Nipped in the Bud (7 page)

He nodded admiringly. “Nice try, old girl.”

“What do you mean,
try?
It’s the only hypothesis that fits the facts.”

The Inspector’s smile was pitying. “Now
you
listen!” he said.

Some years before, during the period when Miss Withers had been devoted to the raising of tropical fish, a friend returning from Army Air Force duty at Karachi had presented her with a tiny replica of the Taj Mahal made of intricate bits of white marble; a delicate, lovely, incredible thing not five inches high. It had occurred to her how striking the little temple would be if placed at the bottom of her largest aquarium, framed by the green of the water plants and reflected in a little mirror set in sand for the foreground.

So she had arranged it, had carefully siphoned back the warmed, cured water and replaced the hundred tiny, jeweled fish, turned on the concealed overhead fluorescent lamp and then had sat herself down in rapt admiration to gaze upon her handiwork. The
betta splendens,
the neon
tetras,
the mollies and guppies and hatchet fish and
scalares
had all swum inquisitively around the new addition to their green wonderland, and a snaky
dojo
had even writhed its way, like a minuscule boa constrictor, into a doorway …

And then, in front of her eyes, the Taj had begun to shimmer and change, like faery gold. Nightmarishly, the thousand intricately assembled bits of marble drew in upon themselves, assumed strange, ungeometric attitudes contrary to all the rules of architecture, and then slowly, inevitably, collapsed into a pile of rubble.

Now, as Oscar Piper talked, Miss Withers began to feel the same shock of incredulous disappointment. The case she had built up in the last few hours, like the miniature of the Taj Mahal, had lacked waterproof glue.

The inspector, in short, was telling her not to try to teach her grandmother to suck eggs, nor the police to follow obvious lines of investigation. First of all, Tony Fagan’s love life, involved as it might have been and probably was, could not possibly have included an affair with Crystal Joris. Miss Joris was billed in nightclubs as “300 Pounds of Rhythm,” and her weakness was calories, not cuddling. Nor had she ever had a chance to introduce her little country cousin to Tony Fagan. Ina Kell had never been more than fifty miles from Bourdon, Pennsylvania—except perhaps in dreams—nor had any of her infrequent trips away from the drab home she shared with an invalid mother, a stepfather, and three half-brothers ever taken her near a city where Tony Fagan might have been making a personal appearance at some theater or night spot. Her life was an open book, and Tony Fagan—because of the business he was in—came under the same category. It was absolutely impossible that the two had ever met until that moment—
la hora de verdad,
as the Spanish put it—when her curiosity had led her to push open his door and look upon his bloody ruin.

There were many times when Miss Withers had doubted her old friend the inspector, and with reason. But not about things like this. She subsided slowly, letting her coffee cool.

Moreover, every point in Ina’s story that could be checked had been—and rang true as a bell. There had even been enough prints of her little bare feet recovered from the floor of the hallway to show that she had tiptoed cautiously from her door to Fagan’s and then had gone back considerably faster, almost running. Her fingerprints were on the Joris phone, backing her story about trying to call the police.

“Oh,” said Miss Withers, in a very small voice indeed.

“And just to top it all,” Piper added gently, “Junior Gault, after repudiating his confession, agreed to a lie-detector test. Like so many other smart boys who read recent articles in
Esquire
and
True
and other men’s magazines explaining how it’s so easy to beat the machine, he did his best and it wasn’t good enough.” The inspector drew one finger across his Adam’s apple. “Guilty. Of course we can’t bring that evidence into court—a man can’t be forced to testify against himself—but we’re satisfied. Gault killed Tony Fagan. But unless we can find that Kell girl and bring her back to testify, he’s going to get off scot-free.”

The schoolteacher nodded, a very chastened nod.

“And Gault
has
to be convicted. There can’t be one law for the rich and another for the poor. The Department has had enough criticism, what with the bookie scandals and all. So far homicide hasn’t been smeared with the tarbrush, and I mean to see that it doesn’t get smeared. Now, will you go out and find Ina Kell for us?”

