“What happened?”
“Betty mistook him for the cat burglar. I guess they both heard him on the roof. Bruce must have gotten that meat cleaver from the kitchen to go hunting for him. When he opened Betty’s door, she thought it was the burglar and shot him. All these lights weren’t on then. All she could see was a shadowy figure with what looked like an axe in his hand.”
“My God!” Marshall said. “No wonder she’s in shock.”
Derring raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t noticed. I thought she’s been holding up rather well.” He moved out into the hall. “He must have died instantly, because there’s hardly any bleeding. We may as well go downstairs.”
“What about Bud?” Marshall asked.
Derring pointed to a closed door across the hall. “Slept through it all. I looked in on him and he’s all right. No point in waking him.”
Patrolman Nat Thorpe appeared at the head of the stairs and moved toward them. He had a flash camera in his hand.
“All right to take pictures now?” he asked Derring.
“Go ahead. I’m finished.”
They went downstairs together, leaving the policeman alone with the body. When they entered the front room, Meister gave the doctor an inquiring look.
“He died instantly,” Derring said. “Nothing could have been done for him even if I’d been called earlier.”
The added comment seemed to have been directed at Betty rather than the chief, for Derring was looking at her when he said it.
In a low voice she said, “I just wasn’t thinking, Emmet. I was so appalled at what I’d done, all I could think of was to call the police.”
“It wouldn’t have helped to call Dr. Derring first,” Meister said soothingly. “Nobody’s blaming you. Are you settled down enough now to tell us exactly what happened?”
Betty closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “I’ve already told you I thought it was the cat burglar. I shot him. That’s all there is to it.”
Meister gave his head a mild shake. “Not quite. I’ll have to know step-by-step everything that happened just before the shooting.”
She took a deep breath. “All right. It was just two-thirty, because I glanced at the luminous dial of my bedside clock when a noise on the roof awakened me. It sounded like someone walking around up there. Instantly, I thought of the cat burglar, because he always starts on the roof, doesn’t he?”
Meister said, “His M.O. generally has been to climb a drainpipe to the roof, then lower himself by rope to a second-story window. At least we think he uses a rope. We can’t see how else he’d manage. So what did you do?”
“I sat up in bed, took the gun from beneath my pillow and listened. I thought I heard a peculiar rasping sound from the direction of the window at the far end of the hall. Then I heard stealthy footsteps and my bedroom door eased open. A dark figure stood there with a glittering blade of some kind in his hand. I was absolutely sure it was the cat burglar, so I fired. When he dropped, I turned on the light and saw it was my husband.”
“You and your husband had separate rooms, huh?”
There was a long pause before Betty said, “He’d been sleeping in the downstairs study, just off the kitchen. I suppose he, too, heard the noises, went to the kitchen to arm himself with the meat cleaver, then came upstairs to investigate. He must have opened my door to see if I was all right, and so as not to awaken me he didn’t turn on the hall light first.”
Meister opened his mouth to ask another question, changed his mind and closed it again. Marshall suspected he had been about to ask why her husband had been sleeping in the downstairs study when there were several bedrooms upstairs.
Instead he asked, “Why do you suppose your husband was fully dressed? He even had on shoes and socks. Seems if he was awakened from sleep he would just throw on a robe, like you did.”
“He may have just come in,” Betty said. “He was out this evening, and I went to bed while he was still gone. I have no idea when he got home.”
“I see. Incidentally, I checked that hall window upstairs — the one you thought you heard rasping noises coming from. It wasn’t your imagination. The screen’s been cut out.”
“Then the cat burglar actually was trying to get in!”
“Looks like it. The window was still closed but unlocked. Probably he was frightened off before he could push up the window — by your husband upstairs.”
“He had pushed it up!” Betty said. “He may actually have been in the house. I closed the window after phoning the police because there was a draft. I didn’t notice the cut screen, though.”
“It’s cut right out of the frame. Probably he just dropped it on the ground and we’ll find it outside.”
Nat Thorpe came into the room carrying his camera in one hand and the meat cleaver in the other. Hefting the cleaver, he asked, ‘Will we want this, Chief?”
“Sure,” Meister said. “It’s evidence. You get the gun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tag them both and put them in the safe when you get back to headquarters. Have you finished everything else I told you to do?”
“Yes, sir. I took four pictures and I checked all the rooms. There’s a kid sleeping in one, but I took a good look anyway. He didn’t wake up. I couldn’t find any evidence of anything being disturbed anywhere in the house except for that cut screen. At any rate the guy’s not hiding here.”
The chief said, “We’ll see what we can find outside after it turns daylight. Meantime, Mrs. Case, don’t let anyone touch that window or screen. I’ll want a fingerprint man to go over both in the morning.”
“There’s no one here but Bud and me,” she said. “I’ll keep him away from it.”
That was the extent of the preliminary investigation. Meister told Betty he would be back about eight a.m. and that meantime she could have an undertaker come for the body. He and Nat Thorpe departed.
There was no such thing as a public morgue in Runyon City. Dr. Derring asked Betty what undertaker she preferred and she said the Joyce Funeral Home. The doctor phoned Joyce to send someone for the body.
When he hung up, he said to Betty, “Want me to send Virginia over to stay with you the rest of the night?” Virginia was his wife.
Betty shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll be all right.” She glanced at Marshall. “You’ll stay until they come for the body, won’t you, Kirk?”
“Of course,” he said.
“The doctor studied her contemplatively. “Like a sedative before I go home?”
She shook her head again. “I’ll be all right, Emmet. Don’t worry about me.”
Remembering the doctor’s comment upstairs that he thought Betty was holding up well, Marshall almost wished she had expressed a need for a sedative. Aside from her paleness, she didn’t seem very emotionally upset over having shot her husband. Perhaps she was merely forcing herself to be calm, but it struck him that she was succeeding remarkably well.
“Okay,” the doctor said. “If you need me, call or run over.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m sure I won’t.”
When the doctor had left, Betty gave Marshall a pale smile. “Do you suppose I’m in a state of shock, Kirk? I don’t think it’s quite registered on me what I’ve done.”
The question had the effect of relieving him. Quite possibly she hadn’t yet realized fully what had happened and emotional upset would come later.
“It was an accident,” he said. “Don’t brood about it.”
“But I can’t seem to feel anything. I’m not going to pretend to you I still loved Bruce. After this afternoon you know I didn’t. I was planning to divorce him. But I ought to feel something after killing a man I lived with for eleven years. All I feel is sort of dazed. Of course I regret it, but I can’t induce any feeling of guilt.”