I merely nodded. She possessed the good manners not to ask where and how and under what circumstances I had met her. Those large eyes were thoughtful and far-away. She was mentally skipping along over my back trail at a great rate. But she couldn’t find anything; she knew too little.
“A sort of a friend,” I said by way of explanation and let it go at that.
She put her hands across the desk and grasped one of mine. Her cigarette was burning uselessly in the ash tray.
“Please forgive me for this, Chuck, but do you need money?”
I laughed. “No. Thanks, anyway. The expenses weren’t large. Harry Evans paid for it.”
“You’ve already mentioned that. May I ask... the connection between you and Evans, and Evans and the girl, and the girl and you isn’t quite clear.”
“It wasn’t clear to me, until last night. I think it stacks up like this: the girl — let’s call her Leonore — was Evans’ lady friend. Mistress, if we want to be frank about it. The poetry and the Chinese symbol and another fact tend to show that.”
“Yes. And you said Evans retained you?”
“As a sort of local bodyguard. He knew he was heading for some kind of trouble, exact nature of which unknown. Meanwhile, I had met Leonore in quite another way. Now the three of us are tied together in a sort of triangle.”
“That much I can follow. And I understand your interest in the autopsy.”
“Yeah.” Her cigarette died unnoticed in the ash tray. She was still holding onto my hand. “Remember those ‘slices’ I mentioned last night in your car? Evans and Leonore were having a pretty deep love affair. Something happened to that love affair, something startling, something unexpected? Do you follow that?”
She recalled the unexpected but quite natural results of a certain chemical test, and said yes. “A baby.”
“Keep that in mind. And then Evans came in to my office for protection. He doesn’t really know what is going to happen to him, but he thinks the police will frame him.”
“That doesn’t sound like Boone.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t Boone. I’ve come to believe the chief of police is a rat; he denied me my license renewal because someone who has reason to dislike me applied pressure. But I don’t think he could or would go so far as to frame a man of Evans’ standing.
“To get back to the point: Evans walked out of this office and was killed by his mistress. They loved one another very much. What do you think of that?”
“Nothing at all. It is confusing.”
“That’s it, Elizabeth. The apparent contradiction is the fine point upon which the whole thing revolves. That contradiction has no business being there. But it exists. Find out
“Sorry, Chuck. I’m not that bright.”
“Neither am I. I wish I was. If they loved each other as deeply as evidence suggests, he would never, never run out on her. Baby or no, he’d stick by her. Having no reason to kill him then, she promptly kills him. And shortly afterwards the death car is found, ditched. And she falls in the lake.”
“It sounds like murder for revenge, and then desperate suicide. I’m sorry, Chuck, I’m only a doctor. I’m lost.”
“I’m as good as lost. Logic tells me there is a third party mixed in somewhere. That third party can explain the contradiction of a mistress murdering her lover whom she’ll need very shortly; he can also explain why Evans expected to be framed.”
“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth suggested, “and how she left the car in one place and was ice skating in another a short while later. It’s a crying shame she decided to go ice skating that night. She could have told us...”
She stopped talking. We eyed each other.
“Yes,” I echoed, “it is a shame, isn’t it? I wondered how long it would take you to suspect something.”
Her eyes were narrow with speculation. The hands holding mine tightened around my fingers.
“Yes,” she said again, ever so softly. “It
I could see what she was thinking. Her thoughts were practically echoing my own. But Louise, what I couldn’t tell her was this: since last night when I had seen the Chinese symbol on that identification bracelet, I had known (or thought I knew) the missing third party.
Leonore was driving for the gambler. The gambler had told me it was Leonore’s first trip between downtown and the lake; but Leonore had told me it was her second. She had made her
Remember also how the gambler lost his poise when I mentioned talking to the doll? That was my mistake, Louise, for I realized, during that long half-hour wait before Beth came in, that I had said something he didn’t like.
And Leonore fell in the lake and drowned.
That gambling gentleman is probably our third party. But don’t ask me how or why Leonore killed her lover; don’t ask me why Evans expected trouble from the police; don’t ask me how the gambler fits into the picture. I don’t know.
“Beth — was there any trace of dope in the body?”
“None whatsoever. We would have found it. Why?”
