Stranger At Home (24 page)

Angie said, “He told us Joan had gone out into the garden.”

“Uh huh. She'd gone out, all right, for good. Well, somewhere along the line Bill managed to slip the chloral into your drinks. He brought it along, like a careful craftsman, in case it should come handy. He also brought along the brass knuckles with which Brownie was clipped, impressed them with Vickers' fingerprints, and tucked them away in Vickers' bureau drawer. A very thorough boy.

“When everybody but Bill was sound asleep, he scurried about setting the stage. He carried Joan in from the kitchen. She hadn't had time to cool off, or stiffen up, so he didn't know she was dead. He banged her over the head with the poker a couple of times, made sure this time that it was final – he'd had bad luck with corpses before – then arranged Vickers, the poker, and the fingerprints to look right. He had wrapped the poker handle in his handkerchief when he used it. It didn't even get bloody. Then he went out by the front door, called good-by for the benefit of the boys staked out by the gate, and drove straight to me with the package. Then he went home. He probably felt pretty safe, but he was still being careful. That's why he took the gun into the bath with him, and left the door so that he could watch the bedroom via the mirror over the wash­stand.

“The chloral gag was a little risky, but not too much, and he had to use it. He hoped that in the excitement nobody would think about drugging until it was too late for a conclusive test. But if anybody said anything about it, well, what the hell. Vickers was obviously a killer. He was obviously a little nuts. Maybe he had intended to murder Angie, too, painlessly, and commit suicide himself. There was the motive, the opportunity, the weapon, the fingerprints, and the corpse. What more would the cops need to convict a man for murder?”

“Not much,” said Vickers.

Angie set her glass down. She had begun to shiver, though the sun was hot. She shut her eyes and put her hands over her face.

“In a way,” she whispered, “I suppose this is all my fault.”

Vickers went over and sat down beside her, drawing her close to him.

“You mean because Bill wanted you, and did all this because of it? Well, in the first place, darling, I don't blame him too much. I can understand feeling that way. In the second place, you didn't do anything to encourage him. I hope.”

“Vick! For God's sake, don't joke about it!”

“All right.” He said soberly, “There was a lot more to it than that. Bill's an odd guy. He's always had a bit of a God complex, too. I say ‘too,' because I know I had one. Bill made up his own laws and ethics. He did exactly as he pleased, because that was all that mattered to him – doing what he wanted to do, in his own way. And he always got what he went after. Women, particularly. It puzzled him that he couldn't get you, and the more he couldn't get you, the more he wanted you, and I suppose you took the kick out of every other female in the world as far as he was concerned. So he began to hate me, because I was between you and him. But I'm beginning to think that you were the symbol, a very real one, but not the whole cause.

“Bill hated me. He hated me, I think, because I was a bigger and more successful louse than he was. I was more arrogant, more selfish, more cold blooded, and I had huge bank accounts and social standing, and the woman he wanted for a wife. I was a challenge to him. To his manhood, if you like. I kept him around because he was good company. He amused me. He could play up to me at cards, and even beat me with fair frequency. And that attitude on my part was like feeding him poison. Harry and Job were weaker stuff. They took it. But Bill didn't. And because he was the man he was, he reacted in the way he did. Violently, but subtly.” Vickers shook her gently. “So you see, Cleopatra, it's more my fault than yours.”

“Nuts,” said Trehearne. “It's Saul's fault, and he'll find it out in the gas chamber.” He stood up. “Well, I guess that covers everything, for a while. You'll have to stick around while the usual legal machinery grinds this mess through the mill. After that, you're on your own. Oh, and by the way, this'll interest you. Harriet Crandall isn't going to press charges against Job. She's decided on a separation, instead.” He grinned. “You should go down and see her. From all I've seen and heard of her, she's a changed woman.”

“Tomorrow,” said Vickers. “I've got another woman to look at right now.”

Trehearne nodded. He said good-by and walked away around the comer of the house. The pepper tree swayed gracefully on the green lawn. Coolin and Molly escorted him, only half in play, to his car. Trehearne drove away. He began to hum, and then to sing.

