The Hamlet Trap (15 page)

Again Charlie nodded. There was a tap on the door then and Constance admitted the waiter with a tray. He looked at them curiously as he arranged the lunch things. “Ro ain't here?” he finally asked.

“Nope. How much do we owe you?” Charlie replied.

“It goes on the tab,” the waiter said and slowly backed out, examining the room as he did so.

“Probably never saw a room where murder has been done,” Charlie commented. “Let's eat.”

Gray's color was better. Having a problem to solve seemed to improve his circulation, Constance noticed. He ate little, however.

Suddenly he put down his sandwich and said, “Ginnie couldn't have done it, could she? She would have had to come in first, go to the desk and get the statuette and wait for him to turn around and move away one step. What for? Where was he hit?”

Charlie touched his head just behind and slightly above the right ear. Gray said more positively, “She couldn't have done it. He was my height and she's what? Five-six, -seven?”

“It's the kind of thing experts get rich arguing in court,” Charlie said. “A bullet track is easier, but even that isn't foolproof. But you were going to tell me how you would stage it.”

Gray regarded him steadily for a moment, then turned his gaze to the desk. “The clown was usually on the end of the desk. I never saw it used as a doorstop, anyway.” He paused, thinking. “Ellis came in and walked to the desk and put the portfolio down. Since no one could have come leaping out of the closet, picked up the clown, and caught him that fast, he must have seen whoever it was. Maybe even talked to him a minute, while the killer picked up the clown and came around the desk. As soon as Ellis had turned his back, taken a step or two, the killer hit him, sent him sprawling forward. Would he have fallen like that?”

“Probably. Might have clipped the table on his way down, and for certain hit the chair, knocked it over. But go on. Then what?”

Gray swallowed a bite of sandwich and drank coffee, still thoughtful, before he answered. “He must have run, and at the door realized he was carrying the clown and dropped it. Out through the double doors to the shop, I'd say, or Ginnie would have seen light around the stage door when it opened. The doors open from the inside unless they're padlocked, and Spotty doesn't put on the padlocks until after his ten-o'clock check. Once outside, he was home free.”

Charlie righted the chair he had turned over and sat in it. “That's how the police will reconstruct it, I'm afraid.”

“What's wrong with that reconstruction?”

“Well, it rules out mistaken identity, for one thing. The killer had time to get a good look at him and knew it was Ellis, not you, in that raincoat. And for another, if the killer had been a burglar, would Ellis have turned his back on him?”

Gray finished his sandwich and drained his cup. Constance refilled it for him and he nodded thanks. “Is that what you wanted to see me about? That little demonstration?”

“Actually no. You have to get to the cast reading at one, don't you? That leaves almost an hour. Would you mind filling in a few details for us? We're still trying to get the complete picture for both nights.”

“Sure,” Gray said with a touch of weariness. “Where do you want me to start?”

“I have a question,” Constance said then. “I've been wondering why you didn't go back East for the funeral.”

Gray looked startled. “Her family didn't like me. I would have been in the way. I wasn't welcome in their house when Laura was alive. I sure as hell would not have been welcome when she was dead.”

“Was she leaving you, going back East?” Constance asked.

“Yeah. Everything blew up when we got here. She didn't like the small town atmosphere, and she couldn't get a job that she felt was right for her.”

“Ellis got her the job, is that right? Were the four of you friends?”

“Not really. I met him a couple of times only. He got us our house, too, but because of Ginnie, not us. He would have done anything for her.”

Constance glanced at Charlie and leaned back in her chair.

“Why don't you just fill in the details of both those evenings for us,” Charlie said easily.

Gray took more coffee and looked at it. “We'd been having a lot of arguments, one after another. That night it was the same thing. Laura got mad when I said I had to go to the high-school play. She wanted me to go to the movie with her, but I seldom go to movies, and I thought it might be important to see the quality of the kids' performance. We get some of our actors from the high school, of course. Anyway, that's what we agreed, that I'd drop her at the movie and see the production, and then meet her in the bar. We had planned to spend an hour or more there listening to jazz, but we were both soaked and she was furious, and we came home.”

“Whoa,” Charlie said with a grin. “Too fast. Why did you take the car? It was hers, wasn't it?”

“It was hers. I had to drop off the promptbook for Sunshine's play here, and the high school is on the other side of town. It just seemed simpler that way. It's only two and a half blocks from the movie to the bar. In fact, it was her idea that we do it that way, less trouble for both of us. And I'd join her faster that way,” he added bitterly.

“So you saw Eric and Ro. When?”

