Lady, Lady, I Did It!
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Серия: 87th Precinct #14
- Год: 1961
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon and Schuster
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «Lady, Lady, I Did It!». Краткое содержание книги:
Kling waited. His hands had bunched into fists. He was waiting to ask the big question. Then he was going to beat Halsted to a pulp on the kitchen floor.
“When... when she went to the hospital, my wife would... would prepare food for the children. For Terry and... and Eileen. And...”
“Go ahead!”
“I would bring it down to them whenever... whenever my wife was working.”
Slowly Halsted took his hands from his face. He did not raise his eyes to meet Kling’s. He stared at the worn and soiled linoleum on the kitchen floor. He was still trembling, a thin frightened man in a sleeveless undershirt, staring at the floor, staring at what he had done.
“It was Saturday,” he said. “I had seen Terry leaving the house. From the window. I had seen him. My wife had gone to work — she does crochet beading; she’s a very skilled worker. It was Saturday. I remember it was very hot here in the apartment. Do you remember how hot it was in September?”
Kling said nothing in reply, but Halsted had not expected an answer. He seemed unaware of Kling’s presence. There was total communication between him and the worn linoleum. He did not raise his eyes from the floor.
“I remember. It was very hot. My wife had left sandwiches for me to take down to the children. But I knew Terry was gone, you see. I would have taken down the sandwiches anyway, you see, but I knew Terry was gone. I can’t say I didn’t know he was gone.”
He stared at the floor for a long time, silently.
“I knocked when I got downstairs. There was no answer. I... I tried the door, and it was open, so I... I went in. She... Eileen was still in bed, asleep. It was twelve o’clock, but she... she was asleep. The cover... the sheet had... had got... had moved down from... I could see her. She was asleep and I could see her. I don’t know what I did next. I think I put down the tray with the sandwiches, and I got into bed with her, and when she tried to scream I covered her mouth with my hands and I... I did it.”
He covered his face again.
“I did it,” he said. “I did it, I did it.”
“You’re a nice guy, Mr. Halsted,” Kling said in a tight whisper.
“It... it just happened.”
“The way the baby just happened.”
“What? What baby?”
“Didn’t you know Eileen was pregnant?”
“Preg... what are you saying? Who? What do you...? Eileen. No one said... why didn’t someone...?”
“You didn’t know she was pregnant?”
“No. I swear it! I didn’t know!”
“How do you think she died, Mr. Halsted?”
“Her mother said... Mrs. Glennon said an accident! She even told my wife that — her best friend! She wouldn’t lie to my wife.”
“Wouldn’t she?”
“An automobile accident! In Majesta. She... she was visiting her aunt. That’s what Mrs. Glennon told us.”
“That’s what she told your wife maybe. That’s the story you both invented to save your miserable hide.”
“No, I swear!” Tears had welled up into Halsted’s eyes. He reached forward eagerly now, pleadingly, grasping for Kling’s arm, straining for support. “What do you mean?” he said, sobbing. “What do you mean? Please, oh, please God, no...”
“She died getting rid of your baby,” Kling said.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Oh, God, I swear I didn’t—”
“You’re a lying bastard!” Kling said.
“Ask Mrs. Glennon! I swear to God, I knew nothing about—”
“You knew, and you went after somebody else who knew!”
“What?”
“You followed Claire Townsend to—”
“Who? I don’t know any—”
“—to that bookshop and killed her, you son of a bitch! Where are the guns? What’d you do with them? Tell me before I—”
“I swear, I swear—”
“Where were you Friday night from five o’clock on?”
“In the building! I swear! We went upstairs to the Lessers’! The fifth floor! We had supper with them, and then we played cards. I swear.”
Kling studied him silently. “You didn’t know Eileen was pregnant?” he said at last.
“No.”
“You didn’t know she was going for an abortion?”
“No.”
Kling kept staring at him. Then he said, “Two stops, Mr. Halsted. First Mrs. Glennon, and then the Lessers on the fifth floor. Maybe you’re a very lucky man.”
Arnold Halsted was a very lucky man.
He had been “temporarily unemployed” since August, but he had a wife who was an expert crochet beader and willing to assume the burden of family support while he sat around in his undershirt and watched the street from the bedroom window. He had raped a sixteen-year-old girl, but neither Eileen nor her mother had reported the incident to the police because, to begin with, Louise Halsted was a very close friend, and — more important — the Glennons knew that Terry would kill Arnold it he ever learned of the attack.
Mr. Halsted was a very lucky man.
This was a neighborhood full of private trouble. Mrs. Glennon had been born into this neighborhood, and she knew she would die in it, and she knew that trouble would always be a part of her life, an indisputable factor. She had seen no reason to bring trouble to Louise Halsted as well — her friend — perhaps her only friend in a world so hostile. Now, with her daughter dead and her son being held for assault, she listened to Bert Kling’s questions and, instead of incriminating Halsted in murder, she told the truth.
She said that he had known nothing whatever of the pregnancy or the abortion.
Arnold Halsted was a very lucky man.
Mrs. Lesser, on the fifth floor, said that Louise and Arnold had come upstairs at 4:45 on Friday afternoon. They had stayed for dinner and for cards afterward. He couldn’t possibly have been anywhere near the bookstore where the killings had taken place.
Arnold Halsted was a very lucky man.
All he had facing him was a rape charge — and the possibility of spending twenty years behind bars.
Chapter 14
The case was as dead as any of its victims.
The case was as dead as November, which came in with bonechilling suddenness, freezing the city and its inhabitants, suddenly coating the rivers with ice.
They could shake neither the cold nor the case from the squadroom. They carried the case with them all day long, and then they carried it home with them at night. The case was dead, and they knew it.
But so was Claire Townsend.
“It has to be connected with her!” Meyer Meyer said to his wife. “What else could it be?”
“It could be a hundred other things,” Sarah said angrily. “You’re all blind on this case. It’s Bert’s girl, and so you’ve all gone blind.”
Meyer rarely lost his temper with Sarah, but the case was bugging him, and besides, she had overcooked the string beans. “Who are you?” he shouted. “Sherlock Holmes?”
“Don’t shout at Mommy,” Alan, his oldest son said.
“Shut your mouth and eat your string beans!” Meyer shouted. He turned back to Sarah and said, “There’s too much involved in this! The pregnant girl, the—”
Sarah shot a hasty glance at the children and a warning at Meyer.
“All right, all right,” he said. “If they don’t know where babies come from already, it’s time they found out.”
“Where do babies come from?” Susie asked.
“Shut up and eat your string beans,” Meyer told her.
“Go ahead, tell her where babies come from,” Sarah said angrily.