The Long Night (20 page)

“You can take it for granted,” I said, “that King did the arranging. He's in this up to his neck. So you can skip everything but the essentials.”

Warner looked at me remotely and wet his lips. In a toneless voice, he said, “The night that girl was murdered, I got a phone call at home some time around nine o'clock. Someone who said her name was Judith Walker asked me if I were interested in getting hold of some information that could put Richard Gilmore away for the next thirty years. I could have the information for free because she hated Gilmore . . . only thing was she was scared of being seen anywhere near me. . . .”

“So could you visit her apartment at some discreet hour when no one was likely to see you,” I said. “And you fell for it.”

“I guess I was leading with my chin, right enough, but I thought this might be just what I needed to fix Gilmore for keeps. I couldn't see what harm could come to me, anyway, as long as I took a gun. So I agreed to call on her shortly after two in the morning.”

“Didn't you ask why it had to be two a.m.?”

“She said she was a singer in a night club and she didn't get home until nearly two. She also hinted that Gilmore stopped over with her most nights but that night he was out of town and she might not get the same chance again. It was plausible, damnably plausible.” There was fine sweat on Warner's forehead.

“Go on,” I said.

“I parked my car a couple of blocks away . . . when I got upstairs, she had left the door partly open . . . I got a bit uneasy
at the way she was dressed. I hadn't expected she'd be in a nightdress with nothing but a flimsy wrap over it.”

“Nobody made you stay there once you saw the red light,” I said.

“She was ready with an explanation for her get-up like she had an answer for everything else. The costume she wore for her act was uncomfortably tight and she was always glad to get out of it soon's she got home . . . she didn't change at the club . . . she hadn't given it a thought . . . now she realised maybe it wasn't the right thing to be wearing in the circumstances, she'd go and put something else on and would I fix myself a drink while I was waiting? . . . It wouldn't take her long. . . .”

“Which left you feeling like Joe Shmoe.”

“Sure. The whole thing was smooth and natural. . . . I said I didn't want a drink and she shouldn't bother to change as I wouldn't be staying long, but she'd ducked into the bedroom by then. She said if I couldn't use a drink she could and would I mind fixing one for her? Like a damn' fool, I did.”

In the room across the passage, the sound of the typewriter stopped. I heard a drawer open and shut while Warner brooded over what a damn' fool he'd been.

Then he said, “I knew I'd got myself into a crooked deal when she came out of the bedroom dressed exactly as she'd been before. But I hadn't time to do anything about it. Like she'd rehearsed the stunt until she couldn't miss, she got to the hall door and locked it and put the key down the front of her nightdress. I'll never forget the way she looked at me and laughed.” He rubbed his eyes and kept his hand to his face while he stared at nothing. “She didn't say a word. She just kept on laughing quietly to herself as she went over to the table and picked up the tray with the bottle of rye and the two glasses and carried them into the bedroom.”

Not far away, a door closed softly. Outside in the passage voices murmured and footsteps brushed on the thick carpet.

With the nerve jumping in his cheek again Warner said, “I asked her what kind of game she thought she was playing and she said I ought to be able to guess. As she said it, she poured out a fresh glass of rye and drank it. Then she opened a drawer in the bedside table and took out a pair of white
gloves and put them on. I stood in the bedroom doorway and watched like a goof without being able to think of a single thing to do.” He swallowed again and wiped his hand over his face.

“Go on,” I said.

“She kept looking at me all the time and smiling and I got the idea she was listening for something. I couldn't hear a thing. I was busy telling myself that the whole business wasn't real, that this kind of affair didn't happen to a guy like me. I don't think I even moved when she picked up the glass I'd filled for her and walked towards me, still smiling the way a woman does when she's got a little secret and she wants you to persuade her to tell you what it is.”

He hardly needed to complete his story. I knew the rest. I knew so many things I had only dimly guessed at before. If this were the truth, all the pieces fitted like the jigsaw parts of a mosaic: all the pieces except one. Unless panic had driven Warner to silence Judith Walker . . . confusion and fear and the overwhelming desire to escape from the net she had wrapped around him . . . but he hadn't needed to kill her. He had only to wipe his fingerprints off the glass he had handled and she could prove nothing; no one had seen him enter the apartment—no one would see him leave. . . .

