Malice in Wonderland Page 2

  “Evidently you know of some connection between this woman and Mr. Dean,” he said.

  Miss Fernandez looked somberly wise. She struggled to capsule within a few words a panorama of a situation that had, for a considerable time now, been disturbing her inwardly.

  “It is deeper than the shopworn convention one calls the eternal triangle. Its roots lie in the character of that dangerous woman.”

  “This woman? Miss Sangford?”

  She expressed a shrug of impatience at his ineptitude in failing to grasp instantly the implacable chains that fettered young Dean.

  “No, the roots lie in his mother. She is rich, but fantastically rich. Her jewels alone are worth a fortune. She has put the world at his feet, but he dare not explore it without her visa.”

  “What I suppose you’re getting at, Miss Fernandez, is that Miss Sangford made a serious attempt to snag the boy.”

  “What else? Not alone I, but all the guests knew it to be true. I was in the cocktail room on the evening when this greedy one arrived. How shall I tell you?”

  She looked at him and beyond him and back to the scene of Theda Sangford’s initial entrance one week earlier into the cocktail lounge, adjusting the main characters (young Dean and Bert) into their proper place on stage, which was a table beneath a mounted marlin on the west wall.

  She pictured herself seated near enough to this table for observation but quite beyond earshot of what was being said. Then she brought the body of Theda Sangford from its stiffening posture on the sand into an effect of life that was convincing in spite of her outlandish way of expressing herself.

  “One watched her entrance, which was in the manner where every step is a provocation. One watched her pause and survey the field. One watched her remove a cigarette from a jeweled case and seat herself on a banquette adjoining the table of Mr. Dean. It was a display of virtuosity which would have brought an acclaim to a Cleopatra. Almost immediately she asked him for a light. Ah—the impact!”

  “On Dean?”

  “I shall tell you this. You may regard it as having been equivalent to the effect upon a man which would be produced only by a cobra with business in its eye.”

  “Well, after all,” Duggan said equably, “if there was that initial aversion to her on his part—I’m afraid I just don’t understand.” She said with courteous impatience that he did not understand his own sex, nor did he evidently comprehend the power of sex in itself, particularly when it was wielded by an accomplished woman. This, of course, was absolute slander, but Duggan let it pass.

  “You will accept that by last night she had him in her power.” Miss Fernandez launched into the full-bodied stream of her narrative. “You will regard me at the hour of cocktails, seated at a vantage point from which one aspect of this tragedy could be observed very clearly.”

  “Just let me get this straight. You are now talking about last night?”

  “I am. To my right, at their accustomed table beneath that stiff, stuffed fish are seated Mr. Dean and the leechlike Mr. Jackson.”

  “Why leechlike?”

  “He is an agent engaged by Mrs. Dean to report every movement of her son. So they sit there and they solace themselves with double daiquiris while awaiting the arrival of Miss Spang.”

  “Double daiquiris. How was young Dean? Would you say that he was drunk?”

  “He had taken too much to drink. But it is not Miss Spang who accepts the waiting chair. It is this poor one, here.” Miss Fernandez lowered a glance of Christian commiseration on the dead. “I must tell you that Mr. Jackson is temporarily away, gone through that door on which is the silhouette of a running man.

  For an instant I am bemused by Francine, the barmaid, who is producing at my table a rum punch. When again I study Mr. Dean it is to see that his face is as white as the under portion of that terrible fish. He is saying, forgetting his true gentility, ‘Shut up!’ And this unfortunate one employs upon her lips a smile of pure evil and remarks, ‘By daybreak, understand? Be there or you will be a very, very sorry little boy.’” Miss Fernandez concluded simply, “She stands. She goes. It is the curtain of her scene.”

  It also, Duggan realized, planted Dean squarely on the spot.

  “You said one aspect, Miss Fernandez. Were there others?”

  The sun rose leisurely above the ocean’s rim. The sands were fired with gold, and only the flesh of Miss Sangford retained a mortal pallor. The tide on ebb sighed backward into the sea, and Miss Fernandez emerged with another small bouquet from the garden of her thoughts.

