Black Is the Fashion for Dying (10 page)

“Oh, thank you,” she said.

She struggled to reach Karl, but the men held her. “Thank you for what?” Gordon asked. But she was smiling at Karl, her face ecstatic.

“You killed her for me!” she cried. “Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you.”

Richard Blake

He was hovering around the portable dressing room, hoping for a chance to see Lisa again, when the policeman found him. “You Blake?” he demanded and when he admitted he was, said, “This way.”

“I already told my story.”

“So you tell it again.”

Blake shrugged. The odds were against his seeing Lisa alone anyway, with two dozen or so assorted cops breathing down people's necks. He followed the blue uniform towards the camp set, thinking of their brief, unsatisfactory meeting. He'd found her staring into her dressing-table mirror just after Mrs. Grumpert had been taken away. Her eyes were haunted. It should have been a love scene, but it wasn't.

“Dick. Did I kill her?”

“Of course not.”

“I did!”

“Well, if you did it was an accident. Nobody knows yet where the bullets came from.”

“I wanted her dead.”

“So did a lot of other people.”

“Then you don't believe—”

“My God, Lisa! I love you. I
know
you didn't.”

She began to cry and he was just reaching for her when the detective came, shoved him out of the dressing room. If he'd only had a few minutes—

The blue uniform came to a halt. Blake saw they were in front of the tent where Caresse had died. The policeman thumbed him inside. He glanced apprehensively at the cot, saw that Caresse's body was gone, and turned to the three men seated on camp chairs at the rear. One was Josh Gordon, another was the precise, school-teacherish detective who had questioned him, Sergeant Grimsby; and the third was a square-jawed man with bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows and crew-cut gray hair.

“Captain Walsh,” Gordon said, “of Homicide.”

Walsh had an open copy of the script on his lap. “You wrote this, Blake?” he asked accusingly. He looked like a labor leader protesting a union contract.

“Well, yes …” Blake said guardedly. “The last part.”

“Then sit down.” Walsh gestured with his head towards an empty chair beside Gordon. “And don't speak unless you're spoken to.”

Blake sat down.

“I got you two here to check some things,” Walsh said. “But that don't mean you're clean.” He examined them through the bushy eyebrows. “One of you had a fight with her today. A wingding, if I heard right. And the other's had trouble in the past.”

“Not really trouble,” Blake protested.

“Shut up!” For a second it looked as though jaw and eyebrows were going to meet. “We don't need any yakking to screw us up. We're doing fine as it is. Two hours and we still don't know what happened.”

Sergeant Grimsby, bent over a leather-bound notebook, nodded in confirmation.

“The dame's dead,” Walsh said. “We do know that. Two gunshot wounds below the left breast. Body still warm on arrival of coroner's physician. No autopsy report yet, but time of death tentatively established. Ten twenty. Pistol found by campfire. Prints smeared, but we still pulled a couple.”

“Ashton Graves,” Sergeant Grimsby read from the notebook. “And Lisa Carson.”

“But proving nothing.” Walsh peered down at the script. “Since they both handled the pistol, it says here.”

“They did,” Gordon affirmed.

“They both had motives, too,” Sergeant Grimsby volunteered.

“Who didn't?” Walsh snorted. “We got motives coming out of our ears.”

“One direct accusation,” Gordon said.

“You don't like Fabro much, do you?”

“You hang it on Fabro, Captain, and I'll buy two tickets for the next police benefit.”

A grin made Walsh seem more human. “I'm one for selling tickets, but that poor old lady …”

“Mrs. Grumpert,” Sergeant Grimsby said.

“Nuttier than a Christmas fruit cake. Kept calling me Al! And the time's wrong. Fabro was in a conference. Been there for ten, fifteen minutes. Six witnesses.”

“All relatives of his wife,” Gordon said.

Walsh looked interested. “You think they could be lying?”

“Fabro swings enough weight.”

“Gavin and I talked to all six, Captain,” Grimsby said. “They aren't relatives. They don't like Fabro any better than Mr. Gordon.”

“I'll buy
four
tickets,” Gordon said.

The script banged against Walsh's knees. “I said no yak-king!” He leaned towards Gordon and Blake. “Look. I'm trying to level with you, which is an unusual thing for a cop. Letting you know a little we know. And I'm about to do another unusual tiling. I'm going to let you kibitz while we question some of the people.”

