“You two can be bridesmaids,” Cleve said, “But I don’t know what we’ll do with your little brother.”
“Honest?” April said.
He nodded, and Polly Walker blushed.
“Oh,” April said, “Oh—super!” She kissed him on the cheek, and hugged the breath out of Polly Walker. “Archie—my little brother—can be the ring-bearer.”
“I’m not little,” Archie said angrily, “and I won’t. And what is one, anyway?”
“Never mind,” Dinah said. “Would somebody mind telling me what goes on here?”
Polly Walker looked up at her and said, “We’re going to get married.” Her hair was loose and there were tearstains on her face. What little lipstick was left was badly smeared. She looked awful. “Today.”
“You’d better wash your face first,” April said. “And make with the make-up. And do with the hair-do.”
Polly looked at them, laughed, started to cry again, and said, “I’ve been such a fool!”
April looked at Cleve and said, “Well, if you want to marry a fool, that’s your business!”
“It’s your responsibility,” he told her. “You fixed it up. You advised me what to do and helped me carry it out. If I have to divorce her after forty or fifty years—”
Polly Walker looked up and said, “She—what?”
“She advised me to kidnap you,” he said, “and she called you up this noon and gave you the urgent message that lured you away from the house.”
Polly Walker stared at April and said, “You? Was that your voice?”
“How do you think I get all those A grades in Junior Drama Class?” April said modestly. “And by the way, how did you like my speech?” She struck an attitude and said, “Mees Valker. I haff here zertain documents wheech haff been found een ze Zanford ’ouse. Zey are off no eemportance to me, an’ I weel be deelighted to giff zem to you, eef you weel come to—”
“If Miss Grubee could hear that,” Dinah said critically, “you’d flunk Junior Drama for the next two years. And will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
Cleve Callahan looked at April and said, “You’d better tell her. She’s your sister.”
April told the whole story, beginning with Rupert van Deusen and ending with the advice she’d given Cleve Callahan.
“And I did kidnap her,” Cleve finished for her, “with April’s help. And we talked everything over, and we haven’t any secrets from each other. And we’re going to drive to the airport and fly to Las Vegas and get married, without, I regret, bridesmaids, because you two would look very sweet in organdy dresses.”
“I’m sure of it,” April said. “Pink for me and blue for Dinah, or vice-reverse, and white broadcloth for Archie.”
“By the way,” Dinah said anxiously, “where is Archie?”
Archie had vanished.
April sighed. “He’s probably gone to call the police and tell them a murder suspect is being flown to Las Vegas. So, Miss Walker, you’d better tell all fast, and then get going.”
“Tell—what?” Polly Walker gasped.
“That was part of the bargain,” Cleve told her. “Remember?”
“A bargain with me,” April said. “I was to help you kidnap her if you’d bring her out here at four o’clock and she’d tell us exactly what had happened.”
“I—can’t!” Polly Walker buried her face in her hands. Cleve Callahan said, “Polly—darling!”
“Don’t be goony,” Dinah said. “You can, too. My gosh! Just because your father was a gangster and he’s in a jail some place! I think he must of been a pretty swell guy because of the way he took care of you, and you haven’t anything to be ashamed of except maybe acting like this. So, my gosh, quit bawling.”
“Shush-wow-e-lul-squared,” April said under her breath.
Polly Walker borrowed Cleve’s handkerchief and blew her nose. “She—that Mrs. Sanford—found out about it, somehow. She kept asking me for money. And I don’t make a lot of money. Then I met him—Wallie—at a party. He—well, flattered me—and I found out he was her husband, and I thought—well—maybe—” She blew her nose again. “I didn’t really like him, or anything. Cleve knows that.”
Cleve held her hand tight and said, “We’ve been all over that already. Remember?”
She nodded. “Oh, Cleve, I love you so!”
“Tell him about that on the way to Las Vegas,” April said. “Tell us about Mrs. Sanford.”
“Go on,” Cleve said quietly. “They deserve to know the whole business. After all, if it hadn’t been for them—”
“Well,” she said, “he sort of—well, fell for me. I shouldn’t, have, but I encouraged him. And then— Oh, look, it was like this. I thought, maybe, through him, I could get that stuff—those letters and everything—away from Mrs. Sanford. But he had some ideas of his own. He got—well, matrimonial.”
“I don’t think that’s quite the way to use the word,” Cleve said, “but we understand. Quite understandable, on his part. Anybody who took more than one look at you—”
She began crying all over again, and he found a fresh handkerchief. “It wasn’t like that. It was because I’m a— I’m a promising young actress and I’ll probably make a lot of money some day—I mean I would have made a lot if I hadn’t decided to get married and retire and—Oh, Cleve!” She buried her face on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you just marry Boulder Dam?” April asked him.
Cleve laughed, pushed Polly off his shoulder, wiped off her face, and said, “Go on, baby. Tell all.”
“Well. Well, finally, I told Wally about—the stuff she had about my father. He said he’d get it for me if—if he could get a divorce from her and marry me. Then. Then suddenly she wanted me to come out and see her. I did. She wanted a lot more money. I guess—well, I practically know—he must have just told her—everything. She said, for a lot of money she’d give me those letters and give him a divorce and forget everything. So, I said I’d come out Wednesday and bring the money with me.”
There was a long, long silence. Finally April said, softly, “We’re still listening.”
