After Midnight (6 page)

“And popular?” Simon suggested.

“Popular?” Mrs. Rainey’s smile faded. She ceased a search for aphids that had continued thus far into the interview and gave Simon her undivided attention. “Who are you?” she asked. “One of those insurance snoops?”

“No—” Simon began.

“Or are you from one of those government committees? Because I won’t tell you a thing if you are! I hate snoops. You people are making a police state out of this country. We might as well be living in Russia.”

“I don’t work for the government,” Simon said.

“Then you must be one of those sociology snoops from the university. What is it you want to know this time? Do I fear death? Do I believe in hell? … You bet your life I do! Hell is what life is when snoops get through with a person!”

“Mrs. Rainey,” Simon broke in, “—have you seen the morning paper?”

“No, and I don’t want to see it. I have enough trouble with garden pests.”

“But you have heard about the murder of Roger Warren?”

“Yes, certainly. What has that to do with Nancy?”

Simon repeated the story Nancy Armitage had told him the previous evening, and explained that she knew he was making an inquiry.

“She said that you probably wouldn’t remember when she returned to the house Sunday night, but I thought you might remember when she went out. It must have been shortly before seven.”

Mrs. Rainey listened intently and then gave a surprising answer.

“Nancy didn’t go out Sunday night,” she said.

“She didn’t? Are you sure?”

“Positive. Nancy went out Sunday afternoon between bowling and the cartoon show on TV. That was between four-thirty and five o’clock. And you’re right, I don’t remember when she came back because my picture tube blew at ten-thirty and I went straight to bed. Couldn’t sleep a wink until the storm came up. It sounded like the late show, and I went right off.”

“Between four-thirty and five,” Simon reflected. “Mrs. Rainey, you never did answer my first question. Does Nancy Armitage have many friends?”

“Men friends, do you mean?”

“Yes, I suppose I do,” Simon said.

There was no merriment in Mrs. Rainey’s eyes now. “I’ve never known Nancy to have a male caller,” she said.

“How long has she lived in your hourse?”

“Almost two years. Of course, she does go out—”

Simon looked across the rose garden. A French door—the frame painted blue and the glass portion screened with a tight mesh curtain—made a second entrance to the house. A small canopy hung over the doorway, and from it dangled a wire coat hanger that had to belong to Nancy Armitage.

“What would it take to get me inside Miss Armitage’s room?” Simon asked.

“A court order,” Mrs. Rainey said.

“Let me put it another way. Nancy Armitage may be getting herself into a great deal of trouble. She leads a simple life. She doesn’t know what can happen in a courtroom. I want to help her.”

“Why?” Mrs. Rainey demanded.

“Because she’s done me a great favor. She came to me with evidence against one of my clients before going to the police. She didn’t have to do that. I think she’s sincere.”

Mrs. Rainey hesitated, and in that hesitation Simon saw the oncoming signs of denial. He didn’t wait. He strode quickly across the garden and grasped the doorknob. His guess was right—Nancy Armitage was a trusting soul. The door opened easily on a large, light room with the windows overlooking the sea.

“Mister, you can’t do that!” Mrs. Rainey cried.

She was too late. Simon had entered the room. The furniture was old—but it had been good once and showed excellent care. One wall was lined with bookshelves filled with what were obviously well-read texts. Nancy Armitage seemed to be a scholar. There was no television in the room, but he did find a compact hi-fi and record player of recent vintage.

“I suppose Nancy Armitage collects Bach,” Simon mused.

He raised the lid on the player. A disc was on the spindle. He couldn’t make out the title, so he switched on the mechanism and placed the needle. Nancy Armitage was a puzzle he had to solve. Anything that helped him find her pattern of thinking was important.

He wasn’t prepared for what came from the player. It wasn’t Nancy. It was low, sensuous and primitive. It was strings like soft fingers playing on his spine. It was woodwinds in a haunting mating call underlined by a throbbing beat that made trusting, neat, scholarly and conscientious Nancy Armitage an enigma once more. He switched off the player and turned to Mrs. Rainey.

