Give Up the Body (7 page)

I had surprisingly little trouble with her. She was evidently too weak from shock to resist. With Daisy’s vague help I got her to the second floor and into the room at the far end of the hall. Daisy turned on the light. I laid Glory on the low bed.

“Get some towels,” I told Daisy.

She trotted away like a little girl. I got Glory’s shoes and stockings off and then began to unbutton her blouse. She had had her eyes shut but now she opened them.

“You killed him,” she said.

“Not me,” I assured her. “I’m your pal from the Pioneer.”

“Thought you were a man,” she said. Because of the old felt hat I was wearing, I thought. Glory said, “What are you undressing me for?”

“You’re wet,” I told her.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were a man.” She closed her eyes again.

I finished undressing her. I was pleased to find that a lot of Glory’s physical perfection lay in her expensive brassiere and girdle. Undressed, she had a tendency to sag here and flare there. Daisy came in and I stopped feeling smug in my comparison and went to work.

The towels Daisy brought were the size of young rugs. They were rough and heavy and just the thing for this job. “You start at her feet,” I directed, “Rub hard.”

Glory turned softly pink under our efforts. Daisy worked in childish silence, but evidently too weary to object to being ordered around. When we were finished we rolled Glory under the covers. I towelled her head vigorously.

She opened her eyes again. “What are you doing.”

“Drying you,” I said.

“I fell in,” she announced in a distinct voice.

“How?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I could feel Daisy stiffen.

“Fell in the pond,” Glory said. “You killed him.”

I said patiently, “I’m not a man, Glory.”

She pointed at my hat. “On the water. And it wasn’t his! I saw it. I saw him!” She began to cry again, softly now, and, as if it were too much effort, fell asleep in the middle of a sob. I tucked the covers in closely about her and looked at Daisy.

“Get a dry towel,” I said. “We’ll make her a turban.”

Daisy trotted obediently after the towel and with it I fashioned a turban to cover Glory’s beautifully bleached hair.

“What did she mean?” Daisy whispered when I had finished.

“My hat,” I said cheerfully. “She evidently saw a man’s felt hat floating on the pond tonight. The one I’m wearing reminded her of it.”

Daisy didn’t say anything. She turned very pale and gave a little moan. I caught her just as she crumpled.

“Bad news,” I murmured, and wondered which was her room.

I
PUT
D
AISY
across the foot of the bed and began a hunt for her room. I had to try three before I located hers.

I tried the door next to Delhart’s. It was very neat and masculine. So probably it belonged to Hilton. I crossed the hall. The room was dark and I reached around the casing for the light switch. The squeak of bedsprings didn’t come quite soon enough to stop my hand. The light flared up and then I shut it off. I had caught a quick glimpse of Mrs. Willow asleep on her back.

Next to her room was Daisy’s. Dainty and pink feminine garments were strewn about. The room was at the rear of the house and through an open window I could hear feet crunching the gravelled path. I went to the window to close it. I heard a low murmur of voices. The men were returning.

Going back to Glory’s room, I found Daisy stirring. It took only one glance for me to know she was going to be sick. I rushed her to the bath.

“Better?” I asked when she finished.

She nodded miserably. I took her arm. “Let’s go to your room. You could stand to go to bed.”

She let me lead her. Just as we entered her door I heard the whine of a police siren. From the steady sound it made I decided it was Jocko Bedford, the sheriff himself. Jocko dearly loved his siren.

“Cops,” I said cheerfully, and helped Daisy inside. She sat down on the bed and bent to work on her shoes. I took them off for her, and then swung her legs onto the bed and propped her against the headboard with pillows.

“I’m so tired,” she whimpered.

I lit a cigaret and offered her one. She shook her head. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her. The siren was coming closer. If I got anything out of Daisy Willow it would have to be now. Not even an old friend like Jocko would permit me to question people privately. And I doubted if the usual rough and ready methods of questioning used by the Teneskium sheriff’s office would get anything but hysterics out of this child.

“Do you know anyone with a felt hat like this one?”

Some of the weariness left her and wariness crept in. Her little chin went stubborn. “Most men wear felt hats,” she said.

“Do you faint every time you see one?”

