Richard Deming - This Game of Murder

“How could she be?” Gail Thomas said fiercely. “She admits she shot him, and all that evidence about the cat burglar being there was proved to be rigged. I’ll bet when they finally catch that burglar, he’ll say he was never there that night.”

Wait until she saw the next day’s papers, he thought. He said, “Why do you hate her so much? You were the other woman, not she. You moved in on her man, not vice versa.”

“Because she murdered him! She could have let him have a divorce to marry me, but if she couldn’t keep him, she didn’t want me to have him either.”

“That’s a little ridiculous,” he said. “She was not only willing to give him a divorce, it was her idea.”

“That’s what she said in court,” the blonde agreed. “But I happen to know different.”

“I suppose Bruce told you she wouldn’t let him go,” he said with a touch of indulgence. “It’s a standard dodge used by married men who cheat on their wives but don’t want to upset the status quo. Bruce earned less from his law practice than the average skilled laborer earns over at the local steel plant. He could have earned more, but he didn’t like to work. Believe me, he had no intention of giving up his luxurious life at Rexford Bay for love in a furnished flat.”

She stalked furiously over to a small writing desk against one wall and jerked open a drawer. Pulling out a string-bound package of letters, she slipped off the string, laid the stack on the desk and began thumbing through it. There seemed to be about two dozen envelopes, and she must have known them all by heart because she picked out the one she wanted by its postmark date.

Handing it to him, she said, “Read that.”

Glancing at the envelope, he saw that it was addressed by typewriter to Miss Gail Thomas at a Buffalo address. It was postmarked Runyon City and the postmark date was nearly a year old. There was no return address.

He pulled out the single typewritten sheet and unfolded it. A quick glance told him it was a love letter. Bruce Case had found one regular use for his law office anyway, he thought cynically. He had typed love letters to his mistress there.

The letter read:

Dearest: I talked to her again last night, and she still won’t give me my release so that I can marry you. I’m afraid that for the moment all we can do is wait, for I know she will make it miserable for me if I try any legal action she hasn’t agreed to. And I can’t stand a scandal. If my practice were ruined how would we live, even if we were able to marry?

I want you to know that I love you very much and will continue to try to make her see the light. Perhaps eventually she will come around.

I will be in Thursday night about the usual time and can stay until Saturday morning, as I told her I have business in Albany. If you wear that new nightgown with the transparent bosom, I’ll give you concrete evidence of how much I love you.

It was signed simply, ‘Your lover,’ and even that was typed.

Handing the letter and envelope back to the girl, Marshall asked, “What’s that supposed to prove?”

“That he’d been trying to get her to agree to a divorce as long as a year ago. I’m not saying he told her about being in love with me. He didn’t tell her he wanted a divorce because of another woman, because he knew she’d raise hell with me if she found out, maybe even drag me into court for alienation of affections. He just told her that since they couldn’t get along, he wanted out. She didn’t know about me until just before she killed him. But she did know he wanted a divorce.”

“You’re a very gullible young girl,” Marshall said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“So you were twenty when you met this married man, or at least when you became his mistress, and he was thirty-four. It’s easy for any man to make promises. But don’t you see how careful he was? The letter, even the signature, is typed so that no one could identify his handwriting. He doesn’t mention his wife by name and identifies himself merely as ‘Your lover.’ He doesn’t even call you by name, only by an endearment. There’s no return address on the envelope. He was making very sure that if you got too impatient about the marriage he was promising you, you couldn’t make any trouble. You couldn’t prove in a million years that those love letters came from Bruce Case. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even used a rented typewriter instead of one that could be traced to him.”

“That was just because he was a lawyer,” she said. “It wasn’t because he was handing me a line, or thought I would be a problem even if he was. He knew I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him even if I found out he was a rat. But he wasn’t. He wanted a divorce and she wouldn’t let him go. Then when she saw me, she knew she couldn’t possibly hold him any more, so she killed him.”

He looked at her curiously. “You mean she realized she was no competition for you?”

She arched her back, thrusting out her remarkable bosom. “Do you think she was? Why, she must be past thirty.”

“Just thirty,” he said, amused. “But at the risk of hurting your feelings, I’d rather have her for a wife than you. The relative attractiveness of women depends on a little more than age difference and bust measurement.”

“Can you see anywhere else she has me beat?” she demanded, slipping off her beach jacket and tossing it onto the sofa-bed.

Pulling in her already flat stomach, she marched past him with a beauty-contest walk, her hands, palms down, slightly out from her sides. She turned slowly to give him a rear view, then walked over to the sofa and put the beach robe back on.

He had to concede that she had a beautiful body. Her hips were softly rounded, neither too plump nor too slim; her legs were long and perfectly tapered; her skin was a creamy white and without a blemish to mar its perfection.

“You have everything to make a man want to crawl in bed with you,” he said with a sudden unreasonable desire to hurt her. “But what have you to offer for the other twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes of the day?”

She gazed at him with such a hurt expression on her face that he immediately felt ashamed of himself. All at once he realized she was one of those women whose sole interest in life was men, yet was slightly in awe of all men. If a woman had said to her what he had, probably she wouldn’t have hesitated to scratch the detractor’s eyes out. But she was no more capable of lashing back at male criticism than a child could lash back at a father.

She was probably what psychologists called a child-woman, he thought, one who needed a lover and protector and father-image all rolled into one. The very fact that she had picked a lover fourteen years older indicated this. Probably she wouldn’t make a bad wife provided she drew a dominating enough husband, because she not only would be amenable to bossing, but would need and expect it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a lousy thing to say. My only excuse is that sometimes I can’t help being a boor.”

“That’s all right,” she said in a small voice. “I guess I know what you mean. I guess I haven’t got all Mrs. Case’s fine ways. I never went to Bryn Mawr. I didn’t even finish high school.”

“I’m sure you’ll make some man an excellent wife,” he said, eager to amend the hurt. “Just because I’m upset about another woman being in jail is no excuse to take it out on you. Thanks for your time.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

She walked with him to the door. As he stepped into the hall, she said, “Mr. Marshall.”

He turned to look back at her in the doorway.

“Were you just saying that to make up for being mean, or do you think someday I could be a good wife for someone?”