“I got there a few minutes before eight and they were already there. We spoke but didn't have time to talk. I saw Ro again at the intermission at eight-thirty or so. He introduced me to a couple of people. Jerry Alistair, for one. It was hot in the auditorium, people were milling about, going outdoors for cigarettes, things like that. I told him I'd left the promptbook for him. Then we separated and I didn't see him again that night.”

Charlie looked at him thoughtfully. “When did you leave?”

“A little after nine. I didn't notice exactly. It was raining and I realized that Laura would be getting wet. The movie got out at nine-ten. I drove right to it, but it was already emptied, and I went on to the bar. I had to park a block away, and by then I was pretty soaked too.”

“Where did you sit in the high school?”

Gray looked exasperated. “In the last row, aisle seat, nearest the parking-lot exit. I knew I wanted to get out before it ended.”

“When you and Laura met at the bar, what did she say?”

Now Gray's expression was murderous. He stood up and looked at his watch. It was twelve-thirty; he could not plead that he had to get to the cast reading yet. He started to pace. He had good recall and he was a good mimic. He repeated what Laura had said, then added, “I told you we'd been having trouble. We were both bitchy. When we got home it turned into a real fight and she ended up in the second bedroom of the house. She stayed in there from then on.

Charlie stood up and stretched and now Constance also left the table and leaned against the desk watching Gray. He was looking over the shelves of books of plays.

“Gray,” Charlie said softly, “was Laura interested in money? Would she have tried to blackmail anyone?”

Gray's reaction was swift. He turned from the shelves and leaped toward Charlie. Constance, almost in slow motion, caught his wrist and he found himself sitting down hard on the floor with a grunt.

Slowly he pulled himself up and sat in one of the chairs at the table. He rubbed his wrist, watching Constance warily.

“Do you know that she wouldn't have tried to blackmail anyone? Really know it?” Charlie asked in the same low, pleasant voice, as if he had not noticed the incident.

Gray shook his head violently. “She wouldn't have done that!” He started to talk about Laura and their relationship, about Laura and Ashland, Laura and Sunshine, Laura and the night they had had dinner at Ginnie's house. He talked rapidly, his voice harsh, his face strained. Suddenly he jumped up and went to the door. “I'm responsible. I know that. She was right about that. It's all my fault. She called me the climber. Maybe I was, maybe I still am. Maybe I saw myself in that damn play. Her father called me, they all know I'm responsible for everything that happened here. I can't deny it. I'm not even trying! I've got to get out of here for a few minutes. Christ, it's almost one!” He left so fast he was almost running.

EIGHTEEN

Let's get the hell out of
here before Ro comes back from lunch,” Charlie said. “I've about had it for one day.”

“Amen.” Constance drew on her coat, collected her purse and Ginnie's paisley bag, and they left the office in time to see Sunshine enter through the stage door. The cast members for her play were already gathering backstage. Charlie steered Constance past them all, out through the double doors that opened onto an alley. Directly across the alley was the shop with open doors. To the right was the parking lot.

“I parked over there,” Constance said.

Charlie nodded and kept walking through the lot onto the sidewalk, where he stopped and looked up the street in the direction of Lithia Way.

“Laura was on that corner at exactly the right time to see someone leave,” he said. “The question is, who?”

They retraced their steps to the other alley that led to Pioneer Street, and again he stopped. “This is where Ginnie parked and waited for Ellis. No way could she have seen anyone go out that back door from here. All right, let's beat it.”

“You don't think all those alibis will hold up?” Constance asked as they reached the Buick. Charlie opened the door on the passenger side for her and went around to get in before he answered.

“Ro was right about this town,” he said as he started to drive. “You can walk from end to end in ten minutes, and you can drive in just a couple of minutes. I've been all over it today. I know. Anyone could have left the high school, driven over here for something, and met Ellis. Two minutes to get here, a minute to bash in his head, two minutes to get back. Who'd miss him? Same with William. Drop off Sunshine, a minute to the theater, get Ellis, and be in the store less than two minutes later. Even Sunshine could have hightailed it over after William left her.”

“That makes it completely unpremeditated,” Constance said slowly. “Not even time for an argument to develop.”

He nodded. “That's the hitch. Look, there's Ro's car.” He had driven on the street behind the apartment complex. The carports were like stair steps, each one a foot or two higher than the last. The car parked there was a two-seater Fiat. It looked like an antique. Constance told him about Jack Warnecke, Ro's next-door neighbor with the birds. His carport was empty. Charlie drove on and made a left turn at Main Street.

“There's the movie house. One block to Lithia Way, another block to Pioneer, half a block to the bar where they met. Three minutes, at the most. Say she took a minute or two to get her coat on and actually leave, that puts her on the corner at about fifteen after nine.”