Oh, yes, I have brought you gold, and I have paid your fee, and I have not come to see you die upon the gallows tree!

THE END

 

George Sanders was born in St Petersburg in 1906. He left Russia in 1917 with his family, who settled in England and had George educated at Bedales and Brighton College.

He made his British film debut in 1929, but it was in 1930's Hollywood that he honed his distinctive, charming-yet-dangerous screen persona – the quintessential cad. Sanders co-starred in Alfred Hitchcock's
Rebecca
 and
Foreign Correspondent
 (both 1940), and went on to win an Academy Award for his signature role, that of Addison DeWitt in
All About Eve
(1950). He continued to work in films up until the year of his death in 1972.

In the 1940's, Sanders' film-star status was the impetus for his two crime novels, both featuring recognizably Sanders-esque heroes:
Crime on My Hands
(1944) and
Stranger at Home
(1946). In 1960 came a third book: his autobiography, fittingly titled
Memoirs of A Professional Cad
in which the line between fiction and fact is blurred even more convincingly – and wittily – than in the novels. All three works are available as ebooks from Dean Street Press.

Crime on My Hands

Memoirs of A Professional Cad

I squatted, rather than knelt, over the prostrate form. I tried to concentrate on how, and at whose hand, she had met her death. Try as I might, though, I couldn't make myself believe that the wretched girl was dead, and I simply didn't give a damn who had killed her, or why.

For one thing, the heat was getting me. I was wet with sweat and my newest shirt was a six-dollar wreck. My Shetland jacket was going to be a headache for my cleaner. And I was so tired that I squinted against the bright light.

But I had to solve the case, and the important clue was in plain sight. That is, it was in plain sight to my trained eyes. The ordinary person would have missed it. The ordinary detective would have missed it, for that matter. But I, George Sanders, would see it.

I examined the body.

Her name was Velda Manning, and she was a spy. She had been killed because she had been careless. Served her jolly well right. She wasn't very likeable, anyway. She had always been too certain of her great beauty, too proud of her legs, which she flaunted at the drop of a glance.

They were on parade, even in death. She lay on her side, with her right leg extended. The left t leg was bent at the knee, and the inside of her thigh was visible to an almost embarrassing extent. It seemed to me that several yards of bare, pink flesh was exposed to distract me from the more important problem of the body as a whole.

I lifted my eyes to the wound, a red mass in her chest. Her strutting breasts were not bare, but they gave that impression. As a matter of fact, she was much more exciting as a corpse than she had been as a flaunted body.

The clue. Oh yes, the clue. Must find it. Where was the damned thing? It had to be here. Ordinary eyes might pass it by, but not mine – not mine. This keen and flashing glance should seek it out, this incisive brain weigh its significance, this objective voice reveal all. And then, maybe this splendid body could go dunk itself in its private pool.

If only that bare leg were covered. I pulled her skirt down, and went back to the search. My legs were beginning to ache, just behind the knees.

I stood up. “The clue is missing,” I said.

I knelt, later, on my spread handkerchief, to examine the body. I wasn't going to get my trousers dirty just because a weak-minded girl had got herself rubbed out. I wanted to wear those trousers to Melva's party that night. Provided I ever got away from this silly case.

Her leg was bare, but I was inured by now. This time I would find the clue. Now it peeked out from under the hem of her dress, a tiny gleam of brass that other eyes would have missed. Not mine.

I picked it up. I turned it between my long, tapering fingers. I frowned. This was a hard problem. She had been stabbed. Why, then, was this cartridge here? Had she been shot, too? A thorough person, this unknown murderer. Perhaps she had been strangled also.

Yes, there were the marks on her lovely throat. I hadn't seen them before, but t once my keen mind took hold of the problem, my eyes knew where to look. I touched the bruises on her throat with thoughtful fingers. Silk had been used, a silk scarf.

I looked at the cartridge again. I stood up. “This,” I said furiously, “is the wrong caliber!”

