'All right!' said Alison crossly. 'I don't know what you mean by that! It's hopeless, that's all.'
' Claro que si, it's hopeless. Ambos tu y yo mismo, you and me both. Stop worrying over that, come and soothe me. I need soothing like the very devil. I need to have my hand held by a sympathetic female and be told what a big strong smart masterful fellow I really am. I might even find it helpful to lie down quiet with my head in your lap, of all ridiculous conventional poses, and listen to the same theme at infinite length.'
' Pobrecito, que paso? ' asked Alison, sufficiently alarmed by this unprecedented behavior to forget her art. 'Come and sit down, tell Mother who's been mean to you.'
He pulled her down beside him on the couch. 'That's the damned awful thing, mi vida, it's nobody else but me-I've been a stupid, thickheaded, imbecilic dunce. I don't know any more of importance about this thing than I did before we found the corpse-and because I am-tell me, tell me!-because I am a brilliant and gifted detective, quite unused to failure, I'm out of sorts with myself.'
'You are,' said Alison obediently, 'a brilliant and gifted detective, un macho muy valoroso, un hombre intelligente, y agraciado, y amiable, y de aspecto bravo y bello, y attractivo, y importante, y-y cancuntador, y concienzudo, y-y elegante, y honorable, y un jefe muy justamente, y-y-y magminimo, y absolutamente un caballero muy satisgfactorio y maravilloso. Do you feel any better now?'
'A little, a little. This I like to hear. So I am, I know-'
' Y un egotiste! ' said Alison.
'That I know too.' The kitten Sheba, who resembled her mother in being brown, sleek, and affectionate, leaped up beside him, walked onto his stomach, and settled down to purr as he stroked her. 'Ah, I do begin to feel better-I am being duly appreciated… Even I think my mind begins to work with its usual acuteness… Damn it, I can still be right! Friday night-Friday night. That ritual or whatever it is, it was over at nine. All right. Say they got away by a quarter or twenty past, they could be out at 267th by ten o'clock. I'd give myself an hour at least, that drive, but they could have done it.'
'Undoubtedly,' said Alison.
'You know nothing about it, silencio.'
'I'm only soothing you. Whatever you say is so must be so, naturalmente.”
' Muy bien, soothe me in silence.” He slid down comfortably, cradling the kitten, stretched out and put his head in her lap. 'They could have. Now, Bainbridge says two to six hours before death for that beef stew and so on. Seven to eleven. That's all right, that can fit. Say he's raised his demands, and-of course, claro esta! -because whatever plan he was counting on that Wednesday had fallen through. Yes. They want to see him. They chase right out there after their damned service, and get there about ten, say even ten-thirty. And-and there's an argument. But, a fight? This namby-pamby blackmailer and a smooth con man? Why? Can we say maybe Twelvetrees insulted Mrs. Kingman, and Kingman was protecting her honor?'
' Oye, la drama magnifico! ' said Alison. 'Next week East Lynne.'
' Chiton, I'm thinking! Well, anyway, there's a struggle, Kingman snatches up the gun lying there on the bureau-Twelvetrees' gun-and hits him a little too hard. O.K. Then, just as I built it up befor-the dither, the inspiration of the trap, etcetera. Only Bartlett had nothing to do with it, it all happened at least an hour after he'd been killed-that was the kids after all. And because Kingman doesn't drive, the woman went off to do that part of it while he buried the body and so on. It'd have taken that long easily, the time it took her to drive in with the Porsche-after they'd made the plan, too-that took some time-to put her on the spot to be the lady in the serape.'
The kitten got up, stretched, yawned to show him a pink mouth and needle-sharp white teeth, turned around and settled down again.
' Perfecto! ' said Alison. ' Obvio, that's how it was.'
'You are no help whatever,' said Mendoza. 'And this is a most uncomfortable position, regardless of all the movies and the award-winning photographs of couples in parks. If it wasn't for disturbing the cat, I'd move… Obviously it is not how it was-not exactly, anyway. I can see them finding the trap by accident, or just possibly Twelvetrees had called their attention to it on some former visit. As confidence workers, they're used to making slick plans on the spur of the moment. But how the hell did they know where to lind that trowel? They-' He stopped abruptly.