“I’ll do my best; angels can do no more,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers. “Obviously, with so much money and influence involved, and so much depending on her testimony, the girl is in danger. She may be out of my reach, as well as beyond subpoenas or extradition papers. It occurs to me that you and Mr. Hardesty are more interested in Ina’s testimony than in her safety.”

Piper was reaching for his hat. “She’s safe enough, as long as Junior Gault is on ice. Now it’s late, and tomorrow is another day. How about my walking you home?”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” snapped Miss Withers. “But then, as you were probably about to say, I have plenty left!”

The inspector merely looked sheepish.

“Oh, thou child of many prayers!”

“Life hath quicksands; life hath snares!”

—LONGFELLOW

“I
AM NOT SEEING
any clients this morning,” said Sam Bordin in as firm a tone as one dares use to an attractive employee with whom he has been rumbaing until two
A.M.
“Gracie, you know I’m up to my hips in the Gault thing and I’ve no time to tackle anything new—not even if it’s a beautiful widow with a smoking pistol in one hand and a fat checkbook in the other.” The tall rangy girl looked down at him fondly, in spite of the fact that the tubby little lawyer had not shaved that morning and obviously had a hangover. “If she was beautiful I wouldn’t
let
her in,” she told him. “This one is the intellectual type, and I don’t think she’s a client. She just wants ten minutes of your time.”

“For some worthy cause,” Sam Bordin said, wincing. “
No
, Gracie!”

The tall girl sighed, and then went out of the room with a practiced waggle of her lips. A moment later she bounced back, bearing an envelope. “The lady said perhaps you’d like to have this anyway, to look at when you’re not so busy.”

Bordin glanced at the two sheets of yellowing paper inside, started to drop them into the basket, and then his eye was caught by something in the handwriting. He read on a bit and then cried, “What did you say her name was? Never mind—run after her! No, give me five minutes and
then
send her in!” Starting out, Gracie noticed that her employer was reaching hurriedly into the top right-hand drawer of his desk, where she knew he kept a loaded .38.

The drawer also held an electric shaver, with which Sam Bordin had just finished touching up his blue jowls when the visitor entered. He stared at her for a moment, rather as if she were a ghost. “Miss
Withers!
” he said wonderingly. “I didn’t connect the name at first—but you haven’t changed a bit. Even the hat, and the umbrella!”

She smiled, and nodded toward the yellowed sheets in his hand. “I thought perhaps a glimpse of your own handiwork might remind you. ‘
What Being an American Means,
by Sascha Bordin, aged nine.’ Prize third-grade essay of the year. I thought you might like to have it back, perhaps to show your own children?”

“Well—” He laughed nervously. “I’m married to my law books, I’m afraid.”

“Really? Then I’d watch out for that girl in the outer office; she has a certain glint in her eye.” They talked for a few moments about the old days at P.S. 38. “Not,” Miss Withers admitted, “that I’m surprised at the way you’ve risen in the world. The child is father to the man, and as I look back on it I can see very clearly how you were meant for the law. You used to argue interminably, whether you were in the right or the wrong, and perhaps best when you were in the wrong. I’ve watched your career from a distance, and when I heard the other day that you are to appear in another big murder trial, I suddenly thought it might be possible for me to see you in action.”

“Oh, the Gault case. But it’s been set back on the calendar, or I’d be happy to fix it so you could have a front seat. When the time comes—”

The schoolteacher thanked him. “But I’m afraid I won’t be in town. I’ve retired, you know, and am living out in southern California.”

“Too bad. There’ll be some legal fireworks, if the case ever comes before a jury. I’d like you to see the fun.”

“
If?
” said Miss Withers sharply, cocking her head.

He looked at her with an added respect. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

“Sascha, you haven’t answered the question!”

“Yes, ma’am. Well, personally I don’t think that the D.A. will press. They haven’t a very strong case against my client, you know.” He waved his hand. “Except for the circumstantial evidence.”

“And except for—” began the schoolteacher, and bit her tongue.

“Except for a so-called surprise witness for the prosecution who has suddenly turned up missing?” At the look on her face Sam Bordin broke into a wide grin. “Wait a minute, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been tapping wires or listening at keyholes, but those things get around.”

