1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid (13 page)

“Have you seen the papers this morning?” I asked, stretching out on the sand. By turning my head I could still have an exciting view of her.

“You mean the second murder? Do you know who the girl is? Was she the one who met your friend: the one he went with to the bathing cabin?”

“That’s her.”

“Everyone is talking about her.” She reached for her big beach bag and began to hunt around in it the way women do. “It’s most mysterious, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but there’s probably a very simple explanation.”

The heat of the sun was beginning to bother me a little so I turned on my face and moved my body a little more into the shade made by the umbrella. Lying that way I could look directly up at her face. It was something that I would be happy to do any time of the day or night: she really was quite a dish. Possibly the loveliest girl I’ve ever seen.

“Could she have committed suicide?”

“She could have, I suppose, but it is very unlikely. Why stab yourself with an icepick? There are simpler ways.”

“But suppose she killed your friend? She might have felt a need to atone for what she had done. The papers say she was very religious. She might have felt the only way to atone was to die the way he had died.”

This startled me.

“For the love of mike! Did you think that up yourself?”

“Well, no. I was talking to some people. One of them said it and I thought it could be right.”

“I wouldn’t worry my brains how she died if I were you,” I said. “That’s a job for the police. She worked at this place out at Arrow Point. The School of Ceramics they call it. Have you ever been there?”

“Why, of course. I go there a lot. I’m just crazy about some of the designs that man Hahn makes. He really is wonderful. Last week I bought a statue of a little boy he made. It was enchanting.”

“Did you ever see the girl there?”

“I can’t remember her. There are so many girls working there.”

“From what I’ve heard, I was under the impression the place was just a tourists’ junk shop.”

“Well, in a way, I suppose it is, but Hahn has a room at the back where he keeps all his newest and best work. Only his very special customers can get in there.”

“So he does pretty well?”

“Of course, and he deserves to. He really is a great artist.”

Watching her, I could see she meant it. Her face was alight with enthusiasm.

“I must go out and take a look one of these days. Maybe you would come with me, Miss Creedy? I’d like to look at his best stuff. I’m not a buyer, of course, but good pottery interests me.”

There was a pause. I wasn’t sure if she were hesitating or thinking or what.

“Yes,” she said. “The next time I go I’ll let you know. Will you still be at the Adelphi Hotel?”

“That reminds me. How did you know I was staying there when you called last night?”

She laughed.

She really had beautiful teeth. They were just the right size, even and as white as orange pith. And she didn’t just make a hole in her face the way some girls do when they laugh. Her laugh sent a little prickle up my spine. This girl was certainly getting me worked up. I hadn’t felt this way since my first serious date, fifteen-odd years back into the past.

“I asked Mr. Hammerschult. You must have met him. He knows absolutely everything. I’ve never asked him a thing that he couldn’t answer.”

“That had me a little foxed. I wondered how you knew. To return to the Adelphi: I won’t be there. They’ve asked me to leave. The police have been in and out of my room so often, the management are afraid someone will think there’s a continuous raid on. I’ve got to find a place before tonight.”

“That won’t be easy. It’s right in the season.”

“Well, I’ll have to look.”

I didn’t much like the idea. Usually Jack found our rooms. He had a natural talent for knowing the hotel that had a vacancy. I would call on ten hotels and be told there wasn’t a room to be had. He would pick one and we’d move in straight away.

“You wouldn’t know of any little place that isn’t expensive?” I said, then remembered who I was talking to and laughed. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. That’s not quite in your line, is it?”

“How long are you planning to stay?”

“Until this case is cleared up. It could be cleared up in a week or it may take a month. I don’t know.”

“Could you look after yourself?”

“Why, sure. You don’t imagine I go in for staff back home, do you? Have you something then?”

“It may not be what you want. I have a little bungalow out at Arrow Bay. I had to take it on a two-year lease. I don’t ever go there now. The lease has still a year to run. You could have it if you like.”

I stared at her.

“No kidding?”

“If you want it, you can have it. It’s furnished and there’s everything there. I haven’t been out to look at it for a month or so, but last time I went it was all right. All you need do is to pay the light bills. Everything else is taken care of.”

