Murder is the Pay-Off Read online

  Connie saw that Orval Rogers was one of them. Not that Orval ever skipped, singly or in pairs. Coming down alone now, his black tie neatly tied, his blond hair neatly brushed, he looked very like a young but sober owl behind his neat steel-rimmed glasses. Halfway down the stairs he stopped, searching the room earnestly for a moment before he came on.

  “Poor Orvie—”

  Connie started a little and looked around. It was Martha Ferguson, wife of the bank president.

  “Oh, Martha. You took the words right out of my mind, dear.”

  It was not quite true, because in her mind they had none of the affectionate warmth and bubbling amusement they had as Martha Ferguson spoke them.

  “Hi, Orvie,” she said.

  “Hi, Connie. Hi, Martha. Dad couldn’t come, Connie. He says he’s sorry, but he’s too old for these routs.”

  He looked around earnestly again.

  “Janey isn’t here yet,” Connie said.

  “Yeah. She said she didn’t know whether she could get a sitter for little Jane.”

  Orvie Rogers wandered over toward the bar. Connie looked around at Martha Ferguson again. “I wonder why we always say ‘Poor Orvie,’ ” she said abruptly. “He’s got an awful lot more dough than any of the rest of us.”

  Martha Ferguson laughed. “Oh, he’s so serious and his father makes him work so hard. Poor Orvie—I don’t think he’s really ever had any fun, or busted out all over. I’m devoted to him. He’s really sweet.” She took a Manhattan off the tray the colored boy held in front of her. “Now what I wonder—I mean if we are wondering—is how long, for heaven’s sakes, we’re going on always telling Orvie that Janey hasn’t come yet, or Janey’s over there, or Janey’s upstairs or out in the garden. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  Connie took a sip of the cocktail in her hand. Martha Ferguson glanced at her, her brown eyes kindling a little. “Oh, Connie, don’t be a stinker and a louse! You know damn well you’ve no right to be.”

  “Darling! Who’s being a stinker and a louse? You asked me a question and I asked you another.”

  “Okay.” Martha Ferguson tossed off the rest of her cocktail and put the glass down. “It’s not manners to quarrel with your hostess, so I guess I’ll move along. I’m a bit tense tonight myself. I like Janey.”

  She let her eyes rest on Connie’s plunging neckline and bare, smooth shoulders for an instant. “That’s a divine little twelve-ninety-eight job you’ve got on, Connie. Nice for a working girl, I mean. I hope Janey can’t find a sitter, if you don’t mind my saying so. Though I don’t suppose that would keep Gus home.” She glanced across the room. “There’s my husband wasting his dough on Aunt Mamie’s slot machine. I’d better grab him quick, before the rumor starts it’s the bank’s money he’s stuffing down the iron maw.”

  As she moved away, Connie was alone for a moment in a dancing pool of firelight, her hand resting idly on the back of the yellow sofa, a witch woman smiling quietly as she watched Martha take her husband’s arm to pull him away from the slot machine. She watched her cousin Dorsey Syms move in, drop one quarter, and move away for somebody else. If you play the slot machine, that’s the way to do it, Connie thought. Take a chance—what was it? 2400 to one on the jack pot, somebody had told her—and not take the second chance that was still 2400 to one. She glanced up the stairs. She could hear her Aunt Mamie’s vigorous, strident voice and see her in her mind’s eye, a champagne glass in one hand, the other firmly pinioning some polite unfortunate, the rector probably, or the judge, vocally bludgeoning him on the decay of manners and morals in Smithville, while her son and her husband put their quarters in the machine. Aunt Mamie’s slot machine, Martha Ferguson had called it. That was because of the printed sign over it. This machine is for your amusement. It pays off 75 per cent to you and 25 per cent to the box in the corner for the League for Civic Improvement. It does not pay for the liquor you drink here. That’s free. It was signed with John Maynard’s vigorous scrawl.

  Connie turned, smiling, to look up the stairs. The League for Civic Improvement was the banner under which John Maynard’s sister Mamie, otherwise Mrs. Nelson Syms, its founder and president, carried on all her whirlwind crusades. Connie could hear her voice now, rising above the clang of the machine—which must be paying off very well tonight, she thought, the way everybody was crowding in to play it, and judging by the crescendo of the laughing chatter around it.

