Stranger At Home (5 page)

“You see, my darling,” he murmured, “it's quite possible that four years ago you said to Harry Bryce, or Bill Saul, or Job Crandall, ‘Look. You are going on a long cruise with my husband, whom I would like never to see again. If by chance anything permanent should befall the son of a bitch, you may have what you will in payment.” His arms tightened. “Christ, that would be worth a murder...”

 “Vick.”

She pressed him back, thrust him away. Not harshly, not in anger. He could not read her eyes. Her face was like a page on which nothing is written.

“Vick,” she said. “There's a car coming. That'll be the police.”

But it wasn't. It was Joan Merrill and a short, shrewd, bald-pated man named Sessions. They came in Sessions' car, and the back seat contained a butler, a cook, and a shapely young person who appeared to be a maid, but only vocationally. She was blond, and Bill Saul made sure that she got safely into the servant's wing.

Sessions caught Vickers' large lean hand in his two small plump ones and wrung it.

“Gosh, it's good to see you again! I'd about given up hope. What happened to you, Vick? Where have you been? Why didn't you let us know you were coming? How is everything? How are you?”

Vickers permitted himself a faintly cynical smile. “Don't overdo it, old boy. You can't be that glad to see me, not unless absence has made your heart grow much fonder than it ever was.” He led the way from the terrace into the living room. Everybody was there, sort of milling about, roosting briefly on some bit of furniture, then rising to mill again. Vickers' deep voice carried clearly.

“Answering chronologically, I got a bang on the noggin that blanked me out for some time; I've been in South America; I preferred not to send word that I was coming; everything's lovely except that we've a corpse on our hands and no good explanation for it; and my physical condition seems to be adequate.”

Joan Merrill said flatly, “A corpse.” She did not seem to have slept at all. She did not seem particularly surprised.

Angie said; “Harry Bryce. Nobody knows how it happened.”

“You got here just in time for the police, Joan,” Vickers told her, smiling. Then, to Sessions, “Are you still my business manager?”

“Naturally. I've taken care of everything while you were gone.”

“I still own a department store?”

“Of course. And I may say that business has improved nearly one third...”

“That's fine. Then you won't need me back for a while.” Vickers went out to find Bill Saul.

Joan Merrill caught Angie's hand. Her eyes were worried and questioning and devoted. She did not speak.

Angie's fingers gripped hers. They were trembling. “I don't know,” she whispered. “Everything's upside down. I... Joan...” The last was a cry for help.

Joan murmured, “Of course, Angie. Always.” Her hand rose casually, almost furtively, to stroke Angie's hair.

A car came into the drive below. Two cars. Three, and one had a heavier motor and no windows in the back. The passenger who rode in that one would have no need of fresh air or a view. Feet began to climb the steps to the terrace. There was a sudden dead silence in the living room. Vickers came back with Bill Saul. A slight nod passed between them. There was something strangely alike about their faces, mocking, inscrutable, and somehow, vaguely, sad. The door chimes sounded. The butler, whose name Vickers did not know, crossed to the door and opened it. He spoke briefly, then turned to Angie.

“Madam,” he said. “The gentlemen from the police.”

Detective-Lieutenant Joe Trehearne, L.A.P.D., Bay Cities Division, Homicide, stood in the dry fine sand above the water line and looked at Harry Bryce. Trehearne was not a large man. He was lean and wiry and intensely dark – his hair, his eyes, his sunbrowned skin. His features were bold, almost harsh, and seemed at some time to have been pushed aside, rather roughly, toward the left.

“What do you think?” he asked.

The M.E. glanced upward. “Six, two, and even, it's murder. Look at that.” He pointed to the back of Bryce's head. “See the shape of the wound? A round lacerated area here – the skull is splintered underneath – and this bruise that runs across the occiput. Looks to me like a bar, or pipe, with a bump at one end. Maybe a coupling, or a nut.”

“You think he was hit?”

“Sure I think he was hit. But hard.”

“But he could have done it falling.”

The M.E. shrugged. “Maybe he could. If he did, he sure went to a lot of trouble to knock his brains out.”

He stood up. “That's, of course, if he had any. He don't look too bright.”

