Роберт Артур - Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

Sam said, “Makes you an accessory, lady.”

“You can’t blame me for not reporting it,” she said. “He’s my husband. A wife doesn’t have to testify against her own husband. Right?”

“Sure,” Sam said dryly. “But she doesn’t have to help him bury bodies either.”

Art Ward from the lab came around the corner of the house carrying a lab kit and a camera. He had two uniformed cops with him carrying shovels. Mrs. Cooper stared at the shovels as if she’d never seen one before.

“Hi, Sod, Sam,” Ward said. “What’s the scoop?” He gave Cooper and Mrs. Cooper a curious glance.

I pointed to the spaded area. “Right there, Art. Should be a body.” I turned to the woman. “Maybe we’d better go inside while they’re digging, Mrs. Cooper.”

She nodded and then led the way toward the house, with her husband following and Sam and me bringing up the rear. One of the policemen sank his shovel into the ground as we walked away.

She only took us as far as the kitchen. Offering us seats at the kitchen table, she said in a flustered voice, “You’ll have to excuse the house. The servants have been gone several days. I... I always let them have off when George...” She let her voice trail off.

Cooper said glumly, “She means she gives them a vacation when I fall off the wagon. She doesn’t want them to know how I am.”

I glanced around. The place looked clean enough to me.

I said, “Now, Mrs. Cooper, you want to tell us about last night?”

She was standing by the window over the sink, her attention divided between us and what was going on outside. “What is there to tell?” she asked. “George said he told you all about it.”

“We’d like your version,” I said. “Incidentally, we came inside so you wouldn’t have to watch what was going on out there. Don’t you think it would be better if you came away from the window?”

Flushing, she came over to the table and sank into a chair. “What do you want me to tell you, Sergeant? George came home drunk and found Mr. Marks here. They had a fight and George hit him with the fire tongs. That’s all there is to it.”

“How did Marks happen to be here?” I asked.

“He came to the door about fifteen minutes before George got home. He’d been drinking too, but I didn’t realize that until after I’d let him in. He... he tried to get fresh with me. I ordered him out of the house, but he wouldn’t go. Then George staggered in and the argument started. It would never have happened if George had been home where he belonged instead of out getting drunk. Drink was the cause of the whole thing. How many times I’ve warned my husband. George, haven’t I done everything possible to make you stop?”

“I guess,” Cooper said in a low voice.

There was a knock at the back door. Mrs. Cooper started to get up, but I waved her back to her seat and answered it myself. Art Ward was standing on the back porch. Stepping out, I closed the door behind me.

“It was there all right, Sod,” he said. “Got a bashed-in skull. He was only buried about a foot down.”

I walked back to the grave with him to look at the body. It had been lifted out alongside of the hole. It was still all covered with dirt.

“How long do you figure?” I asked Ward.

He shrugged. “No bloating. I’d guess under twenty-four hours. You’ll have to wait for the coroner’s physician to make a post mortem if you want it pinpointed.”

I said, “Our information is he died last night.”

“I’d figure about that,” he agreed. “In this weather it doesn’t take long for them to begin to swell. And he hasn’t started yet.”

I sent one of the uniformed policemen over next door to break the news to the victim’s wife and bring her over to identify the body. She was a mousy little woman of middle age and she went all to pieces when she saw what was left of her husband. She managed to identify him, but she was too upset right then to question. I sent her back home accompanied by the same officer who had brought her over. I told him to phone her family doctor to come over and see if he could quiet her down. Then I went back inside.

I took Art Ward back inside with me, having him bring his lab kit. Mrs. Cooper took us into the front room and pointed out the fire tongs, which still lay next to the fireplace with dried blood on them. I told Ward to check them for prints, then take them back to the lab.

There wasn’t much more we could do at the scene. Sam called City Hospital for an ambulance to take the body to the morgue, while I went next door to see how Mrs. Marks was doing. Her family doctor had arrived and had put her under a sedative. I left word with a servant for Mrs. Marks to drop down to headquarters the next day if she felt better, or to phone me if she wasn’t up to it.

We took both Mr. and Mrs. Cooper back downtown. Cooper had already been booked, so we just turned him over to Central District and had him put in a cell. Pending further investigation, we booked Mrs. Cooper on suspicion of being an accessory to homicide and held her overnight.

The next morning, Wednesday, Mrs. Marks’s maid phoned that her mistress was feeling better and would be down to see us about ten a.m., if that was suitable. I said it was fine.

A few minutes later Art Ward phoned from the lab.

“Fingerprints all over those fire tongs,” he said. “Mr. Cooper’s, Mrs. Cooper’s, some other people who will probably turn out to be servants. Everybody who ever fixed the fire last winter, I guess.”

“Any superimposed over the others, to show who handled them last?”

He snorted. “That’s for the movies. We’re not that brilliant.”

Mousy little Mrs. Marks came into the squadroom just as I hung up. She hadn’t met Sam yesterday because he had been inside with the Coopers. After introducing him, I asked the woman to have a seat.

“We’re sorry to impose on you so soon after your loss, Mrs. Marks,” I said. “But it has to be done.”

“It’s all right,” she said listlessly.

I said, “We’ll make this as short as possible. We know it’s painful for you.”

“I have plenty of time,” she said drearily. “Time is all I have left. But I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I’ve spent most of my life waiting anyway.”

“How’s that?” I inquired.

“For him. If I had back all the hours I’ve waited up, wondering where he was...”

When her voice trailed off, I said, “Your husband?”

She nodded. “I never really blamed him for it. He was awfully handsome, you know. And I’m so plain. I suppose I was lucky to have Henry at all, even to share with other women.”

It seemed like a peculiar philosophy, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. I said, “There’s some question about the date of your husband’s disappearance, Mrs. Marks. It may help to backtrack his movements. Now the M.P. report says you first missed him about nine Friday evening.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t miss him until eight Saturday morning. Nine Friday evening was just the last I saw him.”

I said, “I don’t think I follow.”

“He went out about nine Friday night,” she explained. “I was upset when he didn’t come home, but not worried. About anything having happened to him, I mean. It wasn’t the first time he’d stayed out all night. I didn’t really begin to worry until about seven-thirty the next morning. By eight I knew something had happened.”

Sam asked, “How was that?”

“He always came home to shave and shower before going to work. He owned Marks’s Department Store, you know, and he never missed being there at opening time. He always said if the boss couldn’t get to work on time, he couldn’t expect the help to. He never came in later than seven-thirty unless it was a Sunday.”