Out of Time Page 9

  ‘And Daisy did?’

  ‘That’s how I recall it.’ She drained her glass. ‘But God, I don’t know if I’m remembering more than I remember, if you get me. Honest, I didn’t know the kid very good.’

  ‘I know you didn’t know her real name, but does something beginning with “V” ring any bells?’

  ‘ “V”? Like in victory?’

  I nodded.

  She shrugged. ‘Hey, I’m going to have another little drink. You keep me company?’

  ‘I think I would enjoy that,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got to go see some people.’

  ‘O.K. Yeah.’

  ‘One last thing.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Do you know where I could find anyone else from those days who knew Daisy?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she said positively. ‘Lots of them.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the graveyard, honey. I open the papers and I read a name and I remember it just in time to say goodbye. I’m a dying breed. Better ask your questions now.’ And without again inviting me to stay, she rose to refill her glass.

  Chapter Twelve

  I was due to call on the Belters and intended to arrive there sooner rather than later. Even so, I drove home first, to catch a bite to eat and smack my face a few times to freshen up. We’re a rough, tough lot, private eyes. When I have more time I bang my head against a wall.

  There had been considerable action on my telephone while I was out. I had messages to call back Miller, Maude, my lady friend, and my mother. While thinking about who to honour first, the telephone beat me to it and rang itself.

  It was Douglas Belter.

  ‘I am almost on my way,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please don’t come here tonight.’ His voice was always controlled but this time it sounded particularly steely.

  I hesitated before speaking.

  ‘If it’s not convenient . . .’ I began uneasily.

  ‘Paula’s mother, Ella Murchison, died this afternoon. We are in considerable turmoil.’

  ‘She died? What of?’

  ‘She went to sleep some time after lunch and just died.’

  ‘Was she unwell?’

  ‘Not particularly. Except that she was generally not very well. You met her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We are full of making arrangements tonight.’

  ‘Yes. I can understand that.’ Belatedly perhaps, I said, ‘Please accept my condolences.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I will call again when we have ourselves straightened out.’

  I sat by the phone doing nothing for what felt a long time.

  After a while I thought again about making the return calls which were due.

  Instead I went out, to Biarritz House.

  It was not apparently buzzing with activity. There were few cars in the visitors’ parking spaces and hardly anyone in the foyer.

  The nurse at the reception desk was new to me. I asked for Connie Howard.

  ‘She’s not on duty now. Can I take a message? Or is there someone else who can help you?’

  ‘One of your residents died here today.’

  The nurse switched a gear. I guess I hadn’t looked at first like a grieving relative.

  ‘In fact, two of our people unfortunately have passed over. We have had a real sorry time.’

  ‘I’m speaking of Mrs Ella Murchison.’

  The woman nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Is the doctor who issued the death certificate on the premises?’

  She was somewhat taken aback. ‘Why . . .’ she stopped as she decided what to say. ‘I’m not sure.’

  I took that to mean that he was around.

  ‘I need to speak to him about the cause of death,’ I said. ‘Nothing complicated.’

  ‘Mrs Murchison’s family was in here this afternoon. I’m sure that they have all the necessary information. What was your relationship to Mrs Murchison, please?’

  ‘I work for the family,’ I said, ‘and there are a few details that I still would like to have. What with the turmoil, and everything. You know. I won’t take much of the doctor’s time.’

  ‘I’ll call around to see if Doctor Bentonworth is still on the premises.’

  He was. I joined him in a windowed corner of the dining room. The evening meal for ambulatory residents was over and, except for a boy at the other end of the room who was refilling sugar bowls, we were alone.

  Bentonworth was a gaunt man in his late thirties, who hunched over his coffee cup as if his shoulder blades hung from a wire running down from the ceiling.

  I sat across from him and he took a slow slurp from his cup before saying, ‘You wanted to see me?’

  I introduced myself and said that I worked for the Belter family.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ he said. He looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot.

  ‘What exactly did Ella Murchison die of?’

  He looked again. Raised an eyebrow momentarily, dropped it back in place and said, ‘Heart failure.’

  ‘Did she have a history of heart trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you her regular physician?’

  ‘She had her own doctor, as do most patients here. But if you mean did I know her medical history, I did. I do.’

  ‘Was she unwell?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Was her death expected?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will there be a post mortem?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shouldn’t there be?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To find out why she died when she wasn’t expected to.’

  ‘There is nothing suspicious about her death. People of eighty-seven often just die one day.’

  ‘How precisely did you determine the cause of death?’

  ‘Her heart stopped.’ He shrugged. ‘Mr Samson, do you feel there are unusual circumstances associated with Mrs Murchison’s passing? If so I would appreciate hearing why.’

  ‘I believe that she was behaving strangely in the last few days.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Some visitors, including myself, found that she became unresponsive when they tried to talk to her about certain events in the past. The nurse who knew her best said this vagueness was not typical of the lucidity problems she sometimes had.’

