Fletcher Flora

The Gimlet Affair

It was late in the afternoon of a day that was in June and I was in my office, developing a feeling of sadness that was already pretty bad and would keep on getting worse, because that was the kind of evening it was going to be.

You know the kind of evening I mean? It goes on and on in the softest kind of light, and there’s a breeze that barely stirs the leaves of the trees, and in among the leaves are about a million cicadas sawing away with their legs, or vibrating their wings, or doing whatever cicadas do to make the sad-sounding and lovely racket they make. It is the kind into which you withdraw alone to weep without tears, remembering every pretty girl you ever kissed or didn’t kiss, and thinking with sorrow of things you haven’t done that you will almost certainly never do. It is an adolescent kind of emotionalism, immune to reason. A man in its spell is in danger.

I was in its spell, or beginning to be, and in danger, although I didn’t know it. I leaned back and made a little tent of fingers over which I sighted through Venetian blinds at the neon sign of the Rex-all drug store on the corner across from the Merchant’s Bank Building, in which I had, second floor front, my office. At that moment, I was distracted by the red head of Millie Morgan, which appeared in the doorway and came into the room. Millie is my secretary, and her head was followed, naturally, by the rest of her. The rest of Millie happens to be even more distracting than her head, and the fact that my wife tolerates her amiably is less of a commentary on my stability than on my wife’s serene confidence in her own assets, which are, in fact, considerable.

“If you have no serious objections,” Millie said, “I’ll leave now.”

“No objections,” I said. “Go on home.”

“I’m not going home. I’ve got a date for cocktails and dinner with an engineer. We may try sex.”

“You’ll like it,” I said. “It’s fun.”

I watched her go through the doorway, and then sat down and submitted again to the abortive sorrows of the incipient evening, the elegiac contemplation of going and gone. I sat there alone for about twenty or thirty minutes, I think, before looking at my watch and seeing that it was almost five thirty and time for me to be starting home.

I got up and went through the outer office into the hall, and there on the frosted glass of the door in neat little gold letters was a name, W. Gideon Jones, which was mine, and a designation, attorney-at-law, which was what I had become and what I was.

It seemed to me that an attorney-at-law was something a man might be if he didn’t have the imagination or daring to be something else, and I stood there looking at the neat little gold letters and thinking of all the fine and exciting things I had never done and would never do because I was a picayune fellow who had lived all his life, time out for the university and a service hitch, in one small city of thirty thousand souls and a million cicadas.

Although it was a trim and unsatisfactory state of affairs, it was something that had to be accepted and lived with, and it occurred to me that acceptance might be a hell of a lot easier if I were to go over to the Kiowa Room, which was the cocktail lounge in the Hotel Carson, and have a couple of Gimlets before going home. So I went there and did that, and I would have been better off, as it turned out, if I hadn’t.

The Gimlet was good, the bartender was taciturn, and I was grateful for both of these conditions. The bartender’s name was Chauncy, and he had skin the color of Swiss chocolate surrounding large, limpid eyes that expressed mutely a legend of sorrow. I sat on a stool at the bar with my back to the room, and there were shadows in the glass behind the bar, the dim reflections of remote patrons. I drank the Gimlet unmolested and was well on with a second, supplied by Chauncy in response to a gesture, before someone spoke from behind my left shoulder into my left ear.

The voice came clearly from the distaff side of sex, and it contained a remarkable husky quality that I had heard before and remembered well. You do not quickly forget this kind of voice under any circumstances whatever, and you do not forget it at all, even after seven years of silence, if you have heard it with all the nuances of tenderness and passion and, sometimes, anger.

“One of the nicest things about coming back to a place,” it said, “is meeting old friends in general and some old friends in particular. Hello, old friend.”

I looked into the mirror and saw the face that went with the voice, and it was practically the same face that had gone with it when I had last encountered them together. Part of gone. Part, although I didn’t know it, of the natural conspiracy of a particular day.

I spun slowly, half a turn of the stool, and faced the face directly. Beth Webb was its name. I had loved it once, and it had loved me. It had said so, at least, although in the end it hadn’t acted so.

“Well, for God’s sake,” I said. “Hello.”

“You look about the same,” Beth said. “Has it actually been seven years?”

“Seven lean years. The period of famine. Wasn’t there something like that in the Bible or somewhere?”

“Darling, I’m sorry. Has it been difficult for you?”

“Not at all. Everything has been fine.”

“Well, you mustn’t sound too cheerful about it. I’ll feel better if you suffered just a little. What’s that you’re drinking? It looks good.”

“It’s called a Gimlet, and it’s made of gin and lime juice.”

“It doesn’t sound quite as good as it looks. I’ll have one with you, however, if you’ll ask me.”

“Excuse me. Will you have a Gimlet with me?”

“Yes, I will, thank you.”

I ordered one for her with a gesture to Chauncy, and another for myself with the same gesture, which made one more than I’d planned to have, and I carried both of them over to a little table where she had gone to sit. It was a very small table, and we accidentally touched knees for an instant under it, and I thought sadly that it had been a long time, seven lean years of famine, since I had touched her knee, either accidentally or on purpose, under a table or elsewhere. She was wearing a black dress with a narrow skirt, a sheath, and a tiny black hat on her pale blonde head. I had a drink of my third Gimlet while she was having a drink of her first.

“How do you like the Gimlet?” I said.

“Much better than I expected. I think I would like getting drunk on them. Would you care to get drunk on Gimlets with me?”

“Time was I’d have accepted with pleasure. Now I must beg to be excused. Sorry.”

“It’s just as well, I guess. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing all this time?”

“Routine stuff. Practicing law. Getting married.”

“I heard about that. It made me want to cry. What is your wife like?”

“Small but potent. Brown hair and nice legs and a warm heart. Her name is Sydnie, but I call her Sid. We were married three years ago.”

“She’s lucky. You tell her I said she’s lucky.”

“Cut it out, Beth. She’s not lucky, but she’s satisfied. So am I, and it’s a nice arrangement.”

“I can’t seem to remember her. Did I know her?”

“No. She came here after you went away.”

“How convenient for you. You see how things work out, darling? It’s a law of compensation or something.”

“Is that what it is?”

Was it? Going was still going, but gone had come back, and I thought it might be the law of diminishing returns. I could hear the cicadas as plain as plain, all up and down the streets of town in a thousand tremulous trees.

“Darling,” she said, “my Gimlet is all gone.”

“They’re very small and go quickly,” I said.

“Have another with me. Please do.”

“I will. Damned if I won’t.”

I went to the bar and got them and brought them back. I handed her a glass with a small bow, and our fingers touched. I sat down, and our knees touched.

“Why have you come back?” I said.

“Didn’t I tell you? To meet old friends.”

“I know. Old friends in general and some old friends in particular. Am I general or particular?”

“Very particular, darling. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. I’m the fellow you were going to marry before you married Wilson Thatcher.”

“Surely you can understand why it was necessary for me to marry Wilson.”

“Surely. All that money.”

“That’s correct. It was the money that made me. Several millions of dollars is a very serious temptation, you know. A girl can scarcely be blamed for yielding to it.”

“I don’t blame you. Your decision was sensible.”

“It really wasn’t a decision. It was just something that happened. We were out dancing at this place on the highway, and Wilson got loaded and wanted to make love, and I said I was saving myself for the man I married, which was almost true, if not entirely, and he said, well, let’s get married, then, and it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“Thanks for the information. There’s nothing like a primary source in the study of ancient history. The rest, however, is a matter of record. So you got married by a justice of the peace, and so you went to California a week later, and Wilson became manager of the California branch of the Thatcher factory. Shirts and jeans for the general market. Uniforms made to order. I hope you were very happy.”

“It wasn’t so bad for a while, but it didn’t last long, as you know.”

“Three years, wasn’t it?”

“Almost four. Wilson was unreasonable as a husband, but in the end he was quite agreeable.”

“So I heard. No nasty publicity at all. Just a quiet settlement between the two of you, after which you went off for a divorce. I trust that the settlement was a substantial one.”

“Oh, it seemed like a great deal of money at the time, especially when Wilson might have been able to avoid giving me anything at all; but now it doesn’t seem like so much, because it’s almost all gone.”

“So soon?”

“You know how it is when you are going different places and enjoying yourself. You become sort of careless about expenses and things.”

“What different places?”

“Places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”

“No, I don’t know. I’ve never gone to those different places.”

“They’re very expensive if you live well.”

“It’s better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all.”

It came out of me just like that, just a little differently than it had come out of Tennyson. I remembered that it was from In Memoriam, and I thought that it was appropriate, everything considered, that it happened to be. In memoriam of Gideon Jones. In memoriam of Beth Webb. Beth Webb Thatcher. In memoriam of going and gone and never, never.

“You’ll find things cheaper here,” I said.

“I don’t plan to stay, darling. Only a day or two. The truth is, I really came to see if Wilson might be willing to give me some more money. He has plenty, of course, and wouldn’t miss a little more.”

“He’s married again, you know. His wife may object to his giving money to an ex-wife with no legal claim to it.”

She laid an index finger alongside her nose and looked at me with a sly and intimate expression. “As far as that goes, Wilson himself may object a little.”

It occurred to me suddenly that there were probably people in the lounge who knew Beth and me and the brief bit of pre-Thatcher history in which we were involved. This, I knew, would be the stuff of gossip, if not of scandal, and I began to get a notion that I’d better get the hell out of there, but I didn’t want to go. What I wanted to do was stay. I had recovered a bit of gone in an hour of going, and I wanted to keep it until the last Gimlet.

I thought of my position in the community, and it made no difference. I thought of my duty as a husband, and I thought to hell with it. Then I thought of her to whom the duty was owed, sweet Sid among the singing trees of Hoolihan’s Addition, and this thought made a difference not lightly dismissed, or not dismissed at all, for the call to Sid was not merely the call to duty, odious word, but the call to later love.

One clear clarion call, I thought.

Tennyson again, for God’s sake, I thought.

“I’ve got to get the hell home,” I said.

“Do you, darling? I was hoping we could have another Gimlet.”

I stood up and looked down at her, and there she was, looking up, in her black sheath with her little black hat on her pale hair and one sheer nylon knee on top of the other. Smiling, she lifted her glass to her lips, but the glass was empty. The Gimlet was gone, all gone, and I was going.

“Mr. Gideon Jones begs to be excused,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

This was the Gimlets talking again, but I thought it was a perfect exit line, spoken with restraint and salvaged dignity, and so I turned and walked away, and there by herself at a table near the door was one of the ones who did indeed know Beth and me and our brief bit of pre-Thatcher history. Her name was Sara Pike, thirty and thin and slightly sour, and she was watching me with a carefully composed expression. She nodded and said hello, and I said hello right hack with a composure that was, I hoped, equal to hers.

“Isn’t that Beth Thatcher you were talking with?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s Beth.”

“How nice to see her after all this time. She looks hardly a day older.”

“That’s because she’s been living well in different places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”

I considered that I’d handled that minor incident with admirable deftness, too, and there was an element of pride in my sadness and sense of loss as I hit the street and headed for home. In fair weather, for exercise, I make a habit of walking. This morning I had walked to town from home, and now I walked back home from town. It was quite a way and it took quite a while. It was pretty late when I got there.

I went in the front door and through the house and out the back door, and there on the little flagstone terrace was Sid, staring at cherry-hearted bits of charcoal in the grill. She turned her head and looked up at me without speaking, and I kissed her, and we decided to hold the kiss for a while. Then she sighed and leaned against me, and I could hear her sniff.

“Where the hell have you been?” she said.

“I stopped in the Kiowa Room and had a couple of drinks.”

“The thing I like best about you, sugar, excepting a talent or two that I’m too proper to mention, is that you tell the truth under only the slightest duress. You smell like a gin mill.”

“I drank Gimlets. Gimlets are made of gin.”

“You taste like gin, too. I love gin kisses. Will you give me another?”

I gave it to her, and we held it again between us, and she raised herself on her toes to get closer to it.

“I was wishing you were dead,” she said, “but I take it back.”

“That’s all right. It would be a nice evening for dying if you didn’t have to stay dead tomorrow.”

“I always wish you were dead when you make me feel like a wife.”

“Don’t you like being a wife?”

“I don’t mind being one, I just don’t like feeling like one.”

“Would you like me to kiss you again?”

“I’d like for you to, but I don’t think you’d better.”

“I could modify it a little if you like.”

“No. I’d rather have no kiss at all than a modified one. Modified kisses are what make one feel more like a wife than anything else.”

“I’ll make a note of that. Not that a note will be necessary. I see that you’ve been broiling rock lobster tails.”

“I was just wondering what to do with them. They’ve been done for ages and are surely too tough to eat.”

“Let’s try. It’ll be a challenge.”

“There’s salad and a bottle of white Burgundy in the refrigerator. We can eat out here if you want to. There’s still enough light, and the table’s all set.”

“I want to. I’ll take up the tails while you’re getting the salad and the white Burgundy.”

She went across the terrace and into the kitchen, and I was pouring drawn butter into two little pots when she came out with the salad and the wine. The wine was a good domestic brand from a vineyard in California. It was chilled just right. The rock lobster tails were slightly tough from overcooking, thanks to me, but they were good, nevertheless, because, after all, how tough can a lobster tail get?

“Did you see anyone we know at the Kiowa Room?” Sid said.

“I saw Sara Pike,” I said, “and someone I used to know before you and I met. Beth Thatcher. Used to be Beth Webb. She was a girl around town.”

Sid dipped a bite of tail into her little butter pot and popped it into her mouth.

“I’ve heard about her,” she said.

“To tell the truth, we went together for a while.”

“That’s one of the things I heard.”

“She married Wilson Thatcher and went out to California with him. Later they were divorced, and he came back without her when he took over the local factory. Now she’s in town for a day or two, and so I sat around and had a couple of drinks with her.”

“That’s fine, sugar. Two drinks with an old girl friend are quite permissible, even if it does mean keeping me waiting and waiting while the God-damn lobster tails get tougher and tougher.”

“She asked me to buy her a drink, so what the hell could I do? I had to be courteous, at least.”

“Of course you did, sugar, and I admire you tremendously for it. If you keep practicing, you may even become courteous enough to come to dinner on time.”

“Oh, hell. If you don’t want to be treated like a wife, you’d better try not to act like one.”

“Now, why in hell would you make a remark like that? Have I said a single thing to justify your calling me a dirty name?”

“Oh, cut it out, Sid. Please do. I’m sorry I was late, and I’m sorry I had the damn drinks with Beth.”

“Well, now that you’re properly contrite, I may as well admit that I may have been a little unreasonable about it. I think it was mostly because you came directly home afterward and covered me with gin kisses. Anyhow, we must become reconciled without delay, because I have to go over to Rose Pogue’s for a conference. She and I are conducting the next session of our discussion group, you know, and tonight is absolutely the last chance we’ll have to get together and plan things.”

“Why do you have to have a conference? Couldn’t you each just take a part and plan it alone?”

“No, no, sugar. Not possibly. We need to talk things over.”

“Well, if you must have a conference, why must it be so late? It’s already eight thirty.”

“Honest to God? Sugar, I simply must take a shower and dress and run. Would you mind too much clearing away the things? There are only a few, and you can simply put them in the sink and leave them.”

She went inside, and I sat there and finished the white Burgundy. It was pretty dark now, and the moon and a mess of stars were getting bright in the sky. A mosquito began buzzing around my head. I made a couple of passes at it, but it wouldn’t go away, and after a minute or two I got up and cleared the table and carried the things into the kitchen. I left the things in the sink, as Sid had suggested, and went upstairs.

Sid was out of the shower but not yet out of the bathroom. I sat down on the edge of the bed in our room and waited for her to come out. Pretty soon she did, as brown and lustrous as a polished acorn, and walked over to the closet and took down a sleeveless dress, pale yellow cotton, that she was going to wear. She pulled it over her head and backed up to me for zipping and then walked over to her dressing table and began to brush her short brown hair with quick strokes.

“Did you clear the table?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

She put the brush on the dressing table and shoved her feet into white flats and came over and sat down on my lap. “Sugar, I’m sorry to run. Really I am. What will you do while I’m gone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe read. Maybe listen to music. How long will you be?”

“It’s hard to tell. Quite a while, I imagine. You know how Rose is about things. She insists upon considering every little detail that might or might not be important.”

“Try to be back soon,” I said.

She kissed me then and got up and went out, and I watched her go. Slim brown legs below the yellow skirt. Bare brown arms and slender brown neck bearing erectly her proud brown head. I could hear her going down the stairs. I heard the door slam.

Well, she was gone.

She had deserted me without appreciable concern just when I was full of vague apprehensions and sorrows, to say nothing at all of gin and white Burgundy and lobster tails, and was peculiarly susceptible, as a consequence, to all sorts of idiocies.

