Harmon Dunstan sat at the home bar in the immaculate living room, a drink in his slender hand this time. It was late enough now, maybe in more ways than one. Dunstan was less friendly this time, his thin, dark face slack and watchful.
“You sent the police last night?” the small man said.
“The Dresden police sent them. Your wife was in New Haven-just about unseen. Where were you?”
“Calling on a client in Westchester,” Dunstan said. “My bad luck, he wasn’t at home-called away suddenly.”
“Did you know Abram Zaremba?”
“No. I don’t like people coming here with threats.”
“I haven’t made any threats.”
“You-” He ended it there. The threat was in his mind, and he was smart enough to realize he had revealed that.
I said, “What did Francesca Crawford really want from you, Dunstan?”
“I’ve told you all I’m going to, Fortune.”
Grace Dunstan said, “Talk to him, Harmon. Your women are no real secret. Everyone knows we have an understanding.”
“Be quiet, Grace,” Dunstan said. It was firm, but gentle. Telling her that she didn’t know what she was saying.
I said, “What did she want, Dunstan? She made a play for you, yet she lost interest fast. Did she think you could help her to find out about her father?”
“Her father?” Dunstan said.
It wasn’t a question, no, not even rhetorical. It was footwork, something to say while he thought. He finished his drink, keeping busy to keep from talking. Grace Dunstan took his glass, and began to refill it. She worked with one hand, drinking her own Bloody Mary while she made his drink.
“Ralph Blackwind,” I said. “You remember him? You were his captain in Korea. You testified for him at his trial.”
“Yes,” Dunstan said, “I remember him.”
“Did Francesca ask about him?”
“Yes, she asked about him,” Dunstan said. His wife gave him his new drink. He drank. “I told her that Ralph had died fifteen years ago. That he got a raw deal, went to prison, and died. I told her that he was a good man who had deserved better, but that’s the way the ball bounces. She had her mother and a good life, let Ralph Blackwind rest in peace.”
“That’s all?”
“That was all.”
“But it means you knew who she was before she was killed. You knew she was Francesca Crawford not Martin.”
“Yes, all right, I knew. After she asked about Ralph, I knew. What does it mean? That was all a long time ago. She was a woman here and now, I liked her, wanted her. Ralph was old history. It was the present I was after.”
“So am I,” I said.
Dunstan said nothing.
“Poor Harmon,” Grace Dunstan said. “You didn’t get what you wanted this time, did you? This one got away.”
Dunstan turned on her. “I liked her, Grace. This was real. You sensed that, didn’t you? You’ve never cared about the women I chased before. You’re not interested in me, so the other women didn’t matter, and for that I thanked you. I need a woman, you don’t need a man, at least not me. So you didn’t care about my substitutes. They weren’t good, but they were better than nothing if I couldn’t have you. But this time you knew it was different.”
“Did I?” she said. “Maybe you’re right, but she’s dead, and that ends it, doesn’t it? You’ll have to settle for what we have until next time. I’m sorry, really I am.”
“Sorry enough to come to my bedroom sometimes?”
She turned away, sharply.
I said, “You have separate bedrooms? Then your alibis for Francesca’s murder are zero. It’s a big house, with separate bedrooms. Either of you could come or go without being seen or heard. You can’t prove where you were when Francesca was killed. No more than you can prove where you were last night.”
Dunstan was silent. “Can most people prove where they were when you ask them about any given night?”
“It depends.”
“On what, Fortune?”
“Mostly on luck. The chance they were with someone.”
“Then we weren’t lucky,” Dunstan said.
Grace Dunstan said, “We never have been, have we, Harmon?”
I had the feeling of a man standing high on a cliff looking down at two people walking a solitary beach. No one else was anywhere, yet they walked apart. Each alone in the sea and sky, unable to move together no matter how much they wanted to, or even had to because there was no one else. They walked along side-by-side, but each alone. Each staring at the horizon for someone else to come along, any new face to talk to, to smile with. Yet no one would come, because, for them, there really was no one else. Neither anyone else, nor each other, so doomed to a kind of slow dance together that would end only when one or both were dead. Two people wanting each other, without mercy on each other, and needing each other maybe more than they even knew.
I said, “You’re sure Ralph Blackwind is dead, Dunstan?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m sure. I know he’s dead, and now I have to leave. No more questions, Fortune, unless you come with the police and more than suspicions you can’t prove.”
Grace Dunstan drank and watched him go. She put down her glass, smiled at me. It was a stiff smile.
“He was rebuffed by Francesca Crawford, whether he wants to say so or not. I can tell. He’s right, too, I did take more notice of her than I had of his other women. She wasn’t like the women he usually toyed with. A strange girl, not his type at all. I met her twice, and I didn’t think she cared about Harmon for himself at all. I didn’t know about her father. She puzzled me.”
“Puzzled you,” I said, “and worried you?”
She considered the question and me. “Yes, she worried me. The unknown worries me. I live with the familiar, the sure. This house, our money, my furniture. Harmon and I are tied like stones on a short chain, but we’re tied closely. Only I didn’t kill her, Mr. Fortune.”
“I hope not,” I said.
I went out to my car.
18
I had to park in a garage six blocks from the Emerald Room. I looked for a taxi, but it was five-thirty now, and I walked three blocks looking and waving. After the three blocks, I gave up, and walked to the restaurant. It had just opened.
The elegant entry greeted me with a cosy warmth that made me want to settle down at the bar for a long stay. Carl Gans didn’t greet me. A bigger man seemed to have his job now. The bigger man saw my duffel coat and missing arm.
“You want something?” he said.
“I’m looking for Carl Gans.”
“He’s off tonight.”
“Commissioner Zaremba’s murder?”
“You know, huh?” He had new respect for me. I was in the know, no matter how I looked. “Yeh, Carl took it
