The Blue Hammer

"I like my work."

She made a bitter face, and succeeded in looking quite ugly. She struck her knees with her fists. "Don't play with me. I'm serious."

"So am I. I don't want your money. But you could try bribing me with information."

"Bribe you to do what, exactly?"

"Give you an even break if you've got one coming."

"All you want to do is play God, right?"

"Not exactly. I would like to understand why a woman like you, with everything going for her, would try to cover up a lousy murder."

"It wasn't a murder. It was an accident."

"Who committed the accident?"

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"You haven't given me anything to believe, or not to believe. All I know is that you and Rico dug up a dead man's bones; then you sent Rico to sink them in the sea. That was a foolish thing to do, Mrs. Chantry. You should have left them underground in the greenhouse."

"I don't think so. My mistake was getting Rico to handle it. I should have disposed of the body myself."

"Whose body was it, Mrs. Chantry?"

She shook her head as if the past were swarming like bees around her. "He was a stranger to me. He came to the house asking to see my husband. Richard shouldn't have seen him, and normally wouldn't have. But evidently the man's name meant something to him. He told Rico to send the man into his studio. And when I saw the man again, he was dead."

"What was the dead man's name?"

"I don't remember."

"Were you there when the dead man talked to Rico?"

"Yes, at least part of the time."

"And later when Rico buried the body?"

"I knew what was being done. I didn't participate in the burial."

"Rico said you ordered it."

"I suppose I did, in a sense. I was relaying my husband's wish."

"Where was your husband at the time of the burial?"

"He was in his studio, writing his farewell letter. It's a strange thing," she added after a moment. "He'd often spoken of taking off in that way. Dropping everything, starting a new, unencumbered life. And then the occasion came up, and he did just that."

"Do you know where he went?"

"No. I haven't heard from him since. Neither has anyone else, to my knowledge."

"Do you think he's dead?"

"I hope he isn't. He was-he is a great man, after all."

She let herself cry a little. She seemed to be trying to regain lost emotional ground, rebuilding the Chantry myth with the materials that came to hand, partly old and partly new.

"Why did he kill the man in the brown suit?"

"I don't know that he did. It may have been an accident."

"Did your husband claim it was an accident?"

"I don't know. We didn't talk about it. He wrote his letter and went."

"You have no idea how or why the man was killed?"

"None whatever."

"Your husband gave you no explanation at all?"

"No. Richard left in such a hurry there was no time for explanations."

"That isn't the way I heard it, Mrs. Chantry. According to Rico, you and your husband and the man in the brown suit did some talking in the studio. What were you talking about?"

"I don't remember that," she said.

"Rico does."

"He's a liar."

"Most men are, when they get into real trouble. So are most women."

She was losing her self-assurance, and anger seemed to be taking its place again. "Could you possibly spare me your generalizations? I've been through quite a lot in the last twenty-four hours and I don't have the strength to listen to a cheap private detective mouthing moral maxims."

Her voice was high, and she looked tormented.

I said, "You've been through quite a lot in the last twenty-five years. It'll go on and get worse unless you do something to end it."

She sat in silence for a while, her gaze turned inward on the unburied past. "End it how?" she said finally.

"Tell me what actually happened, and why."

"I have been."

"Not really, Mrs. Chantry. You've left out some of the most important things. Who the man in the brown suit was, and why he came here. The fact that he came here twice, and when he came here the second time-the time that he was killed-he had a woman and a small boy with him. The fact that you told Rico the man had a stroke and died more or less by accident."

She sat and absorbed this, too, like someone undergoing a rapid aging process. She didn't try to evade it or push it away. In a sense, it appeared to be what she had been waiting for.

"So Rico did a lot of talking," she said.

"All he had time for. You picked a lousy co-conspirator."

"I didn't pick him. He simply happened to be here." She looked me over carefully, as if perhaps I might be used to take Rico's place in her life. "I had no choice."

"People always have some kind of choice."

She hung her pretty head and brushed it with her hand in a desolate twisting gesture. "That's easy to say. Not so easy to act on."

"You have a choice to make now," I said. "You can cooperate with me-"

"I thought I had been."

"Some. But you're holding back. You can help me to sort out this case. And if you do, I'll make it as easy for you as I can."

"Don't do me any favors." But she was studying my face for the exact meaning of what I had said.

"You wouldn't be well advised," I said, "to go on trying to cover up for your husband. You could end up with your own share of a murder rap."

"It wasn't a murder. It was an accident. The man was in poor shape. My husband may have struck or pushed him. He had no intention of killing him."

"How do you know?"

"He told me. He wasn't lying."

"Did he tell you who the man was?"

"Yes."

"What was his name?"

She shook her head in a quick distracted movement. "I don't remember. He was simply a man my husband had known in the army. The man had been wounded in the Pacific, and spent some years in a veterans' hospital. When they finally released him, he came here to see my husband. Apparently he'd heard of Richards' success as a painter and came here to bask in reflected glory."

"Who were the woman and the little boy?"

"They were the man's wife and son. The second time he came, he brought them to meet my husband."

"Were they aware that your husband killed the man?"

"I don't know. I'm not even certain that that's what happened."

"But you assumed it."

"Yes. I had to. I kept waiting to hear from the woman. I hardly slept for weeks. But I never did hear from her. Sometimes I wonder if I imagined the whole thing."

"The bones Rico dug up aren't imaginary."

"I know that. I meant the woman and the little boy."

"What happened to them?"

"They simply went away-I don't know where. And I went on with my life as best I could."

There was self-pity in her voice, but she was watching me in cold surmise. The contours of her body appeared to be aware of me, more in resignation than anything else.

Below the house, the sea thumped and fumbled and slid like a dead man trying clumsily to climb back into life. I shivered. She touched my knee with her tapered fingers.

"Are you cold?"

"I suppose I am."

"I suppose I could turn on the heat." The smile that went with the offer lent it a double meaning, but it was forced.

"I won't be staying, Mrs. Chantry."

"I'll be all alone here."

She uttered a mock sigh, which ended on a note of genuine desolation. She seemed to be realizing how completely alone she was.

"You'll be having visitors before long."

Her hands came together and clenched. "You mean the police, don't you?"

"You can probably expect Mackendrick in the morning, if not before."

"I thought you were going to help me," she said in a small voice.

"I will if you let me. You haven't told me enough. And some of the things you've told me aren't true."