  “… clubs can’t exist in this town without slot machines,” Aunt Mamie was saying, “then the clubs will have to fold, my dear Commodore. Bingo is an entirely different matter. The League made twelve hundred dollars on Bingo last year. I myself won an electric mixer, and a very respectacle woman I know won a washing machine she very badly needed. That is hardly what I call gambling, Commodore.”

  Poor Commodore, Connie thought. She could see him, too, in her mind’s eye, a pleasant little man who was certainly no match for Mrs. Nelson Syms. But the commodore and Aunt Mamie, Aunt Mamie’s son Dorsey Syms, whom she’d just seen at the slot machine, Aunt Mamie’s husband—Uncle Nelly, he was usually called—and her father’s slot machine itself, the gift of Doc Wernitz, there for Amusement and Civic Improvement, occupied only the periphery of Connie Maynard’s active mind and smiling, attentive eye. Janey and Gus Blake occupied the center and core of both as she watched the stairs, waiting for them to come.

  And if they didn’t? If Gus hadn’t heard about the checks, he’d certainly come. If he had heard, then he’d have to come, and make her come, just to show, to keep face in front of all their friends. Unless— Connie dismissed that. If Janey had been going on month after month, getting deeper and deeper into the hole she’d dug, she wasn’t likely to choose tonight to try to crawl out of it, not with Gus so busy trying to get out a Centennial edition of the Smithville Gazette that he was hardly civil to his own staff—Gus who by nature and circumstances was never more than six jumps from the sheriff anyway. She could dismiss that.

  Janey wouldn’t tell him tonight even if Janey knew it herself, and nobody else would. Martha Ferguson, maybe— if her husband had told her. Martha might blurt it out for his own good.

  Connie looked across the room. The Fergusons were standing at the bar talking to the colored boy behind it, Jim Ferguson’s arm around his wife’s shoulders. Connie shook her head. Martha talked a lot, but not when Jim told her, to shut up. As president of the town’s leading bank, this was one time he’d be sure to tell her. No, Gus could go on a long time without knowing anything about it. It was one of the things about a town like Smithville. The Conspiracy of Silence, John Maynard called it. Like Aunt Mamie not knowing she used money from a slot machine, and the people who came and lived there for years not knowing that Judge Dikes hovered so solicitously around his sister because she’d pick up any small movable object if he didn’t, and not knowing, for instance, that another of the guests upstairs had shot his wife and been acquitted without the jury’s so much as leaving the box to make up their mind.

  “Waiting for somebody?”

  Connie started. She hadn’t noticed her cousin Dorsey Syms move around behind the masonry piers to join her. He was smiling, the Maynard smile. There was very little Syms in Aunt Mamie’s son. He had the Maynard height, the Maynard confidence, the black hair, brown eyes, straight nose, and slightly cleft chin. And a good deal of his Uncle John Maynard’s charm. The Syms family had nothing much to distinguish them except an ancestor who’d conducted the Siege of Smithville against Cornwallis and whom Aunt Mamie had brevetted from ensign to colonel. Except Nelson Syms, of course. He had Aunt Mamie, and the job her brother John Maynard had got him in the County Treasurer’s office. And his son Dorsey Syms, whose most attractive quality was his obvious fondness for his father. Neither of them could have survived Aunt Mamie if they hadn’t formed a “league” of their own, Connie thought, hearing the voluble, determined voice beating on upstairs.

  She smiled at her cousin. “Just wondering whether we ought
to start feeding people.”

  “Not before Gus and Janey get here, surely,” Dorsey Syms said. “I suppose they’re coming?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Not a ripple showed on the clear surface of her casual unconcern, but her pulse had quickened. He works in the bank. He knows. He must know all about it. He’s trying to find out if I know, too. He’s supposed to have been crazy about Janey once. She glanced around the playroom again. How many people there did know? Jim Ferguson certainly, and probably Martha. Orvie Rogers probably. Dorsey Syms, herself, her father upstairs—who else? There were at least thirty people there by now. If Janey and Gus didn’t come pretty soon, somebody would say something.

  “I hear Doc Wernitz is leaving town,” Dorsey said. “Scotch, please.” He took a highball off the tray the boy was passing again. “Does he take that little gadget of yours over there along with him?”

