She wrung her hands. They were so dry that I could hear their friction.
“Your husband made mistakes, too. You mustn’t blame yourself entirely.”
She gave me a startled look. “Yes, I was going to tell you. I find I haven’t the heart. But perhaps you know?”
“I’ve talked with a man named Bourke, who runs a detective agency in Hollywood.”
Her hands went to her bosom, and she sighed. Like a frozen flame, dark fire converted into substance, her hair curved over her forehead. It seemed to me that, guilty or not, she was a magnificent woman.
“I was faithful to Abel,” she said. “It’s strange that I should be telling you this. I’ve never discussed it with anyone, I don’t expect I ever will again. I was genuinely innocent. Perhaps I was indiscreet in letting Larry take me places. I didn’t know until today that Abel was suspicious of me, at least to that extent. Of course I knew he was jealous.”
“Any man would be.”
“Any old man, perhaps. You see, I haven’t much pity for him now. It seeped out of me gradually. The last drop of it went today, when he told me what he had done. To put a spy on me!” she said. “When all I’ve thought about in the last six years was looking after him.”
“He told you that he had?”
“Yes, he did. When I came home from the mortuary, I described the dead man to him. I thought he might have seen him at the station. Abel recognized the description, but not from the station. It was a private detective he’d put on my trail some time last fall.”
She rose and went to the window, her shadow looming across the wall like a dark fate, the one who did the cutting:
“He realized what he had done. It was Abel himself who brought that dead man into our lives in the first place. He made that false move against me, and everything else followed from it.” She paused. “Did you really accuse me of murdering Abel, as Larry said?”
“Larry was jumping to conclusions. I admit the possibility occurred to me.”
“Well, I didn’t. Abel killed himself. He couldn’t live with the thought of what he had done. He told me that some time before he died.”
“He committed suicide?”
“I don’t like to call it by that name. He didn’t shoot himself, or take poison. It wasn’t necessary, in his condition. Abel got up out of bed and destroyed the furniture in his room. He broke it up, piece by piece, with his hands. I tried to stop him, but it was no use. He threatened to kill me if I set foot in there. He died of the effort, and the anger with himself. When things were quiet, and I dared to go in, I found him in the wreckage.”
“Why don’t you try for some rest now, Helen? You’ve had a terrible day.”
“I can’t. I’ve had an incredible day, but I can’t even think about sleep.”
“I have some Nembutals at home.”
“No,” she answered brusquely. “I have pills, too. I prefer not to sleep. I know it’s irrational but I have the feeling that if I keep thinking I’ll be able to think where Jamie is.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“Everybody does. I love him most. He’s my son.”
“The chances are Miner is holding him somewhere in the desert.” I told her about Lemp’s “timetable,” which I had given to Forest. “Do you know of any place in the desert where Miner would be likely to take him?”
“No. Fred always hated the desert.” She added thoughtfully: “We have a cabin in the desert. He wouldn’t dare to take Jamie to our own house.”
“It’s worth considering. It might have struck them as good tactics, on the least-likely principle. Is there anybody in your desert house?”
“Not now. We closed it last month for the season. It’s too hot in the summer.”
“Where are the keys?”
“Abel kept them in his desk. I’ll get them.”
She left the room, and returned quickly, looking distraught. “They’re gone.”
“Where is this place? Does it have a telephone?”
“Of course.”
She brought me a telephone and gave me a Palmdale number. At three o’clock in the morning, the call went through immediately. Among husky rumors of transcontinental conversations, I heard the rural telephone ring four times, then four more times. The receiver at the other end was lifted.
“Pacific Point calling,” the operator said.
There was a long pause.
“Is anyone there?” the operator said. “Pacific Point is calling.”
The receiver was replaced. There was a colloquy of operators; then: “I’m sorry, sir, your party does not answer.”
“But there was someone there?”
“I think so, sir. Shall I have them ring again?”
Close to my ear, Helen cried: “Yes! Please! I know he’s there. It couldn’t be anyone else.”
“No, thank you,” I said to the operator, and hung up.
Helen grasped my shoulder with both hands, and shook me: “He’s there! Talk to him. I have to know.”
“No, we might frighten him off. It’s possible we’ve done that already.”
Her emotions were swaying in great surges. She cried with equal passion: “Yes! You’re right. We’ve got to go there, now, immediately.”
“We?”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”
I reached for the telephone. “I’ll notify Forest.”
Her hand closed over mine, slender and strong. “You’ll tell no one. I’m taking no chances, understand. Fred Miner can go Scot free if he gives me Jamie back. He can keep the money–”
“How far is it?”
“About a two-hour drive. We can do it faster if we take the Lincoln.”
“The F.B.I. can do it still faster by plane.”
“I don’t care. I want my boy to be alive when we reach him.” She was obdurate, her mind completely fixed on one final hope. I made no further attempt to argue with her. She was perfectly ready to go alone if she had to.
“Where’s Seifel?” I said. “He might be some use if we run into trouble.”
“He went into the pantry to make himself a drink. He never did come out. Hurry and find him.”
The lights were on in the butler’s pantry, and Seifel had left spoor: a silver pail half-full of melting ice, an icepick floating half-submerged in it, a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey standing open, a wet ring whitening on the black oak sideboard. Animal noises reached me from another part of the house.
I found him in a bathroom, dousing his head in a basin of cold water. The fluorescent light thrust a white shaft through an open door across the master bedroom, making a cross-section of the chaos Helen had described. In his last hour Abel Johnson had gone berserk. The bed had been dismantled, its coverings torn, the drapes dragged down from the windows, the windows and mirrors smashed. The angry man had fought himself to a finish, bringing his life down in ruins around his own head.
Seifel raised his dripping face and reached for a towel. “Don’t mind me, I’ve been sick. Feeling much better now. I should never mix my drinks.” He shuddered behind the towel.
Above the square blue bathtub in one corner of the room, an Aubrey Beardsley drawing was recessed in the wall behind glass. It depicted a young woman with a swan neck, serpent eyes, hair like a tropical forest. She was perfectly drawn, debonair and evil.
“On your horse,” I said to Seifel, who was retying his tie. “We’re going for a ride.”
“A ride? Where to?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Come on. You don’t have to look pretty.”
“One moment. There’s something I wanted to say to you, in private.”