The Zebra-Striped Hearse (28 page)

“I hope you’re not carrying it around.”

“It’s in the safe at the hotel.”

“Leave it there. Harriet certainly won’t be needing it. I don’t believe it was her idea, anyway.” I turned to look at her under the light. “You’re a generous woman, Mrs. Hatchen. I took you for something different.”

“I am something different.” She narrowed her eyes and drew down the corners of her mouth. “Please turn off the light and don’t look at me. I’m an ugly old woman, trying to buy back the past. But I came back here about fifteen years too late. I had no right to leave Harriet. Her life would have turned out better if I’d stayed.”

“You can’t be sure of that.” I switched off the light, and noticed that all the lights in the Blackwell house had gone out. “Do you mind telling me just why you left Mark Blackwell? Did it have anything to do with Isobel?”

“No, he wasn’t interested in her. He wasn’t interested in any woman, and that includes me.” Her voice had become harsher and deeper. “Mark was a mother’s boy. I know that sounds like a peculiar statement to make about a professional military man. Unfortunately it’s true. His mother was the widow of the late Colonel, who was killed in the First War, and Mark was her only son, and she really lavished herself on him, if ‘lavish’ is the word. ‘Ravish’ may be closer.

“She spent the first years of our marriage with us, and I had to sit in the background and watch him dance to her tune, playing skip-rope with the silver cord. It’s a common story—I’ve heard it from other women, in and out of the service. You marry them because they’re idealistic and make no passes. The trouble is, they stay that way. Mark was like a little boy in
bed. You’ll never know the contortions I had to go through to get a child. But we won’t go into that.

“When his mother died, I thought he’d turn to me. I was a dreamer. He transferred his fixation—yes, I’ve talked to the doctors—he transferred his fixation to poor little Harriet. It’s a terrible thing to see a person converting another person into a puppet, a kind of zombie. He supervised her reading, her games, her friends, even her thoughts. He made her keep a diary, which he read, and when he was away on duty she had to send it to him. He got her so confused that she didn’t know whether she was a girl or a boy, or if he was her father or her lover.

“He was worse than ever after the war, when he got back from Germany. The war was a disappointment to Mark; it didn’t do what he’d hoped for his career. Actually he only chose that career because it was a family tradition and his mother insisted on it. I think he would have been happier doing almost anything else. But by the time they retired him, he thought it was too late to start something new. And he had money, so he didn’t have to. There’s always been scads of money in the family, and he could afford to spend all his time on Harriet. He conceived the grand idea of turning her into a sort of boy-girl who would make everything come right in the end for him. He taught her to shoot and climb mountains and play polo. He even took to calling her Harry.

“It sickened me. I’m not the aggressive type, and I’d always been afraid of him—you get that way living with a man you don’t love. But I finally forced a showdown. I told him I would divorce him if he didn’t get some help, psychiatric help. Naturally he thought I was the one who was crazy—he couldn’t afford to think otherwise. Maybe I was, to stay with him for twelve years. He told me to go ahead and divorce him, that he and Harriet were enough for each other. She was only eleven years old at the time. I wanted to take her with me, but Mark
said he would fight me to the limit. I couldn’t afford a court battle. Don’t ask why. Everything catches up with you in the end. So I lost my daughter, and now she’s really lost.”

We sat and let the darkness soak into our bones. I tried to relieve it.

“There’s a small chance that Harriet’s all right,” I said. “She and Campion may have decided to travel separately. It would account for his refusal to say what happened to her. She may turn up in Mexico after all.”

“But you don’t really think she will?”

“No. It’s just one of several possibilities. The others aren’t so pleasant to contemplate.”

There was a stir of life in the cab ahead. The driver got out and slouched toward us.

“You said a few minutes, ma’am. I don’t mind waiting if I know how long I got to wait. It’s this uncertainty that makes me nervous.”

“Things are rough all over,” I said.

“I was speaking to the lady.” But he went back to his cab.

Mrs. Hatchen opened the door on her side. “I’ve kept you longer than I meant to. You said you wanted to talk to Isobel.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think she knows something she hasn’t told?”

