“You’re jumping at conclusions and not being very fair to Stella.”
“Not as bad as what the coroner did, broadcasting a girl’s secrets that way. Ought to be ashamed of himself. Two months’ pregnant, and he puts it in the paper!”
“He had to do that,” she said. “It’s part of the evidence. It shows the motivation for murder.”
“Uh-huh,” Uncle Benedict said.
“What makes you think it was Saturday noon in one picture and Sunday morning in the other?” she asked.
“Use your eyes,” he told her. “Here’s a motel. See all those garages with cars in them?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the sun?”
“What do you mean, where’s the sun?”
“Look at your shadows,” he said. “Here, hand me that ruler.”
She handed it to him. His arthritis-crippled hands moved the ruler over the photograph so that one end was against a patch of shadow, the other end against the top of an ornamental light pole. “All right, there’s the angle of your sun, good and high.”
“All right, so what?”
“Look at the automobiles in the garages. Most motel patrons are transients. They’re hitting the road. They want to come in at night, have a bath, sleep, get up early, be on their way.
“Now, look at this one. Automobiles in almost every garage, and from the angle of the sun it’s either three in the afternoon or nine in the morning. Look carefully, and you can see it’s morning because here’s a cabin with a key in a half-open door. The key has a big metal tag hanging from it so tenants won’t cart it off, and it’s caught the sunlight and reflected it right into the camera. That car got away early. If it had been afternoon the key would have been in the office instead of the door.
“Only one car is gone; most of the people using the motel aren’t traveling and that means it’s Sunday. The guests are weekenders, people who came Saturday to spend a weekend. Spend it where? Not in a motel, unless that motel’s at a beach.
“Now look at this other picture. Warm, sunny day. Hardly any surf. See that wharf out there? Lots of fishermen on it. Those are people who came early and—”
“I don’t see any wharf.”
“Take a good look,” he said.
“That’s just a black spot out there — no, wait a minute—”
“Black spot nothing,” he said. “It’s the end of a pier. See it sticking out there? Take a magnifying glass; you’ll see people all bunched up, fishing at the far end of the—”
“Of course,” she said. “I hadn’t noticed it before.”
“Now, look at the people. Here’s where a road runs down to the beach. Jammed with cars parked all along it. But people haven’t spread out on the north end of the beach yet. On a Sunday the whole thing would be crowded. The way it is now, just about the number of people are on the beach who would have come in those parked cars. They haven’t had to park their cars way uptown and walk down to the beach.
“See the shadow of the automobile? Sun’s pretty much overhead. It’s just about noon. Wouldn’t get that big a play on a beach this time of year except Saturday. Sunday noon it’d be even bigger. All right, what more do you want to know?”
She said, “I’d like to know who owns that automobile.”
“Why don’t you find out?”
"How can I?”
He said, “How many beaches are there around here that have piers sticking out that far? How many motels in that city—”
“What city?”
He tapped the ornamental lighting fixture. “See the peculiar design on that lighting fixture? I could tell you a lot about those fixtures. Pal of mine took over the sale of ornamental lighting fixtures to a city. There’s a great opportunity! That’s real graft. Perfectly legitimate. I guess that’s why I never cared much for it, but I can tell you—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said, “I know where it is myself now. Why in the world didn’t I notice the significance of that ornamental street light before?”
“Preoccupied,” he said. “That’s ’cause you’re in love.”
“I am not!”
“Bet you are! Wrapped up in that Beau Brummell guy they took to prison.”
“I am not, but — I would like to impress him once with Peggy Castle the girl, and not just Peggy Castle the logical thinker.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“I’m going to prove he didn’t commit the murder.”
Uncle Benedict chuckled. “Listen to her, Martha. She wants him to notice her as a cute trick and not as an efficient thinking machine, so she goes out and uses her brain! Don’t use your brain when you’re trying to impress a man, Peggy. Don’t let him think you have any brain. Have curves. Be helpless and—”
“You leave Peggy alone,” Aunt Martha said. “She’s doing it her way.”
Uncle Benedict shook his head. “Men can’t see glamor and brains together, Martha. Either one or the other.”
Aunt Martha put down the teapot. “What did you marry me for?”
His eyes were reminiscent. “Glamor, curves,” he said. “Boy, when you walked out on the stage with tights on, you—”
“So,” she blazed indignantly, “now you’re trying to tell me I haven’t any brains!”
Uncle Benedict shook his head. “Arguing with a woman,” he said, “is like trying to order the weather to suit the farmers. Where are you goin’ in such a rush, Peggy?”
Peggy was dashing for the door. “I’m not going, I’m gone...”
Peggy felt a surge of triumph when within less than an hour from the time she reached the beach city she had located the motel. The proprietress was reluctant to discuss registrations.
“We’re running a decent, clean, respectable place,” she said. “Of course, we don’t ask people to show us marriage licenses every time they come in, but they don’t do that even in the Waldorf-Astoria. We just try to look ’em over and—”
Peggy patiently interrupted to explain that hers was a private matter; that if necessary she could get official authority; but that she didn’t want to and she didn’t think the woman wanted her to.
That secured instant results. Peggy examined the weekend registrations.
The car was 5N20861, registered to Peter Bushnell. Mr. and Mrs. Bushnell had spent the weekend in a cabin.
Peggy could have cried with disappointment. All her hopes were dashed. If she could have proved that Stella had had a boy friend with whom she had spent the weekend, then Stella’s date with Don Kimberly would have looked like a mere business date. But now that had been swept away. Stella had spent the weekend with the Bushnells.
Fighting back tears, Peggy started back to her apartment. Then a thought struck her with the force of a blow. She felt certain Mrs. Bushnell had said that Pete was “still” married to her. Did that mean—?
Peggy frantically consulted the address she had taken from the registration book at the motel. It was a ten-to-one shot, but she was taking it. Peter Bushnell was going to have an unexpected visitor.
She drove rapidly to the address, an old-fashioned, unpretentious, comfortable-looking apartment house.
A card in the mailbox told her Peter Bushnell’s apartment was on the second floor. Peggy didn’t even stop for the elevator, but raced up the stairs to the apartment. A slender ribbon of illumination showed from the underside of the door.
Her heart hammering with excitement, she rang the bell.
Peggy heard a chair being pushed back, and then the door opened and Peggy found herself looking at the face of the man in the photograph. Now it was a haggard face, drawn with suffering.