She had enough energy to flush. “I don’t see what business that is of yours,” she said. She was trying the icy attitude on me. But I remembered just how little-girlish she had looked.

I stood up. “My business or the police’s business,” I said disinterestedly. The flush was draining fast from her now. She looked scared again. “Don’t make of a fool of yourself.” I started for the door.

I had my hand on the knob when she said, “Please, Miss O’Hara …”

I went back. “I was a sergeant,” I said. “The company mother confessor. Maybe because I radiate sympathy and kindness. Maybe because I look like someone’s grandma.”

She had to smile at that, feebly though. “I like you,” she said childishly. Her dark eyes were big and a little wet. “I’m awfully scared.”

“Because of yesterday? Or the felt hat?”

Her lips trembled. “People are beastly,” she whimpered. She put her hands out appealingly. “I—I’d rather not talk now. I’m so sleepy. I just didn’t want you to go away mad at me.”

I patted her hand and felt ancient. “Okay,” I said. “Sleep on it.” The sirens were right outside now, dying out in a long, mournful wail. “By the way, what kind of hats does Arthur Frew wear?”

She might be childish but she was sharp enough. “Arthur doesn’t wear a hat. Now, please …”

I could hear people tramping about downstairs. “Your father does, though.” I was watching her carefully.

Daisy fooled me. She said quickly, too quickly, “Daddy wouldn’t wear an
old
hat.” Reaction was nil. Whatever it was that made her faint, the child had it under control. She was standing up to me. That was all I was going to get. I had interviewed enough people to know when to say goodbye.

“Get some sleep,” I told her, and left.

I went downstairs quietly. Not that it would have made any difference. The rumble of voices in the living room was loud enough to drown out any sound I might have made short of falling down the stairs. They opened into the hallway by the kitchen door. I saw a light in there now, and the door was propped open. It looked warm and inviting. Instead of going into the living room I turned into the kitchen.

Mrs. Larson was there, working at the stove. “Hi, Ma,” I said. She turned her broad red Irish face to me. She was usually as happy looking as her husband, Big Swede. Now, though, I could see she had been crying. She was alone in the room.

“You’re a sight, Adeline.” She reached for the coffee cup and the pot. I took the coffee, thanking her.

“Did they …?” I began. Someone came in. It was Hilton.

He looked pale and tired and upset. His hair was awry and his neat clothing wet and muddy with fir and pine needles clinging to his trouser legs. He dropped into a kitchen chair with a brief, “May I?”

He gave me the answer. “We found him,” he said. I sat down, too. The tone of his voice sent little shivers up my backbone. It was so dull and dead and yet so descriptive to me. I could see them wandering through those woods, searching in that awful blackness, having the endless sound of the river beating at their ears and then, finally, coming across what they sought—and dreaded to find. In quick sympathy I touched his hand.

Instead of being grateful, he looked sourly at me. “I’m appreciative of your help, Miss O’Hara, but we don’t want any more publicity than necessary.” He didn’t say it but the idea was: Scram.

“I already phoned a story to The Press,” I told him. “Besides, with the sheriff’s men here the newspapers will send reporters down like vultures. No policeman ever hid his light, Mr. Hilton.”

He was glaring at me. I went on, “So, you give me a break and I’ll try to give you one. That’s fair enough.” He seemed to waver, and I said, “Don’t forget that I’m a local product. I know a lot of gossip. And there is plenty of it in a place the size of Teneskium. And Mr. Delhart is our best topic.”

The idea got over. Hilton shifted his weight in the chair and picked up the cup of coffee Mrs. Larson had set before him. She was silent, standing by the stove but looking toward us. I smiled at her. She had always been a special friend of mine. When I was a kid she was the one I could run to for an afternoon cookie or for a lap to sob out my troubles in.

She didn’t smile back. She looked worried and anxious. I thought, so many people have looked just that way recently. All of these people connected with Delhart. Worried and anxious or worried and frightened, but never at ease. None of them. The scene I had tumbled into by the river yesterday afternoon had not been a beginning. It had started before that, before I had been aware of the existence of most of them.

Hilton was speaking. “We hope you will cooperate the best way possible, Miss O’Hara.”

“I’m still working for the Press,” I reminded him.

“Naturally.”

