“Why did you refer to him as Mrs. Burke’s alleged brother?”
“They didn’t strike me as brother and sister. They acted toward each other more like – oh – intimate friends who were simply going along with Helen’s gag. I intercepted a couple of knowing glances, for example.”
“Will you describe the man in detail for me?”
“I’ll try. My visual memory isn’t too good. I’m strictly the verbal type.”
But under repeated questions, he built up an image of the man: age about thirty-two or -three, height just under six feet, weight about 175; muscular and active, good-looking in an undistinguished way; thinning black hair, brown eyes, no scars. He had worn a light gray silk or imitation silk suit and pointed low black shoes in the Italian style. Haggerty had gathered that the man Jud worked in some undetermined capacity for one of the gambling clubs in the Reno-Tahoe area.
It was time I went to Reno. I looked at my watch: nearly eleven: and remembered that I would gain time on the flight west. I could still have a talk with Luke Deloney’s widow, if she was available, and get to Reno at a reasonable hour.
I went into the house with Haggerty, called O’Hare Airport, and made a reservation on a late afternoon flight. Then I called Mrs. Deloney. She was at home, and would see me.
Bert Haggerty offered to drive me out to her house. I told him he’d better stay with his father-in-law. Hoffman’s snores were sounding through the house like muffled lamentations, but he could wake up at any time and go on the rampage.
Chapter 21
Glenview Avenue wound through the north side of the north side, in a region of estates so large that it almost qualified as country. Trees lined the road and sometimes met above it. The light that filtered through their turning leaves onto the great lawns was the color of sublimated money.
I turned in between the brick gate-posts of 103 and shortly came in sight of an imposing old red brick mansion. The driveway led to a brick-columned porte-cochère on the right. I was hardly out of my car when a Negro maid in uniform opened the door.
“Mr. Archer?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Deloney is expecting you, in the downstairs sitting-room.”
She was sitting by a window looking out on a countryside where red sumac blazed among less brilliant colors. Her hair was white, and bobbed short. Her blue silk suit looked like Lily Daché. Her face was a mass of wrinkles but its fine bones remained in all their delicacy. She was handsome in the way an antique object can be handsome without regard to the condition of the materials. Her mind must have been very deep in the past, because she didn’t notice us until the maid spoke.
“Mr. Archer is here, Mrs. Deloney.”
She rose with the ease of a younger woman, putting down a book she was holding. She gave me her hand and a long look. Her eyes were the same color as her blue silk suit, unfaded and intelligent.
“So you’ve come all the way from California to see me. You must be disappointed.”
“On the contrary.”
“You don’t need to flatter me. When I was twenty I looked like everybody else. Now I’m past seventy, I look like myself. It’s a liberating fact. But do sit down. This chair is the most comfortable. My father Senator Osborne preferred it to any other.”
She indicated a red leather armchair polished and dark with use. The chair she sat in opposite me was a ladder-backed rocker with worn cushions attached to it. The rest of the furnishings in the room were equally old and unpretentious, and I wondered if she used it as a place to keep the past.
“You’ve had a journey,” she reminded herself. “Can I give you something to eat or drink?”
“No thanks.”
She dismissed the maid. “I’m afraid you’re going to be doubly disappointed. I can add very little to the official account of my husband’s suicide. Luke and I hadn’t been in close touch for some time before it occurred.”
“You already have added something,” I said. “According to the official account it was an accident.”
“So it was. I’d almost forgotten. It was thought best to omit the fact of suicide from the public reports.”
“Who thought it best?”
“I did, among others. Given my late husband’s position in the state, his suicide was bound to have business and political repercussions. Not to mention the personal ugliness.”
“Some people might think it was uglier to alter the facts of a man’s death.”
“Some people might think it,” she said with a grande dame expression. “Not many of them would say it in my presence. In any case the fact was not altered, only the report of it. I’ve had to live with the fact of my husband’s suicide.”
“Are you perfectly certain that it is a fact?”
“Perfectly.”
“I’ve just been talking to the man who handled the case, Lieutenant Hoffman. He says your husband shot himself by accident while he was cleaning an automatic pistol.”
“That was the story we agreed upon. Lieutenant Hoffman naturally sticks to it. I see no point in your trying to change it at this late date.”
“Unless Mr. Deloney was murdered. Then there would be some point.”
“No doubt, but he was not murdered.” Her eyes came up to mine, and they hadn’t changed, except that they may have become a little harder.
“I’ve heard rumors that he was, as far away as California.”
“Who’s been spreading such nonsense?”
“Lieutenant Hoffman’s daughter Helen. She claimed she knew a witness to the killing. The witness may have been herself.”
The insecurity that had touched her face changed into cold anger. “She has no right to tell such lies. I’ll have her stopped!”
“She’s been stopped,” I said. “Somebody stopped her Friday night, with a gun. Which is why I’m here.”
“I see. Where in California was she killed?”
“Pacific Point. It’s on the coast south of Los Angeles.”
Her eyes flinched, ever so slightly. “I’m afraid I never heard of it. I’m naturally sorry that the girl is dead, though I never knew her. But I can assure you that her death had nothing to do with Luke. You’re barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Archer.”
“I wonder.”
“There’s no need to. My husband wrote me a note before he shot himself which made the whole thing very clear. Detective Hoffman brought it to me himself. No one knew it existed except him and his superiors. I hadn’t intended to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because it was ugly. In effect he blamed me and my family for what he intended to do. He was in financial hot water, he’d been gambling in stocks and other things, his business was overextended. We refused to help him, for reasons both personal and practical. His suicide was an attempt to strike back at us. It succeeded, even though we altered the facts, as you put it.” She touched her flat chest. “I was hurt, as I was meant to be.”
“Was Senator Osborne alive at the time?”
“I’m afraid you don’t know your history,” she chided me. “My father died on December 14, 1936, three-and-a-half years before my husband killed himself. At least my father was spared that humiliation.”
“You referred to family.”
“I meant my sister Tish and my late Uncle Scott, the guardian of our trust. He and I were responsible for refusing further assistance to Luke. The decision was essentially mine. Our marriage had ended.”
“Why?”
“The usual reason, I believe. I don’t care to discuss it.” She rose and went to the window and stood there straight as a soldier looking out. “A number of things ended for me in 1940. My marriage, and then my husband’s life, and then my sister’s. Tish died in the summer of that same year, and I cried for her all that fall. And now it’s fall again,” she said with a sigh. “We used to ride together in the fall. I taught her to ride when she was five years old and I was ten. That was before the turn of the century.”