Brett Halliday: Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

“Of course,” Wallace said slowly, the wrinkles beside his old eyes hardening into the semblance of rutted stone.

Burns came out of the bedroom holding two pieces of a torn scarf. “I found this, sir.”

“Uncle Bob gave that to Mother,” Betty said, and slid off the Inspector’s lap.

“What of it, Burns?” Wallace’s voice sounded tired and far away.

“It has been torn wilfully.” Burns looked very young as he stood there with the red and blue silk pieces trailing from his hand, and a little worried, because he was afraid he was going to say something presumptuous.

Betty turned the music box over and wound it. Once more the sad little tune rose and descended, through the three weeping phrases, stopped for a moment and then began again, while the doll, its arms outstretched, turned endlessly.

“I’ve been listening to you talk to the little girl,” Burns said, “and I thought you did a fine job of it. I wish I could talk to children that way. But I can’t, because I’m not married or anything and I was an only child and I’ve never had experience with children. They frighten me, to be completely honest about it.”

The lines beside the old Inspector’s eyes softened just a little, or changed somehow infinitesimally from rutted stone to a gentler, more flexible series of wrinkles — a series which might have been started long ago by too much smiling. It was true, he did understand children, having had four of his own. And he did understand young policemen, having had many more than four of them around him. So he said, “What is it you’re trying to tell me, Burns? What’s bothering you?”

“Only this, sir. As I said, I’m not married, and I guess I’m sort of romantic. I’ve been thinking how it would be if you loved a woman and if that woman was — well, partly a child.”

He paused for a long while to let the flush which had come to his face recede, and then he said, “And I’ve been listening to the little girl talk. And somehow she isn’t just like a child. So if the man were sort of a father type and his wife treated him like a parent — if she lied to him and was glad when bad things happened to him, as some children are, I understand, or think they are anyway — well then, if this man had to make a choice, he might choose to protect the woman who was a child rather than the child who was a woman.

“Because the chances are, the woman would always be a child, while the little girl had a chance of growing up into a real woman. And maybe, the man thought that a little unhappiness and experience and responsibility would help the child grow into a better woman. Then too, the child has a whole life ahead of her in which to forget and learn and be happy, while the woman who is a child has only now and not much left of that.”

“I don’t follow you,” Wallace said a little brusquely. “What are you getting at?”

“I guess I’m not making much sense. I’ll try again, though maybe it isn’t even worth the saying. When I found the torn scarf and Betty said her uncle had given it to her mother, it made me wonder.”

Burns stopped short and mopped his forehead, certain he had overstepped the bounds of rank.

The music box ran down and, in the new silence, Burns felt Betty’s eyes on him. He met them for an instant. They were alert, expectant, waiting in a sort of suspended stillness. Strangely, she did not move to rewind the box.

“Go on,” Wallace said. “It made you wonder what?”

“I know you’ve sort of taken it for granted that the man killed his brother,” Burns said apologetically. “But from what Betty said about her mother’s being so happy this morning — it occurred to me that maybe that happiness was jeopardized later. You see, the mother knew that as long as her husband’s brother was alive, her husband would never feel himself to be top man. And her husband had to feel important if they were going to live in that safe, fairy-book world. Then too, maybe if there weren’t another child-adult around — like Betty’s uncle — to show her husband up, she wouldn’t have to drink.”

“It’s all very neat,” Wallace said wearily. “So the husband took her away to protect her at the expense of Betty — because he thought Betty was young enough to throw it off and his wife was too young. But you’re just guessing, Burns. The torn scarf is nothing. She might have torn it in a fit of anger. That doesn’t mean she killed the man who gave it to her.”

“I know, sir. There’s no real proof.” Burns looked across at the child and, for a moment, their eyes clung together across the empty air. “But Betty knows,” he said.

Betty set the music box down carefully without taking her eyes from Burns’s face, but she kept one hand on it, as if it gave her comfort. “We all did it,” she said. “But Mother fired the gun.”

Burns opened his other hand and laid four torn pieces of paper on the desk before Wallace. “I found these too, sir.”

The old Inspector bent his head to fit the scraps together. There was only one sentence, written in ink, dated that morning. “Being of sound mind, I leave all my worldly goods to my daughter, Betty Lorman.” It was signed, “Robert Lorman.”

“It may or may not be true,” Burns said. “Betty’s mother may have asked him not to come around any more and, out of spite, he threatened to show it to the husband.”

“Good thinking, Burns.”

“Well, I figured, sir, that the father being the kind of man he was — a father to both his wife and his child — if he had killed his brother, he’d have gone off alone. There’d be no reason for him to take his wife then. He’d have left her with Betty.”

“All right.” The old Inspector looked tired. “It’s all very neat, but what’s the difference? They’ll probably both get caught. It’s difficult for two people to escape the law forever.”

“There’s one way they could, sir,” Burns said. “If they were dead,” he added softly.

The old Inspector’s eyes could not have been more startled if he had not spent most of his life looking at death and the perpetrators of it. “No,” he said.

“They only killed their bodies,” Betty whispered. “Daddy told me that was all, that I shouldn’t feel alone.” Her eyes were glazed, as if she were thinking — or praying.

“But to leave a child—” the Inspector said.

Before he spoke, Burns looked at Betty. Her eyes were fastened on him in a sort of tense concentration, as if she were willing him to say or do something.

“He prepared her,” Burns said. “He made her strong. He hoped someone would take her. As a matter of fact,” he cleared his throat and hesitated, but only for an instant. “If you’ll give me time… if I can find someone who’ll have me… I wouldn’t mind…” His voice trailed off.

The music box started playing. It was wound tighter and the tinkling notes sounded less off-key, and somehow the tune sounded only tenderly nostalgic now.

“I thought you were afraid of children,” Wallace said gently.

“I was, until now.” Burns smiled at Betty and, surprisingly, a dimple appeared in his left cheek.

“Well, yes, I’ll give you time,” the old Inspector said. “And meanwhile, I have a wife already…”