  “You mean the slot machine?”

  She wasn’t smiling any longer. “That’s Dad’s, not mine.” Her level gaze met his and held it. “And it was a gift, not a loan. Doc Wernitz hasn’t any strings on Dad, or vice versa, if that’s what you mean. Any more than he has on—”

  She broke off and flashed around. The quick light in her cousin’s eye and the delighted shout from everybody else in the playroom could only mean one of two things. A jack pot, or—

  “Janey! Hi, Janey!”

  A jack pot, Connie Maynard thought, or Janey.

  “Hi, Janey!” Everybody was shouting it, and Janey was there on the stairs. Gus was behind her, and Connie heard somebody say, “Hello, there, Gus, how’s the boy?” But it was Janey they were glad to see and always saw first, Janey, who always just stopped and stood there, looking as if she’d just been scrubbed and had her hair ribbons tied, always surprised and eternally delighted that they noticed she’d come and really seemed to want her there. Connie Maynard suppressed a sharp flash of irritation. That was what she was doing now, just stopped halfway down the stairs, her small pointed face breaking into wreaths of happiness and delight, her blue eyes like breathless stars, just standing there surprised and excited as a child. And not even pretty. That irritated Connie Maynard. Her nose was too stubby and turned-up, her face too pointed, her eyes too big and set too far apart, all her facial bones showing, her fuzzy tow-colored hair escaping everywhere as the water she’d slicked it up with dried and it popped out of the black velvet ribbon she wore like a topknot on her head. Janey trying to look sleek and well-groomed was as absurd as her just standing there in the middle of the stairs.

  “Go on, Janey.” Connie heard Gus Blake, and saw him give her a little push to bring her to.

  “Hello, hello, everybody!” She came on down the stairs. “Hello, Connie! I’m sorry we’re late.” She put her hand out. It was cold, so cold Connie Maynard was startled touching it.

  “Hello, Dorsey—hello, Martha!” Janey moved on. “Hello, Orvie—hello, Jim!” Janey never said, “Hi, there,” to people: Her voice was always warm and full of velvet delight, as if Connie, Dorsey Syms, Orvie Rogers, Martha and Jim Ferguson, each one of them, was the one person she’d hoped would be there without really daring to hope she could count on it. And the last person, Connie Maynard thought, in that room, or in the whole of Smith County, that anybody would think, to look at her, was responsible for the handsome sheaf of rubber checks upstairs in John Maynard’s library desk drawer. If it made any difference to anybody what Janey did, it hardly seemed likely, now, the way the Fergusons, Orvie, Dorsey Syms and all the rest of them gathered around her.

  “Hi, there, Gus,” Connie said. Gus Blake was left back with her. They were a little like something washed up on the beach as Janey’s trim and sunlit craft took off to sea.

  Connie shook her head impatiently. It wasn’t so at all. She could be at the other side of the room with all the rest of them, too, if she wanted to. She was here in the comparative quiet with Gus because that was the way she wanted it and had maneuvered to arrange it. I almost sound as if I’m jealous of Janey. It came sharply into her mind. But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t in the least jealous of Janey Blake, only irritated at the way everybody always acted as if Janey were somehow something different, not just a little climber whose father was a night watchman at the Rogers plant but something rare and precious, like a branch of apple blossoms in the show. How in heaven’s name had Gus Blake ever married her? She felt a sudden passionate impulse to scream it at him, scream it out at the top of her voice.

  She clutched one fist in the green taffeta folds of her skirt.

  Stop it, Connie, stop it! she told herself angrily. Just stop it. Don’t be a fool. Remember you’re the girl that has brains.

  She forced herself to smile as she looked up at Janey’s husband.

  “How’s the boss man tonight?”

  “Pooped,” Gus Blake said briefly. “Here comes a drink, and boy, can I use one. I’d like to throttle whoever it was got the big idea for a Centennial edition. Thanks, Lawrence, and how about you, Connie?”

  Before she could remind him the Centennial edition was his own idea, originally designed to keep her busy, or even say she didn’t want another drink, Jim Ferguson had disengaged himself from Janey’s entourage and was over with them.