“Does she play this often?” he asked.

Mrs. Rainey didn’t like him any more. “I don’t listen at keyholes,” she said. “My room’s on the opposite side of the house, and I’m usually at the TV whenever Nancy’s at home.”

Simon brightened. “Then you really wouldn’t know if she had a male caller, would you?”

“She would have told me. I’m not prudish.”

“But she might be, Mrs. Rainey. Have you thought of that? On the opposite side of the house, you couldn’t see—”

“I saw her Sunday!” Mrs. Rainey protested. “I was taking the sun in my deck chair. My TV’s a portable. I carried it outside. She went out alone.”

There was more than one way to find out about a woman. Mrs. Rainey was already miserable over the invasion of her roomer’s privacy. He might as well give her blood pressure a real boost. He crossed to the wardrobe closet and shoved back the sliding door. Nancy Armitage’s clothing was hung neatly on the clothes pole: simple, tailored suits, street dresses, half a dozen freshly laundered uniforms and the gray raincoat she had worn to The Mansion. Everything was in good taste—quality but economical. Everything but one sleek, black dinner dress which Simon removed from the rack for closer scrutiny.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Rainey protested. “Young man, I’m about to call the police—”

But Mrs. Rainey wasn’t about to do any such thing. Instead, she was about to become as enthralled as Simon as he examined the garment. It was low-cut, form-fitting and expensive. The label was from one of the finest shops in Marina Beach, and the perfume that still clung to the fabric sold for more by the ounce than Mrs. Rainey collected for a month’s rent.

“My, my, my!” Simon said. “Miss Nightingale has fine feathers! I’d like to be her patient on the night calls she makes in this uniform!”

And so Nurse Armitage had another life after all. Simon looked to Mrs. Rainey for explanation.

“I’ve never seen her wear that,” she insisted. “It’s not like Nancy! It’s just not her!”

A woman could miss a great deal staring at a television tube so much. But Nancy Armitage didn’t have a set—only a hi-fi.

“What about the record player?” Simon asked. “Is
that
Nancy?”

He didn’t expect an answer. He resumed the search of the closet and found a pair of expensive dancing slippers tucked in among the sensible oxfords and walking brogues. They were new and showed little wear. In the bathroom he found the perfume to match the scent on the dinner dress, and a collection of good costume jewelry. Dangling one glittering earring before Mrs. Rainey’s eyes, he asked:

“Have you seen Nancy Armitage wear these?”

“Never,” she answered.

Simon dropped the earring back into the jewelry tray.

“Or the black dress, or the slippers, or the French perfume? No? But you did see Miss Armitage leave the house Sunday afternoon. What was she wearing then?”

“Her raincoat,” Mrs. Rainey said.

“Are you sure? The sun was shining. You told me yourself that you were sitting in the sun in the garden. Wasn’t it warm for a coat?”

“Yes, but the forecast was for rain and it did rain later on.”

“Even so, Miss Armitage could have carried her coat. Did she carry anything?”

“Her purse—and the small bag she always carries when she goes out on special cases.”

“Where does she keep that bag?”

Mrs. Rainey was a woman of principle who still disapproved of the entire search.

“You said that you wanted to help Nancy,” she protested. “I don’t see how going through her things can help. She pays her rent. She’s entitled to privacy.”

But Simon could search faster” than Mrs. Rainey could protest He found the bag on the closet floor just under the shoe rack. It was about fourteen by eighteen inches and deep enough to contain a full wardrobe. He snapped open the lid. The bag was empty. There was no scent of medication, but there was the strong aroma of perfume. In a satin side pocket he found traces of face powder, two bobby pins and an eyebrow pencil.

He didn’t ask Mrs. Rainey for an explanation. He replaced the bag and closed the closet door.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “Miss Armitage is entitled to privacy. I suggest that we both forget I ever came into her room.”

