Chapter VIII

Two days crawled by, and they were bad days for me.

I kept thinking of Gilda, seeing again the wooden stunned expression on her face as she had driven away and wondering why she hadn’t wanted me with her.

I tried to assure myself it was a natural reaction. I had confessed that I had murdered her husband. The shock must have been a horrible one. What really bothered me now was that this stupid confession might have killed her love for me. That was something I couldn’t bear to think of, for her love was more precious to me than my own life.

On the second night I could stand my thoughts no longer. I got into the truck and drove down to Los Angeles. I called her number from a pay booth.

I was startled when a man answered.

“Is Mrs Delaney there? ” I asked, wondering, with a feeling of dread, if this man was a police officer.

“Mrs Delaney left a couple of days ago, ” the man said. “I’m sorry but she didn’t give us a forwarding address. ”

I thanked him and hung up.

I didn’t need a blueprint to tell me what had happened. My stupid confession had killed her love for me as I had feared it might. She had gone away because she didn’t want to see me again — ever.

I scarcely slept that night, and for the first time, I regretted killing Delaney. I was paying for what I had done, and from the look of my future, I would go on paying for it.

The following morning, as I was shaving, the telephone bell rang.

It was Harmas calling.

“Can you meet me at Blue Jay cabin at eleven? ” he asked. “We’re having a meeting, and I want you in on the technical end. ”

I said I would be there.

“Swell, and thanks, ” and he hung up.

The next three hours were bad ones. My nerves got so shaky I had a drink around half-past nine, and that led to three more drinks before I drove over to Blue Jay cabin.

Harmas’s Packard was parked near the verandah steps, and as I walked up them, I could hear him whistling in the lounge.

He looked around as I paused in the doorway.

“Come on in. The others will be along any time now. ”

I walked stiff-legged into the lounge.

“What’s it all about? ” I asked.

“You’re going to see how we insurance dicks earn our money, ” Harmas said. He had dropped his indolent pose. He looked alert, and his wide, satisfied smile scared me. “I want you to give me a hand. ” He took two ten-dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to me. “You’d better freeze onto these in advance in case I forget. My boss — this guy Maddox I was telling you about — is coming, and when he’s around I’m likely to forget my own name. ”

“Maddox? ” That really jolted me. “What’s he coming for? ”

“Here he is now, ” Harmas said.

I heard a car coming and I stepped to the french doors and looked out.

The sight of the police car with its siren and red light on the roof gave me a shock.

From the car came Lieutenant John Boos of the LA Homicide Squad: a big, powerfully-built man, around forty-two or three, with a red, fleshy face and small steel-grey eyes.

He was followed by a short, thickset man who I guessed was Maddox. He wasn’t more than five-foot six. He had the shoulders and chest of a prize fighter and the legs of a midget. His face was rubbery and red. His eyes were restless and as bleak as a Russian winter. He wore his well-cut clothes carelessly, and he had a habit of running thick, stubby fingers through his thinning grey hair to add to his untidy appearance.

He came up the verandah steps, frowning, his small restless eyes missed nothing.

Harmas introduced me.

Maddox shook my hand. His grip was hard and warm, and he nodded to me.

“Glad to have your help, Mr Regan, ” he said. “I understand you’re working for the company now. ”

I muttered something as Boos loomed up.

“Hello, Regan, ” he said. “So you’ve got tangled up in this thing too, huh? ”

“That’s right, ” I said, and my voice sounded small and husky.

“Let’s get at it, ” Maddox said and walked into the lounge. He stood in front of the TV set. “This it? ”

“That’s the baby, ” Harmas said cheerfully. He turned the set around. “Those four screws held the back in place. ”

Maddox stared for a long moment, then walked over to the empty fireplace.

“Sit down, Lieutenant. You, Mr Regan, sit over there. We won’t need you for a while so just take it easy. ”

I sat away from the other three and I lit a cigarette. My heart was thumping and my hands were unsteady and I was pretty badly scared.

Boos picked the most comfortable chair and lowered his bulk into it. He took out a pipe and began to fill it.

Harmas sank into another lounging chair and stretched out his long legs.

