There I sat.
Patrick was just outside, within reach. I could only open my mouth to scream, but I could not. My throat was paralyzed. I could feel the sickening pounding of my heart and it seemed to pound up into my throat, stuffing it with silence.
It was queer to have this happen now, just when I felt sympathy for this man. Nobody liked him, as Steve Banning had said, but he was a good doctor. And now, all at once, I had liked him, and because of it I sat as if nailed to this chair and eight feet away he sat eyeing me with those horrible fly’s eyes and pointing that horrible little black gun.
Where was Patrick? The house and its surroundings were painful with silence. I could even hear my heart.
“You talk too much,” the doctor said softly.
I nodded, to agree. I had to agree. And I had to look at him all the time, and at the gun, and suddenly I realized how hideous he was, grotesque with his big body and short legs, his near-sighted distorted eyes, his wide flexible thick mouth.
He said, in that same gentle tone, as if sitting by the bed of a dying patient, “I did get Casey in the head, though. He came home when he had no business to. It was his bad luck to quarrel with Rob Murray that night and arrive home just as I had the safe open and his money in my pocket. I ducked back of the bar and there on a shelf was his little gun and when he ran to look in the safe I got him back of one ear. He never knew what hit him and he was saved from dying miserably of a malignancy nobody knew about till we did the post mortem.”
That was my chance. I might have said something clever to divert him.
I could not say anything. I sat stiff as a rod.
A gleaming mirthful look came into the eyes and he took them off of me and gazed at the gun, twisting it in his hand, and taking off the safety catch, which, until then, I had not realized was on.
“I had this pistol with me, but I was lucky not to have to use it. It has been faithful. It disposed of John Adriance long years ago and I was prepared to use it again, but if I had used it on Casey I would have had to have got rid of it in the limestone sinkhole where Adriance’s body has been hidden ever since.” He made a sort of chuckling noise and said, ‘‘For a long time things grew on the bank of the brook near this house with a special luxuriance because it fed from the body of John Adriance. It was the only thing he ever did that was any earthly use.”
I felt really sick now. Where was Patrick? The blasted idiot, leaving me here with this monster, I thought.
The thought perked me up. Briefly.
“The gun bothers you, Mrs. Abbott?”
“Of course!” I croaked.
He put it and the hand that held it in his pocket.
“There is no reason for you to look at it, yet. But I’m going to talk. I’m going to tell the things I’ve kept to myself too long. First, I want to tell you that I never meant to involve Rob Murray or Steve Banning. That is, to start with. I only wanted to get rid of Guy Adriance. I stole Casey’s money purposely to plant it in Guy’s things in order to tip off the police. Guy had to be got rid of because if he married Alexis Murray, Kitty would be rid of me. Once she was sure of some other income she never would have me near her again. She loathed me. She called me a baboon with a toad’s face. She compared me to John Adriance, and recently to her handsome son where the money had come from. He guessed right away that I had stolen it, and why, and he thought that I had done a clever thing. That is, at first. And then everything began to go against me. First, Guy found the money too soon. He told his mother he had got it from a sweepstakes and that he was going to blow—his word—but first he’d fill up with some champagne which they had got to celebrate his engagement to Alexis Murray, which he was sure he could pull off last night. Because he guessed that I had stolen it, and why, and he thought that was very funny, for some reason, I knew he had to die at once. I had picked up his gun in his room a few days before.… Of course all my plan was made days in advance, but it did not include murder to start with—and I knew now he had to die tonight before he said too much to his mother. Suicide was the answer and it had to come at once. Theft. Remorse when his mother learned about the money and Casey. Suicide. In that order. Don’t fidget, Mrs. Abbott. The gun is in my pocket and I’m keeping a hand on it, but I’m not going to use it till I say my say.”