“People nearly always do,” I said. “It’s why I have a hard life, and an interesting one.”

She reached for the letter, which was still in my hand. “I’d like that back if you don’t mind. It’s very important to me.”

“I’m sorry. The police will have to see it. I’ll try to get it back to you eventually. Will you be staying at the Santa Monica Inn?”

“I don’t know. Isobel asked me to stay with her, but that’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“We don’t get along. We never have. She thinks I’m a silly flibbertigibbet. Maybe I am.
I
think
she
is a hypocrite.”

“I’d be interested in your reasons.”

“They’re simple enough. Isobel has always pretended to despise money and the things it can buy. Plain living and high thinking was her motto. But I notice she grabbed Mark and his money the first good chance she got. Please don’t quote me to Isobel. In fact, you better not tell her that you saw me.”

I said I wouldn’t. “One more question, Mrs. Hatchen. What happens to Ada’s trust fund if Harriet doesn’t live to enjoy it?”

“I suppose it reverts to Mark. Nearly everything does.”

T
HE MAID
reluctantly let me in. I waited in the hallway, counting the pieces in the parquetry and wishing that I had never seen Isobel Blackwell, or taken her money, or liked her. She finally appeared, wearing the same dark suit and the same dark patches under her eyes. Her movements were carefully controlled, as if she was walking a line.

She said with unsmiling formality: “I hope the importance of your news justifies this late-night visit.”

“It does. Can we sit down?”

She took me into the drawing room, under the eyes of the ancestors. I said to them as well as to her: “I’m doing you a favor coming here. If you weren’t my client, there’d be policemen instead, and reporters trampling the roses.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?” Her speech was slurred; and her eyes had a drugged look. “If I am, you’ll have to explain it to me. And please bear in mind that I may not be thinking too clearly—I’m full of chloral hydrate. Now what were you saying about policemen and newspapermen?”

“They’ll be here tomorrow. They’ll be wanting to know, among other things, if you have an icepick with a square-cut silver handle.”

“We do have, yes. I haven’t seen it lately, but I assume it’s somewhere in the kitchen, or one of the portable bars.”

“I can tell you now it isn’t. It’s in the hands of Sergeant Wesley Leonard of the Citrus County Sheriffs Department.”

I was watching her closely, and she seemed genuinely perplexed. “Are you trying to threaten me in some way? You sound as though you were.”

“The word is warn, Mrs. Blackwell.”

Her voice sharpened. “Has something happened to Mark?”

“Something has happened to Ralph Simpson and Dolly Stone. I think both those people were known to you.”

“Dolly Stone? I haven’t even seen the girl in years.”

“I hope you can prove that, because Dolly was murdered last May.”

She lowered her head and moved it from side to side, as if she was trying to dodge the fact. “You must be joking.” She stole a look at my face and saw that I was not. “How? How was she murdered?”

“She was strangled, by unknown hands.”

Isobel Blackwell looked at her hands. They were slender and well kept, but the knuckles suggested a history of work. She massaged the knuckles, as if she might be trying to erase the history.

“You surely can’t imagine that I had anything to do with it. I had no idea that Dolly was dead. I
was
quite close to her at one time—she was virtually my foster daughter—but that was years ago.”

“She was your foster daughter?”

“That may be putting it too strongly. Dolly was one of my projects. The Stones lived across the road from us, and I couldn’t help noticing the beginnings of antisocial tendencies in the child. I did my best to provide her with an example and steer her clear of delinquency.” Her voice was cool and careful. “Did I fail?”

“Somebody failed. You sound a little like a social worker, Mrs. Blackwell.”

“I was one before I married my first husband.”

“Ronald Jaimet.”

She raised her brows. Under them, her eyes appeared strangely naked. “Suddenly you know a great deal about my affairs.”

“Suddenly your affairs are at the center of this case. When I found out tonight that you knew Dolly Stone and her parents, it knocked most of my ideas sideways. I’m trying to work up a new set of ideas, and I can’t do it without your co-operation.”

“I’m still very much in the dark. I’m not even sure what case we’re talking about.”