“Well now, Lieutenant, ” Maddox said, “I’ve asked you up here because I’m not satisfied with this claim. Briefly, one of our salesmen called on Delaney and sold him insurance coverage for this TV set. There’s a clause in the policy that gives coverage of five thousand dollars in the event of death through a fault in the set. It’s one of those dumb clauses our sales people put in to catch a sale. We have sold twenty-three thousand, four hundred and ten of these policies, and this is the first claim covering death by a fault we have had. That is: it is a twenty-three thousand to one chance, and when that happens I get suspicious. The claim arrived five days after the policy was signed. Delaney was buried before the policy was even delivered. ”

Boos lit his pipe and frowned at Maddox.

“It could be one of those things, M: Maddox. I’ve read the coroner’s report. I’ve talked to Sheriff Jefferson. Nothing I’ve seen in the report and nothing Jefferson has said has convinced me there’s anything wrong with the setup. It looks straightforward enough to me. ”

“It looks straightforward to you, Lieutenant, because you don’t handle fifteen hundred claims a week as I do, ” Maddox said. “If you had sat at my desk for the number of years that I have, you would get to know a bad claim by instinct. I know this claim is a bad one. I feel it here! ” And he paused to thump his chest. “But I don’t expect you to act on my hunches. Let’s take a look at the setup. Delaney was paralysed from the waist down. I’ve got a report from the doctor who attended him when the accident happened. The doctor says he was not able to bend at the waist. That means he was sitting upright all the time in his chair, and he could not bend forward. Now I’ll give you a little demonstration that’ll interest you. ”

He turned to me.

“Mr Regan, I want your help. Will you sit in Delaney’s chair? ”

I knew what was coming. Keeping my face expressionless, I walked over to the chair and sat in it.

Harmas picked up a length of cord that was lying on the table. He went around behind me and looped the cord around my chest and behind the chair and tied it tightly, preventing me from moving forward.

“That was the way Delaney was fixed: bolt upright and unable to bend forward, ” Maddox said.

“Okay, okay, ” Boos said, frowning. “So what? ”

“Go ahead, Regan, ” Maddox said, “and take the back off the set. ”

“It can’t be done, ” I said.

“Well, try anyway, and try hard. ”

I wheeled the chair up to the set and took out the two top fixing screws: that was easy, but I couldn’t get within two feet of the bottom screws, fixed as I was in the chair.

“You’ve read the coroner’s report, ” Maddox said to Boos. “When Regan found Delaney’s body, the back of the set was off. And another thing there was a screwdriver by Delaney’s side. He apparently got it from the storeroom. He hooked the toolbox down from the shelf with a walking stick. The tools fell on the floor. Ask yourself: how did he manage to pick the screwdriver up? ”

Harmas put the screwdriver on the floor beside me.

“Can you reach it? ”

My fingers were a good twelve inches from the tool.

Maddox said to Harmas, “Take the back off the set. ”

When Harmas had removed the back, Maddox said to Boos, “See those two terminals in the set? Delaney was supposed to have touched them with the screwdriver: that’s how he was supposed to have been killed. You can see Regan can’t get near them from where he is sitting. ”

Boos got abruptly to his feet. He came to stare at the inside of the set.

“Do you see what I’m driving at? ” Maddox went on. “Delaney is supposed to have taken the back off the set. He couldn’t have done it. He is supposed to have got the screwdriver from the storeroom. He couldn’t have done it. He is supposed to have touched those two terminals. He couldn’t have done it. ”

Boos stared at him.

“Well, I’ll be damned! ”

Harmas undid the cord that bound me to the chair and I got out of the chair.

Then Boos turned to me.

“Let’s have your story again, Regan, ” he said. “Let’s go over the whole thing. You called on Delaney to see how the set was working. Right? ”

“Yes. I found Delaney lying in front of the TV set. There was a steel screwdriver by his hand and the back of the set was off. I thought he had electrocuted himself. I pulled the plug out of the mains and then I touched him. ”

“He was dead? ” Boos asked.

