The Way Some People Die Read online

  It struck me that vaudeville was dead. “At the time Dalling was shot, I was fifteen or twenty miles on the other side of Palm Springs, talking to a woman by the name of Marjorie Fellows. Why don’t you get in touch with her? She’s staying at the inn there.”

  “Perhaps I will. What time was that?”

  “Around three in the morning.”

  “If you know that Dalling was shot at three, you know more than we do. Our doctor places it around four, give or take an hour.” He spread his hands disarmingly, as if to underline the fact of his candor. “There’s no way to determine how long he lived after he was shot, or exactly when he was shot. It’s evident from the blood that he lived for some time, though he was almost certainly unconscious from the slug in his cortex. Anyway, you can see how that plays hell with any possible alibi. Unless you have better information?” There was irony in the question.

  I said that I had.

  “You want to make a statement?”

  I said that I did.

  “Good. It’s about time.” He flipped the switch on the squawkbox on the corner of his desk, and summoned a stenographer.

  My obligation to Peter Colton was growing too big for comfort. Apparently the conversation up to this point had been off the record. That suited me, because my performance had been painful. I’d bungled like an amateur when I found Dalling’s body; gambled and lost on the chance that Miss Hammond or Joshua Severn might tell me something important if I got to them before policemen did. Gary had driven that home, in spite of my efforts to talk around the point. Vaudeville was dead as Dalling, and the Rover Boys were as out of date as the seven sleepers of Ephesus.

  Gary gave up his chair to the young male stenographer.

  “Do you want it in detail?” I asked him.

  “Absolutely.”

  I gave the thing in detail from the beginning. The beginning was Dalling’s visit to Mrs. Lawrence, which brought me into the case. The night died gradually, bleeding away in words. The police stenographer filled page after page of his notebook with penciled hieroglyphics. Gary paced from wall to wall, still looking for a way out. Occasionally he paused to ask me a question. When I told him that Tarantine had taken my gun, he interrupted to ask:

  “Will Mrs. Tarantine corroborate that?”

  “She already has.”

  “Not to us.” He took a paper-bound typescript from his desk and riffled through it. “There’s nothing in her statement about your gun. Incidentally, you didn’t report the theft.”

  “Call her up and ask her.”

  He left the room. The stenographer lit a cigarette. We sat and looked at each other until Gary came back:

  “I sent a car for her. I talked to her on the phone and she doesn’t seem to object. She a friend of yours?”

  “She won’t be after this. She has a queer old-fashioned idea that a woman should stick by her husband.”

  “He hasn’t done much of a job of sticking by her. What do you make of Mrs. Tarantine, anyway?”

  “I think she made the mistake of her life when she married Tarantine. She has a lot of stuff, though.”

  “Yeah,” he said dryly. “Is she trying to cover for him, that’s what I want to know.”

  “She has been, I think.” And I recited what she had told me about the early-morning visit to Dalling’s apartment.

  That stopped him in his tracks. “There’s a discrepancy there, all right.” He consulted her statement again. “According to what she said this afternoon, she drove him straight over from Palm Springs to Long Beach by the canyon route. The question is, which time was she telling the truth?”

  “She told me the truth,” I said. “She didn’t know then that Dalling was dead. When she found out that he was, she switched her story to protect her husband.”

  “When did you talk to her?”

  “Early this afternoon—yesterday afternoon.” It was four o’clock by my wristwatch.

  “You knew that Dalling was dead.”

  “I didn’t tell her.”

  “Why? Could she have killed him herself, or set him up for her husband?”

  “I entertained the possibility, but she’s crazy if she did. She was half in love with Dalling.”

  “What was the other half?”

  “Mother feeling or something. She couldn’t take him seriously; he was alcoholic, for one thing.”

  “Yeah. Did she communicate all this, or you dream it up?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested in my dreams.”

  “Okay. Let’s have the rest of the statement, eh?” And he went back to filling the room with his pacing.