  “Hi there, Gus! How’s the boy?” He gave Gus an enthusiastic slap on the back and pumped his hand. “Swell seeing you, boy. Swell party, Connie. Here comes chow. Well, be seein’ you, boy.”

  He headed off for a table, calling Janey and Orvie Rogers to share it with him. Gus Blake looked at Connie, one brow quizzically raised.

  “What’s the matter with our banker?” he inquired. “Vine leaves? Or is my account overdrawn? Last time Fergie was that glad to see me was just after he turned me down on some dough I wanted to borrow from his blasted bank.”

  Connie held her breath for only an instant. There was no meaning in what he’d said. No meaning that he was aware of—yet.

  “Vine leaves, I expect. Or isn’t it barley they make Scotch out of? Here’s food. Why don’t we go back here and sit in peace if you’re pooped?”

  She moved around to a small table set for two just outside, the dancing fan of firelight. Janey was across the room, but Connie could see the blank blue eyes following her and Gus as they got around there, away from the yellow sofas that were filling up with people bringing their plates to eat by the fire. Janey’s the one who’s jealous, not me. It flashed into her mind. Her pulse quickened. Jealousy was stupid. Jealous people did stupid things. And why should Janey care, anyway? She had Orvie, Jim Ferguson, and Dorsey Syms at her table.

  Connie saw suddenly to her irritation that she herself had her uncle Nelson Syms. Uncle Nelly was drawing up a chair to talk to Gus.

  “I expect you two see plenty of each other at the paper all day, and I want to ask Gus about that piece Mamie wants to write for the Centennial edition. Her brother said it sure ought to go on the front page, but Mamie’d have to ask you, Gus. John always says he doesn’t have any say about the paper, you run it. It’s up to you.”

  Connie bit her lip in sharp vexation. There was nothing she could do. Poor Uncle Nelly. Thin and stoop-shouldered, he looked as if he’d been brought up in a potato cellar before a steam roller had permanently shaped him. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened to Uncle Nelly if Aunt Mamie hadn’t married him and forced him to live their kind of life, moving him from job to job until John Maynard got him the one he’d had for ten years now, as a clerk in the County Treasurer’s office. He’d probably have been a lot happier and never had the stomach ulcers that put him in the hospital a couple of weeks out of every year.

  He was going on about Aunt Mamie’s article, and Gus Blake was listening, not irritably or even patiently, but with a friendly interest that apparently was quite genuine, sipping his highball, nodding his head, as serious about this nonsense, apparently, as Uncle Nelly himself. Anybody would think Uncle Nelly was one of his closest friends and most astute advisers, the way he was listening—
or think he was glad to have Uncle Nelly there so he wouldn’t be alone in the corner with her. But that was nonsense, too.

  I wonder if I’ll ever really understand the guy, Connie Maynard thought, trying to blot out her uncle’s voice. It had the unbearable monotony of a tap dripping in a basement laundry tub. She lowered her eyes and looked through her long, darkened lashes at the man across the table from her, the editor of her father’s paper, her boss whose job she could take any time she decided she really wanted it—even if she and everybody else knew she couldn’t do it as well as he did. He had a flair for it that she didn’t have, even if he didn’t have courage enough to say nuts to the local customers and take their obituaries off the front page and put them over on page ten where they belonged. That was the first thing she’d do. And she’d get along. She’d keep Ed Noonan as city editor, just as Gus had done. She brought herself up sharply. That wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want the paper. She wanted Gus Blake and the paper. The paper was hers any time she wanted it. Her father could give it to her with sound financial logic, saving on his income tax now and estate taxes later, since the Gazette, tottering on its last moribund typestick when Gus took it over, had showed a very neat profit for three years running. But it wasn’t the paper. It was Gus Blake.

  Because I’m absolutely nuts about this guy, Connie Maynard thought.

  THREE

  HER PULSE QUICKENED again as she glanced across the table at him. The sound of his voice, the half-sardonic twist of his wide mouth when he smiled, the sudden subrisive humor that lighted his gray eyes without apparent reason a hundred times a day—all of it added up to something that set up jet pin points of flame inside her far more exciting than anything else she’d ever known. And infinitely more exciting now she was back home after her own trial fling at marriage, with Janey a barrier between them, than he’d ever been when she was engaged to him, and could have had him simply by being a little less willful and impatient.