After Midnight (4 page)

Siman shouldn’t have felt such a swift surge of anger. His work led him through some of the finest cesspools in the various strata of society and he was long past being shocked. But the anger did come and Simon said:

“You sound like the commander. She’s not that kind of woman!”

Franzen’s smile stretched to a broad grin. “Be careful, counselor,” he cautioned. “I’ve always heard that Simon Drake had an eye for the ladies, but Thompson’s tough. You’ll need a cool head to get your client out of this mess. Better take off the blinders.”

Simon didn’t answer. He replaced the bottle in the cabinet and turned his attention to the opposite end of the bar. A crumpled sheet of wrapping paper and a pile of cut twine had fallen to the kitchen side of the partial partition, and on the bar above it, standing alone, was a gold-plated trophy about eighteen inches high cast in the form of a tennis player about to deliver a mighty backhand. Simon picked it up and read the inscription. It had been awarded to Richard Roger Warren III as the winner of an interscholastic event in an eastern prep school nine years earlier.

Simon looked to Franzen for explanation.

“That was the package carried home from the yacht. The one that sparked the murder.”

“A tennis trophy? Why would a tennis trophy spark a murder?”

“Because he needed a knife to cut the twine and unwrap the package. The time, the place, the weapon—”

“—the emotionally charged moment,” Simon reflected. He could hear Wanda’s voice and see her bewildered eyes struggling for understanding when she told him:
“I had to do what I did or I would have exploded … I would have just exploded!”
He was grateful that Lieutenant Franzen hadn’t been present at that emotionally charged moment.

Caustically, Simon added: “I suppose you have explained all these theories to the newspaper reporters.”

“The District Attorney likes to maintain communications with the working press,” Franzen said. “It creates a good feeling.”

“Not among defense attorneys who need an unprejudiced jury,” Simon said. He placed the trophy back on the bar. It wasn’t particularly attractive and didn’t do a thing for the décor. “So that’s what Roger Warren carried in the package. Are you sure it came from the yacht?”

“According to Commander Warren it did.”

“I wonder what Roger wanted with it?”

“Who knows why people want the things they want?” Franzen said. “It was important to him for some reason—an ego builder, maybe. He could look at that trophy and remember the kind of life he had led before he married a watusi artist. Now that sort of thinking could spark a murder in any household.”

“Lieutenant,” Simon said gravely, “I hope you never decide to run for District Attorney. I may have to leave Marina County.”

In addition to the huge living room there was a small, compact kitchen behind the bar, a dining area and a closet lined hall leading to the bedrooms at the rear of the house. Wanda’s room was as she had left it—the Roman striped spread thrown back to uncover the pillows and no other preparation made for retiring. The lab men had removed the bloodstained pillow—otherwise the bed was as it had been when Elmer Cranston discovered the sleeping beauty snuggled up beside the murder weapon. Increasingly minute drops of blood spotted the carpet as far as the bedside, but there were no stains leading into the bathroom where Simon found one of Franzen’s men dusting a water glass for prints. The medicine chest was open and an uncapped bromide bottle stood on the marble-topped lavatory. The white and gold vinyl floor was immaculate.

“Was this floor vacuumed, too?” Simon asked.

The lab man nodded. “We found a lot of sand,” he said.

“But no blood.”

“That’s right, no blood.”

“And no blood on that glass, or the bromide bottle? No blood on the medicine cabinet door or the faucets?”

“Mr. Drake,” Franzen called from the hall doorway, “wouldn’t you like to see Roger Warren’s wardrobe?”

“Not particulary,” Simon answered. “I’ll take your word for it.”

He ignored Franzen until he returned to the front of the house and then proceeded into Wanda’s dressing room. She wasn’t a good housekeeper. The closet doors were open and something brief and frilly was on the floor. Simon picked it up. It was a nightgown—pink lace, full skirted and so short it must have hit her well above the knees. But that wasn’t pertinent to the case. She had clothes—lots of them and all in high style, and she had twenty-six pairs of pumps and slippers in every shade from kelly green to bright orange. Most of them were spike heels. She had perfumes—all French and expensive, and there was a wad of used chewing gum on the stopper of almost every bottle.