  It was ten to five when I finished my statement. The stenographer left the room with orders to have it typed as quickly as possible.

  “If you’ve been leveling,” Gary said to me, “it looks very much like Tarantine. Why would he do it?”

  “Ask Mrs. Tarantine.”

  “I’m going to. Now.”

  “I’d like to sit in if possible.”

  “Uh-uh. Good night.”

  She met me in the corridor, walking in step with Sergeant Tolliver.

  “We’re always meeting in police stations,” I said.

  “As good a place as any, I guess.” She looked exhausted, but she had enough energy left to smile with.

  CHAPTER 26: I woke up looking for the joker that would freeze the pile and win the hand for me. It wasn’t under the pillow. It wasn’t between the sheets. It wasn’t on the floor beside the bed. I was climbing out of the bed to look underneath it when I realized that I had been dreaming.

  It was exactly noon by my bedside alarm. A truck started up in the street outside with an impatient clash of gears, as if to remind me that the world was going on without me. I let it go. First I took a long hot shower and then a short cold one. The pressure of the water hurt the back of my head. I shaved and brushed my teeth for the first time in two days and felt unreasonably virtuous. My face looked the same as ever, as far as I could tell. It was wonderful how much a pair of eyes could see without being changed by what they saw. The human animal was almost too adaptable for its own good.

  The kitchen was brimful of yellow sunlight that poured in through the window over the sink. I started a pot of coffee, fried some bacon, broke four eggs in the sizzling grease, toasted half a dozen slices of stale bread. After eating, I sat in the breakfast nook with a cigarette and a cup of black coffee, thinking of nothing. Silence and loneliness were nice for a change. The absence of dialogue was a positive pleasure that lasted through the second cup of coffee. But I noticed after a while that I was tapping one heel on the floor in staccato rhythm and beginning to bite my left thumbnail. A car passed in the street with the sound of a bus I was about to miss. The yellow sunlight was bleak on the linoleum. The third cup of coffee was too bitter to drink.

  I went to the phone in the hall and dialed my answering service. A Mrs. Caroline Standish had phoned on Monday and again on Tuesday. No, she hadn’t left her number; she said she would call again. A Mrs. Samuel Lawrence had phoned twice Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon a certain Lieutenant Gary had wanted to speak to me, very urgently. There had also been a call from Mr. Colton of the D.A.’s office. The only Wednesday call was long-distance from Palm Springs. A Mrs. Marjorie Fellows wanted me to call her back at the Oasis Inn.

  “When did you get that last one?”

  “About two hours ago. Mrs. Fellows called about ten thirty.”

  I thanked the cool female voice, depressed the bar, and dialed Long Distance. They got me Marjorie Fellows person-to-person.

  “This is Archer. You wanted to talk to me.”

  “I do, very much. So many things have been happening, I don’t know which way to turn.” She sounded rather beaten and bewildered.

  “Give me an example.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Give me an example, of the things that have been happening.”

  “Oh, so many things. The police and—other things. I don’t like to spe
ak of them over the telephone. You know these switchboard operators.” She said it with direct malice, to a hypothetical operator listening on the line. “Could you possibly come out and talk to me here?”

  “It might be more convenient if you came to town.”

  “I can’t. I have no car. Besides, I’m quite disorganized. I’ve been so depending on you. I don’t know anyone at all in southern California.” A whine ran through the flat mid-western voice, in and out in a pattern of self-pity. “You are a private detective, as Lieutenant Gary said?”

  “I am. What happened to your car?”

  “Henry—is using it.”

  “You can fly in from Palm Springs in half an hour.”

  “No, I couldn’t possibly fly. Don’t you understand, I’m terribly upset. I need your help, Mr. Archer.”

  “Professionally speaking?”

  “Yes, professionally speaking. Won’t you come out and have lunch with me at the Inn?”

  I said I would, if she was willing to wait for a late lunch. I put on a tie and jacket, and loaded a revolver.

