The Late Clara Beame (17 page)

“But the gun,” Edith whined. “I never seen a gun.” She glanced over her shoulder at the open door of Laura’s room. “It ain’t a real gun, is it?”

“The gun’s real,” John said. “Now, if one of you wants to go for the police, do so.”

“Telephone’s out,” Mrs. Daley told them. “You can’t do nothing without a telephone.”

Prodded by the gun, Henry went slowly down the stairs in front of John Carr.

Mrs. Daley, still standing fixed and frightened on the landing, became aware of Edith’s sobbing. She turned to her niece and slapped her face. “Wake Evelyn,” she ordered. “Hurry! Wake Evelyn!”

It seemed incredible to Henry Frazier that the living room could still be warm and festive, and that the fire still burned brightly, and that in the corner their Christmas tree still sparkled. “Sit down.” John Carr’s voice was firm. “We have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Laura,” Henry said, wringing his hands. “Laura. She’s — ”

“Dead? No doubt,” John said. “I haven’t the slightest doubt in the world.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?” Henry cried.

“I said sit down. You’ve asked questions, and I’ll answer them.”

“Laura!”

“May she rest in peace.”

Henry moved a step or two closer. But the gun pointed towards him never wavered. “I don’t have the slightest objection to killing you,” John told him. “Sit down. This is the last time I’m going to tell you, Frazier.”

“What do you want?” Henry asked in a faint voice. “You tried to kill me. Did someone try to kill Laura?”

“I didn’t ‘try’ to kill you. I never intended to kill you when I fired on you. And someone indeed tried to kill Laura. You weren’t fooled by that note, were you? Or, were you?”

Henry sank slowly onto a chair, his face drawn. He glanced towards the hall. Was there a furtive movement in the rear of the house, a soft opening of a distant door? Would there actually be help? Would one of the women go for the police?

John Carr fished for a cigarette and lighted it as he contemplated the man across from him. “Let’s have a talk. First, though, let me introduce myself. I’m John Beame.”

Henry regarded him in stunned silence.

“That’s right. I’m Laura’s brother. Actually her half brother. We had the same father, if you want to dignify him by calling him a father. That’s why you both recognized me, or thought you did. I look like the old man. Laura dimly remembered him. And, in some ways, I seem to resemble Laura. Same coloring and features, except for the eyes. You both remembered me, or recognized me, for entirely different reasons.

“Laura’s brother!”

John shrugged. “A pretty poor specimen. I never thought to look her up. But then my mother hated him, hated poor Lucille, and, of course, hated Laura. The stories! Well, it doesn’t matter. Later I decided that if I came to see her she’d think I was after something. My father was a washout; after he died, my mother told me that dear little Laura was some sort of a vampire, and that the family would never get a cent out of old Clara. We did, though. She gave my mother fifty thousand dollars outright, for my sister and me, and then eight hundred dollars a month until she died. Not bad, would you say?”

Henry stared. John Beame smiled.

“Isn’t it funny that Laura and I never met before a couple of days ago? I’m ashamed of myself. You won’t believe it, but I’m ashamed. If I’d known how much she needed me, I’d have been here before this. But there were the prejudices I’d been taught by dear Mama. Then there’s my sister, a couple of years older than I. Just like dear Mama. Shakespeare speaks of ‘lean and hungry men’, but he never seemed to notice that a lot of women are lean and hungry, too, and much more vulturish than many men. Mama and my sister, Edna, were that kind.”

The clock in the hall struck half-past four.

“Laura — need you?” Henry muttered incoherently.

“She certainly did need me. Ever since she met you, Frazier. Ever since she married you.”

Henry pressed the back of his hand against his tired eyes. Laura? Was that Laura muttering and crying? Or Alice?

“Let me tell you something about myself,” John said, still very much at ease. “Aunt Clara’s money sent me to Harvard. I was a teaching fellow there for a time. Then I joined the FBI and was stationed in Cleveland. Dave Gates and I met there, at a party. He recognized my name immediately, of course. We found that we were distant relatives. Oh, by the way, I’m still with the Bureau. They gave me the ‘cover’ I’ve been using with you. Pretty convincing, wasn’t it?”

Henry had straightened in his chair and sat rigid and unmoving.

“Dave and I became good friends. Very good friends,” John went on. “And then he told me all about you and Laura. He told me about Sam Bulowe and his alleged suicide. I decided I ought to move in on you. For Laura’s sake. I received special consent from Washington. By the way, did you think it was all an accident that old Bancroft managed to get you to take care of my law business? We set it up with him, and all the background. I can tell you, he was pretty disturbed and shocked. Yes, indeed. It took us months to build up a new ‘cover’ for me, for we know how suspicious lawyers are. It had to look authentic.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Henry asked.

