Tinchfleld put a cut of tobacco in his mouth and chewed on it for a moment. Then he shut his teeth tight and leaned down and turned the body over carefully, as if he was afraid it would come apart in his hands. The late sun shone on the loose necklace of green stones I had noticed in the water. They were roughly carved and lustreless, like soapstone. A gilt chain joined them. Tinchfleld straightened his broad back and blew his nose hard on a tan handkerchief.
«What you say, Doe?»
Menzies spoke in a tight, high, irritable voice. «What the hell do you want me to say?»
«Cause and time of death,» Tinchfleld said mildly.
«Don’t be a damn fool, Jim,» the doctor said nastily.
«Can’t tell nothing, eh?»
«By looking at that? Good God!»
Tinchfleld sighed and turned to me. «Where was it when you first seen it?»
I told him. He listened with his mouth motionless and his eyes blank. Then he began to chew again. «Funny place to be. No current here. If there was any, ’twould be towards the dam.»
Bill Haines got to his foot, hopped over to his clothes and strapped his leg on. He dressed slowly, awkwardly; dragging his shirt over his wet skin. He spoke again without looking at anybody.
«She done it herself. Had to. Swum under the boards there and breathed water in. Maybe got stuck. Had to. No other way.»
«One other way, Bill,» Tinchfleld said mildly, looking at the sky.
Haines rummaged in his shirt and got out his dog-eared note. He gave it to Tinchfleld. By mutual consent everybody moved some distance away from the body. Then Tinchfleld went back to get his bottle of whisky and put it away under his shirt. He joined us and read the note over and over.
«It don’t have a date. You say this was a couple of weeks ago?»
«Two weeks come Friday.»
«She left you once before, didn’t she?»
«Yeah,» Haines didn’t look at him. «Two years ago. I got drunk and stayed with a chippy.» He laughed wildly.
The sheriff calmly read the note once more. «Note left that time?» he inquired.
«I get it,» Haines snarled. «I get it. You don’t have to draw me pictures.»
«Note looks middlin’ old,» Tinchfleld said gently.
«I had it in my shirt ten days,» Haines yelled. He laughed wildly again.
«What’s amusing you, Bill?»
«You ever try to drag a person six feet under water?»
«Never did, Bill.»
«I swim pretty good — for a guy with one leg. I don’t swim that good.»
Tinchfleld sighed. «Now that don’t mean anything, Bill. Could have been a rope used. She could have been weighted down with a stone, maybe two stones, head and foot. Then after she’s under them boards the rope could be cut loose. Could be done, son.»
«Sure. I done it,» Haines said and roared laughing. «Me — I done it to Beryl. Take me in, you — s — !»
«I aim to,» Tinchfleld said mildly. «For investigation. No charges yet, Bill. You could have done it. Don’t tell me different. I ain’t saying you did, though. I’m just sayin’ you could.»
Haines sobered as quickly as he had gone to pieces.
«Any insurance?» Tinchfield asked, looking at the sky.
Haines started. «Five thousand. That does it. That hangs me. Okay. Let’s go.»
Tinchfleld turned slowly to Loomis. «Go back there in the cabin, Paul, and get a couple of blankets. Then we better all get some whisky inside our nose.»
Loomis turned and walked back along the path that skirted the lake towards the Haines’ cabin. The rest of us just stood. Haines looked down at his hard brown hands and clenched them. Without a word he swept his right fist up and hit himself a terrible blow in the face.
«You!» he said in a harsh whisper.
His nose began to bleed. He stood lax. The blood ran down his lip, down the side of his mouth to the point of his chin. It began to drip off his chin.
That reminded me of something I had almost forgotten.
FIVE
THE GOLDEN ANKLET
I telephoned Howard Melton at his Beverly Hills home an hour after dark. I called from the telephone company’s little logcabin office half a block from the main street of Puma Point, almost out of hearing of the .22’s at the shooting gallery, the rattle of the ski balls, the tooting of fancy auto horns, and the whine of hillbilly music from the dining room of the Indian Head Hotel.
When the operator got him she told me to take the call in the manager’s office. I went in and shut the door and sat down at a small desk and answered the phone.
«Find anything up there?» Melton’s voice asked. It had a thickish edge to it, a three-highball edge.
«Nothing I expected. But something has happened up here you won’t like. Want it straight — or wrapped in Christmas paper?»
I could hear him cough. I didn’t hear any other sounds from the room in which he was talking. «I’ll take it straight,» he said steadily.
«Bill Haines claims your wife made passes at him — and they scored. They got drunk together the very morning of the day she went away. Haines had a row with his wife about it afterwards, and then he went over to the north shore of Puma Lake to get drunk some more. He was gone until two A.M. I’m just telling you what he says, you understand.»
I waited. Melton’s voice said finally: «I heard you. Go on, Dalmas.» It was a toneless voice, as flat as a piece of slate.
«When he got home both the women had gone. His wife Beryl had left a note saying she’d rather be dead than live with a lousy cheater any more. He hasn’t seen her since — until today.»
Melton coughed again. The sound made a sharp noise in my ear. There were buzzes and crackles on the wire. An operator broke in and I asked her to go brush her hair. After the interruption Melton said: «Haines told all this to you, a complete stranger?»
«I brought some liquor with me. He likes to drink and he was aching to talk to somebody. The liquor broke down the barriers. There’s more. I said he didn’t see his wife again until today. Today she came up out of your little lake. I’ll let you guess what she looked like.»
«Good God!» Melton cried.
«She was stuck down under the underwater boarding below the pier the movie people built. The constable here, Jim Tinchfield, didn’t like it too well. He’s taken Haines in. I think they’ve gone down to see the D.A. in San Bernardino and have an autopsy and so on.»
«Tinchfleld thinks Haines killed her?»
«He thinks it could have happened that way. He’s not saying everything he thinks. Haines put on a swell broken-hearted act, but this Tinchfleld is no fool. He may know a lot of things around Haines that I don’t know.»
«Did they search Haines’ cabin?»
«Not while I was around. Maybe later.»
«I see.» He sounded tired now, spent.
«It’s a nice dish for a county prosecutor close to election time,» I said. «But it’s not a nice dish for us. If I have to appear at an inquest, I’ll have to state my business, on oath. That means telling what I was doing up there, to some extent, at least. And that means pulling you in.»
«It seems,» Melton’s voice said flatly, «that I’m pulled in already. If my wife —» He broke off and swore. He didn’t speak again for a long time. Wire noises came to me and a sharper crackling, thunder somewhere in the mountains along the lines.
I said at last: «Beryl Haines had a Ford of her own. Not Bill’s. His was fixed up for his left leg to do the heavy work. The car is gone. And that note didn’t sound like a suicide note to me.»