I was glad not to have to look at it. The gun was a little monster, short and vicious, like himself. I tried to sit still. Patrick would come. But to have to wait, for Patrick to submit me to this awfulness …
“I planned everything. I made a date with Kitty for ten-fifteen last night and I went to Casey’s cabin on the way, walking over from the little pike, knowing vaguely what the combination of his safe was because I had heard him say often as a joke that Faye’s birthday meant a lot to him. I looked up her birthday on her card in my files and decided that would be the combination, in one shape or another, for his safe. Everybody knew he kept his money in the cabin. He was spending all his time just lately up at the barn with that prize red runner of Rob’s and how could I even imagine that this would be the time he would suddenly get mad and go home? Otherwise everything was easy. The house was not locked up and neither was the safe. That’s Kentucky for you, Mrs. Abbott. People carry their easy-goingness too far in Kentucky. I put the bills in my pocket. They were all together in a fat roll with a rubber band around them. I wasn’t in the cabin even five minutes, including getting rid of Casey himself. It doesn’t take long to shoot a man. Or a woman, either.” The eyes twinkled, and he said, “I was ten minutes late in picking up Kitty but she always expects that, and we drove straight back to your hotel and were having a soft drink in the bar when that blonde woman fell down outside your door. I didn’t know who she was then, unfortunately. That woman and your husband have ruined my whole plan. Well, she’s paid for it by now, I hope, and even if I can’t get your husband I’ve got you. He loves you, my dear.”
Tears came in my eyes and the man had the effrontery to offer his breast-pocket handkerchief. I ignored it, and sniffed.
“At that time I didn’t think much about Miss Benson. My mind was full of Guy Adriance. And I did not want to be absent long from downstairs. I had gone to the hotel to be seen and I wanted to be seen by everybody. Nobody knew I had murdered Casey, but it was wise to be seen around, and for that reason I had also put off two hospital calls until much later than I make it a rule to visit. But, unfortunately, Rob went down to the cabin, found Casey dead, tried to reach me, and, most unfortunately, got your husband instead. Your husband had no business meddling in this case, Mrs. Abbott. You’re what we call furriners. You do not belong in Kentucky. Don’t move, I said.”
Out came the gun. I swallowed, and with a mirthful twist of his thick mouth he stuck the gun and the hand that held it back in his pocket.
“From then on my luck went bad. Kitty and I left the hotel and went on to my country club. There I finally got Rob’s message and we drove back to the Murrays’. Kitty talked too much, but that was all in my favor, as I realized later on. The angrier Rob could be pictured as being the more likely—I knew that very soon when the thing had to look like murder and not suicide—it could look as if he had murdered Guy Adriance. I am getting ahead of my story. Then as you know I took Kitty on home from the Murrays’. Guy followed us at once and I had barely got the money in his case—I went through Kitty’s bath and stuck it in a bag which happened to be just inside his clothes closet—when by some hideous chance he found it. I knew when he found it. He stayed in his room long enough to wipe off the fingerprints which I had purposely left on the money. Kitty and I had gone to the kitchen where she was making us some lemonade and Guy came out, swaggering and important. He said he had not told his mother the true amount of money he had. He said he would split with her and pay off a certain obligation he had to meet and take the rest and go to Nevada. He was going to get back into gambling, he said. He said he detested the callow life of the bluegrass country and he couldn’t stick callow Alex Murray. But first he was going to drink that champagne. He fixed up an ice-bucket and went off into the parlor with it alone. Kitty was beside herself. Everything had been wonderful. Guy was going to marry Alex and in some way or other she was going to bleed Rob Murray for a far better living than she had got off me. I have been supporting her ever since her husband died …” He paused and smiled gleefully. “But often she has found me niggardly. I would not put money into this house. It belonged to Murray and sooner or later he would put her out so I refused to spend money on it the way she did when Guy sent her a few thousand a few months ago. We sat in the kitchen forty minutes while Guy sat and drank alone in the parlor. I knew at once what she planned to do. He would get drunk, and he gets drowsy when he has had too much, and then she would take the money herself. She was through with me forever and she said so. She told me then to go. She said she would take a long hot bath and wait till he was asleep and let him sleep it off. And I knew that when Guy slept she would take Casey’s money. Also I knew she would take the bath. When Kitty had a problem she always lay and thought it out in her bath.
“I left Kitty and, walking past the open living-room door, I stopped to look in. Guy was sitting on the sofa smoking and drinking. He had fetched another bottle of champagne and the empty stood on the tray. He had half-filled a glass dish that Kitty treasured highly with cigarette ashes and stubs. The window was open and I would have to get him over to the window somehow and then shoot him. I Would merely have to speak to him, because he had no special reason, then, to fear me.
“I went out the front door, walked around the house and waited till I heard Kitty’s bath running. I knew she would be getting ready to get in the tub and take a long soak waiting for her son to be dead drunk. Then I walked around to the window. I spoke to him and he got up and staggered over and I shot him in the heart region. He fell back and down on the floor. Then I realized I had made a serious mistake. I had wiped the revolver clean of fingerprints and I was wearing gloves! I could not risk climbing in the window to press the gun into his hand because Kitty might have heard the shot and look in. Besides, it was too difficult for me. The window was not high off the ground but I am not built for climbing. Kitty was quite right in saying that I am built like a baboon, but unfortunately I do not have the ape’s aptitude for climbing.