  “After dinner, at the hour when the television is in force, seated on the banquette next to mine are Mrs. Dean and Mrs. Spang. Ah, that one!”

  Duggan asked with reasonable uncertainty, “Which?”

  “Mrs. Spang, the mother of that charming, fragrant girl. A woman, you must grasp, of ice, with a cold prettiness that is beginning to melt with age. As one woman has put it to me, she is a Custer in Schiaparelli embarked on her ultimate stand.”

  “Busted?” “So it is said. It is either a marriage of importance for her daughter, or the end. The Dean fortune exposes itself as her last gun.”

  “Well, from what you’ve told me he seems willing enough. Or was Miss Sangford a serious threat?”

  “You will consider the conversation which I overheard when the scenario on the television screen concerns itself with pantomime. You will listen, please, to Mrs. Dean: ‘If Ernest were to marry and leave me I would cut his allowance off completely.’ To this decision Mrs. Spang replies: ‘I suppose you know best, dear. But that woman is determined. Why don’t you go to Nassau until she leaves?’ And now, the crux. It is the voice of Mrs. Dean: ‘I shall meet this danger in my own manner—and never by running away.’”

  Miss Fernandez reached the end of her disclosures and obviously waited for Duggan to take up the ball. What she expected, he imagined, was a swift descent on his part upon young Dean, who, being a fine, upstanding American youth (no matter how badly mother-ridden), would obligingly admit that he had met Miss Sangford by appointment at daybreak. Under the harmless cloak of taking an early-morning dip, of course. It would then be revealed that the dip had backfired and that young Dean, callowly panic-stricken, had taken off for home base.

  * * * *

  Duggan was saved from disillusioning Miss Fernandez as to the number of holes in this amateurs slice of Swiss by a group strolling toward them from the motel. It was led by Officer Day.

  Duggan explained to Roth, a police technician, what pictures to take, specifying in particular close-ups of the ankles and the hair and the patterns left on the dead woman’s flesh by the dried sand. He suggested that they first be outlined, say with a lipstick.

  He wanted a complete set of Miss Sangford’s fingerprints transmitted telephotographically to New York and Washington, after which the boys could remove the body to the morgue space of Tropical to be held for the medical examiner.

  He left a final suggestion that a detailed search be made of the shoreline to the north and south. If the ocean had been kind enough to disgorge it, he would like the bathing cap that was missing from Miss Sangford’s head. Presumably it had been lost during the usual convulsive struggles that precede a death by drowning. Then he went to the manager’s office and called up Sibley.

  Dr. Frank Sibley, pathologist at Tropical General Hospital, was the appointed associate medical examiner for South Broward County. He was young, he was a perfectionist, and he was adroit. Homicide held for him the peculiar fascination of a Chinese puzzle, one of the ring sort that requires the most delicate patience to solve.

  Duggan explained.

  He said to Sibley in conclusion, “One thing I wish you’d do at once, Frank. Subject the heart to the Gettler test.”

  Sibley was impressed.

  “So it’s one of those?”

  “I think it is. Let me know, will you, as soon as you’ve checked? As early this afternoon as possible?”

  “Look, Bill, the solutions for that tes
t have to stand overnight. There will be nothing on it decisive before tomorrow morning.”

  Waldo Barcombe, the motel manager, came into the room from his quarters and looked frowzily at Duggan. Waldo’s job was largely titular, as his wife Kitty did the managing and the actual work of keeping the place running smoothly. In spite of his post before the public, Waldo was not in reality an affable man, being given to blanket dislikes, such as a loathing of all Southerners, all jobs where the slightest physical exertion was required, and any lack of tastiness in the preparation by Kitty of his meals. He was an all-round coddled egg.

  “Hello, Bill,” he said. “Kitty’s told me. There’s always one like that Miss Sangford. A troublemaker.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “What do we know about any of them? What they tell us, that’s all. She had the dough and she laid it on the line.”

  “For how long?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “What else?”

  “A New York address in the East Fifties.”

  “How about mail since she’s been here?”

  “No mail.”

