Jonathan Latimer - Red Gardenias

Crane added, "Look at Peter, too. She s quite friendly with him."

"Peter told me this afternoon he wanted to get Richard s letters to protect a lady," Ann said. "From hints he dropped I got the idea the lady is Carmel, and that the letters were important." She glanced at his face. "And that gave me an idea."

The road curved to the right, crossed a small stone bridge and entered a valley. Apple orchards, fruit trees and cornfields lay on either side of them. They passed a wagon loaded with yellow feed corn.

"I think you re wonderful," Crane said.

"Be serious. If Carmel was your wife and was having an affair with Richard, what would you do?"

"I d lock her up in the coalbin."

"Please be serious."

"I d be angry with Richard."

"Exactly "

"My God!" Crane blinked at her. "You don t think John killed him?"

"He could have discovered Carmel in the car with Richard (that fits in with the gardenia), sent her into the club, then killed Richard."

"How?"

Ann smiled. "That s as far as I ve gone."

"I ve got an idea." Crane lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth. "I ll tell you if you re not mad at me."

"I ve never been mad at you."

"No?"

"Well, I wish you wouldn t drink so much."

Crane was about to tell her of his plan to make people think he was a drunkard so they d disregard him, but it didn t sound so convincing sober.

"All right, I won t," he said. "Here s the idea."

He reconstructed the murder (if it had been a murder) for her. Richard, he said, had passed out. Then John, or someone else, had fastened a rubber hose to the exhaust of his sedan, run the free end through a partially open window, and started the engine. Then, when Richard was dead, he removed the hose.

"I think that s very clever," Ann declared.

The road came to a good cement highway, and Ann turned to the left and increased the sedan s speed. The sun was barely above a long ridge ahead of them, and the air was cooler. Haze hung like muslin over the distant countryside.

Crane was frowning. "Only then I don t see who killed John," he admitted.

Ann held her cigarette out the window to let the wind remove the ash. "John killed himself. Remorse."

Crane looked at her smiling face with respect. "That makes it pretty neat." He pulled the tan camel s hair around him. "But the old man is certain Carmel did the murdering."

Ann said, "That s a good theory, too."

Crane had another thought. "Maybe Carmel signed her notes to Richard with the name Delia."

"She didn t. Her handwriting s different."

"You ve been busy, haven t you?"

"One of us has to work."

Crane retired into high dudgeon. He had begun to be a little alarmed about Ann Fortune. It would be an awful thing if she solved the case singlehanded. He would never live it down. He had a dreadful feeling he might have to go to work.

"I need a drink," he said, and then, as Ann looked at him, added, "of nice warm tea."

Presently he saw they were entering Brookfield. Middle-sized houses, many with fine lawns, sat under great oak and chestnut trees. There were gardens, filled with the yellow and white and orange flowers of late fall, around the houses and barbered hedges around them. Twice the clear stream forced the road to arch its back with stone bridges.

The village had a double main street with a partition of young trees in the middle. The stores had evidently been influenced by Tudor England. Their dark, exposed beams and red bricks contrasted with clean sidewalks and Paris-green grass. A one-story building had two display windows: one read, Daphne Gray, Beautician; the other, Charles G. Jameson, Real Estate.

Ann parked the sedan at an angle to the curb, and they went into the office and found an old man in a pair of slippers tinkering with a radio. He wore a coat and trousers and a shirt, buttoned at the collar, but no tie.

"Fix one o these?" he demanded.

Crane said he couldn t. He showed the old man a card from the American Insurance Company, said he was an investigator, and asked him about the Maxwells. He didn t know very much about them.

"I recollect they paid Chuck in advance for two years," he said in a reedy voice.

"Then the lease hasn t expired?" Ann asked.

"No, ma am. They got until next May." He looked curiously at Crane. "What you investigatin, Mr Maxwell s death?"

Crane asked, "How d you know he d died?"

"The house ain t been used this summer. And besides, another feller was inquirin about him last January. I suspicioned he was dead then."

Crane and Ann exchanged glances. Both were thinking Richard March had died soon after the man s inquiries, in February.

"What d the man want to know?" Crane asked.

There was a sly look about the old man s bright eyes, as though he shared some secret with Crane. "Wanted to know what Mrs Maxwell looked like."

"Did you tell him?"

"We couldn t. Me and Chuck never laid eyes on her."

"Did he want to know anything else?"

The old man chuckled. "Wanted to know how much they used the house." He didn t make any noise, just shook inside.

"How much did they?"

The old man gave Crane that sly, secretive look. "It seemed kind of odd. They paid a right fine price for the house." He looked down at his slippers. "But they only came week ends."

Crane asked if he d seen Maxwell, and he said he had. He thought his name was assumed, but he wasn t sure.

"You ve no clue to who he was?" asked Ann.

"Your speakin of that s a funny thing." The old man looked at her with a pleased smile. " Bout a month ago I seen a picture that looked a lot like the feller who was askin for him in January. It was in the newspaper."

"Who was it?"

"John March, the one that died in his garage."

Crane flicked a glance at Ann, then asked, "Do you think Mrs March and Mrs Maxwell were the same person?"

"I got my idears."

Ann was wearing a three-quarter length black caracul coat, fastened at the neck with a gold chain and cut so that it hung like a tunic to just about the knees. She undid the coat and found a photograph in an inside pocket.

"Would you know Mr Maxwell?"

"I reckon so," said the old man.

Crane stared at her with reluctant admiration. He could see it was a photograph of Richard March. Tall, tanned and blond, he looked like a movie actor in gray slacks and an open shirt. Ann handed the picture to the old man, smiled at Crane.

He made a face at her. She was too darned efficient. He thought he had better go to work. He thought it was a fine thing when a man had to work hard to keep ahead of a woman. Especially one as pretty as Ann.

The old man handed back the photograph. "That s him."

"Well, thanks," Crane said.

"One more thing," said the old man, "though I don t know as it s much of a clue…"

"It might be," Ann said. "What is it?"

"Well, twice I borrowed matches from Mr Maxwell. An both times he gave me a package from the Crimson Cat. That s a night club near here."

A middle-aged man with spectacles and dandruff flakes on his blue serge suit came into the office. He turned out to be the old man s son, Charles, who operated the realty business. The old man told him Crane was an insurance investigator, looking up the Maxwells.

"Been a lot of interest in them today," the younger Mr Jameson said.

"How s that?" Crane asked.

"A fellow came a couple of hours ago to collect the Maxwell things. He had a note from Mrs Maxwell." Ann said excitedly, "He wouldn t still be there?"

"I don t know."

Crane said, "How do we get there?"

Following the younger Mr Jameson s directions, it took them three minutes to reach February Lane. The house was a Cape Cod cottage, white, with a high roof and a screened porch on the side. In the driveway was a big sedan with a woman in the driver s seat.