A blond detective in a tan sports jacket poked his head in the tent. Sergeant Grimsby got up, went outside with him. Walsh pulled a stick of chewing gum from a pocket, cut at the wrapper with a thumbnail.

“Now I want a couple of things from you,” he said. “No talking to Teporters.” Gordon and Blake nodded. “And when anybody we bring in here lies, or is mistaken about something, you're to sound off. Understood?”

“Understood,” Gordon said.

“I want a blueprint of what happened. Every move everybody made.” Walsh frowned at the piece of gum, unwrapped now. “A thing's shaping up here I don't like.” His eyes, the color of faded burlap, moved up to their faces. “You know those locked-room murders they're always putting in books?”

They nodded again.

“Well, this baby, if something don't give, could make all of 'em look like kindergarten riddles.”

Blake said, “You're sure it's murder, Captain?”

Walsh ignored this “Grimsby,” he called. “Start bringing 'em in.”

The two litter bearers, still wearing only loin cloths, were first. Grimsby took notes while the captain questioned them. They were scared, but reasonably coherent. They had done only what Mr. Gordon had told them to do in the rehearsals. Carried the litter into the tent, put it on the cot and fled when the shots were fired.

“Fled where?” Walsh asked.

“Why, where Mr. Gordon said. Into the jungle. Just like in the rehearsals.”

“You talk with Miss Garnet?” Walsh asked.

Gordon said, “They wouldn't during the scene.”

“Before the scene then.”

“No,” the younger bearer said.

“Why not?”

“She told us to knock off the gab.”

Walsh's faded brown eyes brightened. “Made you sore, eh?”

“Well,” the younger bearer said, “it wasn't very friendly of her.”

“Sore enough to shoot her?” Walsh asked sharply. “At the same time the other shots were being fired?”

“Me! You think I …?”

“No,” Walsh said wearily. “I don't think anything of the sort. Where would you hide a gun in a jockstrap? Beat it. Both of you.”

As the hearers left, brown faces relieved, Blake studied the captain. It was something he hadn't thought of: this possibility of the shots coming from somewhere besides the Webley. A rifle maybe. With a silencer on it. Improbable, but if something like that had happened it would clear Lisa. Not that she wasn't clear.

Josh Gordon, evidently working along the same lines, asked, “Do you know whether or not the bullets came from the pistol. Captain?”

“Boys in Ballistics checking that.” Walsh jerked his head at Sergeant Grimsby. “Bring in the next one.”

The next one actually had to be brought in and propped against the tent's center pole. Poor Ashton Graves, still in his hunter's costume, eyes half closed, face an unhealthy soap-white. Drunk as a fiddler's bitch, Blake thought, and found himself inanely wondering what a fiddler's bitch was. Dog or lady friend?

Walsh was studying the swaying figure. “You able to talk?”

“Certainly—old boy,” Graves said in a surprisingly clear voice. “Can—always talk.” He seemed to be in a world where time had slowed down. “My job—in life.”

“Your job right now is to tell us what you did up to the time of the shooting.”

It seemed to take forever, but Graves managed to cover everything, not missing a move and even quoting some of the dialogue. He told of leaving Lisa by the pistol, of leading the bearers into the tent and telling them to put the litter on the cot, of bending over Caresse and pulling back the blanket to see where she was hurt.

“You're sure you pulled the blanket down?” Walsh asked.

“Quite sure.”

Walsh swung around to Sergeant Grimsby. “It was over her when we got here, wasn't it?”

Thumbing back through his notebook, Grimsby found the page he was looking for. “‘Entire body covered by blanket,'” he read.

“Who put it back?” Walsh eyed Gordon. “You do it when you found she was dead?”

“I didn't touch anything.” Gordon's face was alert. “What are you getting at?”

“I wish I knew.” Walsh sighed. “Make a note, Grimsby.” Grimsby made a note. Walsh scowled at Graves. “Go on, man.”

There wasn't much further to go. Still speaking slowly and distinctly, a scholar translating hieroglyphics on an eroded monument, Graves told of Lisa's entrance, of the two shots, of the struggle for the pistol and of his wrenching it from Lisa upon the arrival of the hunters. “It fell—beside the fire.”

