1944 - Just the Way It Is Read online

  ‘What on earth for?’ Peter demanded, stripping down to his underwear.

  ‘Who’s going to scare burglars away? I sleep heavy myself.’

  ‘Well, go and shake her. Maybe she can cook.’

  ‘Now you have said something. I thought that was just gristle between your ears.’ Duke fumbled for the switch and turned on the light. ‘Wake up, sleepy head,’ he called. ‘We want some breakfast.’ Then he stopped and took a hasty step forward.

  Timson was sprawled across the bed, his head thrown back and his hands clenched. He had a big throat wound which glistened in the hard light The sheets were red and there was blood on the wall, at the head of the bed and on the carpet.

  Duke took a deep breath, feeling his skin prickling and his stomach flutter. He walked very cautiously to the bed and touched Timson’s hand. It was cold and clammy like damp clay. Duke guessed he’d been dead for some time.

  Treading with care, he went round the room, but could find nothing to catch his attention. There was no sign of Lorelli. Somehow, that didn’t surprise him. With Timson dominating the room, it seemed as if Duke had come suddenly into another house, into another world for that matter.

  He looked rather hopefully for a weapon but didn’t find one. This upset him more than finding Timson. It meant murder. It meant all sorts of complications and, worse, it meant the police.

  He stepped to the door again, examined his clothes and shoes carefully for bloodstains, didn’t find any, turned out the light and backed into the sitting room. He closed the bedroom door carefully as if it were made of egg shells.

  ‘Why don’t you chuck her out of bed?’ Peter yelled from the bathroom. ‘You ain’t scared of her, are you?’

  Duke poured himself out a large whisky and drank it slowly. He felt he needed it. Then he wandered into the bathroom.

  Peter was under the shower. ‘This is terrific,’ he said. ‘Come on in.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Duke said, feeling the whisky mounting to his head. He began to undress slowly.

  Peter climbed out of the bath and dried himself vigorously with a towel. ‘I smell whisky,’ he said, sniffing. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking already?’

  ‘I was wondering who it was,’ Duke said, pulling his shirt over his head. ‘I smelt it too.’

  Peter stared at him. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?’

  Duke stepped under the shower. ‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ he said, turning on the cold tap. He let the icy water run over him, pricking his skin and clearing his head. He stayed there for several minutes and then turned off the shower. He began to towel himself as Peter began to shave.

  ‘We’ve got a corpse on our hands, Pete,’ he said, gloomily. ‘A corpse with a nice throat wound.’

  Peter nearly cut his own throat. He put his razor down hurriedly. ‘I didn’t get that,’ he said, staring at Duke with startled eyes. ‘You know it sounded just like you said we’d got a corpse on our hands.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Duke returned, beginning to lather his face. ‘That’s exactly what I did say.’

  Peter laughed uneasily. ‘Oh, well, what’s a corpse between friends?’ He picked up his razor, then looked at Duke suspiciously. ‘But I wish you wouldn’t fool so early in the morning.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I like to be fooling,’ Duke said, running his razor over his face carefully. ‘I must be pretty tough. My hand’s as steady as a rock.’

  Peter stood still. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Duke looked over at him. ‘Sorry, Pete,’ he said. ‘But, it gave me a bit of a shock. You remember Timson? He’s in there with his throat cut.’

  ‘Timson . . . with his throat cut?’ Peter hastily grabbed his dressing gown. ‘You’re crazy. We left your girlfriend in there last night, not Timson.’

  ‘Don’t rush in there,’ Duke said, hurriedly. ‘It ain’t anything like as nice as it sounds. What the hell are we going to do?’

  Peter left him and Duke heard him cross the sitting room, go into the bedroom and turn on the light. He shrugged and washed the soap off his face. Then he put on his shirt, slipped into his trousers as Peter came back. His face was the colour of cold mutton fat.

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Duke said. ‘There’s some whisky in the other room.’

  ‘This gets me,’ Peter said, following him into the sitting room. ‘I think I want to be sick.’

  ‘Don’t be a dope,’ Duke said, sharply. There’s nothing to be sick about.’

  Peter sat down slowly and reached for the whisky. ‘Who did it?’ he asked. ‘And where’s the girl?’