Simon returned to the bedroom. The far end of the room was a wide plate glass door that opened onto a balcony overlooking the beach. Even with the door closed, the sound of the surf was loud enough to cover the sound of the lab man working in the bathroom. He slid back the door and stepped outside. The house cantilevered out from the rocks, making a drop of at least forty feet to the beach below. There were no descending steps from the balcony, but between the Warren house and the house next door a narrow stairway climbed precariously down the rocks to the sand bar. The sky had cleared but the sea was still wild after the storm, and a jagged rock formation a short distance down the shoreline made a permanent sounding board for the deafening surf.

Simon peered over the railing at the stairway. It was too sharp a drop to provide access to or from the Warrens’ balcony. He then tried the matching glass door that led into Roger’s room and found it unlocked. The room was a twin to Wanda’s except for the masculine décor and a navy-bred neatness. The commander would have been proud. The bathroom was similarly shipshape. The medicine chest, which Simon found closed, contained the usual men’s products plus a vial of sleeping tablets. The colognes were expensive, the military brushes of the finest quality, and the toothbrush was electric.

He checked the wardrobe and verified Franzen’s judgment. Roger Warren wore only the finest suits and even his shirts were hand tailored. He had a small fortune invested in cuff links; his swimming trunks were monogrammed.

The house inspection completed, Simon returned to the living room area and found the lieutenant entertaining a visitor. It was a man—middle-aged, lean and sickly pale compared to the Marina Beach bronze of Lieutenant Franzen. He was dressed in a modest gray business suit that had been the pride of some chain retailer, and wore a narrow-brimmed felt hat with a bold green feather in the band that didn’t match the self-conscious tremor in his voice.

“I had some business at the gas company this morning,” he said. “Trouble with the pilot light in the furnace. I called three times last week for service but I had to make a trip down to the office to get results. That’s why I missed all the excitement this morning when Mr. Warren’s body was found. I was downtown at the gas company.”

“You said you had something important to tell me,” Franzen urged.

“Yes, that’s why I came here as soon as I heard about the murder. I don’t like to get involved in this sort of thing, but I thought you should know what I heard last night. I live next door. Twenty-seven fourteen Seacliff Drive, right next door. My name is Frank Lodge.”

Simon stepped into the room. Franzen glanced up and glared at him, but there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop Simon from hearing whatever neighbor Lodge had to say.

Lodge coughed nervously and stared at the bloodstain on the floor in front of the armchair.

“Is that where they found the body?” he asked.

“That’s where they found the body,” Franzen answered. “Now, Mr. Lodge, what did you hear last night?”

“A terrible quarrel,” Lodge said. “Oh, I’d heard the Warrens fight before. When houses are built as close together as these a neighbor doesn’t have to be nosy to hear that kind of battling, but last night’s was special. For one thing, it was so late.”

“How late?” Franzen asked.

“It was twenty minutes past twelve when I finally closed my front windows. I had to. I couldn’t sleep with noise like that going on. To begin with, they woke me when they drove in. Warren always gunned the motor and those foreign cars are noisy. Then they started yelling at each other in the driveway. I got out of bed and went to the living room windows—they’re just above the driveway—to see what was wrong. Mrs. Warren had lost a heel off her shoe and Mr. Warren was fussing about the kind of clothes she wore to go fishing—”

Frank Lodge stopped speaking. He had noticed Simon and seemed suddenly shy.

“Don’t let Mr. Drake bother you,” Franzen said. “He’s almost like one of the family.”

“Drake—?”

Lodge studied Simon warily and then decided to continue his story.

“I didn’t mean to listen to what they said,” he added, “but they were shouting back and forth because that was the only way they could hear each other above the wind. Mr. Warren unlocked the front door and went back to the car for his fishing gear. He was really keyed up by that time. He yelled at her for taking the stuff out of the car and then took it all away from her. There was a fishing rod and reel, a tackle box and a package about this long—”

Lodge measured the length of the tennis trophy between his hands. They were well-groomed with a wedding ring on the third finger left hand.

“They kept on yelling after they got into the house,” he added, “but I couldn’t hear much of what was said because nobody locked the front door and it kept banging in the wind. That’s when I closed my front window and went back to bed.”

“What was the last thing you did hear?” Franzen asked.

“Something about a knife. Yes, there was a lull for a few minutes and then Mr. Warren yelled: ‘What did you do with that kitchen knife? I want to cut the string on this package.’”

“And that was the
last
thing you heard?”

