The Narrow Cell. Ronal Kayser
Читать онлайн книгу.
shirt,” said he, “and a coat.”
The box spring cried out, the gardener jerked visibly as from a blow. His lips worked under their shelter of greying moustache. He whined: “If you got to know. I had to go look for Lally. I went down to the Shore Club, only she wasn’t there.”
“Lally! What is this? Why didn’t you say so?”
Fred Crush’s face got brick red. On his cheekbones traceries of hairline capillaries gorged into blue prominence.
He exploded: “Well, God A’mighty! Corinne told me not to mention it! Lally’s on a drunk-bat, I suppose. They’re trying to hide that, they expect me to lie and get myself in Dutch with the police . . . What does Corinne care about me? They’re all alike, that family!”
Lieutenant Kenmore could not imagine Corinne in the role of Lally’s defender. There was certainly more to it than that . . .
The gardener had jumped up excitedly.
“If you had to put up with them yourself!” Fred Crush exclaimed. “The way they impose on a man! Take just one thing—eating. Of course they’ve got my ration books, so’s to do all the shopping together. But you take meat . . . The government never intended a big roast should go on Henry Bowling’s table for him to carve off more than the family can eat, and then send the bone out to the kitchen for the hired help. I don’t care if you are a cop, you have to admit that’s not right.”
But he didn’t give Kenmore a moment to admit it, he plunged on:
“Oh, they’ll tell you what a fine fellow Henry Bowling is—was. How much he did for civilian defense. Well, maybe, but there’s more to it than that. You take those sandbags down there—” the gardener gave a short bark of laughter. “On account of the housing shortage, he was afraid the government’d step in and make him rent that little cottage to some War worker. But a family in it would mean kids. Not that there’s anything they could hurt. Only you know how it is. Kids holler and yell. They’d be a nuisance. He saw it coming, and he figured if he made the place into an air raid post, he wouldn’t be bothered.”
Fred Crush wiped a bent and nervous forefinger across his moustache, both ways. And went on, headlong:
“There’s your Henry Bowling. He knew which side to spread the butter on—his side. And when butter’s rationed, it makes a man stop and think . . . At that, he was the best of the lot. When I see those girls that never lifted a finger in their lives—one of them drinking herself to death—and Corinne just as bad, driving everybody else to drink—! What the hell have they got to kick about? I’d like to know. They’ve got every advantage and luxury money can buy. Everything in the world. And they’re bawling because the moon wasn’t thrown in. I tell you what it is—
“Selfishness! It’s spoiled selfishness. I’m not any crazy Red,” he shook his head at Kenmore, “but the whole family makes me good and swearing mad. Miz Axiter, too. Damned if she doesn’t think those girls ought to have the moon!”
“Yes,” said Kenmore, “if it’s true, I can see how you feel.”
But this lengthy outburst hadn’t distracted his attention from the original issue.
“You brought Lally home, then?”
“No,” said Crush, “she wasn’t at the Club.”
“One more thing. This.”
The gardener peered at the envelope, and shook his head.
Lieutenant Kenmore carried that object back to the guesthouse where Donald Heyes, police photographer and fingerprint technician, was now busy.
“You had better take a picture of this, and see if there are any prints on it.”
Donald Heyes took the picture.
He said there were only unidentifiable smudges on the envelope. “Plenty of other prints here, if you got any suspects to match ’em up with.”
Kenmore replied everyone involved might conceivably be suspected. “Only we can’t start fingerprinting them yet.”
He had to be content with bundling together the pink sheets along with the gas mask and helment; these last articles he could fairly claim, since they were property issued through the war duty office authority.
“Too bad he wasn’t wearing that,” said Heyes.
“You mean the mask? It wouldn’t have made any difference, this type isn’t designed to exclude carbon monoxide.”
Nevertheless, Lieutenant Kenmore examined the mask attentively; the white, very thin rubber inlet valve was lifelessly weak. “He couldn’t have worn it, anyway.” And the lieutenant transferred his attention to the heater. This had two valves; one upon the heater base, and the other at the wall tap, whence ran a reinforced tubing to the heater.
“Check these prints here,” said Kenmore, discovering the grilled top of the heater bore visible impressions.
He had next to pay a call at the mortuary and, according to regulation procedure, remove and list Henry Bowling’s clothing and personal effects to seal and deliver to the police department’s property clerk.
In this occupation, Kenmore generally found both food and opportunity for reflection. It followed the first interrogation of witnesses, and with the conflicting testimonies fresh in mind.
Though Kenmore knew he was not going to get any useful perspective of Henry Bowling by walking around and seeing him through a dozen pairs of eyes. (The armband and whistle he laid aside. Wallet, wristwatch, keys, spectacle case, tobacco pouch, stickpin and signet ring went into another heap.) For what any man sees in another is the reflection of the observer’s self-interest, attributes and attitudes. Kenmore thought, “A missionary doesn’t look the same to a bishop and a cannibal.”
(He tied the shoes together by their laces.)
And how the missionary would look to a homicide detail detective would be neither the sum of those observations, nor a balance struck between them. Henry Bowling as employer, as sector warden, and as family head didn’t engage John Kenmore’s professional attention. No matter what the man had really been like; only, how must he have seemed to the murderer he meant to denounce?
(The clothing, neatly folded, made another pile.)
And with the clothing went the individual; what remained was The Victim. Who had to be seen as such; and not in any perspective Kenmore could get by adding Wyeland’s estimate with the several contributions of Lauren Wallace, Mrs. Axiter, Corinne, Lally, and Fred Crush.
Leave the exact weighing of pros and cons to the Recording Angel; leave Kenmore’s own personal and human philosophy and feeling out of the matter; what he had to do now was see eye-to-eye with the killer . . . a nebulous figure concealed in an unexplored shadow Henry Bowling hadxast sometime and somewhere.
Eye-to-eye with the killer?
Lieutenant Kenmore had not reached that point. It was, he thought, “Like playing chess blindfolded,” against an adversary who operated at no such disadvantage and besides had every move plotted in advance.
VII
“The grave is a very small hillock, but we can see farther from it . . . than from the highest mountain in the world.”
Grandfather always quoted this when he preached a funeral sermon.—THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CATHERINE HOPE.
The Marine Research Institute grounds occupied a picturesque headland; they were not otherwise picturesque; consisting principally of redwood cottages surrounding the architecturally barren central buildings.
“Wait here,” Lieutenant Kenmore told Donald Heyes, and went hurrying along a footpath to the third cottage beyond the pier entrance.
Darwina Roydan, opening the door, widened her eyes at her caller’s request.
“The