I got from the bed where I was still sitting after being kissed and deserted, and went downstairs and washed and dried all the things I had left in the sink. I put the things away in proper places and went out onto the back terrace and looked up at the moon and the mess of stars. I sat down in a canvas sling chair and smoked three cigarettes, which helped to keep the mosquitoes away, and then I went back inside and found a bottle of gin and made a batch of Gimlets with Rose’s lime juice.

In the living room, carrying a Gimlet in a glass, I thought I might as well listen to some music, and so I went over to the record cabinet to see what I could find that would seem appropriate to the kind of night it was and the kind of mood I was in. I am ordinarily a Haydn man, and will choose something by Haydn seven times out of ten, but tonight old Papa struck me as being a little too damn cheerful, and so I looked through the records until I came to Death and Transfiguration, by Richard Strauss, who was a good composer, too, and I knew at once that this was exactly it.

I put the record on the player and sat down to listen and drink the Gimlet. I drank two Gimlets while listening, and then I started the record again and poured another Gimlet, and I was drinking the third Gimlet and listening to the Largo, the very first part of the piece, when the phone began to ring in the hall.

I went out into the hall and answered it, and a voice said, “Is that you, Gid?” and it was a voice you would instantly know if you had ever heard it before, which I had, and the last time I’d heard it, after seven years, was that very afternoon in the Kiowa Room. I had been trying not to think of Beth, and I had been doing pretty well at it, all in all, especially when Sid had been around as a distraction, but now Sid was gone, lost temporarily to Rose Pogue, and Beth’s unforgettable voice had just spoken softly into my ear over a long wire, and for a moment it was just like back there before the lean years, and I had the same sharp, poignant feeling that I used to have then.

What had Beth said? Hadn’t she asked if it was I?

“Yes,” I said, “it is.”

“I’m so glad you’re home, darling. What are you doing?”

“I’m drinking Gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration.”

“Still drinking Gimlets?”

“Not still. Again. I took time out to drink a bottle of white Burgundy.”

“Aren’t you afraid of becoming drunk?”

“Not at all. In fact, I’m cultivating it.”

“Darling, are you unhappy?”

“I am. I’m full of gin and sorrow.”

“Is Sid there?”

“No, Sid is not here. Sid’s gone. Sid is off discussing something with Rose Pogue.”

“Really? A thing like that can go on forever with Rose.”

“True. Rose is an exceptionally gregarious intellectual type. Windy is what she is.”

“Couldn’t we get together?”

“We could, indeed, but I don’t think it would be wise.”

“Oh, come on, darling. Don’t be such a coward.”

“Come where?”

“Well, I’m staying at the hotel, of course, but I don’t think you had better come here. Do you remember Dreamer’s Park?”

“How can you ask? We stopped there now and again in the past to do a little necking in the old bandstand.”

“That’s exactly the place, darling. Wouldn’t it be exciting to be in the old bandstand again? Like old times. I’ll meet you there if you’ll come. Will you?”

“Yes, I will.”

“In half an hour?”

“I’ll have to walk. It may take a little longer.”

“As soon as possible, darling. Please hurry.”

She hung up, and I did, too, and if you are thinking that I was a damn fool. I won’t argue the point, but I would like to say at least that circumstances were extenuating, and everything, as you can see, was working just right to come out all wrong in an afternoon and an evening and a night that were filled with the nostalgia and idiocy of going and gone.

Death and Transfiguration was out of the Largo and into the Allegro. I went over to the player and turned the reject dial, and the arm lifted, and the music stopped. I closed and locked the back door and went out of the house the front way, and all this time I was trying to think of Beth only and not at all of Sid, instead of Sid only and not at all of Beth, hut this did not work perfectly, or even very well, for Sid is not the kind of person you can just quit thinking of in an instant, even for someone like Beth.

“What the hell!” I said to myself in my mind. “I am only innocently going to see an old girl for old time’s sake.”

Like hell you are! Sid said in my mind. You are going to see an old girl for tonight’s sake, and not so damn innocently, either, if you ask me.

I hadn’t asked her, but she kept telling me, and I kept trying not to listen and to think only of Beth as I walked along. Dreamer’s Park was quite a long walk away, on the other side of town, and as an aid to the exclusion of Sid, who refused to be mute or invisible. I began to remember how it used to be with Beth and me in the pre-Thatcher days, and this is the way it was.

Beth had been a girl around town, born there and growing up there, and I had known her since way back. She had always been the kind of girl that boys notice, even when she was a very small girl being noticed by very small boys, but later, sometime in high school, she was suddenly the loveliest girl in the world. I was lucky then, in high school, for Beth took a fancy to me that was somewhat greater than, if not exclusive of the fancies she had in varying degrees for others.

This was the early period of our ancient era. The middle period lasted for nine years and was characterized mainly by my absence from town. I spent most of seven of the nine at the state university in pre-law and law, and then I worked two more for The Adjutant General. I was released, as they say, under honorable conditions, and came home. End of middle period.

I had seen Beth now and then during this time, of course, but not often and never for long, and in the final eighteen months of it, not at all. Now I was home to stay, honorable but undistinguished, and there was Beth still. If she was not exactly waiting for me, still she was there. She was more or less engaged, in fact, to Sherman Pike, who was about my age and who had become editor of the Record, the local daily, during my absence. Sherm had a good brain and considerable talent, a fine and sensitive fellow, and it was generally conceded that he had a fair prospect of becoming important. I had been anticipating more of Beth, but I was prepared, after I discovered how matters had developed with her and Sherm, to withdraw all claims and look elsewhere for diversion.

But Beth wouldn’t have it that way. Her fancy for Gideon Jones was still strong, although not exclusive, and pretty soon we had taken up what we had never quite put down. It was too bad about Sherm, but as things turned out, it didn’t make much difference to him, anyhow, for it wasn’t long after my return when he went home one evening and died. He’d had rheumatic fever as a boy, and the doctor said that it was an impaired heart that caused it. He was buried on a Wednesday afternoon, having had no time to become important after all, in the cemetery on the east edge of town.

Everything was satisfactory with Beth and me. Even intense and exciting. She went out a Couple of times with Wilson Thatcher, and I raised a mild sort of hell about it, but she said it was only for a little variety and to help him spend some money, of which I was short constantly and he never. Then, to get it over with, there was the night when they got married, and that was the end of it. For seven years at least.

I won’t go into those seven years, except to say that they were rather distressing in the beginning, and I wished that it had been I who died of an impaired heart instead of Sherman Pike. My own was impaired, I felt, but I didn’t die of it, and when Sid came along I was glad I hadn’t. We were married after a while, and it was a good marriage, and I thought of Beth only now and then.

Until tonight, that is, when I tried to think of her exclusively in the evasion of my conscience. This sad summer night of gin and cicadas at the end of seven years. Walking through the night across the town in spite of what my common sense told me was wrong, and despite Sid.

In your own town, if it is a town of a certain size and character, you probably have a Dreamer’s Park. It is not large, occupying a square block, and it is thickly planted with indigenous trees, possibly oaks and maples and elms and sycamores. Gravel paths, bordered with red bricks set edgewise in the earth, cross the park diagonally from corner to corner, and various gravel tributaries branch off less geometrically from these. In the center of the park, so that the two diagonal paths must coincide briefly to make their ways around it in a circle, is a wooden bandstand badly needing a new paint job and repair.

The park is old, as age is reckoned in your town, and not so much use is made of it now as used to be. A few children play there on warm, dry days. The green benches under the frees are mostly occupied by old men who have nothing much to do, and who walk there slowly to sit and rest and dream before walking slowly home again. At night, sometimes, lovers stop by.

This was Dreamer’s Park, to which I was going, and after a while I got there. Arriving at the bandstand. I went a quarter of a turn around the circle and up the rickety steps. The stand was also circular, with a shingled peaked roof, and all around the perimeter was a built-in bench that was no more than a hard seat braced at intervals with two-by-fours, open space between the seat and the floor. I sat down on the bench and began to wait, looking out into the park and listening for the sound of Beth’s feet on the gravel walk, but the only sounds I heard came from the four bounding streets, where cars and pedestrians passed sparsely in four directions.

Time passed. So, on the four streets, did the sparse cars, the even sparser pedestrians. And so, in the bandstand, did the expectations of Gideon Jones, who had been tricked and traduced in the tradition of the past.

I stood up and walked across the bandstand to the other side, my steps a truncated series of hollow sounds on the rotting boards. The last step brought the toe of my right foot into the space beneath the circular bench, and it made contact suddenly with something soft but substantial down there on the floor. I stood for a moment with breath and motion suspended, and then I breathed and backed away a step and bent down. There was something down there, all right, under the bench, and I touched reluctantly what felt like flesh. Soft flesh beneath my fingertips. Nose, eyes, mouth. Sinking down all the way onto my knees, I struck a match and looked at Beth beneath the bench. Beth’s face with open, empty eyes, and somehow I was not in the least surprised. The match burned my fingers, and I let it fall.

What did I think? Well, I thought that it was just like Beth, by God, to come to such a sticky end, and that she had surely come in amiable innocence to die with utter wonder that anyone on earth would wish her dead. I thought that it was too bad to kill her, and that whoever had done it should be ashamed of himself. I thought that now I would never have the chance to say good-by to her properly, never in this world. I thought that I had better get the hell away from there if I knew what was good for me.

I stood and turned and went, leaving her lying where she was, a long way in the end from Miami and Rio and Acapulco and places like that. I walked directly home, and the cicadas were silent in the trees, and the sad summer night was sour. The house was dark, and I went upstairs and undressed in the dark and got into bed and lay there under a sheet, thinking. My thinking, however, was not very clear or coherent, and the truth is that I didn’t know what to do, or if I had been smart or stupid in doing what I had already done.

What I was in, plainly, was a mess. Someone had killed her, and I had walked into it full of gin and nostalgia, with nothing more on my mind than a minor infidelity, and who had done it, for whatever reason, was something that might never be known if I became involved and placed at the scene, for it might be decided that I was as logical as anyone else could be, besides being convenient. If this developed, as it might, it would be advisable to have alternate suspects in mind, and I tried to think of some, but the best I could do on short notice was Wilson Thatcher, who wasn’t very convincing in the part.

Most likely, it was a local glandular nut who had followed her to the park or had simply discovered her there by accident in the dark bandstand. Still, as I remembered her in the brief and tiny flare of the match, she had shown no signs of struggle or abuse. No bruises or abrasions or torn clothing. Neither had her face in its final expression shown any of the agony or distortions that are supposed to be left by strangulation, which would have been a reasonable technique in a murder that no one had anticipated or planned. There had been only the expression of wonder that this was actually happening to Beth Webb Thatcher, who had lately been living well in various pleasant places.

It occurred to me then that I had no acceptable evidence, aside from her being dead, that she had been killed at all. And being dead is really no evidence of having been killed, for it is possible to be dead from merely having died. I could recall no blood, no wound, not even any bumps. Was it possible that Beth had simply and suddenly died? The odds against it, I thought, were far too great to discount for even so unpredictable a long shot as she. She had been lying on her back, under the bench where she must have been pushed, and somewhere on her back where I couldn’t see it, there was surely the mark of whatever had killed her.

I wished Sid would come home. I was in no mood for conversation or entertainment, hut I was more than ready to welcome a warm and comforting presence. Just someone around. Someone to lie lightly and breathe softly and sleep sweetly beside me. Not just someone, either. Sid or no one. Specifically Sid, and here she came.

I heard the car in the drive and her steps on the stairs. She came into the room and, after lighting a small lamp on her dressing table, stood looking at me with her hands on her hips. I could see her fuzzily through slits and lashes.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said.

She walked over to the bed and bent over and examined me thoroughly. She bent nearer and sniffed.

“Stoned,” she said.

She went away into the bathroom, and pretty soon she came back barefooted, having kicked off her white flats, and got out of what she was in, and into what passed for a nightgown. In the gown, a blue shortie with tiny white rosebuds here and there, she returned to the bed and sat down on the edge and again examined me critically.

She shook me by the shoulder, but I kept my eyes closed in simulation of the stupor she had charged me with. I kept on lying there with my eyes closed, but then there was a small and painful explosion on my left cheek which was repeated instantly on my right cheek, and it seemed to me that simulation had become entirely too risky to sustain. I groaned and opened my eyes and groaned again.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, sugar?” she said.

“I’m sick,” I said.

She laced her hands around a knee and rocked back on her pretty pivot with a derisive expression.

“Sick! You’re loaded, sugar. That’s what you are.”

“Nothing of the sort. I had a few more Gimlets, I admit, but I’m not loaded.”

“Where are you sick?”

“It’s my stomach. Something terrific is going on down there.”

“Well, you can hardly expect to drink Gimlet after Gimlet for hour after hour without having something go on in your stomach. What you need is a big dose of Kaopectate.”

“Like hell I do.”

“Nonsense. You’ll take a big dose immediately, and later you’ll be glad.”

She got up and went into the bathroom again and rattled around and came back with bottle and spoon. She poured a spoonful of Kaopectate and poked it at me, and in order to avoid getting soaked, I sat up and opened my mouth and permitted her to pour it down my throat.

“There you are,” she said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Bad enough.”

She went away with the bottle and spoon and came back without them. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the same place and position, she watched me for a while without speaking, and I began to feel uncomfortable.

“Are you feeling any better yet?” she said.

“Not yet.”

“It’s a shame that I must treat you like a baby and be with you every minute. It does seem that you should be able to behave yourself without being under constant surveillance. The wonder is, I suppose, that you weren’t into more mischief than you were.”

“The mischief I was in was mischief enough, believe me.”

“What do you mean? I don’t like the sound of it. What did you do besides drink and drink and get your belly in an uproar? What else?”

I hadn’t intended to go off in this direction, and I was simply gone before I knew it. I admit freely that I just wasn’t made for the solitary bearing of bad trouble and grim possibilities.

“What else I did,” I said, “was meet Beth Thatcher in the old bandstand in Dreamer’s Park. At least I went there to meet her, although I didn’t, as it turned out. She called and said she wanted to see me, and a lot of things were working together to make me go. She was the one who suggested Dreamer’s Park, and I went there to meet her, but I didn’t because she was dead.”

We sat there looking at each other after my confession, and she didn’t appear to be exceptionally angry, hardly at all, but I wasn’t fooled by this, having known her pretty well for some time now. She was probably thinking, in spite of her deceptive, serene gravity, what a pleasure it would be for her to attend my funeral after having personally got me ready for it.

“As for me,” she said at last, “I am not so concerned with your having found her dead as I am with what you would have done if you hadn’t.”

“There’s no use speculating about that, so far as I can see. She was dead, and nothing was done.”

“On the contrary, there’s a great deal of use in speculating about it. One could very easily reach some mighty interesting conclusions, although the range of possibilities of what could be done in a dark park is so broad that it almost staggers the imagination.”

“Damn it, there was nothing of any consequence intended. You know how this town is, and what would have been said about us if we had been seen together. We merely wanted to avoid gossip, that’s all, and Dreamer’s Park was just a place that occurred to her and seemed reasonable to me because it’s a place we had been before, a long time ago, and a place where couples still go now and then.”

“I know that couples go there, and I know what for. Your explanation, however, is just ridiculous enough to seem characteristic, and I’ll consider accepting it. But now, I suppose, I had better consider the rest of the matter. You’ve made a mess of things by drinking gin and sneaking off in the night to meet someone who turned up dead, and it’s plain that I must consider what’s to be done about it. Isn’t it expected of a person who finds a body to report it to the police or someone?”

“Yes, it is. It’s expected.”

“Then why, may I ask, didn’t you do what was expected?”

“Because she was dead from having been killed. Because I wanted to avoid the suspicion of having killed her. It would probably be difficult to explain to a cop how I just happened to be in that damn park at such an hour.”

“That’s true. It’s even difficult to explain it to me. Wouldn’t it have shown you were innocent if you reported the body?”

“Not necessarily. They’d be sure to think it might be a trick.”

“I doubt that you’d be seriously considered a suspect, sugar. A man who is too cowardly to take a dose of Kaopectate would hardly commit a murder. How was she killed, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I only saw her for a few seconds by the light of a match, and I didn’t see any wound or anything.”

“Then how the hell do you know she was killed at all?”

“It seems probable.”

“I agree that it does. Dreamer’s Park in the middle of the night is hardly a place where one would go deliberately to die naturally. Do you know what I think?”

“No. What?”

“I think that there is nothing to be done except let things work out as they will. If bad comes to worse, you are at least a lawyer and can defend yourself competently.”

“Thanks. That’s very reassuring.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“Cheerful and confident. I always feel cheerful and confident after finding a body under incriminating circumstances.”

“I mean your stomach, sugar.”

