Detective-Sergeant Franks wouldn’t know an explanation if it bit him in the leg and called him brother.
His Chief was another story. He had set up a temporary office in the kitchen and was questioning the witnesses one by one, while a uniformed policeman took notes in shorthand. When the sergeant took me in to him, Knudson was talking to Francis Marvell. The authority I had noticed in his bearing had flared up in the emergency, like a slow fire doused with gasoline. The opaque eyes and the thick face were full of life and power. Homicide was his dish.
“Archer?” The heavy voice was crisp.
“This is him, Chief.” Sergeant Franks was staying close to me, still with his hand on his gun.
“I’d like to congratulate the sergeant,” I said. “He only one shot to bring me in. And I’m a witness in a murder, and you know how serious that is.”
“Murder?” Marvell spread his hands on the red plastic-topped table and pushed himself to his feet. His jaw moved down and up silently before more words came out. “I understood it was an accident.”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Knudson snapped. “Sit down.” He used the same tone on Franks: “What’s this about shooting?”
“He tried to escape, so I fired a warning shot.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I made a wild break for freedom.”
He whirled on me: “If you didn’t try to escape, why did you go for the door?”
“I needed a breath of fresh air, Sergeant. Now I need another one.”
“Break it up,” Knudson cut in. “Franks, you go out and help Winowsky with his photographic equipment. You, Archer, sit down and I’ll be with you shortly.”
I sat down in a straightbacked kitchen chair on the other side of the room and lit a cigarette. It tasted bitter. A large wooden tray of what had been hors d’oeuvres stood on the tiled sink beside me: the remains of anchovies, a little earthenware crock half full of caviar. I helped myself to some caviar on a cracker. Mrs. Slocum had lived well.
Marvell said: “You didn’t tell me she was murdered. You permitted me to think it was an accident.” He sounded badly shaken. His yellow hair was wet, but the water that glistened on his forehead came from his own pores.
“They’re no deader when they’re murdered. In any case, we don’t know if she was.”
“Murder is such a perfectly dreadful thought.” His blurred gaze wandered around the room and skipped past me. “It was bad enough when I found the poor woman’s body. Now I simply know I shan’t sleep a wink tonight.”
“Take it easy, Mr. Marvell. You did exactly the right thing and you should be feeling more than satisfied with yourself.” Knudson’s rippling bass was gentle and bland. “One thing I don’t quite understand, though, and that is why you decided to take a swim all by yourself after dark.”
“I don’t entirely understand it myself,” Marvell answered slowly. “It was one of those half-conscious motivations, I believe. I’d just stepped outside for a bit to smell the jasmine, and I was strolling in the loggia, when I thought I heard a splash from the swimming-pool. It had no sinister connotations, you know, nothing like that; I must have thought that someone else was taking a dip, and I decided to join them. I’m always one for fun and games, you see—”
“I see.”
“Well, first I went down to the pool to see who it was—”
“Right after you heard the splash?”
“No, not immediately. It took a little while for the idea to grow on me—”
“And meanwhile the splashing continued?”
“I believe it did. Yes, I think it must have. By the time I got down there, however—it’s quite a piece from the house—”
“Nearly a hundred yards. By the time you got down there?”
“It was perfectly silent again, and perfectly dark. Naturally I was a little surprised to find that the lights weren’t on. I stood by the pool for a moment, wondering what had happened, and then I made out this round dark object. It was a large straw hat floating upside down in the water, and when I realized that I became alarmed. I switched on the underwater lights, and saw her. She was lying face down at the bottom of the pool, her hair swirling round her head, her skirt billowing, her arms spread out. It was ghastly.” The water from his pores had made bright marks along his cheeks and formed a single clear droplet at the point of his chin. He brushed it away with the back of a nervous hand.
“Then you went in after her,” Knudson stated.
“Yes. I took off my clothes, all but my underthings, and brought her to the surface. I found I couldn’t raise her onto the side, so I pulled her to the shallow end and got her out there. She was terribly hard to handle. I’d thought that dead people were stiff, but she seemed loose all over. Like soft rubber.” A second droplet formed.
“It was then that you raised the alarm?”
“Yes. I should have done before, but all I could think of was to get that poor dear woman out of the cold water.”
“You did just fine, Mr. Marvell. A minute or two didn’t make any difference, anyway. Now I want you to think carefully before you answer this: how much time elapsed between the initial splash and the alarm? It was twenty to nine when you called for help. You see, I’m trying to fix the time of death.”
“I understand that. It’s very hard to say how long it was, impossible in fact. I was lost in the beauty of the night, you know, and I wasn’t consciously taking note of time, or of what I heard. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been twenty, I really couldn’t say.”
“Well, think about it some more, and let me know if you can set it more definitely. You’re perfectly certain, by the way, that you didn’t see anybody else at all at the pool, or while you were back of the house?”
“As certain as I can be, yes. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“Of course. And thank you.”
Marvell left the room in a nervous sidewise movement, stroking his hair with his hand.
“Jesus,” Knudson said as he stood up. “He never saw a stiff before, let alone touched one, and it hit him in the middle. It takes guts to dive for a cadaver at night, though. You get all of that, Eddie?”
“All but the gestures.” The man in uniform stroked himself elaborately from hairline to nape.
“Okay, take a little walk while I talk to Archer here.” He crossed the room and stood above me with fists on hips until the door had closed. I put some caviar on a cracker and ate it daintily, in two bites.
“Have some?”
He didn’t answer that. “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”
I took out my wallet and showed him the photostat of my license. “Now ask me what the hell I’m doing here. Unfortunately my chronic aphasia has taken a bad turn for the worse. It always goes like that when a dumb cop takes a shot at me.”
He wagged his studded head good-humoredly. “Forget Franks, eh? I can’t help it if he’s a ward-heeler in the Mayor’s party, and the Mayor is
“You could put him on a desk, or issue him blanks.”
“Yeah. You’re a fast talker, Archer, but you needn’t get your back up. Maude Slocum told me about you.”
“How much?”
“Enough. The less said about that the better. Right?” His mind was quick and cold, out of place in his big, full-blooded body. I could almost see it turning a leaf and writing a new heading at the top of a clean page. “So far as she knew, you were the last one to talk to the old lady before she died. Exactly when did you see her?”
“Just before sunset. That would be a few minutes after seven.”
“A couple of minutes before. It’s earlier here on account of the mountains. You talked to her in the garden, I believe? If you’ll tell me now exactly what was said—” He went to the door and called his shorthand writer, who took his position at the kitchen table. I told him what was said.
“Nothing much there, eh?” He sounded disappointed. “No sign of suicidal impulse? Or illness? She had a pretty bad heart, the doctor says.”
“Nothing that I could put my finger on. She seemed a little screwy to me, but nearly everyone does. What’s the physical evidence?”