“It’s all one case,” I said, “Harriet’s disappearance and Dolly’s death and the murder of Ralph Simpson, who was stabbed with an icepick—”

“My
icepick?”

“That’s the police hypothesis. I share it. I’m not accusing you of doing the actual stabbing.”

“How good of you.”

“The fact remains that you knew Ralph Simpson, you were almost certainly aware of his death, and you said nothing about it.”

“Is this the same Ralph Simpson who worked for us at Tahoe in the spring?”

“The same. A day or two after he left you he was stabbed to death and buried in the back yard of the house you used to own in Citrus Junction.”

“But that’s insane, utterly insane.”

“You knew about it, didn’t you?”

“I did not. You’re quite mistaken.”

“There’s an account of the Simpson killing on the front page of the Citrus Junction paper in your sitting room.”

“I haven’t read it. I take the paper, to keep track of old
friends, but I’m afraid I seldom look at it. I haven’t even glanced at it this week.”

I couldn’t tell if she was lying. Her face had become a stiff mask which refused to tell what went on in the mind behind it. Her eyes had veiled themselves. Guilt can effect those changes. So can innocent fear.

“You have sharp eyes, don’t you, Mr. Archer? Unfriendly eyes.”

“Objective eyes, I hope.”

“I’m not fond of your objectivity. I thought there was a—degree of confidence between us.”

“There was.”

“You put that emphatically in the past tense. Since you’ve been operating with my money, operating on
me
in fact, I would have expected a little more tolerance, and sympathy. You realize my connection with Dolly proves nothing whatever against me.”

“I’d be glad to see that proved.”

“How can I prove it?”

“Tell me more about Dolly. For instance, what were the antisocial tendencies you noticed in her?”

“Must I? I’ve only just learned of her death. It’s distressing to rake over the past under the circumstances.”

“The past is the key to the present.”

“You’re quite a philosopher,” she said with some irony.

“I’m simply a detective with quite a few murder cases under my belt. People start out young on the road to becoming murderers. They start out equally young on the road to becoming victims. When the two roads intersect, you have a violent crime.”

“Are you suggesting that Dolly was a predestined victim?”

“Not predestined, but prepared. What prepared her, Mrs. Blackwell?”

“
I
didn’t, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She paused, and took a deep breath. “Very well, I’ll try to give you a serious
answer. I
was
concerned about Dolly, from the time she was four or five. She wasn’t relating too well to other children. Her relationship with adults wasn’t right, either, and it got worse. It showed up particularly in her contacts with my husband. Dolly was a pretty little thing, and her father had treated her seductively and then rejected her, It’s a common pattern. The Stones aren’t bad people, but they’re ignorant people, lacking in insight. They were our good neighbors, however, and Ronald and I believed in helping our neighbors as best we could. We tried to provide Dolly with a more normal family constellation—”

“And yourselves with a daughter?”

“That’s an unkind remark.” Her anger showed through her mask. She forced it back. “It’s true, we couldn’t have children; Ronald had a diabetic condition. I’m also aware of the ease with which good white magic turns into bad black magic. But we made no attempt to take Dolly from her parents, emotionally or otherwise. We merely tried to give her some things they couldn’t—books and music and recreation and the company of understanding people.”

“Then your husband died, and you moved away.”

“I’d already lost her by that time,” she said defensively. “It wasn’t I who failed Dolly. She’d begun to steal money from my purse and lie about it, and she did other things I prefer not to go into. She’s dead:
nil nisi bonum.”

“I wish you would go into the other things.”

“I’ll put it this way. I wasn’t able to protect her against degrading influences—I only had a part of her life after all. She ran with the wrong crowd in high school and picked up gutter ideas of sex. Dolly was already mature at the age of fifteen.”

She didn’t go on. Her mouth was grave, her eyes watchful. It was possible, I thought, that Dolly had made a play for Ronald Jaimet before he died. It was possible that Jaimet had fallen for it. A daughterless man in middle age can take a sudden fall, all the way down to the bottom of the hole. It would
be a suicidal hole, but suicide came easily to a diabetic. He simply had to forget his dose and his diet.

Being a murder victim came easily to a diabetic, too.