newspaper package was in his hands. I thanked him. He said I was welcome. I asked for a double bourbon, which he brought. I paid him for it. He lit my cigarette. I drank the bourbon straight and walked out with the money in my pocket.
Gretchen Keck was standing in front of the butane stove just inside the door of her trailer. She was wearing a halter and slacks. Her yellow hair was pulled up into a top-knot, held in place by an elastic band. The egg that she was frying spluttered and popped like a tiny machine gun riddling my guts with hunger.
She didn’t notice me until I rapped on the open door. Then she saw who it was. She picked up the frying-pan and brandished it clublike. The egg fell onto the floor and lay there drooling yellow. “Get away from me.”
“In a minute.”
“You’re a dirty bull, ain’t you, one of the ones that bumped Pat? I got nothing to say.”
“I have.”
“Not to me you haven’t. I don’t know nothing. You can amscray.” With the frying-pan upraised, ready to throw, she should have looked ridiculous. There was nothing ridiculous about her.
I talked fast: “Pat gave me something for you before he died—”
“Before you killed him, you mean.”
“Shut up and listen to me, girl. I haven’t got all day.”
“All right, finish your pitch. I know you’re lying, copper. You’re trying to hook me in, only I don’t know nothing. How could I know he was going to murder somebody?”
“Put it down and listen to me. I’m coming in.”
“In a pig’s eye!”
I stepped across the threshold, wrenching the iron pan from her hand, pushed her down into the solitary chair: “Pat didn’t murder anybody, can you understand that?”
“It said he did in the paper. Now I know you’re lying.” But her voice had lost its passionate conviction. Her soft mouth drooped uncertainly.
“You don’t have to believe what you read in the papers. Mrs. Slocum died by accident.”
“Why did they kill Pat then if he didn’t murder her?”
“Because he claimed he did. Pat heard a policeman tell me she was dead. He went to the man he was working for and convinced him that he killed her.”
“Pat wasn’t that crazy.”
“No. He was crazy like a fox. The big boss gave him ten grand lamster’s money. Pat talked himself into getting paid for a murder he didn’t do.”
“Jesus!” Her eyes were wide with admiration. “I told you he had a brain on him.”
“He had a heart, too.” That lie left a bile taste on my tongue. “When he saw he wasn’t going to make it, he gave me the ten grand to give to you. He told me you were his heir.”
“No. He told you that?” The cornflower eyes spilled over. “What else did he say?”
My tongue wagged on: “He said he wanted you to have it on one condition: that you get out of Nopal Valley and go some place where you can live a decent life. He said it would all be worth it if you did that.”
“I will!” she cried. “Did you say ten grand? Ten thousand dollars?”
“Right.” I handed her the package. “Don’t spend it in California or they might try to trace it. Don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you. Go to another state and put it in a bank and buy a house or something. That’s what Pat wanted you to do with it.”
“Did he say that?” She had torn off the wrappings and crushed the bright bills to her breast.
“Yes. He said that.” And I told her what she wanted to hear because there was no reason not to: “He also said that he loved you.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I loved him, too.”
“I have to go now, Gretchen.”
“Wait a minute.” She rose, her mouth working awkwardly, trying to frame a question. “Why did you—I mean I guess you really was his friend, like you said. I’m sorry. I thought you was a copper. And here you just came to bring me the money from Pat.”
“Put it away,” I said. “Get out of town tonight if you can.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll do just what Pat wanted me to. He really was a swell guy after all.”
I turned and went out the door, so that she wouldn’t see my face. “Goodbye, Gretchen.”
The money wouldn’t do her any permanent good. She’d buy a mink coat or a fast car, and find a man to steal one or wreck the other. Another Reavis, probably. Still, it would give her something to remember different from the memories that she had. She had no souvenirs and I had too many. I wanted no mementos of Reavis or Kilbourne.
Mrs. Strang ushered me into James Slocum’s bedroom. It was a very manly room, equipped with red leather chairs and solid dark furniture: Prints of old sailing vessels, like portholes opening on a motionless sea, adorned the paneled oak walls. Built-in bookcases, crammed with volumes, covered the length and height of one wall. The kind of room a hopeful mother might furnish for her son.
Olivia Slocum’s son was sitting up at the end of the great four-poster bed. His face was bloodless and thin. In the late gray light from the windows he looked like a silver image of a man. Francis Marvell was sitting on his own feet in a chair beside him. Both of them were intent on a chessboard set with black and white ivory pieces that rested on the edge of the bed between them.
Slocum’s hand emerged from his scarlet silk sleeve and moved a black knight. “There.”
“Jolly good,” Marvell said. “Oh, jolly good.”
Slocum withdrew his dreaming gaze from the board and turned it on me. “Yes?”
“You said you would see Mr. Archer?” the housekeeper faltered.
“Mr. Archer? Oh. Yes. Come in, Mr. Archer.” Slocum’s voice was weak and vaguely peevish.
Mrs. Slocum left the room. I stood where I was. Slocum and Marvell projected an atmosphere, a circle of intimacy, which I didn’t care to enter. Nor did they want me to enter it. Their heads were turned toward me at the same impatient angle, willing me to be gone. To leave them to the complex chess-play between them.
“I hope that you’re recovering, Mr. Slocum.” I had nothing better to say.
“I don’t know, I have had a perfectly dreadful series of shocks.” Self-pity squeaked behind the words like a rat behind the wall. “I have lost my mother, I have lost my wife, my own daughter has turned against me now.”
“I’m standing by, dear fellow,” Marvell said. “You can count on me, you know.” Slocum smiled weakly. His hand moved toward Marvell’s, which was resting slack by the chessboard, but paused short of it.
“If you’ve come about the play,” Marvell said to me, “I’m afraid I have to confess we’ve given it up. After all that’s happened, it may be months or years before I can regain the world of imagination. Poor dear James may never act again.”
“No great loss to the theatre,” Slocum said with quiet pathos. “But Mr. Archer isn’t interested in the play, Francis. I’d supposed you knew by now that he’s a detective. I imagine that he’s looking for his pay.”
“I have been paid.”
“That’s just as well. You’d never have a penny out of me. May I hazard a guess as to who paid you?”
“You needn’t. It was your wife.”
“Of course it was! And shall I tell you why?” He leaned forward, clutching the bedclothes. His eyes were bright with fever or passion. The silver face was peaked and hollowed like an old man’s. “Because you helped her to murder my mother, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
Marvell uncoiled his legs and stood up, his face averted in embarrassment.
“No, Francis, please don’t go. I want you to hear this. I want you to know the sort of woman I’ve had to spend my life with.”
Marvell slumped back into the chair and began to bite his knuckles.
“Go on,” I said. “This is interesting.”
“It came to me the night before last. I lay here thinking the night through, and I saw the whole thing plainly. She’d always hated my mother, she wanted her money, she wanted to leave me. But she didn’t dare to murder her without assistance. You were to lend the professional touch, were you not?”
“And what was my particular contribution?”
His voice was soft and sly: “You provided the scapegoat, Mr. Archer. No doubt Maude drowned mother herself; she wouldn’t delegate that task, not she. You were there to make sure that Reavis took the blame. My