“Yes. ”

“How did you know he was dead? ”

“He was cold and he was stiff. ”

“When a man is killed by a big dose of electricity, ” Maddox said, “he burns. He’s not going to cool the way a body would cool, dying from gun-shot wounds or a stab in the back. The jolt he gets from an electric shock would increase the temperature of his blood. If Delaney had died of an electric shock, his body wouldn’t have been noticeably cold in three hours. ”

Boos began to look bewildered.

“Are you trying to tell me he didn’t die of an electric shock? ” he demanded, staring at Maddox.

“I’m not trying to tell you anything, ” Maddox said curtly. “I want his body exhumed. ”

Boos scratched the side of his neck, frowning at Maddox.

“You’ll have to talk to Jefferson first, ” he said. “Maybe there is something wrong, but I’m Homicide. You’re not suggesting Delaney was murdered, are you? ”

There was a constriction in my chest now that made breathing difficult. I leaned forward in my chair, staring at Maddox, my hands squeezed between my knees, waiting to hear what he would say.

“Am I suggesting Delaney was murdered? ” Maddox asked. “No, I’m not suggesting it: I’m telling you he was murdered! He was murdered because he took out an insurance policy that covered his crippled life for five thousand dollars. He was murdered because his killer took into account that the inquiry would be handled by two old dead-beats who would accept what they saw and wouldn’t dig deeper. ” A hard, grim smile lit up his face. “Murder? Of course it’s murder! Why do you think I brought you out here? This is the plainest case of murder I’ve ever had to deal with! ”

Boos scratched a match alight. The sound of the red head against the sanded side of the box made a sharp explosion in the silence of the room.

No one was looking at me. That was my good luck.

“Now look, Mr Maddox, ” Boos said after he had lit his pipe and had got it to draw to his satisfaction, “I know your hunches. I know you have yet to be proved wrong. Okay, if you say this is murder, I’ll listen, but before I start something I can’t finish, I want to be convinced. ”

Maddox went back to the fireplace and stood before it. “This is a murder case. When I smell murder, I know it’s murder. I’ve never been wrong, and what’s more, I’ll stake my life I’m not wrong this time. Anyway, I can give you enough ammunition to blast this old has-been right out of office. ”

Boos had let his pipe go out. As he groped for his matches, he said sharply, “What ammunition? ”

“I’ve given you enough to get an order to exhume the body, but I can give you more. I can even give you a guess who killed him. ”

My heart missed a beat, then began to race so violently I could scarcely breathe.

“You can? ” Boos was sitting forward, the match burning between his fingers, forgotten. “Who killed him then? ”

“His wife, ” Maddox said. “She’s tried to kill him once before but only succeeded in crippling him. ”

I started to protest but checked myself in time. I wanted to tell him he was crazy, but I hadn’t the nerve. I knew if I spoke and they looked at me, they would know who had killed him all right. At that moment my guilt was written across my face.

“I don’t get it, ” Boos said.

“Delaney married this woman four years ago, ” Maddox said. “They hadn’t been married three months before she got into touch with one of my agents. She suggested he should talk to Delaney about an accident insurance policy. She said her husband was interested in a hundred thousand coverage. ” Maddox pointed a stubby finger at Boos. “I don’t have to tell you when a wife tries to arrange an accident policy for her husband the red light goes up. My agent told me. I told him to go ahead, but I opened a file on Mrs Delaney. The agent talked Delaney into signing a policy, but a day later, Delaney wrote in and cancelled it. We didn’t press him because I smelt trouble. It was a hunch that paid off. Three days after he had cancelled the policy, my agent reported to me that Delaney had met with an accident. If he had been insured, I would have con-tested the claim and started an investigation, but as he wasn’t insured I let Jarrett, who you took over from, handle it. It was cleverly done, and he didn’t get anywhere. You’ll find it on file though. Delaney was drunk and asleep and she was driving. She stopped the car on the mountain road. A friend of hers had had a breakdown and was blocking the road. Delaney was asleep. She got out of the car and her story was she hadn’t set the parking brake properly. It’s a wonder Delaney survived. ”

Boos said, Well, I’ll be damned! ”

“The woman must be cock-eyed, ” Maddox went on. “The moment Delaney takes out this TV policy and she discovers he is covered for five thousand bucks, she moves in again: only this time she kills him, and this time I’m right here to fix her! ”

This was the moment when I should have got to my feet and told him he was wrong. This was the moment when I should have told him I had killed Delaney. But I didn’t. I just sat there, my heart pounding, too frightened for my rotten skin to tell them the truth.

