Confess, Fletch Read online

  Fletch chuckled. “I guess so.”

  “I mean, you don’t seem offended.”

  “I’m not. Why should I be?”

  “Would you be if I were your sister?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Some are.”

  “Everybody should be what he or she is.”

  Lucy said, “Bart even suggested religion for me. Jesus.”

  “How did you handle the marital situation?” Fletch asked.

  “First, I went throught a long period thinking I could have it both ways. Marsha and I were making it together. Sometimes here. Sometimes at my place. It was beautiful. Too good. It was the real thing. It wasn’t a passing phase on my part. It was me. We were getting careless. I mean, we were even doing it at my apartment while a servant was there. Oh, my God. I realized unconsciously, I wanted Bart to find out. He was too thick. I finally had to tell him.”

  Fletch asked, “How did he take it?”

  “I said, like a personal insult. He thought he had enough masculinity for both of us. He thought he could snap me out of it, if I just gave myself to him fully. He suggested more psychiatrists. He suggested religion. He even suggested we go into a marriage-of-convenience thing, both of us making love to girls on the side. That was about the last straw. By then Marsha had come to mean just too much to me. As a person, you know?”

  Again they exchanged looks. Marsha’s hand was squeezed.

  “Bart set up the boutique for us. Financially. I mean, the one we now run. You can forget the name of it. We don’t need the publicity.”

  “Does he still own it?”

  “He’s still financing it. We’re not completely divorced yet.”

  “You say he was hurt?”

  “I guess so. I guess this revelation about me caused him to question his own masculinity. I mean, he loved me, he married me, and I wasn’t there at all.”

  “But at the same time, apparently he hadn’t found your sexual relations satisfactory.”

  “He had put up with them. He hadn’t thrown me out. It might have been better if he had. Instead, he had tried to help.”

  “Do you ever see each other?”

  “We bump into each other. Boston’s a small city. Everybody’s always embarrassed. These days, you know, everybody knows everybody else’s sexual business.”

  “Hey, Marsha?” Fletch said. “What do you think?”

  Lucy looked at her expectantly.

  Bright, dark eyes in Fletch’s, Marsha shook her head slightly, and said nothing.

  Fletch closed his notebook and put it in his pocket.

  “Again, sorry about coming on a Sunday morning,” he said. “I tried several times to phone you Tuesday night. Weren’t you here?”

  “Tuesday?” Lucy looked puzzled at Marsha. “Oh, Tuesday. I was in Chicago, buying for the boutique. I was supposed to fly back Tuesday afternoon, but the plane was late. I was here by nine o’clock. You were here, weren’t you, Marsha?”

  She said, “Yeah.”

  “I have to fly out to Chicago sometime soon,” Fletch said. “What did you fly, Pan American?”

  “TWA,” Lucy said.

  “That’s better, uh?”

  “We were supposed to arrive at five, but it was seven-thirty before we got to Boston. Fog.”

  “Well, Lucy, I thank you very much. Will you keep the name of Connors?”

  “I don’t think so. I guess I’ll use my maiden name. Hyslop. Get out of Bart’s hair. What’s left of it.”

  Looking straight at Fletch, Marsha said, “You didn’t call here Tuesday night.”

  “I tried.” Fletch stood up and put his pen in his inside jacket jocket. “Phone must have been out of order.”

  Marsha’s eyes followed him as he went towards the door.

  Lucy followed him.

  Fletch said, “What’s this about a murder in your husband’s apartment?”

  “That’s irrelevant,” said Lucy.

  “I know. I’m just curious. I mean, murders are interesting.”

  “Not for the story?”

  “Of course not. What’s it got to do with you?”

  “Some girl was murdered in our old apartment. After Bart left for Italy. He rented the apartment to some schnook who says he found the body.”

  “You mean, your husband killed her?”

  “Bart? You’re kidding. There’s not an ounce of violence in him. Believe me, I should know. If he were going to kill anybody, he would have killed me.”

  “Have the police questioned you?”

  “Why should they?”

  From across the room, the harsh light from the window streaking between them, Marsha’s eyes were locked on Fletch’s face.

  “You must still have a key to the apartment,” he said.

  “I suppose I do,” she said. “Somewhere.”

  “Interesting,” said Fletch.

  “The police probably don’t know where to find me,” Lucy said. “Everything here is under Marsha’s name. You wouldn’t have known where to find me, if Bart hadn’t given you the number.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m still surprised he did. Bart must be coming to the idea that this situation happens to other people, too.”

  Fletch said, “Your husband’s a surprising fellow.”

  “How did you happen to meet him?”

  “He’s doing some trust work for my editor. We all happened to be together in Montreal,” Fletch said, “Tuesday night.”

  Marsha still had not moved. Her eyes, clear and unwavering, remained on Fletch’s face. A small amount of fear had entered those eyes.

  “When will we see your story?” Lucy asked.

  “Oh, a few weeks.” Fletch opened the door. “I’ll send it to you. If it works out.”

  XXVIII

  T H E Countess was not at the apartment when Fletch returned.

  She had left a note for him saying she had gone to mass.