“Oh, my stomach’s all right. It’s fine.”

“You see? Kaopectate works wonders.”

She went over and turned off the little light on her dressing table and came back and lay down beside me in the darkness. I could hear her breathing evenly, and smell the sweet scent of her, and after a while feel the soft warmth of her, and we lay there for a while quietly before she spoke again.

“Sugar,” she said, “is it possible that you killed her after all?”

“No.”

“One could conceivably believe it.”

“A few minutes ago you said that one couldn’t.”

“I know, but I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided that it’s possible. After all, I am as unlikely a murderer as you are, and if she were here alive at this very moment, I’m quite sure I would kill her with pleasure.”

I woke early after going to sleep late. Sid was still asleep on her side, curled like a cold child in a sprinkling of white rosebuds. Outside, in the bright light of morning, a cardinal was screeching his pointed red head off, telling everyone to cheer up, cheer up, and I thought to myself, like hell I will.

I went into the bathroom and bathed and shaved and brushed, and then I dressed and decided that I might find myself a little more tolerable if I were full of hot coffee, and so I went downstairs to the kitchen and put on the pot. I drank the coffee black, two cups, after which I went out into the hall to the foot of the stairs and stood listening for sounds of life above, but there weren’t any. There didn’t seem to be anything left to do but go, and so I went, walking, and it was still pretty early when I reached my office.

An hour and a half had passed when Millie came, half an hour late, and it took her ten minutes more to get from her desk to mine. She looked fairly fresh and alert, and smug enough to justify the assumption that something pleasant had recently happened to her.

“Good morning, Mr. Jones,” she said. “You’ve got bags under your eyes.”

“So have you.”

“I was up all hours. Were you?”

“Never mind. How was the engineer?”

“Determined. Original, too. He was interesting and challenging, but not entirely successful.”

“Next time, give in. You’ll get to bed earlier and to work on time.”

“Well, aren’t we sour this morning! What happened to you last night?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Well, then, that explains everything. That’s the worst kind of night of all.”

In my opinion, she was wrong, but I didn’t feel like continuing the discussion. Having had the last word, she went back to her desk in the outer office, and a few minutes later I could hear the busy sound of her typewriter.

The morning got going much as other mornings had been getting going for something like seven years, and at ten fifteen Millie took a coffee break in the Hotel Carson coffee shop. She returned at ten forty, ten minutes late, and came on directly into my office. I could see at once by her glittering eyes that she had been stimulated during her absence by more than caffeine.

“The most shocking thing has happened,” she said. “I heard all about it in the coffee shop.”

“Shocking things are happening all the time everywhere,” I said.

She hooked half of her bottom on the edge of my desk and inspected the fingernails of her right hand. “You remember Beth Webb Thatcher? I think you used to know her.”

“You know damn well I used to know her. I used to go with her fairly regularly. In fact, exclusively. I thought for a while that I was going to marry her, but I didn’t, and I’m glad. This is all ancient history.”

“Well, now she’s dead. This is modern history. In fact, it’s current events. This morning a couple of kids went into Dreamer’s Park to play in the old bandstand, and there she was. Beth. Dead. Someone had slipped a long, thin blade into her from behind, and she had died of it. Just imagine. All this was happening to her while an engineer was happening to me and nothing at all was happening to you.”

I thought I was prepared for it, but it made me sick. I guess I showed it, pallor or something, for Millie unhooked her bottom from the desk and came around and hooked it on the arm of my chair and put an arm around my shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Gid,” she said. “I’m just a witch, that’s what I am.”

“Think nothing of it,” I said. “It’s no more than the natural shock of learning that someone you once knew intimately has died suddenly from having a long, thin blade slipped into her from behind.”

“You’re a good boss and an understanding fellow,” she said, “and I love you.”

“I’m all for that,” I said. “If there’s anything I need at the moment, it’s love.”

“Shall I lock the door?” she said.

“Well, no,” I said. “It’s Platonic love I need.”

I went on sitting there, looking pale or something, and she went on sitting there beside me, hooked on the arm, with her arm around me. I was grateful for the arm, grateful for her bright red head and for all the rest of her, and even grateful for Plato, who gave it a name and kept it decent.

“Who do you suppose did it?” she said.

“I don’t know. Local legend gives me a reason, but I’m innocent.”

“It may have been a nut. That’s always possible and frequently convenient.”

“So it is. What else did you hear in the coffee shop?”

“Only that Beth came to town yesterday. Only that everyone is wondering why, and no one seems to know.”

“Also that everyone, by this time, knows that she and I had two Gimlets together in the Kiowa Room yesterday afternoon.”

“It’s good to know the facts. I’ve heard everything from Martinis to Daquiris and from one to six.”

“That’s interesting. Did you hear anyone say that I killed her?”

“Not exactly. All I heard was one man say that you should, have killed her if you didn’t. He was a friend.”

“Some friend,” I said bitterly.

At that moment, someone came into the outer office, and Millie went out to see who it was. I waited for her to come back and tell me, but she didn’t. Sid came instead. She came around my desk and kissed me with sufficient warmth to make me feel wanted again, and I held her for a minute, smelling her hair.

“I’ve been feeling perfectly miserable,” she said.

“So have I, and for a good reason. What’s yours?”

“I wasn’t asleep at all this morning when you left. I was only pretending. It was deceptive and cowardly, and you were no sooner gone than I wished I hadn’t done it.”

“I don’t blame you for wanting to avoid me. I would have avoided myself if it had been possible.”

“You mustn’t be too self-critical, sugar. It makes a bad impression. What you must do is concentrate on your good qualities. You have a number that I can name if you wish.”

“Thanks very much, but I think it will be more therapeutic if I can discover them for myself.”

“Meanwhile, will you give me an honest answer to a candid question?”

“As honestly as my character permits.”

“Good. If Beth had been alive when you went to meet her last night, what would you have done?”

“We’d have talked, and maybe held hands and kissed and got sloppy about the past. Then we’d have said good-by, and she’d have gone away, and I’d have been glad that she was gone.”

“Sugar, you have said exactly the right thing. I even feel rather tender toward you for being such a chump. What we have to concentrate on now, since this has been settled satisfactorily, is how to keep you out of trouble if possible, or how to get you out of trouble if it becomes necessary.”

“I’ve been thinking myself that this problem should have priority.”

“We’re agreed on that, then, and we’re again, I hope, on the best of terms.”

“Well, I’m madly in love with you, non-Platonic style. You may call that being on the best of terms if you choose.”

“I do, sugar. There are absolutely no terms better. I’m feeling fine now, and rather hungry. What time is it? Couldn’t you leave for lunch?”

“It’s eleven, and I could.”

“Let’s go, then. We’ll have a drink before lunch, that’s what we’ll do.”

We went into the outer office, and I told Millie I was going to lunch, and if I wasn’t back by noon to lock the door and go to lunch herself. She said all right, and Sid and I went on downstairs to the street, which was hot and full of sunshine.

“Where do you want to go?” I said.

“There’s a bullet in the Kiowa Room.”

So we went on over to the hotel and into the Kiowa Room. We served ourselves and found a table in a corner, and a girl who came to pour coffee was induced to bring a couple of Sidecars, which were what Sid decided we should have, and we emptied our glasses slowly and started on our plates. We hadn’t said anything since entering the room, not a word to each other, hut our silence was warm and comfortable, and everything was fine for the present, even though later it might not be.

“Do you know what I would like to do this afternoon?” Sid said.

“No,” I said. “What?”

“I’d like to go swimming and lie in the sun.”

“I wish I could go, but I can’t.”

“Couldn’t you possibly arrange it?”

“I can’t possibly. There’s some work I have to finish on a case I’m sure to lose, and at three o’clock I have an appointment with a man who wants to sue another man.”

“I’m sorry. It’s such a disappointment.”

“You go on, anyhow.”

“No, I don’t want to go without you.”

“I wish you would.”

“No, no. I’ll go home and sit on the back terrace and go over my notes on the meeting with Rose Pogue. They’re rather confusing right now, and need to he straightened out in my mind. Rose is very intellectual, as you know, and is inclined toward making things confusing that usually wouldn’t be.”

“Rose is a school teacher, and it’s expected of her to be intellectual.”

“She only teaches second grade. Is it expected of teachers who teach second grade?”

“Possibly not. I admit that Rose is an exceptional second-grade teacher.”

“It’s a pity that everyone can’t be exceptional at something. I try and try to be, but I can’t.”

“In my opinion, you are exceptional in many ways without trying at all.”

“Sugar, what an absolutely charming thing to say. Are you sure you can’t take the afternoon off?”

“Not completely off. But maybe I can get through early.”

“That’s something, at least. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pick you up in the car, and we’ll drive straight home. Will you be finished by four with the man who wants to sue another man?”

“Finished and waiting.”

Oh, well. That’s the way it went. We never mentioned what was in the back of our minds, sometimes in front, but I knew that she had come downtown to have lunch with me in a public place because she knew that what had happened would dredge up old matters, unpleasant at best and disastrous at worst, and, in her own way, she was making a public declaration of faith.

What she was doing was wonderful, and what she was little and lovely and tough as a boot.

As it turned out, the three o’clock appointment was canceled, which was a relief, and I decided about that time that I’d call Sid and have her come on down and pick me up. I had my telephone out of its cradle and my index finger pointed at the dial when Millie cracked the door to the outer office and poked her red head through the crack.

“There’s a man here to see you,” she said.

“I don’t want to see a man. I want to go home.”

“His name is Cotton McBride, and he’s a policeman. Not just an ordinary policeman, either. He’s a detective.”

“Damn it, I know who and what Cotton McBride is. Did he say what he wants to see me about?”

“No, he didn’t. You obviously haven’t done anything illegal today, so it must be something left over from last night, and I’m wondering how someone could get involved with the police on a night when nothing at all happened to him.”

“Never mind. Send Mr. McBride in.”

“It’s Lieutenant McBride. That’s what he said.”

“Thanks very much. Send him in.”

She withdrew her bright head with its bright, inquisitive eyes, and I thought how odd everyone becomes when anything sufficiently extraordinary happens. Because of what had happened last night to Beth, a call by a cop was suddenly something with all sorts of implications.

Cotton McBride must have been ten years older than I, but I had known him casually for a long time. He was thin and dry, with limp pale hair and round shoulders and a chronic expression of quiet despair, and he did not look much older than he had twenty years ago. This was not because he kept himself looking young, but because I couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t looked old. Even as a kid he had seemed dry and withered and a little tired, always wearing his expression of quiet despair. He wore it now with a wilted seersucker suit and a black string tie.

“Hello, Cotton,” I said. “Millie says I ought to call you lieutenant.”

“I heard her. That’s a neat redhead, Gid, but she doesn’t show much respect.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally if I were you.”

“You always had an eye for the lookers, Gid. I remember that about you.”

“Do you? Maybe so. It’s not an uncommon post-puberty trait among males.”

“What I’d like to know is how you get that little wife of yours to tolerate a redhead like that.”

“My wife’s vain. She simply can’t conceive of my looking twice at anyone but her.”

He sat down uninvited in a chair beside my desk, dropping his stained straw hat on the floor beside him. “I never had any luck with the girls myself. Guys like you had all the luck.”

“Some of it bad, Cotton. Girls have a way of being bad luck at times.”

“That’s true enough. I’ve seen more than one man in bad trouble because some woman got him there. On the other hand, I’ve seen women in the same condition because of some man. Like the one who got herself killed out in Dreamer’s Park last night. Beth Thatcher. You heard about it, I suppose.”

“I heard.”

“Seems to me you used to know her pretty well.”

“Pretty well.”

“That was a pretty dirty trick she played on you years back. Something like that can sometimes do peculiar things to a fellow. It sticks. Maybe he thinks he’s forgotten all about it, and then something brings it back, and it’s as bad as ever. Maybe worse.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Cotton. She got married and went away, and she was gone seven years. She quit being important quite a while back.”

“No, she didn’t, Gid. She was killed last night, and that makes her still important. Anyhow, it makes her important all over again. What I’ve been wondering is, why did she come back to town?”

“I can answer that. She had been living well in various places where living well is expensive, and she was broke. She needed some money, and she thought Wilson Thatcher might be willing to give her some for old times’ sake.”

“If you ask me, that’s a hell of a poor reason for giving away money.”

“If I know Wilson Thatcher, he would agree with you.”

“Maybe you don’t know him so well.”

“Is that so? Why?”

“Because she wasn’t broke when we checked her room at the hotel this morning. There was a purse of hers in the top drawer of a chest, and there was five grand in the purse.”

“You think she got it from Wilson?”

“Who else? Did you give it to her?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve been paying her five grand a month for years. She was blackmailing me.”

“You’re trying to be funny. I guess, but I’m always open to suggestions.”

“Blackmail? Don’t be a fool, Cotton.”

“I’ll try. It wasn’t you I had in mind, though. Hell, I know you don’t have the kind of money you need to pay blackmail. Wilson Thatcher’s different. Wilson has most of the money in the world. I talked with Wilson this morning, but I’ve got a notion I’d better talk with him again.”

“Did Wilson see her before she died?”

“He says not. He says she called him at the factory early yesterday afternoon and tried to make an appointment with him. but he told her to go to hell. He hadn’t heard about her being dead until I told him, but he didn’t seem particularly surprised. That could be because he already knew without being told, though. What do you think?”

“You’re the detective, Cotton. You do the thinking.”

“Seems to me that you might be willing to help. It might turn out to be in your own interest if you did.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“It’s plain enough. As far as anybody knows now, there’s as much reason for suspecting you as anyone else, and the quicker it turns out to be someone else, the better for you.”

“Is that what you came here to say? If it is, you’ve said it and I want to go home.”

“You needn’t get sore, Gid. Why I really came is because you probably knew her better than anyone left around here, except maybe Wilson, and I thought you might know something that happened in the past that might help us now. The way it looks to me, she was sure as hell killed, for whatever reason, by someone right here in town, and probably you and I both know whoever that person was.”

“Not necessarily. Someone could have followed her.”

“There aren’t any suspicious strangers in town that I know of.”

“He could have come and gone. Murderers don’t usually hang around after they’ve committed murder.”

“It could have happened that way, but I don’t believe it. What’s bothering me right now as much as anything else is why she was out there in that park alone, late at night.”

“She may have just walked out there for sentimental reasons. Dreamer’s Park has played a part in most of our lives.”

“I don’t believe that, either. It doesn’t explain why she was killed there.”

“Assume a nut. There she was in the dark park for sentimental reasons, and there at the same time, for reasons of his own, was a psycho. It was something that just happened.”

“No. The killing was too neat. Nuts are generally messy. Whoever did this just slipped a long, thin blade into her from behind, and that was all of it.”

I remembered her face in the light of a match, the fixed wonder that was almost an expression of serenity, and it was in that instant, for the first time since finding her dead in the old bandstand, that I realized fully that dying had not made her someone with nothing to do with anything that had happened, and that she was still, although dead, the same person I had known and loved and ached for and wanted once to marry. I had said that she had quit being important a long time ago, which was true in a way, but I suddenly hoped with all my heart, which was hurting, that a particular person turned out to be even sorrier than I that she had died in the particular way she had.

“What’s the matter?” Cotton said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”

“You’re looking funny.”

“Am I? I don’t feel funny. I was wondering what you’ve done with her.”

“The body? It’s over in a back room of Paley’s Funeral Parlor. You might be able to see it if you’re interested.”

“Thanks. I might be interested.”

“You haven’t been much help, to tell the truth. If you get any better ideas, you let me know.”

“I’ll do that.”

He retrieved his stained hat and left, and after a minute or two, I went out and downstairs and east on the street three blocks and two blocks south to Charlie Paley’s Funeral Parlor. I found Charlie’s office, Charlie in it, and he said Beth was ready, and took me back to see her.

She was lying in this little room just off the alley, and it seemed to me a bleak and depressing room to lie in, even dead, but Beth didn’t seem to mind, her face serene and still fixed in wonder, although it was now apparently the wonder of a dream, for her eyes were closed. Charlie went away and left me with her, and I stood there and tried to say silently the proper good-by that we had never said, but it was simply something that couldn’t now be wrapped up neatly after being and ending in such disorder, and after a fair trial that came to nothing I went back to the drug store across from my office and called Sid.

She said she was getting ready to come. I crossed the street and stood on the curb until she came, and we went home.

At something like seven, or thereabouts, we were out on the back terrace in a couple of sling chairs. The cicadas were up there in the trees, and under the trees the shadows had a kind of blue transparency.

“Sugar,” Sid said, “hasn’t it been a pleasant evening?”

“Yes, it has. It has been an evening to remember.”

“It makes me happy when I am able to show you a good time.”

“You show me the best time of anybody. Nobody could possibly make a time half so good as you.”

