They sat, or rather, lay comfortably at full length in the long padded chairs by the pool. The butler brought a tray of tall cool glasses and went away again. Trehearne sipped drowsily and then glanced with a certain sardonic annoyance at Vickers.
‘I’m disappointed,” he said.
“And also,” said Vickers, “your pride is touched.”
“To the quick.” Trehearne sighed. “And I had such a beautiful case against you.”
“Circumstantial evidence,” said Angie.
“Not with that last performance. I had everything. Fingerprints on the poker. Fingerprints on the bottle of chloral hydrate we found behind the flower bowl. Your visual testimony, Mrs. Vickers, which you volunteered.”
Angie flushed painfully, and Vickers said, “My God, do you blame her? She wakes out of a drugged sleep and sees me...”
“I don’t blame her at all. I merely said it was helpful. Very. Then your wild escape down the hill.” Trehearne shivered. “Christ, you terrified me! I was in that police car, you know. We thought we were dead ducks. We didn’t have the license number of your car, our radio was busted in the crash, and Mrs. Vickers had passed out cold, so we were a trifle delayed in finding you. You got quite a lot done in that time.”
“I had four years to make up for,” Vickers said.
Angie said, “Just what did you do to Bill?”
“Darling,’! said Vickers gently, “we’re interrupting Mr. Trehearne. This is his moment. Let him enjoy it.”
Trehearne said, “Thank you. Well, this was supposed to be the set up. Bill Saul had to get Vickers out of the way. He fumbled the job in Mexico, through no fault of his own, and it was very embarrassing to have him turn up again, alive, and probably able to guess pretty shrewdly at what had happened. Saul figured it this way – Vickers hadn’t told anyone he was alive, or coming back, therefore he suspected an attempt at murder. However, Vickers had not set the police onto Bill Saul, therefore he did not know who was responsible. Saul thought he had a little time, enough to try something smart.
“Saul knew that the only way to get rid of Vickers once and for all, as far as Angie was concerned, was to make it seem that Vickers was a killer, a louse, a murdering, half-cracked sonofabitch. In short, to destroy Angie’s faith in him. So he killed Harry Bryce, knowing that Vickers would be blamed for it. But the thing got a bit confused, what with Angie and Joan, and a distressing lack of proof. Nothing for Bill to do but wait and try again. I’m using the third person here because it goes easier. Ungrammatical, but you don’t mind, do you?”
They did not.
“So he waited, and suddenly the break came. The psychological moment. Joan gave him his chance. She, too, wanted to get rid of Vickers. So she arranged a very clever frame-up. She knew that she and Harry Bryce had the same type of blood. They found that out during the Blood Bank era. And she knew what nearly everybody has read in the newspapers – that blood tests can only be proved negatively. That is, you can prove that a certain sample of blood did not come from a particular individual, if it’s the wrong blood type, but never that it did, if it happens to be the right type. There are only four blood groups, and that makes a lot of people that match.
“So Joan doctored a pair of Vickers’ shoes with her own blood, which was the same as Harry Bryce’s, polished them carefully, and sent them to me, via Bill Saul. She sent a note with them, explaining that Vickers had switched shoes on me when his clothes were picked up for examination, and that these were in reality the ones that Vickers had worn at the beach the night Harry was killed. The only trouble with that hopeful effort was that laboratory tests showed that the shoes had not been worn for a long time, there was no beach sand or tar on them, and there were none of Vickers’ fingerprints, which there would have had to be if he had worn and polished them himself, as she claimed.
“Well, Bill didn’t know any of that, and he didn’t care. He knew the evidence was a phoney, of course, because he himself had killed Bryce; but that didn’t matter. What did matter was that Joan had put into his hands a perfect motive for murder. The lack of love between Joan and Vickers was pretty well known all round. So what would be more convincing than that Vickers should discover that Joan had sent incriminating evidence, phoney or not, to the police – she was even the type who might have bragged about it to Vickers – and that Vickers flew into a rage and killed her? So Bill knocked her out, he thought, and went back into the living room to play some more gin rummy.”
Angie said, “He told us Joan had gone out into the garden.”