There was a local hospital record on Milton Merton, the Aaronsons’ invalided uncle. He was almost seventy-five, partially senile, crippled and only recently placed on sedation to ease the terminal stages of his disease. It didn’t seem likely that Nancy Armitage had worn her finery for his benefit, but at this point Simon wasn’t certain of anything. He left the Rainey home and proceeded to the patio coffee shop in City Hall. Here the architects had blended modern with Romanesque and, at a table in the outdoor area surrounded by fountains and mosaic walls, he found Dr. Braun waiting with a carafe of coffee and two cups.

“So we have complications,” Braun said. “A reluctant witness to murder. Chalk up a victory to our Puritan heritage. Justice must be served.”

“How did Mrs. Warren react?” Simon asked.

Dr. Braun was a slightly built man with neat, black hair and the quiet manner of a well-trained shoe clerk. He filled both cups from the carafe, added a pellet of saccharine to his own, and said:

“Negative, Mr. Drake.”

“She didn’t remember any more about the night of the murder?”

“No. I’m sure she didn’t. I watched her very carefully. But she didn’t deny the confession. She didn’t fight back. She didn’t even say: ‘That hussy is a publicity hungry liar!’”

“And do you think she’s a publicity hungry liar?”

“Unfair question, Mr. Drake. Nancy Armitage isn’t my patient and I don’t hazard guesses on anything so important as murder. But I do like a little show of self-defense. Passive resistance is one thing, but passive without resistance is stark chaos.”

“Or guilt,” Simon suggested.

Braun studied the cup of coffee before him as if it contained the mystic answer to all things.

“At this point, despair is a better word,” he said. “Mrs. Warren is out of her depth. Her father idol failed and she’s such a dependent creature—and an emotional one—that when Roger Warren came along looking like a knight in white armor she eagerly traded the sawdust trail for orange blossoms. Changing classes isn’t easy in our—if you’ll pardon my sarcasm—’democratic’ society. Mrs. Warren would have been better off marrying the bakery boy.”

“Dependent,” Roger reflected. “Was that why she married Roger Warren—for protection?”

“I would imagine that nature had something to do with it,” Braun answered dryly.

“But for protection—not status or money.”

Simon became uncomfortably aware that Dr. Braun was staring at him in an almost professional manner. “Doctor,” he said quickly, “you must understand that cases aren’t won in the courtroom. If I’m to be of any use to Mrs. Warren, I have to win the case with her before taking it before a jury. She
is
my case.”

Across the patio, a crowd had gathered at one of the exits to the parking area. Someone shouted, and Simon happily abandoned
his
self-explanation in favor of any diversion. There were more angry voices followed by a sharp shattering of glass. Simon stood up. Towering above the crowd was the military figure of Commander Warren—outraged. Dressed in a dark mourning suit but with his head bared to the sunlight, he faced a battery of newsmen with all the contempt of a super-dreadnought on collision course with the enemy.

“No comment,” he roared, “and no pictures! McKay, get me out of here!”

McKay was a huge, broad-shouldered man in faded blue jeans and a yachting cap who appeared to be the commander’s bodyguard. Everything happened too quickly for Simon to follow the play, but McKay haunched his shoulders, ducked his head and executed a battering ram technique that opened a path through to the coffee shop patio. Beyond that low wall lay the sanctuary of private enterprise which no representative of advertising-sponsored journalism dared violate. Once within the safety zone, Commander Warren pushed past McKay and strode toward the entrance to the indoor restaurant, but his eyes were too sharp and his temper too short to complete the escape route without stopping to gloat. He spotted Simon as he was easing back into his chair.

“So,” the commander roared, “you’re the modern day Darrow who’s going to save my son’s murderer from the gas chamber! What do you say now, Mr. Drake?”

“I say that we have to make the scene with a few legal formalities,” Simon answered.

“Legal formalities! Haven’t you heard about Nancy Armitage’s testimony? My son’s wife is guilty, Mr. Drake. The nurse’s story proves that!”

