Sinful Woman (6 page)

“I must have forgot the shell in the barrel.”

“Pretty careless you’re getting.”

“Sheriff, if Mr. Spiro feels upset, I feel it double, because I ought never to have lent the gun in the first place. I thought I threw the ejector and snapped the trigger, that’s all I can say; but a wholesaler’s man was waiting for me out back and—”

The Sheriff nodded at Dmitri, who went on: “And so, Bushy, he showed Vicki how we can do the scene, so Sylvia will love it. He say ‘Vicki, girls fight till dresses are torn to rags, and maybe Sylwia don’t look good in a scene where her dress is all torn off. So one piece of the dress, one piece of the other girl’s dress, catches in the gun—the trigger. We cut in, show the dress caught in the trigger, but the girls don’t see it. So, Sylvia almost has the gun. She twists the gun from the other girl’s hand, but oh!—oh!—oh!—oh! People see the piece of the torn dress pull tighter, tighter, tighter—and
boom!
The gun goes off, and there is the other girl dead on the floor. So we tie one henadkerchief to Vicki’s leg, one to the gun tryger, tie the henadkerchiefs together. Vicki takes the gun, I grab it, twist his hand. Bushy, he stands by the camera, which was an electric fan on the water cooler. Bushy, he say, ‘come around slow now, so it’s in close to the camera.’ So we come around slow, handkerchiefs tighten, Vicki say, ‘Ah yes, I see now, is very good, yes, yes—come up very slow’—and
boom!
There was Vicki on the floor, and I can’t believe it. I say ‘Vicki, Vicki, speak to me.’ I say—”

“O. K.”

The Sheriff, who had evidently found this recital a little difficult to keep up with, knit his brows and in a moment said to Mr. La Bouche: “I didn’t see any signs of a fight.”

“What fight?”

“Well—?”

“Oh, they didn’t do the fight, if that’s what you mean. We allowed for that. A fight, it’s like jungle stuff, it’s a cutter’s job anyway. You shoot five hundred feet, or whatever you need, and he puts it together. All that mattered was the torn dress and the gun. So we laid it out how that would break. We figured the cell would be nine feet long, five feet wide, with two out for the bunk. So we marked the set with the ashtrays and chairs, set up the camera over the water cooler, and started her going. I mean, it was an electric fan. The henadkerchiefs were the torn dress.”

The Sheriff asked a number of questions of the doctor, checked the routine work that had been done by his men and Mr. Britten’s, asked the Coroner if there were questions he wanted to ask. The Coroner wanted more information from the young interne, and was pretty exact about rigor mortis, the extent of internal bleeding, and such things. He said he thought he would be ready for the inquest tonight, if the autopsy showed nothing to extend the inquiry. The Sheriff nodded to the undertaker. “O. K., you can move him. Hold him for autopsy and the police will instruct you. You can open any time, Tony.”

Departure of the body cleared out quite a lot of vehicles out front, to say nothing of many uniforms inside. It gave Tony a chance to set his office to rights, and the undertaker’s truck was hardly out the gate before he had charwomen at work in there, and was busy himself, setting things in order. When the room was restored to its former condition the Sheriff asked: “Is Miss Shoreham here?”

“I had the maid take her to the ladies’ room.”

“Will you ask her to step in?”

“Right away, Sheriff.”

Her astonishment, when she saw him, was complete. He went over, took her hand, and led her to a chair. “You have a time remembering I’m sheriff of this county, don’t you?”

“All I saw was police.”

“They help. But it’s my case.”

“I’m sorry about the lunch.”

“I too. I was there waiting.”

“I kept thinking about it, believe it or not.”

She had let her hand stay in his, and now leaned her head against his arm with the trust of a weary child. “I guess I just wanted to be with somebody that loves me.”

“You think I love you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, you’re right.”

He sat on the arm of her chair, and put his arm around her, and she caught it in her hand and held it close, and cradled her head against his coat. They sat that way a long time. Then he said: “What happened?”

“I don’t know what happened. I was over by the stream, and I haven’t got it straight what they tried to tell me. They were rehearsing some kind of scene.”

