The Murder of a Fifth Columnist (10 page)

“But why the Whartons?”

Mrs. Sherwood shrugged lightly.

“Well, I had to have…” She hesitated, and went on. “To be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Wharton has been trying to get Senor Delvalle and her husband together ever since he was defeated last fall. I was just helping her out. It wasn’t very successful. Senor Delvalle spent all his time talking to Mrs. Latham.”

Sergeant Buck, standing at a modified attention by the door, gave me a congealed look indicating that his worst suspicions had been confirmed if confirmation was needed. I could see him warning Delvalle at the first opportunity.

“Bliss Thatcher I asked because he’s a friend, and I thought he’d be interested in meeting Kurt Hofmann. He’s spent several seasons shooting in Scotland with the Wrenns, which is why I asked Lady Alicia.”

She looked at me and smiled. “I asked Mrs. Latham because she lives next door to me, and I wanted to know her better.”

It seemed very simple, really. If it hadn’t been for Sylvia’s Cassandra prologue on the stairs, or Barbara’s coming, or Ruth Sherwood’s own astonishing confessional—to say nothing of Corliss’s murder—I’d have accepted it as calmly as did Captain Lamb, who’d just come in. In fact, I must have done it anyway, even if I wasn’t completely aware of it, because I was definitely taken aback by Colonel Primrose’s sardonic comment on it a moment later.

“Did that dagger belong in this house, ma’am?” Captain Lamb asked.

Ruth nodded. “It was on the glass table to the right of the library door.”

“Someone must have picked it up when they passed,” Captain Lamb said.

I imagine Euclid looked a little embarrassed too when he said things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.

“I’ve been trying to think when,” Ruth said. “I recall definitely that it was there when Mrs. Wharton and Lady Alicia and I came in here to have coffee. You and Miss Peele went upstairs,” she added to me. “Lady Alicia stopped and picked it up. She said, ‘I can think of several places I’d like to see that.’ Of course she meant Hitler, or the Vichy government. You know how people talk that wouldn’t hurt a rabbit themselves. Would you like to see where it was?”

Captain Lamb would, and she took him out into the hall.

“What do you think of it really?” I asked Colonel Primrose, chiefly because he was looking intently at me and I thought I’d better say something.

“Oh, I always enjoy good theatre,” he said, with a lift of one eyebrow.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Mrs. Sherwood. What do you suppose?” he replied calmly.

“What makes you think it’s theatre, may I ask?”

He smiled.

“You, largely, my dear. You’re very transparent, Mrs. Latham, you know. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Ruth Sherwood was coming back. I heard Captain Lamb out in the hall. “Looks like somebody’s done a good job of polishing up. Take it whether there’s anything there or not.”

Colonel Primrose was looking at me. I only hoped I wasn’t so transparent that he could see Sylvia Peele’s after-image on my mind—though of course other people would tell him if I didn’t.

“When did you notice the dagger there, Grace?” Ruth asked. “Or did you at all?”

“It wasn’t there when Mr. Thatcher and Corliss and I came in,” I said.

“It was taken between the time you came in here with the ladies and the men came in from the dining table,” Colonel Primrose said.

Ruth Sherwood nodded.

“And consequently, it could have been at the dinner table that someone definitely decided to kill Marshall.”

He looked at me, and looked away again. Captain Lamb came back in.

“How many of your guests know about this dagger being used, Mrs. Sherwood?” he asked.

“Only Mrs. Latham and myself—and whoever it was that…”

Captain Lamb looked at his watch, and glanced down at his open note-book.

“How about it, Colonel?” he asked. “If we could see them all separately before it gets around…”

“We can try it,” Colonel Primrose said. He took out his own watch and looked at it.

As he was getting up there was a subdued racket in the hall. I heard the detective’s voice growing out of it, heavy with sarcasm.

“Sure, I know all about it, wise guy. You’re the next of kin. You’re not comin’ in, see? To the morgue if you want to—but stay outa here. Sure you was here to dinner. You don’t have to tell me. So was I. Funny you don’t remember.”

Colonel Primrose looked at Captain Lamb, who was out of the door in a flash.

“All right,” he said. “It’s O.K. Come in, Hamilton. Just getting in touch with you myself.”

