“May I quote you on that?” she asked.
Frank laughed.
She said: “Go ahead, elaborate on that theme some more. I don’t care anything about the solution of the case now. Just keep telling me about what happened in the Pressman household.”
Duryea said: “I’m afraid I can’t give you any of the spicy, salacious details, so dear to the heart of a woman.”
“Why not?”
“It’s all cut-and-dried, all the same old methodical routine pattern.”
“And what’s the pattern?”
“Well,” Duryea said, “we enlisted the aid of the butler, a man who apparently was very much attached to Mr. Pressman. We explained to him what we were looking for, and he made a careful search of the house.”
“What were you looking for?”
“A newspaper with certain phrases cut out of it — three phrases, to be exact — which were pasted together to form a message that was intended as a suicide note.”
“Did he find that paper?”
Duryea nodded wearily. “In the glove compartment of her car.”
“And what happens next?”
“Oh, it means another disagreeable legal chore. I’ve notified Mrs. Pressman to come up here tomorrow morning. The sheriff and I will interview her.”
“Will that be what they call a third degree?”
“It will follow the same old routine pattern,” Duryea said. “We’ll be very courteous and sympathetic. We’ll get her to tell her story over and over. We’ll look for some little discrepancy in it. We’ll ask her about her domestic life, let the questions get more and more personal until she gets really angry... The same old sparring match. She’ll be frightened, desperate, and hopeful by turns. She’ll mix in a few falsehoods with the truth, try to move us with tears, become indignant when we crowd her, make more and more slips, then get rattled, and finally probably break down and tell us the whole story.”
“You make it sound very disagreeable and unromantic,” Milred said.
“I hate to spar with people when their lives are at stake... Although probably her life isn’t at stake.”
“Why not?”
“Women with beautiful figures never get the death penalty.”
“Is that all?” Milred asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you holding out anything else?”
“Oh, just the usual incidentals,” Duryea said somewhat wearily.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, the usual wild-and-woolly clues.”
“Now just what is a wild-and-woolly clue?”
“All the anonymous tips, and things of that sort.”
“You act as though there were hundreds of them.”
“Sometimes it seems that way... Notice that when an airplane is lost dozens of people will come forward to tell of seeing mysterious lights in the mountains, hearing planes flying overhead, hearing crashes, and seeing mysterious flares in the night sky.”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly thoughtful. “I’d never realized before just how many of them there are.”
“It’s the same way with a murder. When a murder has been committed, every crank in the country hypnotizes himself to attach some great significance to some trivial affair.”
“Such as what, in this particular case?” Milred asked.
“Oh, for one thing, Jane Graven, Mr. Pressman’s secretary.”
“What about her?”
“I had an anonymous tip over the telephone that she was having an affair with Pressman and trying to poison his mind against his wife; that she’d probably make some attempt to drag his wife into it; that if she did, I should go after her hammer and tongs.”
“Who gave you the tip — man or woman?”
“A man’s voice.”
“You have no idea who he was?”
“No. I didn’t get a chance to trace the call.”
“Anything else?”
“That woman’s compact that was found on the porch of the house.”
“Have you identified it?”
“I think so.”
“Whose is it?”
“A girl by the name of Eva Raymond. She’s a lady of leisure.”
“Professional?”
“Well, what you might call a gifted amateur with commercial tendencies.”
“I see. And how did her compact get there?”
“I’m not exactly certain,” Duryea said. “She denies it’s her compact. We’re pretty certain she’s lying, but we can account for her time up until midnight of the twenty-fourth. According to the autopsy surgeon, Pressman must have been dead by eleven o’clock. That leaves her out as having anything to do with the murder, but... well, I don’t like it.”
“Don’t like what?”
“All these women in Pressman’s life. It doesn’t sound right.”
“Why not?”
“He wasn’t that kind of a man.”
“Don’t be silly, Frank. All men are ‘that kind’ when they are tempted by good-looking women.”
“That’s the point,” Duryea said. “He wasn’t the type that good-looking women would tempt. He was cold, austere, selfish, undemonstrative, and he lived his life for only one purpose — the pursuit of wealth.”
“Perhaps he had another side to his nature which people didn’t see.”
“Quite possibly,” Duryea admitted, “but if so, it was a side which came out from hibernation only at rare intervals, and sneaked back as soon as it had accomplished its purpose.”
Milred said: “Frank, you’ve got to quit that job.”
“Why?”
“It’s making a dirty, nasty cynic out of you. You’re getting world-weary while you’re still a very young man.”
Duryea laughed. “Oh, it’s just that these things follow a pattern.”
“I’m going to make you get out of that job. I’ll... I’ll just turn Gramps loose — and then you won’t have any job.”
“We’d starve to death in private practice, the way things are now.”
“All right, we’ll starve then... And, in the meantime, what you need is a darn good stiff drink.”
Duryea grinned. “You haven’t any of that delightfully mild liquor from Mexico, have you?”
“I wish I did have. You just need something like that. You— Oh, oh!”
“What’s the matter?” Duryea asked, looking up to see her staring out of the window.
She said: “I’m becoming psychic. Your path is about to be crossed by a little old man who’s unusually active for his years, a man who will ask you if you wouldn’t like a nice, mild drink, and—”
“Do you see that man now?” Duryea asked.
“I see a rattletrap car and a home-made trailer swinging around so that the trailer can be backed up into our driveway.”
Duryea said: “Doggoned if I’m not going to be glad to see the old reprobate. I could just go for one of his cocktails tonight, and I wouldn’t care whether he made it mild or not.”
They heard steps on the porch, and Gramps came in with just a little too much enthusiasm, like a small boy who has been in mischief and tries to overcome the tendency to sneak in quietly by making his feet deliberately loud.
Milred looked at her grandfather appraisingly. “You,” she announced, “have been up to something.”
Gramps’ eyes were as innocent and guileless as clear pools of mountain water. “Up to somethin’? Been sorta traipsin’ around, that’s all.”
Duryea said: “We were talking about one of your cocktails, Gramps.”
Gramps’ face lighted. “Were you now!”
Milred said: “Don’t let him change the subject, Frank. He’s been up to something. I can tell it.”
Gramps grinned at her. “You’ve been associatin’ too much with district attorneys. Maybe a good cocktail will fix you up. How’s for havin’ dinner with me, folks?”