“And you think,” he said bitterly, “that three murders took place right under our noses. You think we’re that stupid!”
“It’s not that you’re stupid, Lieutenant. It’s that the guy behind it is one clever operator. Take the beach party. No trick to get Winniger out into the surf and drown him. No special trick to take advantage of the empty house on a Sunday, start a conversation with Sherman and trick him. And if a guy were disarming enough, he could talk the Flynn boy up onto a chair in the closet on some pretext.
“And now Brad. This last one is bolder than the others. This last one was permitted to even look a little like murder. Was it hard to find out where Brad and Laura had a habit of going? Would it be difficult to wait until Laura left to go back to her sorority house? There was a moon last night. What time did it happen?” I asked Lieutenant Cord.
“Around two, I guess. The way it was discovered so fast, this Toberly couldn’t sleep. He went for a walk around the place. He saw the light on and it bothered him. He took a quick look and phoned. We were there at quarter to three. Doesn’t that spoil the moon angle?”
“Not completely. Sneak in there and find the razor and let him have it. Then snap on the light on the way out to make it look more like a suicide.”
Cord studied me. “You talk a good game, Arlin. You almost get me believing it. Except for one thing. Why would anybody do all that? What the hell reason would he have?”
“Are you going to expose me, Lieutenant?”
He shrugged. “There’s no point in that. Keep playing your little game if you want to, as long as you’re getting paid for it. But stay out of my way. Don’t foul up any of my work.”
He got out of the car. He regarded me soberly. “And don’t leave town. I’m taking a chance on believing you, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do some checking to make sure.”
I had no heart for the classes. I ate and went over to pick up Tilly. She came running out to the car. She climbed in beside me and her fingernails bit into my wrist. “Oh, Joe, I can’t take it any more! All this horror! I keep seeing him the way he was out at your place. Smiling and happy.”
“How did Laura take it?”
“They had to stop questioning her. She’s in the Sandson General Hospital. Shock and hysteria. They’re fools to bother her,” she said hotly. “Laura goes all green if somebody steps on a bug.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No, I couldn’t. And I couldn’t stand going to classes today, Joe. Start the car. Take me away from here. Drive fast, Joe.”
We didn’t get back until late afternoon. We bought a paper and read it together.
MYSTERY DEATH OF COLLEGE STUDENT.
That’s the way they covered it, speaking neither of suicide nor murder, but hinting at murder.
Bradford Carroll, accompanied by a coed to whom he was secretly married, registered in at a local tourist court at ten o’clock last night. He was discovered shortly before three this morning by the proprietor of the court — who was attracted by the light which was left on. His throat had been cut with a straight razor which was found near his right hand.
Police took the coed into custody. She had returned to her sorority house some time before the body was discovered. Police report that before his wife collapsed, she testified that Carroll had been alive when she left, at approximately ten minutes of two.
Carrol, a senior at West Coast University, was a member of Gamma U, that same hard-luck fraternity which lost through suicide and accidental death, five members during the previous school year.
From there on the article went into his history and the school groups of which he was a member.
“It’s a ghastly thing,” Tilly said. “The police,” I said, “promise an early solution of Carroll’s mysterious death.”
A friend of Tilly’s came over to the car. Tilly introduced us. The girl said, “How do you like the new ruling, kids?”
“Haven’t seen it yet.”
“No? It’s on all the bulletin boards. Curfew for all students living on the campus in either houses or dorms. All special senior privileges rescinded. Now we stand a bed check just like the lower classes. All absences from living quarters after eleven are to be reported to the office of the dean until further notice. How do you like that?”
“I don’t,” Tilly said. “But what else can they do? Anxious parents will be giving the school a very bad time. They’ve got to have some sort of an answer.”
I dropped Tilly with a promise to pick her up later, and went to the house. Step Krindall looked as glum as his round pink face permitted.
“Special meeting tonight,” he said.
Bill Armand was standing in the lounge, staring out the windows toward the palms that bordered the drive. He gave me a crooked smile.
“Come to college for a liberal education,” he said. “Where have you been all day?”
“Comforting the shaken.”
“Tilly? When you need a stand-in, let me know.”
I was surprised at the sudden feeling of jealousy. “Sure, Bill,” I said easily. “What’s the voting around here? Murder or suicide?”
“The dopes, which I might say covers about ninety percent of our membership, favor suicide. They overlook the very real argument that Brad was too selfish to kill himself. He wouldn’t think of depriving the world of his presence for the next forty years.”
“I thought he was your friend!”
“Is friendship blind, like love?”
“Armand, the adolescent cynic. Who stepped on you, Bill? And how hard?”
His lips tightened and his face turned chalk white. He turned on his heel and walked away.
I ate with placid Step Krindall, Arthur, Al Siminik and a quiet senior named Laybourne at a table for four. It was a very subdued meal. Once I went to a slaughterhouse. I saw the look in the eyes of the steer after that first brutal smack between the eyes. Siminik wore that look. Arthur ate doggedly, as though from a sense of duty.
After coffee, Arthur looked up at the dining-room clock. He rapped on his glass with a knife. “We’ll go up to the meeting room in five minutes. You Step — you other latecomers — hurry it up.”
We filed up to the meeting room. It was a meeting without ritual, the lights on full. Arthur took the chair. “We’ll dispense with the minutes of the previous meeting and with the treasurer’s report. This is a special meeting called for a special purpose. What happened last night was a severe shock to all of us. Brad was... our brother and our friend.”
Siminik startled the group by sobbing once aloud. He knuckled his eyes like a small boy.
Arthur went on. “I have talked with the police, just before dinner. It begins to appear that the verdict of the coroner’s jury will be death by his own hand.”
“Nuts!” Bill Armand said loudly.
Arthur rapped for order. “That’s enough, Armand. If you can’t control yourself, I’ll order you out of the meeting. Lieutenant Cord has made it clear to me that he anticipates that some of you will find a verdict of suicide hard to believe and will make some foolish, amateurish attempt to uncover evidence turning it into a crime. Murder. I have called this meeting to tell you that the police intend to deal with any such quixotic impulse very harshly. I will deal with it very harshly from this end. What happened is police business and will be handled by the police. I hope I’ve made myself clear.
“Now for my second point. The students will ask us Gamma U’s innumerable questions. Was Brad depressed? Did we know about his marriage? It will be the duty of each and every one of you as a Gamma U to politely but firmly evade all such questions. It is our duty as Brad’s friends to keep our mouths shut. By that I do not mean to go about with mysterious and knowing looks. Brad is dead. Nothing can alter that. The policy of this house will be to say that Brad had been troubled lately and that we did not know the cause. Any comment?”