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“I’m not just standing here!”
I counted to ten, slowly, wiped my eyes with digging fists, blew my nose, and fell downhill.
I led Henry and Crumley up the path to my grandparents’ house.
“I smell geraniums and lilacs.” Henry lifted his face.
“Yes.”
“And cut grass and furniture polish and plenty of cats.”
“The studio needs mousers. Steps, here, Henry, eight up.”
We stood on the porch, breathing hard.
“My God.” I looked out at Jerusalem’s hills beyond Green Town and the Sea of Galilee, beyond Brooklyn. “All along I should have seen. The Beast didn’t go to the graveyard, he was entering the studio! What a setup. Using a tunnel no one suspects to spy on his blackmail victims. See how much he had scared them with that body on the wall, grab the money, scare ’em again and pick up more!”
“If,” said Crumley, “that’s what he was doing.”
I took a deep trembling breath and at last let it out.
“There’s one more body I haven’t delivered to you.”
“I’d rather not hear,” said Crumley.
“Arbuthnot’s.”
“Crud, that’s right!”
“Somebody stole it,” I said. “A long time ago.”
“No, sirree,” said blind Henry. “It was never there. That was a clean place, that icehouse tomb.”
“So where’s Arbuthnot’s body been all these years?” asked Crumley.
“You’re the detective. Detect.”
“Okay,” said Crumley, “how’s this? Halloween booze party. Someone poisons the hooch. Gives it to Arbuthnot at the last second as he leaves. Arbuthnot, driving, dies at the wheel, smashes the other car off the road. There’s a coverup. Autopsy shows his body glows with enough poison to pile-drive an elephant. Before the funeral, instead of burying the evidence, they burn it. Arbuthnot, so much smoke, goes up the chimney. So his empty sarcophagus waits in the tomb, where blind Henry here tells all.”
“I did do that, didn’t I?” Henry agreed.
“The Beast, knowing the tomb is vacant and the reason why maybe, uses it as a base, hoists the Arbuthnot look-alike on the ladder, and watches the scalded ants run in a fright picnic over the wall. Okay?”
“That still doesn’t find us Roy, J. C., Clarence, or the Beast,” I said.
“Lord deliver me from this guy!” Crumley pleaded with the sky.
Crumley was delivered.
There was a fearful racket in the studio alleys, some backfires, honks, and a yell.
“That’s Constance Rattigan,” observed Henry.
Constance parked in front of the old house and cut the motor.
“Even when she turns off the ignition,” said Henry, “I can still hear her motor running.”
We met her at the front door.