Ruth Sherwood’s hands folded in her lap contracted sharply, her breath came as if she’d held it much too long. I didn’t dare look at her. What possible reason she had to be concerned about Pete Hamilton I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. But concerned she was, without the shadow of a doubt. She turned her head expectantly toward the door. If it hadn’t been for her hands and that long steadying breath I should never have noticed she was upset. I’d never seen so many people who could conceal their emotions, of one sort and another, as I’d seen since eight o’clock that evening. I began to have the uneasy feeling that I’d spent some hours in a churchyard quite full of whited sepulchers—with Colonel Primrose, sitting quietly on the edge of the desk, a notable addition to the rest of them.

Behind him on the desk I caught a glimpse of the photograph of the problem child. Ruth Sherwood must have taken it out of the drawer before I came back from my apartment.

“What’s this about Marshall?” Pete was demanding.

I tried to figure out from the sound of his voice whether he was shocked or… or what. Though why I should have thought he was any more open-work than the rest of them I wouldn’t know.

“Suppose you tell us, Hamilton,” Captain Lamb said. “Like to know ourselves.”

Pete came into the library. He gave Colonel Primrose a surprised stare and glanced briefly at Sergeant Buck. I remember thinking that Buck was standing, like a petrified wooden Indian, in front of the greenish headless female nude by Degas with the definite object of covering it up—because there are certain things Sergeant Buck does not approve of. Pete came quickly over to Ruth Sherwood.

“I’m dreadfully sorry about this. If there’s anything I can do—”

“There is,” Colonel Primrose said evenly. “You can tell us how you found out about it.”

“—What do you mean, ‘found out about it,’ Colonel?” Pete asked. “Do you think Corliss Marshall can die without anybody knowing it?”

“I’m asking you how you did know it, Hamilton.”

“It was a confidential report from a usually reliable source, Colonel,” Pete replied coolly… and when Pete is ostensibly cool it means his adrenalin content is rising sharply. I wondered if Colonel Primrose was deliberately making him angry.

“—The reliable source,” he said slowly, “is what we’re looking for, in this case. No one else, Hamilton—except Mrs. Sherwood and Mrs. Latham, and the police who are in the house—knew anything about it so far as we are aware. Except, of course, the murderer himself. That’s why I’m asking you who told you—if that’s how you did find out.”

“You mean, unless I knew already?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” A grin that was not amused twisted Pete’s big mouth. “The old Army game, Colonel. Everybody knows I hated Corliss Marshall’s guts. Therefore it was me that spilled ’em. Then I barge in on the scene of the crime and give myself away red-handed. No soap, Colonel. Too easy. Try again.”

“All right, Pete. Now you’ve had time to think up a story, let’s have it. Who did tell you?”

“Nobody,” Pete said coolly. He was self-controlled, but I could see the tell-tale lines still sprayed out at the corners of his eyelids. “Believe it or not, I figured it all out for myself. Corliss left before any of the rest of us, but his coat and hat are still out there. They were there when we all went. I was down in the lobby when Lamb and his Gestapo came in and asked the number of Mrs. Sherwood’s apartment. I didn’t put any of it together until I called up Marshall’s hotel and found you’d been there and he hadn’t. After that it was easy. Homicide squad—homicide. Marshall’s coat and hat, no Marshall—Marshall’s homicide. Simple, after ten years of reporting politics.”

“What did you phone Marshall for, Pete?” Colonel Primrose asked.

“Just to say good-night to him. That’s the way I spend my early mornings. Calling up all my old friends.”

Captain Lamb was looking increasingly bewildered by all this, I thought.

“What made you come back here, Hamilton?” he said.

“To find out what did happen. And that’s what I’d like to know,” Pete replied promptly. “I take it he didn’t just pass out, the way they’re fingerprinting everything out there.”

He turned back to Colonel Primrose.

“I also figured maybe Mrs. Sherwood might need a little help. That’s another reason I came. And another is what I just got through saying. I’m the Number One suspect, and I know it. There’s no use sugar-coating the pill. I thought I’d save the taxpayers the expense of having you guys run me to earth.”

Colonel Primrose was looking at him with quiet interest.

“What’s the matter, Pete? What’s on your mind?”

Pete hesitated for a bare instant.

“Plenty, Colonel. I’ve just found out, about fifteen minutes ago, that I’m the guy that’s writing ‘Truth Not Fiction.’ All my friends have been keeping it from me. It’s the old gag. The husband’s the last one to know.”

