Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

Forty-three

District attorney Phil Howland, immaculate and gaunt, as sharp of outline as Gerard was fuzzy, smiled tolerantly through his cigarette smoke. “Why don’t you let the kid alone? It was an angle at first, I grant you. We combed through his friends, too. There’s nothing, Gerard. And you can’t arrest a man on his personality.”

Gerard recrossed his legs and allowed himself a complaisant smile. This was his hour. His satisfaction was heightened by the fact he had sat here smiling in the same way during other less momentous interviews.

Howland pushed a typewritten sheet with his fingertips to the edge of the desk. “Twelve new names here, if you’re interested. Friends of the late Mr. Samuel furnished us by the insurance companies,” Howland said in his calm, bored voice, and Gerard knew he pretended especial boredom now, because as District Attorney he had so many hundreds of men at his disposal, could throw so much finer nets so much farther.

“You can tear them up,” Gerard said.

Rowland hid his surprise with a smile, but he couldn’t hide the sudden curiosity in his dark, wide eyes. “I suppose you’ve already got your man. Charles Bruno, of course.”

“Of course,” Gerard chuckled. “Only I’ve got him for another murder.”

“Only one? You always said he was good for four or five.”

“I never said,” Gerard denied quietly. He was smoothing out a number of papers, folded in thirds like letters, on his knees.

“Who?”

“Curious? Don’t you know?” Gerard smiled with his cigar between his teeth. He pulled a straight chair closer to him, and proceeded to cover its seat with his papers. He never used Howland’s desk, however many papers he had, and Howland knew now not to bother offering it. Howland disliked him, personally as well as professionally, Gerard knew. Howland accused him of not being cooperative with the police. The police had never been in the least cooperative with him, but with all their hindrance, Gerard in the last decade had solved an impressive number of cases the police hadn’t even been warm on.

Howland got up and strolled slowly toward Gerard on his long thin legs, then hung back, leaning against the front of his desk. “But does all this shed any light on the case’?”

“The trouble with the police force is that it has a single-track mind,” Gerard announced. “This case, like many others, took a double-track mind. Simply couldn’t have been solved without a double-track mind.”

“Who and when?” Howland sighed.

“Ever hear of Guy Haines?”

“Certainly. We questioned him last week.”

“His wife. June eleventh of last year in Metcalf, Texas. Strangulation, remember? The police never solved it.”

“Charles Bruno?” Howland frowned.

“Did you know that Charles Bruno and Guy Haines were on the same train going South on June first? Ten days before the murder of Haines’ wife. Now, what do you deduce from that?”

“You mean they knew each other before last June?”

“No, I mean they met each other on that train. Can you put the rest together? I’m giving you the missing link.”

The District Attorney smiled faintly. “You’re saying Charles Bruno killed Guy Haines’ wife?”

“I certainly am.” Gerard looked up from his papers, finished. “The next question is, what’s my proof? There it is. All you want.” He gestured toward the papers that overlapped in a long row, like cards in a game of solitaire. “Read from the bottom up.”

While Howland read, Gerard drew a cup of water from the tank in the corner and lighted another cigar from the one he had been smoking. The last statement, from Charles’ taxi driver in Metcalf, had come in this morning. He hadn’t even had a drink on it yet, but he was going to have three or four as soon as he left Howland, in the lounge car of an Iowa-bound train.

The papers were signed statements from Hotel La Fonda bellhops, from one Edward Wilson who had seen Charles leaving the Santa Fe station on an eastbound train the day of Miriam Haines’ murder, from the Metcalf taxi driver who had driven Charles to the Kingdom of Fun Amusement Park at Lake Metcalf, from the barman in the roadhouse where Charles had tried to get hard liquor, plus telephone bills of long-distance calls to Metcalf.

“But no doubt you know that already,” Gerard remarked.

“Most of it, yes,” Howland answered calmly, still reading.

“You knew he made a twentyfour-hour trip to Metcalf that day, too, did you?” Gerard asked, but he was really in too good spirits for sarcasm. “That taxi driver was certainly hard to find. Had to trace him all the way up to Seattle, but once we found him, it didn’t take any jostling for him to remember. People don’t forget a young man like Charles Bruno.”

“So you’re saying Charles Bruno is so fond of murder,” Howland remarked amusedly, “that he murders the wife of a man he meets on a train the week before? A woman he’s never even seen? Or had he seen her?”

Gerard chuckled again. “Of course he hadn’t. My Charles had a plan.” The “my” slipped out, but Gerard didn’t care. “Can’t you see it? Plain as the nose on your face? And this is only half.”

“Sit down, Gerard, you’ll work yourself into a heart attack.”

“You can’t see it. Because you didn’t know and don’t know Charles’ personality. You weren’t interested in the fact he spends most of his time planning perfect crimes of various sorts.”

“All right, what’s the rest of your theory?”

“That Guy Haines killed Samuel Bruno.”

“Ow!” Howland groaned.

Gerard smiled back at the first grin Howland had given him since he, Gerard, had made a mistake in a certain case years ago. “I haven’t finished checking on Guy Haines yet,” Gerard said with deliberate ingenuousness, puffing away at the cigar. “I want to take it easy, and that’s the only reason I’m here, to get you to take it easy with me. I didn’t know but what you’d grab Charles, you see, with all your information against him.”

Howland smoothed his black mustache. “Everything you say confirms my belief you should have retired about fifteen years ago.”

“Oh, I’ve solved a few cases in the last fifteen years.”

“A man like Guy Haines?” Howland laughed again.

“Against a fellow like Charles? Mind you, I don’t say Guy Haines did it of his own free will. He was made to do it for Charles’ unsolicited favor of freeing him of his wife. Charles hates women,” he remarked in a parenthesis. “That was Charles’ plan. Exchange. No clues, you see. No motives. Oh, I can just hear him! But even Charles is human. He was too interested in Guy Haines to leave him alone afterward. And Guy Haines was too frightened to do anything about it. Yes—” Gerard jerked his head for emphasis, and his jowls shook—“Haines was coerced. How terribly probably no one will ever know.”

Rowland’s smile went away momentarily at Gerard’s earnestness. The story had the barest possibility, but still a possibility. “Hmmm.”

“Unless he tells us,” Gerard added.

“And how do you propose to make him tell us?”

“Oh, he may yet confess. It’s wearing him down. But otherwise, confront him with the facts. Which my men are busy gathering. One thing, Howland—” Gerard jabbed a finger at his papers on the chair seat. “When you and your—your army of oxes go out checking these statements, don’t question Guy Haines’ mother. I don’t want Haines forewarned.”

“Oh. Cat-and-mouse technique for Mr. Haines,” Howland smiled. He turned to make a telephone call about an inconsequential matter, and Gerard waited, resenting that he had to turn his information over to Howland, that he had to leave the Charles-Guy Haines spectacle. “Well—” Howland let his breath out in a long sigh—“what do you want me to do, work over your little boy with this stuff? Think he’ll break down and tell all about his brilliant plan with Guy Haines, architect?”