  By-passing Palm Springs, I reached Oasis shortly after two thirty. Its grid of roads lay on the flat desert, a blueprint for a boom hopefully waiting for the boom to happen. An escarpment of black stone overshadowed the unbuilt town, its steep sides creased and folded like a stiff black tarpaulin thrown carelessly on the horizon. Beyond it the desert stretched into rainbow distances. The bright new copper penny of the sun spun in its heat against a flat painted sky.

  The stucco buildings of the Oasis Inn were dazzling white in the daytime. It was a pueblo hotel with the main building fronting the road and about twenty detached cottages scattered behind it. The watered lawn around them looked artificial and out of place, like a green broadloom carpet spread on the arid earth. I parked against the adobe wall beside the portico, and entered the lobby. Its air-conditioning chilled the sweat on my forehead. The big room was lined and furnished with light wood and leather, draped and upholstered with desert-colored cloth in Indian patterns. Whoever did it had both money and taste, an unusual combination anywhere.

  The man behind the desk was expecting me. He called me by name and turned me over to a Filipino in a white-drill steward’s jacket. I followed his thin impassive back down a concrete walk between spaced rows of cottages. Several half-naked bodies, male and female, were broiling in the sun or reclining on long chairs in the shadowed porches: castaways from Hollywood and Chicago and New York. More castaways were grouped around the pool that shimmered at the rear of the compound. Dolce far niente with a dollar sign.

  My Filipino guide led me onto the porch of one of the smaller cottages and knocked discreetly on the screen door. When Marjorie Fellows appeared he said “Mr. Archer” and vanished.

  She looked larger than life in a sleeveless linen dress that emphasized the width of her shoulders and hips. “I’m so glad you could come, I really am.” She held the door for me and extended her hand at arm’s length. It was large and cold and moist, and it held on for some time.

  I murmured appropriate greetings as I disengaged myself. She led me into her sitting-room and seated me in an armchair.

  “I took the liberty of ordering for you,” she said. “They close the kitchens at three. I’m having shirred eggs with those cute little pork sausages they have. I ordered the same for you. Shirred eggs Bercy?”

  I said that shirred eggs Bercy sounded delectable.

  “Perhaps you’d like something to drink. You’ve had a long hot drive and all on my account. I owe you a nice cool drink.” She was hovering around my chair. She wasn’t built to hover, but she was hovering.

  I said that I could do with a bottle of beer.

  She went to the phone in a little skipping run that jolted the foundations of the building; turned with her hand on the receiver: “They have some very nice imported Loewenbrau, at least Henry likes it. Dark or light?”

  “Dark will be fine.” While she placed the order, I looked around the room for traces of Henry. There were no traces of Henry.

  When she returned to her hovering, I asked her: “Where’s your husband?”

  Her face arranged itself in a meditative pout. Her large arms hung awkwardly at her sides. I felt a sudden sympathy for her, with a little insight mixed in. Her type had been invented to make men comfortable. Without a man to be nice to, she didn’t know what to do with herself at all. And she was without a man.

  I wished I could recall my brusque question and wrap it up in a prettier parcel for her.

  She understood the look on my face and answered it along with the question: “I’m glad you brought it up, honestly. It’s what I want to talk to you about, but I hated to broach the subject. I’m an awful dreamer, Mr. Archer. I live in a world of my own unless somebody snaps me out of it like you just did.”

  She flung herself on a bright-patterned sofa, which sagged and creaked under her weight. Curiously enough, her legs were good. She arranged them in such a way that I couldn’t fail to notice the slimness of her ankles.

  “The dirty bastard picked up and left me,” she said in a deep harsh voice. Her eyes were round with anger, or surprise at her own language. “Good heavens,” she said in her normal voice, “I never swear, honestly.”

  “Swear some more. It will probably do you good.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t.” She had flushed to the ears. But she said: “I call him a dirty bastard because I believe he is one.”

  “You’d better go back and take it from the beginning.”

  “I hate to. I hate to talk about it, or even think about it. I’ve acted like a great fool. I let him take advantage of me all along the line.”