“I think so. The door started banging again and I closed the window. I forgot all about it until I picked up a newscast on my radio a few minutes ago. It did seem strange that Warren would leave his car out all night in the rain. He was awfully proud of that car. But I assumed he’d been drinking and didn’t think of it.”

“The way he didn’t think of closing the front door,” Simon suggested.

Frank Lodge shifted his weight awkwardly. “That’s right,” he said.

“And you heard only two voices?” Franzen queried.

“Only two? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, sir. There were only two voices—Mr. and Mrs. Warren’s. And there was something else. Before Warren asked for the knife I heard Mrs. Warren say: ‘I don’t have to take that from you.’ I think she was crying. I sure hate telling tales this way. I’m just a visitor in town. I came down to recuperate from an operation. The medics said I needed rest and quiet.”

“You’ve done the right thing, Mr. Lodge,” Franzen said. And then he looked at Simon with a smug smile. “How does it look to you now, Mr. Drake?”

“About the same,” Simon said. “Mrs. Warren has already admitted getting the knife for her husband.”

“But now we have a witness to verify that the two of them were alone in the house at the time and at each other’s throats. I’m sorry about your operation, Mr. Lodge, but I’ll have to ask you to come down to headquarters and make an official statement.” He started to direct Lodge toward the stairway and then waited for Simon. “I don’t want to rush you, counselor,” he added, “but my men are just about finished here.”

“Bully for them,” Simon said.

He followed Franzen and Lodge down the stairs and found a uniformed officer posted at the front door to screen any more neighborhood volunteers. When Simon tried to close the door behind him, he encountered difficulties. The officer lent a hand.

“You have to put a little English on it,” he explained. “There’s a defect in the catch. It only closes from the inside unless you get it just right.”

“Then the wind wouldn’t lock it,” Simon mused.

“No, sir. The wind blows in. The door bangs but it doesn’t lock.”

Simon shook his head sadly.

“These new houses,” he said. “They just don’t build them the way they used to.”

There were people in Marina Beach who were dismayed with its booming growth—a few leftover artists, poets and aesthetic oddballs who read Thoreau and were more thrilled by the reflection of the moonlight on a silken smooth sea than by close-ups of a prospective landing strip and franchise coffee shop on the lunar planet. They were in the minority and their days were numbered. There were others who held that no publicity was bad publicity, and in the vanguard of this group was Duane Thompson, the aggressive District Attorney of Marina County. Photogenic and ambitious, Thompson, at the age of thirty-one, had attained statewide recognition for his astute use of a prominent public relations firm in conjunction with breaking up a gang of teen-age car thieves.

The subsequent tour of speaking engagements before law enforcement groups and service clubs was an unmistakable symptom. The party needed a new face on the ticket, and it was common knowledge that Duane Thompson aspired to the office of Attorney General.

None of these things had any bearing on the question of how Roger Warren died, but they had everything to do with how his widow fared at her preliminary hearing.

Two days passed before Simon saw his client again. Shock reaction transferred her upstairs to the hospital floor, where no outsider was admitted except Dr. Braun, the psychiatrist imported from Beverly Hills. Deprived of direct contact, the press did its own research on Wanda’s background. As Wanda Carle she had danced at the Club Mobile, a discothèque in Santa Monica, and the management was not averse to picking up a little free publicity through the release for publication of some provocative stills that had been used on display boards. One enterprising reporter on a city yellow sheet dug deeper and checked the Los Angeles County wedding license bureau. He learned that Richard Roger Warren III had taken out a license to wed Wanda Ruth Call, and it required only a visit to the newspaper morgue to establish Wanda as the daughter of Joshua Call and a former child soloist in his evangelistic group. This gave the case a sensational angle; for news value nothing is better than dirt.

The story hit the street in the early evening hours. Simon waited until four o’clock and then proceeded to Duane Thompson’s office. The atmosphere at City Hall had changed. Uniformed police now guarded the corridor to the district attorney’s office, and, once he was past that barrier, the receptionist gave him a cool greeting. The district attorney was busy. He had been busy all day. Mr. Drake would have to wait. Simon, smiling in a way the receptionist couldn’t understand, waited. He wasn’t alone in the reception room. A dapper little man wearing an Italian silk suit and English shoes paced the floor like an expectant father. Within ten minutes the door to Thompson’s office opened and a lovely size twelve redhead in a size eleven dress emerged from his office. She struck a conspicuous pose in the doorway, waited and then bellowed her outrage at the little man who had stopped pacing the instant she came into view.