“If she saw Gray…” Constance said thoughtfully, “as mad as she was about getting wet, that might have been the last straw. She was jealous of the theater, of course, and everyone connected with it.”

“The only one she couldn't have seen was Ginnie.”

“Or Juanita. Does her alibi hold up?”

“Definitely. Half a dozen people will swear she was in Medford.” He turned again and this time went down Water Street. He nodded toward a restored Victorian house. “That's the boardinghouse where William dropped off Sunshine. Three blocks from the theater.” He drove on past a Greek restaurant, past a wooden bridge. The river was no less swift here in the middle of town than up in the park; the banks were steep and rocky. He turned away from it onto a different street. “Let's go home and put our feet up and brood. Okay?”

“Sure. What were you looking for?”

“Some other place where Laura's body could have been put in the river. Not easy. Too many cars, streetlights, no approach to the river by car. No one can tell how far she was carried by the river before she was caught up in the boulders.”

As he drove back to the inn she told him about her visit with Shannon. His only question when she finished, as he parked the car at the inn, was “And what did Sunshine say your cards foretell?”

She laughed softly. “Poor Sunshine. No one wants her to read for them except Shannon.”

His gaze was on the hills across the valley. “You know what I like? Snow that goes away by itself.” The hills were brilliantly green without a trace of snow. He turned to grin at her. She was frowning absently. “What is it?”

“Oh, the town, how accessible everything is to everything, five minutes from here to there, no matter where either point is. People made so much of alibis, remember? What good are any of them in a town that size? Who would miss anyone for five minutes? Even Sunshine. She said she worked on a new play the night Laura was killed, but who's to say if she did or didn't? I bet in a house like that boardinghouse of hers, no one pays any attention to the goings-on of the residents.”

“You're right. I asked.”

“About Sunshine? I was just making a point. Why would she do it? She didn't even know Peter Ellis, and Laura was about the only person around here to give her the time of day.”

“Why would anyone else do it? I'm afraid that Draker's hunt for circumstantial evidence may be the only way to go about all this, and let motive take care of itself. On that basis, of course, the strongest case can be made against Ginnie. Let's go in.”

Constance was reading a copy of
Troilus and Cressida
, Charlie gazing out the window. They had been quiet for almost an hour. Suddenly Charlie stood up and said, “I can make a case for just about all of them. Too messy. I don't like it.”

Constance put her book down and waited. When he seemed absorbed in the scenery again, she cleared her throat. “Eric?”

“He's easy. He wanted the job that Gray landed. He was next in line, as far as he was concerned, and Ro brings in this young man with practically no experience. He knows that Gray left the promptbook for Sunshine's play at the theater; he overheard Gray tell Ro. He gets bored with the high-school kids and goes to the theater to read the promptbook, maybe with the idea that if it's as bad as they all seemed to think it was, that would be his chance. Ellis comes in with Gray's coat over his head and when he turns to leave, Eric swings, just as Ellis let the coat fall around his shoulders. Too late. He's dead and Eric knows he needs an alibi and hightails it back to the school.”

“But everyone agrees that no one would mistake Ellis for Gray,” Constance reminded him. “He would have seen his face.”

“Maybe not. Everyone's assuming the lights were on when Ellis entered the office, but maybe they weren't. Eric could have turned them on just to make everyone jump to that conclusion.”

She considered it, then said, “And Laura? How could he have managed that? He was at Ro's apartment until eleven-thirty, and on the phone to Ro at nine-ten.”

“Remember that nine-o'clock time of death is approximate, could be off half an hour, or even more, either way. He leaves for Ro's house and meets Laura and she tells him she saw him the other night and he slugs her. He puts her body in his car and covers her with a rug, a blanket, something, and goes on to Ro's. When he leaves, he drives up the park road, gets rid of her body, and then goes home.”

Shuddering, she said, “And Gray? You can see a way he could have done it?”

Charlie picked up the map Ralph Wedekind had provided them. “Look, here's his house, up a pretty steep hill. Everyone says he would have had to go down the hill, through town, up the park road, but that's not quite so. See, he could have stayed on the hill. They could have taken a walk together, talking, ended up on the ridge overlooking the park, here. That park's really in a canyon, with Park Drive winding around the crest over it for several miles. They get to the edge of the cliff and their argument gets worse and he hits her, kills her instantly. She topples over the cliff and goes rolling down the slope. It has dozens of paths up and down it; we saw them, remember? Steep as hell, but obviously used. He goes sliding down after her. She wouldn't have bruised since she was already dead, but she would have been covered with mud, her clothes torn, scratched up, probably. And that's why he puts her in the river and messes up the opposite bank, to make it appear that she went in there. He figures the swift water will tumble her about, account for the shape she's in. Then back up the cliff, the same streets home, and cleanup time.”

