“Who else had a reason to kill them?”
“Bess,” she said harshly. “Lucy was in touch with Bess in Bella City, I could tell by talking to Lucy. Max Heiss was on her track. How do I know what Bess did with Singleton? Maybe he died on her hands and that made her accessory. Bess couldn’t stand a police investigation. Bess has a record going back ten years.”
I stood up and moved towards her and stood over her: “Did you remind Bess of her record, up at Singleton’s cabin, after your brother shot him? Is that why she dropped out of sight and took Singleton into hiding?”
“Figure it out for yourself.”
“You scared her into hushing it up, didn’t you? Purely out of sisterly devotion, of course, to protect your brother, and his income.”
She shifted restlessly in the chair, doubling her legs under her to tighten her defenses. “What other reason would I have?”
“I’ve been casting around for one,” I said. “I thought of something that happened in Los Angeles about fifteen years ago, to a man and his wife and their son. The son was a Mongoloid idiot, and the man hated his wife for giving him that son. When the boy was ten or twelve years old, his father bought a shotgun and took him out on the desert and taught him to shoot. The boy had brains enough to pull the trigger of a shotgun. One night the father handed him the gun and told him to shoot his mother. She was asleep in bed. The boy blew her head off, being eager to please. He wasn’t prosecuted. But his father was, though he hadn’t physically committed the murder. He was convicted on a first-degree charge and put away with cyanide.”
“Too bad for him.”
“Too bad for anybody who tries to do murder by proxy. If you incite an insane person to commit a crime you’re legally guilty of it. Did you know that was the law when you drove your brother up the mountain to Singleton’s cabin and handed him a gun?”
She looked up at me with loathing, the muscles weaving and dimpling around her mouth. On the left side of her head where the knotted veins jerked, her face had swelled lopsided, as if moral strain had pushed or melted it out of shape. The light from the window fell on her like visible heat from an open furnace-door.
“You’ll never bum-rap me,” she said. “You haven’t even got a body. You don’t know where golden boy is any more than I do.”
Her statement turned at the end into a question. I left the question turning like a knife in her brain.
Chapter 28
Lights shone like wit in a dowager behind the windows of the Palladian villa. The green spectrum of its lawns and trees was deepening around it into solid green darkness. I parked under the porte-cochère and yanked at the old-fashioned bell-pull that hung by the side entrance.
A stout woman in an apron opened the door. Her hand left a deposit of white flour on the doorknob. “What is it?”
“Is Miss Treen in?”
“I think she’s busy. Who shall I say is calling?”
“Mr. Archer.”
She permitted me to enter the hallway. I started to sit down on an elegant bowlegged chair, caught her backward look of disapproval, and remained standing. The Chinese gentleman with the wise earlobes was pursuing his timeless journey along the wall, from the lowlands across a river valley into the highlands and up the snowcapped mountain to his shrine. There were seven of him, one for each stage of the journey. There was only one of me, and my earlobes felt inadequate.
Sylvia appeared at the end of the hall, pale and absent-looking in a black suit like a uniform. “I’m so relieved you’ve come.”
“How’s Mrs. Singleton?”
“Not well, I’m afraid. This afternoon was too much for her. The police phoned from Bella City to say that Charles’s car had been found with his body in it. They wanted her to make a formal identification. Before she was ready to leave, they called again. The body had been identified as someone else, some detective. I’m so glad it wasn’t you.”
“So am I. It was Max Heiss.”
“Yes. I found that out. Why was he killed, do yoy know? Why was he dressed in Charles’s clothes?”
“Somebody wanted to have it appear that Charles died in an accident this morning. The body was burned to make it hard to identify.”
Her mouth was pulled thin across her teeth in horror. “There are such dreadful things in the world. Why?”
“There are dreadful things in people’s heads. This one is easier to explain than some. If Charles died in an accident this morning, he couldn’t have died in a shooting two weeks ago.”
“You mean that he did die two weeks ago? You can’t mean that,” she softly prompted the irreversible facts.
“Charles is probably dead, Sylvia. I know he was shot. I think he died of it.”
“Who would shoot Charles?”
“He was mixed up with a woman named Bess. She had other lovers. One of them caught Charles with her in his studio, and shot him. Bess had a police record, and she was forced to cover up the shooting. She took Charles to her husband, who is a doctor in Bella City. Charles died, apparently. No one has seen him since.”
“She has,” Sylvia whispered.
“Who?”
“The woman, Bess. She phoned here a little while ago. I’m certain it was the same woman.”
“You spoke to her?”
“Yes. She insisted on talking to Mrs. Singleton, but Mrs. Singleton was in no condition. The woman didn’t identify herself. She didn’t have to. I knew from what she said that she was – Charles’s mistress.”
“What did she say?”
“That she could give us information.”
“Five thousand dollars’ worth?”
“Yes. She claimed to know where Charles is.”
“Did you arrange to meet her?”
“I invited her to come here, but she wouldn’t. She said she’d phone again at seven to fix a meeting place. We must have the money ready for her in cash, in unmarked bills. Fortunately Mrs. Singleton has the cash on hand. She’s been holding it in readiness ever since she posted the reward.”
“Mrs. Singleton is going through with this, then.”
“Yes, I advised her to. I may be quite wrong. I’ve had no one to turn to. The woman particularly warned me not to call in the police or Mrs. Singleton’s detective agency or her lawyers. She said that if we did, the deal was off.”
“She didn’t mention me, though.”
“If only you would stand by, Mr. Archer. I’m not equipped to handle this kind of – transaction. I wouldn’t even know what to ask for in the way of proof.”
“What sort of proof did she offer?”
“Proof that she knows where Charles is. She didn’t describe its nature and I hadn’t the presence of mind to question her about it. The whole thing took me by surprise. I lacked the wit, even, to ask her if Charles was dead.” She hesitated, then said in a rush of feeling: “Of course I meant to ask her. I was afraid to, I suppose. I put if off. Then the operator asked her to deposit more money, and she hung up.”
“It was a long distance call?”
“I had the impression it was from Los Angeles.”
“How much did the operator ask for?”
“Forty cents.”
“Probably Los Angeles. Bess didn’t give her name?”
“No, but she called him Charlie. Not many people did. And she knew my name. Charles told her about me, I guess.” She bit her lip. “When I realized that, I felt sort of let down. It wasn’t simply her calling me by my first name. She condescended to me, as if she knew all about me – how I felt about Charles.”
“You’d feel better if you knew all about her.”
“Do you?”
“Nobody does. She’s crowded several lives into her first twenty-five years.”