“I wonder, though, if I have been entirely successful.”

“Why should you wonder?”

“For the past half-hour you’ve been silent and sad-looking. Are you becoming depressed about something?”

“I’m a little depressed, but not excessively under the circumstances.”

“It may become worse, however, if you just continue keeping everything to yourself. The psychological consequences of something like that can sometimes be quite bad. What happens is, you break out with all sorts of nasty traits that nobody can understand but that are really the results of whatever it is you’re keeping to yourself.”

“I surely wouldn’t want that to happen to me.”

“Neither would I. A certain number of nasty traits are natural and expected in anyone, but it would be difficult, to say the least, to keep on being in love with someone who kept breaking out with more than his share.”

“I promise that I’ll try to avoid anything of the sort.”

“Well, there’s very little you can do about it, once you have repressed something long enough to do the damage. Besides. I’m dying of curiosity to know if anything special has developed. Has there?”

“I don’t know how special it is. Cotton McBride came to see me in the office this afternoon.”

“Cotton McBride? Isn’t he that faded-looking little man who is some kind of policeman?”

“Yes. He’s a detective, and that’s a kind of policeman.”

“Why on earth did he come to see you?”

“He thought maybe I could tell him something that would help him find whoever killed Beth.”

“Why should he assume that you could tell him anything of the sort?”

“Oh, he’s simply working in the dark, I think. As a matter of fact, I was able to tell him something that may help, although it wasn’t from any farther in the past than yesterday.”

“What were you able to tell him?”

“Beth was broke. She came to town to ask Wilson Thatcher for money. She didn’t see anything unreasonable in this, even though Wilson’s married again, but Beth was always assured that anyone would be happy to give her anything she wanted whenever she wanted it.”

“How do you know she was broke? Did she tell you so?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to know if Wilson did give her money. In my opinion, he wouldn’t have been such a fool.”

“You’re right. Anyhow, he said he didn’t. He said he refused to see her. That’s according to Cotton McBride. Cotton wasn’t so sure about it, though.”

“Not so sure? Why not?”

“Because, as it turned out, Beth had five thousand dollars in her room at the hotel.”

“That’s quite a lot of money for someone to have suddenly just after being broke.”

“Not so much for someone who liked to live well in places where living well was expensive.”

“Nevertheless, it’s quite a lot of money to most people, including Wilson Thatcher. He may have more money than is decent, which he does, but I’ve never known him to display exceptional generosity in giving any of it away, and I’m willing to bet that he didn’t voluntarily give any to an ex-wife for nothing more than the asking.”

“I’m inclined to agree. So is Cotton.”

“Do you think he gave it to her because she forced him in one way or another?”

“This is one line of reasoning that seems indicated.”

“It’s absolutely fascinating, isn’t it? What do you suppose Wilson could have done to make him susceptible?”

“I can’t imagine. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he cheats on his income tax, but I can’t see him doing anything really juicy.”

“You never can tell, however. Some people are deceptive in such matters. Wilson Thatcher may not have always acted like a deacon just because he looks like one. Suppose he did something once that he doesn’t want known, and your precious Beth tried to blackmail him because of it. Wouldn’t that be an acceptable reason for his killing her if it could be proved?”

“Acceptable, indeed. I can detect a couple of flaws in the supposition, though. In the first place, why pay her five grand and kill her afterward? Why not kill her before and keep the five grand in the bank?”

“Perhaps he had to give her the money as a kind of down payment until he could get her in a position to kill her.”

“I concede the possibility, but I have no faith in it. Flaw number two, in my judgment, is even more critical. I consider it extremely unlikely that Wilson deviated from propriety enough to make him a subject for blackmail. Having known him and Beth both from away back. I’m satisfied that the deviations, whatever they may have been, were on the distaff side. This view is supported by the nature of their divorce. Wilson, as you pointed out, is only slightly poorer than Croesus and could have been tapped for a steady increment of magnificent proportions if he had been vulnerable. Nothing like this happened, however. A settlement was made quietly, and Beth went off quietly for her divorce. A few years later, she turns up broke. I submit that any major diversion by Wilson, felonious or merely scandalous, would have kept her living well in Miami and Rio and Acapulco and places like that indefinitely.”

“At any rate, you clearly admit that she was not above blackmailing him, which is very enlightening, to say the least.”

How can you possibly hope to explain someone who could surely have made blackmail seem like an amiable and reasonable negotiation, conducted without malice in the friendliest fashion with the most sincere wish for no hard feelings? I was silent for quite a while, having nothing convincing or even safe to say, and finally Sid said something more.

“Never mind, sugar,” she said. “I’m only interested in protecting you from the consequences of your foolishness, whether it was seven years ago or last night. Did Cotton McBride have any notion that you went to Dreamer’s Park?”

“I don’t think so. Why should he?”

“Do you think it would make things difficult for you if he found out?”

“I think it would.”

“In that case, we must be prepared to lie about it convincingly if necessary, and we had better agree at once on the lies we will tell.”

“I’m wondering if it might not be better to tell the truth.”

“Certainly not. Put any such nonsense right out of your head. The truth is so ridiculous that even I, as you will recall, had difficulty in believing it, and I have no doubt that the police would find it absolutely impossible. You could hardly avoid an effect of duplicity, to say nothing of positive imbecility.”

“Thanks.”

“We have to be realistic, sugar. I’m bound to say that you haven’t been especially brilliant in this matter. You had better consider my opinions carefully if you want to escape some unpleasant consequences, and it’s my opinion that we must lie if necessary.”

“That may be a problem. After all, you were with Rose Pogue, so you can hardly go on record as being with me, and I was alone all the time, which is impossible to prove.”

“Don’t be dull, sugar. As a lawyer, you surely realize that you don’t have to prove that you weren’t in Dreamer’s Park. It will be entirely up to the police to prove that you were.”

She made it sound remarkably simple and sensible and even honorable, as if candor and deceit had somehow exchanged places with one another, and I was diagnosing this with the intent of further discussion when there was suddenly a soft, dry sound from a rear corner of the house behind us, and I turned my head and looked back there to see who or what had made the sound, and it was no one but Wilson Thatcher who had made it by coughing to attract our attention. I stood up with a queer feeling to face him, and he came across from the house to the terrace with a long-legged stride that appeared to be a kind of slow-motion lope.

Sid had said that he looked like a deacon, although possibly not always acting like one, and I guess that’s what he looked like if a deacon is tall and thin with lank black hair and a dyspeptic face with pale blue eyes tending to project. I thought to myself, watching him approach, that he had surely been no match for Beth, who had surely given him a bad time while it lasted, and I felt sorry for him all at once and hoped that his trouble, if he had any, was no worse than mine, which might be bad enough.

“Hello, Wilson,” I said.

He held out a dry hand, which I took and released, and he looked over my shoulder at Sid, who had risen and turned, and relaxed his face in a thin smile.

“I rang at the front door,” he said, “but no one answered, and so I took the liberty of walking around the house. I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Not at all. Come over and sit down.”

“Thanks. Gideon.” He stood for a moment with an air of abstraction, staring off into the dusky yard and popping his knuckles by flexing his fingers. “Perhaps I should have wailed and come to your office tomorrow, but what I want to talk about is urgent and delicate. I preferred coming here, if you don’t mind.” He folded into a chair in a kind of boneless surrender to it. “The truth is, I may need a lawyer.”

“You already have several lawyers,” I said. “What do you need with another?”

“Company lawyers. They’re all right for business matters, but this is something different. Personal. To be frank, I’ve committed an indiscretion that may prove extremely troublesome.”

I wondered if he was referring to murder, the slipping of a long, thin blade into Beth from behind, and I thought that indiscretion, if he was, was a discreet word for it.

“Indiscretions sometimes have a way of proving troublesome,” I said.

“Yes,” said Sid, “don’t they?”

“My indiscretion,” Wilson said, “was the telling of a lie.”

“That’s very interesting,” Sid said. “We were discussing the telling of lies as a matter or prudence just before you came.”

“A lie,” I said, “is scarcely a legal problem unless it was told under oath.”

“It wasn’t told under oath,” Wilson said, “but it was told to the police, which is the next thing to it. Now I’ve been compelled to retract it as a result of a later development, and my position has become difficult if not precarious.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me directly what it’s all about,” I said. “That is, if you’re serious about wanting my opinion. Not that I’d recommend me in this case. I may need a lawyer myself pretty soon.”

“Well, you may have guessed that it concerns someone we have both known quite well.”

“Beth, you mean. I’ve guessed.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat and popped his knuckles. “I’ve been told that you saw her and talked with her at the Carson yesterday.”

“That’s right. She told me she had come to town to ask you for money.”

“She told you that? Beth was an incredible person. I was never able to understand her at all. I can’t imagine any other woman on earth who would openly imply that she was attempting blackmail”

“Did you say blackmail?”

“Oh, that wasn’t what Beth called it, but you know how Beth was. She had a genuine belief in euphemisms. Anything was what you called it. She was perfectly charming, and she was surprised and hurt to discover that I wasn’t anxious to give her twenty thousand dollars.”

Sid made a derisive sound, but I made no sound at all for several seconds, because I believed what he said was true, and I was trying to understand why in the devil he had said it, to me or to anyone, for it gave him a motive for murder that even Cotton McBride would be able to appreciate.

“Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” I said, “It ought to pay for a pretty big mistake.”

Wilson sighed and seemed to sag a little more in his chair. “I was simply stupid, and I suppose stupidity is always expensive. You remember when Beth and I separated out in California? I made a very generous settlement, it seems to me, for I don’t mind telling you that I could have gotten off without paying her a penny. Not a single penny. It would have entailed a lot of unpleasantness, however, and I was glad enough to settle.

“Anyhow, she took what I gave her and went off to get a divorce, which was part of our understanding. Soon after she left, I came back here, and later on I got notice from her that the divorce had been granted. I married again, and everything seemed to be satisfactorily settled and almost forgotten until Beth showed up here yesterday and told me that I was a bigamist.”

“A what?”

“A bigamist. She said that she hadn’t ever actually gotten the divorce, but it wasn’t really anything to worry about, for she was willing to go away quietly again, and all that was required of me was to give her twenty thousand dollars to go on.”

“Didn’t you sign any divorce papers or anything, for God’s sake?”

“Yes, I did, but she said they were phony. She had them drawn up by a disbarred lawyer she met somewhere, because, she said, being married made her feel a little more secure in case something came up to make having a husband handy. I admitted in the beginning that I was stupid.”

“I hope you haven’t been stupid enough to tell this to anyone else.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. I told Cotton McBride that I refused to see Beth, but then he found the five thousand dollars in her room, and later I had to admit that I’d seen her and given her the money, because he was sure to find it out one way or another, and it would only have looked worse for me if I kept on lying. But I didn’t say anything about my being a bigamist, or blackmail, or that the five thousand, which was all I had in the office safe, was only an initial payment on twenty. Now I’m afraid it will all come out, and I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to tell it voluntarily in my own way.”

“Do you realize the probable consequences if you do?”

“Yes. I’ll he suspected of killing her. I may even he arrested.” He got up abruptly from his chair with an unfolding motion and stood looking into the darkening yard, and I could hear once more that soft, measured popping of knuckles. “It was damn inconsiderate of Beth to let me go on thinking I was divorced, getting married again and all, but it was even more inconsiderate to come back here and get herself killed. Still, you know, I can’t seem to feel any malice toward her for it. I wish that things had turned out better for her than they did, but there’s no use in wishing to change what is over and done with. Her father died when she was a young girl, you know, and her mother died several years ago, while Beth and I were in California. Do you happen to know if there are any other relatives living?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, she must be buried, of course, and I guess I’m the logical one to see that it’s done. I’ll buy a little place for her in the cemetery and make the arrangements. It can be done quite simply and cheaply, I think. There’s no sense in making a great fuss about it.”

Sid and I had stood up with him, and now he suddenly made a jerky half-turn toward us and an odd little half-bow from the waist that somehow managed to give an effect of great courtliness.

“Thank you for tolerating my intrusion. It’s been a relief to talk to someone, but I’ll have to decide for myself, after all, what I must do. I won’t ask you to treat this as a privileged communication if you feel that you shouldn’t. Now I’ll say good night.”

He completed his turn, now away from us, and walked to the house and out of sight around the corner. There was a kind of lanky, loping dignity about him that was touching, and he was quite a puzzlement besides.

“I wonder why he really came here,” I said, “and I wonder why he told us what he did. I can’t see any sense in it. If Beth made a bigamist of him, it seems to me that the sensible thing would simply have been to keep quiet about it. Chances are, now that Beth’s dead, that no one would ever have known.”

“Well,” said Sid. “I’m most relieved to know that there is a fatter suspect in this business than you, and I’m pleased, moreover, to discover that he has behaved, all in all, with even less intelligence.”

“He seemed sad and confused,” I said. “I felt sorry for him.”

“If he had popped his knuckles just one more time,” Sid said, “I’d surely have screamed.”

On Saturday we buried Beth. Charlie Paley moved her up from the rear room to the chapel for the occasion, and I don’t think it took more than twenty minutes to get the service finished from first to last. There was a minister who said a few words about hope everlasting, and a semi-pro tenor about town sang a song with organ accompaniment, and the song he sang was “Somewhere the Sun Is Shining.”

Well, it was shining right outside, although not for Beth, and after the service I drove out in it to the cemetery. Sid was with me, and maybe a dozen other people in other cars. Wilson Thatcher was there, but not his wife, and Cotton McBride was there, and so was Sara Pike. The grave was in a corner of the cemetery where the graves came to an end, and just across a fence there was a field full of white clover. Altogether, it was as pretty a place as one could wish to be dead in, although I’m sure Beth wouldn’t have wished, if she could have, to be dead in any place whatever.

Sid stood beside me and held my hand, and when it was all over we turned and left. I still didn’t feel, walking away, that I had said good-by to anyone, or that I had finished anything that needed finishing. What I felt was at odd ends, the strange disconsolate sense of leaving undone what I would never get back to do. Sid and I had not spoken since leaving Charlie Paley’s Chapel, and we didn’t speak now until we had left the cemetery and were back into town. Then she asked me if there was anything I especially wanted to do, and I said that I especially wanted to go home.

“I thought you might feel like going somewhere and doing something,” she said.

“Home is somewhere,” I said, “and anything I want to do can be done there.”

“Do you have anything particular in mind?”

“Yes, I do. I have in mind to mow the yard.”

“In order to keep you company. I’ll do something outside, too. Perhaps I could clip around the edges of things while you’re mowing.”

“Good. I’ll appreciate the company.”

We rode along silently until we turned onto our street and approached our drive. Sid was sitting with her legs folded under her and her nylon knees showing below the skirt of the plain black dress she had worn in deference to a funeral, and I could see from the corners of my eyes that she looked, in silence, a trifle sad and pensive.

“She looked much younger than I thought she would,” she said suddenly. “What happened is just too damn bad.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s just too bad.”

I turned into the drive and stopped, and we got out and went into the house together. Sid peeled off toward the kitchen, and I climbed the stairs to our room and changed into old clothes. Then I went downstairs and into the garage and started the power mower and began to mow the front yard. After a while, Sid came out in short shorts and began clipping along the brick border of a flower bed in front of the house. She looked altogether charming and distracting, and not at all domestic.

I finished the front yard and then went on into the back. After a couple of times to the alley and back, I killed the engine under a tree with the idea of going into the kitchen for something cold and wet, but then I saw Sid coming with two cans of beer, which met the specifications perfectly. We sat under the tree, flank to flank and drinking slowly, and it was by way of being a pretty good time after some bad ones until Cotton McBride appeared at the side of the house and came on back to where we were.

“Hello, Cotton,” I said. “It’s a hot day.”

“Ninety-eight in the sun,” Cotton said. “Those beers look mighty inviting. I’ll tell you that. If I wasn’t on duty. I might have a good cold beer myself.”

“I shouldn’t think one beer would interfere with your duty,” Sid said. “My experience has been that one beer doesn’t interfere with much of anything.”

“What I came out for, Gid,” Cotton said, “was to have a private talk about something important.”

“Let me tell you something,” Sid said. “There isn’t going to be any private talk that doesn’t include me as one of the private parties, and so you may as well get any notion to the contrary out of your head.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cotton said. “You can’t he intruding on police business, Mrs. Jones.”

“Sid,” I said, “go get Cotton a beer, for God’s sake.”

“I’m not at all sure that I care to give him a beer,” Sid said.

“That’s all right,” Cotton said. “I don’t believe I want one after all.”

“Of course you do,” I said. “I’m about through with mine, and I’ll have another one with you. Go get the beers, Sid, please.”

“I’ll go only on condition that I’m included in the private talk,” Sid said.

“How about it, Cotton?” I said. “Can Sid be included?”

