Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (11 page)

There was a cheerful young man with a car for hire at the airport, and the lights were with them all the way out on Foothill Boulevard. And then finally they were in sleepy little San Bernardino; they were pulling up outside the flat little white hospital on the far edge of town. To the north hung a mountain, scarred with a great pale arrowhead, but the inspector had no eye at the moment for scenic beauty.

He walked up the sidewalk toward the hospital door with his fingers crossed. At the steps he paused, studying the green lawn intently, and then pounced. Inspector Oscar Piper had found a four-leafed clover in the grass, a symbol of good luck everywhere but a thousand times more so here and at this time. It was as good as a true shamrock, at least.

Piper stuck it in his lapel and then went inside. At the desk a starched little nurse sat prissily reading the afternoon paper from Los Angeles. “I want to inquire about an accident case you have here,” he said. “A Miss Hildegarde Withers?”

“Miss Withers?” repeated the girl.

“Yes!” He nodded. “I’ve come a long way and I haven’t got all day to—”

“Member of the family?”

“No. I mean yes. Why—?”

“Her father?” pressed the nurse.

“Father?” he repeated wonderingly. “No, it’s just that I need a night’s sleep and a shave. Come on, where is she?”

“She isn’t here,” he was told.

“Discharged already, huh?” The inspector took a deep sigh for himself.

But the nurse was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but there was no hope for her from the first. Miss Withers died this morning about six.”

The inspector just stood there, not even breathing.

“Everything that could be done for her was done,” the nurse continued. “I have her bill right here.”

The inspector took it, stared at it as if the long column of figures were Chinese. Automatically he reached for a checkbook.

As he started to scribble the check the girl went on: “The moving-picture studio she worked for sent an ambulance to take the body back to Los Angeles. You must have passed it on the way over. I’m sorry, Mr Laval.”

That snapped Oscar Piper out of it as nothing else in the world could have done. “Say that again!” he challenged her.

“I said that I was sorry it turned out—”

“No, the name!”

“Laval? Aren’t you him? Because he was calling long distance every hour or so yesterday to ask about Miss Withers. And I thought—”

“Derek Laval, was that the name?”

She nodded, then began to look worried. “Hadn’t you better sit down? Would you like a glass of water?”

The inspector flashed his gold badge, and his questions suddenly became crisp and official, impersonal as a robot’s. “Did Mr Laval leave a number where you could call him back?”

The girl shook her head.

“Did Miss Withers make any statement before she died?”

“She didn’t recover consciousness at any time.”

“Do you happen to know where the automobile accident took place?” She told him.

As Inspector Oscar Piper came down the steps of the hospital he saw that a gray bank of fog was drifting over the sky from the west. He walked back to his hired car, his fingers twisting the four-leafed clover into a green pulp.

The driver stared at him. “Say, you better have a drink before we start back to Los Angeles!”

The inspector climbed in. “We’re not going back to Los Angeles. Do you know the mountain road to Lake Arrowhead?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then get going—and go slow.” He leaned back in his seat, realizing that if Miss Hildegarde Withers had been sitting beside him she would have corrected his grammar. “Slowly,” he said under his breath.

The car turned right and swung up toward the mountain. “Don’t you worry about my going slow on this road,” the driver opened up cheerfully. “You can’t drive it any other way because of the curves. Why, only the other day there was an accident up here.”

“Was
there?” said the inspector through set teeth.

If the red slayer think he slays

Or if the slain think he is slain.

They know not well
THE SUBTLE WAYS I KEEP,
and pass, and turn again.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

M
R NINCOM WAS IN
the groove. After three days of story conference, broken only by the hours of sleep, he had worried and fretted his corps of writers to the point where he was almost certain to get something spectacular out of them. He worked on the oyster plan—irritate enough and you may get a pearl.

He had them all grouped in the long living room of his mountain hideaway amid dozens of leering animal heads, stuffed and painted sailfish and similar trophies of the hill and the deep. Ash trays were heaping full, pencils were stubby and there wasn’t a decent fingernail in the entire squad.

Nincom marched up and down before the ten-foot fireplace, one hand clutching his little rosewood baton. He stopped, aimed it at nothing.