“Men in his condition seldom do.” Trehearne smiled. His mouth was his one jarring note. It was almost beautiful, very gentle, almost sweet. “Know who that is? Or was?”

“All right. Who?”

“Harold Bryce. The Harold Bryce who cleaned up a nice warm million or so in Beverly Hills real estate and then had to scramble to keep off the county.”

The M.E. looked knowing. “Dames?”

“Four wives, and the usual incidentals.”

The M.E. looked down at Harry Bryce and shook his head. “A million, eh? And I'll bet he won't look one bit different from Joe Blow when I cut him open.” He waved to the boys with the wicker basket. Trehearne made a rude remark as to the probable condition of part of Mr. Bryce's anatomy. The M.E. winked and said, “I'll let you know.”

“Yeah,' said Trehearne. “Do that. And check two things particularly. Could it have been a fall, and could a woman have done it. The knock on the head, I mean, and quit grinning. An active woman, strong, in good condition. The sort of female who sails boats and things.”

“Aha!” said the M.E. “Enter the femme fatale.”

Trehearne shrugged. “You never know,” he said. “Women are so capable these days.” He went down across the sand to the landing. The tide had come in and washed the beach clean of any tracks left from last night. It was liberally trampled now, by official boots.

He walked across the worn, weathered planks of the landing. There was a long sort of storage locker built on the right-hand side. It was about five feet high and heavily padlocked. In the lee of it was a bloodstain. It was not a large bloodstain and it seemed to have been messed about quite a bit. There were no recognizable prints of any kind. Trehearne turned around and yelled. The M.E. came back across the beach and joined him.

Trehearne said, “He doesn't seem to have bled a lot.”

“A little from the nose, and some from the mouth and ears. The head wound wouldn't have bled much.”

Trehearne scowled thoughtfully. “Then if he was murdered, the killer probably wouldn't have got any blood on him.”

“I shouldn't think so. Not unless he dabbled in it afterward.” The M.E. studied the shape and surrounding areas of the stain. “That's just a gently spreading pool. Looks like he lay there and dripped for a few minutes and then got up – it's amazing how a guy can live sometimes with his skull stove in – and fell over the edge.”

“And that finished him?”

The M.E. grunted. “He was probably dead before he hit the water. Before he even finished getting up, maybe.”

“Damn,” said Trehearne. “Somebody might at least have stepped into that puddle, so we'd have a nice handy bloodstained shoeprint to check on. Not even a sign of a track. Oh, well. They told me detecting wasn't easy. It's my own fault.” He went away, back toward the house.

By this time the reporters had arrived. Somehow the rumor had got around that Vickers had turned up silently out of the night, and that, coupled with the honey-sweet smell of murder, had brought them swarming. There was a solid and highly vocal mass of them on the terrace, completely submerging the plump little Mr. Sessions, who was handing out a typewritten statement and screaming plaintively for mercy. Trehearne came up and was instantly besieged.

He shouldered through them good-naturedly. “Nothing to report until after the autopsy.”

“Murder?”

“We don't know yet.” He dropped a protective arm around Sessions and ploughed on to the door.

Somebody yelled, “What about Vickers?”

Trehearne said, “I haven't seen him yet, to talk to.” Sessions cried out indignantly, “We have given you a statement...”

Somebody told him what he could do with his statement. “We want to see Vickers!”

“You'll have to battle that out with him.” Trehearne leaped nimbly through the door, pulling Sessions with him. The butler, displaying a keen sense of timing, slammed the door behind them one split second in advance of the rush. Trehearne took his hat off. The butler lifted it smoothly out of his hand and went off.

“Thank you,” said Sessions primly. “Those men aren't civilized. They should be kept in cages.”

He toddled off. Vickers was sitting on one of the twin couches that flanked the fireplace, his long legs sprawled out comfortably. Angie curled beside him in the crook of his arm. She wore a yellow frock that made her eyes more like sunbeams than ever. They looked a very happy couple, with no important sins on their souls. Vickers glanced up at Trehearne and smiled.

“Sit down, won't you? What did you find out?”

