Charlaine Harris - Real Murders

“Well. You will call me if you need me to do anything? I can bring you some lunch, or you can come stay with me.”» “No, I’m fine.” A slight exaggeration, but close enough to the truth. I suddenly wanted to say something real, something indelible, to my mother. But the only thing I could think of wouldn’t bear uttering. I wanted to say I felt more alive than I had in years; that finally something bigger than myself had happened to me. Now, instead of reading about an old murder, seeing passion and desperation and evil in print on a page, I knew these things to be possessed by people around me. And I said, “Really, I’m okay. And the police are coming by this morning; I’d better go get ready.”

“All right, Aurora. But call me if you get scared. And you can always stay here.”

I had a sudden flood of nervous energy after I hung up. I looked around me, and decided to put it to good use picking up. First my den/dining room/kitchen right off the patio, then the formal front room that I seldom used. I checked the little downstairs bathroom for toilet paper, and ran up the stairs to make my bed and straighten up. The guest bedroom was pristine, as usual. I gathered up my dirty clothes and trotted downstairs with the bundle, tossing it unceremoniously down the basement stairs to land in front of the washer. Lawrenceton is on high enough ground for basements to be feasible.

When I looked at the clock and saw I had fifteen minutes left before Arthur Smith was due to come, I checked the coffee level and went back upstairs to put on some makeup. That was simple enough, since I wore little, and I hardly had to look in the mirror to do it. But out of habit I did, and I didn’t look any more interesting or experienced than I had the day before. My face was still pale and round, my nose short and straight and suitable for holding up my glasses, my eyes magnified behind those glasses and round and brown. My hair unbound flew all around my head in a waving brown mass halfway down my back, and for once I let it be. It would get in my way and stick to the corners of my mouth and get caught in the hinges of my glasses, but what the hell! Then I heard the double ring of the front doorbell and flew downstairs.

People almost always came to the back door instead of the front, but Arthur had parked on the street instead of in the parking area behind the apartments. Under the fresh suit, shaved jaw, and curling pale hair still damp from the shower, he looked tired.

“Are you all right this morning?” he asked.

“Yes, pretty much. Come in.”

He looked all around him, openly, when he passed through the living room, missing nothing. He paused at the big room where I really lived. “Nice,” he said, sounding impressed. The sunny room with the big window overlooking the patio with its rose trees did look attractive. Exposed brick walls and all the books make an intelligent-looking room, anyway, I thought, and I waved him onto the tan suede love seat as I asked him if he wanted coffee.

“Yes, black,” he said fervently. “I was up most of the night.”

When I bent over to put his cup on the low table in front of him, I realized with some embarrassment that his eyes weren’t on the coffee cup.

I settled opposite him in my favorite chair, low enough that my feet can touch the floor, wide enough to curl up inside, with a little table beside it just big enough to hold a book and a coffee cup.

Arthur took a sip of his coffee, eyed me again as he told me it was good, and got down to business.

“You were right, the body was definitely moved after death to the position it was in when you found it,” he said directly. “She was killed there in the kitchen. Jack Burns is having a hard time swallowing this theory, that she was deliberately killed to mimic the Wallace murder, but I’m going to try to convince him. He’s in charge though; I’m assisting on this one since I know all the people involved, but I’m really a burglary detective.”

Some questions flew through my head, but I decided it wouldn’t be polite to ask them. Sort of like asking a doctor about your own symptoms at a party. “Why is Jack Burns so scarey?” I asked abruptly. “Why does he make an effort to intimidate you? What’s the point?”

At least Arthur didn’t have to ask me what I meant. He knew exactly what Jack Burns was like.

“Jack doesn’t care if people like him or not,” Arthur said simply. “That’s a big advantage, especially to a cop. He doesn’t even care if other cops like him. He just wants cases solved as soon as possible, he wants witnesses to tell him everything they know, and he wants the guilty punished. He wants the world to go his way, and he doesn’t care what he has to do to make it happen.”

That sounded pretty frightening to me. “At least you know where you are with him,” I said weakly. Arthur nodded matter-of-factly.

“Tell me everything you know about the Wallace case,” he said.

“Well, I’m up on it of course, since it was supposed to be the topic last night,” I explained. “I wonder if-whoever killed Mamie-picked it for that reason?”

I was actually kind of glad I’d finally get to deliver part of my laboriously prepared lecture. And to a fellow aficionado, a professional at that.

“The ultimate murder mystery, according to several eminent crime writers,” I began. “William Herbert Wallace, Liverpool insurance salesman,” I raised a finger to indicate one point of similarity, “and married with no children,” I raised a second finger. Then I thought Arthur could probably do without me telling him his job. “Wallace and his wife Julia were middle aged and hadn’t much money, but did have intellectual leanings. They played duets together in the evening. They didn’t entertain much or have many friends. They weren’t known to quarrel.

“Wallace had a regular schedule for collecting insurance payments from subscribers to his particular company, and he’d bring the money home with him for one night, Tuesday. Wallace played chess, too, and was entered in a tournament at a local club. There was a play off chart establishing when he’d be playing, posted on the wall at the club. Anyone who came in could see it.” I raised my eyebrows at Arthur to make sure he marked that important point. He nodded.

“Okay. Wallace didn’t have a phone at home. He got a call at the chess club right before he arrived there one day. Another member took the message. The caller identified himself as ‘Qualtrough.’ The caller said that he wanted to take out a policy on his daughter and asked that Wallace be given a message to come around to Qualtrough’s house the next evening, Tuesday.

“Now, the bad thing about this call, from Wallace’s point of view,” I explained, warming to my subject, “is that it came to the club when Wallace wasn’t there. And there was a telephone booth Wallace could have used, close to his home, if he himself placed the ‘Qualtrough’ call.”

Arthur scribbled in a little leather notepad he produced from somewhere.

“Now-Wallace comes in very soon after Qualtrough has called the club. Wallace talks about this message to the other chess players. Maybe he means to impress it on their memory? Either he is a murderer and is setting up his alibi, or the real murderer is making sure Wallace will be out of the house Tuesday evening. And this dual possibility, that almost hanged Wallace, runs throughout the case.” Could any writer have imagined anything as interesting as this? I wanted to ask.

But instead I plunged back in. “So on the appointed night Wallace goes looking for this man Qualtrough who wants to take out some insurance. Granted, he was a man who needed all the business he could get, and granted, we know what insurance salesmen are still like today, but even so Wallace went to extreme lengths to find this potential customer. The address Qualtrough left at the chess club was in Menlove Gardens East. There’s a Menlove Gardens North, South and West, but no Menlove Gardens East; so it was a clever false address to give. Wallace asks many people he meets-even a policeman!-if they know where he can find this address. He may be stubborn, or he may be determined to fix himself in the memories of as many people as possible.