Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“Now who’s not being gracious?”

I said. “It seems to me a guy with any pride wouldn’t want to force an invitation on someone.”

“Oh, I won’t force it. You don’t want a lift, have it your own way. I’d just as soon kill you here.”

“Wouldn’t that be rather risky?”

“I don’t think so. Odds are no one will hear anything. You probably wouldn’t even be found for a while. Anyhow, I’m not here. I’m in my room at the restaurant. So’s Darcy. If it got to be necessary, which it probably wouldn’t, we could find a half dozen guests who are with us.”

I thought about it and decided that he could. Maybe even a full dozen. And so, after thinking, I conceded.

“I believe you could,” I said, “and I’ve decided to accept the lift after all.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

I crossed the parking to the Caddy, and while I was crossing, Darcy reached back from the front seat and unlatched the door, which swung open, and I got in like a paying passenger, with no effort, and Silas Lawler got in after me and closed the door behind him.

“Good evening, Mr. Hand,” Darcy said.

“I’m beginning to doubt it,” I said.

He laughed softly and politely and slid under the wheel of the Caddy and started the engine and occupied himself with driving. He drove at a moderate rate of speed, with careful consideration of traffic regulations, and where he drove was out of town on a highway and off the highway onto a country road. I admired the erect and reliable look of the back of his head. He looked from the rear exactly like a man whose vocabulary included virtuoso.

“You’re a very stubborn guy, Hand,” Silas Lawler said. “You simply won’t take advice.”

“It’s a fault,” I said. “All my life I’ve been getting into trouble because of it.”

“You’re through with that,” he said. “This is the last trouble you’ll ever get into.”

This was not merely something he was saying. It was something he meant. I began trying to think of some way to change his mind, but I couldn’t, and so I began trying then to think of some way to get out of the Caddy and off in some dark field with a sporting chance, but I couldn’t think of that either. In the meanwhile, Darcy drove most of another mile and down a slope and across a culvert, and it was pitch dark down there in the little hollow where the culvert was. Silas Lawler leaned forward slightly and told him to stop the Caddy and turn off its lights, and Darcy did. The window beside Darcy was down, and I could hear clearly the infinite variety of little night sounds in the hollow and fields and all around.

“It’s a nice night to die.” I said. Lawler sighed. He really did. A long soft sibilant sound with weariness in it.

“I’m sorry, Hand. I rather like you, as I’ve said before, and I wish you hadn’t made this necessary.”

“I fail to see the necessity,” I said.

“That’s because you don’t know enough about something you know too much about.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?”

“It is, and it does.”

“Excuse me for being obtuse. I don’t know much of anything about anything that I can see. I know that Constance Markley is alive, and to teach piano lessons, in Amity at two bucks per. I know she’s calling herself Faith Salem. So what? She’s got a right to be alive and teaching piano lessons and what she calls herself is her business. I was hired to find her, and I found her. That’s a capital offense?”

“Murder is. Murder’s capital almost everywhere.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy. I haven’t committed any murder.”

“I know you haven’t,” he said. “But Constance has.”

I sat and listened to the sounds of the night from the hollow and fields and all around. For a few moments they were thunderously amplified and gathered in my head, and then they faded in an instant to their proper dimensions and places.

So that’s where Regis is , I thought. Regis is where I almost am .

And I said, “I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t got a shred of evidence.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head and took his gun out of his pocket again. “You know where Constance is, and that’s enough. You’ll tell the client who hired you, and your client will tell others, and the cops will know. Everyone thinks she and Regis ran away together, and when they learn that Regis isn’t with her and hasn’t ever been, they’ll wonder where he is, and he’s dead. It wouldn’t take them long to find that out. She couldn’t hold out against them for an hour. So you see? So you know too much to be trusted. So you’ve got to die. I’m glad for your sake that it’s a nice night for it.”

I didn’t try to convince him that I’d swap silence for life. The risk in a deal like that would have been all his, and he was too good a gambler to consider it. I sat and listened some more to the sounds in the nice night to die, and I was thinking pretty clearly and understanding a number of things, but there were some other things I wanted to understand and didn’t, and they were things that Silas Lawler could explain. Moreover, the longer we talked, the longer I lived, and this was important to me, if not to him.

“All right,” I said. “Constance killed Regis, and for some reason you want her to get away with it. Why? After all, Regis was your brother.”

“Foster brother.”

“Okay. Foster brother. It’s still in the family.”

“Regis was no damn good. Dying was the best thing he ever did, and he had to have help to do that. He wasn’t fit to touch Constance, let alone sleep with her, and why she ever loved him is something I’ll never understand. But she did. She loved him, and she killed him.”

“It sounds paradoxical, but it’s possible. It wouldn’t make her the first woman to kill a man she loved. Anyhow, I’m beginning to get a picture. You’re on her side, maybe because you both play the piano, and you helped her get away after she killed Regis. I’m guessing that you disposed of the body too, and that poses a puzzle I’ve been trying to figure. No body, no murder. Why should Constance run? And why, since she did, only to Amity? With your collusion, which she had, why not to Shangri-La or somewhere?”

He stared past me out the window into the audible night, and he seemed to be considering carefully the questions I’d asked, and after a while he sighed again, the sibilant weariness with the job he had to do, or thought he had to do. Either way, unless I could prevent it, it would come to the same end for me.

“I guess it won’t hurt to tell you,” he said. “It’ll take a little time, but I’ve got plenty, and you’ve got practically none, and maybe it won’t hurt to allow you a little more.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s generous of you.”

“Don’t mention it. And you’d better listen close because I’m only going over it once lightly. The night it happened, I went up to Regis’s apartment to see him about something personal. I punched the bell a couple times, but no one answered, so I tried the door, and it wasn’t locked. I went in, and there they were. Regis on the floor and Constance in a chair. Regis was dead, and she was gone. What I mean, she was in a state of shock. She was paying no more attention to Regis than if he’d just lain down for a nap. She hardly seemed aware that I’d come into the room. I checked Regis and saw that he’d been shot neatly between the eyes. She just sat there and watched me without moving or saying a word, her eyes as big and bright and dry as the eyes of an owl. I asked her what had happened, but she only shook her head and said she didn’t understand. She said she was confused and couldn’t seem to get things clear in her mind. I wanted to help her, and I held her hands and kept talking to her, trying to get her to remember, but even a dumb guy like me could see pretty soon that it wasn’t any use. She was gone, not home, and it wasn’t any act. She kept insisting she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand where she was, or why, or who Regis was, or I was, or a damn thing about anything. She said her name was Faith Salem. She said she lived in Amity. She said she just wanted to go home.