“They said you didn’t like it.”

“It wasn’t that. It was them.”

“I kind of wondered about that part.”

“It didn’t make any difference how they did it, I wasn’t going to do the picture or have any more to do with them. They could just have well—never started their rehearsing.”

She began to cry, and he knelt beside her and wiped her eyes with his big bandanna, and blew her nose.

Then he got up, went to the window, stood for a long time looking over toward the mountain stream. When he spoke it was with the utmost casualness:

“Who killed this man?”

She stopped crying suddenly, and he turned around and looked at her. Then she said: “I did.”

“Why?”

She started to talk, and rehearsed the events of the morning. At the end she said: “I’m not ashamed of what I did, though I’m not proud of it. I love my sister more than I love anybody. She’s not responsible, and what he was about to do, what he would have done, was a shocking, horrible thing. I feel I did right. It was the only way out that I could see.”

“What did your sister say about it?”

“I don’t know if she knows it yet. I suppose she must, but I haven’t heard from her. While we were talking, Vicki thought I might go out there, where she was parked just outside the door here, and get her to come with me, and take her away from him. Or, I guess that’s what was in his mind. Anyway, he went to the door and told her to drive in and he’d meet her at the hotel, and she went.”

“Why did Spiro make it accident?”

“Hays office.”

“That’s right. I forgot.”

“If I get smeared, Spiro can’t release Sugar Hill Sugar. It cost him a million, and if it stays in the can he’s ruined.”

“Now, I get it.”

Presently he asked, “And why did
you
make it accident? They couldn’t lie to me, if you didn’t back them up.”

“My sister.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“My sister loved this man, and I love her. There is nothing I won’t do to prevent her from ever finding out what I did. Don’t try to use what I’ve told you against me. I want you to know the truth, but if you try to convict me, I shall say I never told you any such thing, and they’ll believe me. I’m not one of the leading actresses of the world for nothing.”

“Will they believe
her?
”

“She knows nothing to tell.”

“Do you remember the ending of that picture, The Glory of Edith Cavell? Where Cavell marched to the wall for something that was done by somebody else?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“I remember it very well. When she was before that court, telling her story, she looked a lot like you looked just now. You remember the court didn’t believe her?”

“I never saw the court scene.”

“You—
what?
”

“Except for the shots I was in, the whole courtroom sequence was done in retakes and I never saw them.”

“The court didn’t believe her, but shot her just the same to bust up her organization. She didn’t know it, but the man she was trying to save, the one that was more important than she was, was already dead. So the court shot her, knowing she hadn’t done what they were trying her for. The chief judge of the court hated it, and that was the most awful scene I ever saw in a movie, where you and him were facing each other there. He looked like he loved you as much as I do. It’s funny you don’t remember that.”

“It begins to come back to me.”

“I thought it would.”

He considered, said: “I’m taking you back to your hotel, and for the time being I’m not putting you under arrest, and I’m not putting you under guard. I could, but I’m holding everything in this case till I talk to your sister.”

“Now, I’ll tell you something. I love you, and I think you’re the only man I’ve ever loved. Don’t forget that, judge.”

“I won’t. I’ll take you back to town.”

They rode with him in Mr. Britten’s car. At the hotel, Mr. Britten suggested they enter through the kitchen and go up in the service elevator, as such a crowd of reporters, photographers, fans, and cops were visible inside, evidently waiting for her, that they might have trouble getting through. But when the Sheriff went up with her to her suite they found it empty. Sylvia, leaving him in the sitting room, went to her bedroom to phone the desk, and when she came back she looked frightened. “She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“She didn’t come back here.”

“Did you send her back to California?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then don’t worry, we’ll find her.”

He went down in the service elevator again, climbed into the car. But when Mr. Britten learned of the dragnet that must now be put out to find the missing girl, he gave an exclamation. “I knew there was something funny about this. And that girl, I heard about her when I began talking to the gamblers, but they didn’t have a word to say about her.”

“She’s daft.”

“She’s—What?”