Boos tapped out his pipe.

“You can’t prove she killed him, Mr Maddox. ”

Maddox made an impatient gesture with his hands.

“That’s your job. I’m telling you this is murder, and I’m willing to bet my last buck, she did it. It’s your job to pin it on her. Find out where she was when Delaney died. I’ll bet you she’ll have an alibi. When you know what it is, take a good look at it before you accept it. Get Delaney’s body exhumed. I’m willing to bet she staged the scene by taking off the back of the TV set and she also planted the screwdriver by Delaney, and she did it to collect the five thousand coverage. ”

Boos stroked his fleshy nose.

“Well, okay, I’ll talk to Jefferson. We’ll have the body exhumed right away. ” He got to his feet. “Do you happen to know where Mrs Delaney is? ”

Harmas said, “She’s in Los Angeles looking for work. Her attorney, Macklin, will know where you can contact her. ”

“Okay, Mr Maddox, ” Boos said. “I’ll take it from here. I’ll let you know how it develops. ” He turned to me. “I’m going to lock up this place and seal it. I want the set left just where it is. Did she ask you to sell the set? ”

“Yes. ”

“Well, I’ll talk to her. ”

“Let me have a copy of the p. m. report, ” Maddox said as he started for the door. He paused abruptly to look at me. “You’ll be needed as a witness for us, Mr Regan. Thanks for what you’ve done so far. ”

He and Harmas went down to the Packard and drove away.

That left Boos and myself alone.

Boos stared after the departing Packard.

“That guy! ” There was a note of admiration in his voice. “What a police officer he would have made! He can smell murder a hundred miles away, and I’ve never known him to be wrong. Well, I’d better seal this joint up. You got the key? ”

I handed him the key.

“Okay, Regan, be seeing you at the trial, ” and he started down the passage to the back door, humming under his breath.

I left the cabin and got into my truck.

It wasn’t until I was back in my cabin and had drunk two fingers of straight Scotch that I began to recover my nerve.

Could they prove a case against Gilda?

I knew Delaney had died by an electric shock. How could they hope to prove that Gilda had been responsible?

I would be crazy to give myself up until I knew for certain that she was in danger. I must wait and see what happened. Then, if it looked bad for her, I would tell Boos the truth.

The following afternoon I drove down to Glyn Camp. I left the truck in the parking lot and walked over to Jefferson’s office.

I found him sitting at his desk, a bewildered, brooding expression in his eyes.

“Hello, son, ” he said. “Come on in and sit down. ”

I sat down and watched him lift the jar of apple jack into sight from behind his desk. He poured two shots into glasses and pushed one of the glasses over to me.

“Well, the thing’s happened I didn’t want to happen, ” he said. “I had at the back of my mind that Delaney’s death wasn’t all that straightforward. If I had known he had signed that insurance policy, I would have made a much closer investigation. ”

“What’s going on? ” I asked.

“They’re holding the p. m. now. They’ve got Allison, the Medical Officer from LA, to handle it. They exhumed the poor fella last night. ”

“You know Maddox thinks Mrs Delaney did it? ” I said.

Jefferson nodded.

“There’s a man I could never get along with. That girl wouldn’t hurt a fly. I haven’t been dealing with people for sixty years without learning who is a bad “un and who isn’t. I’m willing to bet she didn’t do it. ”

“Me too. ”

“I don’t think it’s murder, ” Jefferson went on. “I think it was suicide. She got tired of living with him and she left him. He was down to his last buck, and with her leaving him, it was too much for him. Somehow he managed to get the back off the TV set. Don’t ask me how, but a desperate man can do things that most people think impossible. ”

“Have they talked to her yet? ” I asked.

“They can’t find her. She’s vanished. ”

I stiffened, slopping my drink.