“Uh huh. She’d gone out, all right, for good. Well, somewhere along the line Bill managed to slip the chloral into your drinks. He brought it along, like a careful craftsman, in case it should come handy. He also brought along the brass knuckles with which Brownie was clipped, impressed them with Vickers’ fingerprints, and tucked them away in Vickers’ bureau drawer. A very thorough boy.
“When everybody but Bill was sound asleep, he scurried about setting the stage. He carried Joan in from the kitchen. She hadn’t had time to cool off, or stiffen up, so he didn’t know she was dead. He banged her over the head with the poker a couple of times, made sure this time that it was final – he’d had bad luck with corpses before – then arranged Vickers, the poker, and the fingerprints to look right. He had wrapped the poker handle in his handkerchief when he used it. It didn’t even get bloody. Then he went out by the front door, called good-by for the benefit of the boys staked out by the gate, and drove straight to me with the package. Then he went home. He probably felt pretty safe, but he was still being careful. That’s why he took the gun into the bath with him, and left the door so that he could watch the bedroom via the mirror over the washstand.
“The chloral gag was a little risky, but not too much, and he had to use it. He hoped that in the excitement nobody would think about drugging until it was too late for a conclusive test. But if anybody said anything about it, well, what the hell. Vickers was obviously a killer. He was obviously a little nuts. Maybe he had intended to murder Angie, too, painlessly, and commit suicide himself. There was the motive, the opportunity, the weapon, the fingerprints, and the corpse. What more would the cops need to convict a man for murder?”
“Not much,” said Vickers.
Angie set her glass down. She had begun to shiver, though the sun was hot. She shut her eyes and put her hands over her face.
“In a way,” she whispered, “I suppose this is all my fault.”
Vickers went over and sat down beside her, drawing her close to him.
“You mean because Bill wanted you, and did all this because of it? Well, in the first place, darling, I don’t blame him too much. I can understand feeling that way. In the second place, you didn’t do anything to encourage him. I hope.”
“Vick! For God’s sake, don’t joke about it!”
“All right.” He said soberly, “There was a lot more to it than that. Bill’s an odd guy. He’s always had a bit of a God complex, too. I say ‘too,’ because I know I had one. Bill made up his own laws and ethics. He did exactly as he pleased, because that was all that mattered to him – doing what he wanted to do, in his own way. And he always got what he went after. Women, particularly. It puzzled him that he couldn’t get you, and the more he couldn’t get you, the more he wanted you, and I suppose you took the kick out of every other female in the world as far as he was concerned. So he began to hate me, because I was between you and him. But I’m beginning to think that you were the symbol, a very real one, but not the whole cause.
“Bill hated me. He hated me, I think, because I was a bigger and more successful louse than he was. I was more arrogant, more selfish, more cold blooded, and I had huge bank accounts and social standing, and the woman he wanted for a wife. I was a challenge to him. To his manhood, if you like. I kept him around because he was good company. He amused me. He could play up to me at cards, and even beat me with fair frequency. And that attitude on my part was like feeding him poison. Harry and Job were weaker stuff. They took it. But Bill didn’t. And because he was the man he was, he reacted in the way he did. Violently, but subtly.” Vickers shook her gently. “So you see, Cleopatra, it’s more my fault than yours.”
“Nuts,” said Trehearne. “It’s Saul’s fault, and he’ll find it out in the gas chamber.” He stood up. “Well, I guess that covers everything, for a while. You’ll have to stick around while the usual legal machinery grinds this mess through the mill. After that, you’re on your own. Oh, and by the way, this’ll interest you. Harriet Crandall isn’t going to press charges against Job. She’s decided on a separation, instead.” He grinned. “You should go down and see her. From all I’ve seen and heard of her, she’s a changed woman.”
“Tomorrow,” said Vickers. “I’ve got another woman to look at right now.”
Trehearne nodded. He said good-by and walked away around the comer of the house. The pepper tree swayed gracefully on the green lawn. Coolin and Molly escorted him, only half in play, to his car. Trehearne drove away. He began to hum, and then to sing.
Oh, yes, I have brought you gold, and I have paid your fee, and I have not come to see you die upon the gallows tree!
THE END