Trehearne sat down. Bill Saul, in the corner of the opposite couch, looked at Vickers and thought,
That's the old Vickers there now. The complete I Am. Looks funny with that scar
... The blonde was draped over the arm of the couch and from there onto his shoulders. She ran her forefinger idly up his cheek, and from the scraping Saul knew he hadn't shaved very well that morning.

Trehearne's quiet, rather diffident answer to Vickers' question was astonishingly loud in the room.

‘I'm afraid it looks like murder.”

Job Crandall, sitting as far away from Harriet as possible, took his right arm and held it tightly against him under his left. He was breathing slowly and evenly, counting to each breath. The right side of his face twitched. With the sunlight on his thick white hair he had the appearance of a towheaded youth. Only his eyes were old and lost and pathetically questioning.

“Of course,” said Trehearne, “there's a bare possibility that he struck his head in falling from the landing. We'll know better after the autopsy.”

“Autopsy,” said Harriet Crandall. “How horrible.”

Jennie Bryce reared up suddenly on the window seat. “Jesus,” she said. “You aren't going to muck him up so we can't bury him decent.”

Vickers said soothingly, “Don't worry, Jennie. They'll put all the pieces back.”

“My God,” said Harriet. “With poor Harry lying dead...”

“Harriet,” said Vickers, “go get a drink. You might get one for Job, too. He looks worse than Harry did. Trehearne?”

“No, thanks. Too early in the day for me.”

Vickers nodded. “Murder, eh? I suppose that means we're all in for what is known as a grilling.”

“Well, some preliminary questions.” Trehearne settled back and crossed his legs. He kept glancing at Angie. He tried not to, but it didn't do any good. He wished she had not worn a yellow dress. Yellow did things to him; it was sort of an alive color. She had no business wearing yellow, really. Not with her hair and her eyes and her particularly gorgeous and bare brown skin. “Yes,” he said. “Just some preliminary questions. For instance, exactly what happened last night?”

“Good lord,” said Vickers, and laughed. “The man's really an optimist.”

“Why?”

Job Crandall said, “There was a party last night. We all got drunk.” He added dully, “All except Vick, I guess.”

Harriet shoved a glass in his hand. “
You
passed out. I can remember that much.”

“But you didn't remember me,” said Vickers. He looked at Trehearne. “I got here about midnight. Frankly, I doubt that anyone will remember anything. Nobody recognized me but Bill Saul, and even that took a bit of doing.”

Saul nodded. “It was a Grade Double-A, super-colossal brawl.”

“Yes,” said Harriet spitefully. “Even the hostess couldn't stand it.
She
disappeared in the motor boat and didn't get back until morning.”

Trehearne raised a questioning eyebrow at Angie.

Angie said, “They were mostly Harry's friends. I hardly knew them. But you know how these parties are. I was tired, I don't drink, so I went away for a while.”

“Then nobody can remember anything about Harry Bryce last night? What he did, who was with him, anything at all?”

Jennie Bryce said, “Well, I don't know about the rest of 'em, but
I
didn't see him all night. Angie brought him down. I came with some other people. He and I had a fight...”

“A fight?”

“Oh,” said Jennie airily, “we were always having 'em. I was just telling him it didn't look right for him to be spending so much time with Angie while he was still married to me. So of course he went right over to Angie's.” She shrugged one perfect shoulder, left bare by the sundress she had put on. “I didn't care, you understand. It's just that it seems like a wife's got some rights as long as she's still a wife, even if she isn't going to stay that way long. Anyhow, I didn't see him again till this morning.”

Her last words rang out with a deafening clarity. The living room had become abruptly silent. Jennie, having dropped her brick, smiled at Trehearne with a lazy droop of the lids and settled back. Bill Saul began to hum the song about Poor Jennie. Vickers said, “Why, Angie.” He looked down at her and laughed. “Sometime soon we must get together and compare notes.”

“Any time, darling.” Angie smiled up at him. The mile was perhaps a little stiff around the edges. To Trehearne she said, “Harry did make a nuisance of himself, I'm afraid. He was drinking very heavily, and he eemed to find my house a quiet place to do it in. I drove him down here last night because he was in no condition to drive himself.”