CHAPTER FIVE
1
It was another all-night session.
Winters nearly had a nervous breakdown that night and the rest of us were far from being serene. We were interviewed one after the other in the dining room, just like the first night but under more distracting circumstances for police photographers and investigators were all over the place and there was talk that Winters would soon be succeeded by another, presumably more canny, official.
The Pomeroys returned, looking no worse than the rest of us that grisly dawn. The newspaper people were at every window until they were finally given a somewhat muffled and confused statement by Winters. He made no mention of the arrest of Pomeroy, an arrest which had not been legally completed, I gathered, since Mr. Pomeroy was now among us.
I sat beside Ellen in the drawing room. The others, the ones who were not being interviewed, talked quietly to one another or else dozed like Verbena Pruitt in her chair, her mouth open and snoring softly, her hair in curlers and her majestic corse damascened in an intimate garment of the night.
Ellen for once looked tired. Langdon sat some distance away, staring at the coals in the fireplace, wondering no doubt how on earth he was to get a story for Advanceguard out of all this confusion.
“Why,” said Ellen irritably, “do they keep us up like this if Rufus did the murder? Why all this damned questioning? Why don’t they go home?”
“They have to find out where we all were,” I said, reasonably … but I wondered too why the confusion since the police had not only a confession but the confessor’s corpse, the ideal combination from the official point of view: no expensive investigation, no long-drawn-out trial, no angry press demanding a solution and a conviction.
Through the crack between the curtains, I saw the gray dawn and heard the noise of morning traffic in the streets. My eyes twitched with fatigue.
Ellen yawned. “In a few minutes I’m going to go to bed whether they like it or not.”
“Why don’t you? They’ve already got your testimony.” There was a commotion in the hall. We both looked and saw Rufus Hollister departing by stretcher, a sheet of canvas over him. As the front door opened, there was a roar of triumph from the waiting photographers; flash bulbs went off. The door was slammed loudly and Rufus Hollister’s earthly remains were gone to their reward: the morgue and, finally, the tomb.
“Disgusting!” said Ellen, using for the first time in my experience that censorious word. Then, without permission, she went to bed.
After the body was gone, a strange peace fell over the house. The policemen and photographers and investigators all stole quietly away, leaving the witnesses alone in the house with Winters and a guard.
At five o’clock I was admitted to the dining room.
Winters sat with bloodshot eyes and tousled hair looking at a vast pile of testimony, all in shorthand, the work of his secretary who sat a few feet down the table with a pad and pencil.
He grunted when I said hello; I sat down.
He asked me at what time I had found the body. I told him.
“Did you touch anything in the room?”
“Only the corpse’s hand, his wrist, to see how long he was dead, or if he was dead.”
“Was the body in the same position when we arrived that it was in when you found it?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing in Hollister’s room at that time of night?” The voice, though tired, was sharp and impersonal.
“I wanted to ask him something.”
“What did you want to ask him?”
“About a note I received this morning.”
Winters looked at me, surprised. “A note? What note?”
I handed it to him. He read it quickly. “When did this arrive?” His voice was cold.
“This morning at breakfast … or rather yesterday morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“Because I thought it was a hoax. I figured there was plenty of time to give it to you. I had no idea you were planning to arrest Pomeroy so quickly.” This was a well-directed jab at the groin. Winters scowled.
“You realize that there is a penalty for withholding vital evidence?”
“I didn’t withhold it. I just gave it to you.”
A four-letter word of exasperation and anger burst from his classic mouth. We were both silent for a moment. He studied the letter. “What,” he said in a less official voice, “do you think this means?”
“I thought it meant that Hollister was the one who broke into the library that night and got some incriminating documents, or tried to find some.”
“Obviously he didn’t find them.”
“Did you find them?”
The law shook its head. “If we did we aren’t aware of their significance,” he said candidly. “We’ve checked and double-checked all the secret files and, as far as I can tell, there isn’t anything in any of them which would send Hollister to jail, or even the Senator … a lot of fast political deals but nothing illegal.”
“Do you think the Senator might have kept his business transactions somewhere else?” I recalled those mysterious safety deposit boxes belonging to pillars of the Congress which revealed, when opened posthumously, mysterious quanties of currency, received for services rendered.
“I think we’d have found it by now.”
“Maybe the Governor might be able to tell you. He was the Senator’s lawyer.”
Winters sighed and looked discouraged. “I can’t get a word out of him. All he does is harangue me about our heritage of civil liberty.”
“Maybe you can track down who wrote that note and ask them.”
Winters looked at me vindictively. “You picked a fine time to let me know, right after I almost made a false arrest. What was the big idea?”
“Remember that I didn’t see you all day. I got the note in the morning. I went to see Hollister to question him …”
“Then you did talk to him about the papers?”
“I certainly did.”
Winters was interested. “What did you get out of him? How did he seem?”
“I got nothing out of him and, for a man who planned to commit suicide in the next few hours, he was remarkably calm.”
“No hint at all? What exactly happened. Word for word.”
I tried to recall as exactly as possible my conversation, making my bluffs sound, in the telling, more insidiously clever than they were. My testimony was recorded by the silent clerk.
When I finished the Lieutenant was no wiser. “Was anyone else there? Did he mention anyone else’s name?”
“Not that I remember. We were alone. Some newspaper people tried to get him on the phone and …” A light was turned on in my head, without warning. “What time did Hollister die?”
“What time …” Winters was too weary to react quickly.
“The coroner, what time did he fix his death?”
“Oh, about twelve. They’ll know exactly when the autopsy is made.”
“Hollister was murdered,” I said with a studious avoidance of melodrama, so studiously did I avoid the dramatic that Winters did not understand me. I was forced to repeat myself, my announcement losing much of its inherent grandeur with repetition.
“No,” said Lieutenant Winters, beginning to weave in his chair, “he was the murderer. We have his confession.”
“Which was typed by the murderer after he was shot.”
“Go to bed.”
“I plan to, in a few minutes. Before I go I want to make sure that you plan to keep a heavy guard in this house. I have no intention of being the next ox slaughtered.”