Nothing More Than Murder

I swore under my breath, and got up. The back door was closed and the shades were drawn. I went over and stood beside her.

'Now what?' I said.

'N-Nothing.'

'Come on, spit it out!'

I guess I sounded pretty harsh, but I was nervous. I had things to make me nervous. She whirled, her eyes flashing.

'I heard what you said to him!'

'What I said to him?'

'Yes. About Elizabeth!'

I couldn't figure out what she meant for a minute. Then I said, 'Well, for God's sake, what did you think I should say to him? That I hated her guts and was damned glad she was gone? That would have sounded good, wouldn't it?'

'N-No-You didn't really mean it, did you?'

'Of course I didn't mean it.'

She wiped her eyes and tried to smile. I sat down on a chair and pulled her onto my lap.

'Look, Carol,' I said, 'you're going to have to get over this suspiciousness and jealousy. If you don't it'll crop up at the wrong time, and that'll be just too bad. Don't you see? If people thought there was anything between you and me it would give you a motive for Elizabeth's-for this woman's-death.'

'I know,' she said. 'I'll behave, Joe.'

'You've got to, Carol,' I said. 'If they ever get the idea that you or I wanted Elizabeth out of the way, they'll do an autopsy on that- on the remains. They'll do one to end all autopsies. They won't know what to look for so they'll look for everything. And they'll find out it wasn't Elizabeth.'

'But-well, there wasn't anything left-'

'Oh, yes, there was. The teeth were left, and that's all they'd need. The teeth would show that it wasn't Elizabeth.'

She didn't know about things like that. She sat looking at me, making sure I wasn't kidding.

'Maybe-You don't suppose they've already-'

'Not a chance,' I said. 'If they had we wouldn't be sitting here. Oh, sure, they've had an inquest. Decided she died by reason of fire and so on. But that's all they've done, and we mustn't give them any reason to do any more than that. You'd better clear out of here tomorrow, at the latest.'

'No!' She threw her arms around my neck. 'Please don't make me, Joe!'

'But you've got to, Carol. We planned it that way. It don't look right for us to be staying here together.'

'No! I don't care how we planned. It's different now.'

'You'll be all right. You can get you a little job of some kind here in town and go ahead to school. In six or seven months, when all this blows over, we can start seeing each other and-'

'But what if something. should happen that I ought to know about? You wouldn't be able to let me know until-until it was too late.'

'It'd be too late from the start,' I said. 'This isn't something we can run out on if things get hot. Anyway, if anything went wrong you'd know it as soon as I would.'

'No, I wouldn't, Joe.'

'Why the hell wouldn't you?'

'Elizabeth was your wife, and I was the last one to be seen with her. And you were out of town when it happened. They'd talk to you before they did anything.'

'Well,' I said, 'what of it? You're not going to be at the north pole. If talking to you would do any good after things had gone that far, I could reach you easily enough.'

She sat not looking at me. 'They can't prove anything against you, Joe,' she said in a funny voice. 'Not what they can with me. If-if I took the blame-'

'Oh,' I said slowly. 'I see.'

'Please, Joe-'

'Why don't you say what you mean?' I said. 'You think if I got the chance I'd throw everything on you. Is that it?'

I shoved her to her feet and got up, but before I could move away she had her arms around me. She began crying again, and her breasts shivered against me, and I patted her and finally held her close.

'You shouldn't feel that way, Carol,' I said. 'We've got to trust each other.'

'I d-do, Joe!' she said. 'I trust you and love you so much that-and that wasn't the reason I wanted to stay! I-I just want to be near you. It doesn't seem like I'm living when I'm not with you.'

Well, hell. I was pretty sure she meant it, but even if she didn't it sounded good. A woman can't make a man sore talking like that.

'Well,' I said, 'we'll talk about it again. I guess it will be all right if you stay around a few days. Maybe something will turn up by that time.'

'That Mr. Chance. How long is he going to be in town?'

'I don't know,' I said, wishing to God that I did. 'I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on. He may be around helping me for quite a while.'

'If he stayed here, too, it'd be all right for me to stay, wouldn't it?'

I didn't know how to get around that one. If I'd had my way Hap would be staying at the bottom of some good deep well.

'We'll see,' I said.

16

I told Carol I wasn't hungry yet and left the house without eating breakfast. If there was ever a time in my life that I needed to keep my mind clear this was it, so I got away before I could be caught up in another argument.

I stopped at the Elite Cafй and ordered ham an'; and while I was eating Web Clay came in for a cigar. He saw me and came back to my booth. He'd already eaten but I got him to take a cup of coffee.

'Web,' I said, after we'd talked for a while, 'what do you think about the fire? About Elizabeth's death?'

'I don't think you need to ask me that, Joe,' he said. 'She was an irreplaceable loss to the entire community. I grieved with you.'

'I appreciate that, Web,' I said. 'What I'm asking is, do you think Elizabeth could have been murdered and that the fire was used to cover up the crime?'

A slow flush spread over his face. He lit his cigar and dropped the match into his coffee cup.

'You don't think my investigation of the case was sufficiently thorough?'

'Now, Web-'

'You're a friend, Joe. I knew-I believed-that you trusted me, and I wanted to spare you all the pain that I could. Now, I'll tell you something; something that only Rufe and I have known up to now. Before that fire was cold, before that whippersnapper Appleton got here, I had a man here from the state bureau of criminal investigation. He went over the ground thoroughly, and found nothing of an incendiary character. It was his theory that the fire must have been started by rats.'

'But-'

'I know. We don't see how it could have been. But if it wasn't for the impossible and improbable we wouldn't have any accidents. Do you recall reading, a few years back, about the hardware clerk who was killed while unpacking a shipment of rifles? The gun had never been out of the packing-case, but it was loaded. It couldn't have happened at the factory. The chief inspector had examined it and sealed the breach with his tag. It couldn't have happened at the store because it had never been out of the box. But it did happen, Joe.'

'I remember the case,' I said. 'Well, suppose, then, that the fire was an accident-and I've felt like you that it must have been. But-'

'The two things go together, Joe. Elizabeth's death was undoubtedly caused by the fire. It's true that the post mortem, such as it was, was not very revealing. The body-excuse me, Joe-was pinned beneath the remains of