“I guess it won’t do any harm,” Cotton said, “although I can’t imagine that it will do any good, either.”

“In that case,” Sid said, “I’ll go.”

She stood up and tugged at her short shorts and started for the house, and Cotton sank down onto the grass and took off his stained straw hat, exposing pale limp hair plastered damply to his skull. He sat there in a wilted heap with his legs crossed before him at the ankles. In a couple of minutes, the screen door banged and Sid came back with the beers. She passed one to Cotton and one to me and sat down with the third.

“What has been said while I was gone?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“We were waiting to include you,” Cotton said.

“Then there’s no sense in waiting any longer.”

“No, there isn’t.” Cotton had been looking at Sid’s brown legs, but now he took a swallow of beer and began looking at me. “You remember what I told you in your office? How Wilson Thatcher denied seeing Beth or giving her any money?”

“I remember. You said you were going to talk to him again.”

“I talked to him all right. He claims he lied the first time about not seeing her, because it might incriminate him or something, but he changed his mind and decided to tell the truth, and the truth is, according to him, that he arranged to meet her and give her the five grand.”

“Where did he meet her?”

“He says he picked her up on a corner, and they just drove around a few minutes, and then he let her out on the same corner, but I’ve got a notion it’s a lie.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Hell, I just can’t see any good reason why he should give her five grand if he was going to kill her afterward. Besides being a waste of money, which isn’t like Wilson, it would make us think of him first thing.”

“Then maybe he didn’t kill her. The fact that he gave her the money, if it is a fact, is the best evidence of his innocence.”

“You think so? I might agree if it wasn’t for something else that I know and you don’t.” He paused and swallowed more beer and looked at me with a sly expression in which there was a touch of smugness. “Did you know Wilson Thatcher was a bigamist?”

This was clearly intended to be a bomb, which it had been at the time Wilson exploded it on the back terrace, but now it barely popped.

“Oh, cut it out,” I said. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s a fact, just the same. At least Wilson says it is, and I can’t see why a man would say something like that about himself unless it was true.”

“I can’t see why he’d say it at all, true or otherwise.”

“He was afraid we’d find it out ourselves, and then it would look all the worse because he hadn’t told. He didn’t even know it himself until Beth Thatcher came to town to put the squeeze on him. The five grand, Wilson says, was just a down payment on twenty, and he was going to get the rest of it for her the next day. There’s a couple of pretty good motives for murder. You get rid of a wife who makes you a bigamist while you’re saving fifteen good grand that would otherwise have to go after five bad.”

“Oh, sure, Cotton. Two wonderful motives. And so he just handed them to you out of pure charity and a natural desire to be hanged.”

“All right, Gid. You don’t have to go on with it. It looks like the guy’s going out of his way to make trouble for himself, and that’s just the thing that bothers me. Fact is, I’m wondering why he doesn’t just confess to the murder and be done with it.

“He doesn’t, though. He swears he never saw her again after paying the five grand, but I’m still not convinced that he actually paid her anything at all. Damn it, he didn’t have to make any down payment, like he said, and it doesn’t seem reasonable that he would have done it if he intended to kill her. Besides, what the hell kind of a reason for killing someone is this bigamy business? Or even for paying blackmail? It wasn’t deliberate, and he could have proved it. He could even have proved that Beth tricked him into it by a kind of fraud or something, which would have put her in a hell of a lot more trouble than he was in. The most it would have meant to him in the end, I suspect, was a little scandal and humiliation and the inconvenience of getting his second marriage legalized. I can maybe see a rich man laying out a bundle to avoid a scandal and all, but I can’t see him committing murder over it. Not if he’s got any brains whatever, which Wilson Thatcher has.”

“Speaking of brains,” Sid said, “you have almost convinced me that you may have some yourself.”

“What’s that?” Cotton said.

“Well,” Sid said, “you have obviously thought everything through, and weighed one thing against another, and you’ve come up finally with all of these brilliant deductions, and it seems to me that this requires a certain amount of brains, however inadequate.”

Cotton’s ears had turned red, and I could see that he was somewhat hotter than the hot day. “Thanks very much for the compliment, however inadequate.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Sid said. “I don’t agree, however, that your final conclusion regarding Wilson Thatcher is sound. The weight of evidence surely indicates that he is sadly deficient in brains, if not totally without them. I’ll concede, however, that he must have had the glimmering of intelligence required to keep him from getting into a great sweat over the silly bigamy business, but I can tell you another person who would have got into the greatest sweat imaginable, even if she had all the brains in the world, and the person I mean is no one but Mrs. Wilson Thatcher.”

Cotton was looking at her with his mouth open, and so was I. Finally Cotton drained his can of beer and then began to read the label, at least the big print, as if it were something instructive or comforting, possibly a short prayer.

“Now what in hell, exactly,” he said, “made you say that?”

“What made me say it,” she said, “is being a woman with a husband, and I don’t mind admitting that I would be considerably upset, to put it mildly, if another woman came along suddenly and told me that he had been her husband first and still was. Moreover, if this happened to be the result of a deliberate dirty trick, I’m sure I would try my best to make her sorry or dead. Although I have more brains than I need, and am not given to behaving as if I needed more than I have, I’m bound to say that my own reaction would be more emotional than intelligent in such a case.”

Cotton was still reading the label, forming with his lips the shapes of the words. He did this silently, his expression rather imbecilic, but I could tell that he was listening intently and thinking as furiously as his inadequate brains permitted.

“There’s something else I’ll tell you, if you care to listen,” Sid said.

“I don’t believe I care to,” I said.

“As for me,” Cotton said, “I’m listening.”

“It is apparent,” Sid said, “that someone who is emotional about something is more vulnerable to threats than someone who isn’t, and if I were married to a man who was also married to someone else, and if I wanted to make a good thing of it in the way of getting some money, I’d surely give serious consideration to the woman as the one to get it from. You might be surprised to know how absolutely neurotic a woman who thought she was a wife would feel about having it known by everybody that she wasn’t really, and had been sleeping practically publicly with someone else’s husband.”

Cotton turned his beer can, now empty, around and around in his hands. He seemed to be trying to find his place among the words, which he had apparently lost. Suddenly, giving it up, he lay the can gently in the grass and got onto his knees and then to his feet.

“By God,” he said. “Oh, by God.”

Turning without another word, he walked away and around the house and out of sight.

“What’s the matter with him?” Sid said. “Is he mad or something?”

“I don’t think he’s mad,” I said. “I think he’s just a little disturbed.”

“It was damn impolite of him, if you ask me, not to thank us for the beer.”

“He didn’t intend to be impolite. He was abstracted. ‘Stunned’ may be the word.”

“Oh, nonsense. I only pointed out a few things he should have thought of himself.”

“It was a deft job of directing suspicion toward a woman who is probably as innocent as you are.”

“Well, if she’s innocent, it will do her no harm in the end, and I’m convinced that it will be favorable to our own cause. In order to keep you out of jail, if possible, we must have as many suspects as can be arranged.”

“I see. Sort of a calculated confusion. Well, as Voltaire said, let us tend our garden.”

I got up and started the mower and finished mowing the back yard, and Sid sat under the tree and watched me do it.

Monday was a bad day. It started out all right, a brisk walk to the office and Millie already there in a good humor with her bright head cocked like a woodpecker’s, and it stayed all right, if not exceptional, until mid-morning, which was about the time that Millie took a call from the county attorney, who wanted to talk to me. The county attorney’s name was Hector Caldwell. We were about the same age, and he had always been a friend of mine, but he was compelled in his professional capacity, as it turned out, to treat me in an unfriendly fashion.

I took up the phone and said, “Hello, Hec,” and he said, “Hello, Gid,” and I said, “What can I do for you?” and he said, “I wonder if you could get over to my office right away?” and I said, “Well, I don’t think I can make it right away,” and he said, “I think maybe you’d better,” and I knew in an instant, although his voice was pleasant, that I had no choice.

In the outer office, Millie was waiting for me when I passed by. “You be careful what you say to that Hector Caldwell.”

“You’ve been listening on the extension again,” I said.

“Don’t admit anything,” she said.

“You’re just a crazy redhead. What makes you think that I’ve got anything to admit?”

“I don’t think you necessarily have, although I wouldn’t bet on it, but I think he thinks you have. Who does he think he is to be ordering you around?”

“He thinks he’s the county attorney, that’s who, and I think you’d better quit listening in on my telephone conversations.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go talk to that Hector Caldwell at all. I’ll let you hide out in my apartment if you want to.”

“When I married Sid, she made me promise to give up staying with girls in their apartments. She’s unreasonable about such trifles.”

“I was only trying to help. I have a notion for some reason that you may need all you can get.”

Which was a correct notion, as I shortly learned.

I went downstairs to the street, bright and hot with sunlight, and I worked up a quick sweat walking three blocks to Hec Caldwell’s office. When I got there, Hec was waiting for me behind his desk, and Cotton McBride was standing at a window with his back to the room and looking down into the street through the upper section of the window above a one-ton air-conditioner installed in the lower. Hec stood up and asked me to sit down, which I did. Cotton turned away from the window and stood there, looking at me with an expression that suggested a bad taste in his mouth, while Hec sat down again and started looking at me, too, and between the pair of them, staring like that, they made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

“Well,” I said, “you asked me to come over, and here I am.”

“So you are,” Hec said. “Thanks for coming.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. Just something that’s come up. We hope you’ll be able to help us with it.”

“Anything to oblige. What do you want me to do?”

“What we want you to do,” Cotton said, “is quit playing fancy with me and everyone else and tell the truth for a change.”

“Who says I haven’t been telling the truth, and who says what it is that I haven’t been telling it about?”

“I say it, that’s who says it, and what it’s about is the murder of Beth Thatcher, and I’m the one who says that, too. Anyhow, you haven’t been telling all the truth, if any part of it, and you’d better start telling it right now if you know what’s good for you.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I’ve just recently had advice from two pretty shrewd characters, and one of them presented a convincing case for the advantages of telling lies, and the other one said not to admit anything.”

“No need to get excited,” Hec said. “Gid, Cotton’s somewhat annoyed with you, as you can see, and maybe he’s justified, and maybe he isn’t. That’s what we want to find out.”

“I’m all for that,” I said. “Let’s.”

“All right.” Hec opened the belly drawer of his desk and took out an envelope. “This was delivered to the police station this morning. Regular mail. You’d better read it.”

He passed it across the desk, and I took it. It was a cheap envelope, addressed with a typewriter. Pica type. Local postmark. I removed a single sheet of paper from the envelope and read what was on it: Ask Gideon Jones what he was doing in Dreamer s Park the night Beth Thatcher was killed. Don’t let him tell you he wasn’t there, because he was, and I saw him. No signature, of course. No X’s and O’s for love and kisses. I put the sheet back into the envelope and handed it across the desk to Hec.

“I thought you said this was no occasion,” I said. “I beg to differ. I’ve just been accused of murder for the first time in my life, and in my judgment that’s an occasion as big as any there is.”

“Who accused you of murder?”

“Whoever wrote that note.”

“No. The note just said to ask you what you were doing in Dreamer’s Park, and we’re asking. What were you doing there?”

“Assuming that I was there at all to be doing anything?”

“True. I’ll put that question first. Were you there?”

Well, what the hell! Sid had told me to lie and had patiently explained the advantages of it, and I wanted to lie and had the lie all ready on my tongue, a single, lousy little two-letter word beginning with n and ending with o, but I couldn’t pronounce it. All I had to do was to get a consonant and a vowel off my tongue in proper order, but I couldn’t do it, I simply couldn’t. And so I told the truth and made an admission at the same time in spite of the sagest advice from separate sources to do neither.

“Yes,” I said.

Hec looked surprised and uncomfortable, and Cotton looked something I couldn’t see, for I wasn’t looking at him. I could hear him, though, and I heard him make a little wet smacking sound with his lips that seemed to have in it a quality of satisfaction.

“Why didn’t you say so before?” Cotton said.

“You didn’t ask me,” I said.

“It’s your duty to tell something like that to the police without being asked,” Cotton said.

“That’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “You know it is. You should have told Cotton. Why didn’t you?”

“That should be obvious,” I said. “I wanted to avoid being suspected of killing someone I didn’t.”

“I don’t know that you’re suspected of killing anyone yet,” Hec said.

“As for me,” Cotton said, “I don’t know that he isn’t.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“You’d better tell us why you went there and what you did there,” Hec said.

“I’ll be happy to,” I said. “I went there to met Beth at her request, but I didn’t meet her because she was dead.”

“Why didn’t you report her death to the police?” Cotton said.

“I didn’t report it because I didn’t know it.”

“You mean to say she might have been dead in that old bandstand all the time you were there and you didn’t even see her?”

Having considered my answer carefully for a split second, I retreated to Sid’s prepared position.

“I mean to say,” I said.

“What I can’t figure out,” Hec said, “is why you agreed to meet her in Dreamer’s Park at night. There doesn’t seem to me to be any good reason for it.”

“As for me,” Cotton said, “I can think of two good reasons, and the other one’s murder.”

“You aren’t even half right,” I said. “Dreamer’s Park is a place of sentiment, and we were going to say good-by, and it seemed appropriate to say it in a sentimental place. Besides, I had been listening to cicadas and drinking gin.”

“Maybe you’d better just tell us what happened in your own words,” Hec said.

“Well, I was alone in the house, and the phone rang, and it was Beth. She asked me to meet her and say good-by, and I asked where. That was when she thought of Dreamer’s Park, and I agreed to go there to meet her.”

“What time was this?” Cotton said.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “As I explained, I’d been drinking gin. Pretty late, though. About nine thirty.”

“Go on, Gid,” Hec said.

“There isn’t much farther to go. Just across town to Dreamer’s Park. When I got there, I sat in the bandstand and waited for Beth, but she didn’t come. Finally I went home and went to bed, and the next day I heard she’d been murdered, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I’ve got a feeling,” Cotton said, “that there may be more.”

“Did you see anyone at all while you were in the park?” He said.

“No one,” I said, “except a few people, at a distance, passing along the streets. No one in the park itself.”

“That’s too bad. It would be helpful to you if we had someone else to suspect, but we don’t, and now we have the problem of what to do with you.”

“That’s no problem,” Cotton said.

“What’s your suggestion?” Hec said.

“What we have to do,” Cotton said, “is hold him on suspicion.”

“I guess that’s right,” Hec said. “I’m sorry, Gid, but I guess we have to hold you. You were there and all, and you didn’t tell about it, and that makes you suspicious at the very least.”

“I feel chosen,” I said. “May I go back to my office and tidy things up a bit?”

“I’m against it,” Cotton said. “You can’t let a murder suspect run around loose to do things like that.”

“By God, Cotton,” I said, “it’s impossible for me to tell you how much I admire your devotion to duty. Do you think it would be permissible to make a couple of telephone calls?”

“I can’t see any harm in a couple of telephone calls,” Hec said. “Can you, Cotton?”

“That depends on who he calls and what he says,” Cotton said.

“Who are you going to call, Gid?” Hec said.

“A couple of pretty seamy characters. Millie Morgan at the office and Sid Jones at home.”

“I can’t see any harm in calling Millie and Sid,” Hec said.

“Thanks. May I use your phone?”

“Sure. Go ahead and use it.”

I did, dialing the office number first, and Millie answered.

“Hello, Millie,” I said. “This is Gid.”

“Why are you calling? Why don’t you come back and tell me what Hec Caldwell wanted with you?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not possible at this time.”

“Will you be long? I can hardly wait to hear.”

“It appears at the moment that my absence may be prolonged. Cotton McBride, who is listening to this end of our conversation, is of the opinion that it may be permanent. In brief, I’ve been hauled into custody.”

“Are you serious?”

“Never more so.”

“Have you admitted anything? What are you suspected of?”

“I’m suspected of murdering Beth Thatcher.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“I’m happy to say I didn’t.”

“I didn’t think you did, really.”

“It’s too bad that present company isn’t as easily convinced.”

“Cotton and Hec? Those two clunk-heads have absolutely no brain between them. Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe I could get that Hec Caldwell in a compromising position that would enable us to put some pressure on him.”

“Don’t bother, please. Just be a good girl and take care of things. Good-by, now.”

I hung up and took a deep breath and began to dial my home number. Hec Caldwell leaned back in his swivel chair and looked past me at Cotton McBride with an expression of complacency.

“You see, Cotton?” he said. “Nothing was said that could do the least harm.”

“Nothing harmful was said at this end of the line,” Cotton said, “but I’m not so sure about the other.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “our conversation was innocent at both ends. The only thing you might find objectionable was her calling you a pair of clunk-heads.”

“There you are,” Cotton said. “That’s a smart-aleck redhead if I ever saw one. She has no respect for anyone.”

