“It’s a night of coincidences, Mrs. Deery,” Bannion said. “I met him outside and took over the errand.” He held out a neatly wrapped package.
“Well, thank you,” Mrs. Deery said, and moistened her lips.
“We don’t have to worry about the boy from the drugstore now,” Bannion said.
“It’s rather late, you know,” Mrs. Deery said.
“I want to talk to you,” he said, and walked toward her slowly, hands deep in his pockets. She backed away from him, more annoyed than frightened, into the hallway of her apartment. When Bannion closed the door, she said, “You’re acting very strangely, Mr. Bannion.” She glanced down at the peach-colored robe, and then up at him with a prim, dramatic school expression of alarm. “I’m not dressed for company, you know.”
“Don’t think of me as company,” Bannion said. There was a light in the living room, but the hallway and Deery’s study were dark. He snapped on the hall light, and walked into Deery’s study and did the same there. “Light and lust are deadly enemies, Mrs. Deery,” he said. “That’s from Shakespeare, the British playwright.” He glanced around; the ashtray had been emptied, the typewriter covered, but nothing else had been changed.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Deery said.
“I should have seen it, of course,” he said, quietly. He glanced at Mrs. Deery who stood in the doorway regarding him with lady-like exasperation. “I should have seen it because it wasn’t here,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. Tom Deery, a cautious, methodical man, shot himself in this room. His insurance policies were clipped together, his household bills were paid, his whole life was wrapped up in preparation for an orderly death. Still there was something missing — the one thing Tom Deery wouldn’t have forgotten was missing.”
“I think you had better go, Mr. Bannion.”
“The note, that was it,” Bannion said. “There had to be a note. It was inevitable, and its absence should have been instantly noticed. Tom Deery wouldn’t kill himself without leaving a note to explain his reasons.” He glanced at her, his face hardening. “He left a note, of course. Where is it?”
Mrs. Deery sat down on the arm of the easy chair. She looked surprised but far from shaken. “You must be a fool, Mr. Bannion,” she said. “I suppose it was clever of you to find out about it, but you’re certainly stupid if you think I’m going to take it from my pocket and hand it to you.”
“I’ll get it,” Bannion said.
“Oh, no you won’t,” she said, in the tone she might use to deny a child’s unreasonable request. “That note is my trust fund, and I’m not giving it up — to you or anyone else.”
“Trust fund, eh? Then Lagana’s paying you to keep it quiet.”
“Certainly.” Mrs. Deery swung a slippered foot slowly. “I discussed the note with him the day after Tom shot himself. He agreed to pay me a handsome amount of money, in yearly installments, if I destroyed the note.”
“And you did?”
“Of course not. That would have been silly. When I talked with him the note was already in my safety deposit box, with a letter to my lawyer asking him to deliver it to the Director of Public Safety, in the presence of the press, in the event of my murder.” She smiled slightly. “The note is not only a trust fund but an insurance policy, you see. Mr. Lagana will make sure that nothing happens to me.”
“And you told Lagana about Lucy Carroway, I suppose.”
“Why, certainly. You intimated she might know more than she had already told you. That worried Mr. Lagana. Perhaps Tom had told her about the note he was writing or planned to write. She might keep talking, and that was very dangerous, Mr. Lagana thought.”
“So she was tortured to find out what she knew, and then she was murdered,” Bannion said. “You’ve got a lot on your soul, Mrs. Deery.”
“I’m not worrying about it,” Mrs. Deery said smiling. “I had no affection for Lucy Carroway. Do you think it’s pleasant to realize that such a person is having an affair with your husband? I can tell you it isn’t. I hated her, quite frankly, and I have no tears for her now. But I’m no ghoul. I’m sorry her end was so unpleasant.”
“You’re lying. You’re delighted at what happened to her.”
“You have a horrid mind,” she said, smiling up at him, her eyes wide and bright. “Poor Lucy. What a ghastly finish to her shabby little life.”
“You wouldn’t have it any other way,” Bannion said.
She smiled ruefully, as if caught in a small deceit. “You’re right, I believe. I’ve saved the newspaper stories about it, and re-reading them satisfies something deep inside me, Air. Bannion. Something not very nice, I’m afraid. But then I’m not a nice person. I’m glad she got paid off fittingly.”
“You were also glad that your husband blew his brains out,” Bannion said. “And you were glad to find the note. The note he left to make amends for what he had done. You denied him that chance, again quite happily, I’m sure.”
“Oh, Tom was a fool,” Mrs. Deery said, shrugging. “I have no sympathy with death-bed confessions. He was no angel. He was smart. He made enough for us to live decently — at first. He had soul-struggles about it, and finally decided to live on his salary. He never cared about me, of course. He didn’t care that I had no clothes, no jewels, none of the things a woman might expect out of life. It was after his affair with Lucy Carroway that he turned over a new leaf, and isn’t that a ridiculous development, by the way? Imagine anyone seeing the light through an association with that tramp! At any rate, like all men who’ve been tied to their mother’s knee, he suddenly turned back to religion when he lost his nerve. Oh, he got very religious and saintly, Mr. Bannion. He spent eight years worrying about his sins, and finally he decided to absolve himself by ‘telling all’ in a note and blowing his brains out.” She smiled contemptuously. “Fortunately, I got the note instead of the papers.”
“And you’ll hang onto it,” Bannion said slowly. “A whole city is dying in the hands of a gang of thieves, but you don’t care a bit. You’ll protect Stone and Lagana, you’ll save murderers from the chair, you’ll let justice be kicked into the alley, just for the sake of a mink coat and a diamond brooch.”
Mrs. Deery laughed softly, and then wet her lips with the tip of her small, pink tongue. “Go on, Mr. Bannion, you’re really amusing,” she said.
“And you’ll cheat your husband out of his last chance to ease his conscience,” Bannion said, in the same slow hard voice.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Mrs. Deery said, snapping the words out fiercely. “I’ve suffered, and now it’s over. I’m going to enjoy life to the hilt now, and none of your dreary’ moralizing affects me in the least.”
“You think the coming years are going to be good?”
She seemed amused at the question. “Certainly, I do.”
“You’re wrong.”
“They’ll be wonderful years,” Mrs. Deery said, and began to laugh.
“There aren’t going to be any years at all,” Bannion said slowly.
“What do you mean?”
Bannion’s face was hard and gray as he took the gun from his shoulder holster. “Can’t you guess, Mrs. Deery?”
“—You won’t do it.”
“The note will be delivered, then,” Bannion said. “The note with the papers present. That’s the big heat, bright lady. For Lagana, Stone, the rest of our city’s thieving bastards.”
Mrs. Deery slid from the arm of the chair in one fluid, slack movement, and went to her knees before Bannion. She looked up at him, moving her body slowly from side to side, and wetting her pale lips with her tongue. Her mouth opened and closed, her hands made fluttering gestures to accompany the words; but no words sounded.