“Eddie! What kind of agent are you? Where’s the photographer?”

Eddie tried desperately to silence her. “Outside,” he whispered hoarsely. “The photographers are all outside the building.”

“But you promised—”

“Come on—”

Eddie hustled his client through the reception room and into the corridor before she could give away any more professional secrets. Simon, who had his foot in Thompson’s door the instant it opened, stepped quickly inside and looked questioningly at the man behind the desk.

“What was that?” he asked.

Thompson currently projected the working public servant image by doffing his jacket during office hours. He wore a white shirt and a narrow, conservative tie with his dark suit trousers. He was mopping his brow with a white handkerchief when Simon asked the question. He looked up and smiled weakly.

“Clarissa Valle,” he answered, “your client’s former roommate.”

“A witness for the prosecution?”

“Definitely. She told me an interesting story about Wanda
Call’s
”—Thompson stressed the last name—”character. Her desire to marry a rich man, her spells of deep morbidity—”

“Her fits of temperament?” Simon suggested. “Her emotional instability?”

“Have you talked with Miss Valle?”

“I don’t have to. I heard her at the door just now screaming for the photographers. If she was any more of a climber, she’d have claws.”

“Mr. Drake,” Thompson said, “I have every respect for your professional reputation, but your client is guilty and I’m going to get an indictment.”

“You have nothing but circumstantial evidence,” Simon said.

“That can be sufficient—and you know it. What’s more, I’ll get a confession before I’m finished. I don’t believe that blackout story for one minute.”

“Why don’t you give her a lie detector test?” Simon said.

He was bluffing. He had yet to see Dr. Braun and hear his opinion, but at this stage, with Thompson off on a crusade and the shadow of Commander Warren standing behind him, a toe to toe and eye to eye bluff was the only offense that constituted the proverbial best defense.

Thompson hesitated. He stared at Simon and Simon smiled his bland confidence.

“It would never be admitted as evidence in court,” Thompson said.

Simon swallowed his panic and let the smile grow more bland.

“I’m going upstairs now to see Mrs. Warren” he announced. “She seems to be taking her husband’s death very hard.”

He didn’t want Wanda to see the headlines without preparation. The doctor on the floor concurred—no newspapers would be allowed in her presence. Simon found her in a happy, semi-sedated state, relaxed and pleased to see him. She had talked to Dr. Braun, a very kind and gentle man who had asked many questions. She didn’t know what they meant or why he was interested in her dreams. He had given her a drug and asked more questions, but she still couldn’t remember anything that happened on the night of Roger’s death except the quarrel at The Cove and the moment of giving him the knife to cut the cord on his package.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Simon said. “You’re still very tired. I want you to relax.”

An orderly knocked at the door and came in with a huge bouquet of spring flowers. The nurse found a vase for them while Wanda’s eyes sparkled over the card.

“Why, they’re from you, Mr. Drake!” she cried.

“I told you I was a nice guy,” Simon said.

“They’re lovely! May I have them here—nearer the bed?”

They had put her into a plain hospital gown. Simon’s subconscious wandered off to that flimsy knee length bit he’d discovered on the dressing room floor and he had to whip it back again.

“Mrs. Warren,” he said earnestly, “in a day or two you will be going back downstairs to your cell. You’ll have to expect changes.”

“Changes?” she echoed.

“The district attorney is preparing his case. He’s questioning people who were once your friends—or seemed to be. Don’t let anything you hear or read about them hurt you. In every person there has to be some deep, quiet place where nothing is ever bruised or shattered, no matter what happens to them. There’s an outer reality and an inner reality. Sometimes we become confused—especially when we are very young—and the things that belong to the outer world are taken in. Then we have to work hard to clean out the debris. I don’t want you to take things in, Mrs. Warren. Whatever lies ahead, I want you to remember that you are a lovely young woman and the finest years of your life are yet to come. The happiest years are yet to come.”

Simon Drake surprised himself. He hadn’t meant to say these things to Roger Warren’s widow. He had never said such things to any client before. But when he said them, he knew they were the right words.

She listened.

“You won’t have many friends at the trial—perhaps no friend at all but me. A courtroom is a very cold place. The law wears a blindfold for a good reason. You will have to be quiet inside and trust me completely. If you do that, I promise that you will never be indicted for murder.”

