I said, “It was nice timing. I remembered afterward that Lola had been glancing at her watch fairly often. Lola must have dropped a couple of steps behind me without my knowing it. After the first time the car backfired, she said ‘Wayne’ and I turned and there—it was just light enough to see her—was Lola with a pistol in her hand aimed right at me. She had a glove—that glove—on the hand that held the pistol. Shall I let that be the second-act curtain, Adrian, while we have another drink?”
Adrian was leaning forward. He said, “Go on. And don’t corn it up.”
I said, “I did corn it up, then and there. I guess Lola wasn’t used to murdering people; she didn’t move fast enough. And, for some reason, I did move fast enough. I had my hand on the gun, over hers, before she pulled the trigger.
“And then we were fighting for the gun, and Lola was plenty strong. And she must have been scared and thought she was fighting for her life, because she fought like a demon for that gun. She almost got it aimed at me again once, short as that struggle was. But it was turned back, pointing at her, when it went off.
“And the car, out on the street fifty feet away, backfired once more after the shot. I just stood there, too stunned to move or to know what had really happened. It didn’t make sense; Lola couldn’t have gone suddenly insane, because the fact that she’d had the glove along—a man’s glove, by the way—and the gun proved she’d planned it.
“But first I was mostly worried about having killed her. I suppose I did silly things. I pulled off the glove and rubbed her hands I started to run for help and ran back because I didn’t want to leave her there alone. And I touched her again and knew for sure that she was dead.”
I looked at Taggert. I said, “One thing I remember out of that frantic first few minutes after I killed her. I heard the sound of footsteps on the cinders of the bridle path and I turned around and said, ‘Hurry! Someone’s hurt!’ But no one came. Whoever had been on the bridle path turned around and went back to the street—when he heard my voice instead of Lola’s. He got in the car—the car he’d made backfire a few times—and drove off. But that part of it I figured out afterwards, while I was walking around wondering what to do.
“And I finally figured it, Taggert, and I waylaid Adrian and had him bring me here. I hadn’t meant him to know that Lola was really dead; I knew he’d think I was acting. But that didn’t matter, since he played along anyway.”
Taggert wet his lips. He didn’t wear his voice quite straight when he asked, “What makes you think I was the man in the car or that he was an…accomplice of Lola’s, if she really tried to kill you?”
“It makes sense that way,” I told him. “She was in love with you. She couldn’t divorce me because she had no grounds—in New York State—and anyway I still have some insurance I took out a few years ago during a prosperous period. A big chunk of insurance, Taggert, enough for you and Lola to take a chance to get.”
I said, “And the plan was worthy of a detective story writer, Taggert, because it was so simple. You’d know how easily complicated plots and plans go astray. This one was so simple as to be foolproof once Lola had pulled the trigger. But even this went haywire—because she didn’t pull the trigger soon enough. Am I right?”
Taggert said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Adrian said, “Maybe I’m being stupid, but—I’m not sure I do, either. How was Lola to get away with shooting you?”
I said, “The story was so simple that even the cops would believe it: We were held up in the park. I tried to jump the holdup man and was shot. And Lola had fainted. If no one had found her in half an hour or so, she’d have come to and screamed.
“They couldn’t have disproved that story with a sledgehammer; it was so simple. There’d be no gun anywhere around that Lola could have used; there’d be no nitrate marks on her hand; my wallet and probably her purse would be gone. Taggert’s backfires would have covered the sound of the shot; nobody would have thought anything of it. If there’d been people around, in the park, Lola wouldn’t have done it tonight; there would have been other nights. The sound of the car backfiring had another purpose too, probably; it could have let Lola know that there was no one going by on the sidewalk immediately outside the park at that point.
“When he heard the shot in the park, Taggert would have come in—as he started to do, until he heard my voice—got the gun and the glove and my wallet and Lola’s purse, and ditched all of them on the way home. Maybe he even had an alibi rigged, just in the remote chance that the cops would doubt Lola’s straightforward story and go nosing around.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “As simple as that, except that Lola didn’t pull the trigger quickly enough.”
Adrian said, “I’ll be damned. When I told you Lola was vicious, I didn’t guess she’d—”
“I told you you didn’t know the half of it, Adrian.”
“But, Wayne,” he asked, “how can you prove it?”
I stood up and backed around the chair I’d been sitting on until I was behind it, with a little more distance between me and them. I rested the gun on the back of the chair, still pointing between them.
I said, “I can’t, Adrian. I can’t prove it in a thousand years, so I told you what the third-act curtain was going to be. I shoot both of you. And myself.”
Adrian’s face started to turn the color of the white window curtain just behind him. He said, “Me? But why? Surely, on account of ten years ago—”
“It’s been more recent than that, Adrian. Taggert is the most recent, but you weren’t ancient history. Maybe she even tried to blackmail you a bit, Adrian, and that’s why you were so glad to learn I’d killed her that you were willing to help me beat the rap or make a getaway. Anyway—”
I turned my eyes back to Taggert. His face didn’t look much better than Adrian’s.
I said, “Adrian’s right, Taggert. I can’t prove a thing. I’m not too sure I want to bother. But you might talk me out of this, with a pen and a paper and full details— including things like where you and Lola bought the gun, and little details you’d have a lot of trouble changing your mind about if you decided to claim the confession was under duress.”
Taggert said, “You’re crazy, Wayne. I didn’t have anything to do with whatever Lola did or tried to do tonight. Even if you’re telling the truth about that.”
“Okay,” I told him, “that’s fine with me. I didn’t think you would, so—”
“Taggert!” Adrian Carr was leaning forward in his chair. “Taggert, you fool! He means this. And what are you confessing to if you write it? Accessory before the fact to a murder that never came off! With a good lawyer—”
I said, “Don’t argue with him, Adrian. I’d just as soon he didn’t. Taggert, get up and turn that radio on. Loud. A regular program, not the short-wave band.”
I had to swing the muzzle of the gun dead center on his chest and let him see my finger pretend to tighten slowly on the trigger, before he got shakily to his feet. He backed over to the radio and turned the switch; I thought he was going to try to do it without looking away from my face, but he didn’t. He turned to face the console to push the button for a broadcast station, and I looked quickly at Adrian and winked.
A little of the color came back into Adrian’s face after that wink and I saw him let out his breath slowly. The radio started to blare as the tubes warmed. Taggert turned back and began to edge toward his chair, and Adrian started to look scared again, though not quite so convincingly this time. But he didn’t really ham it up; there was enough of the real stuff left to carry over.