“That’s pretty nice of you, Miss Creedy.” I was knocked back on my mental heels. “I’ll take it like a shot.”

“If you’ve nothing better to do, we could go out there tonight after dinner. I have a dinner date, but I’ll be free after ten. I’ll have the water and light turned on between now and then, and I’ll bring the key with me.”

“Honest . . . you embarrass me, Miss Creedy. Such service for a stranger. Look, I don’t want to trouble you . . .”

“It’s no trouble.”

I wished I could have got a glimpse of her eyes behind those big goggles. I had a sudden idea I would like to have seen the expression in them. There was something in her voice that told me I was missing something by not seeing her eyes.

She looked at her watch.

“I must go. I’m having lunch with Daddy. He hates to be kept waiting.”

“Better not tell him you’re providing me with a home,” I said, getting to my feet. I watched her slip a short-sleeved dress over her swimsuit. “I have an idea I’m not exactly his favourite man. He might discourage you.”

“I never tell Daddy anything,” she said. “Would you meet me outside the Musketeer Club at ten: then we’ll go on to the bungalow.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Then good-bye for now.”

There was that small smile again that had me practically rolling on my back with my hands and feet in the air. She moved away across the sand and I stood there looking after her.

I thought I had got long, long past the stage of being excited over a girl, but watching the way she moved, the sway of her hips and the way she held her head really did things to me.

II

A
fter I had had a snack lunch, I returned to my hotel and packed my suitcases. I got Joe, the bellhop, to arrange for Sheppey’s things to be sent to Sheppey’s wife. I then wrote her a brief note and included a cheque for a couple of hundred bucks, stressing that this amount would come off the amount I would finally pay her.

By then, it was time for me to attend the inquest. I had my things taken to the Buick and I settled the account. Brewer again apologized for needing my room, but I told him I’d got something else and he needn’t bother his head about me.

I went down to Greaves’s office, where I found him polishing his shoes with a duster.

“You coming to the inquest?” I asked.

“I’ve been told to.” He tossed the duster back in his desk drawer, adjusted his tie and reached for his hat.

“You going to give me a ride down or do I take a bus?”

“Sure, come on.”

On the drive down to the Coroner’s court, I asked him if he had been along to look at Thelma Cousins’ body.

“I wasn’t asked,” he said. “Rankin hasn’t any time for me. Brewer saw her: that’s a laugh, isn’t it? He wouldn’t be able to identify his own mother if they showed her to him on a slab. Not that it would be easy to identify the girl. That hat and the sun goggles she wore made her just any woman in a dark wig.”

I didn’t tell him that he had been wrong about the wig. He wasn’t the type to be told he could be wrong. There were only nine people attending the court. Five of them were the obvious timewasters you always see at inquests, but the other four attracted my attention.

One of them was a girl with rimless glasses with the hard, poker face of an efficient secretary. She was smartly dressed in a grey linen frock set off with a white collar and cuffs. She sat at the back of the court and took down the whole proceedings in rapid shorthand. Then there was a youngish man in a pearl-grey, loose-fitting suit. He had a lot of blond hair that had been crimped in places by a curling iron. Sunglasses completely obscured his eyes.

He sat on one side of the court and looked around as if he were something pretty intellectual. Every now and then he yawned so prodigiously that I thought he would dislocate his jaws. The other two who caught my eye were a couple of glossy, smooth, well-fed men, immaculately dressed, who sat facing the Coroner. I noticed he nodded to them when he came in and again when he finally went out.

The Coroner seemed pretty bored with the whole proceedings. He hurried me through my evidence, listened with a faraway stare in his eyes to Brewer’s stammering statement, didn’t call Greaves and was pretty curt with the attendant of the bathing station. It wasn’t until Rankin got up to say the police were still making inquiries and he would like a week’s adjournment that the Coroner became remotely human. He said hurriedly that he would grant an adjournment, then whisked himself out of sight through a doorway behind his chair.

After I had given my evidence, I had returned to my seat beside Greaves. I asked him if he knew who the two glossy-looking men were.

“They’re from Hesketh’s office,” he told me. “The biggest and smartest attorney on the Pacific Coast.”

“Would he handle Creedy’s business?”

“There would be no one big enough except him to handle it.”