Across the desk the maiden schoolteacher looked hard at the little boy whom she had once assisted over the bumps and potholes of the third-grade curriculum. There were not many among her thousand and more pupils for whom she had once held higher hopes. “You never used to cheat, Sascha,” she finally said softly. “Not in my classroom. You might argue that black was white, but you never cheated.”

He bowed. “Thanks. But why bring that up now, ma’am?”

“Because somebody in this Fagan-Gault affair has cheated and still is. Where is the Kell girl, Sascha?”

It was a clean miss. “You tell me,” he came back swiftly. “Because I have a subpoena here ready to serve on Ina Kell if she ever shows up. Even if the prosecution doesn’t want her on the stand, I do.”

Miss Withers’ sniff was eloquent of doubt, but she said, “You are, I suppose, quite satisfied in your own mind that your client is innocent?”

Bordin hesitated only a moment. “I could hardly express an opinion—”

“Then you think he’s guilty?”

“Not until proven,” said the little man stubbornly. “Listen a minute. It’s an attorney’s job to make the best defense possible for his client.
I’m
not the judge or the jury. I use every means at my command to get the facts, particularly everything on
his
side of the story, and to present it all in the best light. I don’t know how you happen to know so much about the Fagan murder—”

“Justice is the problem of every good citizen,” she informed him. “And sometimes my friend Oscar Piper, down at Centre Street, talks to me about his cases.”

The famous Bordin smile congealed a little. “So? I’ll bet you the inspector didn’t tell you that the autopsy showed that Tony Fagan had an abnormally thin cranium, a skull so frail that it might have been smashed during a man-to-man fight by slamming against a wall or other hard object?”

Miss Withers said nothing.

“At the moment,” the lawyer went on, “I have almost decided to base the defense on the fact that while Gault may have been responsible for Fagan’s death, he never premeditated murder but meant simply to beat him up. Manslaughter while in a state of temporary emotional insanity caused by malicious persecution …”

“Been reading up on the Harry Thaw case, Sascha?”

It was Bordin’s turn to say nothing.

“You know perfectly well the man is guilty. There’s the confession, and the lie-detector tests.”

He brightened, like a chess player confronted with a difficult gambit. “But neither is admissible as evidence. The confession, if you can call it that, was verbal and never formally signed or sworn to. As for the polygraph, even Professor Leonarde Keeler, who invented it, always said it must be used by trained technicians, of which there are perhaps a dozen in the nation. But the police, as you probably know, use it as freely as if it were a pencil sharpener, just as they are always using sodium pentothal and the other truth drugs. I don’t mind telling you that I have every hope of being able to satisfy a jury, in spite of everything, that Gault is no murderer at all, and that there is at least a reasonable doubt that he caused the death of Tony Fagan. Gault
may
have only left his enemy unconscious from a deserved beating, and then some other person or persons happened along and finished the job knowing it would be blamed on Gault anyway.”

“Ingenious,” Miss Withers admitted with a wry smile. “Sascha, you haven’t changed a bit since you were nine. You argued hardest when you were trying to convince me that two and two weren’t necessarily four.” She sighed. “Would you like to do me a favor for old time’s sake? I want an interview with Gault.”

“What?” Bordin was incredulous. “You want me to fix it up for you to talk to Gault in jail—and you lined up with the opposition?”

“I am only with the opposition if he’s guilty, remember.”

The lawyer thought it over a moment. “Hmm. Junior is not what one could call an especially cooperative character. He seems to have certain antisocial tendencies.”

“So many murderers do, don’t they? But I still have, I hope, an open mind. I don’t like to see killers get away, but I also have a deep disinclination to see an innocent man rot in prison—or for that matter an innocent young girl tangled up and perhaps destroyed in what is no real concern of hers at all. Don’t you think this whole affair would be the better for stirring up a bit?”

“You mean you want to play Hawkshaw?”

“The inspector says I’m no detective, simply a catalytic agent. What real harm would it do for me to have a few well-chosen words with Junior Gault?”

Bordin picked up the desk pen. “I’ll see what I can do.” He carefully wrote down the name of her hotel.

“And if it isn’t possible for me to see the accused, could I talk to his family and his fiancée?”