Give Up the Body (21 page)

“And if Willow died first?”

“Then I imagine Mr. Delhart would have had to pass on Willow’s successor.”

“The job Frew is in training for?”

“Mrs. Willow and Arthur are both fairly competent. He’s a little young yet,” Hilton said.

“Nice plush life for Willow,” I murmured. “It seems to me that the so-called “necessary expenses” are always the part that is biggest in a charity donation.”

I stopped and watched him but my innuendo wasn’t getting results. He was as expressionless as the railing behind his back—and a good deal smoother. So I said, “But at eight o’clock Mr. Delhart talked to his attorney about changing his will.”

“I didn’t hear the conversation,” Hilton said. “And anyway, the police know all that—don’t they?”

“Touche,” I admitted. “All right, what does Glory get out of the will?”

If he were going to give me an answer he didn’t get a chance. At that moment noise shattered the air all around us. Quiet stillness was hanging over the pond basking in the sunshine. And that scream blew everything wide apart.

“Good God!” That was I.

“Mrs. Willow—from the house,” Hilton said jerkily.

I looked that way. I suddenly wanted to scream myself. Or be violently sick. I could see a body dangling from the balcony, swinging horribly in the light breeze.

I ran frantically to the house, Hilton coming more sedately behind me. It wasn’t really far but by the time I reached the upstairs hall they had cut Daisy down and she lay on the bed in Delhart’s room.

I leaned against the door jamb, panting. No one paid any attention to me. Tiffin was running back and forth, excited and useless. Jocko was a good deal calmer; he was working over Daisy. I looked for Mrs. Willow but evidently they had removed her before I got there. I crowded to the bed as soon as I had enough breath.

There were half a dozen deputies around and when I pushed my way through them I saw Titus Willow. He was kneeling alongside Daisy’s bed, across from where Jocko worked, and he held one of Daisy’s small, limp hands in his. He wasn’t saying anything, he was crying.

I said, “Can I help, Jocko?”

He didn’t look up at me. “She’s coming out of it,” he said. “She didn’t hang long enough for it to kill her.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t know,” Jocko said shortly.

Either that or he wouldn’t tell me. I looked down at Daisy. Her face was deathly white. The signs of strangulation were gone and she looked corpse-like. Her breathing was strong, pushing her breasts hard against the light yellow blouse she wore. That was her only movement. Her mouth hung open but her eyes were shut. If she hadn’t been breathing so violently, I would have sworn she was dead.

Titus Willow had his forehead against her hand now and his whole pudgy body was shaking. I went around the bed and touched his shoulder.

“She’ll be all right,” I said.

“It won’t happen again, honey. It won’t happen again.” He wasn’t saying it to me, but to Daisy. He didn’t know I existed.

Jocko straightened up. “Better get him away,” he said to no one in particular. I slipped a hand under Willow’s arm and pulled him a little. He came docilely enough, but he walked like a man in a dream. Only when I saw his face there was more than grief. He was no longer pink, he was deathly white. He was afraid, sick with fright. I could feel his muscles tremble under my hand.

He said, “Not again,” and then one of the deputies took him from me and led him out of the room. I wasn’t calloused enough to go after him for a story right then. Maybe if I had been, I could have saved a lot of trouble. But instead I turned to Jocko.

“I don’t know, Addy,” he repeated. “First thing I heard was Mrs. Willow screaming.” He pointed to a door connecting Daisy’s room with Delhart’s. It was opened wide. “She must have come through there real quiet.”

Tiffin popped into the room from the hall then. I hadn’t even realized he had gone out. He held two pieces of cord in his hand. They were white twisted silk. A bathrobe cord, I thought.

There was a line around Daisy’s neck now that I looked more closely. I thought of the cord in Tiffin’s hand and that welt on her neck and I shivered. I thought of her tying the cord to the balcony and looping it around her neck and letting herself drop. I could almost feel the jerk and the bite of the cord in my throat, and the feeling of swinging there in the air. She hadn’t struggled. She must have fainted when she jumped.

Tiffin was glaring at me. “Adeline, you get out of here. I’ll issue a statement at the proper time.”

“I came in to help,” I said stiffly.

“Better go,” Jocko said mildly. “The doctor’s coming. She’ll be okay.”

Daisy’s eyelids fluttered. I turned my back on Tiffin. When he put a hand on my arm I shrugged it off. Daisy opened her eyes. They were blank, drained. They seemed almost colorless. She licked her lips slowly. She seemed in a trance.

