The Girl Who Kept Knocking Them Dead (23 page)

Gibby turned to Jellicoe. “That leaves only you,” he said.

“Gee,” Jellicoe muttered. “Why me?”

“You’re the man who corrupted Ellie Bannerman,” Gibby said.

“That’s a lie. We had our parties. I’m not denying it, but I wasn’t the first. I’ve only known her for a month or a little more. She had been there before.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Gibby said. “But when it’s pay day, there aren’t these fine distinctions. The man who first corrupted Ellie Bannerman came and went years ago. That must have been some time shortly after she came to New York, but you did enjoy her favors. Look at her brother. He’s ready to kill you. In his mind adultery is adultery and there are no distinctions.”

“Just because the kid was enjoying her life?” Jellicoe bleated.

“It’s all a matter of what your standards are,” Gibby told him. “You think nothing is as important as enjoying yourself. He thinks nothing is as important as righteousness and virtue. He would kill his sister because she hadn’t refused her favors. You would kill her because she had refused them.”

“She was a good kid,” Jellicoe muttered. “She was more fun than a parcel of monkeys.”

“We know she never refused you,” Gibby continued. “It’s a great pity that you had been drinking with her and you couldn’t understand when she told you that you were going to have to stay away because her brother was coming to town. You didn’t mean to hurt her, but you didn’t understand what she was saying and you started choking her and you choked her too much.”

“You just said he killed her,” Jellicoe shouted. “He killed all the others. You just been showing how he did it.”

“I’ve been showing how he could have done it. You killed Sydney Bell and then you went running in a panic to your friends—Mae and George and Harry. They were going to fix it for you. They knew how. They could fix anything for a price. They asked you if after the killing you had thought to wipe away fingerprints. You hadn’t, of course. They went to the apartment and they wiped it clean. They did all the careful things you didn’t have the brains to do for yourself. They even clipped her fingernails right down to the quick and beyond so that we couldn’t find any scrapings under them since they would be scrapings of you. They didn’t tell you anything or ask you to do any part of it. You were just to leave it to them and do as they told you and you were to pay.”

“Look,” Jellicoe protested. “Just because I laid her. That’s all I ever did. I laid her.”

“It started that way. Then you killed her and they were taking care of it. But they knew you. You were a sentimental slob and they weren’t taking any chances on your doing something silly that would give it all away. They watched you and they watched the apartment. George was watching the apartment when Miss Loomis got there. He thought that would bring the police and when it didn’t, they knew she could be worth watching as well. The time could come when it might be possible to put it on her or at least to make some profitable use of her and of the silly things she was doing to screen Bannerman. Then you were just as silly as they’d expected you’d be. You bought the nightgown. They took you in tow and they got you to a quiet place where the two of them could work you over and get it away from you. That wasn’t a fight. It was a beating. They were teaching you that you would not only have to pay but that you would have to stay in line as well. You got away from them then, but it wasn’t enough. Staying in line wasn’t going to be any fun and what is life if there isn’t fun in it? Meanwhile you had learned something or you thought you had. You thought you could kill and get away with it. All you had to do was remember to wear gloves for it or wipe off fingerprints if you couldn’t manage gloves. You didn’t know there could be a million other things you’d have to watch. You were never going to have any fun again or any freedom ever as long as George and Mae and Harry were alive. You started after them. First you went to Harry’s and got him. Then you went after Mae. You were the passenger crouched down in the back of Mae’s car when she drove around to the bar. You were waiting for a chance to get at her but you couldn’t while she was driving busy streets. Then George took the car over. He didn’t drive busy streets. He drove up to Westport because they had to find you before you did any other silly things. Something had happened to Harry and whatever it was, it was dangerous, and they had to find you. You saw where he was heading and you let him take you all the way. He was taking you to just the spot you would have chosen for yourself. You killed George. You were making certain he was dead when we came along. We were in your way and you went after us. You got the cop but you fumbled me and you fumbled Mac. You smashed the lock on your own garage door and you took your own red sedan and drove back to New York. Then you came down here and you finished the job. You got Mae. You thought you were being clever coming around here to look for your car. You weren’t clever enough.”

“Look,” Jellicoe argued. “I’m not smart. Anybody can tell you I’m not smart. I’m not smart enough to do any of this stuff. I can’t even understand it when you’re telling it. Him, now. He’s smart and it’s like you said. He’s got a reason.”

“Brother, you aren’t smart,” Gibby told him. “You aren’t even as smart as you think you are. You weren’t smart enough to clip Harry’s fingernails close, not even after he’d tried for your face after your doctor had changed the fastenings on your dressings to Scotch tape because he thought adhesive tape wasn’t becoming. You weren’t smart enough to think that Scotch tape will chip off and cling under a man’s nails. We found a bit under Harry’s. You see, you needed them to clean up after you. You were no good at cleaning up after yourself. You did it again up in Westport. You smashed the lock on your garage but the wood isn’t splintered inward or outward as it would have to be if you had forced the door. You did it the easy way. You opened the door with your key and you took a rock to the lock and smashed it then. You smashed downward on it. The wood is splintered in that direction and it couldn’t be unless the door was opened before the lock was smashed. You weren’t smart enough to know how to get rid of your blood-spattered clothes after you killed that cop and half killed Mac and me. You went up to the house and changed into completely fresh clothes and you took the stuff you’d been wearing—it was all brown and yellow to match your convertible and I suppose you don’t have a red and chromium suit to match the sedan—you took it outside and set fire to it. You weren’t smart enough to know that clothes are hard to burn. There will be scraps left with blood on them. Just because they made such a smoky fire, you thought they were burning fine. We would have found them long ago if it hadn’t been that you had half killed us, and when we came to and were coughing like crazy with the smoke, we were still too muzzy to wonder what was burning to make all that smoke.”

That was as far as Gibby got and then things went crazy. Cops or no cops, Bannerman did charge out of his chair and go for Jellicoe. The cops grabbed Bannerman and he dragged them with him. They were so busy with him that they didn’t even notice that Jellicoe was breaking for the door, or possibly they just thought he was afraid of Bannerman. Anyhow it fell to Gibby and me to bring him down. I came out of it all right, but a couple of the stitches in Gibby’s ear pulled open. He was bleeding again when he had to answer to Milton Bannerman and the girl. They wanted to know why he had frightened them by building the whole case against Milton when he had known even before we had ever come to Mabel Sylvester’s house that Jellicoe was our man.

“I was teaching you what it meant to fool around with murder,” Gibby said.

It was enough answer for them since they were who they were and they had such a strong belief in being punished for their transgressions. I knew Gibby better than that. I could look back over the whole session and see how he had built it to get out of them every last shred of their story, however soiled and however sordid. He needed that story to fill out the chinks in the case against Jellicoe and he had done the job.