“I’m not satisfied with the setup, not satisfied at all,” he told them. “This has got to be a
big
picture. Now what”—and he aimed at Melicent Manning—“what does it need to make it
big?”

“It’s the theme that’s weak,” she ventured nervously. “We’ve got a wonderful love story between Lizzie and the lawyer. But it comes to nothing. If we could take out the murders and build up the love …”

Nincom turned to Frankie Firsk. “What do you think of that?”

Firsk hesitated, trying vainly to get a clue to what the great man was thinking. “It’s not a bad idea,” he ventured. “Maybe Lizzie
didn’t
kill her father and her stepmother. Maybe the stepmother killed the father and then committed suicide. And Lizzie wanted to keep the family name clear and she …”

“Sewage,” interrupted Mr Nincom.

“Take out the love story,” suggested Doug August. “Build up the murders. Make it a story of hate. Lizzie murders three or four other people. Townspeople fear her but they’re afraid to talk. A sort of ‘M’ character.”

“I’m having trouble enough casting Lizzie without trying to find a she-Peter Lorre,” Nincom said. “Mr Abend, does your vast experience on the Hungarian stage inspire you to any bright ideas?”

“Brotherhood—that’s the keynote to strike. We can get some social significance in the picture. Lizzie is furious at her father for the way his captains treat the crews of the family whaling ships. She is a direct descendant of Barbara Frietchie, and Lizzie treasures the American flag that old Frietchie designed. She’s a hotheaded idealist, see? This builds up into a family quarrel, and Lizzie strikes a blow in anger. Not for herself, but for the exploited mariners….”

“More sewage,” decided Mr Nincom. “Besides, it was Betsy Ross. Anyway, we’re selling entertainment, not waving flags. Leave that to Warner Brothers; they discovered patriotism.” He turned to Virgil Dobie who was busily making notes on a sheet of yellow paper. “Well?”

“I haven’t been on the story quite as long as the rest of you,” Dobie began. “But here’s something that occurred to me on my layoff. Everybody loves a mystery. So why not leave it up in the air?—did Lizzie Borden bump off her family or didn’t she? At the end leave it to the audience. Is she guilty and fit for hanging or does she go free to marry her lawyer boy friend? The screen goes dark for five minutes while the house lights come on and everybody gives a standing vote. Then the operator flashes the one of the two endings that they’ve chosen….”

“No! No! No! They’ve already got their hats on and are hell-bent out of the theater,” Mr Nincom objected. “It’s a novel idea, but—”

“Novel?” Virgil Dobie laughed. “It’s the newest idea since they invented close-ups. I don’t see why—” He stopped suddenly and motioned toward the door. “Uncle Remus wants something.”

Mr Nincom turned impatiently to face the white-jacketed darky who lurked in the doorway. “I told you we were not to be disturbed for any reason….”

“’Scuse,” said Uncle Remus. “Gentleman to see you. I tole him nothin’ doin”. He come inside anyway.”

“What? Well, tell him—”

“I don’ tell the law nothin,” said Uncle Remus definitely. “He got a big gold badge and he’s mad.” The darky came closer. “It’s about that accident the other day.”

“Tell him that it’s in the hands of the sheriff,” Mr Nincom exploded. “He can get everything he needs from Sheriff Truesdale.”

“Sheriff brought him,” confided Uncle Remus. “This’s a really big law man. Sheriff calls him ‘Mr.’”

Mr Nincom took this, blinked and then nodded. “I’ll try to see them in a moment,” he decided. He turned to his writing staff. “This has nothing to do with you, so let’s not waste any valuable time. We have a release date to meet, you know. So go to your rooms and tear up everything you’ve done on ‘Sequence D’ and start all over. Frankie, you and Douglas see what can be done with Ellis’ part. It’s got to be built up or Cooper will never accept it—”

“I’m for Melvyn Douglas anyway,” Doug August said.

“All right, all right. Virgil, bear down on the comedy situations, especially in the courtroom! … Lizzie’s uncle, old Vinnicum Morse—he ought to be worth building up. Maybe we can cast Guy Kibbee. Or Tom Mitchell. And the ladies of the church … no, you better make them the Woman’s Club to play safe. Anyway, they can be played broader—a sort of Greek chorus of harpies. Remember, all of you, this is a
big
picture. Murder is a
big
theme. Love is a
big
theme. We’ve got both of them….”