Mrs. Willow chose that moment to come in. She literally charged at the bed. “Baby, baby!”

Daisy’s eyes focused. Suddenly she screamed. It was a horrible sound, shrill and piercing and full of fear. I thought of Titus Willow’s face. And now Daisy’s scream.

“Baby,” her mother cooed.

Daisy kept on screaming. She didn’t stop until Tiffin had Mrs. Willow removed. He had me removed too. Mike Mulcahey did the job under orders. We went downstairs into the den.

“I’m going to phone this story in, Mike.”

“No one said for you not to,” he told me.

I said, “Mike, what happened?”

“I ain’t sure, Addy. I was with Jocko. I got her under the arms while he sawed the cord. It was dug in pretty tight. But we got her in time. The old lady was right there with us. She let up screaming and started to give the kid hell all the time we were cutting her down. Ain’t that a hell of a note?”

I agreed it was and I thanked Mike for the realistic details. Slightly nauseated, I went to the phone and called The Press. When that was done I wandered into the hall and tried to get some information. Mike wouldn’t let me go upstairs. He was nice about it but firm too.

Tiffin came down finally and I put myself in front of him. He shook his head and showed me his teeth. “I’ll have to issue a statement to the reporters all together,” he said. “Now go home, Adeline.”

“Where is everyone?” I demanded. “Where is Frew? Hilton? The Larsons?” I hadn’t been able to find them and I wanted to, not only for their statements but for their reactions.

“You won’t be able to see them,” Tiffin informed me. And from the way he said it I knew he meant it. There was nothing for me to do at the moment but leave the field to him. I decided to go to Portland.

It was growing dark when I parked Jud’s car and carried my bag to the hotel. It was a tiny place, with almost no lobby, and I had to ring for the clerk. When he appeared he confirmed the fact that I had telephoned for a reservation and, taking my bag, he showed me to my third-floor room.

I had insisted on the third floor since Jeff had a room on it. And the hotel was so small he couldn’t be over a few doors from me. As it turned out he lived directly across the hall.

My room was small and dark, but clean, and I seemed favored by having what they called delicately a semi-private bath. It really didn’t matter. I had the feeling that the room would be of little use to me except as a base of operations. My first act was to use the telephone.

Jeff was at The Press and they dragged him out of the morgue for me. I presumed he would know all about the story I had phoned in but there was no excitement in his voice when he answered.

“Come here right away,” I said. “I’m hungry and I want to talk.”

I heard someone say, “Who is it?”

Jeff made no attempt to cover the mouthpiece when he said, “It sounds like my wife—the way she orders me around.” Into the phone, he said, “Where are you, O’Hara?”

“At your hotel. Across the hall.”

“She’s closing in on me, boys,” Jeff said, and hung up. I sat on the edge of the bed and burned about that until he showed up.

He came in breezily. “Home-like place, isn’t it? What’s the news, O’Hara?”

“I have a notebook full of it,” I said. Tapping my head to show where. “And the story on Daisy besides.”

“What did Daisy do—tell?” He leaned against the dresser and filled his pipe.

“You don’t know?”

“Don’t screech, O’Hara,” he admonished. “I know nothing.”

“But it’s a front-page story,” I insisted. “I phoned it in hours ago.”

“I’ve been in hiding and I have a notebook full too,” he said. “No one bothers to tell me anything in that joint.”

“Daisy,” I said, “put a bathrobe cord around her neck and tried to strangle herself from the balcony. Her mother found her, screamed, and then gave her hell all the time they were cutting her down. Another minute and Daisy wouldn’t be having hysterics now—in jail.” I had picked up that last item when I had stopped in the county seat for gas and oil. I had got through to the ranch by phone and Hilton had answered and told me. It was a small victory over Tiffin.

Jeff took it without moving or even registering surprise. “That makes the second try,” he said ruminatively. Not counting the one when she shot herself at the age of fourteen. It’s all in the files of The Press.”

“I hope they get that into the story,” I said.

“So they jailed her this time,” Jeff mused, ignoring me. “And I know why.”

“Attempted suicide usually calls for a prosecution,” I said.

He ignored me again. “Well, O’Hara. Let’s eat. I’ll show you how the city mouse feeds his country cousin.”