  “Phone calls?”

  Waldo picked up the telephone and said to the girl on the front-office switchboard, “About Miss Sangford, Mabel—”

  “Isn’t it terrible!”

  “No, it isn’t. She probably took a swim while potted and got what was coming to her.”

  “Oh, Mr. Barcombe! The Bible says—”

  “Never mind what the Bible says. Tell me if she received any telephone calls while she’s been here.”

  “Not while I was on.”

  “Check with Pete about nights.”

  “I have. That is, he mentioned it to me only this morning when I took over. Not a call, and what with her figure he thought it peculiar.”

  Waldo hung up and relayed all this to Duggan.

  “What made you say she had it coming to her?” Duggan asked.

  “Latching onto young Dean for one thing. Trying to take him away from Jenny Spang. Boy, has that guy’s mama got dough. She’s even got a watchdog-bodyguard to ride herd on him, she keeps him so loaded. No kidding.”

  “Bert Jackson? Is that his name?”

  “You know about it?”

  “A Miss Fernandez briefed me.”

  “That bird. She flops around in fogs feeling for things. I think she’s half cracked.”

  “Possibly. Let me in Miss Sangford’s apartment, will you, Waldo?”

  Waldo took a passkey from the desk drawer.

  “Let’s go.”

  While Duggan searched the Sangford unit with the zealot nicety of a Carrie Nation sniffing out a dram, the sun rose higher into the warmth of morning, while the motel stirred to life and to the impact of snowballing rumors.

  Among the feminine division these embraced such positively known facts as that that vampire had accidentally drowned—she had committed suicide—she had been dragged beneath the waves by (a) Mrs. Dean, (b) Mrs. Spang, (c) Jenny Spang, (d) Ernest. She had fought madly for her life and had been bruised all over, several people knowing several people who had heard her perfectly ghastly dying shrieks (sea gulls). She had succumbed without a struggle while in a disgraceful drunken stupor—with the only point of complete agreement among the ladies being that Officer Day was a doll.

  The local press—Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Miami—was as yet cold to the story, and the incident was tactfully dropped into the category of a sadly drowned tourist. As such it was quietly underplayed, with the virtuous hope being advanced that amateur swimming visitors to our golden strands would take proper heed and quit venturing into our gentle, delightful, azure-blue sea before the efficient lifeguards came on duty and would be on hand to fish them out of it again.

  Duggan ended his inch-by-inch search and had Roth take such photographs as he felt the county prosecutor could use in evidence. These included three sets of fingerprints on one of the two bottles of scotch that Jimmy had left. Duggan wanted them put through the mill.

  Then he said to Waldo, “I’m about ready for young Dean.”

  Waldo looked at him with the pleading eyes of an unfed seal.

  “Take it easy with the kid, will you, Bill? They’re paying top seasonal rental, and what’s more she’s got enough of the stuff to slam the pick of the legal hot shots in your face if you step out of line.”

  He would not, Duggan promised, step out of line, and they walked to the Dean apartment, and Waldo pressed the button for the door chime. Sun smashed purple flame into the bougainvillea in one corner of the patio, and only the surf on the shore made any sound, and the chime died into this silence. Then the door opened, and Duggan had his first view of Mrs. Dean.

  Even though the hour was only half-past eight she presented a picture of competent preservation. Her gold hair shone from its brushing and the expensive sheen from an imported brilliantine. Her face was in order, and a deceptively simple cotton dress suggested the freshness of jonquils on a sunny hill.

  Waldo smiled managerially.

  “You’ve heard, I suppose,” he said.

  “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  “These lamentable, these stupid accidents!”

  She played docilely along in her soft, rich voice, flickering her long-lashed glance at Duggan.

  “Always so tragic,” she agreed. “Especially with the middle-aged.”

  “Middle—! Miss Sangford?”

  “Oh, easily, I should think, a contemporary of my own. Won’t you come in?”

  “Thank you, I can’t. I’ve the usual thousand things to do and now with this on top of it. I just wanted to introduce Bill Duggan, our chief of police. Then I’ll run along.”

