Extra Kill - Dell Shannon (31 page)

And Hackett asked, "But why? What possible
motive—"

"
Eso tiene gracia
,”
said Mendoza, "that's the funny thing. I don't know. I've got a
little idea, but I don't know. Maybe she'll tell us."
 

SEVENTEEN

And it was a curious ending to a curious case, how
readily she told them, eventually.

When they brought her in the next morning and
confronted her with the green plastic laundry bag and its contents,
which had been locked away in Angel's old trunk, she went on talking
for a while about her poor misguided child, so frantic with
unrequited love.

She sat in the chair beside Mendoza's desk, which she
had unobtrusively moved to put her back to the light from the window,
and smiled at him, and at Hackett, at the silent policewoman and the
stolid police stenographer, in perfect confidence. She was in black
today, as glossily turned out as ever—and the little loose fold of
skin at her throat shaking a little as she turned her head from one
to the other, the little strain lines about the eyes (because she
should wear glasses) showing deep, and the raised blue veins on her
hands; the thick, skillful cosmetic mask could not hide the lines and
hollows and shadows.

"Miss Ferne," said Mendoza finally, "it's
really no use, your going on like this. Sooner or later you'll have
to listen to me and believe it. We know Miss Carstairs had nothing to
do with the murders. We know who did, and we have evidence on it. The
salesclerk where you bought that coat on Monday remembers the
incident very clearly—do you know why? Because, as Mr. Horwitz told
us, you never were much of an actress and you can't do character
parts. You overplayed it quite a bit, with that black hairpiece
fastened to a turban, and the fake accent that puzzled everybody
because it was partly French and partly German and partly just your
own idea of how any foreigners talk English. You didn't fool
anyone—the cab driver that night, or the man in the shop where you
bought the serape, or the clerk on Monday—they all knew you were
putting on a very crude act—"

"That's a lie!" she exclaimed. "I can!
I'm a great actress, everyone always said so—it's only jealousy,
I'd be showing these snippy young things today if—"

"We have the whole story from Miss Janet Kent,
too. You make a mistake there in believing she really was devoted to
you. All she was interested in was the money you gave her. Just as
Brooke Twelvetrees was——wasn't he? That's why she fawns on you
and flatters you—that's why she was afraid not to oblige you, when
you came to her last Sunday and asked her—told her—to be ready to
back up an alibi for you for the night of Friday the thirtieth. You
hadn't thought you'd need one up to then, but after we'd found the
body you thought you'd better have one. Miss Kent didn't like it,
though I'm afraid she thought it was an illicit love affair—"

She smiled and smoothed her hair. "Of course.
And that's a lie too, she is devoted to me—simply devoted. Servants
always like me. You probably forced her to tell."

"It's always a mistake to count on other people
in a business like this. They just haven't the incentive, you know,
to go on telling lies. And when she heard that it was a murder case,
she told us all about it. You made quite a few mistakes that night,
and not the least of them was in overlooking all those odds and ends
on the bureau. His hat, and the medicine bottles, and his watch and
pocket-knife, both monogrammed, and the half bottle of Scotch and so
on. It was convenient that you'd also overlooked that laundry bag on
the chair. Into that it all went. But you couldn't face going down
that trap again, so you took it with you.

"You thought you'd covered your tracks so
cleverly, with the act you put on for the cab driver, for the
salesclerk—" Mendoza laughed and shrugged. "You have a
most unfortunate love of wild Gothic melodrama, Miss Ferne—no
appreciation of dramatic subtleties at all! As I daresay directors
have told you—many years ago." He let some contempt show in
his eyes.

"A lie," she said in automatic reaction,
"it's all lies."

"But things went on going wrong, we found the
body, and that brought you into it—when we'd identified him—if
only on the outskirts of the case. And when you talked to your dear
friend Cara Kingman on Monday, she told you that the police had
connected with the murder a woman wearing a light-colored coat with
dark bands of trimming on the cuffs and front panels. That really
frightened you, because you still had the coat—"

“
Angel had it. You found it."

"I mean the real coat," said Mendoza
patiently, "the one you were wearing that night."

"You don't know," she said almost slyly. "I
never owned a coat like that in my life. You don't know."