“And that’s why you killed Corliss Marshall?” Colonel Primrose asked.

“That’s the idea, Colonel.”

Captain Lamb looked from Pete to Colonel Primrose, and back again.

“What’s that?” he demanded.

“ ‘Truth Not Fiction,’ ” Pete said. “Or ‘Fiction Not Truth’—if anybody thinks I write it.”

“Well, what the hell is it?” Captain Lamb exploded. “Who does write it?”

“That,” Colonel Primrose said calmly, “is what the F. B. I. has been trying to find out.”

“—Did Marshall know?”

“He said he did,” Pete said sardonically.

Colonel Primrose’s “—When?” was shot out so abruptly that all of us started.

“—Tonight at dinner,” Pete said, blankly. “He said he was going to the F. B. I. tomorrow. He told Bliss Thatcher that.”

Colonel Primrose put his hand in his inside coat pocket, took out a telegram, unfolded it and handed it to Captain Lamb. He read it through twice before he handed it back, not further enlightened so far as I could see. Colonel Primrose took it and handed it to me—rather to the surprise of everybody else and certainly to Sergeant Buck’s silent but granite displeasure. It was addressed to the Colonel at his house on P Street.

“Have inside dope authorship of Truth Not Fiction,” I read. “Will you undertake verification as public service. Personal angle makes it inadvisable my name be connected with public exposure. Can meet you my hotel Washington Tuesday night.”

It was signed “Corliss Marshall.”

Colonel Primrose took it out of my hand, folded it again, and then apparently changed his mind. He handed it to Pete and waited, looking at him very casually, which meant he was seeing straight through him. Pete’s jaw hardened and the anger smoldered in his eyes as he read it. He handed it back.

“You think Corliss’s fine feelings wouldn’t let his name be connected with a public exposure of a friend, Colonel?” he asked ironically. “It would be the first time in his life he didn’t want all the publicity he could get, at whoever’s expense. Or was he trying a little anonymous blackmail?”

“Or perhaps he was… afraid something might happen to him.”

It was Ruth Sherwood who said that. There was something about the way she said it that made even Captain Lamb look at her sharply. It was as if she knew very well what that kind of fear was like.

“And something did,” I said.

It frightened me—not so much for her as for that girl asleep behind the easily opened door of my apartment. Maybe that was what the matter was.

Colonel Primrose nodded. “I don’t understand why he said he was going to the F. B. I. when he knew he was meeting me in less than an hour.”

“Because it sounded better,” Pete said promptly. “It made a bigger guy out of Corliss Marshall.”

“Or possibly he wanted to frighten somebody,” Colonel Primrose said. He looked at Pete for a moment, and took a step forward from the desk. “If you don’t write ‘Truth Not Fiction,’ Hamilton,” he said coolly, “I think it’s up to you to prove it. Corliss Marshall—if that’s what he thought—isn’t the only person in Washington who thinks it. For one very good reason, I’ll advise you to do something about it, and do it quick. Good-night.”

If he’d slapped Pete Hamilton across the face he couldn’t have given him a more stunning shock. Pete stood there, his mouth open, his cigarette burning to a long crazy cylinder between his fingers, staring after him long after he’d followed Captain Lamb out the door and closed it behind him.

I suppose it wasn’t more than a minute that he stood there rooted to the floor, but it seemed like an age. Then he strode forward, the door slammed shut and he was gone.

I turned blankly to Ruth Sherwood.

“For Heaven’s sake,” I demanded, “what
is
going on?”

She was sitting there with her hands in her lap, just as she’d been before, but the most extraordinary change had come over her. She looked as if she’d been sick for years. There were deep shadows under her eyes, and her skin was the color of dirty water. She shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered painfully. “Just what Bliss Thatcher told me last night. They’ve had to cancel all press conferences in his division. This newsletter’s been printing off the record information. They don’t know who it is. It’s dangerous—for the press as well as the country. If they can’t trust accredited correspondents, they’ll have to put in censorship.”

“But that’s not the press!” I protested.

“It’s some member of it—Bliss says.”

“But not Pete Hamilton!”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t mention any name.”

She raised her head slowly, listened a minute and closed her eyes. “The detective’s going to stay here. You’d better go now. Will you see that Betty gets off first thing in the morning? I don’t want to run the risk of seeing her again.”