“Oh, come off it! You killed Sam Bulowe. You tried to kill Laura last summer. Neatly planned. You tried to kill her when Dave was around, so you’d have a reliable witness. He took away a sample of the rope you had carefully unwound and torn here and there; he’s a suspicious soul, like you. Then, he discovered something which convinced him you’d killed Alice’s husband. If he hadn’t come on that, he wouldn’t have suspected anything phony about Laura’s ‘accident’. He’d have accepted her death, if she had died as you had intended, as just one of those things. But he had been alerted by what he had found among Sam Bulowe’s papers. Then — last summer. You wanted a witness that Laura’s accident and death were all natural. Everything lovely between you, as the poor girl, herself, had believed. What else could it be but an accident? You got Dave to swing Laura. Very smart. You’d fixed the rope that morning. Very clever. You were setting out the picnic things, so what was more natural than that you should suggest that Dave swing Laura? She loved to swing, and Dave remembered that, later. So Dave complied, and she went sailing off into the trees and smashed up. Not bad! I congratulate you on your plotting, at any rate.”

Henry continued to sit absolutely still, as though in a trance.

“But Dave came to me with samples of that rope and I sent them to headquarters for examination. You did it all very cleverly, in case there was an investigation locally, which there wasn’t. But we came to an interesting conclusion. The accident wasn’t an accident. It was intended murder.”

John watched the smoke from his cigarette curl in the air. He heard a car with chains lumbering through the snow of the driveway to the private road. Henry seemed not to have heard. John continued:

“Now let me tell you what Dave found among Sam Bulowe’s papers. We checked your phone calls subsequently, of course. You had called Sam several times from your office in New York. You never wrote him a letter. I don’t know exactly what you told him but we can work that out — later. I suspect, from the evidence, that we can reconstruct it all. You manufactured a friend, let’s say, a friend in some deep and complicated trouble whom you wanted to help. We’ll get all the details later. Possibly even from you.

“You didn’t know that Sam would make some notes in his office so he would remember. You never called him at home, of course, so Alice knew nothing about it, and you had no doubt asked Sam to keep the matter quiet. Sam, however, was a ‘doodler’. He was also a man who kept records of calls, being an orderly sort. So, he had all your calls written down in his handwriting. We have the dates, which coincide exactly with your telephone calls. Did you say something?”

But Henry merely shifted his position in the chair. His face was haggard.

“You had not only manufactured a friend, but a whole rigmarole of his imaginary troubles. You had asked Sam to help this friend. Sam would write you; unfortunately, he didn’t make carbons, as you probably knew he wouldn’t, seeing it was all a private matter. But you had to be artistic. You had to add your own little touches.

“Finally, after a couple of years, Sam wrote you exactly what you’d been waiting for. In his own handwriting, poor devil! ‘I can’t see any way out of the situation but this.’ Your fraudulent friend’s ‘situation’. Sam was sorry. ‘But I can’t think of any alternative.’ A fine, good man, that Sam Bulowe, always wanting to help people. ‘I know you will understand.’ You did, didn’t you? He had written exactly what you needed. I wonder how many other letters he had written you that didn’t come up to the standard you wanted? ‘Affectionately, Sam.’ Yes, affectionately. You’ll have a lot of time between now and a date with the hangman to think of that.”

“You’re wrong. You’re crazy,” Henry whispered.

John turned to the door. “Come on in, Dave.”

David entered, followed by his sister. Neither of them looked at Henry. David announced sadly, “Laura is dead. I did what I could. But she’s dead. Poisoned with barbiturates. The five capsules in the medicine cabinet are missing.”

Henry started to get to his feet, but David pushed him back in the chair. “You animal,” he said quietly. “You killed Laura, just as you killed Sam.”

Henry glared up at him. Then he saw Alice’s face, and read the utter hatred and loathing on it. He shrank back in his chair.

“Alice, go and sit with Laura. She won’t know you’re there,” David said in a broken voice, “but I don’t want you to be down here now.”

“I just wanted one last look at him,” Alice told them.

“The man who killed Sam, because he wanted me. Yes, he wanted me, long before I married Sam. But I had no money. Aunt Clara had left me almost nothing. And Hank was ambitious. So he married Laura for her money. Then he thought up his great plot to get my husband out of the way — dear, good Sam! And then, once Sam was out of the way, he turned to Laura. He moved very carefully. First Sam, then Laura. I, a widow, and he, a widower, with all Laura’s money. What could be better than all that? What he didn’t know was that I’d detested him for years.” She burst into tears. “Sam! And now Laura.” Her voice broke. “I want to be there when they execute you!”

David caught her uplifted arm by the wrist. “Alice,” he said very quietly. “Please go back and sit with Laura.”

“I want to see him suffer!”

“Go back to Laura,” David told her. “The law will take care of him.”

Alice covered her face with her hands, then turned and left the room. They watched her go. David sat down. “How much have you told him, John?”

“Almost everything. Except what you found among Sam’s papers. Read them aloud, Dave. I don’t think he’s in a mood to read, himself.”

“It’s all a lie,” Henry said dully.