  “Where did you get on?”

  “Get on?”

  “How did you happen to meet him?”

  “Oh,” she said. “He was staying at the guest-ranch near Reno when I was waiting for my divorce. Everything was so romantic, and Henry could ride so well, and his conversation was so interesting. I sort of fell in love with him on the rebound.”

  “Rebound?”

  “From George, I mean. I was married to George for sixteen years and I guess I got bored with him, or we got bored with each other. It would have been seventeen years this coming June the 10th. We never went anywhere or did anything together any more. All George wanted to do was go out to the country club when he got finished at the office and try to break eighty. I always wanted to come out west but George never took me further than Minneapolis. The only reason we went to Minneapolis was because the business has a branch in Minneapolis. George is the secretary-treasurer of the Simplex Ball Bearing Company.” Pride and resentment and nostalgia warred in her expression. Nostalgia won. “I was a fool to leave him, a great fool, and now I’m having to take my medicine. I walked out on George, now Henry walks out on me. My second marriage lasted sixteen days.” The contrast was too much for her. It brought tears to her eyes, still puffed and red from previous tears.

  “Henry walked out on you?”

  “Yes.” The syllable lengthened shakily into a sob. “He left this morning, with the car and the money and—everything.”

  “After a quarrel?”

  “We didn’t even quarrel,” as if Henry had denied her her rightful due. “The police called from Los Angeles early this morning, and Henry answered the telephone, and afterwards he heard me talking to them over the phone. He started packing right away, before I put down the receiver, even. I begged him to tell me what was the matter. He wouldn’t say a word, except that he had to go away on business. He checked out and drove away without even eating breakfast.”

  “In your car?”

  “I paid for it, only it’s registered in his name. Henry wanted it that way, and he was so masterful, and besides we bought it for our honeymoon. It was really my idea to put it in his name, it made me feel more married.” She hugged her large fine bosom, but there was cold comfort in that.

  “You also mentioned money, Mrs. Fellows?”

  “Yes.” A
nervous hurt plucked at her eyebrows, drawing them closer together. “Please don’t call me Mrs. Fellows, I hate it. Call me Marjorie, or Mrs. Barron.”

  “George’s name?”

  “Yes.” She managed a weak smile, with tears still standing in her eyes. “George made me a very generous settlement, and I’ve thrown a lot of it away already. Great fool that I am.”

  “How much did Henry get into you for?”

  “Thirty thousand dollars.” The sound of the numbers seemed to appall her. Unconsciously, she reached for the alligator purse that was lying on the couch beside her, and pressed it to her girdled abdomen. “He said he had a wonderful chance to make a good investment for both of us: this apartment building in Hollywood. He showed me the apartment building, too. Now I guess it’s gone with the wind.”

  There was a gentle tapping on the door behind me. She opened it, and an elderly waiter wheeled in our lunch on a cart. While he set the table, Marjorie left the room. She came back in time to tip him heavily, smiling with a washed and reconstructed face. At least Henry hadn’t taken her for all she had, financially or otherwise.

  She ate her lunch with appetite, and asked me how I liked mine. I said that the German beer was very good, and that the quality of the shirred eggs Bercy was not strained. I waited until we had lighted cigarettes, and asked her:

  “What did you say to the police on the telephone this morning? Apparently that’s what frightened Henry off.”

  “Do you think so? This Lieutenant Gary wanted to come and talk to me but I explained that I was on my honeymoon and he said he would get in touch with me again and arrange to have me make a deposition, or something of the sort. Then he asked me a lot of questions about Mr. Dalling’s house: what I was doing there and if I found you unconscious, and of course I said I did—and what time it was. Finally he told me that Mr. Dalling was dead, isn’t that dreadful?”

  “Dreadful. Did Lieutenant Gary ask you what you were doing at the house when you found me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The same as I told you.” She dropped her eyes demurely, and tapped the ash from the end of her cigarette. “That I was just driving by, and saw you lying there on the porch.”