Warner went on. “I think I told her not to be crazy and I have a recollection that I asked her to give me the key. But this time she didn't answer me. She just came very close with the glass of rye held up like she was toasting me. She didn't seem to care that her wrap had fallen open and her nightdress didn't conceal much. Somewhere in my mind I remember thinking that a girl as beautiful as she was should never have had to behave like that. For a moment, I stopped worrying about myself; I just felt that it must be a terrible thing for her to behave this way with a man she didn't even know.”

“Because a dame has a pretty face and a swell shape,” I said, “doesn't mean she can't be rotten on the inside. If you don't know that, you must've had a very sheltered upbringing.”

With his eyes on the smoke coiling up from his cigarette, Warner shrugged like he had goose-pimples. “Whatever she
was, I feel darn sorry for her. A girl deserves a better break than King Gilmore.”

“You're losing the place,” I said. “You were telling me about a glass of rye.”

“That was meant to be the padlock on the frame-up,” Warner said. “I couldn't have prevented it even if I'd suspected what she was going to do. And she didn't give me any warning. She held the glass out to me and she said, ‘Why not be friendly and take a drink? I know lots of guys who'd give plenty to trade places with you right now.' She made it sound like she really wanted me to share a drink with her.”

“Did you oblige the lady?”

“Of course not. I asked her again to let me have the key and she said, ‘What's your hurry?' She was still listening for something but I couldn't hear a sound outside the apartment.”

“And then?”

“Then she put the glass to her lips and took a sip of rye. In a funny kind of voice, she said, ‘I wonder how a sucker like you could ever make trouble for anybody. What d'you think the Citizens' Committee will say to your fingerprints on a glass that's got my lipstick on it. You better have a drink, buster. You look like you could use one.'

“I said, ‘O.K. I'll take a drink.' And I held out my hand for the glass. She laughed the same way she had laughed before but her eyes looked queer as if she were dizzy. If I hadn't seen how little she'd had, I've have thought she was half-drunk. Then she stopped laughing suddenly and she said, ‘That's mamma's boy . . . take your drink—sucker!' '

“Before I could do a damn' thing about it, she whipped the glass up and shot the rye straight in my face. It blinded me and some of it went up my nose, too. Inside a couple of second I felt my eyes were being burned out. I could hear her laughing again. That made me mad. With tears running out of my eyes I tried to catch hold of her but she backed away from me into the bedroom. I followed her in still trying to see straight.

“Next thing I knew, I had walked into the bed . . . and she had her arms around my neck and her sticky mouth was kissing me. Maybe it sounds crazy but I had to fight like hell to get away from her. She had plastered me with lipstick
before I loosened her arms and broke free. By that time her laughter was as drunken as any I've ever heard.” Sweat was trickling from his forehead down the bridge of his nose. Warner wasn't enjoying his recollections.

“It could be suggested,” I said, “that that was when you killed her.”

He rubbed the side of his face like it hurt and his eyes were as plaintive and honest as the eyes of a retriever. “I didn't kill her. I swear to God I didn't kill her! If I did handle her roughly, it wasn't enough to do her any harm. And I had to get away from her.”

“Don't go around telling people you handled her at all,” I said. “The police are hunting for the guy who clawed her all down the breast and ruined her pretty nightie.”

His fingers closed tightly on his cigarette and his hand shook. The glowing tip squeezed out on the end of a stalk of tobacco and a burning fragment fell on to the desk. It lay there smouldering and he paid it no attention. Lloyd Warner wasn't putting on any act. He was scared. But scared.

When he'd taken in more air, he said, “I didn't do it. I know I was in a panic to get away but I didn't do it. You've got to believe me. . . .”

“I'm neither judge nor jury,” I said. “What I believe can't make any difference to you. But I'd be interested to hear what you did do.”