'These are the people from that Temple? Well, she's psychic, isn't she? She divined it.'
' Aguarda, un momento! Si, como no? Yo caigo en ello! -yes, of course, of course!' He swung his legs off the couch and stood up abruptly, holding the kitten. 'Why didn't I see that before? I tell you, I'm going senile!'
'But you get it now, or so you just said. Better late than never. You've solved the whole case-and under my helpful feminine soothing.'
'Well, not exactly. But look. Is it likely-I ask you-that this brash young fellow with his movie ambitions, his record as a pimp's apprentice-a city man, an apartment liver-is it likely that he was remotely interested in gardening? Not by any stretch of the imagination! Then why did he go to the trouble of convincing Mrs. Bragg he was, buying that plant food for her damned Tree of Heaven and so forth? Why else?-because it gave him an excuse for fooling around it, and probably when he undertook the care of the thing she wouldn't bother with it any more. I'll bet on any odds you name that was his safety deposit box. I'll swear it, he had something concrete on them-and he wouldn't leave it tucked in the toe of a shoe or in a drawer, he wouldn't carry it on him-not that cautious, canny, ladylike boy-to be stolen so easy or maybe involve him in a roughhouse, not that one! He found a safe place to stash it away, where nobody would think of looking-buried with that Tree of Heaven-and he'd just brought the trowel from Mrs. Bragg's carport to dig it up with, to take with him, and that's why the trowel was there in his kitchen. And-'
The phone rang and Alison went to answer it. The kitten scrambled up on his shoulder and began to lick his ear thoughtfully. 'For you,' said Alison.
Mendoza took the receiver, listened, began to smile, and finally fired rapid orders. 'Get hold of Hackett-oh, beautiful, beautiful, just how I'd figured it!-who's in the office? O.K., I want Boyce, one man'll be enough, and a blank warrant-jump to it! I'll be there in twenty minutes, I want it waiting! I felt all along that was the answer- Tell Hackett to step on it. I'll meet him at the Temple in forty-five minutes… O.K., thanks, get busy!' He slammed the phone down, handed the kitten to Alison, kissed her, and snatched up his hat. 'I'm vindicated-not so senile after all! Pennsylvania has come through and I think we'll tie up this case tonight- se buena, hasta mas ver,' and he was gone.
'Well,' said Alison, and returned to dissatisfied inspection of the canvas.
What Pennsylvania-specifically, the Chief of Police of Philadelphia-said was that the prints of the corpse identified him in their records as one Robert Trask, particulars as follows-etcetera. Nothing of Trask's antecedents were known beyond the fact that he had come from some place in New England, to the detriment of Philadelphia, some twelve years back. He had been mixed up in various unsavory businesses, but had been charged and convicted only once, seven years ago-contributing to delinquency of minors, a year's sentence. After he got out, he had been on the scene for a couple of years, and twice private citizens had lodged complaints of attempted extortion on him, but he had managed to wriggle out of the legal net. He had then disappeared, and Philadelphia was interested to learn what had subsequently happened to him.
As for the description appended of a middle-aged couple calling themselves Kingman, it was of course impossible to say definitely without fingerprints to check, but it was likely that they were the same pair known to Philadelphia as Martin and Caroline Sellers. The Sellers had been charged with fraud on a private complaint in the same year that Robert Trask had been put inside, but had got off on some technicality with the aid of a smart lawyer; the case had attracted some local publicity., They had held private seances with all the trappings, Mrs. Sellers being the medium, and been detected in fraud by a local officer of the Society for Psychical Research. Investigation of their background at the time (by the Society, not the police) had turned up the fact that they had at one time been in show business with a mind-reading act, billed as The Telepathic Turners. Turner appeared to be the legal name. Two years previously they had been charged and convicted of fraud-on the same count as the Philadelphia arrest, fake seances-in Chicago, were fined, and had served a year apiece inside. If Los Angeles could oblige with prints of these Kingmans, Philadelphia could say definitely whether they were the Sellers-Turners; but as the latter had disappeared from the scene so far as the police knew about five years back, it was a matter of