“I reached up, took hold of the shade cord, drew it down, then, with my gloved hand, I wiped the sill and the lower window frame clean of any possible trace of myself, and closed the window. This too was a mistake but it could be put off on Kitty. I put the gun in my pocket and drove away in my car. I was passing Murray’s barn before I thought of a solution. Rob always kept a gun in his desk drawer. He hardly ever locked up anything. I parked and walked along the lane. There was nobody at the barn. The red horse whinnied softly and neighed not at all softly after I found the gun and ran off along the barn lane. I drove to a side road, discharged two bullets—everybody knew that Rob kept a blank under the trigger as an extra safety measure—then I drove back, parked on the pike, ran along the bridle path back to the Adriance house, and laid the gun under the closed window. I drove like mad into town and made my two calls, both at the same hospital, and just as I got home Kitty telephoned me again about her son. She suspected Stephen Banning. And then she mentioned Daphne Benson and, without telling me just how, said she hadn’t told me but that the yellow-haired blonde had been mixed up with Guy and that he had been meeting her or somebody almost every night out by the pike. As luck would have it, Mrs. Robison called me then because the blonde was sick again and I was able to leave Guy’s gun in Miss Benson’s Ford car. Everything would have been fine if it hadn’t been for your husband, Mrs. Abbott. I had even fixed up special medicine for Miss Benson. Not like that I made for Kitty, and also for myself, but a medicine that is deadly to anyone with organic heart disease. Don’t move, I said!”
I shivered. How long was this going on? A deadly medicine? But she would not know about it and it sounded like heaven by comparison to this.
“In the end it was Kitty or me. I knew that. I’ve always known it. She knew I killed Adriance. I don’t know how she knew but she knew. She knew I killed her son. But I had her in the hollow of my hand. She was a sleeping-pill addict and I knew I could get her whenever I chose and make it look like suicide. She always despised and detested me. She called me poor white trash and she was right. But to me she was always the pretty little girl with the pretty ruffly dress in the pretty house on the pretty street—unattainable, always.”
The screen door opened and Patrick walked in. As I tumbled off my chair with relief and joy he took a sudden sidestep and hit the doctor under the chin. The doctor fell to the floor and Patrick took possession of the gun.
“It’s not loaded,” a drawling voice said from the dining-room door. Out stepped the deputy sheriff. “After you tipped us off, Mr. Abbott, we took out the clip. The gun was in his bag in the car. His technician was suspicious and she helped us by searching his office for any more ammunition. She found none. You see, she found those other tracings, the ones he made with that machine of Miss Benson, and she knew they were of a bad heart …”
“She has no authority to judge!” shouted the doctor.
I was eyeing Patrick.
“Do you mean you let me sit here with him with that gun …”
“We had him covered all the time, ma’am,” the deputy said.
“I’m talking to my husband!” I said, trying to look dignified while being a heap more or less on the floor.
“We wanted him to talk,” Patrick said. “I saw you sitting there being chummy. He didn’t show the gun then. I went around to meet the doctor who had come along the bridle path—you see, the sheriff and his men had already come in that way, too, and the heart specialist was bringing this electro-cardiograph so we could take tracings of Gusdorf’s heartbeat and see if it matched those he gave me as Miss Benson’s …”
Gusdorf got to his feet.
“That’s not ethical!” he shouted. “Such a doctor must be a quack.”
“He’s doing all right with Miss Benson,” Patrick said.
“You mean she’s alive?”
“She is, Dr. Gusdorf.”
It was later that same day and we were with the Murrays on our way to the afternoon meeting at Keeneland. Casey would’t’ve missed a Keeneland meeting if all the stars fell down, and he would have had no patience with Rob Murray’s doing it, or Faye or Alex or Steve, just because he was dead. And of course Keeneland was why Patrick and I were here.
“The doc certainly got around,” Rob said.
“Nobody ever liked the poor man, but he was a wonderful doctor,” Faye said. “I always felt sorry for him, hooked up with Kitty the way he was.”