  ‘That’s what the cops’ll want to know. You don’t have to anticipate them,’ Duke said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to make some coffee. I’ve got some thinking to do.’

  ‘Coffee?’ Peter repeated, taking another pull at the whisky. ‘It’d choke me.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking you to have any, I was asking you to make some,’ Duke said shortly. ‘Get a move on, Pete, it’ll give you something to do.’

  Peter felt better when he’d finished his drink. He got up and plugged in the electric kettle. While he put cups and saucers out and hunted up the milk, Duke lolled back in his armchair and stared out of the window. His mind was very active.

  He didn’t say anything until Peter had made the coffee, then he sat up, reached for a cigarette and lit it. ‘We’ll have to call the cops pretty soon,’ he said. ‘But before we do, we’ve got to get our story straight.’

  ‘Are you talking for both of us or is that an editorial “we” you’re using?’ Peter asked.

  Duke grinned at him. ‘I’m sorry, Pete, but you’re in this up to your neck.’

  ‘I was afraid of that. Oh well, so long as I know, but you might tell me what it’s all about.’

  ‘I wish I could. I’ve only got part of the story.’ Duke finished his coffee, heaved a satisfied sigh and poured himself out another cup. ‘It goes well with the whisky, doesn’t it? I’ve invented another ten second breakfast by the look of it.’

  ‘I wish you’d get down to business,’ Peter said, irritated. ‘This is serious, you know.’

  ‘Okay, okay, don’t get flustered. It’ll work out. It always does. Let me put you wise. Maybe you’ll be able to see something that I’ve missed,’ Duke returned, putting his empty coffee cup down and lying back in the chair. ‘It began by Kells coming to see me.

  Remember? Kells told me that Bellman wanted me to throw in with him. Some bull about my reputation as a gambler being good for his club. He was offering big money. The way I saw it was that Bellman was being threatened by someone and he wanted me in with him so that if trouble started I could look after it.

  ‘I’ve had enough trouble in the past, so I didn’t go for the proposition. I dusted Kells off and when he had gone, I got a telephone call. It was from a woman. I found out later it was the kid I brought here last night.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Peter demanded.

  ‘I caught Schultz trying to wring her neck - so I suppose she’s a friend of his. Apart from that I have no idea,’ Duke said. ‘Anyway, we may find out some more about her as we go on. It’s an angle that wants looking into. Well, she telephones me and advises me to leave Bellman alone. “I’d hate to see you dead” is the way she put it. All right, that sort of talk never worries me. I decided that perhaps I ought to talk with Bellman. Before I do, I dropped in to see Schultz.

  ‘Schultz, as you know, runs a gambling joint and rents me a room where I work. I’ve known him for a while and I’ve thought he was pretty smart, until a few hours ago. He’s in with everyone, knows everything about Bentonville and was one of the first to move into the town when it began to get prosperous. I didn’t know it was Lorelli who telephoned me and I didn’t know that he knew Lorelli. I wouldn’t have mentioned the call if I had known, but I didn’t and I had to shoot off my big mouth. I get nothing out of Schultz except that Bellman might be scared of Spade. It’s a funny thing
, Pete, but everything in Bentonville finally comes down to Spade. He’s a guy I’ve got to investigate. He might be interesting. All the same, I feel that Schultz knows more than he tells me and probably what he does tell me is a lie.

  ‘Well, I see Bellman and while I’m talking to him a little guy bursts in and takes a couple of sneaks at Bellman with a popgun. I was so scared that I upset my whisky and it gets in the little guy’s face. So Bellman is still on his feet, when the little guy remembers an appointment and beats it.

  ‘No more from Bellman except a nice shade of yellow. He isn’t going to open up, so I leave him. I think a word with Schultz might be an idea, so I go over and look in his window. I’m glad I took the precaution, because there’s Schultz kneeling on this kid Lorelli with a nice thick rope round her neck.

  ‘I open the window quietly and stop him doing anything foolish. Lorelli has only to open her mouth and I spot she’s the one who telephoned me about leaving Bellman alone, so I think I ought to take care of her and I bring her away. Schultz doesn’t seem to like this, because he opens up with a lot of fancy shooting and very nearly gives me a heart attack.