"But I do," and he smiled gently at her. "I
had to do a little serious thinking on it, but it came to me. It was
your fur coat you were wearing that night, wasn't it? That specially
made brown mink with the white satin lining. It was the one halfway
clever idea you had—to turn it inside out and wear it that way when
you needed a quick disguise. People could see what you'd done in good
light, of course, but in the dark like that, it was quite effective.
Only the fur on the inside borders still showed, to look like
trimming in the dark. And the rain ruined the lining, didn't it? You
were afraid to send it to the cleaners, they'd be bound to ask
questions and remember. When we searched your house last night, one
of my men examined it, and we've gone back just since you've been
here, to impound it as evidence."

"You can't do that—"

"I'm afraid it's quite legal. As I say, you were
frightened when we got that close to home, and you went on making
mistakes by most unnecessarily trying to cast suspicion on your
daughter. And most ineptly! The rawest new rookie in uniform could
have followed the trail you left. You had a long hunt for a coat made
just like that, you spent most of the day at it, in your crude
disguise, and we've found several clerks who remember you and your
specific request. You finally found what you wanted at a small shop
called Betty Jo's, on Beverly Boulevard, at about four-thirty. You
paid thirty-seven-fifty for it. You hid that damning laundry bag in
your daughter's trunk that evening, put the coat in her wardrobe. Had
you kept the bag in case you needed a scapegoat? I think so. You
didn't have a chance to plant them in Miss Carstairs' room until she
decided to go out to a movie. You knew where she kept the key to her
trunk—but you'd decided to be bold about the coat, which was a very
stupid mistake too .... Once you'd gone to all this trouble, you were
really hoping we'd come with a search warrant: I saw how pleased you
were, yesterday morning, when we walked in and saw that coat lying
there. But your daughter's an intelligent grown-up woman, Miss Ferne,
however much you hate to acknowledge it, and you couldn't have forced
her to admit owning that coat and forgetting it, or to believe she'd
been in love with Brooke Twelvetrees." Suddenly he got up and
stood over her. "You were the one in love with
Twelvetrees—weren't you?"

She looked up at him for a long minute, wide-eyed, a
little smile still on her painted mouth. Then she said, "You're
much cleverer than I thought the police were. You do know, don't
you?"

"We know. We know all about it, Miss Ferne. But
maybe you'd like to give us your version."

She fitted a new cigarette into the jeweled holder
and he leaned to light it for her. "I wonder—it might be good
publicity." She laughed. "You know what they say about
publicity?—it doesn't matter what you get in the papers for, just
get there! I daresay,"—and her tone was complacent—"I'd
have a number of contract offers, afterward .... I don't believe
Stanley's been trying to do anything, just spite, and besides he's
getting old, losing his grip. I'll get a new agent .... Because of
course I'll get off, nobody would say I was guilty—when they know
why. Not if there are any women on the jury," and she giggled,
and then looked thoughtful. "Or perhaps men would be better.
Yes. I must remember to tell my lawyer. I'll have someone really
good, to put on a good production .... It might be interesting."

"I'm looking forward to it. You were going to
give us your version."

She smoothed her hair, looking up at him sideways,
coyly. "He insulted me, that was why, really. And a lie. Yes, I
did love him—dear Brooke—and I'd been kind to him, awfully kind.
I felt sorry for him, you know, the poor boy hadn't any money but the
pittance Martin could afford to pay him. And he was proud, really he
was, I thought he didn't like to take presents from me, but he always
gave in so charmingly! And he spent too much money on me, at quite
nice, expensive places—"

"Like the Voodoo Club."

"Oh, yes, we went there a lot. It was only fair
I should try to make some return. But he was shy too—I thought—"
she gave a little gasp. “I was sure he loved me too, only he was
too shy and proud to say—because I had more money, and then there
was just the tiniest difference in our ages—"

"Just twenty-eight years' difference," said
Mendoza crudely.