“The normal reaction,” David commented. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a long sheet of yellow paper and studied it for a moment. “Sam’s handwriting. Dated October 15, 1959. ‘Hank called. Friend in a mess; undoubted embezzlement at Sloan & Company. Wish he’d told me at first; know Sloan. Too late now. Write Hank. Can’t do anything, myself. Hank should let him go? Mention that? Four years. Can’t go to Sloan after that time. Should make clean breast. Maybe Hank help with money? Law lenient if money returned. Couldn’t talk with Sloan about it. Need their business. Wary friends of embezzlers.’ ”

David folded the paper and calmly put it away. “That’s only one of the notes Sam made of your anxious phone conversations about your ‘friend’. And that letter, which you used as a fraudulent suicide note, was probably only one of many Sam wrote you. But until he wrote exactly what you needed, until you had maneuvered him into that letter, you waited, and called him frequently. Right, Hank?”

Henry’s response was automatic. “Lies, lies. I never took a cent of her money. You have no motive, for Sam’s death, and Laura’s. I can prove I refused her money — ”

“Yes, you were pretty smart about that, weren’t you?” Dave said. “Proving neatly that you hadn’t married her for her money.” He swore softly. “Never mind. I’m not one to rush into things. John called on Sloan, himself, saying there were some rumors that an employee or two was embezzling funds. Naturally, they didn’t believe that. The whole business department is automated. No one could steal a stamp. So then I knew it was all a fake. Poor Sam didn’t investigate, because you probably told him it was top-secret with your ‘friend’.”

Henry closed his eyes, his voice was faint. “Lies, all lies.” David’s laugh was bitter. “After I found Sam’s notes, and put two and two together, I came up here to watch and see what I could find out. You never knew it, Hank, my friend, but I’ve loved and wanted Laura ever since she was a little girl. And I’d known all about you since you and I were kids together. Sam was the only one you ever fooled. Under all that sunny charm of yours, that openness, and warmth, there was always a greedy little swine, even when you were a kid. Surely someone like Laura could see that, I thought, and she’d kick you off the premises.

“I should have remembered,” David went on, “how slick and slippery you always were, particularly around women, especially girls like Laura. I should have known that you would be able to fool Laura easily, without even straining your mental resources. You were what she thought she needed, because you persuaded her you were. She didn’t need what she thought I was. The kind of life we’d all led as kids had made me hard as nails, and pretty damn cynical. It had done that to you, too. But you were smarter than I was. You saw you could get more out of life a lot more easily by being sweetness and light. You could work less and accomplish more, your way. But I’m the hard guy. I’m the guy who yells at patients and antagonizes superiors and only stays where he is because he’s needed and respected, in spite of his personality, and he saves lives. Throw me a cigarette, will you, John?”

John Carr shifted the gun to his left hand and threw David a cigarette. David lit it and studied the burning match for a moment before he blew it out. “I always loved that guy, Sam Bulowe. I never heard him say or do an ugly thing, not even when we were kids, and hungry. Lovable guy, Sam. Only, you hated him, because of Alice, didn’t you, Hank? While I was doing my investigating before coming up here last summer, I woke up, suddenly. You’d discovered Laura years ago at my party for Alice, and you sensed at once that the poor girl was dying for love. But not for Dave Gates, that stupid roughneck. I thought it was obvious to Laura that I wanted her; I thought she had realized it through osmosis or something, but she hadn’t. That was after old Aunt Clara died. Then, there was all that money, and I had a lot of idiot pride; I wanted to be established before I asked Laura to marry me. But, you got there first. I hated both of you then,” David said, reflectively. “It was all plain to me last August. Sam’s notes. I wanted to watch you, to see what I could find that would incriminate you. Then came Laura’s ‘accident’. And, by the way, it wasn’t that poor little nurse who gave Laura the overdose of sedatives, was it? You were quite willing for the nurse to suffer, though, for her ‘carelessness’, and be tried for manslaughter or something if Laura had died from your poison. What was a nurse’s future compared with all the money you’d inherit from Laura? A whole life’s work shot, an innocent life — they meant nothing to you. Yes, it was plain to me last summer. I was catching on to your deadly game.”

David sighed. “I was absolutely sure when Alice wrote me, later, that you’d been taking her out in New York, while Laura was stuck up here with a broken leg. I wrote her to play up to you. She did. Then I showed her Sam’s notes. She couldn’t believe it. Not at first. She couldn’t even believe the truth about the accident. It took me weeks to convince her, and to work out a plan with her. She hated Laura then. She resented her, and she was so bitter that nothing mattered. I had to repeat over and over that you, Hank, had killed Sam. Until, finally, it sank in. After we worked out our plan, we accepted Laura’s invitation to come up here.

“I didn’t tell Alice about John. It never pays to complicate a woman’s mind too much. Besides, telling her would only have made her nervous. She couldn’t have gone through that little scene with you, out in the snow, Hank, if she’d been aware of who John was. She wanted final convincing, herself, and you sure convinced her.” The hand that held his cigarette was trembling.