  ‘I bring her along to you and that’s as far as we go. Except that she wouldn’t talk. She knows something because Schultz warned her if she opened her mouth he’d come after her. Now, you know as much about it as I do.’

  Peter screwed up his eyes. ‘Where does Timson come in?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t mentioned him.’

  ‘It wasn’t until last night when your girl mentioned his name that I remembered him. He used to manage the Chez Paree and I’ve always looked on him as a kind of stooge. What he’s doing in there I don’t know.’

  ‘On the face of it,’ Peter said, uneasily. ‘This Lorelli girl could have killed him. Do you think Timson came to get her back and she knocked him off and bolted?’

  ‘Why Timson? He’s nothing to do with Schultz. It would add up if Joe was lying in there with his throat cut.’

  ‘Joe? Who’s Joe?’ Peter asked, bewildered.

  ‘Oh, he’s just a kid Schultz has to drive his car.’

  ‘We can’t sit here all day making problems,’ Peter said. ‘We ought to tell the police.’

  ‘Sure, we’ve got to do that, but how much are we going to tell them? Do we bring in Schultz and Lorelli?’

  ‘We’ll have to. Otherwise they’d want to know why I didn’t sleep in my bed.’

  Duke went over to the telephone. ‘I think a word with Paul might clear the air,’ he said, and dialled.

  Peter lit another cigarette and began to pace up and down.

  Duke watched him thoughtfully and then shifted his attention when Schultz’s voice floated over the line.

  ‘Paul?’ Duke said. ‘This is Harry.’

  There was a pause, then Schultz said, ‘What do you want?’ His voice had a rasp in it.

  ‘Do you know where Lorelli is?’

  ‘What’s that to you?’

  ‘Don’t act like a dope. This is serious. I brought her to Pete Cullen’s place last night and now she’s disappeared.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ There was a sneering laugh in Schultz’s voice. ‘You must have been pretty drunk last night, Harry.’

  Duke’s face hardened. ‘Okay, so I was pretty drunk. What makes you so sure?’

  ‘You were either drunk or you’ve gone crazy,’ Schultz went on. ‘Lorelli never left my side all last evening and all last night. She’s right here beside me. If you don’t believe me, ask Joe. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Duke said, feeling that Schultz was going to hang up, ‘I don’t want to talk to Joe, I want a word with Lorelli.’

  ‘I don’t think she wants to talk to you, but I’ll ask her,’ Schultz said.

  Duke heard him say, ‘Harry Duke’s on the line. He wants to speak to you.’

  There was a pause, then Lorelli’s voice came to him. ‘Yes?’ It was cool and impersonal.

  ‘What’s the idea?’ Duke said, ‘Schultz says you were with him all the evening. You’re not letting him get away with that, are you?’

  ‘Why not? Where else do you think I was?’

  ‘You’re a dope, sister,’ Duke said, suddenly angry. ‘When I looked in last night, your fat friend was putting a rope round your nice little neck. If I hadn’t stopped him, he’d have killed you. It’ll pay you to play with me. Where did you get to last night?’

  He heard her say to Schultz, ‘Here you speak to him. He’s crazy.’

  Before Schultz could get back on the line, Duke hung up. He looked at Peter with cold intent eyes.

  ‘She’s back with Schultz,’ he said, briefly. ‘Her story is she never left his side all night. Joe’s their witness. We’ve got to think up something fast, Pete, or we might get nailed by the cops.’

  Peter went a little white. ‘Why, that’s ridiculous. They can’t get away with that.’

  Duke stretched. ‘I’m afraid they can,’ he said. ‘If we can’t explain Timson away, we might even burn for this. The cops would be glad of a chance to pin something on me.’

  ‘What the hell can we do?’ Peter said, running his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Wait here a second,’ Duke said, and went into the bedroom.

  After a few minutes he came out again. ‘It’s going to be suicide, Peter. The stage is set for it and all we’ve got to do is to plant a razor in there.’

  ‘Good grief! You can’t do that! If they find out, we won’t have a chance to beat a rap.’