“Oh, Charlie,” she sighed. “We're going to have to talk to that detective, aren't we?” He nodded. “And Ro? Do you see how he might have killed Ellis? He's about the only one who wasn't caught out in the rain that night.”

“I'm working on it,” he said, and the telephone rang.

It was Ginnie, back from her ride with Draker and Ralph Wedekind. She sounded miserable, Constance reported, as she and Charlie got their coats on again to go to her house.

“Oh, I want to glance through her sketchbook first,” Constance said. She started to flip pages, then stopped and examined a page, then another. “Do you remember the scene in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
where the Indian kills Mac? Doesn't he smother him with a pillow?”

“In the book he does. Why?”

He looked at the sketch. It was the setting for the play, with the nurse's desk looming large in the background, file cabinets on one side, and in the foreground the figure of a man on the floor, one arm stretched over his head, his legs drawn up. His arm concealed his face.

“She's good,” he murmured, and looked at the previous pages. Different views of the same setting, some with figures, some without. There was a sketch of the desk being used as a bed, a man lying on it, someone standing over him holding a pillow. “Here's that scene,” he said. He turned more pages—the window with Chief walking away, the boat scene… None of the sketches was complete; the details were not the same from one to another, as if she had been trying out this, then that, just to see how well they fitted.

“That isn't the position Peter Ellis was in, was it?” Constance asked, again studying the sketch that was out of place in that play.

“Nope. Not a thing like it. I wonder what's in the missing sketchbook.”

“Maybe nothing much. I just told her to remember yesterday. That's why I wanted to snatch this before someone else had a chance to.”

Charlie looked at her suspiciously. “When did you tell her to remember?”

“When I told that silly story about a professor yelling at his students. I gave her hands permission to remember even if her head doesn't, and I think it took. Let's go see her.”

Charlie thought of the look of wariness that Gray had assumed after Constance put him on the floor, and he sympathized. Gray didn't know the half of it.

He had insisted years ago that she take self-defense classes, and as soon as their daughter was old enough, that she take them also. When Constance protested one day that they were being taught how to kill people, he had said grimly, “If anyone ever touches you or Jessica and you don't take care of him yourself, I'll kill the son of a bitch and that will be murder one, premeditated, cold-blooded murder. If you do it, it's self-defense.” He had meant exactly what he said and they both knew it. She had become very good indeed. In the beginning of her lessons she had demonstrated some of her new skills on him, but one day when he invited her to show him what they were practicing, she had said quite kindly that she had better not.

Ginnie admitted them and led the way to the kitchen. “I just put on coffee,” she said. “Do you want some?”

“That would be nice,” Constance said. “Was it awful?”

“He's such an asshole!” Ginnie muttered. “He really believes I killed Peter and Laura! He believes it!”

She poured coffee and started to arrange a tray. “Let's just have it here at the table,” Constance said and sat down. Charlie sat opposite her, leaving space for Ginnie at the end between them. She brought the coffee things to the table and sat also. She was still too pale, but there were spots of color on her cheeks and a glint in her eyes that had not been there before. He had made her angry, Constance thought: a good sign.

“I brought your bag and stuff,” she said. “Did the other sketchbook turn up?”

A puzzled look crossed Ginnie's face. “It was on the table in the rehearsal room when I got there. I must have dropped it yesterday. I guess Mrs. Jensen found it when she cleaned this morning.”

“That's good. It would have been a shame to lose all that work.”

“Oh, it wouldn't have been lost, not really. Sometimes I don't even look in them again. I have the preliminary sets drawn up, and at the readings I might get an idea or two, a nuance I missed, something of that sort. Once I draw it, it seems to stick in my head. For instance, today I realized that I hadn't made the hospital look institutionalized enough, and I added more file cabinets, rows and rows of files. They'll be way in the back and an orderly will go to them now and then as background. People won't consciously notice them, but they'll add to the feeling of bureaucracy an institution has.” She opened the paisley bag and pulled out all the sketchbooks; there were four of them.

Constance had looked inside only the one. She wished now that she had examined all of them. “What did you think of yesterday about Sunshine's play? I saw you drawing like mad all through the reading.”

“Nothing much.” She began to flip through the sketchbook as she spoke. “It's pretty low-budget, not a lot we can do with the sets. Sunshine had action going on in every room of the house and I got that down to the living room only.”

Suddenly Charlie felt the invisible fingers on his back and he leaned forward very slightly to look at the page Ginnie had stopped at. The same figure was there in the same position. Ginnie hardly even glanced at it, but turned another page.

“Here it is. I decided to cut away about half of the flats for the living room so that the audience can see through it to the mountains in the background.”