Robert Sinclair - The Eleventh Hour

“That’s very kind of him,” Conway said.

“It starts in the drugstore, when you went over to get that cup of coffee because you were early for the picture. You had to ask your wife for money to pay the check. She was careless and you saw that she had a roll. You asked where she’d gotten it, and, because she wasn’t sticking with you much longer anyway, and didn’t care what you thought about it, she told you. She told you that she’d cleaned out your joint account, and, naturally, you got sore, and you had a fight. That we label Motive Number One.”

“One hundred per cent wrong so far,” Conway said. “I knew about the money an hour after she’d withdrawn it. I got a little upset because she was carrying it around. I told the sergeant all this.”

“Yeah,” Bauer said. “You told me.”

Davis appeared not to have heard the interruption. “Naturally, after that, you were in no mood to go to a movie. Nor was she. So you went back to the car. Somehow — this is one of the details you can help with — you found out about the affair with Taylor. I imagine that she probably taunted you with it — she was through with you, anyway. Motive Number Two.”

“Wait a minute,” Bauer broke in. “I got it. That red scarf she was wearing, that you didn’t like—” He turned to Davis. “He told the waitress he couldn’t stand it, and they were arguing about it. I don’t know if I told you before, but Taylor gave her that. So here’s what happened. Conway’s beefing about the scarf, and she says, ‘You got good reason not to like it — if you only knew.’ So he wants to know what she’s talking about, and she lets him have it. One thing leads to another, and” — he turned to Conway — “that’s when you killed her, figuring the scarf made it poetical justice.”

“I think that’s probably just about it, Sergeant,” Davis said. “How about it, Conway?”

“You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried,” Conway said. “But I guess you are trying, at that. For your information, until this moment, I didn’t know anything about that scarf.”

“There seem to have been a lot of things you didn’t know about,” Ramsden interjected.

“At any rate,” Davis continued, “you took the scarf and choked her and killed her. And then you snapped out of your murderous rage, and realized you had a dead body in the car. You drove around for a while, wondering what to do about it, and then you remembered these maniac killings, and you got a brilliant idea. You figured it all out, and you figured you could make it look like one of them, and get away with it. So you just parked the car on the first quiet street you came to, and went back to the theatre.”

“Let’s stop kidding,” Conway said. “I don’t know what you’re driving at; you must have something on your minds, but it certainly can’t be that you believe I did this thing. The car was parked at ten-o-four, remember? And you yourself, Sergeant, said I couldn’t have done it then.”

“That’s right,” Bauer said. “You couldn’t of done it if the car was parked at ten-o-four. If. That’s what threw me, and it was a lucky break for you — for a while. You must of had a good laugh when you found out that’s what we were going on — you couldn’t of hoped for a break like that. But — and I don’t expect you to be surprised at this — that car wasn’t parked at ten-o-four, it was parked at nine-o-i our, as I found out only this afternoon. So now d’you see what’s changed since this morning?”

Conway looked at them incredulously. “What did you do, bribe that couple to change their story?”

“Wait a minute, Conway—” Ramsden half-rose from his chair. “We’ve taken enough lip from you.”

“He’s naturally disappointed,” Bauer said placatingly, “after getting away with it this long. But don’t you go talking about bribes,” he said sternly to Conway. “You ought to know by this time that a man like me don’t have to pull stuff like that. Matter of fact, it was you tipped me off. You remember, you were talking about rebroadcasts this morning? It must of been your unconscious, thinking about it. Anyhow, I did a little checking up.

“Remember, we were here in this office the day the body was found, and I said this Elsie Daniels told me they’d been listening to Senator Taft when they saw the car being parked. Well, somebody” — there was a barely perceptible glance at Ramsden — “figured that made it ten o’clock, because that’s when most people here heard the speech. But” — the sergeant paused professorially — “that was not a fact. When I got the real fact, this afternoon, all I had to do was take it and the other facts I had, and put ’em together right, like I told you. Senator Taft’s speech was broadcast from two local stations here at ten o’clock, all right. But those were rebroadcasts. By looking up the radio logs at the newspaper, I find out it was broadcast at nine o’clock from a Denver station which not many sets can pick up out here. But whaddaya know? Elsie’s family just got a big new radio that can get it, as I proved this afternoon. And to top it off, the Denver station is practically right next to KNX on the dial, which is what Elsie usually tuned to, on account of the music.

“The other day, when I told Elsie and her boy friend it was ten o’clock when the car stopped, they both said, ‘Oh, it couldn’t of been as late as that.’ I figured that was because they’d been mushing and lost track of the time, but it turns out they were right. What happened was, they intended to tune in KNX, but, not being used to the new radio, they didn’t hit it right on the nose. What they got instead was Denver. So today when I asked ’em again what time they thought it was, they were positive it wasn’t ten. So it must of been nine, which all adds up and makes sense. At nine-o-four, or very close to it,” he was addressing Conway now, “you parked your car with your wife’s body in it, and got out and walked away.”

“I have to hand it to you, Sergeant, for figuring that out,” Davis said. “It’s brilliant.” Conway expected Bauer to take a bow, but instead he ploughed along with his recital.

“You got out of the car,” he continued, “and walked up to Santa Monica Boulevard—”

“Wait a minute,” Conway interrupted. “The car wasn’t parked at nine o’clock because it was still in the parking lot. And I didn’t park it at nine or ten or any other time, because I couldn’t have. Why don’t you look for the man who did — at least you know he had a mustache and was practically hunchbacked.”

Davis’s glance at Ramsden was somewhat disconcerted. They muffed that one, Conway thought. Bauer, however, did not hesitate.

“There’s a dozen five-and-tens and souvenir stores along Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevard open that time of night,” he said. “And they all sell those disguise kits for kids. You parked around a corner on a dark street, locked the car, went into one of those places, paid your quarter, trimmed the mustache a little, and stuck it on. All you have to do to look like a hunchback is hunch up your coat, hunch over your shoulders, and, see?” — the sergeant demonstrated — “I’m a hunchback.

“Another thing, just so you know I haven’t missed any details,” the detective continued to Davis, “he had a hat when he got out of the parked car. Naturally, to help hide his face. What happened was this: he left the hat in the car with her coat, so he had no hat in the drugstore. He wears the hat when he gets out of the car, after he’s parked it, and when he gets a couple blocks away from it, he takes off the mustache, throws it away, rips up the hat and gets rid of the pieces, and arrives at the theatre with no hat. I did a little looking around his house the other day — not a sign of a hat anywhere.”