“Vanished? Doesn’t Macklin know where she is? ”

“No. He had a letter from her saying she was moving from the room she rented and was looking for somewhere else to stay. When she found something, she would let him know. That was three days ago. He hasn’t heard from her, and Boos is hinting she’s got in a panic and bolted. ”

“Can’t they trace her by her car? ”

“She’s sold it. ”

The sound of heavy steps coming along the passage made both of us look sharply towards the door which jerked open.

Lieutenant Boos stood in the doorway. There was a smirking look of truimph in his close-set eyes. He came in, kicking the door shut.

“How do you like it? ” he said, addressing Jefferson. “The guy wasn’t electrocuted at all! ”

I sat forward, staring at him, scarcely believing I had heard aright.

Jefferson too was staring.

“If he wasn’t electrocuted, then how did he die? ” he asked, a croak in his voice.

“He was poisoned, ” Boos said. He put two big, red hairy hands on Jefferson’s desk, and leaning forward, went on, “He was murdered! Someone fed him enough cyanide to wipe out half this goddam town! ”

III

The big moon floated serenely in the night sky, casting a brilliant white light over my cabin and garden.

I sat on the verandah, smoking. The time was a little after ten o’clock.

I was still stunned by the news Boos had shot into our laps. I could scarcely believe that Delaney had died of poisoning and that I hadn’t after all killed him. I was beginning now to savour the realization with an overwhelming feeling of relief that by a trick of fate I was not after all a murderer. The knowledge that I could now no longer be arrested, tried, found guilty and put in the gas chamber gave me a buoyant feeling of freedom.

But if it was good news for me, it was serious news for Gilda.

Not for one moment did I believe she had poisoned Delaney. I was sure Jefferson was right when he had said the thought of losing her and knowing he had no money left had been too much for Delaney. He had taken the easy way out — he had killed himself.

If I hadn’t planned to kill him, if I hadn’t gone to the cabin and set the stage so that it would look as if he had been electrocuted, Gilda would not be in the perilous position she was in now.

To save her, I might still have to tell the police what I had done. Attempted murder was a serious charge. I could get a twenty-year sentence. The thought turned me cold.

The sound of a car coming up the road brought me to my feet. I went to the verandah rail and watched Jefferson’s old Ford bump up my drive-in.

He came slowly up the verandah steps.

“Come in and have a drink, ” I said, wondering what he was doing up here.

He sat down while I made a couple of highballs. I looked at him. He was pulling, at his moustache, a brooding expression in his eyes. I saw, with surprise, he wasn’t wearing his sheriff’s star. This was the first time since I had known him that he hadn’t worn it.

He saw me staring and he smiled ruefully.

“I turned it in this afternoon. It’s always better to walk out than to be kicked out. ”

“You mean you have resigned office? ”

“That’s it. It’s time I did. I’ve got beyond the job. ” He took the highball. -*Truth to tell, now I’ve taken the plunge, it’s a relief. I can sit on the fence and watch the other fella do the work. I’m sorry it finished this way. It’s my own fault. I should have resigned years ago. ”

“I’m sorry, ” I said and I meant it.

“I didn’t come up here to talk about myself. Have you heard about Mrs Delaney? ”

A cold creepy sensation crawled over me.

“No, I haven’t heard a thing. ”

“They arrested her this afternoon in Los Angeles. ”

I sat down abruptly.

“For God’s sake! ”

“She’s being charged with the murder of her husband and attempted fraud. Maddox is pressing the charge: she’s in a bad jam, Regan. ”

I scarcely noticed that he called me by my surname and not my Christian name as he usually did.

“But she didn’t kill him! ”

“I don’t think she did, but Boos has got quite a case against her. She admits buying the cyanide. ”

That gave me a hell of a shock.

“She bought it? ”

“Yes. She says she went to the pharmacist in Glyn Camp. There was a wasps’ nest in the roof of the cabin, and she asked the pharmacist if he could give her something to kill the wasps. He gave her the cyanide. She signed the poison book. When she got home, she told Delaney she had bought the stuff. She put the poison in the desk drawer, meaning to fix the nest the next day, but she was busy and forgot about it. Boos has checked. The wasps’ nest is there all right, but that doesn’t alter the fact that she bought the poison. She’s admitted quarrelling with Delaney the night before his death, and that he hit her. She admits making up her mind to leave him. She told Boos she had told Delaney that she intended to leave him. When she did leave him, he was very disturbed. On her way down to Glyn Camp, she had a flat. She took some time to fix it, then she went on to Glyn Camp. While she was fixing the flat, she had a change of mind about leaving her husband. By the time she got down to Glyn Camp, she had decided she couldn’t leave a cripple to fend for himself, so she came back. On the way back, she met you with the news he was dead. That’s her story. I was there when she told it, and I believe it, but Boos doesn’t. ”

I drew in a long slow breath.