“He had nerve, though,” Patrick said. “After he calmed down and let us take an EKG his heart pounded right along so that it was identical with the tracings his technician gave me this morning. I doubt if we could have got him on that evidence alone, but it helped, and it made him add a little to his confession. A sergeant had taken it down in shorthand what he told Jean while the deputy watched him through the crack in the dining-room door. He told us one or two other things, nothing very important. And then the deputy let him go in to see Kitty, whom he had laid out beautifully on her pretty bed, and he swallowed his own special capsule.”
“Sounds like Goring,” Steve Banning said. “So you’re the reason they didn’t believe my confession, Pat?”
“I don’t think you were convincing enough, Steve. Your reputation is too good. Things like that count in places like this.”
“I say they do,” Rob said. “Why don’t you kids get married next week?”
“Are you crazy?” Alex said. “We’ve got examinations, and Steve has his tobacco to transplant and, anyway it’s all planned for June …”
“And I’ve got to have my house painted and get my new car,” Steve said.
“Okay,” Rob said. “I just didn’t want you to think I’d stand in your way. Under the circumstances.”
“Speaking of circumstances,” Patrick said, “I’m not altogether clear about your confession, Alexis. You had me convinced for a while.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “I went straight over there after he left our house. He was sitting there drinking with the window open and I said my say and tossed in that ring. He made me so mad …”
“Why?” Patrick said.
“Because he told me he was married, you big dope. He said the window was open as a signal to his wife who would be along in a minute on the pike and for me to get the hell out of there.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I was ashamed to. I had been so damn dumb. Why, I had even seen her car parked near the gate, and I went there. But she had gone—if it was she—when I came back. I returned to the house and then I decided to go and see Steve. I just couldn’t wait to see him. I love the guy, darn it. By the time I passed the house again the police were there and I heard them talking about Guy being shot, and about Steve. I knew he’d be suspected so I decided to say I did it. You showed up right away so I said it to you. After all, I did cause the trouble, didn’t I?”
“Oh, no, honey,” Faye said, “It was in the cards. Jean is the brave one. Imagine sitting there listening to the man talk!”
“It was my fault,” I said. “I could have gone easily at first. I felt so sorry for him, worrying about Kitty’s committing suicide. I knew she hadn’t done it, because her teeth were in a blue dish in her bathroom.”
“Try to use that as evidence, pal,” Patrick said.
“It’s perfect evidence,” Faye declared.
“What really made him talk was my telling him Patrick had called in a heart specialist to see Miss Benson.”
“You need your head examined,” Patrick said. “Doctors are frequently jealous of one another. You ought to have known Gusdorf would be, even if he hadn’t been in the mess up to his neck.”
“What made you suspect him to start with?” Faye asked.
“Everything was so neat. The shade was so exactly drawn. There were no fingerprints. No fingerprints on the windowsill looked good for Kitty because she had not wiped her prints off the champagne bottle and the dish she had taken to the kitchen.”
“Why did she call you, Pat?”
“Well, I suppose she knew Gusdorf did the dirty work and she wanted to keep herself out of it. Kitty would always put Kitty first.”
“What were you doing there today, Faye?” I asked then.
“Telling her off,” Faye said. “I suppose I should feel rather awful about it. Well, I do.”
“You shouldn’t,” Rob said. “Pat, has that Miss Benson got any money, do you think?”
“I doubt it.”
“Something will be managed,” Rob said.
“That calendar!” I said suddenly. “What about the calendar?”
“Gusdorf took it,” Patrick said. “He got worried because I insisted on that post mortem. He was afraid I had picked up something at Casey’s. While we were at Steve’s he went back to the hotel, took Hattie’s keys—she was off making herself coffee—let himself into our room, returned the keys, and searched for any possible thing I might have picked up which had given him away. He took the calendar because he had seen it at Casey’s. You all had, of course. Faye’s birthday was marked. Faye’s birthday was in his files. He was worried about the calendar so he took it away and dropped it in his incinerator when he got home. Good thing he took it because it resulted in my keeping tabs on Miss Benson. I went to see her, at once, there at Robison’s Tourist Home, thinking she might have been in our room while we were out.”
Rob said, “Gusdorf sure covered ground last night.”
Patrick said, “No place was far from any other. The pike past Adriances’ isn’t much used. His coupe looks like thousands of others. And he had a good deal of luck. Not enough, fortunately.”
We were turning in at the gates at Keeneland. Ahead of us lay the course and the clubhouse, beautiful with the dignified green simplicity of the bluegrass. Without anybody’s saying so we all knew there would be no more talk of murder here.