Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

“Wait a minute, Inspector,” I said, catching his arm only to have him jerk it free impatiently. “What’s the score?”

“Nothing to nothing!” he snapped. “What’s the point of going around in circles asking everybody the same old questions again? No suspects, no leads, no anything in this case.” He lowered his head to glower at me over his glasses. “I,” he said distinctly, “am going home and get drunk.”

Turning his back on me, he started to walk away.

“Hold it a minute,” I told him. “I got an idea.”

He stopped and regarded me suspiciously.

I said, “I agree with Arnold Tate that somehow the will must be behind this mess. So let’s try an oblique approach. In the first place, all we know about the will is what Mannering told us, and maybe he was lying. How about subpoenaing a copy and looking it over? In the second place, maybe one of our suspects is in financial straits. How about having their financial statuses investigated?”

“You mean secretly?”

“Of course secretly. Do you need written permission from all eleven suspects?”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” he said in a ponderous tone. “You can’t pry into a private citizen’s personal affairs—”

“Look, Inspector,” I interrupted. “It’s me, Moon, you’re talking to — not the commissioner. Don’t tell me the banks and investment companies in this town won’t cooperate if the cops ask for a little off-the-record information. I could get it by myself from some of the banks, if I promised not to use it in evidence. Take a few of those college cops you’re always complaining the chief assigns you, have them contact the credit bureau, the various banks—”

He said coldly, “I know how to conduct an investigation, Moon.”

“All right. Conduct one, then,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re so discouraged about. At least we can now eliminate three suspects, which is progress of a sort, even if it is negative.”

“What three suspects?” he asked.

“Arnold Tate, Maggie, and Doctor Lawson. Tate was with me when Grace underwent this last attack, Maggie was with Mouldy Greene, and the doctor pulled Grace out of the pool, so he could hardly be the one who threw her in.” I paused, then added, “If you assume Don’s killer is the same person who is passing at Grace, those three can be dropped as suspects there, too.”

“Suppose it isn’t the same person?” Day growled.

“It’s almost bound to be. But even if it isn’t, I think we may be able to eliminate Doctor Lawson and Arnold Tate. If you want to do some checking, we may be able to narrow the time of Don’s death down to sometime between two-thirty a.m. and seven, when the servants got up.”

“How?”

“First,” I said, “you’ll need a good recent picture of young Don.”

After staring at me a moment, Day turned to Lieutenant Hannegan. “Go inside and get a picture,” he ordered.

As Hannegan silently re-entered the house, I went on. “A local bus going downtown passes the house at eleven-ten at night. Find the driver who was on that night and see if Don Lawson wasn’t a passenger. There is a tavern at Fourth and Market — I don’t know its name, but it has a neon sign reading, ‘Bar and Grill.’ Check the bartender to see if Don wasn’t there in a back booth from midnight till one-thirty, when the bar closed. Then question all the bus drivers who came this way from downtown from two a.m. on, and I think you’ll be able to establish the time he got home.”

“Where’d you get this lead?” the inspector asked.

“From Arnold Tate, but it was more or less in confidence, so I’d prefer you to hold off questioning him for the moment. If the story checks, Doctor Lawson is clear because he would have been at the hospital when Don went over the bluff. If it doesn’t check, better pull Arnold in for a going over. While you’re at it, check the two a.m. university bus to see if Tate was on it. If he was, and we can prove Don Lawson was on a bus coming home about the same time, Tate will be clear on that angle, too.”

“Why would Tate be on a two a.m. bus?” Day asked querulously. “Grace Lawson dropped him off for the seven-fifteen p.m.”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “And not important to the case unless it’s a lie. Believe me, I’m not holding out on you, but I’m kind of morally bound to keep Tate’s confidence.”

“You’d better not hold out,” Day grumbled. “You’ll need the department’s recommendation for a license renewal one of these days, you know.”

“I know,” I told him.

Hannegan came out of the house carrying a cardboard-framed picture in the hand not occupied by the bag of bottles and glasses. He handed the picture to Warren Day.

“Now go back and get a picture of Arnold Tate,” the inspector snapped.

The lieutenant raised his eyebrows.

“Try Grace Lawson’s room,” Day said impatiently. “Mrs. Tate, I mean. Nuts as she is about the guy, she’s bound to have a picture.”

“I’ll get it,” I said quickly, remembering Grace’s room now contained Mouldy Greene, and not being up to another clash between him and Hannegan.

I managed to locate a picture and was handing it to Day when a car roared up the drive at a rate of speed too fast for safety. When the inspector saw white lettering on its hood, he bellowed, “Hey!” in such an enormous voice, the driver slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt at a point just before the drive passed alongside the building. Two uniformed officers jumped from the car and approached the veranda abreast, becoming noticeably paler the nearer they got to Warren Day.

“Glad to see you boys in such a hurry,” the inspector said in a silky voice. “It can’t be more than an hour since the call went in.”

I glanced at him, noting his rage-gauge was dead white. Not having the stomach to witness two strong men reduced to groveling wrecks, I turned away and went back into the house just as the inspector’s voice began to ascend to a subdued shriek.

When I re-entered the drawing-room, I found Doctor Lawson and Arnold Tate had gone upstairs to check on Grace and Fausta. Abigail Stoltz and Ann Lawson were alone.

“May I speak to you privately?” I asked Ann.

“Why, yes,” she said, rising from her chair, then glancing sidewise at her aunt. “We can go in the den.”

Abigail rose, also, for some reason turning a dark red. “No, don’t go to that trouble,” she said in a flustered voice. “I was going to my room anyway.”

Before either of us could reply, she hurried toward the stairway. Ann resumed her seat, and I situated myself on the sofa across from her chair.

“We’re more or less at a blank wall, Mrs. Lawson,” I told her. “This thing makes so little sense, all I can see to do is start over from the beginning. Only this time I’d like to start farther back, because I’m not sure we started at the beginning before.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Probably because I’m trying to approach the subject delicately,” I said. “I’d like to go back to your husband’s accident.”

Ann’s beautiful eyes widened, and for a moment she was still. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said finally, “but you needn’t be delicate about it. My husband died nearly a year ago, and I’m quite recovered from the shock.”

“Just a few minutes ago a thought occurred to me,” I explained. “When your husband died, his will left everything to Don and Grace. When Don died, all the money was then due Grace, providing she lived to collect. If any one of the five attempts on Grace had been successful, you’d have inherited everything.

“Now your husband’s death appeared to be an accident, and Don’s appeared to be suicide. If the first attempt on Grace had succeeded, probably her death would have passed as an accident, which leads me to wonder if either your husband’s or Don’s death was what it seemed. The thought that occurred to me is perhaps this is a chain of murder, with you next on the list.”