“Why doesn’t he? ”

“His theory is that when she found out Delaney hadn’t any money left, she decided to kill him and grab the five thousand from the insurance. Maddox thinks so too. She denies knowing that Delaney was insured until after the funeral, when you gave her the letters you had been carrying around with you. Maddox says she is lying. He claims soon after her marriage with Delaney, she tried to persuade him to insure his life... ”

“I know. I’ve heard that one, ” I broke in. “No jury would believe that once they looked at her. ”

“Maybe you’re right, but there’s this TV setup. Both Maddox and Boos swear Delaney couldn’t have taken the back off the set. I think he might have if he had been desperate enough, but that will be for the jury to decide. But the one damning thing even I can’t explain away is if Delaney took poison, how did he get rid of the glass containing the poison? ”

I stiffened to attention, staring at him.

“What do you mean? ”

“The pharmacist sold the cyanide to Mrs Delaney in block form. To have used it as a poison it would have had to have been dissolved in water or whisky. Cyanide kills instantly. As soon as it got into his mouth, he’d die. There was no glass found beside him where you’d expect to find one. That must rule out suicide. It makes things pretty difficult for Mrs Delaney. Boos thinks she doped his whisky with the poison, then not thinking she removed the glass when he was dead. Boos says that is the kind of slip most killers could make. ”

It was then, and only then, that I remembered the glass lying by Delaney’s side when I had found him.

I had been afraid that the Coroner might have become suspicious if he had thought Delaney had been drinking and I had washed out the glass and put it away.

“There was a glass, ” I said. “I found it by his side. I washed it out and put it in the kitchen cupboard. ”

Jefferson sat upright, staring at me.

“Is this true? ”

“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. I can’t think why I did it. Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want it to come out at the inquest for Mrs Delaney’s sake that her husband was a drunk. Anyway, that’s what I did. ”

Jefferson relaxed back in his chair. He began to pull at his moustache.

“I’m not a law officer any longer, ” he said, “so what I say doesn’t matter, but I don’t think Boos will accept that story. I don’t think a jury would either. ”

“But I tell you — it’s true! ” I said, my voice shooting up. “I’m willing to go into court and swear to it! ”

He stared up at the moon for some moments, frowning, then he said, “As I said just now, Regan, I’m no longer a law officer. So what I say doesn’t matter. But if I was still Sheriff I’d begin to wonder about you. I’d begin to wonder about you and Mrs Delaney. ”

“What the hell do you mean? ” I said, turning hot and then cold.

“Never mind. This is what you do: go down to Los Angeles first thing in the morning and talk to her attorney, Macklin. He’s a smart fellow. He’ll know how to handle it. Will you do that? ”

“Yes. But, look, I don’t understand... ”

“Better not say anything to Boos about finding the glass, ” Jefferson went on, not looking at me. “If he asks you, you’ll have to tell him, but don’t volunteer any information. You talk to Macklin first. ” He suddenly stared hard at me. “Whatever you say to him will be treated in confidence. ”

I couldn’t meet his searching, steady stare.

“I’ll see him tomorrow. ”

He got to his feet.

“I don’t think she killed him, ” he said. “She’s a nice girl. She wouldn’t have poisoned him. All the same there’s something badly wrong with the setup. If Delaney didn’t take the back off the set, someone did, and that someone would be a man. No woman would think up a stunt like that. I’m glad I’m sitting on the fence, Regan. I’m glad I don’t have to handle this investigation. ”

He nodded, then walked down the steps and got into his Ford.

It wasn’t until he had driven away that I realized he hadn’t shaken hands with me.

This was the first time since I had known him that he had failed to do that.

Chapter VIII

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