  ‘To me you are conveying a change in behaviour which is consistent with sudden, if unexpected, death in old people. Slight changes in behaviour or voice are sometimes the only clues we have of alteration of condition. Frequently they are only recognisable in retrospect.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ I said. ‘But she was being asked to remember things that might be painful to her, things she would not have forgotten.’

  ‘In which case, the additional emotional stress might be the underlying extra cause you are seeking. Unless you are implying that somebody murdered her.’ He studied me closely. ‘Is that what you are implying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘To me it just feels wrong.’

  He looked at me in silence.

  ‘Where is the body now?’ I asked.

  ‘The family has made arrangements.’

  ‘I guess I’d better talk to them.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a nuisance,’ I said.

  ‘I am used to nuisances,’ Doctor Bentonworth said. He sipped at his coffee, and made a face. ‘Cold,’ he said. He was still frowning as I left the room.

  In the foyer I asked the reception nurse for Connie Howard’s home address.

  ‘I can’t give you that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Would you call her at home and ask whether she would let me come by now, or at least talk on the phone about Mrs Murchison? If she says “no” then fair enough.’

  Mrs Howard said ‘yes.’

  The address was a small apartment building less than two miles from Biarritz and Connie Howard greeted me in the entra
nce hall as I came in.

  ‘I saw you coming up the walk,’ she said.

  Her apartment was on the first floor, in the front, where she had a good view of the street. I followed her in, and found a slim woman already sitting in an armchair cradling a half-full martini glass.

  ‘This is my friend, Christine,’ Connie Howard said.

  ‘Hello.’ Christine lifted her glass to me.

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘I think not,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Off duty, she projected rather less of the motherly organiser than when I’d met her at Biarritz House. ‘I am wondering how you feel about the death today of Ella Murchison.’

  Quietly, Mrs Howard said, ‘It made me sad.’

  ‘She liked Ella,’ Christine said.

  Baldly I said, ‘The timing of her death feels wrong to me. I want to know if there was anything unusual about it. You knew her better than anybody else, so I thought I’d come and ask.’

  ‘She seemed all right this morning.’

  ‘Nothing gave you a clue she was about to die?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘How was her mind?’

  Nodding, she said, ‘All right.’

  ‘Was her family in today?’

  ‘Her daughter and the Japanese housekeeper spent a few minutes a little after ten. Not long stays.’

  ‘And when did she die?’

  ‘They think she went to sleep mid-afternoon. She never woke up. I found her about half past five.’

  ‘Did she usually take a nap?’

  ‘Now and then; not every day.’

  ‘Did she show any signs of stress or of being bothered by the rush of visitors recently?’

  Connie Howard sat back. ‘There have been a lot, but if anything I felt it stimulated her. Old people suffer dreadfully from inattention. What isn’t used doesn’t work, by which I mean their minds, and I think that’s the source of a lot of mental lapses.’

  ‘So, she was all right as far as you knew.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you were surprised that she died.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Suspiciously surprised?’

  After considering a moment Mrs Howard said, ‘I suppose not. I was sorry. But it happens.’

  I scratched my head. ‘All right.’

  Christine, in the pause, said, ‘Weren’t you on the box the other night? A Tanya Wilkerson interview?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ll never be a TV star, will you?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Connie Howard asked, ‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’

  ‘I guess not. Perhaps I’m trying to see what isn’t there.’

  ‘An occupational hazard?’ she asked.

  I left restless. I didn’t much feel like making the telephone calls which I owed. When I thought of them, they seemed together a wall too high.

  I am uneasy with unexpected death. I sat in the van a long time. But at the end, it still felt wrong.

  I started the van and set off to drive home.

  The physical activity of shifting gears and stopping at red lights took me out of my contemplative frame of mind. I finally made a decision, to stop at the Indianapolis Star on the chance of finding Maude Simmons.

  As I made my way through the desks on her floor I saw the light in her office. People not being in wasn’t today’s problem.

  Before the war, most stores in Indianapolis had their stock on shelves from floor to ceiling. Maude’s office was not the same shape but the density of files and boxes and card indices and books was strictly in the traditional mould. She might have abandoned the green visor and the pencil collection behind the ear, but the sea of VDUs stopped outside her office and her typewriter wasn’t vulnerable to power cuts.

  She was bent over her desk as I came in and she didn’t look up. She just said, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You left a message I should call,’ I said.

  Slowly she lifted first her gaze and then her body. She leaned back.

  ‘I thought I’d save the dime.’

  ‘You sure they didn’t disconnect you before you noticed?’

  ‘Now, now. It isn’t like that.’

  ‘I forgot. You’re in funds.’ She assessed me. ‘I trust you are in funds ...’

  ‘Yes.’

  She reached for a large blue folder and took out a notepad and some envelopes.