Suddenly Polly Walker sat up straight, no tears in her eyes, though her face was still very pale, and her lovely hair was tumbling over her forehead. “I went there to frighten her,” she said. “I had a gun. I meant to—make her give me those letters. Then I could forget her and Wally and everything else. I got there—about—oh, I don’t know exactly, but it was between four-thirty and five. I parked my car in the driveway, and I went up to the door. I took out my gun. I wasn’t going to shoot her, but—honest, I couldn’t shoot anybody, not even her. I just wanted to—oh, you know.”
“We know,” Dinah said gently.
“I walked into the living room. I rang the bell first, and nobody answered. The door was unlocked, and I walked right in. I had the gun in my hand. She just looked at me, she didn’t say a word. I pointed the gun at her and said, ‘Mrs. Sanford—’ ”
“And then?” April prompted.
“Then—everything happened so quickly. I hardly know what—there was a man, came out from—I guess it was the stairs. I just remember he was thin and dark. He had on a snap-brim gray felt hat, I remember that much. He swore, and he ran past me, out the door. Mrs. Sanford didn’t even seem to notice him. Then suddenly there was a shot. It came from—the dining-room door. I saw Mrs. Sanford fall. And the gun I was holding—just went off. Not at anything, it just went off. I haven’t any idea what it hit but I know it didn’t hit—her. And I turned and ran. The man in the gray hat was getting in a car parked farther down in the driveway. He drove off, fast. I got in my car and drove, fast. I don’t know where he went. I went down by the ocean, and parked there a few minutes. And I thought. Maybe she—Mrs. Sanford—was just wounded. I ought to go back. I could pretend I’d just arrived there, to have tea with her. So I did drive back. And went up and rang the doorbell, just as if I hadn’t been there before.” She paused, and pushed the hair back from her forehead.
“Rupert, my friend,” April said admiringly, “you’re marrying a woman who has nerve!”
Polly Walker said, “But she wasn’t just wounded. She was murdered. So, I called the police.” She looked at Dinah and April, smiled wanly, and said, “And you can take it from there.”
He leaned forward and said, “Now look, you two About this story—”
April looked at him, wide-eyed. “It’s a family trait. Heredity. Our mother is very absent-minded, and so are we. I’m sorry, but we’ve absolutely forgotten every word she said!”
“As for me,” Dinah said, “I wasn’t even listening.” She kissed Polly Walker on the cheek and said, “Oh, gosh! I’m so darn glad you didn’t murder Mrs. Sanford and that you aren’t going to marry Wally Sanford even if he is a rather nice person, but that you’re going to marry this guy, who, I mean whom, I think is absolutely super!”
“My sister!” April said. “The tactful type!”
“Nun-u-tut-shush!” Dinah said. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“Don’t mind her,” April said. “She always cries at weddings. Just the same, I think it’s a dirty trick to go get married in Las Vegas. Because I look Simply Div in organdy. And, anyway, is it legal to take the witness to a murder out of the state even to marry her?”
“I’ll ask my lawyer,” Cleve Callahan said, “when we get back tomorrow.” He looked up and said, suddenly, “Good Lord!”
The Mob was approaching. Most of it, at least. Archie led it, carrying an enormous bunch of hydrangea blossoms. Admiral had an armful of bright purple bougainvillea vine. Goony had a bouquet of his mother’s best dahlias, Flashlight had a handful of petunias, and Slukey had a single, carefully held camellia.
“We coulda done better,” Archie said breathlessly, “but we hadda work awful fast. Here.” He dumped the hydrangea blooms in the car. Slukey handed Polly Walker the camellia, with great solemnity, and the others piled their collection around her.
“I heard you were gonna get married,” Archie explained. “And if you get married you gotta have flowers, so I gave the Mob an emergency call.”
Polly Walker hugged and kissed him. He would have been embarrassed beyond reason, save that she hugged and kissed the rest of the Mob, too. Then Cleve Callahan started the car and backed down the driveway, calling “Good-by,” and Polly Walker started crying all over again.
April beamed at Archie, looked after the roadster, and said, “A swell idea. But unless she turns off Niagara Falls, you’d have done better to have given her about four dozen handkerchiefs!”
The Mob hooted with glee and raced away up the hillside. Dinah and April started up the sidewalk toward home.
“You might have told me,” Dinah said, a trifle miffed.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” April said. “And it certainly was. As a matter of fact, it was a surprise to me, too.” She scowled, and kicked at a stone on the sidewalk. “Dinah, do you believe Polly Walker’s story?”
“Of course I do” Dinah said. “Every word of it. My gosh—”
“So do I,” April said. “Dinah, I think we’re getting somewhere. The thin, dark man with the gray hat. That was Frankie Riley. He was on the scene of the crime. But he didn’t shoot her. Mrs. Sanford, I mean. Polly Walker was there, and she shot Uncle Herbert’s picture. There’s a girl who never ought to be trusted with anything deadlier than a slingshot. And someone fired, from the dining room, and hit Mrs. Sanford. Someone with a forty-five, and darned good aim. Dinah, we’ve found out a lot!”
“A lot of nothing,” Dinah said gloomily. “Don’t be so cheerful. Because there’s still things we don’t know about.”
“I’ll be cheerful if I want to,” April said. “And don’t say ‘things,’ because there’s just one Thing.” She beamed maddeningly at Dinah. “All we have to do now is find out who stood in the dining room and shot Mrs. Sanford.”