  When the downstairs door’s buzzer rang, Fletch shouted into the mouthpiece, “Who is it?”

  “Robinson.”

  It was certainly not the Countess’s voice.

  “Who?”

  “Clay Robinson. Let me in.”

  Fletch had never heard of Clay Robinson.

  He let him in.

  Fletch stood in the opened front door, listening to the elevator.

  A curly-haired man in his mid-twenties got off the elevator. His face was puffy, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, the pupils glazed. His lips were cracked.

  As soon as he let himself through the elevator doors, he returned his hands to the pockets of his raincoat.

  “Fletcher?”

  “Yeah?”

  The man’s words slurred.

  “I was engaged to marry Ruth Fryer.”

  Fletch took a step forward with his left foot and swung with his right hand. His fist landed hard against Robinson’s jaw.

  Going down, Robinson couldn’t get his hands out of his pockets.

  He crashed against the small table under the mirror across from the elevator, rolled off it, and fell on to the floor, a flurry of raincoat.

  Fletch put his right knee at the base of Robinson’s rib cage and knelt hard on it.

  In the right-hand pocket of the raincoat, inside Robinson’s hand, Fletch felt the pistol. Robinson’s eyes rolled towards his brows.

  Fletch grabbed the gun from the pocket and stood up. It was a .22 calibre target pistol.

  Robinson sat on the rug, one arm straight to the floor, a knee up, his other hand gently touching his jaw.

  “Come in,” Fletch said.

  He went into his apartment and put the gun in a drawer of the desk in the den.

  When he returned to the apartment’s foyer, Robinson was standing in the door, dazed, right hand in coat pocket, left hand rubbing his jaw.

  “Come in,” Fletch said.

  He closed the door behind Robinson.

  “I’ll put some coffee on. You take a shower.” />
  He walked Robinson down the corridor to the master bedroom’s bathroom. Sylvia’s things were everywhere.

  “Hot, then cold.”

  Fletch left him in the bathroom.

  He heard the shower running while he crossed the hall to the den with a coffee tray.

  After a while Robinson appeared in the door of the den, hair wet, tie hanging from his opened collar, raincoat over his arm.

  His eyes were less glazed.

  “Have some coffee,” Fletch said.

  Robinson dropped his coat on a side chair, and sat in a red leather chair.

  “You’ve had a rough time.” Fletch handed him a cup of steaming, black coffee. “I’m sorry.”

  Robinson, saucer held at chest level, sipped his coffee, blinking slowly.

  Fletch said, “I didn’t kill Ruth Fryer. Nothing says you have to believe me, or even can believe me. I found her body. She was a beautiful girl. And she looked like a hell of a nice person. I didn’t kill her.”

  Robinson said, “Shit.”

  “Shooting me would have been a real mistake,” Fletch said. “But I dig the impulse.”

  In his chair, Robinson choked. Then, breath out of control, he put his coffee on the side table, his face forward in his hands, and sobbed.

  Fletch went into the living room and studied the Paul Klee.

  The noise from the den was a full-chested, strangulated, broken-hearted sobbing. It stopped. Then it started again.

  When the pauses became more frequent, and longer, Fletch went back to the bathroom and soaked a hand towel in cold water. He wrung it out.

  Going back into the den, he tossed the wet towel at Robinson.

  “Anything I can do for you?”

  Robinson rubbed his face in the towel, then pushed it back over his hair.

  He sat, head over his knees, towel pressed against his forehead.

  “Were you at the funeral?” Fletch asked.

  “Yes. Yesterday. In Florida.”

  “How are her parents?”

  “There’s only her father.”

  Fletch said, “I’m sorry for him. I’m sorry for you.”

  Clay Robinson sat back in a slouch.

  “I hadn’t broken down before this. I guess I’ve been holding myself pretty tight.” He grinned. “The thought of killing you got me through it.”

  “Do you want some food?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t want anything to drink.”

  “No.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Washington. I work for the Justice Department.”

  “Oh?”

  “A clerk. A clerk with a college education.”

  “How did you meet Ruth Fryer?”

  “On an airplane. I was flying some papers in from Los Angeles. We spent the night together.”

  “You picked her up.”

  “We met,” said Clay Robinson. “Fell in love. We were getting married New Year’s.”

  “I don’t remember her wearing an engagement ring.”

  “I hadn’t bought one yet. Have you ever lived on a clerk’s pay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I came up Tuesday,” Clay said.

  “To Boston?”

  “Yes. I was going to surprise her. I knew she had ground duty all this week. I took some time off. By the time I got to the hotel, she had gone.”

  “Do you know with whom?”

  “No. Her room-mate just said Ruth’s uniform was there, so she must have changed and gone out. I didn’t know about it, about the murder, until next morning when I went to the airport to find her.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was the next morning I called her father and began to make arrangements to fly the body down. The police had already done an autopsy. Arrogant bastards.”

  “Where did you get the gun?”

  “Pawn shop in the South End. Paid a hundred dollars for it.”

  “This morning?”

  “Last night.”

  “Where did you stay last night?”

  “Mostly in a bar. I got pretty drunk. I fell into some hotel at two, three this morning.”

