“Lucy can’t take Ruth Fryer home with her, because Marsha is at the apartment, waiting.”
“So,” said Flynn, “knowing Bart’s in Italy—either not knowing about your arrival, or not caring as she has a perfect right to use the Connors apartment, they not being divorced yet—she brings Ruth Fryer to what is technically your apartment at that point.”
“Yeah. And at the apartment, Ruth discovers she, in fact, is being seduced. She’s a young girl, she’s about to be married, she’s not that way. She’s straight. She resists. Her dress gets torn from her. She runs down the hall. Lucy, who enjoys violent play, chases her down the hall. Also, Lucy is not very experienced at seducing girls. She loses her head. Maybe she’s hurt at being rejected. Maybe she goes into a blind rage.”
“And she cracks little Ms. Fryer over the head with a whiskey bottle.”
“Dusts,the bottle and puts it back. She puts all the other bottles in the salt-and-pepper cabinet, knowing Mrs. Sawyer will have to move them around. Her own fingerprints wouldn’t make any difference, anyway.”
“And she puts out a carafe of water, knowing that when you return to the apartment and find the body after dinner, it would be any man’s normal instinct to pour himself a stiff one at the sideboard. Thus she got your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”‘
“Right.”
“Damned clever. How did you get to interview Lucy Connors?”
“I said I was from a magazine.”
“I see. It seems you’ve done better than we have, Fletcher.”
“The thing that has been puzzling since the beginning,” said Fletch, “is that this murder appeared to be a crime of sexual passion. The victim was naked. She was beautiful. And yet they autopsy turned up no evidence of sexual intercourse.”
“That was surprising,” said Flynn.
“There would be no such evidence, if the sexual affair was lesbian?”
“My God, it’s been in front of our eyes all the time.”
“Lucy has a key. She and Ruth were at the airport at the same time. She would be attracted to Ruth. Anyone would be. She and Ruth could not go to a hotel, easily or safely. Lucy is known to be violence-prone. Ruth would have resisted her.”
“An arrest,” said Flynn, standing up from his desk, “is imminent.”
“58 Fenton Street, Brookline,” said Fletch, also standing. “Apartment 42. Under the name of Marsha Hauptmann.”
“Have you got that, Grover?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Now, Frank,” said Fletch. “Would you do me a favor?”
“It seems I owe you one.”
“Get your goons off my back.”
“I will, indeed. Grover, order Mister Fletcher’s tail removed immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And will you be at home later tonight, Mister Fletcher?”
“I expect to be. Later.”
“Perhaps I’ll give you a call to tell you how things turn out.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“I’m sure you will, Mister Fletcher. I’m sure you will.”
Thirty-six
Both Andy and Sylvia marveled when Fletch donned blue jeans, boots, a dark blue turtle neck sweater, Navy windbreaker, and a Greek fisherman’s cap, and said he was going out for a while.
He said he would be back for dinner.
He wouldn’t.
Although free of his police tail, out of habit he went through the kitchen and down the service stairs of the apartment house. Going through the alley to his garage on River Street was a short cut, anyway.
In the black truck, Fletch put himself Newbury Street and headed west. (The two top storeys of 60 Newbury Street were lit.) He crossed Massachusetts Avenue, down the ramp, and continued west on the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension.
Lolling along, singing to himself while munching pretzels, he took the Weston exit, went left at a light, and curved right up a grade after a second light. The moon was out. Climbing, after he passed the golf course, he had a better view of the antique farmhouses, close to the road, and the well-separated estate houses, set back.
Passing the Horan house, he noted it showed no light.
He continued on into Weston Center.
Next to a drugstore on the main road was a lit telephone booth. Fletch parked at an angle, next to it, and checked his watch.
It was five minutes past nine Monday night. He had been in Massachusetts about six days and six hours.
Despite the dim light emanating from the drugstore, he knew it was closed.
In the phone booth, he dialed the Boston number of Ronald Risom Horan.
The man answered immediately.
Chewing gum in mouth, thumb pressed against his left nostril, Fletch said, “Mister Horan? Yeah. This is the Weston police. Your burglar alarm just went off. Yeah. The light just lit house the console here.”
“Is someone at the house now?”
“Yeah! A burglar is, I guess.”
“Are the police there?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re sending the car over. As soon as we can locate it.”
“What do you mean, as soon as you locate it?”
“Yeah, they’re not answering the radio just now.”
“Jesus! Listen, you jerk! Get someone to the house right away!”
“Yeah. I’ll do what I can.”
“I’ll be out right away.”
“Yeah. Okay. You know where the police station is?”
“I’m not going to the police station, you jerk! I’m going to the house!”
The phone slammed down.
Taking his time, Fletch drove back to Horan’s house, down the driveway.
He drove behind the house to the garage. His headlights picked up the dirt track around the right of the garage. He drove around the garage. His headlights swept the area as he turned.
He backed the black truck into the tractor shed and turned out the headlights.
Walking back around the garage, he saw that the back and side of the house were bathed moonlight. It was easy to find a big enough stone.
On the back porch, being careful to lay his bare fingers nowhere but on the stone, he reexamined the alarm system carefully. There were six small panes of glass in the back door. Each pane had two wires of the alarm system zigzagging through it, from left to right, top and bottom.
Very carefully, with the stone, he smashed the pane of glass nearest the door handle, knocking out both wires.
The alarm went off—a high, excited, shrill, piercing, truly frightening ringing.
His mind’s eye saw a light beginning to flash at a console at the Weston police station.
As he went down the porch staff he pitched the stone into the woods.
He crossed the driveway to the bushes. In the bright moonlight, he stood, silently, further back in the bushes than he wanted to, but he still had clear views of the driveway, the side and back of the house.
Soon he saw the huge lights of the Rolls-Royce traveling north on the road. It braked as it approached the driveway.
The lights streamed down the gravel.