“Which is where we found it,” Walsh observed. He glanced at Gordon. “Everything check?”

“That's the way I saw it.”

“Okay.” Jaws working over the gum he had at some time put in his mouth, Walsh regarded Graves speculatively. “You hear anything strange? Like, maybe, two shots from somewhere else?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Now what's with this speech we hear you made?” His eyes went to Grimsby. “With all the big words?”

Grimsby already had the right page in his notebook. He read, “‘Could kill Caresse, completely compunctionless, carnivorous, contemptible creature.'”

“You left out calumnious,” Gordon said.

Grimsby put it in.

A faint smile, more the echo of a smile than a smile, curled the corners of Graves' mouth. “Meant every—word—of it.” His eyes seemed clearer.

“That don't sound so good,” Walsh said. “With the dame being killed a couple of minutes later.”

“Would admit—I killed her—old boy,” Graves said. “If could think—how I did it.”

“Very sporting.” Walsh nodded agreeably. “You work on that. And so will we. Maybe we can get together later.”

“Pleasure,” Graves said.

A policeman came and took him away. Grimsby wrote industriously in his notebook. Walsh took out his gum, examined it dubiously, then put it back in his mouth again. “Complicated,” he said. “But that lad's not as drunk as he'd have us believe.” A strange detective appeared, handed him a cardboard box and an envelope. “From Ballistics, Captain.”

“Fine.” Walsh ripped open the envelope, at the same time saying, “Get them two gun guys.”

The two gun guys proved to be the prop men. They waited uneasily just inside the tent while Walsh finished reading the report he'd taken from the envelope. Both men, Blake thought, looked as though a sudden noise would land them in the next county.

“Alf Romero,” Walsh said at last. “And Gus Romero. Brothers?”

“Uncles,” Gus said. “I mean he's my uncle. Alf is.”

“And your story's you loaded the pistol with blanks, stuck it in the holster and never touched it again?”

“Is truth,” Alf said.

Walsh shook his head sorrowfully. “Trouble is, it can't be.”

“Is truth,” Alf said.

“Let's find out.” Walsh took the lid off the cardboard box. “First thing is to identify the weapon.” He took a pistol out of the box, held it out to Alf. “Webley-Fosbery. Generally comes in .455 caliber, but this is a .325. First one I ever saw.”

Reluctantly, Alf edged up to the pistol.

“Take it. Been dusted for prints.”

Alf took it. Gus moved to his shoulder. “Same pistol,” Alf said. “Same scratch on butt. Same serial number.”

“Which one of you loaded it?”

“We both load,” Alf said. “Gus give me the blanks, I fill clip, put clip in pistol.”

“You're sure it was blanks.”

“All we got,” Gus said.

Walsh frowned, very serious now. “This is important. Can you prove you loaded it with blanks?”

Blake said, “I saw them, Captain. When I went to tell them they'd forgotten the pistol. Blanks.”

Walsh sighed. “I was afraid of that. So now we got the pistol loaded with blanks. Who put it in the holster?”

“Me,” Alf said. “I run out on set.”

Gordon said, “I saw him.”

“Okay. Pistol in holster. Now we jump to the fire. Pistol by fire. Same pistol.”

He paused, bushy brows almost hiding the burlap eyes. Grimsby stopped writing, stared at him expectantly. So did the others.

“Pistol by fire,” Walsh repeated thoughtfully. “Don't prop men generally collect weapons after a scene?”

“Scene not over,” Alf said.

“Neither of you touched it?”

“We don't go on set.”

“Dandy.” Walsh took a clip from the cardboard box. “This was in the pistol.” The burnished metal gleamed in the light. “Take a look at it, Alf.”

Bending over the clip, Alf said, “Same one I put in pistol.”

“Now these.” Plucking them one by one from the clip, Walsh lined five blank cartridges on the cover of the script he still held on his lap. “Same blanks?”

“Same. Only two missing.”

Walsh collected cartridges, clip and pistol, put them back in the cardboard box. Then from the envelope he produced two other cartridges. “Found these here, in the tent.” Cupping his hand he dropped the cartridges in it, thrust the hand out at Alf. “What about 'em?”