Anatomy of a Murder (21 page)

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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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As I settled for our bill in the main dining room Mary Pilant was nowhere to be seen. “Thank you, young lady,” I said to the waitress. “We enjoyed our luncheon immensely—the service, the view, the delicious lake trout—all were superb. I'm sorry we kept you waiting so long and please tell Miss Pilant that we'll surely be back. Don't forget now.”
“Thank you,” the waitress murmured, gliding away to retrieve her tip.
“Hark! the candidate for Congress bestows his first snow job,” Maida jibed sarcastically. “Charm to burn for everyone but his downtrodden steno. Henceforth I'm voting straight Federalist.”
“Ah, the truth emerges,” I fought back. “I've suspected you of ballot-box treachery all along.”
“Aren't you going to try to see her?” Parnell said as we moved out to the lobby. “Mary Pilant, I mean?”
I shook my head. “No use, Parn. Certainly not now at least, while she's playing us this glacial chill. If and when I ever do see her I want to have all the story, or as much of it as we're ever likely to get. I haven't even heard all your story yet, but from the Cheshire cat grin on your face I know you've still got something up your sleeve.” I paused and lowered my voice. “Stand by and watch, now, while I go try to speak to the clerk. You'll see how much use it is to talk with her.”
I moved over to the desk. “Pardon me,” I said. “When we were interrupted this noon …” I began. The clerk looked up and regarded me stonily. “Is there any use?” I said. “Is the gag really on that tight?”
To his credit the little man looked embarrassed as he shook his head. “No use,” he said. “I'm sorry … . I need the job.”
“But you'll have to tell me eventually,” I pressed him quietly. “I'll get it out of you in court anyway.”
He stared at me blankly for a moment and then glanced toward the dining room. “Will you?” he said, and turned away. I wheeled around and, yes, Mary Pilant was standing motionless in the doorway. She smiled and nodded agreeably at me and moved out of sight into the dining room.
“Sad, sad,” Parnell murmured as we left, shaking his head dolefully. “It—it's hard to believe she could stoop to such deception and intrigue. She signaled him, all right, I saw her shake her head, I
saw
her. Ah me, ah me, what a dreary complicated old world … .”
“This really looks like war, Parn,” I said, setting my jaw and doubtless adding three new wrinkles to my already knotted forehead. One thing was plain: whatever her motives, Mary Pilant in her quiet way was every bit the relentless fighter that her late boss had been, the fabulous and unbelievable Barney Quill. “You see, Parn,” I said, “this little lady happens to be suppressing the truth—and truth that we happen to need badly.”
Parnell sighed and shook his head. It grieved him mightily that his sweet Nora-Mary should carry on this way.
 
Before leaving town we drove into the tourist park to get the lay of the land, pausing at the now open gate and the smaller adjoining opening in the fence through which Laura Manion's little dog had lighted her way the night Barney had raped and beaten her. Maida was in a seventh heaven of pleasure just to be present at the scene of so much delicious violence. “And it looks so placid and innocent now,” she breathed. “Brr … .”
The road wound through the park and around under the Norway pines toward the lake and then circled northerly and inland again back to the caretaker's cottage, near which the Manion trailer had been parked, as we guessed from the area of yellowed grass. Parnell asked me to note that the trailer had stood considerably north of the gate, that is, closer to the town and Barney's than the entrance gate itself. I put my hand on the door to get out. “Where you goin'?” Parnell politely inquired.
“I thought I'd go see the caretaker,” I said. “Want to come along?”
“Spare yourself,” Parnell said loftily. “I've seen him already. I didn't waste my mornin' like some I know, standin' around in the town's fanciest bar.”
“Was it worth it?”
“I'll tell you when we get rollin‘—the sight of all these tourists an' trailers is giving me hay fever. Let us away.
A-kerchoo … .”
On the way out of town I paused by a rather obscure two-rut dirt road turning off the main road and running into the woods westerly, away from the tourist park. I pointed. “That would be the road that Barney drove Laura in on when he raped her,” I said.
 
