Robert Sinclair - The Eleventh Hour

“I shall look for an apartment tomorrow, but I will not stay in a ratty motel when there is a perfectly good room with a perfectly good bed upstairs.”

This was obviously too much for the sergeant’s tender sensibilities. “How can you sleep in the bed your own murdered sister slept in?”

“Half-sister. And if I were home in Topeka I’d be sleeping in the bed she slept in, because I still use the one we shared when we were kids. I don’t see any reason to be morbid about it.”

“And I don’t see how a girl who looks like you do can be so unconscious. Don’t you know it just ain’t right, your staying here in this house?”

“Where I come from,” she said, “when anyone’s in trouble, or there’s sickness or death in the family, their friends and relatives all pitch in and do what they can to help. Well, I haven’t noticed anyone else trying to help Arthur, and as long as he’s the only relative I’ve got, it seems to me I ought to try to do what I can.”

“But what will people say? How does it look to people?” The sergeant was growing exasperated. “I’ll tell you how it looks — it don’t look decent. Right?” He turned to Conway as he confirmed his own judgment. “Right.”

She looked him up and down coolly, impersonally, and it was a moment before she spoke. “Sergeant Bauer,” she said glacially, “I have looked after my reputation — and my virtue — without the help of the Los Angeles Police Department up to now, and I think I can continue to do so. Right now I’d be much happier without your advice, opinion, or company.”

Conway expected that the detective would explode, but he only stood, dumbly. Betty walked to the door, flung it open, picked up Bauer’s hat, and held it out to him. He walked to her, took the hat without breaking stride, and left. She closed the door firmly behind him.

“People like that do make me angry,” she said in a voice that was remarkably calm.

“Would you mind telling me just why you put on that act?” Conway asked.

“Was it that bad?” She shook her head ruefully. “I guess I’m not a very good actress. Anyway, it was good enough for him — it worked.”

“What was the idea?”

She looked at him in surprise. “I just wanted him to go away — and I thought you did too.”

“I had no particular reason to ‘want him to go away’ — and certainly not in that fashion.”

“My mistake,” she said. “What shall we do tonight?”

“I’d also be interested to know why you said Helen couldn’t bear to lose anything and never threw anything away.”

She looked at him for a moment before replying. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said. Again that dread of hidden danger, the fear of the secret knowledge she possessed, gripped him. “Do you feel like going out, or shall we have dinner here?” she continued.

“You do as you like,” he said. “I’m having dinner here.”

“All right.” His rudeness, he noticed, no longer seemed to have any effect. “I’ll start getting it.”

He debated, and decided against, offering her a drink or having one himself. He was sure that he would not be affected by a cocktail or two, but he preferred to take no chance of having his tongue loosened. Dinner was even more silent than lunch had been.

When they were through, he said, “I’ll do the dishes.”

“You know what I said this noon about finishing what I start,” she said.

“All right. Then if you’ll excuse me, I’m going upstairs and try to do some work.”

“You know, you really ought to get out more,” she said. “I’ll bet you’ve been cooped up in this house for days.”

“May I remind you that my wife has just died, and that I’m not exactly in the mood for the gay spots?”

“I didn’t mean that. As Sergeant Bauer would say, that wouldn’t look good. But you could—”

“ I didn’t say it wouldn’t look good — I said I’m not in the mood for it.”

“Naturally you’re upset because she was murdered. But that doesn’t mean you have to put on this big grief act.”

He stared at her for several moments before he dared speak. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“You were married for four years, weren’t you? Well, after living with her for four years, you certainly couldn’t have liked her. Nobody who’d had four years of Helen could be sorry when it was over, no matter what had to happen to put an end to it.”

There was utter candor in her eyes, and he could not face them. “You — you’re out of your mind,” he said. He fled to his room and locked the door.

What did she know? What did she suspect? What was she plotting? How was she planning to trap him? The questions to which there were no answers went reeling about in his brain. Her seeming honesty and artlessness were so disarming that it was difficult to guard against them. She had to be got out of the house, and quickly; that would help.

But — would it be enough?

He was horrified as he realized the implication of what he was thinking. Was that the only way he could save himself — by killing this girl, too? But he wasn’t a killer, even though he had murdered Helen. He had no qualms about that: it had been his only chance of salvation. Even Betty knew that was justified. Or did she? Had that remark been a trick to decoy him into some damning revelation? She seemed such a completely engaging person — or might have, at another time or place. He couldn’t kill her — but what other way out was there? Except that he couldn’t get away with it: even his perfect murder, so carefully planned, showed signs of coming apart at the seams. And if two sisters, within a week— Not even Bauer would be fooled under those circumstances. But — was there any way?

He heard her come upstairs, and a long time after her door closed, he peered out. No light showed under the door, so he went downstairs and made himself a drink. Then, on second thought, he took ice, soda and the bottle of whisky to his room and locked himself in.

When Conway’s eyes opened in the morning, the first thing they saw was the small clock on the night table. When the eyes focused, he jerked to a sitting position, surprised to discover that it was ten o’clock. He tried to sort out the thoughts that came crowding into a head which was too full of riveting machines to be able to think. At least there had been no phone call from Bauer, which meant that he was not wanted at the line-up. As for Betty, perhaps he could cope with her after some coffee.

His place was set at the dining-room table, and the coffee pot was simmering on the stove. He poured a cup, drank it black, and poured another which he took back to the table with him. Betty was nowhere to be seen; he assumed that she had already eaten and gone to her room. He started on the papers and the grapefruit which were at his place, simultaneously.

The case was still on the front pages, but it was down to one column, consisting of a reworking of the facts, conjectures and surmises which had been printed yesterday. The only added information was the disclosure that no sex crime had been committed; both papers, with an unmistakable air of disappointment, concluded that the murderer must be merely a homicidal maniac. It was only a matter of time, Conway reflected gratefully, until, as Bauer had predicted, something else, newer, more sensational, would come along to push the murder of Helen Conway off the front pages, and into the already crowded oblivion of unsolved crimes.

The final paragraph of one story caught his eye: “Captain Ramsden referred newsmen to Detective Sergeant Bauer for further developments in the case, explaining that Sergeant Bauer had been put in full charge.” The sergeant is not so dumb, Conway thought, and then amended, about some things.