  Mrs. Dean extended a firm, cold hand. “Chief Duggan?”

  “Mrs. Dean.”

  They shook hands, and Waldo ran along to attend to his thousand things, which were nothing more arduous than a head dive back onto a foam-rubber mattress. Duggan followed Mrs. Dean into the living room, where she asked him to sit down and then arranged herself in a formal posture on a lounge. She sat there, very composed, and observed him with a polite attention.

  “I would like to talk with your son, Mrs. Dean.”

  “Ernest is asleep, Mr. Duggan. Drugged, really. He suffered a rather shocking experience this morning. Around daybreak to be exact. It came as a climax to a heavy night, and the combination jolted his nerves severely. I insisted on his taking two of my pills. Luminal.”

  Duggan smiled back at her understandingly. A good deal more understandingly than she knew. He admired her technique in launching the attack against himself, the enemy.

  “The shocking experience. You refer to his appointment with Miss Sangford?”

  Mrs. Dean gazed at him steadily with eyes that were not quite violet, not quite green, and the social set of her smile remained unaltered.

  “Of course you would know about that. I believe one of the barmaids—Francine—spread the word? Or anyone else having cocktails within earshot of Miss Sangford’s voice. Have you ever noted the muted quality of some bars, especially those that go in for Liberace lighting like the one here?”

  “Yes, I have. An added decibel of sound in a person’s voice—”

  “Exactly. As for the rendezvous, it never took place. Miss Sangford was lying on the sand, drowned, when Ernest went down to the shore. As I have said, the shock of it, added to a terrific hangover—”

  “I can well imagine.” He added sympathetically, “It must have been pretty tough to make him fail to notify either the management or the police.”

  She looked back at him calmly and permitted him to light the cigarette she had taken from a box on the coffee table between them.

  “Obviously that would occur to you, Mr. Duggan. It would occur to anybody. I was awake when Ernest returned. I heard him being violently ill by the beach door. You may have noticed that its upper half is glassed? I went to him and could see the beach through the windowpanes. I saw that Puerto Rican woman, Miss Fernandez. I sa
w Miss Fernandez find Miss Sangford’s body and then saw her go to the telephone booth at the lifeguard’s shop. The call was to the police, to you, wasn’t it, Mr. Duggan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I felt confident that it would have been and gave my full attention to Ernest. Bert helped me. Bert Jackson, my son’s friend. After we had put Ernest to bed I looked out again on the beach, and you and that other officer had taken over.”

  Duggan let the explanation rest in a quiet that grew prolonged to a limit where the smile was gone from Mrs. Dean’s carnation-painted lips.

  She began to feel it intolerable and said, “Well, Mr. Duggan?”

  “Did you also hear your son when he left for the beach, Mrs. Dean?”

  “I am a very light sleeper, and there is little that I do not hear at night. Ernest got up and went out not more than a quarter of an hour before I heard him return. In the condition that I’ve told you.” Her expression grew more strained. “Is it the reason for the rendezvous that is puzzling you?”

  “In a way.”

  “Now really, Mr. Duggan, with a woman of her type, why should it? My son is a perfectly normal young man.”

  “It is the secrecy that has me bothered.”

  “Nonsense. Were you never, at Ernest’s age, shall we say, similarly involved?”

  “No, neither then nor now. You see, I am still a bachelor, Mrs. Dean.”

  It took a full moment for the implication to sink in, and the effect of it on Mrs. Dean was appalling.

  “Bachelor—bachelor?”

  “Surely you knew that Miss Sangford was your sons wife?”

  Her words were spaced like the death roll of a heart slowing down.

  “I do not believe you, Mr. Duggan.”

  He took a paper from a jacket pocket and handed it to her. “The marriage certificate,” he said. “She had hidden it rather cleverly among facial tissues. Evidently Miss Sangford was afraid it would be searched for.”

  He did not, Mrs. Dean noticed, directly specify that the search would have been made by Ernest, although he obviously seemed to imply it. Her eyes lingered in total disbelief on the certificate’s date, which was two months ago, and on the place, which was the Borough of Manhattan.