I was prepared to defend the Chinaman but Jeff gave me no chance. He drove to a dark and dismal neighborhood and led me up a flight of stairs just made for murder and finally ushered me into a breath-taking private room. It was all Chinese silk and jade, and we had to sit on the floor to eat. There was incense, and fragrant tea in tiny bowls. I felt out of place in my business suit. This was the spot where I needed the green pajamas and a kimono.

Murder and violence stayed behind, at the door, until we finished eating. And then, when the food had been cleared away, Jeff wriggled around on his pillows and put his head in my lap!

“Now tell me about your day, O’Hara.”

I blew cigaret smoke in his face but I didn’t make any suggestions that he move. Hardly! “First,” I said, “I want to know why Daisy tried to kill herself before.”

“Mama and papa,” Jeff said. He took my cigaret and paid me back for the smoke I had blown at him. “When she was fourteen she had a crush on her father’s secretary. Mama found some poetry Daisy had written to the secretary. Daisy got spanked. Then Mama showed an amazing genius for psychology. She read the poetry to a houseful of guests. You can imagine.”

“I can,” I said angrily. “That…. .”

Jeff wagged a finger at me. “Save it, O’Hara. As I was saying, Daisy ran away. When they caught her she got another walloping. So she stuck a .22 to her breast and pulled the trigger. She spent quite a time in the hospital for that.”

“Then,” he droned on, “she tied a weight to her feet and threw herself into the Willamette River. That was last year.”

“I know the answer there,” I said. “Mama made her give up her boy friend and get engaged to Frew. He seems to have money.”

“From piecemeal reports,” Jeff said, “young Frew’s origin is hazy. But he has never lacked for money. And when he left college not too long ago someone died—a mysterious aunt, I presume—and left him enough to live comfortably while he’s learning the charity racket from Willow.”

“She seemed reconciled to Frew,” I said, returning to Daisy. “So she didn’t hang herself because she was supposed to drop him for Delhart—not after Delhart was killed.”

“No,” Jeff said, “she tried to kill herself because Titus Willow killed Delhart—and she found out. From what you said Papa is fonder of Daisy than Mama. And I imagine she returns the affection in direct ratio.”

“Do you think that was why he looked so scared there by her bed?” I asked. Jeff nodded and I said, “So why did Daisy have hysterics at the sight of her mother then?”

“Maybe her mother threatened to expose the old man,” Jeff suggested. “Maybe that’s why Daisy tried to do the dutch. He was scared that Daisy might talk when she came out of it.”

“And you’re sure it was Willow that killed Delhart?”

“I had that clothing analyzed,” he said. “There are traces of blood.” He rolled over on one elbow, digging it into my leg. “Science is wonderful, O’Hara,” he said, cocking his head at me. “Those clothes were under water for a while and the lab still got blood and powder and hairs out of them. All I have to do is snatch Willow bald-headed and we can prove the things were his.”

“He is bald-headed.”

“He’s got a ruff over the ears,” Jeff corrected. “And what’s more the hairs were in a rear pocket as if they came from a comb.”

“What kind of powder?”

“In the cloth,” Jeff said. “Lot’s of men use bath powder. Or it could have been after shave stuff. Non-smelly is the kind I have.”

“The private habits of males don’t fascinate me,” I said. “And you’ll ruin my leg completely with your gross elbow.”

He moved and sat up. “You’re so soft and feminine, O’Hara. That’s what I like about you. The gentle, frilly touch. Ready?”

I agreed to go. I actually hated to leave that place but a job was a job and so I followed him, stuffed and docile, back to his car. He drove to The Press and we went up to the City Room. It was a morning paper and so, this late, things were in full swing. It was my first visit to a paper larger than the Teneskium Pioneer and the noise unnerved me.

“Here’s the famous Teneskium telephone voice,” Jeff announced loudly. “O’Hara herself.”

The lack of enthusiasm was dampening. And then someone said, “She doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for, hooking up with Jeff.”

And a small, grey-haired man drifted up to me and put out his hand. “I’m Printz,” he said. “I suppose Jeff told you the job is open as soon as you get settled.”

I dropped his hand and turned to Jeff. He cleared his throat hastily. “Printz—City Editor,” he muttered. “Ah, O’Hara, let’s go to work. This way.” He took my elbow and swung me between a maze of desks. He had the footwork of a ballet dancer. At the door he turned around and remarked lewdly on the general character of the room’s occupants. That done, he hurried me to a chair set before a long table. The table was piled with files and clippings.