When I took up my examination again, I stood in a half crouch. It was a more comfortable position than the others, and it didn't wrinkle my pants.

The leg. Hello, leg. I was beginning to know every pore of that leg, every vein in delicate tracery just under the skin. That tiny hollow, just above her dimpled knee, the gentle curve of her calf.

Now, the wound. She had been shot. She had died instantly. Next, she had been stabbed, and then strangled. These latter acts were to cover the fact of shooting, to confuse George Sanders, detective. But they did not. The murderer had left his signature, just as surely as if he had written a confession and pinned it to the bulging bosom of her dress. This cartridge, this thing of metal, was an odd size, an unusual make. Only one man would have such a gun as fired this shell.

That man was the last person you would suspect, but as his name flashed in my head, the pattern was clear. His philanthropies, his kindliness, were a cloak for his true nature: spy, traitor, murderer.

I turned the cartridge thoughtfully between my clever fingers. I looked at it as if it were a crystal ball in which I saw the face and name of death.

“Channing Wommack,” I mused aloud. “He is the man.”

I stood quite still for a few seconds before I nudged the recumbent form with my gleaming shoe. “You can get up now, Pat,” I said. “And pull your dress down.” I turned as Charlie ran over to shake my hand. He was almost maudlin, his round face flushed with satisfaction. “George, you were terrific. You were colossal.”

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I'm thirsty and hot. Can't somebody turn off those damned lights?” Charlie yelled at the roof, “Save 'em!” and an electrician threw the master switch to plunge the sound stage into welcome gloom.

“If we don't get an Oscar for this one, there ain't no justice,” Charlie said. He said it after each picture he directed. Thus far both justice and the Academy Award Committee had remained blind. “You wanta see the rushes, George?”

“Frankly, no. I don't care, somehow, after all those retakes.”

‘I'm going to fire that prop man,” Charlie said.

The prop man who had put the wrong cartridge under Pat's dress had been married just the day before. He was a nice kid.

“Don't fire him,” I said. “He's tired. Send him home to get some sleep.”

Charlie leered, and I went away.

Melva was in her office, her secretary told me with a roll of pretty eyes. “That's a lovely shirt, Mr. Sanders,” she added. I patted her blonde permanent and left her happy.

Melva's green eyes had a gleam as they surveyed me.

“Just the type,” she said. “You're a handsome beast, Georgie.”

“Hello, Red.”

She scowled, looking like a piqued pixie. “Don't call me Red!”

“Don't call me Georgie!”

“You look so boyish in that fancy shirt, George. Sit down and rest your big feet. I want to talk to you.”

She leaned back in her swivel chair, so that the sunlight through the Venetian blind slatted her green blouse with gold.

“Why don't you take a whirl at acting?” I asked. “A screen test in that outfit, with that pattern of shadows, would get you a fat contract.”

“I'd rather be your agent, dear,” she said. “Besides, my nose is too snub. I'd never be able to look down it, and if I can't look down my nose the way you do, I don't want to act.”

“I don't look down my nose at people.”

“It's your most valuable asset, George. Tell me about
Die by Night
.”

I crossed my legs and lighted a cigarette. I slid my case across her desk. “This will be a shock to you. I suggest that you light up. If there's a drink in the place, I suggest that, too.”

She sat up, leaning slightly forward. Concern darkened her eyes. “What's the matter, Georgie?”

“Red!”

‘I'm sorry, George. I won't do it again. Tell.”

“I have played my last role as a detective.”

She didn't scream and wring her hands. She just sat, calm and unruffled. “Why?” she asked.

‘I'm tired of detectives. And don't wisecrack about that. Here is why. The vogue is for the light-hearted playboy with a butter-heart and iridium brain to become involved in a murder situation. Now the audience knows that I, as that amateur detective, am going to triumph in the end. There's no suspense, except of an intellectual nature. The melodramatic action seeks to cover that dramatic fault, but I know suspense is lacking. I can't be whole-hearted about it when I know that I will win, no matter what.”

“And so?” she prompted.