“Why did she want to call us names like that?” Hec said. “That’s no way to talk about public officials.”

I had dialed, and the phone was ringing. It rang and rang and no one answered. I was just about to hang up, having decided that Sid had gone out somewhere, when all of a sudden she was on the line breathlessly.

“Hello, hello,” she said. “Who’s there?”

“Gid’s here,” I said.

“Sugar, is everything all right? Why did you call?”

“I called to tell you that I won’t be home for dinner tonight.”

“How exasperating! Why won’t you? Where will you be for dinner?”

“For dinner I’ll be in the county jail as the guest of Cotton McBride and Hector Caldwell.”

“Don’t be absurd. No one has dinner in the county jail.”

“Oh, yes, someone does. A number do, as a matter of fact. The prisoners, I mean.”

“What’s that? Prisoners? Are you sure you’re sober? I hope for your sake, as well as mine, that this isn’t the beginning of another Gimlet affair.”

“Not at all. Whatever they serve in the county jail, I’m sure they don’t serve Gimlets.”

“Tell me the meaning of this at once. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you. What I’m trying to say is that I’m being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Beth Thatcher.”

“Nonsense. How can you be arrested for killing someone you didn’t kill? Who’s arresting you? Is it that idiot Cotton McBride?”

“Cotton and Hec. It’s a co-operative job.”

“What I’d like to know is how the hell they can arrest you without any reason whatever.”

“They think they have one. Someone wrote a note and told them that I went to Dreamer’s Park the night Beth was killed.”

“Who wrote the note?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t signed.”

“Well, an unsigned note doesn’t prove anything. Any nut could write an unsigned note. Surely, after what I told you, you denied being there.”

“I didn’t, unfortunately. I admitted it.”

“Admitted it? Actually? Sugar, were you temporarily insane or something?”

“Hell, I can’t explain it. It just came out.”

“Well, the damage has been done now, and we’ll simply have to make the best of it. It’s perfectly clear to me that I must take a hand in this directly if anything sensible is ever to be done.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I’ll think of something.” She was silent for a few seconds, and when she spoke again her voice had receded and saddened. “I’ll have to think of something all the time to avoid thinking of you in jail. Sugar, I can’t bear to think of you in jail.”

“Sid, I’m sorry.”

“For what, sugar?”

“For everything.”

“Oh, no. Not for everything. In many respects you’ve been a superior and interesting husband, and I love you as much as ever and maybe more.”

“And I you and no maybe.”

“Sugar, I’m about to cry, and I don’t want to.”

“I’ve got to hang up now. Will you be all right out there in Hoolihan’s Addition all alone?”

“I don’t intend to be alone very long. And you tell that clunk-head McBride not to come sneaking around here picking my brains again if he doesn’t want to be shot as a trespasser. I’ll tell him myself if you’ll only put him on the phone.”

“I’ll tell him. Good-by, Sid.”

“Good-by, sugar.”

That was about it. I put the phone in its cradle and pushed it away from me. It had been bad enough, as it had to be, but not as bad as it might have been.

“Tell who what?” Cotton said.

“You’re who,” I said, “and what is that you’d better not come sneaking around picking Sid’s brains again if you don’t want to be shot.”

“What the hell’s the matter with that woman? She can’t be threatening an officer of the law in line of duty.”

“She also called you a clunk-head. That makes two people in ten minutes. I’m beginning to think there must be some truth in it.”

“Did she say anything about me, Gid?” Hec said.

“Nothing much. She concentrated on Cotton.”

“Well, I suppose she’ll never speak to me again after this.” He stood up behind his desk and looked strong and resigned and slightly noble. “It’s one of the penalties of a job like mine. You do your plain duty, no matter how much it may hurt you inside, and someone always hates you for it.”

“As I see it,” Cotton said, “my plain duty right now is to take the prisoner over to the county jail, and I’m going to do it.”

“That’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “It’s Cotton’s duty to do it.”

So he did his duty, and we went. I had tried to be brave and assured and all that prideful stuff, and maybe I managed to make the picture pretty well, but I didn’t feel it. Inside, like Hec, I was hurting.

I have a notion I was hurting worse.

The county jail was a red brick building erected near the turn of the century in the center of a square block of grass and trees and flowering shrubs. It was two stories high, and my accommodations were second floor rear. I had been there four hours that seemed like four weeks when Harley Murchison, the jailer, came up and opened my grill and said that I had a visitor.

He took me down to a small room on the first floor, and there was Sid. I went over and put my arms around her, and she hung on for a few seconds, and I could hear a little choking sound in her throat, followed by a sniff in her nose. I sat down in a chair by a table, and she sat down in one beside me. We held hands.

“What have you been doing?” I said.

“I’ve been trying to run down that idiot Cotton McBride, that’s what, but he’s never anywhere I go, or at least someone says he isn’t, and it’s perfectly apparent by this time that he’s trying to avoid me.”

“Have you talked with anyone at all?”

“Only Hector Caldwell. He was so full of noble regrets and windy pretensions that I was nearly sick on his carpet, but at least he called here to the jail and said that I was to be allowed to see you, and so here I am.”

“If you love me, will you do something for me?”

“I’m not sure. I’m forced to recognize that you’re not always the best judge of what is for your own good. However, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go straight home and be good. Let me get out of this thing the best I can alone.”

“Excuse me, sugar, but to this point, in spite of my telling you exactly what to do and say in certain situations, you have shown almost no ability for getting out of it. On the contrary, you keep getting deeper and deeper into it. Please tell me why you think things will be any different hereafter.”

“Because this anonymous note isn’t sufficient evidence to base an indictment on, and Hec Caldwell knows it. My arrest on suspicion is just a kind of gesture, that’s all.”

“There. That’s exactly what I mean. You — assume without any earthly reason that Hec Caldwell will suddenly begin to think and behave intelligently. This is clearly impossible, for he doesn’t have the necessary brains, and he is, moreover, under the influence of Cotton McBride, who has even less. Now, sugar, what I want you to do is tell me exactly what was said in the telephone conversation between you and Beth. Just begin at the beginning and don’t leave anything out for the sake of discretion. What you might leave out could be the most significant of everything, and we can settle later any issues that may arise from your being honest.”

“All right. First, she asked me if it was me on the phone, and I said it was. Then she asked me what I was doing, and I said I was drinking Gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration, and she said something about drinking Gimlets still, and I said not still, but again, because I had taken time out for a bottle of white Burgundy. Then she asked if you were home, and I said no, that you were off discussing something with Rose Pogue, and she said that something like that with Rose might go on forever. Right after that she asked me if I would meet her somewhere, and I asked where, and she remembered Dreamer’s Park and suggested it, and I agreed to go. Incidentally, I ought to warn you that I didn’t tell quite all the truth to Hec and Cotton. What I didn’t tell them was that I found the body and didn’t report it.”

“It’s a relief to learn that you followed my instructions to that extent, at least. It really would be too bad to have you kept in jail for such a minor offense after you have been proved innocent of a major one.”

“Yes, it would. I couldn’t agree with you more.”

About that time Harley Murchison came to the door and coughed, which was a sign that it was time for Sid to go. I held her and kissed her and took a deep breath of the scent of her hair to smell after she was gone.

“You’re not a bad sort,” I said. “As wives go, you’re quite satisfactory.”

“I know. In some ways, I’m even exceptional.”

Then she sniffed and wiped her nose and went, and where she went and what she did, while I went nowhere and did nothing, make a story that you may not believe if I haven’t been able to make you see her as she was. I don’t know exactly what she did and said in all instances, for I wasn’t with her, but I’m sure I can use my imagination and tell it all with verisimilitude, if not with precise accuracy, from what she told me afterward, and what I heard from others, and most of all from simply knowing Sid and what, in given circumstances, she would most likely do and say.

Where she went first, after leaving the county jail and me in it, was to my office to see Millie Morgan.

“Here you are, Millie,” she said. “I was afraid you might be gone.”

“A few minutes later I’d have been,” Millie said, “but I’m glad I’m not. Have you seen Gid since that stupid Hec Caldwell put him in jail?”

“I just came from seeing him. I don’t think it was so much Hec who put him there, however, as Cotton McBride.”

“In my opinion, they were both in on it and equally responsible. What on earth makes them suspect Gid of having murdered Beth Thatcher? He called me on the phone and said they did, but he didn’t see why, and I’ve been dying to know ever since.”

“Because he went to Dreamer’s Park the night she was killed there, and someone apparently saw him and wrote a note to the police about it.”

“Well, what a dirty trick! Whoever did it?”

“That’s not known, for the note wasn’t signed.”

“Isn’t it rather odd that Gid would go to Dreamer’s Park in the middle of the night? Did you know he was going?”

“No. I only learned that he went after he had gone. To tell the truth, he went there to meet Beth.”

“The hell he did! If he were my husband, I don’t believe I’d be quite so amiable about something like that as you seem to be.”

“It’s not that I’m so amiable, really. It’s only that I’m forced by circumstances to appear so. I may yet, when the time is right, decide to deprive him temporarily of a few privileges for going off like that the minute my back was turned. Now, however, he is in jail and in trouble, and I must get him out.”

“How do you intend to do it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to investivate and see what I can discover. As a beginning, I’ve been trying to find that sneaky McBride, but he’s been avoiding me.”

“Is there anything in particular that I can do to help?”

“Not immediately. There may be something later, however, and it’s reassuring to know that you’re available.”

“Don’t mention it. In the meantime, I’ll keep things going here at the office. It’s my professional opinion that Gid’s practice will benefit from all this. He will get a certain amount of publicity, which is always good in the end, and when he is proved innocent, thanks to you, everyone will eventually forget how it really was and think that it was due to his own cleverness as a lawyer.”

“That’s quite encouraging, T must say. Would you like to go somewhere and have a drink or something?”

“I’d like to, but I don’t think I’d better. I’m scheduled for a scrimmage with a certain engineer this evening, and I need to keep a clear head.”

“In that case, I’ll run along. Good-by for the present.”

“Good-by,” Millie said. “Let me know the instant I’m needed.”

Sid went downstairs and stood still for a moment to consider her immediate future. She thought she might as well try once more to catch Cotton McBride, and so she went over to the police department in City Hall, and Cotton was there, and she caught him.

“Here you are at last,” Sid said. “Where the devil have you been?”

“I’ve been busy,” Cotton said.

“That’s certainly so. You’ve been busy making mistakes and the worst kind of fool of yourself. Why have you put Gid in jail without a word of warning to me or anyone else?”

“Because he’s a murder suspect.”

“And why, precisely, is he a murder suspect?”

“Because he was in Dreamer’s Park about the time Beth Thatcher was murdered there.”

“What time was that?”

“He said he left home about nine thirty, and he walked to the park, so it must have been around ten o’clock.”

“Truly? It’s incredible how you can make such clever deductions. I wasn’t asking what time Gid was in the park, however. I was asking what time Beth Thatcher was murdered.”

Cotton, who had his mouth open in position for his next remark, stood looking at her for a few seconds in silence, his mouth still open in position, and then he sat down slowly in his chair and took a firm grip on its arms. Sid, uninvited, sat down in a chair across from him.

“That’s not exactly known, of course,” Cotton said.

“How interesting! What time, inexactly, would you say she was killed?”

“Damn it, it’s impossible to do more than make a scientific estimate. The coroner says it was between seven and eleven.”

“It must be wonderful to be able to make scientific estimates, and I don’t see how that coroner manages to do it. He isn’t even a doctor, let alone a scientist.”

“The post-mortem was done by a doctor.”

“Naturally. A general practitioner who would have trouble diagnosing rigor mortis itself, without regard for the time when it started.”

“Now, I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Jones. You’re always going around making critical remarks about the police and the medical profession, and I want to warn you that you’d better stop. It’s not right.”

“Isn’t it? I’d like to point out that being critical of a doctor and a policeman and a coroner is not quite so serious a matter as putting someone in jail for the silliest of reasons.”

“Gid was in the park during the estimated time of death. He’s admitted that he was, and that’s reason enough to hold him.”

“I believe you said the estimated time of death is four hours. Seven to eleven. How many other people were in the park in that time?”

“How would I know? We didn’t have the park under surveillance.”

“That’s a very significant admission, don’t you think?”

“I’m not making any admissions or anything else. The point is, Gid’s the only one we know was in the park, and he went there specifically to meet the victim, and he had a reason to hold a grudge against her.”

“Because she married someone else? That was a favor. If she hadn’t. Gid would never have had the chance to marry me.”

“Well, it’s not my place to argue the relative merits of two women.”

“That’s correct. I’m glad to know that you know what your place isn’t, even if you don’t always seem to know just what it is.”

Cotton took an even firmer grip on the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white, and breathed deeply several times.

“There’s nothing to be gained from arguing,” he said finally.

“I agree,” Sid said. “It would be much more profitable to discuss the murder case. We have already established, for example, that you don’t really know when the victim died, or who was with her when she did. Now I would like to know what makes you so sure you know where she died.”

“Damn it, she died in Dreamer’s Park.”

“Did someone actually see her killed there?”

“No, but that’s where she was found, and no one in his right mind would lug a dead body around town when it would be safer and easier to leave it where it became dead. Besides, Beth Thatcher called Gid and arranged to meet him in the park. That’s where she went and where she was killed.”

“It must be a great comfort to have a dogmatic mind. As for me. I’m never so sure about things. Was the weapon that killed her left in the wound?”

“It was not. We haven’t found it yet. It’ll be necessary, by the way, to search your house and yard.”

“We can settle that when the time comes. What I want to know now is how much blood there was.”

“Not much. The wound was just a sort of puncture, made by a thin blade. The doc says it wasn’t exactly a blade, as a matter of fact. It was more spikelike.”

“But the paper and everyone have constantly referred to it as a blade.”

“It was just something that got said and repeated. What’s the difference?”

“I’m of the opinion that there’s considerable difference between a blade and something spikelike. It’s obvious that you’ve been sloppy or deceptive in numerous instances. I consider it odd that there wasn’t more blood, although I’ll concede that something spikelike would probably cause less bleeding than a blade.”

“Thanks so much. The truth is, there wasn’t even enough bleeding to wash away all the dirt.”

“Dirt? Did you say dirt?”

“That’s what I said. There must have been some dirt on the weapon, because there was some at the edge of the wound, and a little inside.”

“Well, this is getting odder and more interesting all the time, and it seems to me that you’ve given far too little attention to details that deserve more.” Sid stood up and walked away a couple of steps and looked back over her shoulder at Cotton. “By the way,” she said, “if you actually plan to waste time searching our yard and house, be sure you bring a warrant with you when you come to do it.”

“I know,” Cotton said sourly. “Otherwise, you’ll shoot me as a trespasser.”

The evening Record carried a startling account of how Gideon Jones, prominent young local attorney, had been detained by authorities on suspicion of murdering Beth Webb Thatcher, formerly the wife of Wilson Thatcher, prominent business executive. Sid read the account carefully from beginning to the end, and although the grounds for suspecting Gideon Jones were made perfectly clear in short words that could be understood even on the fringes of literacy, there was not the slightest suggestion that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Thatcher were legally Wilson Thatcher and Thelma Bleeker, or that they had been blackmailed as a result by the legal Mrs. Wilson Thatcher, who was dead from having been killed, and that they might, therefore, quite reasonably be considered suspicious themselves. There was clearly a minor conspiracy to spare the Thatchers public embarrassment unless it became absolutely unavoidable, and it was Sid’s indignant opinion that the Thatchers were not one bit more worthy of being spared than the Joneses, who had not been spared at all.

The next morning, with this on her mind, Sid went to the Thatcher home. It was a big house on an old street, and it sat well back from the street behind a deep yard. Sid pushed a bell button beside a heavy door flanked by narrow panes of leaded glass. Soon, the door was opened by a maid, who asked Sid what she wanted.

“I want to see Mrs. Wilson Thatcher,” Sid said. “Please tell her that Mrs. Gideon Jones is calling.”

The maid, after a quick recovery from a startled expression, said that she would see if Mrs. Thatcher was in. Sid was allowed to wait in the hall until the maid returned with Mrs. Thatcher’s regrets that she was feeling indisposed and unable to receive anyone.

“In that case,” Sid said, “I would like to see Miss Thelma Bleeker.”

“Who?” the maid said.

“Miss Thelma Bleeker.”

“I’m sorry. There’s no one here with that name.”

“Nevertheless, I’d appreciate it if you would go and tell Mrs. Thatcher that Mrs. Gideon Jones wishes to speak with Miss Thelma Bleeker.”

“If you will just wait here,” the maid said.

She went away again and came back again. Mrs. Thatcher, she said, had decided to see Mrs. Jones after all, and so Mrs. Jones followed the maid into a small room off the hall, where she was left, and pretty soon Mrs. Thatcher came to join her there, and with Mrs. Thatcher was no one but Mr. Thatcher.

