I went through into the garden. There were lights in the gardener’s cottage, and a man’s shadow moved across the window. I ran up the path to the cottage’s open door, and froze there.
Admiral Turner was facing me with a gun in his hand. It was a heavy-caliber automatic, the kind the Navy issued. From its round, questioning mouth a wisp of blue smoke trailed. Alice lay face down on the carpeted floor between us.
I looked into the mouth of the gun, into Turner’s granite face. “You killed her.”
But Alice was the one who answered. “Go away.” The words came out in a rush of sobbing that racked her prostrate body.
“This is a private matter, Archer.” The gun stirred slightly in the Admiral’s hand. I could feel its pressure across the width of the room. “Do as she says.”
“I heard a shot. Murder is a public matter.”
“There has been no murder, as you can see.”
“You don’t remember well.”
“I have nothing to do with that,” he said. “I was cleaning my gun, and forgot that it was loaded.”
“So Alice lay down and cried? You’ll have to do better than that, Admiral.”
“Her nerves are shaken. But I assure you that mine are not.” He took three slow steps towards me, and paused by the girl on the floor. The gun was very steady in his hand. “Now go, or I’ll have to use this.”
The pressure of the gun was increasing. I put my hands on the doorframe and held myself still. “You seem to be sure it’s loaded now,” I said.
Between my words I heard the faint, harsh whispering of shifting gravel on the garden path behind me. I spoke up loudly, to drown out the sound.
“You had nothing to do with the murder, you say. Then why did Todd come to the beach club this morning? Why did you change your story about the Chardin?”
He looked down at his daughter as if she could answer the questions. She made no sound, but her shoulders were shaking with inner sobbing.
As I watched the two of them, father and daughter, the pattern of the day came into focus. At its center was the muzzle of the Admiral’s gun, the round blue mouth of death.
I said, very carefully, to gain time, “I can guess what Todd said to you this morning. Do you want me to dub in the dialogue?”
He glanced up sharply, and the gun glanced up. There were no more sounds in the garden. If Mary was as quick as I thought, she’d be at a telephone.
“He told you he’d stolen your picture and had a buyer for it. But Hendryx was cautious. Todd needed proof that he had a right to sell it. You gave him the proof. And when Todd completed the transaction, you let him keep the money.”
“Nonsense! Bloody nonsense.” But he was a poor actor, and a worse liar.
“I’ve seen the bill of sale, Admiral. The only question left is why you gave it to Todd.”
His lips moved as if he was going to speak. No words came out.
“And I’ll answer that one, too. Todd knew who killed Hugh Western. So did you. You had to keep him quiet, even if it meant conniving at the theft of your own picture.”
“I connived at nothing.” His voice was losing its strength. His gun was as potent as ever.
“Alice did,” I said. “She helped him to steal it this morning. She passed it out the window to him when Silliman and I were on the mezzanine. Which is one of the things he told you at the beach club, isn’t it?”
“Todd has been feeding you lies. Unless you give me your word that you won’t repeat those lies, not to anyone, I’m going to have to shoot you.”
His hand contracted, squeezing off the automatic’s safety. The tiny noise it made seemed very significant in the silence.
“Todd will soon be feeding worms,” I said. “He’s dead, Admiral.”
“Dead?” His voice had sunk to an old man’s quaver, rustling in his throat.
“Stabbed with an ice pick in his apartment.”
“When?”
“This afternoon. Do you still see any point in trying to shoot me?”
“You’re lying.”
“No. There’s been a second murder.”
He looked down at the girl at his feet. His eyes were bewildered. There was danger in his pain and confusion. I was the source of his pain, and he might strike out blindly at me. I watched the gun in his hand, waiting for a chance to move on it. My arms were rigid, braced against the doorframe.
Mary Western ducked under my left arm and stepped into the room in front of me. She had no weapon, except her courage.
“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “Hilary Todd was stabbed to death today.”
“Put down the gun,” I said. “There’s nothing left to save. You thought you were protecting an unfortunate girl. She’s turned out to be a double murderess.”
He was watching the girl on the floor. “If this is true, Allie, I wash my hands of you.”
No sound came from her. Her face was hidden by her yellow sheaf of hair. The old man groaned. The gun sagged in his hand. I moved, pushing Mary to one side, and took it away from him. He didn’t resist me, but my forehead was suddenly streaming with sweat.
“You were probably next on her list,” I said.
“No.”
The muffled word came from his daughter. She began to get up, rising laboriously from her hands and knees like a hurt fighter. She flung her hair back. Her face had hardly changed. It was as lovely as ever, on the surface, but empty of meaning, like a doll’s plastic face.
“I was next on my list,” she said dully. “I tried to shoot myself when I realized you knew about me. Father stopped me.”
“I didn’t know about you until now.”
“You did. You must have. When you were talking to Father in the garden, you meant me to hear it all – everything you said about Hilary.”
“Did I?”
The Admiral said with a kind of awe: “You killed him, Allie. Why did you want his blood on your hands? Why?” His own hand reached for her, gropingly, and paused in midair. He looked at her as if he had fathered a strange, evil thing.
She bowed her head in silence. I answered for her: “She’d stolen the Chardin for him and met his conditions. But then she saw that he couldn’t get away, or if he did he’d be brought back, and questioned. She couldn’t be sure he’d keep quiet about Hugh. This afternoon she made sure. The second murder comes easier.”
“No!” She shook her blond head violently. “I didn’t murder Hugh. I hit him with something, I didn’t intend to kill him. He struck me first, he struck me, and then I hit him back.”
“With a deadly weapon, a metal fist. You hit at him twice with it. The first blow missed and left its mark on the doorframe. The second blow didn’t miss.”
“But I didn’t mean to kill him. Hilary knew I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“How would he know? Was he there?”
“He was downstairs in his flat. When he heard Hugh fall, he came up. Hugh was still alive. He died in Hilary’s car, when we were starting for the hospital. Hilary said he’d help me to cover up. He took that horrible fist and threw it into the sea.
“I hardly knew what I was doing by that time. Hilary did it all. He put the body in Hugh’s car and drove it up the mountain. I followed in his car and brought him back. On the way back he told me why he was helping me. He needed money. He knew we had no money, but he had a chance to sell the Chardin. I took it for him this morning. I had to. Everything I did, I did because I had to.”
She looked from me to her father. He averted his face from her.
“You didn’t have to smash Hugh’s skull,” I said. “Why did you do that?”
Her doll’s eyes rolled in her head, came back to me, glinting with a cold and deathly coquetry. “If I tell you, will you do one thing for me? One favor? Give me father’s gun for just a second?”