“Miss Shiel?” The man in the doorway was stocky and curt. The police. How could you always tell, even without the uniform?
“I’m Carson Dawes, Lieutenant, Los Angeles Police.” He smiled at Basil. “Good evening, Dr. Willing. You probably don’t remember me, but I’ve been attending your lectures on forensic psychiatry at the University.”
“Dr. Willing?” Moira whirled to look at Basil. “You’re a sort of policeman, too!”
“Sort of. I’m really a psychiatrist.”
“Sorry to trouble you. Miss Shiel,” Dawes went on. “But I couldn’t reach you by phone from Los Angeles, so I came out to the beach.”
“My line is down. The storm.”
“I’m looking for your partner, Max Weber, Do you know where he is?”
“No, I was trying to reach him myself when the line went down. His father, Abraham Weber, died suddenly of a heart attack this evening in Santa Barbara.”
“I know,” Dawes said. “When I called Mr. Weber’s number, trying to find Max, a Santa Barbara policeman answered the phone and told me all about it. They were trying to locate Max, too, he said. They had just talked to you and promised you they’d not release the news until he was found. That was when I tried to call you and discovered your line was down. The studio people in Burbank had told me Max was in Santa Barbara with his father. But he wasn’t. Interesting. If he had been, it would have given him an alibi.”
“An alibi? For what?” asked Moira.
“His wife, Katie, was murdered this evening.”
“But who would want to kill poor Katie?”
“Who but Max? They were on the verge of divorce — as you probably know.”
“I didn’t.”
“The Santa Cristina police called us a little while ago and asked us to bring Max in for questioning. Under California community property law, Katie would get half of everything if there were a divorce. That seems to be very inconvenient for Max just now — as I understand it, he wants to start his own recording company and needs all his capital. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about that?”
“Of course I knew. That’s business. We’re partners.”
“Katie Weber was in the Santa Cristina house this evening, sitting beside a picture window. According to medical evidence it was about eight thirty when someone fired a shot through the window and killed her instantly. No one heard the shot. Her body was found by her housekeeper, who had left the house at eight, when Katie was still alive, and returned at nine to find her dead. Where was Max at eight thirty?”
“I don’t know, but he would never kill Katie.”
Dawes looked at her skeptically. “Tough luck for a murderer to have his only alibi-witness die a natural death while he’s committing murder and so blow his carefully planned alibi sky-high.”
“How dare you assume that Max and his father would plan a cold-blooded murder together?”
“Before Abraham Weber retired, he was a lawyer for the racketeers. He never committed a crime himself, but he was not exactly punctilious about the letter of the law. And he loved his son. The heart attack suggests that the old man knew what was going on tonight and the excitement was too much for him. If I’m right — if Max did plan to use his father as an alibi-witness — the Lord hath delivered him into our hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked the Santa Barbara police not to release the news of Weber’s death until Max was found, so Max cannot possibly know his father is dead. When we pick him up, he’ll undoubtedly claim he was in Santa Barbara with his father at eight thirty, the time of the murder, never suspecting that his father was already dead at eight thirty. That will prove that Max was not at his father’s house at all tonight. We’ll hardly have to question him. We can just sit back and let him talk himself into the gas chamber.”
“That’s horrible!” cried Moira. “You’re setting a trap for him!”
Again there was the sound of a car on the road above the beach. Moira was already at the door. Dawes drew her back, almost roughly.
“That may be Max Weber now. I left word with the highway police to bring him here if they picked him up within an hour of the time I left Burbank. Miss Shiel, if you try to warn him in any way, I’ll have you charged as an accessory after the fact. You must not speak to him at all — not a single word. Understand?”
“Yes.” She moved like a sleepwalker to the piano bench and sat down. Basil offered her a cigarette. She took it with trembling fingers. It was Dawes who opened the door when the knock came.
The first man to enter was slender, frail, shy. Basil had an impression of intelligence and sensitivity but without strength — always a dangerous constellation. He was followed by a uniformed highway policeman, who spoke to Dawes.
“We picked him up on the grass verge beside the freeway, Lieutenant. He was just outside Burbank, headed south. He said he was on his way home to Santa Cristina.”
Basil knew what the Lieutenant was thinking: Max could have driven to Santa Cristina instead of Santa Barbara when he left the Burbank studio, shot his wife, and then returned to Burbank, so he would re-enter Santa Cristina from the north, as if he had driven south from Santa Barbara. He’d find some witness on the road between Burbank and Santa Cristina to confirm his driving south at that hour — possibly a filling station man, whom he’d talk to when he stopped for gas.
“Moira!” Max ignored the others. “Have you heard the radio? Katie is dead — murdered—”
He started toward Moira, but Dawes put a hand on his arm.
“You are Max Weber?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m Lieutenant Dawes, Los Angeles Police, and I must talk to you before anyone else does. Where have you been?”
Moira crushed her cigarette in an ashtray on top of the piano. Her restless fingers strayed across the keyboard.
“Miss Shiel, I know you’re nervous, but this is no time for playing the piano. Mr. Weber, where have you been?”
“Santa Barbara. I had intended to dine with my father but—”
“But you didn’t? Why not?”
“My poor father.” Max dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. “Dad died all alone. He must have died just before I got there at eight thirty. He was still warm.”
“You called his doctor?”
“No. I should have, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t. It was such a shock, I went kind of crazy. I drove around for a while, trying to realize what it would be like to live in a world without Dad. At last, I headed for home.”
“Still without notifying a doctor?”
“I was going to do that as soon as I got home. It didn’t seem to matter, really. Dad was gone. The... the thing lying there had nothing to do with him now... I was on the freeway, just south of Burbank, when I heard about Katie on the radio. It was just too much, coming on top of Dad’s death. I couldn’t drive. I pulled off onto the grass and a few minutes later the cops picked me up and brought me here.”
“I guess that lets you out.” Dawes couldn’t hide his disappointment. “I must apologize for—”
“Apologize?” Basil’s voice was sharp. “Lieutenant, are you assuming Max Weber was in Santa Barbara tonight solely because he knows his father is dead?”
“Yes. No one knew about Mr. Weber’s death except the neighbor who called the police and the police themselves and Miss Shiel and you. It wasn’t on the air, because Miss Shiel made the police promise they wouldn’t release the news until Max was found. She couldn’t have telephoned Max about his father’s death, because her line went down right after the Santa Barbara police called her and told her the news. I know, because it was then I tried to reach her myself. Obviously, she had no opportunity to tell Max that his father was dead before I arrived.”
“True, but Miss Shiel did have an opportunity to tell Max Weber that his father was dead after you arrived.”