“You’re afraid of him, too.”
“I just dislike him.”
“Go on.”
“I’d notified the Priams of Dad’s heart attack the first chance I got, which was the evening of the day it happened. I spoke to Roger myself on the phone. He seemed very curious about the circumstances and kept insisting he had to talk to Daddy. I refused ― Dr. Voluta had forbidden excitement of any kind. The next morning Roger phoned twice, and Dad seemed just as anxious to talk to him. In fact, he was getting so upset I let him phone. There’s a private line between his bedroom and the Priam house. But after I got Roger on the phone Dad asked me to leave the room.”
Laurel jumped up, but immediately she sat down again, fumbling for another Dunhill. Ellery let her strike her own match; she failed to notice.
She puffed rapidly. “Nobody knows what he said to Roger. Whatever it was, it took only a few minutes, and it brought Roger right over. He’d been lifted, wheelchair and all, into the back of the Priams’ station wagon, and Delia ― Roger’s wife ― drove him over herself.” And Laurel’s voice stabbed at the name of Mrs. Priam. So another Hatfield went with this McCoy. “When he was carried up to Dad’s bedroom in his chair, Roger locked the door. They talked for three hours.”
“Discussing the dead dog and the note?”
“There’s no other possibility. It couldn’t have been business ― Roger had never felt the necessity of coming over before on business, and Daddy had had two previous heart attacks. It was about the dog and note, all right. And if I had any doubts, the look on Roger Priam’s face when he wheeled himself out of the bedroom killed them. He was as frightened as Daddy had been the day before, and for the same reason.
“And that was something to see,” said Laurel softly. “If you were to meet Roger Priam, you’d know what I mean. Frightened looks don’t go with his face. If there’s any fright around, he’s usually dishing it out... He even talked to me, something he rarely bothers to do. ‘You take good care of your father,’ he said to me. I pleaded with him to tell me what was wrong, and he pretended not to have heard me. Simeon and Itchie lifted him into the station wagon, and Delia drove off with him.
“A week ago ― during the night of June tenth ― Daddy got his wish. He died in his sleep. Dr. Voluta says that last shock to his heart did it. He was cremated, and his ashes are in a bronze drawer fifteen feet from the floor at Forest Lawn. But that’s what he wanted, and that’s where he is. The sixty-four dollar question, Ellery, is: Who murdered him? And I want it answered.”
Ellery rang for Mrs. Williams. When she did not appear, he excused himself and went downstairs to the miniature lower level to find a note from his housekeeper describing minutely her plan to shop at the supermarket on North Highland. A pot of fresh coffee on the range and a deep dish of whipped avocado and bacon bits surrounded by crackers told him that Mrs. Williams had overheard all, so he took them upstairs.
Laurel said, surprised, “How nice of you,” as if niceness these days were a quality that called for surprise. She refused the crackers just as nicely, but then she changed her mind and ate ten of them without pausing, and she drank three cups of coffee. “I remembered I hadn’t eaten anything today.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She was frowning now, which he regarded as an improvement over the stone face she had been wearing. “I’ve tried to talk to Roger Priam half a dozen times since then, but he won’t even admit he and Dad discussed anything unusual. I told him in words of one syllable where I thought his obligations lay ― certainly his debt to their lifelong friendship and partner-ship ― and I explained my belief that Daddy was murdered by somebody who knew how bad his heart was and deliberately shocked him into a heart attack. And I asked for the letter. He said innocently, ‘What letter?’ and I realized I’d never get a thing out of him. Roger’s either over his scare or he’s being his usual Napoleonic self. There’s a big secret behind all this and he means to keep it.”
“Do you think,” asked Ellery, “that he’s confided in Mrs. Priam?”
“Roger doesn’t confide in anybody,” replied Laurel grimly. “And if he did, the last person in the world he’d tell anything to would be Delia.”
“Oh, the Priams don’t get along?”
“I didn’t say they don’t get along.”
“They do get along?”
“Let’s change the subject, shall we?”
“Why, Laurel?”
“Because Roger’s relationship with Delia has nothing to do with any of this.” Laurel sounded earnest. But she was hiding something just the same. “I’m interested in only one thing ― finding out who wrote that note to my father.”
“Still,” said Ellery, “what was your father’s relationship with Delia Priam?”
“Oh!” Laurel laughed. “Of course you couldn’t know. No, they weren’t having an affair. Not possibly. Besides, I told you Daddy said I was the only woman in his life.”
“Then they were hostile to each other?”
“Why do you keep on the subject of Delia?” she asked, a snap in her voice.
“Why do you keep off it?”
“Dad got along with Delia fine. He got along with everybody.”
“Not everybody, Laurel,” said Ellery.
She looked at him sharply.
“That is, if your theory that someone deliberately scared him to death is sound. You can’t blame the police, Laurel, for being fright-shy. Fright is a dangerous weapon that doesn’t show up under the microscope. It takes no fingerprints and it’s the most unsatisfactory kind of legal evidence. Now the letter... if you had the letter, that would be different. But you don’t have it.”
“You’re laughing at me.” Laurel prepared to rise.
“Not at all. The smooth stories are usually as slick as their surface. I like a good rough story. You can scrape away at the uneven places, and the dust tells you things. Now I know there’s something about Delia and Roger Priam. What is it?”
“Why must you know?”
“Because you’re so reluctant to tell me.”
“I’m not. I just don’t want to waste any time, and to talk about Delia and Roger is wasting time. Their relationship has nothing to do with my father.”
Their eyes locked.
Finally, with a smile, Ellery waved.
“No, I don’t have the letter. And that’s what the police said. Without the letter, or some evidence to go on, they can’t come into it. I’ve asked Roger to tell them what he knows ― knowing that what he knows would be enough for them to go on ― and he laughed and recommended Arrowhead or Palm Springs as a cure for my ‘pipe dream,’ as he called it. The police point to the autopsy report and Dad’s cardiac history and send me politely away. Are you going to do the same?”
Ellery turned to the window. To get into a live murder case was the last thing in the world he had bargained for. But the dead dog fascinated him. Why a dead dog as a messenger of bad news? It smacked of symbolism. And murderers with metaphoric minds he had never been able to resist. If, of course, there was a murder. Hollywood was a playful place. People produced practical jokes on the colossal scale. A dead dog was nothing compared with some of the elaborations of record. One he knew of personally involved a race horse in a bathroom, another the employment for two days of seventy-six extras. Some wit had sent a cardiac jeweler a recently deceased canine and a fake Mafia note, and before common sense could set in the victim of the dogplay had a heart attack. Learning the unexpected snapper of his joke, the joker would not unnaturally turn shy. The victim, ill and shaken, summoned his oldest friend and business partner to a conference. Perhaps the note threatened Sicilian tortures unless the crown jewels were deposited in the oily crypt of the pterodactyl pit in Hancock Park by midnight of the following day. For three hours the partners discussed the note, Hill nervously insisting it might be legitimate, Priam reasonably poohing and boshing the very notion. In the end Priam came away, and what Laurel Hill had taken to be fear was probably annoyance at Hill’s womanish obduracy. Hill was immobilized by his partner’s irritation, and before he could rouse himself his heart gave out altogether. End of mystery. Of course, there were a few dangling ends... But you could sympathize with the police. It was a lot likelier than a wild detective-story theory dreamed up by deceased’s daughter. They had undoubtedly dismissed her as either a neurotic girl tipped over by grief or a publicity hound with a yen for a starlet contract. She was determined enough to be either.