“Know who the blond dude is over there with the pencil at his nose?”

Greaves shook his head.

“Or the girl at the back?”

“No.”

As soon as the Coroner had gone, the blond gentleman slid out of court with no more commotion than water makes leaving a sink.

The two glossy men went over to Rankin and talked for a minute or so before leaving. While I watched them, I missed seeing the girl in grey leave.

Greaves said he would take the bus back. He added he hoped I would keep in touch with him. We shook hands and he went off.

The two glossy men went away and that left Rankin and me alone in the court room.

I went over to him.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“No.” He looked vaguely uneasy. “Not yet. I still can’t get a line on that icepick.” He took out a cigarette and began to fidget with it. “We’re now digging into the girl’s background. She may have been a dark horse.”

“Yeah? Suppose you dig into Creedy’s background,” I said. “That might pay off. Were those two guys representing him?”

“They just looked in to pass the time. They have a case on now, and they were a little early for it.”

I laughed.

“Is that what they told you? You don’t fall for that, do you?”

“Well, I can’t stay here talking to you. I have work to do,” he said, his voice curt.

“Did you see the blond boy in the grey suit? Know who he is?”

“He works at the School of Ceramics,” Rankin said, looking away from me.

“That’s interesting. What’s he doing here?”

“Maybe Hahn sent him down,” he said vaguely. “Well, I’ve got to get moving.”

“If you want me, I’m staying at Arrow Point. I’ve got me a little bungalow out there.”

He gave me a curious stare.

“There’s only one bungalow out at Arrow Point. I thought it belonged to Margot Creedy.”

“So it does. I’ve rented it off her.”

Again he stared at me, started to say something, changed his mind, nodded and went away. I gave him time to leave the building, then I went out to the Buick. The time was now half past four. I asked a policeman who was airing himself on the edge of the kerb where the Courier’s offices were. He directed me as if he were doing me a favour.

I got over to the Courier’s offices a few minutes to a quarter to five. I told the girl at the reception desk that I wanted to talk to Ralph Troy. I gave her my business card and, after a five-minute wait, she took me down a passage into a small office where a man was sitting behind a crowded desk, a pipe in his mouth. He was a big man with greying hair, a square jaw and light grey eyes. He pushed out a big firm hand over the litter of his desk and shook hands.

“Take a seat, Mr. Brandon. I’ve heard about you. Holding called and said you might look in for a talk.”

I sat down.

“I haven’t much to talk about right now, Mr. Troy,” I said, “but I wanted to introduce myself. Maybe in a little while I’ll have something for you. I understand that if I give you some facts, you’ll print.”

He showed big, strong white teeth in a wide smile.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “I aim to print the truth and only the truth, and that’s the only reason why I’m still in business. I’m glad you looked in. I want to put you wise to this town. You’ve heard Holding sound off, now it’s my turn.” He eased himself back in

his chair, puffed smoke at the ceiling, then went on, “There’s an election for a new term coming along in a month’s time. The old gang who have been in power now for five years have got to get back into power or sink. And when I say sink, I mean just that. The only way these boys can keep alive is to continue to keep their paws in the gravy. Take the gravy away and they’re finished. St. Raphael City is one of the biggest money spinners on the Pacific coast. Even without the rackets, it would still make money. It’s the rich man’s stamping ground. There’s everything here. There’s no other place outside Miami that offers so much for the millionaire who wants to relax. This town is in the hands of the racketeers. Although Creedy owns a little more than half of it, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t keep the racketeers out. It so happens he doesn’t give a damn one way or the other so long as his holdings pay off. He isn’t a bad man, Mr. Brandon. Don’t get that idea into your head. I’m not saying he isn’t a greedy one. He wants a return for his money. If the racketeers push up the value of his holdings as they are doing he isn’t objecting. So long as the Casino, the gambling ship, the various night clubs, the five movie houses, the theatre and the opera house, all of which he has financed, pay off, he isn’t worrying his brains that the racketeers, the chiselers, the con men, the dope traffickers and the vice boys don’t cut into his profits, he leaves them alone, and they are smart enough to know it. This town is riddled with vice and corruption. There’s scarcely an official in the Administration who isn’t collecting a cut from somewhere.”