In his morning wanderings Parnell had heard that one of Lieutenant Manion's shots had not only broken the bar mirror but also a bottle of bonded whisky; that Barney had been an expert shot with
all manner of small arms, including rifles, shotguns and pistols, particularly pistols; that he possessed a considerable collection of all types of firearms, again particularly including pistols; that he was reputed to have kept firearms stashed somewhere behind the bar; that he had also kept on the back bar a velvet-covered plaque on which was displayed, for the awe of the tourists, the many medals and ribbons he had won for his shooting prowess.
“I didn't see any medals, Parn,” I said, “and I looked around pretty carefully.”
“Maybe they were buried with the man,” Maida helpfully suggested. “I read somewhere last winter where they'd buried ski wax and goggles and all with a skier who'd broken his neck.”
“The ski wax was probably used to fill the empty brain cavity,” I said.
“The medals were there as late as the night of the shooting,” Parnell said. “One of my local informants had seen them earlier in the evening.”
“I thought Barney didn't allow any of the local peasantry in his place,” Maida said.
“Only a select and fumigated few who regularly behaved—and bathed—up to the new high standards,” Parnell replied. “And presumably only those who were properly awed by the great Barney himself.”
“What about the caretaker, Parn?” I said. “Did you learn anything new?”
“Ah, yes, the caretaker,” Parnell said with relish. “Fine little old man by the name of Lemon. He happened to be in one of the last taverns I hit, merely buying a package of Peerless, he isn't a drinking man he told me. One of the patrons pointed him out and I simply went up and introduced myself and asked me questions. He had no hesitation in answering. Fine, frank little old man—and nimble for his years, too.”
“What'd you find out?” I said. “Beyond the fact that he was nimble?”
“Well, first of all I inquired and learned from him there was no other automobile road leading into or from the park; in other words that Barney lied by the clock when he told Laura Manion he could drive her home another way.”
“Good, Parn, good; we must remember that.”
“I also learned that the caretaker liked the Manions, particularly the wife, and that, to again borrow your coarse idiom, he hated Barney's
guts. He called him a bully and a braggart and said that while officially he frowned upon violence and murder that the town was well rid of him.”
“Fine, fine, Pam. Go on.”
“He also likes Mary Pilant and thinks she's a perfect lady and can't understand why she would ever have worked for such a rogue as Barney much less have been his mistress, which he thoroughly doubted.” Parnell paused. “Yes, a fine observant truthful little old man,” he said, obviously pleased to have dredged up a strong pro-Mary fan in his travels.
“What else, Parn? All this is good, but what else? I can tell you're holding out. Let's have it.”
I was not wrong; with his instinctive Irish sense of drama, Parnell had indeed saved the best for the last. He hemmed and hawed and trumpeted, clearing his throat, and finally spoke.
“Now I'm coming to the good part,” he said. “You see, Polly, at the trial we must be prepared to meet a claim or at least an inference by the prosecution that Barney did not rape our lady in the woods, but rather that the affair was a mutual party, an easy lay, as you might say, and further that it was not Barney who beat her up at the gate but rather her angry and jealous husband up at the trailer,
after
she came home. Do you follow me?”
“That I do, Parn,” I said soberly. “And the possibility has bothered me a lot, as you know.”
“Well, I now think we may have medicine to block any such claim.” Parnell paused, nursing his scoop like a mother her first-born. “Real medicine,” he added mysteriously.
“Speak, man, speak!” Maida broke in. “You're killing me dead.”
“Have patience, my fragile doll,” Parnell gently reproved her. “Well, two tourists who had been staying here for nearly a month—an old couple from Akron—checked out with their trailer early this morning, this here now very identical morning. They had just said good-by to Mr. Lemon and were turning away to depart when the woman remarked, just casual like, passin' the time of day, that she hoped now her nightmares would go away and she could at last get a good night's sleep.”
“What happened?” Maida panted.
“Well,” Parnell went placidly on, “Mr. Lemon naturally asked her what she meant about her nightmares. And she up and told him she still woke up at night hearing the screams of that poor woman at the gate—”
“Are you sure she said
at the gate
, Parn?” I broke in. “Are you sure? This is vital, you know.”
“At the gate,” Parnell answered firmly. “And at precisely eleven fifty-nine, she looked at her clock. I asked the caretaker several times whether she said at the gate and he said he was sure. Then he pointed out to me that this Ohio couple's trailer had been, of all the trailers in the park, the closest one to the gate, and that anyway the shouts
had
to be at or near the gate and not up at the trailer because this Ohio woman was a little deaf and both she and her husband had been awakened by the screams, while he, Mr. Lemon, a light sleeper with good hearing whose cottage is right near the Manions' trailer, heard nary a sound.”
“Lord, Parn,” I said, “this is a wonderful break, wonderful. Did you get their names?”
Parnell patted his breast pocket. “I've got their names and addresses written down in my notebook here. They already told their stories to the state police. And that should surely blast any attempt by the prosecution to move the beating up to the trailer.”
“What else did you find out?” I demanded. “I can see you still got something up your sleeve.”
Parnell frowned and grew serious. “You're right, Paul,” he said. “There's more.” Parnell sighed. “What I'm about to tell you may hold the key to the whole perplexing
why
of this case. I refer to Mary Pilant.”
“Then why so glum, Parn?” Maida said. “Out with it, man.”
“When I rushed into the hotel this noon I was just bursting to tell about it.” Parnell paused and sighed heavily. “After I saw Mary Pilant my little triumph turned to ashes—and then I didn't want to tell, and I still don't.”
“Nora, again,” I thought. “Whatever you think best, Parn” I began—
“But I've got to tell it, it's too important to the case. I don't know precisely how we can use it, if at all, but like much else we have learned today that we probably can't use, this is important to an even bigger thing—it should help us to see and understand our case.” Parnell sighed. “When a lawyer once really
understands
his case, half the battle is won.”
“All right, Parn,” I said quietly.
“I had reached the seventh and last tavern,” Parnell began, “when I ran into a nice-looking young soldier boy who had come in and was having a bottle of pop. I had already heard that the
Army had pulled out so, nosey me, I barged over and asked him if perchance he was with Lieutenant Manion's outfit. He was, and on a quick hunch I introduced myself and said I was there helping Lieutenant Manion's lawyer investigate the fatal shooting and did he know of anything that might help us. It was a shot in the dark.”
“Go on, Parn,” I said, wondering what all this had to do with Mary Pilant.
“Well, with that he looked around and pulled me into a back booth and told me that he did have something on his mind that might help us, he wasn't sure, but anyway he'd better tell me as he was just leaving town.”
“What did he say, Parn?”
“He said that the night before the shooting his bunkmate had been out on late pass and, the night being moonlit and warm and himself a little full of beer, the bunkmate had decided to walk down the beach a way and take a swim in the raw. Well, he was walking along the beach, quietly minding his own business and all, when suddenly he stumbled. He flashed on his flashlight and saw one of his junior officers lying on the sand and, standing some paces away behind a pile of driftwood, a woman whom he recognized only as the good-looking hostess at the Thunder Bay Inn, not even knowing her name. He still don't, as a matter of fact.”

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