“If I were as sold on her story as you want me to think you are,” Simon said, “and if I were Roger Warren’s father, I’d be turning handsprings on the patio instead of smashing news photographers’ cameras. You don’t need a bodyguard, Commander. You need a press representative.”

Commander Warren glared at Simon. For a few seconds he seemed to verge on asking McKay to play the heavy again, but somewhere in his nautical mind rang the warning bell of deep waters. The high intensity glare of the fanatic didn’t falter, but Commander Warren, pivoting in military style, executed one of the most graphic social snubs Simon had ever suffered. As the commander and McKay departed, Dr. Braun wryly remarked:

“Bang, bang, you’re dead!”

“Pathetic,” Simon admitted, “but powerful. And I have the uneasy feeling the commander would like to see flogging reinstituted as a part of navy discipline.”

“I’m sure he would,” Braun agreed. “The primitive can’t think of any other way to make people work. But don’t try to reform the commander, Drake. Primitives can’t be converted—only by-passed.”

The wind was rising off the ocean, and it was suddenly quite cool on the patio. Simon pushed aside his cup. It was time to go back to work.

He returned to the hospital floor of City Hall.

The woman in Wanda was fighting back even if the spirit was still weak. The first thing Simon noticed when he entered the room was a make-up mirror on the bedside table and a return of color to Wanda’s lips and mascara to her eyes. His flowers were still conspicuous on the bedside table and there was something almost pathetic in the way she turned toward him as he came through the doorway.

“Mr. Drake, do you know about that woman?” she asked.

“I know,” Simon answered casually. “I knew last night.”

“Last night? But you didn’t warn me—”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

The bluff worked. She was too desperate for reassurance to doubt his sincerity. Quickly, he added:

“Do you know Nancy Armitage?”

“No,” she said.

“Think about it. Are you sure you have never seen her anywhere? On the street? In The Profile? Anywhere at all?”

The front page of the late afternoon edition of the local paper—with a close-up of Nancy Armitage’s stricken face staring out from under a bold headline: NURSE SAYS WANDA GUILTY—was strewn over the floor beside the bed. Simon didn’t know if this was a result of Dr. Braun’s shock treatment or an indication of Thompson’s determination to get a confession, but it did mean that the woman in the bed had seen the face of her accuser.

And at this stage, Wanda was like a subject under hypnosis.

Simon ordered her too think, and she thought. Frown lines worried a forehead that shouldn’t have been troubled by anything more than the daily dinner menu—if the child could cook. And why that fleeting question crossed Simon’s mind was a matter he had no time to pursue.

“No,” Wanda repeated firmly. “I know that I’ve never seen her. I’m good about faces.”

“What do you think of her story?”

He had to be careful with his questions. Though Wanda was outwardly calm, the disposition of the newspaper on the floor could mean she was a hairline from hysteria.

Her voice came in a husky whisper.

“I don’t know why she would lie about me, do you?”

“And you still don’t remember killing your husband—even when an alleged eyewitness details the scene?”

“I’m sorry—”

“I don’t want you to be sorry! I want you to think! All that has happened today—Nancy Armitage’s confession, Dr. Braun’s visit, the commander—”

Simon stopped. There was sudden fear in her eyes when he mentioned the commander.

“Did you see Commander Warren today?” he asked.

“No—only Mr. Thompson and Dr. Braun.”

“Thompson? Was the district attorney here?”

“For a few minutes. He brought her in for identification—”

Wanda’s glance fell to the papers on the floor. She tried to speak again but the words wouldn’t come. Perspiration dotted her forehead and threatened her carefully penciled eyebrows, and then her tension broke in great convulsive sobs.

Simon dropped down beside the bed and held her by the shoulders until his fingers pressed a sobering awareness of pain through the wall of panic.

“I don’t understand,” she cried. “Mr. Drake, why can’t I remember? If Nancy Armitage is right, why can’t I remember killing my own husband?”