It was a romantic setting — the right place, maybe the right girl — but instead of cocktails, it turned out to be...
The boathouse was a long, rotting hulk of a building standing out over the water like an overgrown bug on stilts. The old man’s cabin was set fifty yards away from the boathouse, on the hillside. I saw him standing in the cabin doorway when I got out of the coupé and slammed the door.
I stood waiting while he came across the clearing. I remembered him. Mac something-or-other was his name. Gnarled, beefy, with a chest that made him look top-heavy, and a wide, pleasant face with warm eyes, he moved toward me with a hint of rheumatism in his gait.
The day was warm and clear, the mountain air just brisk enough to put a tingle in your veins. Insect life made a soft, humming rhythm. The mountains were shaggy and majestic, the gorge down which the river flowed a thing of vast, high grandeur. I was looking out over the softly rippling water of the river, when old Mac came walking up to me.
“Howdy. Looking for some fishing?”
“Could be,” I said. “A friend is letting me use his cabin overnight downriver. I’d like to get a boat.”
He nodded, moved toward the boathouse. I was trailing him.
“Got a nice little hull with a kicker,” he told me. “Just caulked her a day or two back. Say, ain’t I seen you around here before?”
“You might have,” I admitted. “Now and then I get in from the city for a breath of clean air.”
“Well, you can’t beat this air around here. No, sirree.”
He vanished through the creaking boathouse. I heard an outboard motor give out with a couple of popping gurgles. Then the motor came to life with a steady hum, and a moment later he tooled the boat out of the far end of the boathouse and drew it up to the low, sagging pier.
I met him on the pier.
“You got some baggage?” he asked.
“No, my friend has everything I’ll need in his cabin. But I’ll want you to keep your eye on my car.”
He nodded. He seemed about to ask me which cabin I was heading for, but evidently thought better of it. I climbed down in the boat. He stood looking out over the river for a moment, loving it.
“Can’t help but envy you younger fellers,” he said. “Don’t get on the river much myself any more. I get the misery in my legs from the dampness. Sort of hurts me, too. Always wanted to follow this old river clean to her end. Yes, sir, I always intended to find out just exactly where the river flows.”
“All rivers find their way to the ocean,” I said.
“Says so in books,” he acknowledged. “But rivers are like people. Some hurry to beat the band. Some take things quiet and easy. Maybe they all do end up the same place. But I always had a partic’lar love for this old river. She’d sure see plenty of country before she ever got to any ocean. I reckon I’d still give my eyeteeth to know where this river flows.”
He broke off, gave a laugh that carried an undercurrent of embarrassment. “Trouts have been striking good the last couple of days. Sure your friend’s got plenty of tackle?”
“Sure.” As far as I knew my friend didn’t have any tackle of her own. At least not the kind to catch fish with. But I didn’t intend to do any fishing. I might as well tell you — I was going downriver because another man’s wife had phoned me. “Pay you for the boat now, Mac?”
“When you get back.” He grinned warmly, spat on the pier, watched me until I was out of sight around the bend of the river.
It was hot out on the river, only the gurgle of water and the hum of the outboard breaking the deep silence. In less than a mile I tried to turn the boat around and go back three times. I couldn’t. It had been the same way with the coupé. I’d tried to turn the car and go back to town half a dozen times. But the coupé had seemed to have some power of its own. Just as the boat had it now.
I didn’t want it to, but the river was sweeping me down to the lodge, where she was waiting. Glenville Grayson’s wife. I’d told myself that, too, when she’d phoned this morning. I’d told myself she was a dirty little rotter. I remembered the way she’d married Grayson when she’d found out he had money. She’d used me for all I was worth — then Grayson.
Those tender moments we’d had together must have been a laugh to her, after she got Grayson. But knowing that didn’t stop me from losing sleep lots of nights, eating my heart out. And when she’d phoned this morning, I’d known that I’d never be able to turn the coupé or the boat around...
The lodge was a little over three miles down river. A rambling, rustic two-story building of logs, it set snugly in the hillside. If anybody wanted privacy, it could be had here, in style. Glenville must have spent thirty thousand on the acreage, building, and its rustic furnishings. More properly, he must have talked his fat uncle, Roland Grayson, into spending the dough.
I wondered how it had set with her, with Darlene, when she’d found that Glenville’s money was tied up under the administration of his uncle. It probably hadn’t been too big an obstacle when she wanted a new mink. As long as it was male, Darlene would find her way over any obstacle — though old Uncle Roland must have been her toughest problem to date. He was wily and a cruel, hard-boiled business man.
I cut the motor, drifted the boat to the pier. I didn’t see any sign of her anywhere. No sign of any kind of life at all. The whole, desolate countryside was so silent that when a jaybird chattered in a nearby thicket suddenly, I jumped.
I stood on the pier a moment, staring up at the lodge. Its windows, set behind the wide, rambling porch like eyes under heavy, beetling brows, stared blankly back at me.
No smoke from the chimney, no movement. Nothing except the growl of water under my feet.
Maybe, I thought, she was taking a nap.