“Good morning, Mrs. Jones,” Wilson Thatcher said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“As a matter of fact,” Sid said, “it clearly isn’t, and we will probably all feel more comfortable if no one tries to pretend that it is.”

Thelma Thatcher (at least by squatter’s rights) examined Sid intently. She herself was rather tall and angular, with large hands and feet and a long upper lip that gave her a kind of squirrelly look. She must have represented, Sid thought, a typical reaction from Beth. Old simple Wilson, having had too much of one extreme, had palpably taken on too much of the other.

“Perhaps we had all better sit down,” Wilson Thatcher said.

“No, thank you,” Thelma Thatcher said. “I don’t wish to.”

“I don’t either,” Sid said.

“It is evident from her use of my maiden name,” Thelma Thatcher said, “that Mrs. Jones intends to exploit information that was foolishly divulged to her, and I think she had better tell us exactly what she wants. There’s no sense in politely skirting the matter.”

“What I want,” Sid said, “is simply to get Gid out of jail, where he has been put by a pair of idiots without a brain between them.”

“You seem to feel that we can help you. Please tell me how.”

“By telling the truth, that’s how. It was all in the paper about Gid, but there was nothing there, not a single word, about how Beth Thatcher came here to blackmail one or both of you for bigamy. In my opinion, that’s as good evidence for murder as going somewhere you shouldn’t have gone at a time when you had much better have been anywhere else.”

“We have no obligation to tell you anything whatever.”

“If you don’t want me to tell everything I know to everyone I meet, you will.”

“It’s apparent that you have no sense of decency.”

“That’s right. All I have is Gid in jail, and I want him out.”

“What do you want to know?” Wilson Thatcher said.

“I want to know exactly what Beth wanted, and I want to know why you came deliberately to our house and told us a lot of things that there was no need to tell anyone, let alone us.”

“I came because I was afraid. I was merely trying to divert to myself suspicions that I erroneously thought would fall upon my wife.”

“I prefer to judge for myself whether they were erroneous or not.”

“I didn’t want to go to the authorities, I although I later did, because I thought they might consider it odd for me to confess so much without reason. I wanted them to know, however, in order to keep their attention away from my wife, and so I chose to tell Gideon because he was the one person, aside from me, who would have the greatest personal interest in Beth’s death, and because I could talk to him under the pretense of seeking legal advice. As you probably guessed. I told several lies. I suppose I was pretty transparent.”

“What you were.” Thelma Thatcher said, “was a fool. Wilson, if you will kindly keep quiet. I’m sure I can relate what happened much more quickly and clearly than you would find possible.”

“Quickly and clearly is the way I want it,” Sid said, “whoever relates it.”

“Very well,” Thelma Thatcher said. “One of the first things this little witch did after arriving in town, apparently, was to call Wilson at his office, but he had the good sense to refuse to see her, and I must admit that it was the only occasion in this whole affair when he showed any sense whatever. I doubt that she cared, however, for it was me she really wanted to see. As a woman with a sense of shame and pride, I would almost certainly be willing to pay handsomely to avoid being publicly humiliated and disgraced, whereas Wilson is reluctant to pay anything for any reason unless interest or dividends are assured.

“She came here to see me, and there was no doubt that she was telling the truth about never having gotten the divorce, for she even invited me to check the records in the place where the divorce had supposedly been granted. She spoke as if it were all a kind of party game which everyone should accept in the best of humor, and then she said she only wanted twenty thousand dollars to go away. She promised to go somewhere and finally get a genuine divorce, after which Wilson and I could quietly get married again, and everything would be all right.”

“It wasn’t necessary to give her a cent,” Wilson said. “There wasn’t a thing she could have done that wouldn’t have been more unpleasant for her than it would have been for us.”

“Do you think so?” Thelma Thatcher said. “Well, I am naturally reluctant to be known publicly as an extralegal concubine to a bigamist. I preferred to pay the money, and I did. At least, five thousand dollars that I happened to have in the house. I gave it to her with the promise that I would give her the rest that night. She left then, and I went to the bank and got the fifteen thousand dollars from my personal account. It may seem like a lot of money to give someone with no guarantee that she wouldn’t be back for more, but twenty thousand dollars isn’t really very much money to Wilson and me, however much it may be to some people. I’m sure that Wilson could have found some way to deduct most of it from his income tax. He’s clever at such things.”

“I don’t think we’d better talk too much about that,” Wilson said.

“What I want to know,” Sid said, “is if she came back for the rest of the money.”

“No, she didn’t. I told her to come around nine, for I knew Wilson had a business meeting at that time, but she didn’t come, and now, of course, it is apparent why she didn’t.”

“Is it?” Sid said. “It may be apparent to you, but it isn’t to me. She called Gid at nine thirty, which was half an hour after she was supposed to have come here for the money, and I would like to know why she was fooling around making a date with my husband and neglecting business in hand that was a lot more urgent and important. In fact, I would like to know just where she went and what she did between the time she left Gid in the Kiowa Room and the time she went wherever she was killed and met whoever killed her.”

“If you want to know,” Thelma Thatcher said, “why don’t you go somewhere and ask someone who might be able to tell you?”

“I intend to,” Sid said. “Thank you for helping me, however reluctantly.”

She turned and walked out into the hall, Wilson loping after her to the door and holding it for her as she left. Driving downtown, she reviewed the sequence of events as Thelma Thatcher had related them, and she was convinced that every word of the version was true, simply because it accorded with her own notions of what had probably happened, which she had expressed, indeed, to Cotton McBride on Saturday last.

Downtown, she parked in the lot beside the Hotel Carson and went into the lobby. The clerk at the desk was young and overflowing with ideas and the juices of glands, but he was, although susceptible, reluctant to give out information about a guest, even a dead one, that might be considered confidential, especially to a woman, however stimulating, who happened to be the wife of the man who was suspected of having made the guest dead. Finally, though, he confided that Beth Thatcher had checked her key at the desk late in the afternoon before the night she was killed, and that she had not picked it up again, and therefore could be assumed never to have returned to her room. This was what Sid wanted to know, and she went, knowing it, to see Chauncy at the bar.

She sat on a stool at the bar and claimed his attention. He moved into position opposite her, brown hands with polished nails placed flat on the bar.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I’ll have a bourbon on the rocks, if you please.”

The stark simplicity of the order spoke well for her character, and Chauncy, after filling it, lingered and watched her discreetly.

“Do you know who I am?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. Some faces I forget pretty easy, and some hard. Yours would be a hard one.”

“Chauncy, I have a notion that you are an exceptional person. I’ve often heard my husband speak highly of you.”

“Mr. Gideon Jones is a very generous gentleman.”

“I suppose you know that he’s been put into jail.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. An error, I’m sure.”

“Did you know the lady he’s erroneously suspected of killing?”

“Only by name and reputation. I remember her from years ago and from the recent evening she was here.”

“The evening she drank Gimlets with Mr. Jones?”

“Yes, ma’am. An innocent episode, I assure you.”

“I don’t suspect Mr. Jones of anything more than a kind of amiable and temporary soft-headedness, Chauncy, and so you needn’t try to protect him. The lady is the one I’m interested in, and I wonder if you can remember how long she was here after Mr. Jones left.”

“Between half an hour and an hour. I regret that I can’t be more exact.”

“Do you remember if she was alone all that time?”

“Oh, no. She was not alone. Several people stopped at her table to speak with her, and one or two, as I recall, sat with her until she left.”

“When she left, did she leave alone?”

“I think not. I have a vague remembrance of someone accompanying her.”

“Does your vague remembrance include a vague remembrance of who that someone might have been?”

“It doesn’t, ma’am. It must have been one of the faces I forget easy.”

“Is it your judgment, then, that you don’t remember the person who may have left here with Beth Thatcher because the person may have a face that it doesn’t please you to remember?”

“That’s my judgment, ma’am. I believe it’s a talent that becomes developed in certain of us who serve in positions that deny us the right to discriminate in our contacts.”

“Thank you, Chauncy. You’re a gentleman and a philosopher, and it has been a pleasure to talk with you.”

“The pleasure was mine, ma’am, and I hope that Mr. Gideon Jones is soon released from jail.”

On this elevated plane of mutual respect, which was genuine, Sid parted from Chauncy. She was tired and sticky after a busy time on a hot day, and so she went home and had a shower and lay down on the bed in our room to think about what she had learned and where she now was in relation to it, and where she was, so far as she could see, was somewhat behind where she had been when she started. As stated, she was convinced that Thelma Thatcher had told the truth. She was also convinced that Wilson Thatcher had not been foolish enough to kill anyone over a matter that could have been settled much less dangerously otherwise, although Wilson’s potential for foolishness was demonstrably considerable, and that left me out in front all alone, in jail and available. This trend of thought left her feeling depressed and inadequate and wanting to cry, and so she cursed a little and closed her eyes and took several deep breaths and fell sound asleep.

To her surprise, when she woke, it was quite late, going on six. Suddenly she remembered that tomorrow night was the night of the meeting of the discussion group, and she realized that it would be absolutely impossible for her to go. It would be necessary for her to tell Rose Pogue at once, and so she went downstairs to the telephone in the hall and dialed Rose’s number.

“Hello,” she said. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Rose said. “It’s Sid?”

“Yes, it is,” Sid said, “and I should have called you sooner, but it simply didn’t enter my mind.”

“Darling, I was simply thunderstruck when I read in the paper what had happened to Gid. If there’s the slightest thing I can do to help, you mustn’t hesitate to call on me.”

“There is something, actually. I’ve just remembered the discussion group tomorrow night, and I can’t be there. Would you mind doing it alone?”

“I won’t say that I wouldn’t mind ordinarily, but under the circumstances it can hardly be helped.”

“It’s very kind of you, Rose. I’m sorry to leave you in such a fix.”

“Wait a minute. Don’t hang up. Were you about to hang up?”

“I was about to, yes.”

“I wanted to ask you if matters will be cleared up soon. Do you think so?”

“At first I thought so, but now I’m not quite so optimistic.”

“I have been told that Beth Thatcher was quite attractive.”

“I only saw her dead, and she was beautiful.”

“How unusual. So often dead people aren’t. I must say that you are being very steadfast and loyal, and I admire you for it.”

“I’m not being steadfast and loyal at all. I am only lonely and wanting Gid home.”

“Of course you do, darling.”

“Thanks, Rose. Good-by.”

Sid went out onto the back terrace and began to think about the conversation between Beth and me, her husband, as I had related it, to see if anything significant could be detected there that had heretofore escaped detection. She had a good memory for details, and she began at the beginning, with the ringing of the phone, and went over them all carefully once, after which she began to go over them again.

The treacherous cicadas were noisy in the trees. In the pale light, the moon was pale in the sky. In the back yard across the hedge, Jack Handy, our neighbor, was watering the grass and making comments in a loud voice to Mrs. Jack Handy, who was apparently somewhere in the house. On a near street, moving rapidly, was the tinkling sound of the siren bell of an ice-cream man.

“Why,” said Sid suddenly, “it’s absurd! It’s simply absurd!”

She was on her feet with a sense of rising excitement, and she felt in an instant much better than she had been feeling in a long, long time.

Feeling so good, she went inside and mixed three Martinis and brought them out and drank them.

I looked out the window into the yard beneath spreading trees. The grass was dark green and cool-looking and inviting, and I wished I could go out and roll in it like a dog. It was my third day in jail, and I was tired of it. I wanted to go home.

“Sugar,” Sid said, “last night I thought of something enlightening.”

“Is that so? I’ve been thinking, too, and the result has been almost precisely the opposite.”

“Well, this enlightening thing is something that was said, and it was said, moreover, directly to you. It does seem to me, sugar, that a lawyer — especially an attorney of your caliber — should be a bit more capable of analyzing things and seeing their significance and all that.”

“Just tell me, please, what was said that’s enlightening.”

“I suppose I must, if you can’t think of it yourself. To begin with, I’ve been greatly puzzled as to why Beth Thatcher was fooling around making a date with my husband when she should have been attending to more important business. It just didn’t seem sensible.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“Then early last night I called Rose Pogue, and that got me to thinking about the telephone conversation you had with Beth, and all at once it was perfectly clear to me why Beth neglected her business to make a date with you.”

“Was it? Is it? Not to me. Why is it?”

“Because she didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t make a date with you.”

“I’m sorry to be contrary and have to mess up what must be leading up to a brilliant theory, but she did. She called me on the telephone.”

“I know, sugar. I know someone called you, that is. But what makes you so positive it was Beth?”

“Because she said it was.”

“Anyone could have said it. That doesn’t make it so.”

“Look, Sid, it won’t do. Honestly it won’t. Beth had a voice that sounded like an invitation to bed if she so much as asked for a light. I’d have recognized it anytime, anywhere.”

“Please don’t be so obtuse, sugar. You have scarcely covered yourself with distinction in this matter up to now, and it’s time you made a special effort to do a little better. Surely you can see that the unusual quality of Beth’s voice is precisely what would make it so easy to imitate.”

“Are you saying that someone called me and pretended to be Beth?”

“Yes. It explains other things and must be true.”

“Why must it? You haven’t given me any reason yet.”

“I was in hopes you’d get it without my help. It would restore my confidence in you somewhat if you could. Can’t you? Really try.”

“Damn it, Sid, cut it out. I’m in no mood to match wits with you.”

“Oh, well, I may as well tell you. It was what was said about Rose Pogue that makes me sure it was not Beth Thatcher who said it.”

“All I can remember being said about Rose was that a conference with her might go on and on forever.”

“There! You see? You only needed to make a genuine effort, and you thought of it right away.”

“Now that I’ve thought of it, perhaps you’ll tell me what it means.”

“Why, sugar, how could Beth Thatcher have possibly known that Rose is so talkative and goes on and on forever about matters in detail? After all, Beth left town seven years ago, and Rose only came here three years ago, when she was hired to teach second grade, and it was therefore clearly impossible for Beth to know Rose at all, or anything whatever about her.”

She was sitting on the table with her legs hanging over the edge, her eyes bright with pride and excitement. I was standing facing her, and I felt limp all of a sudden, as if my bones had gone soft in an instant.

“Who, conceivably,” I said, “could it have been who called?”

“There is nothing difficult about that,” Sid said. “It was whoever killed her, of course.”

“And who, conceivably, is whoever killed her?”

“As to that, I’m not sure yet, but there are things that can be deduced, and the first deduction is that the killer is surely a woman. It would have been easy for a woman to imitate that special quality in Beth’s voice, even if she were no more than a little clever, but it would hardly have been possible for a man, unless he were especially talented and trained, which isn’t likely.”

“That sounds reasonable enough. Now deduce why this woman, whoever she may be, killed Beth and then tricked me into going to Dreamer’s Park and incriminating myself.”

“This is so elementary that it doesn’t really deserve to be called deducing. Allowing for the possibility of her being a little crazy, she undoubtedly killed Beth because she hated her, and incriminated you because she hated you also. The incrimination part was sloppy and uncertain at best. There was no assurance that it would work, and it nearly didn’t, for you simply kept quiet about finding the body, which you might not have found at all in such a dark place. That is why, after a while, it was necessary to send the note to the police.”

“You contend, then, that the telephoner and the writer are the same person?”

“Oh, yes. Naturally.”

“I can’t quite picture myself as the kind of fellow who could incite such strong emotion.”

“Sugar, I’m prepared to testify that you are perfectly capable of inciting strong emotion, but that is beside the point, and we’d better not get into it. Besides, I’m just beginning to get some ideas that may amount to something. As I recall, regarding your telephone conversation, you said you were drinking Gimlets, and whoever was imitating Beth said something about drinking Gimlets still. Is that true?”

“Yes. True. And I said not still, but again, because of the wine.”

She was swinging her legs now like a small, intense girl watching a foot race or something else exciting, and her face was set in the fiercest imaginable scowl of concentration.

“It’s apparent, then, that the person on the telephone, who was surely a woman, was also someone who knew that you had been drinking Gimlets. Since it has been established that it was not Beth, it must have been someone else who was right there in the Kiowa Room watching you at the time, and there is only one person that I can remember your mentioning by name when you came home late and covered me with gin kisses on the terrace.”

She stopped swinging her legs and sat very still on the table, and the fierce scowl faded slowly through subtle changes into an expression of childish wonder.

“Sugar,” she said, “why would Sara Pike want to kill Beth Thatcher and go to all sorts of extremes to blame you?”

“Sara Pike! Are you serious, Sid? You can’t be.”

“I can and I am. Please answer my question. What did you and Beth Thatcher do to Sara Pike?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“There you go. Answering again before thinking. Of course you did something to her, however unintentional. She certainly didn’t kill Beth and incriminate you for nothing at all.”

