‘Glyn! What’s happened?’ Her voice was high-pitched and anxious. ‘Was that a shot?’
‘Yes. Stay right where you are. It’s Dester. He’s shot himself. Now, don’t talk. I’ve got to call the police. Lewis has vanished.’
‘But, Glyn.’
‘Get off the line now. I want to phone,’ and I hung up.
I crossed over to the electric stove, turned it off, disconnected it and put it back in the cupboard. In only a few minutes the police would arrive. This was my last free time to make sure I hadn’t left a clue nor made a mistake. I looked around the room carefully. I looked at Dester’s body. I checked the confession note. I pushed the gun a little closer to his body with my foot.
I sat in the lounge, a cigarette burning between my fingers, listening absently to the sound of the rain against the windows. Marian was curled up on the settee, dozing. A bullneck policeman was standing in the doorway, his back to us. The time by the clock on the overmantel was twenty-eight minutes to four.
The rest of the house was swarming with activity. I caught a glimpse of detectives as they crossed the hall either going towards Dester’s study or away from it. Two newspaper men were arguing with a police sergeant. They wanted to talk to me, but the police sergeant wouldn’t let them into the lounge.
It had been barely four minutes after I had telephoned that a prowl car had pulled up outside the house. Ten minutes later, Bromwich had arrived with a squad of homicide men. In less than five minutes, they had found Lewis.
Bromwich had asked me what had happened. I told him I had heard a shot, come down, found Dester in the study and Lewis missing. That was all I could tell him.
‘Okay, sit in the lounge. I’ll talk to you later,’ he said.
First, I went upstairs and put on a coat and a pair of trousers over my pyjamas, then I had come down into the lounge. By that time Marian had been brought over from the garage apartment After Bromwich had found out she had nothing to tell him except that she had heard the shot, he sent her into the lounge with me.
We hadn’t said much to each other. There was nothing we could say with the policeman in the doorway. She had curled up on the settee and closed her eyes.
It was a long wait, and my nerves were crawling. I saw a tall, bony man cross the hall and heard the policeman say, ‘Straight down the passage on your left, doc.’
This bony man was the one who could shatter my plan. I longed for a drink, but I didn’t dare take one. So I smoked and waited. Around four o’clock an ambulance arrived and I saw Lewis being carried out on a stretcher. It was then that I had a sudden terrified feeling that I might have killed him.
‘Is the sergeant all right?’ I asked the policeman at the door.
He turned and looked at me, his small, hard eyes aggressive.
‘Yeah, he’s fine. He’s only got a cracked skull, but there’s nothing else the matter with him.’
It was pretty obvious by the way he spoke he had no time for Lewis. I went on waiting.
At half past four another van arrived. Four men came in carrying a long, black, coffin-like box. I guessed they would be from the morgue. Around ten past five, they recrossed the hall, carrying the box on their shoulders, their knees sagging slightly under its weight.
After being in the freezer for nearly ten days, Dester was at last going to his grave. I turned my head away, feeling sick, and the dull thump of the coffin as it was shifted from the men’s shoulders to the floor of the van, turned me cold.
The first light of dawn was coming through the curtains when Bromwich came in. He walked with a little swagger, and there was a cocky expression in his hard eyes.
‘You two can go to bed. I’ll want you at the inquest. Should be in a couple of days. Sorry to have kept you up.’
I had hidden my clenched fists in my trousers pockets. At his words my fists relaxed once more into shaking hands. ‘Aren’t there any more questions?’ I said, trying to make my voice sound steady.
He grinned. ‘It’s all fixed. I told that cluck Maddux how it was, but he wouldn’t listen. It was as plain as the nose on my face. Dester didn’t want to go into the sanatorium. On the way they quarrelled. He hit her, killed her and planted her out at the forestry station. Then he realized he hadn’t the nerve to go through with the faked kidnapping. He decided to take the easy way out. Did you see his confession note?’
I nodded.
‘There you are. He came back for his gun, shot himself and that’s it.’
I couldn’t believe he meant what he said. Surely he must have had some suspicions that the setup wasn’t quite on the level? Surely the doctor had cast some doubts?
‘Then we can go to bed?’ I said to make sure I had heard him aright.
‘Sure, go to bed. I’ve got to talk to the Press. Maybe they’ll want a word with you before you go. Just stick around for another five minutes.’
‘Is Sergeant Lewis all right?’
‘He’s another cluck. I had an idea Dester would come back. I told Lewis to watch out, but the mug had to walk into a cracked skull. He’ll be all right. He has a head like stone.’
He went out into the hall and started to talk to the newspaper men. Marian and I looked at each other. I managed to smile at her.
‘Well, that seems to be that,’ I said. ‘I guess you’ll want to leave tomorrow, or rather today. I’ll help you find a room.’
She started to say something when the Press moved in. For the next half-hour we answered the questions that were fired at us. They wanted to know about Dester’s private life; if he had quarrelled with Helen, how she had reacted, what I thought of him and her: stuff like that. I was careful to say nothing that could be proved untrue, but I did hint that they quarrelled, and there had been times when he had thrown things around. You couldn’t call him violent, I told them; maybe hasty tempered. I gave them the idea that it didn’t surprise me to hear Helen had died from a blow from his fist.
We got rid of them at last. Bromwich had already gone. Only the policeman at the lounge door remained. He said Bromwich had told him to stay on for a few hours in case sightseers tried to get into the house.
Marian said she would go back to the garage apartment. We arranged to meet again at ten o’clock. I saw her to the apartment.
‘As soon as the inquest is over, Glyn, I’m going to Rome,’ she told me. ‘I want to get away from all this. You are coming with me, aren’t you?’
I still had most of the two thousand dollars that Dester had paid me. It wasn’t a great deal, but I wanted to get away from all this too. I didn’t hesitate.
‘You bet I’m coming.’
‘Will you be able to manage?’ She looked anxiously at me. ‘Will you get your legacy by then?’
I looked at her, not knowing what she meant. Then I remembered I had been crazy enough to have told her before the insurance plan had come unstuck that I was coming into a legacy.
‘Why, no. I don’t think that’s coming off now,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got some money put by. I’ll manage. Maybe I can get myself a job in Rome.’
‘Let’s talk about it at breakfast’
We left it like that. I went back to the house. The policeman was sitting on the terrace, basking in the early morning sun. He had made a pot of coffee, and he nodded at me as I went by and on to the house.
I stood in the hall for a minute or so, trying to realize that I was out of danger. There was the inquest, of course. An inquisitive coroner could ask some awkward questions, but it seemed to me that the main danger was over. It seemed incredible that the plan had succeeded so well. But I had still things to do. There was the soiled cloth in the saucepan I had to get rid of and my pyjamas and dressing gown. As soon as I had the house entirely to myself I would burn them, I told myself.