Since we seemed to have reached an understanding, I went to work. I said, “Did Jocko Bedford come personally?”

“The sheriff, yes,” Hilton said. He was being precise and secretarial again. He sat straighter in his chair and did very well at looking less tired and more efficient. “He’s questioning the men now.” He indicated the living room with a nod of his head.

“Questioning?”

Hilton looked at me oddly, and compressed his lips. “The sheriff is quite certain there has been a murder.”

It was an ugly word. I had thought of it, Hilton and I together had thought of it without saying it, I had said it aloud to the night editor of The Press. But hearing it spoken—at me—so baldly I could feel the brutality that Hilton felt when he spoke. The shock went clear to my shoes. I was not flattered because Jocko Bedford had the same hunch as I. Secretly, I was wishing for something less ghastly, something closer to the normal that I knew.

I said hastily, “Where did you find Mr. Delhart?”

“A quarter of a mile downstream,” Hilton said. “The current carried him until a fallen tree caught him.”

I knew now. He was trying to be blunt and brutal, trying to nauseate me, a mere woman, into running away from the story. It was a man’s way.

“And he was dead then?”

“Yes,” Hilton said. “He was dead. We left him and came for the police.”

That meant they had not wanted to touch the body, I thought. That meant Hilton or one of the others had admitted his belief that it was not an accident. “How was he killed?” I asked. I could be blunt too. I could be the calm reporter and take whatever he had to offer. So I thought.

Hilton leaned toward me. His expression was cold. “He was slashed. He was slashed with a heavy knife. He was nearly cut in two.”

I couldn’t take it. If I hadn’t been sitting I would have fallen. As it was I could feel the blood leave my face in a rush. Nausea took a good grip on my stomach. I could see it so clearly. I remembered those huge splotches of drying blood so well.

I must have been white to my hairline. Mrs. Larson stepped to me quickly and put an arm around me. “There, dear,” she said soothingly. But when I laid my head against her side I could feel her muscles shaking. I found her hand and squeezed it and straightened up.

“Can I use the phone?” I asked Hilton. That was as close as I could get to being the collected reporter again in such a short time.

“Certainly,” he said. He was very smug without showing it on his face. He stood up and I followed him into the study. I could tell he was smug by the way he walked. He had knocked me down but, being male, he didn’t take the advantage and kick me. He had waited too long. Now I was up again and I would stay that way. I made a face at his back. The first shock was over and I was feeling better. I had learned to come back fast in the army.

I sat at the larger of the desks and put my hand on the phone. “You have any ideas as to how it was done—or by whom?”

“A prowler,” Hilton suggested. He stood by the desk, a thin-lipped, owlish figure, again the personification of business despite his muddy and rumpled clothing. “A robber?”

I gave him a wobbly grin. “Tonight you were halfway human,” I said, “Don’t disappoint me now.”

He put his hands on the desk and leaned a little toward me. “Really, Miss O’Hara, what did you expect me to say?”

“Just what you did say,” I told him. “In other words, assailant unknown?”

“That’s good.”

I heard another siren quite close. “I thought the police were all gathered,” I said.

“I believe the sheriff said something about the Assistant County Prosecutor coming,” Hilton said. “It is probably he.”

Godfrey Tiffin, my pal! I picked up the phone and put my call through to Portland. The night editor seemed pleased even though I gave him the barest of facts. He was almost vehement about it.

I said, “I’d rather have a bonus,” and hung up.

The siren faded in and out, wound up to a last peak and exploded almost at the front door. Hilton threw a half smoked cigaret into a cold fireplace.

“You were very discreet, Miss O’Hara,” he said.

I felt a quick sympathy for him. Despite his mannerisms he seemed genuinely cut up. I said, “I suppose an employer-employee relationship can produce some very close ties. I’m truly sorry.”

Light glinted at me from his glasses and his mouth went thin and straighter than ever. “Hardly,” he said. His facial muscles worked a moment. “Frankly,” he almost spat out. “I hated his guts. He was a bastard!”

That from the precise Mr. Potter Hilton!

I
JUST STARED
stupidly at him. I got to my feet and pushed myself away from the desk. He came striding around it, toward me. Whatever I had expected of his character it was neither what he had just said nor what he said and did now.