  “Want some more coffee?”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “There’s an unused guest room in there,” Fletch said. “If you want to hit the bed, it’s all right with me.”

  “No.” A little more clear-eyed, Robinson looked at Fletch wonderingly. “I was going to kill you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You moved mighty fast.”

  Fletch said, “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to find Ruthie’s murderer.”

  “Good for you.”

  “What do you know about it?” Robinson asked. “I mean, about the murder.”

  “It’s being handled by Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn of the Boston Police Department.”

  “Who does he think killed Ruthie?”

  “Me.”

  “Who do you think killed Ruthie?”

  “I have a couple of ideas.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “No.”

  Robinson said, “You have the gun.”

  “Yeah,” Fletch said, “but you might have another hundred dollars.”

  Robinson’s white face moved as slowly as changes in the moon.

  “Why don’t you go home?” Fletch said. “Go downstairs, get into a taxi, go to the airport, take the next plane to Washington, taxi to your apartment, have something warm to eat, go to bed, and tomorrow morning go to work.”

  Robinson said, “Sounds nice.”

  “Thought it would if someone laid it out for you.”

  Robinson said, “All right.”

  He stood up stiffly and reached for his raincoat.

  “What am I supposed to say to you?”

  Fletch said, “Good-bye?”

  “I guess if I ever find out you are the murderer, I will kill you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Even if they put you in jail for twenty, thirty years, however long, when they release you, I will kill you.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  At the door, Robinson said, “Good-bye.”

  Fletch said, “Come again. When you’re feeling better.”

  Before leaving the apartment himself, an hour or two later, Fletch wrote a note to the Countess saying he had gone to the airport to pick up Andy.

  XXIX

  I T W A S a dark brown, wooden Victorian house, three storeys under a slate roof, on the harbourside, in Winthrop. It had a small front yard and cement steps leading up to a deep porch.

  Looking between the houses, as he walked from where he had parked his car, Fletch saw their shallow backyards ended at a concrete seawall. Beyond was the cold, slate-grey, dirty water of Boston Harbour. The airport was a mile or two across the water.

  On the porch, Fletch looked through the front window, into the living room.

  At the back of the room, four music stands were set up in a row. Behind them, to their right, was a baby grand piano, its lid piled with stacks of sheet music. A ’cello stood against the piano. The divan and chairs, coffee table, and carpet seemed incidental in the large, wainscoted room.

  Two teenage boys who looked just alike, not only in their blue jeans and cotton shirts, but in their slim builds and light colouring, were setting sheet music on the stands.

  A jet, taking off from the airport across the harbour, screamed overhead.

  The storm door to Fletch’s right opened.

  “Mister Fletcher?”

  He had not rung the bell.

  Flynn’s small face, at his great height, peered around the corner at him.

  “Hi,” Fletch said, backing away from the window he had been peering through. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Flynn said. “Your police escort phoned me to report you were approaching my house. They fear you threaten our well-being.”

 
; “I do,” said Fletch, holding out a five-pound box. “I brought your family some chocolate.”

  “How grand of you.” Flynn held the spring door open with his huge left arm and took the candy with his right hand. “Bribery, is it?”

  “It occurred to me it was the City of Boston which owed me a bottle of whisky—not the Flynn family.”

  Flynn said, “Come in, Fletch.”

  The vestibule was dark and scattered with a half-dozen pairs of rubbers. A baby carriage was parked at an odd angle.

  Flynn led him into the living room.

  Besides the boys in the room, one of whom now had a violin in his hands, there was a girl of about twelve with full, curly blonde hair and huge, blue saucer eyes. The colour of her short, fluffy dress matched her eyes. The boys were about fifteen.

  “Munchkin,” Flynn said. “This is Mister Fletcher, the murderer.” Flynn pointed off his children, “Randy, Todd, Jenny.”

  Randy, bow and violin in one hand, extended his right. “How do you do, sir?”

  As did his twin, Todd.

  “Ach,” said Flynn. “My family gets to meet all sorts.”

  A boy about nine years old entered. His hair was straight brown. Mostly he was glasses and freckles.

  “This is Winny,” said Flynn.

  Fletch shook hands with him.

  “No Francis Xavier Flynn?”

  “One’s enough,” said Flynn. “No bloody Irwin Maurice, either.”

  Elizabeth Flynn entered through a door behind the piano.

  Her light brown, straight hair fell to her shoulders. Her body, under her skirt and cardigan, was full and firm. Her unquestioning light blue eyes were deep-set over magnificent cheekbones. They were warm and humorous and loving.

  “This is Fletch, Elsbeth. The murderer. I mentioned him.”

  “How do you do?” She held his hand over the music stand. “You’d like some tea, I think.”

  “I would.”

  “He brought me some candy.” Flynn handed her the box. “Better give him some tea.”

  “How nice.” She looked at the box in her hands. “Perhaps for after supper?”

  “We were about to have our musicale,” Flynn said. To the children, he said, “What is it today?”

  “Eighteen—One.” Todd’s Adam’s apple seemed too large for his sinewy neck, especially when he spoke. “F major.”

  “Beethoven? We’re up to that, are we?”

  Jenny said, “I am.”