Wanda still listened and absorbed. She began to grow quiet before his eyes—it was not a quiet that came from the drug, but from her own strength. She leaned back on the pillows and smiled at the flowers. They were very gay—yellow, pink, blue and white. They were youth and beauty and promise. The tension eased slowly from her body, and then the orderly returned.

This time he brought a special delivery letter. Wanda glanced at the return address and her face brightened with anticipation.

“It’s from home!” she said.

She ripped open the envelope and withdrew a newsclipping and one sheet of plain typing paper. The clipping was a reproduction of a gaudy photo of Wanda’s contorted body inside the cage at the Club Mobile. On the sheet of paper one line was written in a severe Spencerian script:

What have you done to your sainted mother’s memory?

The brightness fled from Wanda’s eyes. Her hand crumpled the paper and she turned her face deep into the pillow.

“It’s your own fault,” Hannah said. “I warned you to leave that case alone. Challenge every female juror—that’s your only chance, Simon. Your only chance.”

It was evening of the same day. During dinner, Simon had briefed Hannah on the details of his visit to City Hall. She needed no briefing on the published events. Not one word printed about the case had missed her discerning eye. Conversation continued in the game room over a hand of poker in a long-running game in which Hannah stood $43,130,000 ahead. Simon dealt out a final hand and poured their usual Drambouie nightcap.

“You’ve got yourself a husband killer,” she continued. “A sweet young thing who clings to a bottle to escape maturity. And who did she kill? The son of a vindictive old salt who would like to see her hanging from the mizzenmast, whatever that is. Simon, have you any idea who Commander Warren is? He’s a crusader. He heads some extremist group that stands for a brand of constitutionalism that would have set George Washington’s wooden teeth on edge. Purity of the bloodstrain. Noblesse oblige. Sort of an urban renewal project of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s small but gilt-edged, and you know how much Duane Thompson pines for higher office.”

“I know all about the commander,” Simon said. “He’s part of our war surplus problem—peerless under fire and completely unadaptable to peacetime. He doesn’t worry me.”

“Then worry about your client. Her own father disowns her. She has a lousy record—”

“A child’s record,” Simon reminded her.

“Children kill.”

“So I’ve heard. But you’re looking at the dark side, Hannah. Now try to see the case the way I see it. Wanda Warren is a lovely girl—young, naïve, swept off her feet by a handsome young man who does something no one has ever done for her before—he makes her feel important. She marries him and is swept into a world too big and too sophisticated for her background. She’s terrified. The commander resents Roger’s insolence in marrying without his permission and cuts off the boy’s allowance. Maybe he’s trying to make a man of him, but his timing is wrong. Left without money, Roger isn’t easy to live with and he was the knight in white armor who rescued the fairy princess from the dark tower. What does the poor child do but take to the bottle?”

“The
poor child!
” Hannah shrieked. “She’s not that pretty, Simon, and you’re not that young!”

Simon slowly sipped his Drambouie. Hannah could do many things, but the one thing she couldn’t do was offend him.

“No,” Simon confessed, “but some of the members of the jury may be. The evidence is purely circumstantial—most of it only gossip.”

“Is the bloodstained pillow gossip?”

“The front door was open,” Simon replied. “Anyone could have walked in and put the knife on Wanda’s pillow.”

“And what about the bloodstains under her nails?”

“She’s admitted picking up the knife after Cranston awakened her. She had to wash the blood from her hands later. Naturally, she didn’t think to clean under her nails.”

Hannah closed her eyes. She leaned back in her chair looking very wise and owlish:

She pronounced the words with delicious venom, then opened her eyes and fixed them on Simon’s.

Simon absorbed the seed of thought and smiled.

“Excellent,” he said. “If I find it necessary, I can suggest that neighborhood gossip made Mrs. Warren a natural suspect. Lodge’s story verifies that. We know that Wanda and Roger quarreled the night of his death. We know that Wanda got the knife and gave it to Roger. Thompson will stress the fact that Lodge heard only two voices, but I have a favorite spy in City Hall who reports that the autopsy report can’t fix the time of death within three hours, and so I shall direct the jury’s thought right back to that open door. Anyone could have entered the house and stabbed Roger after Wanda went to bed and planted the knife on her pillow.”

“Motive?” Hannah suggested.

“The Warrens lived high. Seacliff Drive is a very hot district for housebreaking. In the six months it’s been open for occupation, there have been no less than seventeen reports of interrupted attempts and eight completed burglaries.”