I wiped off my face, pushing the handkerchief in my hip pocket, and started up the hill toward the lodge. The tall shade trees were wide umbrellas over me. The breeze beneath them was cool. But I was sweating, and my pulse was a little thick and fast in my throat. I hated her for still having that effect over me, but I could never make the hatred strong enough.
I was pretty close to the house when I first heard it. The soft sound of sobbing. That stopped me in my tracks for a second. She’d said over the phone that she was alone, that she would be alone, but she was sobbing in a horrible kind of way, as if somebody had done something terrible to her.
I pushed my way up to the front porch. Through the wide, open doorway I could see her slumped in a chair. She heard me, and her head rose from her palms, slowly, gradually, streaked with tears. She knew how to create an effect, all right.
“John!” she said breathlessly. She was rising, still with those slow, gradual motions. Then she rushed across the living room, flung herself against me, twining her arms around my neck. I could feel her trembling.
“John, you came! I thought you’d never get here!”
“Take it easy! What’s wrong?”
She looked up at me, so damned trusting and little-girlish and helpless I wanted to curse at her, because I’d seen the act before.
She said in a small voice, “John, something awful has happened! I’m so glad you came — you’ve got to help me!”
I looked over her shoulder. I saw a thirty-eight revolver lying on the table beside the chair in which she’d been sitting.
“I was afraid, John. I was sitting there with the gun beside me in case he came back. He didn’t have guns like you usually find around a place like this — Glenville never did any hunting, you know. But isolated as the place is, he kept a pair of revolvers around.”
I moved farther into the room. She was clinging to my arm. “What is this?” I said. “This talk about guns? This wondering if he would come back? If who would come back.”
“Glenville.” She started sobbing again.
“You’d better tell me what’s happened, Darlene.”
She sank weakly into a chair. I didn’t try to hold her. She stared at an open doorway across the room. “Glenville shot him,” she said. “Glenville shot his uncle Roland.”
A clutching stillness for a moment, then. A stillness that made a vacuum of my skull, with my pulse hammering inside of it. I turned woodenly, crossed the room to the open doorway.
It was a bedroom. The early afternoon sun slanted in the window, a pale rose-burst of light I didn’t see him at first. I moved into the room edgily.
He was lying on his back over beyond the bed, a big, fat, bald mound of dead blubber. I had to dose my eyes for a second on Roland Grayson’s death. He had been shot just above his left cheekbone.
I went back to where she was sitting. She was reaching hungrily for a cigarette. I needed one just as bad myself.
“I thought you were alone,” I said. “When did it happen?”
“Right after I phoned you. Glenville must have guessed I’d come here. John — I... I hated him! He was weak and sniveling around his uncle. He never did a thing in his life that took any manhood. I used to think Glenville had an aristocratic face. It wasn’t. It was just weak.
“I... I was going to leave him, John. I couldn’t stand him any more. I love you, darling.”
She stood up, slipped her arms about my neck. She was wearing her tears like jewels. She knew how to do that, too.
“I remembered the times we used to have, John. You’re a lawyer. You could have got me a divorce, couldn’t you, darling?”
“Go on,” I said.
“Glenville and Roland came here to the lodge. They took the long way, around the mountain road. I decided it was as good a time as any to tell him, John. When I said I was leaving him, Glenville went to pieces. He said it was all Roland’s fault. Roland had tied up his money and wouldn’t give him enough to care for a wife, decently. As if I wanted only his money! Roland, he said, stuck to him like a leech, living his life for him, giving him no freedom.
“It was — awful, John. It seemed, like all the years had suddenly gathered in Glenville and exploded. And you know the family well enough to know the kind Roland was. Hard and mean. He said some vicious things to Glenville. Then to me, John. He — called me names, darling. Glenville struck him, and Roland knocked him down.
“Glenville went out of the room, and when he came back his face was like a crazy man’s. He had a gun in his hand. Roland had stepped in the bedroom and taken off his coat. I screamed. Roland turned just in time to catch the bullet ha his face,” she shuddered.
“And then?”
“Glenville ran. Crying like a baby, John.”
She walked over to the window, looked out at the sunshine, letting the sun cloak her like a soft, rose-petal gown. She was crying very quietly now.
My throat was tight as I looked at her. People could change, I thought. Sometimes people had to get their stomachs full of one kind of life before trying something else. Maybe she was leveling. Maybe she’d really been going to leave him and come back to the lawyer who had about as many pennies as Glenville had dollars.
A hard trembling began to shake her, and she turned to me, her hands knotted together. “John,” she almost screamed, “what are we going to do with him?”
“Him?”
“Roland!” she cried.
“But Glenville...”
“Yes, Glenville! And Glenville is yellow. Glenville would sell his soul to save his skin. He realizes what he’s done now, John! He’ll sell me out flat! John, they’ll get me — for murdering Roland!”
I could hear her breathing clear across the room.
“Can’t you see it?” she wailed. “Nobody but Glenville and Roland knew they were coming here. They told me. Now Roland is dead. That leaves only Glenville. And he’ll swear he was never here today, John.”
I began to see what she was driving at.