“Well, I can’t think of anything. Not a damn thing.”

“Isn’t it true that Beth and Sara’s brother Sherman once went together seriously?”

“True, true, but of damn little consequence.”

“We’ll continue to think about it and see. At any rate, you said you had done nothing, and already we have come up with something.”

“I said nothing was done to Sara. What was done to Sherm was something else, and it amounted to damn little. Sherm was a brilliant sort of boy, and a very nice one. There were no hard feelings. Besides, he died right away, and none of it made any difference to him then, one way or another.”

“Well, there it is. You have said it yourself.”

“Said what?”

“That he died right away. Dying is surely something.”

“Oh, come off, Sid. He’d had rheumatic fever. He died of heart failure.”

“Who was his doctor? Do you remember?”

“Yes, I do. Old Doctor Weinsap is who. He was the Pikes’ family doctor.”

“I don’t know any Doctor Weinsap.”

“No wonder. He’s dead.”

“That’s too bad, for I’d like to talk with him. Old family doctors are inclined to make mistakes, and sometimes they will even say deliberately, out of a feeling of affection, that dying was the result of one thing when it was actually the result of something else entirely.”

“There is no reason whatever to suspect that Sherman Pike died of anything but what Doctor Weinsap said he died of.”

“You’re far too credulous, sugar. You’ll believe anything fantastic, even when the truth is as clear as can be.”

“What, precisely, is the truth?”

“The truth is that Sherman Pike committed suicide. That’s now evident. It’s the only thing that explains why Sara Pike would do what she has done to Beth Thatcher and you.”

“I’m not sure, but something in your reasoning seems wrong. Maybe you’re starting with a basic assumption that isn’t proved.”

“You had better leave the reasoning to me, sugar. You’ll see. It will turn out that Sherman Pike committed suicide because Beth Thatcher threw him over for you, and all this time Sara has been brooding about it, knowing the truth, and when Beth came back to town, Sara met her and suddenly cracked up and killed her. Something like that is extremely hard on the mind. Everyone knows it.”

“Sara took Sherm’s death hard, all right, but that was natural. She was nuts about him. For a long time after he died, she was practically a recluse.”

“There you are again. You keep trying to argue one way, but everything you say goes the other. Sara did it, and it only remains to find out how.”

“It seems to me that it also remains to prove it.”

“You’re right for once. Idiots like Hec Caldwell and Cotton McBride must have everything done for them.”

I walked over to the window and looked out, and after a while I turned and walked back to where she was standing, she having slipped off the table while I was gone.

“Look,” I said, “will you do something for me? Will you please do it?”

“I may or may not. It depends.”

“Go home. Go home and say a prayer or curse or cry, but let me come out of this in my own way.”

“It’s plain that you have no faith in me.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt or into trouble.”

“I thought I was doing so well, too.”

“You’ve done fine. Now let someone else do the rest.”

“All right. I can see that it’s no use. I was foolish to try.”

It was time for her to go, and she went as far as the door, where she stopped. She looked very small and somehow beaten, looking back, and there was something shining in her eyes. Then she left, but she didn’t go home. She went, instead, to the office, where Millie Morgan was.

“Hello, Sid,” Millie said. “How’s the investigation going?”

“Very well, as a matter of fact. Are you still available?”

“I was about to ask if you couldn’t make use of me in some way. What do you want me to do?”

“First I had better brief you on developments. It has become apparent that whoever called Gid on the telephone and arranged to meet him in Dreamer’s Park was not Beth Thatcher. Beth was already dead at the time, and whoever called had killed her and wanted to incriminate Gid. The killing was probably done somewhere besides the park, and the body taken there afterward. From some other significant things, it was easy to decide who did the killing and the telephoning, but the trouble is that I can’t prove it.”

“Proof would be helpful. I can see that.”

“It will be absolutely essential, and the only way I can think of to prove it is to get a confession by some kind of deception.”

“I’m pretty good at deception, and I may be able to help you work something out. Incidentally, am I allowed to know who did the killing?”

“Didn’t I say? It was Sara Pike who did it.”

“The hell she did! It’s almost incredible. What makes you think so?”

“Well, I don’t want to take the time to go into it now. As I admitted, I can’t prove it yet, but it’s perfectly apparent, as you’ll understand later.”

“How do you propose to deceive Sara into confessing?”

“We must keep in mind, to begin with, that someone who has killed someone is bound to be uneasy and vulnerable. What I propose to do, if you agree, is to call Sara without identifying myself and claim to have seen her commit the murder. What I intend to do then is pretend to be a blackmailer who wants money to keep quiet about it. I’ll arrange to meet her alone someplace where you can be hiding as a witness, and it will be up to me to get her to convict herself by what she says.”

“Do you think I’ll be acceptable to Hec Caldwell as a witness? I doubt it.”

“He may be a little dubious, I admit, but once he and Cotton McBride are put onto her, even they should discover the truth.”

“Nevertheless, I think it might be a good idea to have one or both of them there to hear it with me.”

“I won’t risk it. They might reject the plan and not let us go through with it.”

“Another thing that bothers me a little is the feeling that it might be dangerous. Sara’s probably unstable, and in fact I consider it likely that she may be secretly as mad as the March Hare.”

“There’s some danger, all right, but I’m prepared to face it for Gid.”

“Well, I’m not quite so dedicated to Gid as you are, but I’ll face it with you. When do you intend to call Sara?”

“Now is as good a time as any. Please look up her number in the directory.”

Millie looked it up and told it to Sid, and Sid dialed. The phone at the other end of the line rang twice and was answered. It was answered by Sara, who lived alone.

“Is it Sara Pike speaking?” Sid said.

“Yes,” Sara said. “Who’s this?”

“You don’t know me, but I know you, and I know what you’ve done, because I saw you do it.”

“What’s that? What did you say?”

Sara’s voice, Sid said later, was suddenly shrill and almost frenzied, and it was obvious that she was, as Sid had predicted, extremely vulnerable.

“You heard what I said, and you know what I mean,” Sid said.

“Tell me who you are and what you want. Why have you called me?”

“I’ve called to tell you that I saw you kill Beth Thatcher. Don’t hang up, or I’ll go straight to the police.”

“What do you want?”

“We had better meet somewhere and talk about that.”

“I don’t even know who you are. Are you afraid to tell me your name?”

“Never mind that. Do you agree to meet me? If you don’t, I’ll hang up myself and you can take the consequences.”

There was a long silence on the line, and Sid had an uneasy feeling that there was a great deal of furious and crafty thinking going on at the other end, and this turned out to be true from what was next said.

“I’ll meet you in one place only,” Sara said. “It must be there or nowhere.”

“Where is that?” Sid said.

“At the place where you say you saw me kill Beth Thatcher, and you must tell me right now where that place is.”

It was a neat and treacherous little trap, clearly one that Sid should have anticipated, and she cursed herself because she hadn’t. She had surely been right in thinking that the murder had been done somewhere besides Dreamer’s Park, and if she now said Dreamer’s Park she would give herself away as a liar, but she didn’t, of course, know where else to say. But Sara knew where else. The little trap, however neat and deadly, was also a confession.

Now it was Sid who was doing the furious thinking, and she explained afterward that it was one of the odd experiences in which someone in a crisis is able to do something normally impossible. She was required to know in an instant where Sara had killed Beth, and it was actually a little longer before she knew. All of a sudden she was hearing Cotton McBride say again that the wound had really been a sort of puncture with dirt around the edge, and then she was in the cemetery, helping bury Beth again, and she was seeing now what she had seen then without really noticing, and what she saw was a metal vase for flowers with a spike on the bottom that you push into the ground to keep the vase from falling over. She had, she said later, an exhilarating feeling of assurance.

“Surely,” she said assuredly. “I’ll meet you beside your brother Sherman’s grave.”

Silence again. Then Sara’s voice, curiously flat and almost apathetic. “Shall we say at eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock will be fine,” Sid said.

She hung up with a feeling of having done quite well. In fact, she didn’t know how she could have done much better.

“Sara’s guilty, as I thought,” she said. “We’re going to meet at eight.”

“I could almost swear.” Millie said, “that you said beside her brother Sherman’s grave.”

“I had to name the murder scene to prove I was not lying, which I was.”

“How did you know?”

“It came to me suddenly when I remembered the little metal vases with spikes.”

“Oh. That explains everything. A cemetery seems an odd place for Beth to have gone with Sara, however. Why do you suppose she went?”

“Well. Gid said Beth was sentimental in her way, and she must have been. It’s not so odd, really, that she went with Sara to visit Sherman’s grave, especially if Sara suggested it.”

“As for me, I can think of many places I’d prefer to a cemetery as a place to meet someone who has killed once and might again. Especially at eight o’clock. Isn’t it beginning to get pretty dark right around then?”

“That’s only so much the better.”

“Where, may I ask, am I supposed to hide?”

“The Pike plot, as I recall, is right next to the Thatcher mausoleum, and the mausoleum’s just the place.”

“If you imagine that I’m going to hide in a mausoleum at eight o’clock, you’re simply mistaken. Or any other time, for that matter.”

“Not in it. Behind it. It’s kept locked.”

“Well, behind is bad enough, hut I agree. What time shall we meet and go?”

“We had better go separately, I think. I’ll go by the main entrance, but you had better slip in at the far side near the mausoleum. It will entail some walking through a field, for there is no road approaching on that side. You must give yourself time to be in position shortly before eight.”

“I’ll be there,” Millie said. “You can count on me.”

So there they were at eight o’clock, Sid beside Sherm’s grave and Millie behind the Thatcher mausoleum. And there at eight also, a thin and ghostly shape approaching slowly among the headstones, was Sara Pike.

She stopped when she was quite near and leaned forward to peer through the shadows. She was wearing a loose, light coat that hung freely from the shoulders, although it was a warm evening, and her hands were thrust deeply into the pockets of the coat.

“Who is it?” she said. “It’s Sydnie Jones, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why are you here? Was it you who called? It’s a trick, isn’t it?”

Her voice was thin and clear but somehow remote, as if it carried through the air from a great distance.

“It’s no trick,” Sid said. “I had to talk with you, and I knew you would refuse if I merely asked.”

“Have you come here alone? You haven’t, have you? Who is with you?”

“No one is with me, as you can see.”

“Are you sure? You could he lying. Someone is behind the mausoleum!”

“No one is there, but you can look if you like.”

“I shall. Please stand where you are while I do. I don’t want you to come near me.”

It was a precarious moment for the plan, and Sid was depending heavily upon the sharp ears and physical agility of Millie, who did not disappoint her. When Sara was at the front of the mausoleum, about to turn the corner to the adjacent side, Millie popped into view at the rear, and she kept popping around corners out of sight just ahead of Sara until the mausoleum had been circled entirely and she was back where she had started. The suspense to Sid was severe, but the sudden shock of seeing that Millie was not alone was even worse, and the person with her, popping around corners with equal agility, was no one but Cotton McBride.

Sara, having circled the mausoleum, turned and came back toward Sid, stopping about six feet away, her hands still thrust deeply into the pockets of her light coat.

“You see?” Sid said. “There is no one here but you and me.”

“Why do you want to talk with me? What do you want?”

“I want to talk with you because Gid, as you know, is in jail on suspicion of having killed Beth Thatcher, but he didn’t do it, as you also know, because you did it yourself right here where we are.”

“Who says I did?”

“I say it.”

“You say it, but you can’t prove it. You told me on the phone that you saw me, but you didn’t. You’ve only made some guesses.”

“Deductions are what I’ve made, and they’re true ones.”

“That doesn’t matter. Even the truth must be proved. Who will believe that I did it? What reason did I have?”

“The reason is lying here between us.”

“Sherm? Do you mean Sherm? How do you know? More guesses?”

“More deductions. He killed himself, and it was covered up as heart failure because he had had rheumatic fever as a boy.”

“You’re very clever. You must be very clever indeed. But no matter. It’s all true.” Sara’s voice took on a kind of singsong, crooning tone and tempo. “He was tender and brilliant and very good, and I loved him more than anyone else in the world, more by far than everyone else put together, and then he deliberately killed himself with the sleeping medicine he sometimes used to lake at nights. He went to sleep and never woke up, and the empty bottle was there beside him when I found him, and I hid the bottle and told the doctor he simply died in his sleep. He was a friend of the family’s and pretended to believe it for our sake, and now he’s dead, too, and can never say differently. So far as anyone will ever know, Sherm died in his sleep of a bad heart, but he really died of a bad woman, a pretty little tramp. I loved him and would have taken care of him always, but he didn’t want me, he wanted the tramp instead and didn’t want to live without her, and so he killed himself, killed himself over that tramp, and left me all alone for all these years.”

“I’m sorry. Truly I am.”

“Don’t dare to be sorry. I won’t have you being sorry, for you are married to the man who was partly to blame, but now he is going to pay me back for it, and then I will be sorry for you.”

“Why should you hate Gid? He never deliberately hurt your brother or you or anyone else.”

“He took that little blonde tramp and made my brother die. Now I have killed the tramp and destroyed her consort. The waiting was long, very long, but in the end it was so easy. She came here willingly with me, to visit the grave out of shallow sentiment, and I’m not really sure that I intended to kill her in the beginning. I only intended. I think, to tell her the truth. How Sherm died, and why, so that it would be on her conscience the rest of her life. That was foolish of me, wasn’t it? To imagine that she would have a conscience? Do you know what she said when I told her? We were standing right here beside the grave, and I told her, and she said, Well, what a perfectly ridiculous thing to do! That was when I picked up the vase and stabbed her in the back. The Voice told me suddenly to do it. It was getting late, and I had to do something with her, of course, and the Voice kept telling me what to do. First I hid her body over there in the tall grass of that field, but then I was told to take her to Dreamer’s Park and incriminate her consort, who helped her kill my brother. I drove around as close as I could to where she was in the grass, and then I carried her to the car and took her to the park and put her in the bandstand under the seat. It was quite a dangerous thing to do, I suppose, but ever so exciting and satisfying. She was quite easy to carry, for I am much stronger than I look, and it was even easier to deceive her consort later and persuade him to meet her there. He must be a very credulous person. A fool.”

“He had been drinking Gimlets.”

“It looked for a while, however, as if the consort might escape suspicion, and so I wrote the note to the police, and now everything is working out as beautifully as I wanted it to and as the Voice said it would.”

“Is it? Perhaps you are being a bit too optimistic.”

“Because of you? Oh, no. It was a mistake for you to come here, or to meddle at all, for now I must kill you, as you must surely see.”

“How? Is there a gun in one of your pockets? Is that why you keep your hands there?”

“Not a gun. I know nothing about guns. A knife. I can use a knife quite well. There is no use for you to scream, because there is no one to hear you, nor to run, because I can run faster, nor to struggle, because I am far stronger.”

“If you kill me, you will surely be caught.”

“No, no. Never. The Voice has assured me that I will not. The Voice comes to me and tells me what to do. Maybe it is the Voice of God. Someday, it will tell me if it is or not, and in the meanwhile it has told me that you must be killed, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it, nothing at all.”

“As to that,” Sid said, “it seems to me that I have already done much more than my share in this investigation, and in my opinion it is high time that Cotton McBride begins doing his.”

Cotton came out from behind the mausoleum then, on the run, and began doing his share to the best of his ability. Sara shrieked and clawed and fiercely struggled, but then, all at once, she became perfectly quiet and stood looking with an air of abstraction across the clustered headstones as if she were listening again to the Voice, which may have been telling her to give up.

“Damn it, Millie,” Sid said, “I told you that Cotton was not to be in on it, but you brought him in anyhow, in spite of all my instructions.”

“Fortunately for both of us, I did,” Millie said. “The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that it would be helpful to have some muscles present, even of an idiot.”

“I admit that you were right,” Sid said, “and I, for a change, was wrong.”

A few evenings later, we had a little party on the back terrace to celebrate my getting out of jail.

We had Gimlets to drink because Sid said it was important that I not develop a thing about them.

In addition to Sid and me, Millie was there with her engineer, who was still trying desperately with a kind of restrained frenzy.

Hec Caldwell was there with his wife, just to show that there were no hard feelings, much.

Even Cotton McBride was there, a limp and lonely stag because he had never had any luck with the girls and still wasn’t having any.

The Jack Handys were not invited, but they drifted around the hedge and got into it.

Everything is clear up to a point, and then nothing is, and what I remember most clearly is Sid saying that I had become much more interesting to her since she had discovered that I was once a blonde tramp’s consort.

Another thing I remember pretty clearly is someone saying that he or she wondered what would become of Sara Pike, and Sid saying in response that she would probably plead crazy and be sent for a while to an institution and then be released in due time as all right again.

Which she did and was and probably will be.

Content

Fletcher Flora
The Gimlet Affair