Robert Sinclair - The Eleventh Hour

“I see. Sort of routine investigation?”

“Yeah. But here’s what I wanted to ask you. You must of known more people than just the ones you said yesterday. Naturally, at a time like that, you wouldn’t think of all of ’em.”

“As a matter of fact, I think I did.” Conway’s mind searched quickly, trying to discover if some trap lay behind the detective’s words. “We’d met very few people since we came out here. Let me look at the list and I’ll see if I forgot anyone.”

Bauer took a piece of paper from his notebook. “What I was wondering,” he said, “didn’t your wife have an address book or a list of phone numbers, or something like that?”

“No — yes, she did.” He had genuinely forgotten for a moment, but when he remembered, there seemed no point in concealing it. “She bought an address book when we first came out here. I don’t know whether I can find it — I haven’t seen it for months.”

“Might as well look.”

As they entered the house, Bauer headed for the stairs. “Let’s try her room first,” he said.

In the tiny hall at the head of the stairs, the detective stopped. “Another thing,” he said. “While I think of it, have you got that glove you went back to the theatre to find?”

Conway stopped in his tracks. “Yes, I think so. Why?”

“I’d like to take a gander at it.”

Conway waited, but no further explanation was forthcoming. Bauer followed him into his room, and watched as he took the glove from his dresser drawer. There’s nothing to worry about, he told himself. You’re in the clear.

Bauer walked to the window with the glove, examined it carefully, and then took from his pocket the mate to it and compared them. Conway watched him narrowly, trying to divine the cause behind this.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Bauer announced finally.

“What doesn’t?”

“Look here.” He held the gloves out for Conway’s inspection. “They’ve both been darned a couple times. There’s a rip in this one, and the ends of the fingers are worn through two places in this one and one in that. They’re no good.”

The sergeant’s observation was shockingly true. Conway remembered Helen’s attitude when she had bought the gloves: she had gotten a sadistic satisfaction in letting him think she was spending their money on a whim; she would have enjoyed it less had he known that she needed the gloves. And he hadn’t noticed their condition; neither then, nor in the hurried moment when he had changed his plan and taken them from the drawer. Again his mind raced to discover what it might mean.

“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” he said.

“It doesn’t make sense, that’s all. Why would a woman make you go all the way back to that theatre to get a glove that was all worn out anyway?”

“You know how women are, Sergeant. There’s nothing that annoys them more than losing one glove.” Whatever the sergeant’s theories, he would have to admit the truth of that.

“Yeah,” Bauer conceded, “sometimes women are tough for even me to figure out. I mean, because their minds don’t always work the way a sensible person would expect them to.”

You’ve got something there, Conway thought.

“Let’s see if we can find that address book,” the detective said. He pocketed both the gloves and led the way from the room.

Conway half-feared that some emotion might well up in him when, for the first time since the night she had disappeared, he entered Helen’s room. But if there was any, it could hardly be called an emotion; he felt only the merest flicker of relief that she was not there, and never would be again. Irrelevantly, he realized that he would have to do something about disposing of Helen’s clothes.

Bauer headed straight for the dresser and opened the top drawer. Conway felt a moment of panic: it was the drawer in which he had replaced the new gloves Helen had been wearing, after he had cleaned and pressed them. The blithering idiot, Conway raged to himself. Why should he pick that particular drawer?

The detective straightened up almost immediately. In his right hand he held a small red imitation leather address book.

“See?” he said. “That’s what I mean about practically always being right.”

“It’s amazing,” Conway said. “I wouldn’t have gotten around to looking there for an hour.” Keep him taking bows, he thought.

Bauer was thumbing through the book, comparing the names he found with the ones on his list. After a few pages he stopped. “Who’s this?” he asked. Conway walked to him and looked at the open page.

“Oh,” he said. “The Gordons. They were the best friends we had out here. They went back to New York about three months ago.”

“That must be why she crossed out the address and phone number,” the sergeant observed. Conway mentally applauded this brilliant bit of deduction, but said only, “I suppose so.”

Bauer continued leafing through the book, which consisted mostly of blank white pages. “Didn’t know very many people, did you? Must of been kind of lonesome for you,” he remarked when he was halfway through.

“Not particularly,” Conway said. “Of course we’ve missed the Gordons, but my wife and I were perfectly happy just by ourselves.”

“Who’s he?” Bauer pointed at a name which, though heavily crossed out, was still readable.

“Harry Taylor?” It was several moments before Conway was able to identify the name. “We hardly knew him. We met him once when.we had dinner with the Gordons, and then he was with them one evening when they dropped in here. That must have been almost a year ago. I don’t know why she had the name in the book.”

Bauer looked at the entry more closely. “The Hillside number was crossed out first,” he announced. “See? The hard pencil? Then the Hempstead number was crossed out the same time she crossed out the name.” It was quite obvious that this was true, but Bauer pronounced it with the air of one who had just solved the Bacon ciphers, and Conway felt unaccountably annoyed.

“I don’t know why it was there in the first place,” he said.

“You must of called him up sometime.”

“I’m sure that neither my wife nor I—” Conway began, with what he realized was too glacial a dignity. Then he remembered. “Wait a minute. George and Peggy Gordon came here for dinner one night. George had to work after dinner, so Peggy suggested we try to get this Taylor to make a fourth at bridge. I don’t remember whether my wife or Mrs. Gordon made the call. At any rate, he didn’t come over.”

“Well, makes no difference. Mind if I take this? Save me copying down all these addresses and phone numbers.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ll be getting along.” The detective turned to the dresser to close the drawer. With his hands on the handles, his eyes lingered for a perceptible moment on the contents inside; then, slowly, he closed it. What caused the hesitation Conway had no way of knowing, but he felt the all too familiar tightening of his throat.

The shrill clamor of the doorbell stopped him as he followed the detective from the room. Bauer stopped at the head of the stairs to let Conway precede him.

“I don’t feel like talking to anybody right now,” Conway said. “Would you do me a favor — see who it is, and try to get rid of them?”

“Sure.” The detective started down.

“I’ll wait up here. Call me when they’ve gone.” Conway retreated into Helen’s room, closed the door, and went directly to the dresser.

He pulled out the drawer as far as Bauer had and stood looking into it. The gloves lay in the corner, undisturbed; their whiteness and newness were so glaring that it seemed as though they rested in the beam of a spotlight, that made all the other contents of the drawer appear to be in shadow. Why was I such a fool? he asked himself. Why put them back here, on top of everything? I could have wrapped them up, put them in any drawer, or under the handkerchiefs, or in the back. I knew they might be evidence — why flaunt them in the face of this birdbrain?