For one moment her face was convulsed with rage.
"You—! It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter—it was a lie, a
lie, a lie! He was going away, he was packing—when I came—he let
me in, we were in the living room but I could see into the—I'd made
up my mind to smooth matters out for him—you know—and tell the
dear boy I returned his love—I'd be proud and happy to marry him—I
knew he'd been hesitating to—you know—try his fortune with me.
And he—and he—it was a lie, of course, he was drunk or he'd gone
mad or something! I told him and he swore at me, he called me—"

"An old hag," said Mendoza softly. (And
this was it, the offbeat little idea in his mind.) "He said
you're an old desiccated bag of bones, a wrinkled mummy, he'd as soon
go to bed with his grandmother—a silly old painted bitch pretending
to be sixteen—" And he stepped back quickly from her clawing
fingers, and Hackett and the policewoman took her by the shoulders
and forced her down to the chair again. She sat rigid for a minute,
and the mask of rage smoothed out to her usual vapidity. "You
see, I nearly killed you then. Any woman— And he was mad, it's a
wicked, wicked lie, all anyone has to do is look at me," and up
went the manicured hand, gracefully, to the perfect coiffure. "Real
beauty doesn't fade, of course. And I do have enough self-respect to
keep myself up, retain the youthful outlook—that's the great
secret. You remember that, dear," she said condescendingly to
the policewoman. "But even though I knew it was a lie—as
anyone can see—I, well, I suppose I lost my temper. Just for a
minute. I slapped him, I know, and he must have been frightened—of
me, imagine!—because he stepped back and picked up that gun. I'd
given it to him, you know—silly boy, it made him feel like an
adventurer or something, I think—it was an old one of Bill's. He
couldn't ever have shot anyone with it, he didn't have the courage
for that. I reached for it and got it away from him—really you
could say it was self-defense!—and I must have hit him with it,
because he fell down and when I felt him, well, he was dead. It was
his own fault, he shouldn't have lied to me like that! You can see
how it was."

"I can see. So you started to leave."

"Well, there wasn't anything else to do, was
there? He was dead, and while it was his own fault, I didn't want to
be connected . . . It was raining quite hard then, and when I opened
the door—I'd left my car on the street that time, very
foolishly—there was this sudden great flash of lightning, it lit up
everything—"

"Including the police car sitting right outside.
And the driver. And its number. Yes, I know all about that too. And
several people have identified the gun. It was that extra kill that
was your biggest mistake, Miss Ferne .... You thought the driver had
seen you, and you decided—shall we say—you might as well be hung
for a sheep as a lamb? So you thought it over, and went back to get
the gun, and then you found the car had gone. You spent quite a while
hunting it."

She looked down and then up through her lashes,
demurely. "I know that whole thing was foolish, I realized it
almost as soon as it was over. But I was frightened, and not thinking
very clearly—and of course women haven't logical minds, have they?
There wasn't any way to be sure I'd really killed him, that was the
trouble. It was awful, driving all over looking for that car—I
passed several police cars, but I couldn't always read the number,
and I was frantic—and then, it was like a miracle, I saw it just
ahead, stopped, and the roof light showed up its number, the right
one. Seven-four-seven it was. So I went around the block—of course
I'd made sure the gun was loaded .... You know, I hadn't fired a gun
in years, and I was always better with a ride too, but it came back,
if you know what I mean. But I couldn't be sure. So then—I was
thinking much more clearly by that time, of course—I thought, well,
Brooke was leaving anyway, why not just make it look as if he'd gone
away? And then it wouldn't matter about the policeman, no one would
know Brooke was dead. So I went back, and that time I parked behind
the building. I hadn't any trouble getting in, you see, he'd already
put that note for the landlady, with the key in it, on the front
door. And at first I thought of putting everything, Brooke and the
suitcases, into the car, and going down to the beach—but it would
have been awfully difficult, being a woman I'm not very strong, of
course. And then I thought of that funny trap door. I'd only been to
his place once before, you know—he was ashamed of it, I think—but
he'd shown it to me then, because I noticed the hinges on the floor,
such a funny place, and asked. I think it was clever of me to
remember and take the time to bury him. Dead things begin to—to—you
know, have an odor, after a while. I didn't think it needed to be
very deep, just enough. And it was the oddest thing, very lucky,
there was a trowel, just lying there on the couch in the living
room—I can't imagine why. Very lucky, because of course you
couldn't use a spade down there, there wasn't room. It took ages,
after I'd pushed him down there, and I was terribly frightened once
when some people came in—I don't know who. They knocked, and I knew
the door was unlatched—they might come in—so I just closed the
trap and waited. I'd left my purse in the car. I knew there wasn't
anything damaging for them to see. They stayed an awfully long time,
I could just barely hear the voices, you know. I thought they'd never
go—"