“But they were fond of each other?”
She paused just long enough to confirm my suspicions. “They were very close,” she said, without conviction.
“Did she have much to do with his official life … elections and all that?”
“Not much. She handled the finances, though. I believe they owned everything jointly. I think she wanted him to retire this year but then all political wives are the same: she opposed his going after the nomination, which was good sense because he had no chance of getting it.” She looked craftily into the middle distance, implying that she knew who would be the peerless standard-bearer.
“Would you say that she had a vindictive nature?”
If I had slapped the great woman, I could not’ve got a more startled reaction. “What makes you ask that?” she blustered.
“Oh, I don’t know. It had occurred to me that she might have been the one who threatened Rufus, forced him to confess.”
“Nonsense!” Alarm rippled through the Pruitt, like a revolution in an African anthill; her face turned dark and I was afraid she might have a stroke; but then the odd convulsions ceased and she added, quietly, “Charity could be her middle name. Her life has been one long martyrdom, endured without complaint. She hated politics; she hated the idea of Camilla Pomeroy … as well she might; she almost died when Ellen ran off with a gymnast and the marriage had to be annulled …”
“I thought she married him in a church, properly.” I recalled the photograph of Ellen in wedding veil which the Senator kept in his study.
“No, she was supposed to marry an eligible young man, a fine upstanding lad who might have made something out of her. Two days before the wedding, a wedding which her parents approved of even though she was only seventeen, she ran off with this muscular animal. Her father caught her in Elkton, Maryland and the marriage was duly annulled. Yet in spite of the scandal, her mother took her back without a reproach. Her father …” The butler crept into the room to inform Miss Pruitt that there was a telephone call for her.
She disappeared into the hall. I sat drowsily by the fire. A moment later, she appeared, very pale, and asked me for brandy. I got some for her.
She gulped it sloppily, spilling half of it on her majestic front. I looked about the room to see if the others had noticed anything; they had not; they were deep in their own problems.
“Has anything happened?” I asked.
She dabbed at her dress with a piece of Kleenex; she was, for her, pale … her face mottled pink-gray. “That was Governor Ledbetter. It seems that the papers have got hold of some business deal he and Lee were involved in; something which involved Rufus: the thing he referred to in that confession. A terrible scandal.…”
CHAPTER SIX
1
“Moral turpitude,” said the Senate and they refused to seat the Senator-designate until a committee had checked him out.
The morning was full of meetings and reports in the house. Mrs. Rhodes and Miss Pruitt were especially upset. Langdon was remarkably interested (at last having found a suitable theme for his magazine) and even the Pomeroys delayed their trip back to Talisman City to find out what would happen. To what extent Pomeroy himself was involved in the Senator’s numerous deals, I did not know. As far as I could tell, not at alclass="underline" in this one at least.
After breakfast, I conferred with Winters who, under the ruse of taking some last photographs of the Senator’s study and of Rufus Hollister’s bedroom had returned to the house where he was largely ignored, in marked contrast to his earlier visits.
I found him alone in the study. The wall which had been blown away was now repaired, as far as the brick went. The plastering had not been done, however, so the room had a raw look to it: half paneled and half new-laid brick.
Winters was glancing idly at some of the scrapbooks when I came in.
“Oh, it’s you.” He sounded neutral, to say the least. He looked calmer and happier than usual … with good reason considering that he was now off the hot seat, his case successfully concluded.
“Did you ever go through these?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at a yellowed clipping, dated 1927: a photograph of the Senator shaking hands with a slim woman in a cloche hat.
“Oh yes.”
I tried to read the caption of the picture, Winters tried to turn the page; I deliberately lifted his hand off the page and read the caption: “Senator Rhodes being congratulated on his recent victory in the primaries by Verbena Pruitt, National Committeewoman.”
“Who would’ve thought she ever looked like that?” I was impressed. It was impossible to tell what her face was like in this old picture … but she had had a good figure.
“I don’t think she was ever much,” said Winters; if he was irritated with the abrupt way I had pushed him aside, he didn’t show it.
“What do you think about this new development?”
“What new development?” He looked at me blandly.
“You know what I mean. The business which Hollister was to take the rap for, it’s come out in the papers.”
“The case is finished,” said Winters, opening the 1936 scrapbook.
“Who got the word to the papers?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
“According to the Times the Government has been investigating the Senator’s company for two years.”
“I think that’s right.” Winters sounded bored.
“According to the papers this morning the Senator was just as much implicated as Hollister.”
“Yes?”
“In other words, it doesn’t look as if Hollister was to have taken the rap for the Senator’s misdeeds … in other words, the confession was a phony.”
“Very logical,” said Winters, admiring a Berryman cartoon of Lee Rhodes in the Washington Star.
“I’ll say it’s logical.” I was growing irritated. “Is there any real evidence that Hollister was to take the rap for the Governor and Rhodes? According to the newspaper account, they were all in it equally.”
“What about the papers you got in the mail from your anonymous admirer? What about them? They proved that the Senator had fixed it for Hollister to be the front man. Hollister killed him before he could finish the arrangements … that’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
“You don’t really believe that?”
“Why not?” And that was the most that I could get out of Winters. The thought that someone might have bought him occurred to me again with some force. More than ever was I determined to meddle in this affair.
While he looked at the old clippings, I wandered about the study, looking at the bomb-scarred desk, the books on the shelves. Then, aware that I was going to get no satisfaction out of Winters, I left the study, without a word of farewell. I had about twenty-four hours, I knew, in which to produce the murderer and since I had almost nothing to go on it was a little difficult to determine what to do next. I had several ideas, none very good.
It occurred to me, being of a logical disposition, that I might come to a solution more quickly than not if I were to proceed in an orderly way to examine each of the suspects and then, by collating their stories, arrive at a solution. It sounded remarkably easy; in fact, just the thought of being logical so delighted me that for several minutes I enjoyed the sensation of having solved the murder successfully.