He waved them away, nodded to the secretary who had been hammering away on the noiseless typewriter in the corner. “Take a rest, Caroline,” he said kindly. “And while you’re resting you can look up those references I gave you. Oh yes, and call up every place in Los Angeles where they might have ship models. Lizzie’s home should be full of ship models.”

Alone at last, Mr Nincom sat down at his desk and pressed a button, filling the room with the recorded music of a martial band playing the “Finale” from
William Tell.
He conducted this with closed eyes and much flourishing of the little baton. Then, and not until then, the great man signaled that his uninvited guests might enter the Presence.

It was immediately obvious that Uncle Remus had made an understatement when he said that the inspector had a big gold badge and was mad. Oscar Piper was madder than that.

“But why, why do you come to me?” Mr Nincom opened up when he learned the object of the call. “This Withers woman had just started to work in my unit. I know nothing of her except that she seemed to be well recommended. And if she had an accident on the way up here in a studio car it is no affair of mine. Let her heirs bring suit against the studio if they think they have a case. All I know is that the whole thing has inconvenienced me considerably and that—”

“It wasn’t an accident,” interrupted the inspector. “None of these accidents have been accidents.” He chopped off his words as if it hurt him to speak.

“Not
an accident?” Mr Nincom blinked.

“That’s what Inspector Piper seems to think,” interrupted the sheriff in a placatory tone. “I know how you feel, Mr Nincom, and how busy you are. But I have an idea that maybe if you could co-operate for a few minutes and maybe answer a couple of questions, why, it would all be straightened out.”

Mr Nincom was obviously being very, very patient. “Please go on.”

Piper said: “Was it your idea—bringing Miss Withers up here in the mountains?”

“It was not. I often bring my writing staff. But not a technical adviser. I only sent for her because one of the studio executives felt that she was stirring up trouble and it would be a good idea to get her out of town for a few days.”

“I see.” The inspector made a note or two. “Who knew that she was coming up here?”

“Huh? Why, everybody. Anybody. It was no secret. They were trying to find her all over the studio that afternoon, and I suppose anybody there could have picked up the information.”

“Thanks. And this studio car. Where was it kept?”

Mr Nincom was boiling. “My time is worth one thousand dollars an hour—and you keep me here asking silly questions! How should I know where studio cars are kept? In the studio garage, I suppose.” He urged them both toward the door. “If there’s anything more, gentlemen, I hope you’ll go to Mr Lothian or Chief Sansom at the studio. There’s nothing more I can tell you, and I have a staff of writers waiting for me.”

“Funny you’re in such a hurry to get back to them,” the inspector told him, “when you figure that it’s ten to one that you’re nursing a murderer among them.”

Nincom froze.
“What?
What are you saying?”

“A quadruple murderer.” The inspector stood on the balls of his feet like a marksman taking aim. “Emily Harris back in New York. That was one. Saul Stafford was two. The driver, Daniels, was three—and Miss Withers four. Four victims.”

Mr Nincom looked puzzled and annoyed. “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Inspector?”

“That’s what I been telling him,” the sheriff hastily put in. “Things like that don’t happen out here. In New York or those places maybe. But not here.” He unbuttoned the top button of his trousers and exhaled. “Other cars have gone off into Lost Lizard Canyon. Been several accidents along there.”

Nincom nodded. “A dangerous spot in the road. I’ve noticed it.”

“It might be possible to tamper with the mechanism of an automobile,” the inspector said, “so that later—perhaps hours later—it would go out of control.”

Sheriff Truesdale shook his head. “Sounds kinda complicated to me. I’ll believe that when I see it. Now if you had some proof—”

The inspector thought of the envelope in the breast pocket of his rumpled and torn coat and smiled a hard smile.

“I still don’t see what I have to do with this,” Mr Thorwald L. Nincom announced. “I am naturally sorry to lose one of my employees but I’m afraid that your suspicions, Inspector, sound like some plot that one of my writers might dream up. And, frankly, it’s a plot that I would reject instantly. Sheriff Truesdale, I’m surprised that you make yourself a party to—”

“Now, wait a minute,” insisted the sheriff. “I may not agree with the inspector. But the law has to stick together.”