“They’ll think I did it, John. Everyone knows what bad blood there was between Roland and me — because of the way he bossed Glenville. Several people knew I was coming here today, though not exactly why. But they’ll learn that I was going to see a man behind my husband’s back. That’ll make it worse. They’ll never believe I only wanted to tell you I was leaving Glenville, if you still wanted me. They’ll say that I killed Roland, when he followed me, in an argument over Glenville’s money.”
“But Glenville...”
“Glenville will buy himself an alibi, you can count on that! And they’ll never believe the truth from me, John! In their eyes I’ll be the only person who could have killed Roland. There’s only one thing we can do — get Roland away from here. Hide him some place. Until we can locate Glenville and make him break, make him tell the truth!”
I was lawyer enough to see what that might mean, too.
She drifted across the room to me. She clung to my lapels and for a minute I thought she was going to sink down and kneel at my feet. “I’m not asking you to do anything really wrong, John. Just give me a break, a chance to get at the truth. I’ve been a fool. You’ve got every reason to hate me, John. But you’d give a homeless dog a chance, wouldn’t you?”
Now she was breathing against my cheek. Her lips against my cheek. “A chance to keep your house for you, John. To learn to cook for you and take care of you. To be there when you came home every night.”
Darlene there, instead of the emptiness and silence of a lonely apartment...
And people could change. People got wise to themselves sometimes. But still I was afraid, afraid of her, of the cold dead body in the next room.
I held her face between my palms and looked deep in her eyes.
“I love you, John,” she said softly.
I didn’t say anything. I turned around and started out of the room, toward the back of the house. She followed me, not speaking either.
I went out in the back yard, glancing around.
I hadn’t been able to turn the car around. Or the boat. I’d need something to wrap Roland in.
I’d started toward the garage. A tarpaulin might be in there, to cover his death until I got him out of the house.
“John...”
I didn’t look at her, didn’t speak. I wanted to close my eyes, my whole mind, to everything until it was over. Until we had fixed it so she could be safe for the moment and had cornered Glenville and got the truth.
I paused at the gaping, open doors to the garage, looked back at her.
“John, what — what are you going in the garage for?”
“To get something to wrap him,” I said.
“But... but not in there, John. There’s nothing in there. John, I...”
There was something in there. I could see it. A tarpaulin.
She was saying something, very fast, very brisk. Trying suddenly to laugh. She was walking across the yard toward me, words fluttering out of her. Trying to tell me there was no need to look in the garage.
Something snapped inside of me. I remembered. I remembered that she had spoken of Glenville in the past tense as much as the present. I lunged into the garage, jerked the heavy canvas back.
Glenville lay under it. He’d been shot in the back of the head. Shot, while he’d been trying to run?
I heard her breathing. I turned to look, and she was standing off there, just beyond the garage doorway, breathing hard.
“You killed them both,” I said. “For Glenville’s money. You married him for it, but Roland had it all tied up. I guess you were right about there being an argument here today. Something certainly did gather in a knot and burst — but not in Glenville. In you. Then with Roland’s blood on your hands, you knew Glenville would never stick by you.
“But you were hung with it, up here alone. So you needed a patsy. A fall guy. A sucker to burn while you spent all the money in freedom. You ran the car out of sight, after calling me. Got it all set up. I’d get hung with a corpse on my hands. You’d see to that. You’d see too that the cops heard the right kind of story.
“Even if I managed to skin out of it, they’d never be able to hang it on you. The elements would have been all confused, the circumstances all upset. But that was remote. There was a very definite chance I’d get it in the neck for a double killing that was supposed to have netted me a pile of money and a beautiful dame.”
I looked at her and saw the last veil drop away. What was left was pretty horrible to look at.
She mouthed a curse. Then she whirled and ran toward the house. I remembered that revolver lying on the table in the living room.
I was right behind her. But I couldn’t quite catch her. I just managed to close in and grab her arm when she fired the first shot. It hit the ceiling. She fought like a tigress, squeezing the trigger until the gun was empty. Then she sank her teeth in the back of my hand. I tore loose and ran down the hill.
The outboard fired, and I shoved the boat away from the pier. I had one last look at her before the underbrush along the river became a curtain between us. She was standing halfway down the hillside, her long blond hair tousled about her face, shrieking at me.
My hand bled all the way upriver. I never would forget the way that blood looked. I heaved the boat in at old Mac’s dock, cut the motor, and yelled for him.
I scrambled out of the boat, ran down the pier. He was coming out of his cabin with his rheumatic gait.
“You got a phone?”
“Yeah,” he said, “is something wrong?”
“Plenty. There’s been some trouble down at the Grayson lodge. You’d better called the sheriff.”
He raised his brows, hobbled hurriedly toward his cabin. I stood there a moment, breathing deep and hard, just letting the sun hit my face.
“Mac.”
He stopped in the cabin doorway.
“I found out where your river flows.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“You ever hear of a woman named Salome?”
“Seems that I have,” he said. “She was so beautiful and evil the devil himself must have been afraid of her.”
“That’s the one,” I told him. “And your creek flows right past her front door.”