“Not all there in the head. I doubt if they even saw her. From what Shoreham said to me, she just follows along, and waits in the car, and does what she’s told, and nobody pays any attention to her. Just the same, she’s driving around somewhere. I want her brought in, and Shoreham does.”

“Did it strike you they were covering up?”

“In what way?”

“It all checks up, I guess, or will when we get our lab reports in. And it was just about the kind of cock-eyed thing that does happen. But, I had the feeling that every time I turned my back they were looking at each other.”

“Did you figure on suicide?”

“Yes, I did. There were powder burns, and that put it within the ten-inch rule. And, I always said, if cops have made it a rule they won’t consider suicide from firearms unless there are powder burns, they ought always to consider suicide as a possibility when there
are
powder burns. And she got that divorce, and she’s a good-looking girl, and maybe he was stuck on her, and maybe he was tired of living. But why would they go to all that trouble to cover up?”

“Account of her, maybe.”

“They’re taking one awful chance.”

“She’s worth big dough to them. And maybe she’s a little daft too. Maybe she’s the kind that would go and join the Lithuanian Red Cross or something, so he didn’t die in vain.”

“You breaking it open?”

“I don’t know. We got to find that girl.”

M
R. GEORGE M. LAYTON,
of the Southwest General Insurance Corporation of North America, sat in his mid-town office planning his afternoon, his manner suggesting the jut-jawed determination that a field marshal might show, counting his reserve of tanks. He proposed to call on six newly-arrived divorce seekers, named in the newspaper clippings that lay on his desk, and sell them, or try to sell them, Southwest General policies. This was something he did every day, but it wasn’t something to be approached perfunctorily, as just one more job of salesmanship. It involved, as he often told the luncheon club, of which he was a member, the most careful sort of planning, the most rigid attention to the probable peculiarities of the prospect, and even due regard for special conditions, such as weather. So he sat at his desk, a compact, red-haired, freckle-faced bundle of aggressiveness, dictating memoranda to Miss Jennifer, his secretary: the notes that would not only assist him in his sales talk, but form the basis of the “presentation” that Miss Jennifer would prepare, bind in imitation leather, and stamp with the prospect’s name, as the give-away for the second visit. He frowned slightly when the phone rang, but suspended dictation as she stepped into her anteroom to answer. “Home office calling, Mr. Layton.”

“
Home
office?”

“Well it’s Los Angeles. It must be—”

“Put them on.”

When the call went through he barked: “Contact! Southwest General of N. A.! Layton talking!”—this being his idea of a telephone gambit, as indicating on-the-job-ness, make-it-short-ism, and close-the-deal-ation. The voice at the other end, taking cue at once, barked back: “Contact! Greetings George M. Layton! R. P. Gans talking!”

“
Who
did you say?”

“Gans! Vice President for Claims!”

“Oh, yes of course, Mr. Gans.”

Mr. Layton’s voice, which had been so dark, firm, and confident a moment before, quavered a bit at such overwhelming eminence. Mr. Gans went on: “You got that Shoreham flash?”

“You mean about the divorce?”

“I mean about the murder!”

“The—
what?
”

“Baron Victor Adlerkreutz, that lug she’s been married to, has just been killed in what is described as a shooting accident in the Galloping Domino, a gambling resort about two miles from you, and you’re to get on that case at once. It so happens that we’re on that risk to the tune of one hundred thousand bucks, every cent of it payable to Sylvia Shoreham, and every cent of it due on a verdict of accident. Layton, when a man gets killed less than one year after taking out a thirty-thousand-dollar straight life policy, less than nine months after taking out a twenty-thousand-dollar endowment policy, and less than six months after taking out a fifty-thousand-dollar accident-and-health policy, it
can’t
be on the
up-and-up!
Layton, I don’t make any charges against the wife, but I say the beneficiary under these policies is automatically under suspicion! I don’t say she killed this man! I don’t say anything. But I’m telling you it’s worth one hundred thousand dollars to Southwest General that she doesn’t get away with any false claims! You’re to see that every bit of evidence we’re entitled to is put in the record, that the District Attorney is advised of the existence of these policies, that we get a special autopsy, and above all else that she be held and that the body be held until I arrive there. Have you got that?”