying in heavy shadow beside the storage locker. He seemed to be hurt. I was still not frightened. One doesn't expect violence. I went to him. It was Harry.”

She stopped again. Trehearne watched the increasingly nervous motions of her mouth and hands, and prayed.
Delayed reaction
, he thought.
She probably didn't do anything when she found the guy – if she did find him – and has continued not to do anything since. Watch it hit her when she thinks about it again
.

“I thought at first that he was merely drunk, that he had fallen and stunned himself. It would be the logical thing to think about Harry. Even when I saw that his face was bloody I only thought he had cut himself falling. I asked him if he was all right, and he took hold of me, and I knew he wanted to get up. My thought was to get him back to the house. I tried to help him up. I touched the back of his head.”

Look out – here it comes
. Trehearne leaned forward slightly.

“I imagine,” she said, “that I screamed. I don't remember precisely. If I did, it can't have been loud enough to penetrate the din they were making up at the house. At any rate, nobody heard me. But I knew then that Harry had been killed deliberately. I say ‘had been,' because I knew he was dying, that he was dying right under my hand.

“He got to his feet. I don't know how. Maybe I lifted him. Something fell. It was heavy. It had been lying across some part of his body. A short iron bar. It fell between his feet. He was still half crouching, we both were, and I remember thinking that one of us was going to trip on the bar, and I moved it away. Harry straightened up. I think he was trying to say something, but he couldn't. Suddenly he just fell and went over the edge into the water. I tried to hold him but he was too heavy. My hands were all bloody, there was blood on my skirt. The handkerchief in Harry's breast pocket was half pulled out when he slid over the rough edge of the landing. I took it. Harry's weight was pulling me in too. I had to let go.”

She was holding herself rigid now, breathing unevenly, speaking in short rapid jerks. But she was still, so to speak, all in one piece.

“I wiped my hands with the handkerchief. Then I remembered the bar. Fingerprints. I had touched it. I was beyond thinking clearly. I wiped off the bar and threw it as far as I could into the water. I weighted the handkerchief and threw that, too. Then I just turned and ran. I forgot about Angie. I forgot Michael. I only knew I wanted to get away and not be seen. I could feel Harry's blood still on me. My skirt was wet with it. It was still warm. The people in the house were shrieking and laughing. I wanted to go home. I was afraid. I was afraid they'd think I had killed him. And I was afraid of something else. Much more afraid.”

It was a long pause this time. Her eyes were seeing things, remembering. They gave Trehearne the shivers.

“I was afraid of the murderer. If he had seen me with Harry... Perhaps he was close by, hiding. Perhaps he thought Harry had told me his name. I wanted to get away. I ran back to my car and went straight home. I bathed and took sleeping tablets and went to bed. Even then, with the sleeping tablets, I dreamed.”

She began to relax, to slump forward in the chair. Her voice was dull, and it came slowly now.

“I began to think no one had seen me. Then Job came, and I knew I would have to tell the truth sooner or later.” She looked up at Trehearne. “You'll let Angie go now.”

He shook his head. ‘I'm sorry, Mrs. Merrill.”

She straightened. “But...”

“In the first place, we have to check your story as far as possible. In the second place, even though your story is true – and I think it is – as far as it goes – it does not clear Mrs. Vickers. The actual killer is still unidentified.”

Joan got up. “How can you be so stupid?”

Trehearne didn't try to answer that one. Joan approached him.

“Angie didn't kill him. She couldn't kill anybody. I should think you'd know that just by looking at her. Why don't you arrest Michael? You know he did it. Why don't you do something about it? Why do you go on persecuting Angie?”

Trehearne got up. He moved away from her. “I can't arrest a man without evidence.”

“You fool! What more evidence do you need? Of course Michael killed him. Who else would have had any reason to?”

“You, perhaps,” Trehearne said. “To protect Angie, perhaps from a threat of blackmail, perhaps from what is politely known as intimacy with a man. You're very fond of Mrs. Vickers. Fond enough to do almost anything.”

Joan's eyes narrowed. They blazed. “Just what are you trying to say?”

He shrugged. “Take it any way you want. From your attitude toward Vickers and your own ex-husband, you seem to have rather a low opinion of men. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I have a fairly low opinion of just people in general. Not because they commit crimes, but because they're either so damned stupid about it that catching them is no fun, or so damned clever that it gives me a headache figuring things out.' Never just a happy medium.” He bent over the annunciator. “You can send the matron in now.”

Joan said, “Matron!”

“Yeah. We're holding you as a material witness, Mrs. Merrill. Also, there will be further questioning.”

For a moment he didn't know whether she was going to faint or spring at him. Then she said, “All right. I don't care if you hold me. But you can't hold Angie. You only have her because of what Job said, and now you know he saw me instead of Angie. You can't hold her!”

“You would be surprised,” Trehearne said, “what I can do. I'll have to check your story very carefully before I release Mrs. Vickers. It may take me a long time. A very long time.”

The matron came in. Nobody paid any attention to her. Trehearne and Joan Merrill were still glaring at each other.

Trehearne said softly, “I can't solve this case on clues or evidence. I can't even check time. The only way I can solve it is by getting the truth out of all the people concerned – which I have not been getting from any one of them. I am going to get it, and I don't particularly care how I get it. And now if you'll excuse me, I have things to do.”

The matron took Joan's arm. Joan didn't budge. She looked Trehearne up and down.

“You're like all men. None of you have any common sense or common decency. I can't think why you were ever created.”

The matron, who was blonde, buxom, and still reasonably young, winked at Trehearne and said, “We could tell her!” She led Joan out and closed the door. Trehearne bent over the annunciator, listening. Sounds of strife and general unease came over the speaker, followed by the matron's good-naturedly profane comment about dames that were always passing out. Trehearne nodded and grinned widely. He waited until the debris had been safely cleared away, then said into the transmitter, 

“Bob Doyle.”

A voice said, “Yeah?”

“Send for Michael Vickers, for questioning. Then come in here and start making noises like an assistant.” Trehearne closed the switch and sat down. Presently Bob Doyle came in. He was a good-looking, good-natured, very tough young man with the physique of a medium-heavy army tank. He was considerably lighter on his feet and much more maneuverable mentally. He made himself comfortable with his feet on the corner of Trehearne's desk. He said, “Well?”