Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene (24 page)

“Not argued,” said Captain Kelso succinctly. “Conned.”

“Very well. If you prefer. For a brief while I began to doubt. It looked as if, after all, Alura might be willing to let Aletha pay the penalty for her. But she was, as we now know, only biding her time. Waiting to be sure we weren’t running a bluff. Aletha’s confession settled it. The only course left then was the grim one of telling the truth, and, after that, of taking her own way out. I must say that I find a certain solace in the way she chose. You called it the grand gesture, did you not? It was somehow appropriate for Alura. It seems prophetic, looking back—that entertaining little lecture you delivered to me on the statistics of suicide by leaping from your beautiful bridge across the Golden Gate.”

“There!” Captain Kelso pounced as if he had been waiting in a crouch for the right time. “That phony confession of Aletha’s! That was actually what broke things open. And that was something you
couldn’t
have counted on. By God, you
couldn’t
!”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Miss Withers was offensively smug. “I was convinced, at any rate, that she was highly susceptible to suggestion. Alura herself, if you recall, implied as much. But I shan’t press the point. Let us accept the confession of Aletha as a welcome bonus.”

“Sure,” said Captain Kelso. “I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

When he said this, he was staring across the table into the general area of Miss Withers’ physiognomy that included the specific feature mentioned. Inspector Oscar Piper suddenly choked on a chunk of lobster tail and began to cough violently and rudely into his napkin.

Miss Withers stared at him coldly. “Oscar,” she said, “must you be such a glutton? Try to eat more slowly and chew more thoroughly.”

The inspector, red in the face and gasping for breath, reached for his wineglass and held it aloft. “Here’s to Hildy,” he wheezed. “God’s gift horse to all dumb cops.”

It was by way of being a farewell dinner. Al and Lenore, on the principle that two’s company and five’s a mob, had gone elsewhere by themselves. Tomorrow morning early the inspector and the latter would be on a jet headed east. Miss Withers and the former would be on a Hog headed south. Captain Kelso, stuck, would remain. He was already lonely. To the bleak and closed compartments of his leathery heart, where others had been and were gone forever, including himself as he used to be before he became what he was, there would now be added another, aching and empty, where a certain exasperating spinster had briefly dwelt. He reached for his glass.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said.

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