  ‘By the time they find out,’ Duke said, grimly, ‘I’ll have my hands on the guy who did kill Timson. But, who says they will find out?’ He went into the bathroom and came back with Peter’s razor. ‘Shan’t be a second,’ he said and went back into the

  bedroom again.

  Peter poured himself out another whisky. He felt he needed it.

  Duke came out and shut the door. He made a little grimace as he sat down. ‘It’s all set and it looks convincing,’ he said. ‘Now, listen, Pete, this is our story. You, Clare and I met last night. You saw her home and joined me at my apartment. We had a few drinks, then we went out to get some air. We ran into Timson who was tight as a tick. He’d got a bottle of Scotch and we, being a little high ourselves, helped him finish it. Timson passed out and we brought him back here. We left him on the bed and went to sleep in this room In the morning we missed your razor, checked up and found Timson. We’ll let the cops work out why he did it.’

  Peter stared at him. ‘Why, it’s crazy! You don’t know what Timson was doing all the evening. He might have been with someone.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who he was with if we make it late enough. He came here between three and four in the morning. Okay, that’s when we met him. If you keep your head, we can bluff it out. I can’t see any other way out.’

  ‘You’re a crazy devil, Harry,’ Peter said, miserably. ‘Whenever I get mixed up with you, there’s trouble.’

  ‘Skip it,’ Duke said, roughly. ‘We’re in a jam and we’re going to get out of it.’

  The telephone began to ring. Peter went over.

  ‘Oh, Peter,’ Clare said. ‘Do you know where I can get hold of Harry Duke?’

  Peter stared at the telephone, a sudden surge of jealousy going through him. ‘What do you want with him?’ he asked, trying to keep his bitterness out of his voice.

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ Clare pleaded. ‘It’s about Timson.’

  ‘Timson? What about him?’

  ‘You remember Harry Duke asked me to telephone him if I heard anything about Timson buying property? Well, he has, He has bought Pinder’s End.’

  Peter said, ‘Hold on a second, Clare.’ He looked at Duke, ‘Timson’s bought Pinder’s End,’ he said.

  Duke blew out his cheeks. ‘That could mean anything,’ he said. ‘May I speak to her?’

  Peter thrust the telephone into his hands and stood away. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s a free country, ain’t it?’

  ‘That would seem to
be the idea at first glance,’ Duke returned, dryly. ‘This is Harry Duke,’ he said to the telephone. He heard Clare catch her breath sharply and he felt again the sudden thickening in his throat.

  ‘Oh, Mr. Duke, I’ve been trying to get you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s about Timson, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘You say he’s bought Pinder’s End?’

  ‘Yes, the deal went through yesterday. He’s buying for the Bentonville Land Corporation. No one has ever heard of them.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Duke returned. ‘Maybe I can find out something. Not that it’s done Timson any good. We ran into Timson last night and we all got a little drunk. He slept in Pete’s bed and we found him this morning dead. He cut his throat.’

  Peter snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘She’ll never believe a yam like that,’ he said,

  Duke waved him to be quiet.

  ‘You say he’s dead?’ Clare asked. ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Yep. He seemed sorta depressed last night, but we thought nothing of it. We’ve only just found him. I’ll call the cops now.’

  ‘I’ll come out,’ Clare said. Her voice had gone flat. ‘I – I suppose Peter’s mixed up in this.’

  Duke’s mouth tightened into a thin line. ‘We’re both in it. But it don’t mean anything except a little publicity. That won’t hurt Pete.’

  ‘No . . . I’ll come out,’ and she hung up.

  Duke put the receiver back on its cradle with care. ‘I suppose she’s sore that you’ve got into a jam,’ he said to Peter. ‘Anyway that’s how she sounded.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ Peter returned, not meeting his glance. ‘I suppose I’d better put through a call to the office.’

  Duke picked up the telephone again. ‘Before you do, I’ll have

  a talk with the cops. You’ve got to keep your head, Pete. They’ll

  try and shake you, you know.’

  ‘That’ll be all right,’ Peter returned. He stood close to Duke

  as he dialled police headquarters.

  ELEVEN

  A few hours later there was a council of war held in Sam Trench’s office.