“The suggestion came from you, Mrs. Blackwell.”
“No, it was you.”
“I’m sorry, but you brought it up.”
“I did?” She dragged her fingers diagonally across her face, pressing her eyes closed, drawing down one corner of her mouth. Her lipstick was smeared like blood there. “You’re probably right. I’m very tired, and confused. I only have about half a lobe working.”
“It’s the chloral hydrate,” I said, thinking that the drug had some of the properties of a truth serum.
“It’s partly that and partly other things. Before you arrived, I had a very wearing hour with Harriet’s mother. Pauline flew all the way from Guadalajara to find out what had happened. I didn’t know she had so much maternal feeling.”
“What went on in that hour?”
“Nothing, really. She seems to blame me for the family trouble, and I suppose I blame her. Someday, in the brave new world, we’ll all stop blaming each other.”
She tried to smile, and the faltering movement of her mouth charmed me. I would have preferred not to be charmed by her.
“Someday,” I said, “I can stop asking questions. As it stands, I have to go on asking them. What kind of a houseboy was Ralph Simpson?”
“Adequate, I suppose. He worked for us such a short time, it’s hard to say. I don’t like using servants, anyway, which is why we have only the one living in. I’m accustomed to doing things for myself.”
“Is that why Simpson was fired?”
“Mark thought he was too familiar. Mark likes to be treated as a superior being; Ralph Simpson was very democratic. I rather liked it. I’m not really used to the stuffy life.” She glanced up at the ancestors.
“I heard a rumor at Tahoe that Ralph was fired for stealing.”
“Stealing what, for heaven’s sake?”
“It may have been a topcoat,” I said carefully. “When Ralph got home from the lake, he had a man’s topcoat which he told his wife was given him. It was brown Harris tweed with woven brown leather buttons. One of the buttons was missing. Do you know anything about the coat?”
“No. Obviously you do.”
“Did your husband ever buy clothes in Toronto?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Has he ever been in Toronto?”
“Of course, many times. We passed through there on our honeymoon last fall.”
“This coat was bought from a Toronto firm named Cruttworth. Did your husband have dealings there?”
“I couldn’t say. Why is this topcoat so important to you?”
“I’ll tell you if you’ll let me look at your husband’s clothes.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly, without his permission.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“I don’t believe he’ll leave Tahoe until Harriet is found.”
“Then he may be there for a long time. The chances are better than even that she’s dead and buried like Ralph Simpson, or sunk in the lake.”
Her face was ugly with dismay. “You think Burke Damis did this to her?”
“He’s the leading suspect.”
“But it isn’t possible. He couldn’t have.”
“That’s his contention, too.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“I ran him down last night. He’s in custody in Redwood City. I thought that was going to close the case, but it didn’t. The case keeps opening up, and taking in more people and more territory. The connections between the people keep multiplying. Damis’s real name is Campion, as you may know, and he married Dolly Stone last September. She had a child in March, and two months later she was strangled. Campion was the main suspect in her death.”
“That’s incredible.”
“What I find hard to believe, Mrs. Blackwell, is that you were totally unaware of all this.”
“But I was. I hadn’t been in touch with Dolly.”
“There has to be a further connection, though. You see that. Bruce Campion alias Burke Damis married your one-time foster daughter last year. This year he planned to marry your stepdaughter, with your support, and got as far as eloping with her. Coincidences come large sometimes, but I’m not buying that one.”
She said in a small voice: “You’re really suspicious of me.”
“I have to be. You tried to keep me off Campion’s back. You promoted his marriage to Harriet.”
“Only because she had no one else. I was afraid of what would happen to her, to her emotions, if she went on being so bitterly lonely.”
“Perhaps you were playing God with her, the way you did with Dolly? Perhaps you met Campion through Dolly, and put him up to marrying Harriet?”
“I swear I never saw him before he came to this house last Saturday night. I admit I rather liked him. People make mistakes. I seem to have made a mistake about you as well.”
Her look was complexly female, asking me for renewed assurances of loyalty and fealty. Under the threat of the situation she was using all her brains now, and the full range of her temperament. I guessed that she was defending herself, or something just as dear to her as herself.
“Anyway,” she said, “what possible advantage could I derive from serving as a marriage broker to Mr. Damis-Campion?”
The question was rhetorical, but I had answers for it. “If your husband disinherited Harriet, or if she was killed, you could inherit everything he has. If Harriet and your husband were killed, in that order, you could inherit everything they both have.”
“My husband is very much alive.”
“At last report he is.”
“I love my husband. I won’t say I loved Harriet, but I cared for her.”
“You loved your first husband, too, and you survived him.”
Tears started in her eyes. She made an effort of will which contorted her face, and cut the tears off at the source. “You can’t believe these things about me. You’re just saying them.”
“I’m not saying them for fun. We’ve had two murders, or three, or four. Ralph Simpson and Dolly, Harriet, Ronald Jaimet. All of the victims were known to you; three were close.”
“But we don’t know that Harriet has been murdered. Ronald definitely was not. I told you the circumstances of Ronald’s death.”
“I heard what you told me.”
“My husband will confirm my account, in detail. Don’t you believe it?”
“At this point I’d be silly to commit myself.”
“What kind of a woman do you think I am?” Her eyes were intent on mine, with a kind of scornful ardor.
“I’m trying to develop an answer to that question.”
“I don’t admire your methods. They’re a combination of bullying and blackmail and insulting speculation. You’re trying to make me out a liar and a cheat, perhaps even a murderer. I’m none of those things.”
“I hope you’re not. The facts are what they are. I don’t know all of them yet. I don’t know you.”
“I thought you liked me, that we liked each other.”
“I do. But that’s my problem.”
“Yet you treat me without sympathy, without feeling.”
“It’s cleaner that way. I have a job to do.”
“But you’re supposed to be working for me.”
“True. I’ve been expecting you to fire me any minute.”
“Is that what you want?”
“It would free my hand. You can’t pull me off the case – I guess you know that. It’s my case and I’ll finish it on my own time if I have to.”
“You seem to be using a great deal of my time, too. And as for freeing your hand, I have the impression that your hand is already excessively free. I can feel the lacerations, Mr. Archer.”
Her voice was brittle, but she had recovered her style. That bothered me, too. Chloral hydrate or no, an innocent woman holding nothing back wouldn’t have sat still for some of the things I had said. She’d have slapped my face or screamed or burst into tears or fainted or left the room or ordered me out. I almost wished that one or several of these things had happened.