  ‘This is real work you had me do,’ she said. ‘These people were active a long time ago. Nothing easy like picking up the phone and asking a couple of guys whether the mayor is gay. This was down in the tombs stuff. Out of my office stuff.’

  I wanted to assure her that money was no object, but found I couldn’t say the words out loud.

  ‘The Edwards murder trial,’ she said. She took one of the envelopes, opened it and withdrew a stack of photocopies.

  ‘It was a big case, you were right. We had stories on it, for weeks, running up to and through the trial. You want a summary?’

  I took out my notebook and opened it.

  ‘O.K.,’ Maude said. ‘Date is April 21, 1940. Mrs George Bennett Raymond Edwards telephones the police at eleven thirty p.m. to say that she has just shot her husband to death. Considering that G. B. R. Edwards is the son and heir to a well-known quantity of money – a kid like you may not have heard of the Edwards Meat Company, because it was bought out after the war, but it was bigger than Stark and Wetzell then, if you remember Stark and Wetzell. Anyway, the police arrive to find Mr Edwards dead with two holes in him, body on the conservatory floor, Mrs Edwards with bruises on her arms, a cut lip and a torn dress. She says he was beating her and she shot him in self-defence. They arrest her, hold her and, without much delay, try her for murder.’

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  ‘At the trial there was a lot of character and background testimony. They were married less than two years and weren’t getting along. He accused her of fooling around. She said he demanded unusual things of her which she did her best to comply with. Counsel asked for details, and got them, which was pretty shocking in those days. And it was clear that Edwards was a pretty strange character. A reputation as he grew up as a boozer, gambler and whorer in the kind of rich-kid fashion that doesn’t date. An apartment on the near north side where he kept women, over a period of years. But it stopped when he married. She was younger. Like eighteen, with him whatever it works out . . .’ Maude squinted at a page and found her date. ‘Born January 19th, 1911, which made him twenty-seven when he married and twenty-nine when he died. You with me?’

  I caught up with my notes and said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘As soon as they married he started making a public project out of his reformation, his devotion to his wife, his regrets for the excesses of younger years. Everything except something simple like fixing on a career and by the time they’d been married a year there were rumblings that his “spirit” wasn’t quite in harness. There was quite a bit of defence testimony about tendencies to secrecy and unpalatable associations.’

  ‘What about the prosecution?’

  ‘Made something of the fact that she fired two shots instead of just one, and that both hit him in the region of the heart.’

  ‘Whose gun?’

  ‘Hers.’

  ‘And her injuries?’

  ‘Prosecution said self-inflicted. Defence said not. Experts from each side agreed the possibility of the other side’s case. Inconclusive.’

  ‘How close were the shots fired from?’

  ‘Very close. But disagreement on what it proved.’

  I said, ‘I know she was found not guilty but what tipped it? I’ve been told it was an all-male jury and that she batted her eyelashes.’

  ‘Probably something to that, but a key witness was from the Horse Thief Detective Association.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘A detective agency.’

  ‘T
he witness was a P.I.?’

  ‘Hired by the deceased to establish how the accused spent her spare time. With particular attention to male companions.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she rated a completely clean bill of health. The guy followed her for nearly four months and didn’t get an eyebrow out of place. He’d filed a string of blank reports, all of which were entered in evidence – along with Edwards’ responses saying that he was still absolutely certain she was cheating. He didn’t go quite as far as asking them to fabricate a little something.’

  ‘And so they didn’t. It’s a noble profession, Maude,’ I said.

  She sat back and flipped through her notepad. ‘While we’re talking about him, that is virtually all the information I could find. I only looked for the easy stuff, since I was concentrating on the murder case. I can try to find out if there’s anything else.’

  I looked at her. ‘You’ve lost me,’ I said.

  ‘Normal Bates. He was one of the people I was checking for you.’

  ‘Bates?’ I must have looked as blank as I felt.

  ‘Normal Bates was the P.I. on the Edwards case.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I thought this was all about the Edwards business.’ She looked at me as I sorted through the meaning of what she was saying.

  I said, ‘Daisy Wines?’

  ‘Mrs Edwards.’ She paused. ‘You must have known that.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  I put my pen down and closed my hanging jaw by resting it on folded hands. It is a posture I adopt to look like I’m thinking.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘They were all names from the same pie,’ Maude said. ‘Why else . . . ?’ She began, but didn’t finish her sentence.

  I picked up my pen again. ‘Let’s do this in short simple sentences, spoken slowly.’

  ‘Born Vera Wert, in Logansport in—’

  I interrupted. ‘Vera?’

  ‘That’s right. Ready?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Born in 1920. For some reason I don’t have the date. She came to Indianapolis in 1936 and became a moderately successful club singer with a little-girl-lost kind of style. O.K.?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Rich kid Edwards spotted her singing. Probably one day when he thought he was slumming. He courted her, for getting on to a couple of years. It is said that she was reluctant to marry him, because of the difference in their stations.’