“Nothing,” Warner said breathlessly. “Nothing at all. Soon's I unclasped her hands from behind my neck, she passed right out. Never saw anything like it. Went down like——”

“—like she'd been smacked with the butt of a gun,” I said. “Why be afraid to say it? I can finish the story for you now.”

He crushed the mashed stub of his cigarette in the ashtray and wet his lips and looked as guilty as all hell. He hadn't anything to say. If he had, he wouldn't have had the guts to say it.

“You picked her up from the floor,” I told him. “And you laid her on the bed. You thought the rye had hit her hard. To stall any future questions, you made it look more
that way by dropping her empty glass on the bed beside her and sharing half the bottle between her nightdress and the bedspread. Check?”

Almost inaudibly, he said, “Yes . . . that's right.” By the look on his face he was doing it all over again.

“Why didn't you get rid of the other glass instead of just wiping your prints off it?”

“I——I didn't think of it.”

“Same's you didn't think of doing anything about the two cigarettes, both with lipstick on them. You even omitted to mention them now . . . didn't you?”

“Yes.” He husked and stared up at me emptily. “She lit them together just before she put on her gloves . . . Gilmore trained her well. I realised he'd be arriving soon along with some stooge who'd have a flashlight camera. So I——” he looked down at his shaking hands and his face went guilty again “—I took the key from her . . . and I unlocked the door . . . I was stinking of rye . . . it was all over my collar and the front of my shirt but I couldn't do anything about it . . . all I wanted was to get away. . . .”

“And then you heard someone approaching the door,” I said. “It was too late to use the fire-escape so you ducked into the bathroom. And I was the bug brain who walked in on you.” I got out of my chair and leaned over the desk and stared into his eyes. “Was it necessary, to hang the frame round my neck? I can understand you had to use the butt of your gun on me, but the rest of the play makes me think you're a louse, Mister Lloyd Warner. With all your money, you're just a louse.”

He chewed on that for five or ten seconds while he told himself who he was and who I was and why should he take any buck from me? A slow colour came into his face and he forgot how scared he'd been. He said, “The way I saw it, you were the guy who'd been detailed to complete the badger game in Judith Walker's apartment. I've read of such things. You would be the husband returning home unexpectedly . . . so I dragged you feet-first into the bedroom . . . and gave you the same rye treatment I'd had.” He rubbed his cheek again. “I didn't even waste time to take a good look at your face. So far as I was concerned, you were a part of
King Gilmore's racket. And I wanted his smart stunt to blow back on him.”

“Does that mean you called the police before you left the apartment?”

“Me?” He stopped registering anger and showed surprise instead. “That would've been carrying things too far. All I wanted was to get the hell out of it with a whole skin.”

“And when you left, you still say Judith was alive? You didn't pay her off for her part in the trick, like you tried to get me in dutch with Gilmore?”

“No . . . I never touched her after I laid her on the bed. My only thought was to get away. Then, when I had to knock you down——” he plucked at the fleshy ridge of his double chin and scowled at me like it was my fault “—I got scared over that, too. I was afraid I might've hit you too hard. So I—I beat it. Anyone in my position would've done the same.”

“I'll forgive you,” I said. “That's if you haven't been stringing me along, of course. If you have, even in the smallest detail, you're going to be sorry, Mister Warner, but sorry.”

He went on pulling at his chin while he stared across the desk at me with unhappy eyes. His big handsome head looked too heavy for him to hold up as he said, “I've told you what happened exactly as it happened. I didn't need to. But—I've been carrying the thing around inside me until I couldn't carry it any longer. I feel better now somebody else knows . . . although I'm not proud of having been such a gawddamned fool.” He slid his hand round to the back of his head like his neck hurt. “What're you going to do about it?” he asked. “The next move is up to you.”

“There's a simple choice open to me,” I said. “Depending on whether I believe you or not. One way you come out of this thing clean, the other way you burn. All I have to do is testify that I caught a glimpse of my attacker before I was struck down in the bathroom.”