Джон Макдональд - S*E*V*E*N

By the time I entered the case, Mrs. Warcroft was back in Philadelphia, under a doctor’s care.

After reading through all the statements again, I felt that Mike Henderson might be able to explain to me why she would wish to go to the same place for her honeymoon where she had apparently had a summer affair with him. As a criminologist and psychologist, I am always most interested in acts for which I can find little rational explanation.

I was at last able to reach the Henderson boy by telephone. I was pleased to find he was not the least bit guarded. He was very articulate, very concerned about Norrie, admitting a residual fondness for her. I asked him if he would mind writing up the history of Mike and Norrie and airmailing it to me. He said he would be glad to.

I was unprepared for both the length of it and the exceptional frankness of that personal document. There was, however, no flavor of lasciviousness about it. It was a story of two children trying to grow up, aware of their own handicaps. After reading it, I was able to think of Norrie as a person instead of the anonymous, tragic young widow.

Mike Henderson’s document gave me my suspect, of course. Mrs. Turner was elderly, but she was both spry and robust. And she had not mentioned in her statement that the same girl had stayed in the cabin two years before the tragedy. Again I had an act — this time of omission — which seemed senseless.

I went back to the Turner farm and I interviewed them informally and separately, the man first. I do not believe in all the trappings of formal interrogation. Conversation on an informal level is easier. And if something significant is discovered, they will always repeat it later for the record.

Ralph Turner had not been in the company of his wife when he had made his statement, and he had mentioned Mrs. Warcroft’s staying in the cabin two years before as Miss Ames.

He made a good impression in person, a stocky man with a weathered face, thick white hair, youthful blue eyes, a quiet voice and quiet manner. Yet when I asked him about the time the girl had first rented the cabin he became evasive, and he was not very deft at the game. He said he had been busy around the place and had seen little of her. I asked him if he was aware of the fact she had entertained a guest in the cabin for about ten days. He coughed and tugged at his collar and said that he had happened to see that she had a friend with her, a boy. No, he hadn’t mentioned it to his wife. It had probably slipped his mind. It didn’t seem important.

I then began to realize what was probably bothering him. Mike’s detailed story told about how, once her fear of exposing herself had been overcome, once she had become “used to her body,” Mike’s phrase, and could take pride in the pleasure capacities of her body, they would splash and play in the midday pool, sun themselves, and then have lunch, and then a long siesta of naps and love and talk. Probably Ralph Turner had seen them naked in the pool and had watched from some hiding place. It would weigh on his conscience to have stayed and watched. And perhaps he had not told his wife because he knew exactly what she would do. And there would be no chance to watch the young girl again. Mr. Turner was ashamed of himself.

So next I asked him if, after his wife had caught the young pair in flagrante and ordered the girl to leave, he had then let her know that he had seen the boy.

He stared at me, mouth sagging, and then leaned back in his chair and sighed. Then he nodded to himself. He asked me if the boy had told me about being seen by his wife, and confessed that this was the first he had heard of it. He said he knew that for some reason his wife was upset when the girl had come back as a bride, and now he knew why.

I tried to get him to discuss his wife in a critical way, but his sense of loyalty to her would not permit it. Next, of course, I talked to her before they had a chance to talk to each other.

Mabel Turner was a more difficult problem. She said that she wondered at the time if Mrs. Warcroft was the same girl who had stayed with them two years ago, a girl named Norrie Ames. Now, of course, she knew it was the same girl. But at the time people were asking questions she hadn’t thought to bring it up. She had thought that if it really was Miss Ames, then certainly the girl would have mentioned it.

I asked if she had stayed the full month, and Mrs. Turner said that the girl had left before her month was up.

Time for shock treatment. I let silence build, and then I shrugged and smiled and said, “She probably left because she didn’t like to have you prowling around the cabin, peering in the windows at her.”

She came to her feet, yelling, her face and neck puffed and red. It was a lie, a filthy lie. She had happened to look in the window once and she had seen what she had seen, and she had ordered that dirty little whore off the property at once. She would not and could not dirty her mouth by ever describing what she had seen that slut doing to some young hippie boy she had found and brought back to the cabin to use for her own sick hungers and evil pleasure. It was a long and loud performance, and when she ran down I asked her quite gently why, then, had she let such a vicious girl back onto the property.

She sat down and shook her head and explained that two years ago she had lied to her husband. She had told him the girl had left of her own free will. She had not wanted to upset him. How could she know the girl would be so callous and shameless as to come back to the very same place on her honeymoon? She recognized her immediately, of course, but what could she do about it?

I suggested that she could have quietly asked Norrie to enjoy the rest of her honeymoon elsewhere.

A flicker in her eyes. A slight smugness. She said she wouldn’t lower herself that much. She had decided to totally ignore the whole thing, to not even make any neighborly gesture. She had decided that the month would end and they would leave, and that would be the last of it.

I asked her if she had any theories about the murder. She said that, honeymoon or no honeymoon, one man was never enough for a slut like that girl. Maybe she wanted some boyfriend to move in with them and that nice husband didn’t take to the idea and so they killed him and made up some kind of a wild story. She told me that if I had seen what she had seen, I would know that girl was capable of anything — the more rotten, the better she’d like it.

I had the feeling she was holding something back. I didn’t know in which direction to look. At last, by a kind of psychic triangulation, I made a guess at it and tested my guess by saying, “You sound as if you thought Paul Warcroft was a nice young man.” She said he seemed very nice. It was a crime and a shame the way a sly, meek-acting little whore could snare such a fine young fellow. Then I said, “I would think then that it was your Christian duty to at least give young Warcroft some clue as to what he had gotten himself into. Why didn’t you?”

The smugness again. “I didn’t say I didn’t.”

“Then you did?”

“Sometimes you have to face up to it, Dr. Maas, and find the courage to tell somebody something they don’t want to hear.”

“What did you tell him?”

“When they drove out they were always together. Then he drove out alone. That was the day before the poor boy died. It was in the afternoon. I was doing some weeding in my flower beds, and like a fool I left the old wheelbarrer right in the driveway where he couldn’t get past it when he came back. So I went and apologized about it. And I asked him if he knew his wife had stayed in the cabin before. He said of course, and that was why she wanted to honeymoon there, because it was so quiet and beautiful and she had wonderful memories of the place because she had found it by accident when she needed it the most. I guess I must have snuffed some and looked strange and maybe I laughed, because he asked me what was the matter. And I said it certainly was strange how a wonderful memory for one person wasn’t exactly such a pretty memory for the next one. He wanted to know what I meant, and finally I said that being her husband he had a right to know. I said I’d had to throw her off the place the last time. I said she had a nasty habit of picking up boys and bringing them back to the cabin and doing filthy things to them. I said I warned her but she kept it up, and as my husband and I don’t hold with that kind of thing, I had to tell her to get out. I said we were decent people and we’d raised decent children and led a decent life, and even with the changing times and all, it seemed to me a kind of a nasty tricky thing to do to have your honeymoon right in the same bed where she’d been copulating those scruffy-looking hippie boys. He didn’t say word one. He just drove away like a bat, and a piece of gravel hit me in the leg and stung like fury. I did my duty, and it wasn’t an easy thing to do, believe you me. I always say the truth will out. Whatever you do in this life, you pay for.”